@prologic@twtxt.net I’m pretty sure that’s going to happen at some point or has already happened. 😃 Is this “the dark web”? 😅

Finally, new books arrived. Let’s see if Dead Silence is as good as it sounds. 😃

It happened.

“Can you help me debug this program? I vibe coded it and I have no idea what’s going on. I had no choice – learning this new language and frameworks would have taken ages, and I have severe time constraints.”

Did I say “no”? Of course not, I’m a “nice guy”. So I’m at fault as well, because I endorsed this whole thing. The other guy is also guilty, because he didn’t communicate clearly to his boss what can be done and how much time it takes. And the boss and his bosses are guilty a lot, because they’re all pushing for “AI”.

The end result is garbage software.

This particular project is still relatively small, so it might be okay at the moment. But normalizing this will yield nothing but garbage. And actually, especially if this small project works out fine, this contributes to the shittiness because management will interpret this as “hey, AI works”, so they will keep asking for it in future projects.

How utterly frustrating. This is not what I want to do every day from now on.

@thecanine@twtxt.net Got any responses from any politicians? 🤔 (Assuming you send this letter directly to them, of course.)

@klaxzy@klaxzy.net Yes, if Germany actually opposes this. But so far, there’s only one guy that said something on a press conference. He does speak for the “CDU” party, which is “in command” at the moment, but that’s about it. I don’t trust these people – not until I’ve actually seen them voting against Chat Control. 🥴

@prologic@twtxt.net Where do I stand on “Chat Control”? How long of a response/rant do you want? 😅 It’s a disaster. As I understand it, they want to spy on me directly on my devices before encryption even happens – jfc, no, fuck off. And since there are so many devices, they want to automate the scanning, which is the worst idea you could possibly have.

@bender@twtxt.net I guess most clocks don’t support that. 😅 My wrist watch can do it, you can select it in the menu:

https://movq.de/v/ccb4ffcbc5/s.png

In general, different transmitter means different frequency and different encoding, for example these two:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DCF77
  
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_from_NPL_(MSF)

@klaxzy@klaxzy.net Why, because Germany is now listed as “opposed” on fightchatcontrol.eu? I’m not so sure. This is just one guy (Jens Spahn) saying “no we don’t want it”. That’s not an “official” stance, it’s very fragile and could change any minute. https://netzpolitik.org/2025/eu-ueberwachungsplaene-unionsfraktion-jetzt-gegen-chatkontrolle-innenministerium-will-sich-nicht-aeussern/

Calling it “IBM Bob” … I guess that’s just IBM humor. 🤣 https://www.ibm.com/products/bob

DCF77, our time signal radio station, is a great public service. I really love that. It’s just a signal that anybody can pick up, no subscription, no tracking, no nothing. Much like GPS/GNSS. 💚

This makes me happy. Radio controlled clocks perfectly in sync. ⌚🥳

https://movq.de/v/6b1847a056/VID_20251007_181904.mp4.mp4

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org As the kids on imgur say: I always updoot birbs 👍

So green, so many mushrooms. 🤯

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org @prologic@twtxt.net They’re both great 😃

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org

I was always under the wrong impression that Tkinter is bundled with Python.

It should be. Maybe your distro splits it off. 🤔

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Nope. I think they stayed only one year. 😢

From the chicken archive, 2017.

Not mine, these were more or less free roaming chickens. Farmers didn’t use some of their fields for a while and allowed some other farmer to let the birds live there in the meantime.

(Full resolution, CC BY-SA.)

Image

Image

Image

@prologic@twtxt.net Whoop whoop 🥳

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Xfce is nice, but it’s also mostly GTK. I don’t really know the answer yet. For now, I’ll just avoid anything that uses GTK4.

For my own programs, I might have a closer look at Tkinter. I was complaining recently that I couldn’t find a good file manager, so it might be an interesting excercise to write one in Python+Tkinter. 🤔 (Or maybe that’s too much work, I don’t know yet.)

It’s time to say goodbye to the GTK world.

GTK2 was nice to work with, relatively lightweight, and there were many cool themes back then. GTK3 was already a bit clunky, but tolerable. GTK4 now pulls in all kinds of stuff that I’m not interested in, it has become quite heavy.

Farewell. 👋

@bender@twtxt.net Who?

Solving this puzzle took me longer than I care to admit. It’s kind of obvious in hindsight. https://movq.de/v/83e5aa0709/MVI_8895.MOV.mp4

@bender@twtxt.net I don’t think so, but I might give it a shot when the “official” drivers no longer work at all.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org lol 😅

All good things come to an end, I guess.

I have an Epson printer (AcuLaser C1100) and an Epson scanner (Perfection V10), both of which I bought about 20 years ago. The hardware still works perfectly fine.

