notabot

@notabot@lemm.ee

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Possession⁩ ⁨⁨22⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago⁩:

  Possesive spirit, 5 minutes later: “Let me out! Let me go back to hell!”

  Me: “Nope, you pushed in, now you gotta drive.”

  Spirit: “Please? At least it’s warm there.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #3081: PhD Timeline⁩ ⁨⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  I did the same, pressed on it for the text, got sent straight to the video, and swore under my breath in admiration. In the current climate what he’s done isn’t risk free, despite the fact it a) should be, and b) shouldn’t be needed in the first place.

  Nothing but respect for people calling out the crimes of thus administration, and when it’s someone with an unrelated platform and an audience, so much the better.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨are there bots that downvote every comment users have?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Thanks, this is a really handy tool. Kniwing the information was being withheld ‘just because’ was really rankling me. Now, could you just add a quick feature to read their minds and tell me why they down voted me? ;)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hardware recommendations⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Raspberry PIs are great little machines, but they’re ARM based rather than x86, which can potentially limit your software choices. Once you’ve bought the PI, a decent PSU, some storage, and maybe a case the cost can also start to go up quite quickly. Another option you might want to look at is something like a refurbishd EliteDesk. You can get a decent spec for a similar price to a PI and those extras, it’s x86, they run quietly, and they’re upgradable if you need more horsepower in future.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's not time for your point release yet.⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  DUCK FOR COVER DUCK FOR COVER

  Quack! *BOOM*

  You can securely run IIS on Vista, you just have to unplug the network and power cables.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨China scientists develop flash memory 10,000× faster than current tech⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  You… you don’t? Surely there’s some mistake, have you checked down the back of your cupboard? Sometimes they fall down there. Where else do you keep your internet?

  Appologies, I’m tired and that made more sense in my head.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How to self-host a distributed git server cluster?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Before you can decide on how to do this, you’re going to have to make a few choices:

  Authentication and Access

  Theres two main ways to expose a git repo, HTTPS or SSH, and they both have pros and cons here:

  • HTTPS A standard sort of protocol to proxy, but you’ll need to make sure you set up authentication on the proxy properly so that only only thise who should have access can get it. The git client will need to store a username and password to talk to the server or you’ll have to enter them on every request. gitweb is a CGI that provides a basic, but useful, web interface.

  • SSH Simpler to set up, and authentication is a solved problem. Proxying it isn’t hard, just forward the port to any of the backend servers, which avoids decrypting on the proxy. You will want to use the same hostkey on all the servers though, or SSH will refuse to connect. Doesn’t require any special setup.

  Replication

  Git is a distributed version control system, so you could replicate it at that level, alternatively you could use a replicated file system, or a simple file based replication. Each has it’s own trade-offs.

  • Git replication Using git pull to replicate between repositories is probably going to be your most reliable option, as it’s the job git was built for, and doesn’t rely on messing with it’s underlying files directly. The one caveat is that, if you push to different servers in quick suscession you may cause a merge confict, which would break your replication. The cleanest way to deal with that is to have the load balancer send all requests to server1 if it’s up, and only switch to the next server if all the prior ones are down. That way writes will alk be going to the same place. Then set up replication in loop, with server2 pulling from server1, server3 pulling from server2, and so on up to server1 pulling from server5. With frequent pulls changes that are commited to server1 will quickly replicate to all the other servers. This would effectively be a shared nothing solution as none of the servers are sharing resources, which would make it easier to geigraphically separate them. The load balancer could be replaced by a CNAME record in DNS, with a daemon that updates it to point to the correct server.

  • Replicated filesystem Git stores its data in a fairly simple file structure, so placing that on a replicated filesystem such as GlusterFS or Ceph would mean multiple servers could use the same data. From experience, this sort of thing is great when it’s working, but can be fragile and break in unexpected ways. You don’t want to be up at 2am trying to fix a file replication issue if you can avoid it.

