First Advent of Code visualization this year:

https://movq.de/v/e14086cc1c/MVI_8057.MOV.mp4

It’s for day 8. Don’t look if you don’t want to get spoiled. If you don’t know the puzzle, you’ll hardly understand what this is doing – but it’s fancy and colorful and fun to look at, right? 😅

This is Java 1 (AWT) running on a Pentium 133 on OS/2 Warp 4.

@prologic@twtxt.net It’s always been crazy to watch, yeah. 😅 And kind of frustrating, actually. Without any kind of ranking, this whole thing would be much more relaxed. ✌️

So, AI cheaters have ruined the global Advent of Code leaderboard:

https://old.reddit.com/r/adventofcode/comments/1h9cub8/discussion_on_llm_cheaters/

And they don’t even try to hide it anymore.

At this point, any kind of speed contest or ranking has become meaningless. Seeing this kind of behavior is sad and probably unavoidable, because there will always be a few who spoil things for everyone.

The only way going forward, I can think of, is to remove the global ranking and just have private leaderboards. Basically what these two people have said:

• https://old.reddit.com/r/adventofcode/comments/1h9cub8/discussion_on_llm_cheaters/m0zzfb1/
  
• https://old.reddit.com/r/adventofcode/comments/1h9cub8/discussion_on_llm_cheaters/m0zyswh/
  

Cheaters won’t get public attention anymore. AoC won’t be “officially” ruined by cheaters anymore. If you want to do a speed contest, you can still do that in private leaderboards.

(Honestly, I’d prefer it if AoC didn’t have any kind of ranking anyway. I’m not really fast enough to compete, but it’s always at the back of my head. And last year I made rank 116 once, so it’s not completely impossible. All this creates a lot of pressure that I have to fight and try to ignore. 🤣)

@sorenpeter@darch.dk

“A minimalist social network powered by plain text files”

My brain keeps shortening this to “a socialist network …” and then jumps to “uhh, large parts of the US won’t like this” … 🤦🤪

… aaand now everything’s white: https://movq.de/v/8ad556e1c8/ Let’s see how long it lasts.

@aelaraji@aelaraji.com This is as fog-free as it gets at the moment, although it just started snowing a lot: https://movq.de/v/ec96db0f90/ Same tree, less dramatic effect. 😂

@prologic@twtxt.net Oh, nice! I can hear the cicadas. 😃

@prologic@twtxt.net Yep. 💯

@bender@twtxt.net I see, thanks. 🤔

@aelaraji@aelaraji.com That was exactly the idea. 😀 (Yeah, there might be people who consider AI stuff “art”. On some level, I think that it is art, but not in the same way as a human being creating something.)

Someone explain to me real quick what the appeal of Bluesky is, especially when compared to Mastodon.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org (Semicolon! 🤘)

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org

But then, why just block IPv4 and not also IPv6?

I’ll take “what’s the most overlooked thing in corporate networks” for 200. 😅

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Oh gawd. This is the point where computing stops being fun. 😂

• Can you disable the snakeoil junk temporarily? Probably not, eh?
  
• Have you verified with an external device that it really is your laptop that’s dropping the packets? Like, what does tcpdump on your router see?
  

If this works reliably in the office, then it feels like some kind of fail-safe mechanism of the snakeoil stuff. If it can’t see its control server (which might only be reachable from the office?), then it shuts down web traffic? Something like that?

Any idea how the snakeoil works? Maybe it does LD_PRELOAD magic to hijack syscalls like connect()? Does it use kernel modules?

@bender@twtxt.net “Kunstliebhaber” perhaps? 😅

I’m on vacation now. First order of business: Sit in the armchair for “a few minutes” (= sleep tight for 3 hours straight). 😴

@skinshafi@thunix.net Could be a locale thing, yeah. 🥴

@prologic@twtxt.net Finally a good name!