Until recently, Epson still provided Linux drivers for them. That is pretty cool! I noticed today that they have relaunched their driver website – and now I can’t find any Linux drivers for that hardware anymore. Just doesn’t list it (it does list some drivers for Windows 7, for example).

I mean, okay, we’re talking about 20 years here. That is a very long time, much more than I expected. But if it still works, why not keep using it?

Some years ago, I started archiving these drivers locally, because I anticipated that they might vanish at some point. So I can still use my hardware for now (even if I had to reinstall my PC for some reason). It might get hacky at some point in the future, though.

This once more underlines the importance of FOSS drivers for your hardware. I sadly didn’t pay attention to that 20 years ago.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Awwww! I’ve never noticed their tail feathers being so green. 🤯

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Yeah, it’s probably not black and white. (I have no idea why you would connect a bloody light bulb to your WiFi …) But I do get the impression that there are way more “neo-luddites” that 20 years ago. 😅

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org

Waste paper, like an opened envelope, suits a shopping list perfectly fine.

Indeed, I’m drowning in this stuff and I throw it away anyway, so I might just use it.

You’ve got a nice handwriting, I like it.

Thanks. 😅 (It used to be horrible. Gosh, the teachers scolding me in school … Bah. 😂)

20 years ago, normal people avoided technology and techies would jump on the newest gadgets as soon as they could

now, normal people buy smart toasters & coffee mugs while every techie I know is on the verge of retreating to the forest

https://plush.city/@JellyTBeagle/115272072725713725

But you know what still works, my squeeze filler (didn’t even refill it) and my old (super cheap) calligraphy set … I’ll just use that.

https://movq.de/v/f48c7cda09/IMG_20251001_200317.jpg.jpg
https://movq.de/v/f48c7cda09/IMG_20251001_202438.jpg.jpg

Okay, I give up. The “shopping list” app™ on my phone broke for no reason whatsoever, there wasn’t even an update. I’m going back to pen and paper.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Finally! The end is near! Rejoice! \o/

@zvava@twtxt.net Hm, I tried with https://www.uninformativ.de/twtxt.txt#:~:text=2025-09- and my Firefox 143 didn’t like it. https://www.uninformativ.de/twtxt.txt#:~:text=2025%2D09%2D worked. 🤔

@zvava@twtxt.net

(#abcdefghijkl https://example.com/tw.txt#:~:text=2025-10-01T10:28:00Z), because it can be simply hacked in to clients currently on hashv1 and provides an off-ramp to location-based addressing

I like that property (an off-ramp to location-based addressing), so I think I could live with that approach. ✅

(I’m not sure why we’re using text fragments, though. Wouldn’t that link to the first occurence of 2025-10-01T10:28:00Z? That’s not necessarily correct. And, to be proper URLs that Firefox and Chromium understand, it would also need to be written as 2025%2D10%2D01T10:28:00Z. The dash carries meaning, sadly. I think all this just creates needless complication. How about we just go with https://example.com/tw.txt#2025-10-01T10:28:00Z?)

@zvava@twtxt.net My clients trusts the first url field it finds. If there is none, it uses the URL that I’m using for fetching the feed.

No validation, no logging.

In practice, I’ve not seen issues with people messing with this field. (What I do see, of course, is broken threads when people do legitimate edits that change the hash.)

I don’t see a way how anyone can impersonate anybody else this way. 🤔 Sure, you could use my URL in your url field, but then what? You will still show up as zvava in my client or, if you also change your nick field, as movq (zvava).

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Just as planned! 😅

Hopefully I can muster up the energy to start this new project:

Put up lots of thermometers and hygrometers in the apartment, have them report their readings wireless to a database.

I suspect that I’ll have to “build” these myself, because ready-to-use kits most like require some sort of cloud service. Dunno, haven’t checked yet.

Great to see so many new clients popping up. 👌

@itsericwoodward@itsericwoodward.com (I confess, my brain pronounced it as “TwitStorm”. 😂)

@prologic@twtxt.net I checked a while a ago and there were, like, 3-5 collisions or something like that. Not that many. 🤷 I have to specifically look for them – I don’t notice it in normal operation.

The twtiverse appears to have shrunk. Among the 61 feeds that I follow, I don’t see any hash collisions anymore. 🤔

Day 19 was a really nice puzzle. 😊

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org That looks like an older bug report. Which groff version is that (groff --version)?

Speaking of groff: I’ve been following their mailing list for a while now and this G. Branden Robinson person invests an insane amount of energy into that project. 🤯

Okay, now that I knew what to look for, I found existing bug reports:

• https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2023-04/msg00400.html
  
• https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?63960
  

Most importantly:

This is resolved in the groff trunk.

