Yaky

@Yaky@slrpnk.net

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Replacement.AI: Humans no longer necessary⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, after seeing plenty of “quirky”/“edgy”/“ironic” culture in 2010s, and given the absurdity of current world and tech leaders, I cannot tell if something like this is genuinely delusional or just satire.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there a way to listen to only the radio topics I actually care about?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  And its neighbor, WSTB 88.9 The Alternation, with local bands, indie/emo/pop-punk, sometimes clueless DJs, regular news and weather.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the best chat to self host?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  IMO Snikket (XMPP) is the easiest all-in-one solution with audio/video chat at the moment. Pretty good on resources too.

  I currently host a Matrix Synapse server, but:

  • Matrix seems to be expanding in the corporate / institutional direction, more services are expected for regular functionality
  • Element X (upcoming client) breaks calls compatibility with old Element, now requiring Element Call. It’s kind of a mess, I presume this is to support group calls, but makes it a PITA to use currently.
  • Even with small number of users, Synapse DB grows in size due to state_groups_state table, non-deletable users, and copying ALL data from other servers’ rooms (this one is by design but still…)
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What options of resistance are programmers creating to not submit to AI culture?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  AI is a tech debt generator.

  Any programmer who worked with legacy code knows a situation where something was written by a former employee or a contractor without much comments or documentation, making it difficult to modify (because of complexity or readability) or replace (because of non-existing business documentation and/or peculiar bugs and features)

  AI accelerates these situations, but the person does not even exist. Which, IMO is the main thing that needs to be called out.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xmpp and iphone⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I ran prosody server and used Siskin IM as a client, it worked pretty well. But as others mentioned, since this is Apple, the client developer has to run a push server, no background processes and long-polling allowed. Some other XMPP clients (Secret Messenger I think) did not have that set up and do not have notifications.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Using Termux to create a tiny selfhosted hidden chat server with E2EE.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Profanity for XMPP and gomuks for Matrix are both neat ncurses clients that work pretty well.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I wrote a simple tool chain for creating HTML pages for my self-hosted website. I released it publically under GPL3. Source linked inside⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Nice! Writing a similar converter was my first step when I set up my parallel site-capsule.

  Love gemtext, it’s so simple yet pragmatic. (And there is just one version of it, unlike Markdown)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is it called linux phone?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  “Android is Linux” is a bit oversimplified.

  What the is issue, still simply, the way I understand it:

  • Linux kernel contains drivers for the specific hardware used in devices (processors, modem, memory, display, camera, etc.)
  • Each Android smartphone has different hardware configuration
  • Hardware manufacturers want to guard their secrets, so they sign contracts and NDAs with phone manufacturers
  • Phone manufacturers create a unique, dead-end fork of a Linux kernel that contains drivers and is configured specifically for that model. (There are exceptions, but generally)

  So yes, Android uses a Linux kernel, but in most cases, a very specific one.

  Why not replace it? This requires:

  • Access to the bootloader and ability to read/write to internal storage on low level, and manufacturers lock it down.
  • Knowing the hardware and the drivers. As mentioned, manufacturers will provide drivers only to their contracts. So someone would need to write a driver.
  • Once someone writes a driver, it can be added to mainline Linux, available to all.
  • That is why “mainlining” a device is a big deal - that means that the kernel for that device can be built, and going forward, that device will be supported for all future kernel versions.
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The USA prided itself on a nation of immigrant, heck even the Statue of Liberty says it. When did immigrants (US citizens from the old world) become anti immigrant and why?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  DOJ did denaturalize many members of the German American Bund due to their ties with the Nazi party.

  Source: You Are Not American by Amanda Frost, great book.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My Beko washing machine must be junked because it thinks the load is imbalanced?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  FWIW: I had a Samsung washer that would throw “unbalanced load” error during the spin cycle. It was a top-load, with the motor+drum suspended on 4 springed/dampened rods. The only two solutions that worked were either: 1. Arrange clothes to one side to compensate the unbalanced drum (lots of trial and error there). Or 2. Put a foam mat around the suspended drum (had to take off the top part of the washer to do that). Somehow that dampens the shaking/imbalance just enough to not trip the sensor.

  Don’t buy Samsung appliances.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI Killed My Job: Translators⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  How good is LLM training data for a language spoken by less than 10 million people? Keep in mind that most of those people are probably multilingual (i.e. categorizing which language is which by person is harder), and language itself is similar to its neighbors. And then, again, terms.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I think I 'm witnessing the beginning of a wasp nest in the wall of my living room?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  That looks more like a mud dauber, which are solitary and do not eat wood.

  (Then again, I am only familiar with some NE US insects, and poster is probably not in the US)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI Killed My Job: Translators⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I know someone who was a translator between two (less widely spoken) languages, and some specifics I recall from our conversations about work:

  • Sometimes the translations use many technical terms, and getting those wrong (trusting LLMs) is not an option. (This was for some patents IIRC)
  • Some terms simply do not exist in another language, and it could be up to the translator to invent a term to define and carry the information across. (This was for some government digital service, and the term was similar to “digital queue”)
  • Tone and nuances are very difficult to translate. Phrasing can have implications and connotations. (Simplest example: “i am afraid” does not imply fear, it’s an established politeness phrase) Neutral in one language could be viewed as hostile in another, too. (And with politicians being petty, could have consequences)

  None of those would be addressed with LLMs. Small training set for language (and language being similar to a few others) is an issue. Anything technical or non-existing would be prone to hallucinations. And tone is difficult enough to convey through text to begin with, let alone with LLM translation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨DM me on Spotify: Spotify launches a messaging feature.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Imgur had the social media element since mid-2010s at least, maybe longer.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are the most useful things you've printed?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Most useful was probably this holder for two 1/2in PEX pipes. Printed in ABS, it holds cold and hot pipes in parallel, and uses a #8 screw for attachment. All commercially available holders are for a single pipe, and use nails. Hammering nails in tight spaces (and doing so twice) is not particularly convenient for me, thus, this contraption was born.

