nickwitha_k (he/him)

  • 2 Posts
  • 211 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 16th, 2023

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  • So what it’s really like is only having to do half the work?

    If it’s automating the interesting problem solving side of things and leaving just debugging code that one isn’t familiar with, I really don’t see value to humanity in such use cases. That’s really just making debugging more time consuming and removing the majority of fulfilling work in development (in ways that are likely harder to maintain and may be subject to future legal action for license violations). Better to let it do things that it actually does well and keep engaged programmers.




  • By acting as a man-in-the-middle with the ability to read unencrypted message data (absolutely required in order to try to match against known CSAM), this is absolutely providing a backdoor as well as undermining privacy and security. By needing to trust another party, there is now a greater threat surface which is outside of end user control. One compromised account with access to that third-party is all it would take to extract private details from any messages, undetected, whether for sale on there blackmarket or for suppressing political dissidents, that’s exactly where this would go and we know this because state actors have been caught doing it and getting their toolkits leaked to criminals.

    This kind of law doesn’t make children or regular people any safer.




  • I just wanted to offer some nuance to the table. After everything has been learned, enabling some (otherwise complex and obscure) features can be accomplished by a single line in your NixOS config. Like, this efficiency can not and should not be ignored.

    I really appreciate it. I really WANT to like NixOS. The level of efficiency and portability (ex. Nix as package manager) is incredible and, I think, well worth learning about both for users and distros - I hope we see the ideas propagate further. It’s just not in a place that I can be happy using it. But, it is going to tickle some people the right way and that is something that makes me happy.

    Fedora Atomic does deliver on those without requiring you to go into the deep and learn an entire new language that’s only used for managing your distro 😅.

    This right here is why I’m liking it so far. I’m like Alton Brown is to cooking gadgets when it comes to languages in computing, I really don’t like unitaskers. I get unreasonably resentful of software that forces me to use a DSL (this is a “me” problem).


  • Does it require you to climb through heaps of trash documentation? Absolutely.

    That’s why I think the previous commenter’s statement rings true. I’ve been using Linux exclusively for over a decade across multiple distros. NixOS is not intuitive for new or seasoned users, making good documentation vital.

    An example: I spent a good weekend day or so poking at NixOS. Live boot worked as expected. When I finished, I had a bootable system but no network stack, despite following the docs. This means that my only route forward would be going back to the live boot since there was no way to pull packages in that state.

    I decided to go with Fedora Silverblue as my next test. After dding the image to my USB, it took about 10 mins to get up and running. I was able to setup libvirt and other similar software quick and easy. And once I’m happy, I can write my config to a repo and have my base system wherever, whenever.



  • Are you autistic by any chance ? … Please go see a therapist, please.

    Actually, quite likely on the spectrum and diagnosed with ADHD (this is a major contributor to my verbosity, so apologies if it comes across as a big rant). I do have a therapist indeed and have found it very helpful - highly recommend it if you’re in need. Not sure why this is relevant.

    Maybe we’re hitting a bit of an “impedence mismatch” here. I suspect, partly as you’re coming through from an Aussie instance that it may be partly due to a lack of context on how fucked things are, labor-wise in the States. Healthcare here is tied to one’s employment, intentionally. It is technically possible to get insurance through a public exchange but, practically speaking, it’s not going to do much, especially if one has chronic or severe health problems. Also, we have very poor protections against firings and layoffs (most US labor contracts are pretty well one-sided).

    Is work the purpose of my life? Fuck no. I have, however, been repeatedly screwed over, job-wise, by things outside of my control (Recession, offshoring, mergers, untreated ADHD). It is pretty awful, if you haven’t yourself, I recommend giving the experience a pass. This has made me acutely aware of the impact that my actions can have on others, not just the immediate but also the secondary and tertiary impacts. I’m also the primary income for my household, so, that rather raises the stakes a bit.

    Put these things together with the fact that I now have have coworkers who will literally die without medical care (insurance through work - so cancer patients have to have a job or a spouse with great coverage) and it should paint a good picture for someone with a healthy dose of empathy. Because of how labor is structured in the US, screwing up in a manner that has a big impact on the company means that I could be killing someone indirectly. Should that kind of thing be an employee’s responsibility? No. But that’s the reality of it. Actions have consequences within the system that one operates in, fair or not.

    As for cybersecurity, somewhat fair. I’m not fixated on it but do definitely have a more significant interest than most. With the overall increase in cyberattacks on companies, states, and individuals, I’d recommend everyone being more security conscious.


  • Weird seeming personal attack there. In case it is defensiveness from a perceived attack from myself, that’s not what was intended. My intent was to point out the potential consequences of viewing it in such a seemingly myopic way.

    • Job hunting and stigma: If one’s accounts are found to be the cause of a breach, and it is found to be due to negligence, there’s a good chance of that resulting in a firing. Being fired due to security-related negligence is likely to make it a challenge to get past screening when hunting for a job (that’s what I mean by stigma). And finally, job hunting fucking sucks, in my opinion.

    • Screwing over co-workers: You don’t have to be friends to care about how your action or inaction impacts others. Being the cause of a breach has a real possibility of getting people laid off, if the scope is significant. Maybe less of a big deal if you’re in most countries outside of the US but, here, the ramifications are pretty substantial. For example, I work with several people who are undergoing chemotherapy or who have spouses needing medical care. If laid off, health insurance evaporates and now they literally cannot afford the treatments necessary to live. Others have mortgages or rent to pay. Execs are not even going to entertain the idea of taking on the responsibility that is claimed to be the reason for their absurd pay.

    Yes, it is healthy to set boundaries between your work life and personal life and to leave work at work. But, like I said, noone is an island, our actions in our work life can have profound impacts on others.