@aelaraji@aelaraji.com Awww 😅

It’s really hard to put into words. Mastodon just feels more stressful. Ugh. I don’t know. 😅

(The Mastodon instance I’m currently on isn’t run by me and the “export data” feature appears to be broken, for example. A good reminder to consider anything I post there as temporary and volatile.)

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org That’s not too bad. 😃 Now I wanna do LaTeX again.

I admit that I only follow the groff mailing list to get the occasional email from Doug McIlroy in my mailbox: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2024-12/msg00025.html

@bender@twtxt.net Well, so far, I’m using the standard web client. Haven’t found a great client yet. 🫤 Mastodon/Fediverse is also very different from twtxt, there are way more images/videos that I’d like to see – a TUI client like toot wouldn’t work for me.

Dunno, maybe I’ll make some changes in this area after christmas. Try self-hosting again or something like that …

Thanks. 😅

@aelaraji@aelaraji.com I got lucky this time. 🥴 It certainly helps that there is basically nothing behind that tree for 100-200m. When the fog clears up, I’ll take another shot for comparison.

A cold and foggy day. 🥶

It’s also stressful that everything is “live” on Mastodon: When you post something, you post it immediately. Everything happens NOW. In jenny, I can queue up several replies and send them a bit later – much more relaxed and allows me to change my mind without anyone seeing it. 😅

I’ve been using Mastodon too much lately. The constant notifications are becoming too stressful. I really do prefer slow communication, like twtxt. ✌️

@sorenpeter@darch.dk It was supposed to be one of those “spoiler” tags: Black font on black background, when you click on it it turns into regular text.

@prologic@twtxt.net It’s not “standard” anyway. 🥴 Not even CommonMark includes this …

Okay, not supported. And it’s probably not worth it, we rarely need it, do we? 🤔

Yarn spoiler test:

! foo

@prologic@twtxt.net Hmm, still loads for me. 🤔 But it’s stale, no new posts since last AoC.

@prologic@twtxt.net One bitcoin = USD $100k? That’s … a lot. 😂

I see @taigrr@twtxt.net on the leaderboard. Guess you’re going for speed again? 😅

So, who’s doing Advent of Code? Had some fun this morning:

And how should we handle spoilers here on twtxt? base64? 😅

@prologic@twtxt.net Anything in particular or bitcoin in general? Either way: Yes.

(The book mentions large integers in the introduction, which reminded me that I forgot to check if my target language for AoC supports 64 bits integers. 🤦 But luckily it does. That would have been a showstopper. 😅)

@sorenpeter@darch.dk Neat! How was the feedback from the audience? Any interesting questions/discussions?

@Rob@jsreed5.org Hnggggg. 🙈🙈🙈

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Those lazy bastards! 😃

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org What does the sign on the last photo say? “Zum Vetterleswirt”? What a strange “r”. 🤔

@bender@twtxt.net Let’s not try to break his pod while he’s away. 😂

Someone posted something on Mastodon with a future timestamp and now it’s permanently “trending” on various front pages of various instances:

• https://social.besties.house/@h/113449358538636686
  
• https://social.besties.house/@h/113521888921301438

@prologic@twtxt.net 🤤

@bender@twtxt.net My opinion of Ruby is basically this:

https://youtu.be/vcFBwt1nu2U?t=1116

“Everybody get out!!!!!!!!!! (… unless there’s not a fire)”

“It’s the wrong way around.”

Everything in Ruby is just ever so slightly different than I would expect. 😂

(TIL: yt-dlp supports twitch.)

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org We’re having warm and sunny weather today, at least 15°C. Feels nice but doesn’t feel right. 😅

@prologic@twtxt.net Yeah, I wouldn’t be able to make it if I didn’t take vacation. 🥴 Especially the later puzzles …

@prologic@twtxt.net Awww. Well, better late then never. 😅

Ready for takeoff. Just one more week to go. 🎅 #AdventOfCode