  • File replication. This is similar to the git replication option, in that you have to be very aware of the risk of conflicts. A similar strategy would probably work, but I’m not sure it brings you any advantages.

  I think my prefered solution would be to have SSH access to the git servers and to set up pull based replication on a fairly fast schedule (where fast is relative to how frequently you push changes). You mention having a VPS as obe of the servers, so you might want to push changes to that rather than have be able to connect to your internal network.

  A useful property of git is that, if the server is missing changesets you can just push them again. So if a server goes down before your last push gets replicated, you can just push again once the system has switched to the new server. Once the first server comes back online it’ll naturally get any changesets it’s missing and effectively ‘heal’.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Who needs a lawn?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Parks are great, but unless they’re directly outside the houses where I can keep an eye on what’s happening they’re not as safe or convenient. Being able to send the kids into the garden to run off some energy whilst I’m in the house doing something, and being reasonably confident that they’re safe is a huge benefit.

  That’s certainly not impossible with a bit of sensible planning around how housing is laid out, putting clusters of housing directly around a shared green space, but it is rather challenging to retrofit in existing conurbations, and impossible in more spread out communities. The American style of huge featureless lawns surrounding the house right up to the property boundary are pretty awful, but the more European style of a bit of lawn surrounded by flower beds and maybe trees is rather better.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Who needs a lawn?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  If you have kids It’s helpful to have an open, flat area for them to run around on. It doesn’t need to be (just) grass, but that’s probably the most robust, and least likely to have sharp surprises, option.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨One day, a woman had 100 children⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  You get a full eye roll and groan for that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Testing vs Prod⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I manage all my homelab infra stuff via ansible and run services via kubenetes. All the ansible playbooks are in git, so I can roll back if I screw something up, and I test it on a sacrificial VM first when I can. Running services in kubenetes means I can spin up new instances and test them before putting them live.

  Working like that makes it all a lot more relaxing as I can be confident in my changes, and back them out if I still get it wrong.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do some say they own or have bought something that they technically haven't (e.g. domain names, expensive things, etc.)?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not sure where you are, but typically even if you rent rather than owning you pay the normal taxes, either directy or via your landlord, so they have little to do with owning a property, and more to do with occupying one, as a proxy for the demands you put on communal services. In most places you would also not lose your home for not paying them, you’d get dragged through the courts, possibly jailed for some period, and the tax authority in question would just end up with a lien on the property, entutling them to recompense when you sold or refinanced it.

  I’m not discounting the possibility you live sonewhere with different property tax laws, but you’ve been making extremely broad and general statements that don’t match reality in many places.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨China bans compulsory facial recognition and its use in private spaces like hotel rooms⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The rules also ban the use of facial recognition equipment in public places such as hotel rooms, public bathrooms, public dressing rooms, and public toilets.

  Why was there facial recognition, or any other sort of camera, in those places in the first place? Has something been mangled in the translation, is it a fuss about nothing, or were organisations genuinely going “hmm, we need to check your face before you can use the restrooms”?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I tried THIS and it actually works all the time⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  According to the book, there’s no need for them to eat it, you just have to give it to them, although I think they may have mixed up ‘fascinate’ and ‘confuse’.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Would it be a bad idea to show up at a protest outside a Tesla dealership with a sign that says "Deny Musk, Defund Doge, Depose Trump"?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Foil will do nothing against ultrasonic or any other acoustic weapon, but may, possibly, be of limited use against microwave weapons should they use them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨HP Inc settles printer toner lockout lawsuit with a promise to make firmware updates optional⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Why allow depreciation? You wouldn’t have bought it with the reduced functionality, and it’s going to cost you time and effort to remove it and replace it with something else. Inflation will reduce the value more than enough.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How likely is the US government going to identify and arrest every online user who have disagreed with the current administration?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The trick is not to arrest most if the really high profile individuals who are critical of the state, but encourage rumours about why they’ve been spared to discredit them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm looking to buy something like a reverse wheelbarrow, what do I call that?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I think you’re going to struggle to find something that can carry 200lb and be collapsible. Most carts seem to either be for much less than that, or much more. I found several that looked a bit like what you may want by searching for ‘vendor cart’.

