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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: March 3rd, 2024

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  • three, maybe four things:

    1. as mentioned: Obsidian. i pay for Sync cuz i like the product and want them to succeed and want reliable offsite backups and conflict resolution. use a ton of links and tags. i’ve been into using DataView to make tables of IoT devices, services, todo items, etc based on tags and other YAML frontmatter.
    2. chezmoi. manages my dotfiles so my machines are consistent. i have scripts that are heavily commented that show how to access MQTT, how to read and parse logs from journald, how to inspect my network, etc. i do think of them as code as documentation, even if they’re also just convenient.
    3. NixOS. this has been my code as config as documentation silver bullet. i use it as a replacement for Docker, k8s, Ansible, etc as it contains definitions for my machines and all the services and configuration they run, including any package dependencies and user configurations. no more statting an assortment of files to figure out the state of the system. it’s in flake.nix
    4. honorable mention to git and whatever git hosting provider is not on your network. track your work over time, and you’ll thank yourself when things go wrong.

    some things are resistant to documentation and have a lot of stateful components (HomeAssitant is my biggest problem child from an infra perspective), but mainly being in that graph mindset of “how would i find a path here if i forgot where this was” helps a lot


  • it’s not stupid. i have pretty successfully done some NixOS work flying basically blind with an LLM guiding the way.

    1. ask follow up questions. “can you show me in the docs where this is defined”, “why did you add this line here”, etc

    2. you’re going to have to understand this config eventually. the LLM will start to get confused if you’re trying to squash a weird bug and you’re just chastising it. it will always tell you you’re right even when you aren’t.

    3. document everything with comments and in git

    4. Caddy is better :P



  • honestly, where NixOS shines for me is in my homelab. i don’t always have time to fully document what i’m doing, but my NixOS config is code-as-documentation for when work burns all of my memories away and has a git log and conflict management so i can manage multiple systems that share common config.

    and once you find out you can have services run on systemd with syntax like services.jellyfin.enabled = true you’ll never want to go back to containers, although it has ways to manage those as well.

    it’s overall a great OS for tinkering and deploying small services across small networks. not sure how it scales, but for my use case it’s damn near perfect



  • my point is that it’s hard to program someone’s subjective, if written in whatever form of legalese, point of view into a detection system, especially when those same detection systems can be used to great effect to train systems to bypass them. any such detection system would likely be an “AI” in the same way the ones they ban are and would be similarly prone to mistakes and to reflecting the values of the company (read: Jack Dorsey) rather than enforcing any objective ethical boundary.










  • man this brings back memories.

    i was able to install Arch on my 2012 Macbook Pro, but the networking was a huge issue. not only did the driver cause terrible screen tearing for some inexplicable reason, but i had the same problem even getting the dang thing installed. luckily i’m an Android developer and was able to share wifi over USB with an Android device.



  • ok i’m not saying do this

    i recently setup an API proxy, C&C server, Grafana and Prometheus, and Discord bot. now i can send pings via Grafana or with a simple request (provided it’s authed via VPN or proxy) and have my Discord bot use a local LLM on my network to deliver the alert to a Discord channel in the voice of Ultron.


  • “patience is the absence of expectation” — Shinichi Suzuki

    you’re doing everything right. you’re probably worrying too much and prescribing too much. listen to the science and the literature, but also listen to your body. everyone is different. i’ve been lifting for 5 years and bailed out of a 60kg bench press yesterday (tbh higher reps but still; i was embarrassed).

    also, comparison is the thief of joy. don’t compare yourself to the guy next to you or the influencers on Instagram or “what’s normal”. the only person you need to try to be better than is you from last week or last month or last year.

    trying is the point. trying is progress. discipline is greater than motivation. we all have bad days. but it’s a journey. have a bad day, and go to the gym the next day and celebrate that you made it.

    i started when i was 30, and i have been consistent for over 4 years. it pays off eventually, i promise.