Brian Beach has moved @bwbeach@qoto.org

I'm coming up on the tenth anniversary of my purchase of my home wifi router, an Asus that I bought in late 2014. I think about it approximately never, and checking I see the last automatic software update it got was November 30th of last year.

I feel like we don't make a big enough deal of the companies, orgs, whoever, that do drama-free, low-key long term support well enough that it takes effort to even notice it happened.

#Maddow's A-Block last night was brutal, but mandatory viewing. Here's just part of it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV51sWQ9s3A&list=PLDIVi-vBsOEyETRGoRP9y8zhyu6bHl6iK&index=5

To act is a choice. To do nothing is a choice. Slow walking a response is a choice. The lesser of two evils: also a choice. Choosing something and then misrepresenting what you chose: two choices.

Life has always been full of choices. Some people want this to remain unacknowledged; the responsibility that comes with claiming agency is uncomfortable, and it's true also that YOUR agency, specifically, could pose a threat.

Our agency is very powerful. It builds worlds. You build worlds.

Not only will this funding from the Biden administration provide jobs for underserved and Tribal communities, it will also be used to fight the negative impacts climate change by investing in reestablishing the native seed supply chain, and save water by switching to low-water crops.

This is progressive action. Joe Biden does a good deal for jobs and the climate and doesn’t get enough credit.

#Arizona gets $10.3M in federal funding to restore ecosystem:
https://ktar.com/story/5564130/arizona-gets-10-3m-in-federal-funding-to-restore-ecosystem/

GitHub is struggling to contain an ongoing attack that’s flooding the site with millions of code repositories. These repositories contain obfuscated malware that steals passwords and cryptocurrency from developer devices, researchers said.

The malicious repositories are clones of legitimate ones, making them hard to distinguish to the casual eye. An unknown party has automated a process that forks legitimate repositories, meaning the source code is copied so developers can use it in an independent project that builds on the original one. The result is millions of forks with names identical to the original one that add a payload that’s wrapped under seven layers of obfuscation. To make matters worse, some people, unaware of the malice of these imitators, are forking the forks, which adds to the flood.

“Most of the forked repos are quickly removed by GitHub, which identifies the automation,” Matan Giladi and Gil David, researchers at security firm Apiiro, wrote Wednesday. “However, the automation detection seems to miss many repos, and the ones that were uploaded manually survive. Because the whole attack chain seems to be mostly automated on a large scale, the 1% that survive still amount to thousands of malicious repos.”

https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/02/github-besieged-by-millions-of-malicious-repositories-in-ongoing-attack/

The argument that "protests don't do anything" is kinda undermined by how many places are working super hard to make protests illegal.

Periodic reminder: The only way to write good code is to write tons of shitty code first. Feeling shame about bad code stops you from getting to good code.

In a healthy town, there are
both private spaces and public spaces.

Sure, there is privates houses and privates offices. Some you can access with an invitation, some that require identification, some you just cannot access at all. This is all fine.

But there are also lots of public spaces. There is parks, sidewalks, beaches, town centers, libraries, malls, pubs, and all kind of other spaces where everyone can enter and exchange together freely and safely.

It is the same with the internet.

Sure some spaces will be
locked and should be locked. But we also need public spaces.

Spaces that do not require an account or an email to access, spaces where people can meet together and exchange ideas for just a moment or regularly. Spaces where people can freely access information without requiring identification or invitation.

This is essential to democracy, to equality, to share knowledge globally across communities.

Be very vigilant about
legislation and new platforms that endanger these public spaces.

If we do not nurture them,
We might very well lose them.

The fact that I know more about Fani Willis’ and Nathan Wade’s relationship than I do about the crimes committed by Ginni Thomas and Clarence Thomas shows exactly what is terribly wrong with today’s political mainstream media.

The experience of reading this was of a high eerie whistling sound coming from somewhere high up as the first batch of quotations scrolled by and then a series of explosions getting closer and louder

https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/generative/

Imagine if all the collective money spent of “self driving cars” had been spent on public transport.

As in, not cars - which are ultimately bad solutions for most of the world - but punctual and pervasive clean-energy public trams, trains, and buses.

It’d have cost less and been far more useful for far more people. Including non-drivers. And actually be here. Today. Working.

@zardoz03 reminds me of some advice I used to give about tests:

Imagine you’re telling someone how to use the software over the phone. Any setup you’d abbreviate (“now log in”) should be similarly abbreviated (hidden behind functions) in the test.

And imagine telling the person what to look at to see if the attempt worked. If you wouldn’t mention some particular bit of output/result, the test shouldn’t either.

Applies to both unit and end-to-end tests.

Let's stop mincing words and playing fucking games. Call things what they are. Use precise language. Traitors, fascists, nazis, confederates, terrorism, dictator, authoritarianism, racists are some of the proper descriptors.

I am fond of pointing out that in the early part of the pandemic, we stopped flu in its tracks completely (and even wiped out a whole strain) by wearing crappy masks badly. Well, it turns out those same crappy masks prevented a whole boatload of COVID too! Pretty good for crappy masks, worn badly.

I've worked in this industry for over a quarter of a century.

At no point have I found myself thinking "I wish I could just ask the computer to write this email for me" "I wish the computer could write my code for me". MS is adding co pilot function to lots of products. Not as opt in. But opt out. And it's a right hassle to turn it off? Why? So someone can ask it to right a longer email from a prompt that the recipient can then ask the AI to summarise for them ?

3/n

I saw this online somewhere and I just had to recreate it. This is my coding happy place.

I've missed #ILoveFreeSoftwareDay but maybe it's not too late. People say thanks to big projects like Linux, Git, or Python. But I want to acknowledge the contribution of people who are usually forgotten:

1. That person who faced the same issue as I, asked online, found a solution, and wrote it down.

2. That person who did research I need and spent time to make a blog post.

3. That person who made a small library that solves a very specific problem and published it on Github.

Thank you ❤️

This government official’s choice of words reveals that she defines ‘terrorism’ as something done exclusively by foreigners—a definition that exists neither in the law nor in the English language, but in the imaginations of many.

https://www.nytimes.com/article/kansas-city-parade-shooting.html