🥳

@prologic@twtxt.net No, this is a Linux manpage from the man-pages project: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/docs/man-pages/man-pages.git/tree/man/man7/ascii.7

I do have an idea what’s going on. Could be an unfortunate interaction between the table preprocessor tbl and the man macro package. 🤔

Task for this weekend:

https://movq.de/v/b05a7ce782/vid-1758959332.mp4

When you call man ascii, you get this nice table, but there’s a weird vertical line at the bottom. That line is supposed to be a vertical rule and is supposed to go from the bottom of the table all the way to the top.

Let’s see if I can debug this. (Not getting my hopes up at this point, but I’ll try.)

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Not bad. 🤔 So this started out as a flat sheet and then you cut and folded it, like paper (more or less)?

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org I give up. Just doesn’t give me a 360° video. 🥴 Maybe I’m just having bad luck with YouTube’s randomized stuff (maybe I’m getting “experiments”, who knows) …

@prologic@twtxt.net Hm, I don’t know. Over here, we have parties that we would call “left” or “right”, one of them even calls themselves “The Left”. No idea about your political landscape, but it still makes sense for us. 🤔 For me, at least.

@prologic@twtxt.net Germany was listed as “opposing” on https://fightchatcontrol.eu/ for a while, now it’s back to “undecided”. According to netzpolitik.org, it’s still debated. Also according to that page, there could be an important vote on the EU level on October 13/14.

The green party and the (far) left are opposing this (at least in Germany). Sadly, Germany is leaning more right with every year … As for young people: The (far) left is the strongest party among young people, with the (far) right being the second strongest one. (https://www.tagesschau.de/wahl/archiv/2025-02-23-BT-DE/umfrage-alter.shtml) Is there cause for hope? I don’t know.

@prologic@twtxt.net They have not rolled it out (yet), they are “just” discussing it (for the n-th time).

@prologic@twtxt.net That’s a completely flat threading model (you can’t reply to replies). Is that intentional?

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Hm, I couldn’t trick yt-dlp into downloading the correct format. Works in the browser, though. 😅

@melyanna@tilde.club Exit! Exit!!1! https://movq.de/v/c51aa76926/exit-exit-exit.jpg

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org I can’t remember the last time I came across a 360° video. 🤔

@bender@twtxt.net A renewed vision test might be a good idea for some people. 😅 I mean, it is kind of curious that you get this license as a young person and then it lasts a lifetime, without any further tests. As long as you don’t screw up really bad, it remains valid …

@aelaraji@aelaraji.com 👋

The driver’s license documents in Germany now have an expiration date. You have to renew them every 15 years. (Not the license itself, just the documents.)

I just got my renewed documents. Their expiration date says something like 01.09.40. Huh? That looks super weird to me, like an error. But no, it’s 2040 … Just 15 years away.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org https://www.celestrak.com (where the TLE files are downloaded from) seems to be down. :/

Happy equinox – where the world is illuminated like this:

https://movq.de/v/3f9fc6ebdd/equinox.png

(Instead of this or this.)

Doing a bit of 2018 Advent of Code now to relax. 🎄

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Some stuff is actually more reliable, that’s true. It’s also waaaaaaaaaaay more expensive, though … :-)

I called it a day, yes. \o/

The worst thing you can do is make your infrastructure (switches, wifi, …) depend on some cloud service. Because someone else is maintaining that service; you have no control over it. You 100% depend on that other person now. Very stupid idea.

Now guess what manufacturers are pushing for …

Now guess who couldn’t complete a task at work this Saturday morning, because a certain cloud service was down …

IT is fucked. Throw it all away and start over.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Yep! Super fast and efficient! 😃

Severe but funny burn-ins on my TFT again:

https://movq.de/v/9df0437d27/MVI_8891.MOV.mp4

Now everything looks like it has that silly slogan as a background image:

https://movq.de/v/9df0437d27/smol.jpg

Sometimes, I wonder how my desktop looks to other people. Normal sighted people, I mean. For me, everything is much smaller and always slightly blurry (almost antialiased) because of my eyesight.

Maybe it does look horribly pixelated and super ugly to other people, and that’s why everyone prefers smoothed fonts and UIs and all that … ? 😂

Speaking of Sudoku, I was banging my head against this for 15 minutes:

https://sudokupad.app/adventure/94-advvvvvvvven

I’m glad I eventually got it right. 🥴

(via https://dosgame.club/@Tijn/115221132694421937)

@arne@uplegger.eu Hm, noch nie gemacht. 🤔 Machst du das von Hand oder mit Code?

