I’d defend the hell out of Linus as a woman.
My best mentors in the tech field (software QA, sysadmin) have almost all been women.
Readit NewspodunkPDX commented on We do not break userspace (2012) lore.kernel.org/all/CA+55... · Posted by u/surprisetalk
My strategy of dumping various notes in a semicoherently-named directory tree and then grepping through them makes me feel like a caveman, but it works for me. I feel that tools like this are overcomplicating things.
podunkPDX commented on Coffee for people who don't like coffee ostwilkens.se/blog/coffee... · Posted by u/ostwilkens
A few years back I discovered that the Ethiopian run minimart up the street sells unroasted coffee beans, $6/lb.
I bought a pound and followed the proprietor’s advice, roasting small quantities in a cast iron pan on medium high and agitating/stirring until it looked right.
This was too labor intensive to be sustainable (40m for about 100g), but the end result was breathtaking. Immediately bought a roaster from Sweet Maria’s and haven’t looked back.
I’m in the Pacific Northwest and we are spoiled for choice with artisanal roasters and coffee shops alike, but mine still tastes better since I roasted it yesterday.
podunkPDX commented on A tail calling interpreter for Python (already landed in CPython) blog.reverberate.org/2025... · Posted by u/phsilva
Python is fast enough for a whole set of problems AND it is a pretty, easy to read and write language. I do think it can probably hit pause on adding more syntax but at least everything it adds is backwards compatible. You won’t be writing a 3D FPS game engine in Python but you definitely can do a whole lot of real time data processing, batch processing, scientific computing, web and native applications, etc. before you need to start considering a faster interpreter.
If your only metric for a language is speed then nothing really beats hand crafted assembly. All this memory safety at runtime is just overhead. If you also consider language ergonomics, Python suddenly is not a bad choice at all.
> You won’t be writing a 3D FPS game engine in Python
While Eve Online isn’t an FPS, it is an MMORPG written in stackless Python, and seems to be doing OK.
podunkPDX commented on Firing programmers for AI is a mistake defragzone.substack.com/p... · Posted by u/frag
> I think we're gonna need more SW devs, not fewer
Code is a liability. What we really care about is the outcome, not the code. These AI tools are great at generating code, but are they good at maintaining the generated code? Not from what I've seen.
So there's a good chance we'll see people using tools to generate a ton of instant legacy code (because nobody in house has ever understood it) which, if it hits production, will require skilled people to figure out how to support it.
These AI tools are also not good at answering PagerDuty to fix a production problem that is a result of the code they imagined.
podunkPDX commented on Should we use AI and LLMs for Christian apologetics? (2024) lukeplant.me.uk/blog/post... · Posted by u/hwayne
Most atheists and agnostics struggle greatly to replace the meaning and moral guidance provided by religion.
First and foremost the community aspect. There are countless benefits to being part of an active faith community that atheists have had a very hard time replicating.
Uh… no?
I replicate my community where I find it. Some of it is at a brunch spot I go to regularly. Some of it is a bar that I frequent. Some of it is in annual activities with my neighbors.
I don’t need to believe in a made up Sky Daddy to be a good person, I have plenty of examples in my communities.
On a new job I stuck my foot in it because I argued something like this with a PHP fan who was adamant I was wrong.
Mind you this was more than ten years ago when PHP was fixing exploits left and right.
This dust up resolved itself within 24 hours though, as I came in the next morning to find he was too busy to work on something else because he was having to patch the PHP forum software he administered because it had been hacked overnight.
I did not gloat but I had trouble keeping my face entirely neutral.
Now I can’t read PHP for shit but I tried to read the patch notes that closed the hole. As near as I could tell, the exact same anti pattern appeared in several other places in the code.
I can’t touch PHP. I never could before and that cemented it.
PHP: an attack surface with a side effect of hosting blogs.
podunkPDX commented on For the Colonel, It Was Finger-Lickin’ Bad (1976) kottke.org/16/08/for-the-... · Posted by u/sublinear
In my experience, yes. A Big Mac is a Big Mac pretty much everywhere. The non-US stores do often have some menu items that are targeted to local tastes, that you would not see in a mainland US store.
The McDonalds in Rome near Termini had an amazing desert bar!
podunkPDX commented on IBDNS: Intentionally Broken DNS server afnic.fr/en/observatory-a... · Posted by u/patadune
All DNS is broken. It's always f'n DNS. Always. Call me when you've deployed DNS that actually works.
/s
I have! BIND 9.11.x, as pairs of caching recursive resolvers advertised over BGP. We have a pair in every data center (12 dcs at last count) Each with one of two IPs (anycasting). Every time I get hit up for a “problem” with this it turns out the problem is with an authoritative AD server. I really love it as it’s been in place for almost four years and it has never been the source of any problems.