  You may well be better off building/comissioning something to your spec though as a lot of the bigger carts are designed to be food stalls when stationary, so they’re probably unnecesarily heavy. I think you’d be able to make something along the lines of what you wanted with parts from your local DIY store.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #3058: Tall Structures⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  From what I can find, an average sweater uses between 3-6000 feet of yarn [1]. Apparently an ‘ideal’ altitude for for skydiving is 14000 feet [2]. That puts you around the same altitude as high altitude aerostat radar systems[3]. It would have to be a fairly voluminous sweater, but it’s probably just about within the realms of possibility. It’s chilly at that altitude, so maybe it was made with several layers for extra warmth?

  I’m no wool-ologist, and even less of a jumper out of planes, but these were the sources I used to get my figures:

  [1] www.blackeryarns.co.uk/…/wool-ball-lengths/ [2] friendlyskydiver.com/skydiving-altitudes/ [3] en.wikipedia.org/…/Tethered_Aerostat_Radar_System

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why's everyone freaking out about Firefox Terms of Service? Isn't it Open Source?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  The current intention may not be malicious, but it leaves the way open for changes that are to slip in. If they were worried about services like translation being concidered ‘sales’, which is a reasonable concern, they should have split them out of the core browser into an extension and put the ‘might sell your data’ licence on that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Apple turns off iCloud encryption feature in UK following reported government legal order.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Both. Do both. Make it easier for them to address the issue than ignore you. Depending on which side of the aisle your MP is on, focus your letter on either “those evil <other side> are doing thus terrible thing, I know you’re bold enough to stand up to them.” or “this policy seems to have the following problems, and it’s leaving you open to attack from <other side>. It’d be a shame if you lost your position over it.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Russia-aligned hackers are targeting Signal users with device-linking QR codes⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  What I find particularly concerning is that the were able to “hide javascript commands that link the victim’s phone to a new device” in the payload of a qr-code. I can’t see any valid use for javascript in the group joining process, I would expect the code to just be a signal URI with the relevant group ID, so is there sone external javascript interface being exposed?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do I shrink heatshrink in an explosion proof room?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Would self amalgamating tape work? You have to stretch it and wrap it fairly tight, which can be fiddlyvon small diameters, but it’ll seal the joint and doesn’t peel off and get nasty like electrical tape.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Cola facts rule⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Lies! Look at the picture, they’ve managed to pick up sone coke. It’s a matter of quantity rather than ability.

  If they’re lieing to us about that, what else are they lieing to us about?

  Wake up sheeple etc…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK: This May Have Been Unstalled on Your Device Recently⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  In the play store, don’t forget to flag it as innapropriate.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When you forget that you hired THEM because you weren't skilled enough to do it yourself⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  So their standard hourly rate is $100, but for $75 more they’ll teach you how to do it? That might not be a bad deal, depending on the task, and how frequently you’ll need to do it in future. Even if you had to go to the super delux “do it while I watch” option to really get to grips with it, it might be worth it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Could Trump Force X To Become The Everything App For Government Payments⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m sure he could and would. All he’d need to do is dictate that X is the only payment provider all government departments may use to improve ‘efficiency’.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AND THEY DIDN'T STOP EATING⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Further research shows that they blew everything up trying to deal with the ancient, insatiable, worms they released on themselves out of curiosity. Upon reflection, it is probably better that we didn’t arrive earlier.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AND THEY DIDN'T STOP EATING⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  We’ve got to leave something interesting for the alien xeno-archaeologists of the future to uncover.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Plat plat plat⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I had not considered the concept of an army of bipedal, running, neurotoxin coated, suicide frogs, and now that I have, I intend to stay far away from amphibians, just in case. I still think they should each sport a set of human like teeth though, just to really drive the point home.

  Kudos on ‘Kermitkaze’, that gave me a good chuckle.