@zvava@twtxt.net Good question. This is the spec, I think:

https://twtxt.dev/exts/metadata.html#nick

It doesn’t say much. 🤔

In the wild, I’ve only seen “traditional” nick names, i.e. ASCII 0x21 thru 0x7E.

My client removes anything but r'[a-zA-Z0-9]' from nick names.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Omg, that is great. 😃

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org I didn’t know they had a name, to be honest. When I/we last had a dot matrix printer, I just sat alone in the basement and made these. 😂

@bender@twtxt.net Sigh. So it’s just me. Again. 😂

Next level poop: Can’t log in to reddit anymore with adblock enabled. It says invalid usename or password.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Yeah, I’ve corrupted a Git repo or two doing that … 🥴

@zvava@twtxt.net I was about to suggest that you post some examples. By now, we’re pretty good at debugging hashing issues, because that happens so often. 😂 But it looks like you figured it out on your own. ✌️

Can’t resist.

https://movq.de/v/2a7918d719/a.jpg

@prologic@twtxt.net I completely forgot about that topic … 😂🥴

(Yes, she’s the one who did that Wisky bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HDBSm2s18s )

We’ve got a new feature!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-lgJX3npiQ

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Ouch 😲

@dce@hashnix.club Nope. 😃 What’s that genre called? Sounds like old horror movies from the 70’ies (or it could be a soundtrack to Salad Fingers, if anyone remembers that).

@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz I hope so 😅

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org 🔥🔥🔥

I have a feeling that learning to play electric double bass through an amplifier was a big mistake.

At the core, this is an acoustic instrument. If you play it through an amp, you will instinctively only do the bare minimum to get some sound going, because the amp does the heavy lifting. But it’s just not right.

This is a very physical instrument. It needs a lot of force and strength – in comparison, an electric bass guitar is almost flimsy and delicate. I need to “feel” what’s going on and that’s just not the case when using headphones.

I feel like I wasted ~3 years. 🫤 But maybe it’ll get better from now on …

Made this a few weeks ago, just listened to it again and I quite like it:

https://www.uninformativ.de/music/2025-1-ebow/Fog.ogg

This is just one instrument: Electric bass guitar + EBow. And echo/delay on top. But it’s a single track, single take. It amazes me quite a bit how much you can do with that little thing. 🤯

https://movq.de/v/2496f8ba36/s.png

@dce@hashnix.club I’ve never heard of weirdcore before, but it’s kind of intriguing. 😃

@dce@hashnix.club The difference in brightness is pretty big. When the Moon is completely inside of the Earth’s shadow, you can see the red tint:

https://movq.de/v/7b4c323c0c/

As soon as direct sunlight returns, even just a little bit, the Moon looks mostly normal again.

Yeah, it’s probably overkill. 🙈

Oops, maybe I should have posted a reminder. 🥴

@dce@hashnix.club By the time you posted your twt, the red phase was already over. 🙈 Stellarium has a pretty good simulation of the whole thing.

Lunar eclipse just now: https://movq.de/v/f377c108cb

How about no longer using in-browser Git repo viewers? Make the AI bots do the work and actually clone the repo.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Nice! And I didn’t look out the window at all. Was watching eels. 😂

Well, that was fascinating: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxNq8zOEbM8

@bender@twtxt.net The person actually reached out to me. It’s all good. ✌️

@dce@hashnix.club Oof, that’s surprising. I wouldn’t have expected that to be so slow. 😳😳😳

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org You might enjoy this one: https://github.com/TheMozg/awk-raycaster

Dear dev.alessandrocutolo.it, do you really need to fetch my twtxt feed every 20-30 seconds? 😅 Not that it’s posing a problem, but I feel like this could be optimized. For example, how about using the if-modified-since request header: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Reference/Headers/If-Modified-Since

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org @dce@hashnix.club It’s pretty cool, I won’t argue that, but also really simple, to be completely honest. 😅 The BIOS already provides all you need to send data to the printer:

https://helppc.netcore2k.net/interrupt/bios-printer-services

The BIOS actually does provide a great deal of things, which, to me, was one of the most surprising learnings of this project (the project of writing a little 16-bit real-mode OS, that is). It often doesn’t feel like I was writing an operating system – it felt more like writing a normal program that just uses BIOS calls like we would use syscalls these days.

(I’ve also read a lot of warnings, like “don’t use the BIOS for this or that”. Mostly because it tends to be very slow.)

Good morning. Driving the dot matrix printer from my little real-mode toy OS. 🖨️

(This is just a wrapper around BIOS INT 17. I love it nonetheless. 😅)

https://movq.de/v/6b3f9a2837/MVI_8839.MOV.mp4

Speaking of clouds, yesterday evening: https://movq.de/v/bafe89fd66/p.jpg