  Other than that, stuff that is so practical it is easily forgettable: wall mount for a garage door opener, Y splitter for an exhause fan, various covers and containers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are the most useful things you've printed?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s one of the few subreddits that still has interesting stuff. I don’t care about benchies and shiny dragons.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If we can find information by asking GenAI, who needs the Web?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If we can get food by going to the grocery store, who needs farms?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I genuinely can't wait for Mobile Linux to become a thing⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The complaints I see about custom OS the most:

  • Bank or payment apps don’t work due to Play Integrity API (blame Google)
  • Some other Google apps don’t work correctly (well… duh)
  • Obscure functionality that is usually overlooked or intentionally ignored, but is a complete dealbreaker for that user.
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it worth selling on eBay in 2025?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve sold a few things (games and electronics and such) on eBay within the last year without much hassle.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm never going back to Matrix - Terence Eden⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Seeing lots of dislike for Matrix lately. Hosted a Synapse server for many years, never had issues with encryption keys, but have to agree that Element the company (formerly Vector, but they now control the protocol too?) rolls out more new things than they fix old ones. E.g: Element X is slower and calls are not backwards compatible (!). Synapse server keeps getting some (corporate-looking) auth stuff added while on-boarding and registration for plain accounts on self-hosted servers is still a pain. To give them credit, Element app is consistent across platforms (for purposes of convincing people and troubleshooting), and bridges work pretty well.

  But it seems any self-hosted solution has its can of worms.

  XMPP, being old, implements all modern-expected functionality as extensions, and servers are not guaranteed to have them (common argument). Spam was an issue as well (but simplicity of the on-device and server database allows easy message and attachment deletions). iOS clients for XMPP are meh and require integration with Apple push servers (Snikket and Monal do that, but for how long?)

  Tried SimpleX years ago, loved the idea, but it was going through growing pains. In the same vein as metadata leaks for Matrix and XMPP, if you host your own SMP server with a few users, that exposes some info vs using default servers (along with thousands users)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Where are all the successful "red cities"?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There are some mathematical models similar to a Voronoi diagram, which would make districts convex polygons.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Where are all the successful "red cities"?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  With the new gerrymandering 2.0 Ohio is proposing, soon all of their cities will be “red” (on paper)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Where are all the successful "red cities"?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  A small town, or a suburb of a city that is described as “a great place to raise a family”. From what I have seen, that usually means one of two things:

  1. The town/suburb is closer to the city, but is wealthy, real estate is expensive, usually very car-centric, which excludes anyone poor (or even middle class, sometimes).

  2. The town/village is far away from the nearest city, not necessarily wealthy, but usually ran by a group of people that know each other (good old boys club), probably heavy on religion or other “traditional” values.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Vibe coding service Replit deleted production database⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That is also the premise of one of the stories in Asimov’s I, Robot. Human operator did not say the command with enough emphasis, so the robot went did something incredibly stupid.

  Those stories did not age well… Or now I guess they did?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Snikket is the rebranded-dockerized XMPP environment (uses prosody for server, Conversations clone for Android, and Monal clone for iOS).

  Worked pretty well for me in the past.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve been hosting a server without much problems for several years now.

  Synapse and Riot.im (now Element) became much better around 2019 or 2020. But not too long ago, I also found out that Synapse also bloats the DB with state_groups_state table. There are a handful of commands that come with synapse, but no built-in admin tool or panel, so I wrote my own. Moving server to another host has been seamless for my (few) users. TURN/STUN for calls seems to work okay (I don’t really use it though).

  I appreciate Element being uniform across platforms (which I cannot say about XMPP clients), but the sign-in is pretty tedious, and registration with a token is still impossible last time I checked (which is either a hassle for the user to use another client and then their smart device, or a security issue if you open registration to anyone). Most normal people probably don’t care and don’t want to deal with keys, cross-verification, and all that jazz.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it wrong that i would like to start a small 3d print business?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The somewhat successful 3D-printing businesses I have read about (reddit, maybe here) are those with a rather specific niche. One that I recall was for reproducing vintage car parts (knobs, levers, decor), modeling, matching color, high resolution prints. Another one, I think, was producing hundreds of very specific part for another company (how they had the connection I do not recall)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Late Soviet Union might be a similar to what you are looking for? I wasn’t alive back then, but from what I recall from reading old science magazines as a kid, there were few home computers, lots of “radio-hobbyist” stuff (DIY electronics from radio to computers), and praise for “inventor and rationalizer” for the good of the people. On paper at least. I think most interpersonal communication was over the phone or amateur radio, or even telegrams.

  I don’t know much about how modern China goes about it though.

  But TBF it’s very difficult to speculate about message encryption. Thinking back from my own experience, digital communication (over the internet or even SMS over cell phone networks) was not common until 90s-2000s, and encrypting them became a concern not too long ago, early 2010s I think? Before that, it was HTTP (without the S) and unencrypted AIM chats over the Jabber protocol.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Signal – an ethical replacement for WhatsApp⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  IMO the best on-boarding I have seen in a chat app. Just scan each other’s QR codes or click a link. No account management because ID is unique to each conversation.

  Signal and WhatsApp need a phone number, Matrix/Element is needlessly messy, XMPP/Conversations is sensible IIRC (ID + password)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Dems Demand Answers from Palantir About Plans to Build IRS “Mega-Database” of American Citizens⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Don’t Equifax, Experian and Transunion already have that?

  At least they have enough info about where you lived, what credit cards you had, what loans you had, what vehicles you owned, enough to be used as “verification” to prove your identity.