dave
dthompson@toot.cat
<p>Massachusetts trash. I mostly post about gardening, music, and free software development (not a techbro I swear please you gotta believe me)</p><p>he/him</p>
Posts
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RIP Debian 1993-2026 https://inference.debian.net/
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Tried Beyond and Just brand "chicken". Beyond has a rubbery texture. Just is much better.
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"responsible LLM usage" is the "clean coal" of the tech world
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looks like Guix GCD 008, "Commitments and policy on the use of “generative artificial intelligence”", is dead in the water because one person, on the final day of deliberation, voted against it.
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every time an llm assists in a math proof the AI boosters come out of the woodwork to shame the skeptics. okay but was it really worth making everyone's life worse for it?
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Napalm Death on Tiny Desk!!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e81LZCHhNKQ
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The 2025 edition of the Autumn Lisp Game Jam begins on Halloween! 👻 🎃 Mull some cider, warm up your REPL by the fire, and make a little game with your favorite Lisp dialect! Sign up for the jam now over on itch.io: https://itch.io/jam/autumn-lisp-game-jam-2025 #lispgamejam #lisp #scheme
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I watched Speed for the first time over the weekend. it&#39;s funny to me that Jeff Daniels, whom I know as Harry from Dumb and Dumber, plays a character that is also named Harry. both movies were released months apart in 1994.
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today is a title fight kind of day https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu9KgGqXDyw
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The Spring Lisp Game Jam is coming up quick! It starts on Friday! Grab a pile of parentheses and warm up your REPL! https://itch.io/jam/spring-lisp-game-jam-2026 #lispGameJam #lisp #scheme
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the last time I played a show was in early summer of 2022 before my band imploded due to silly drama. yesterday someone from said former band asked if I was interested in filling in on drums with their new band later this summer. looks like ol&#39; davey gets to play a show, as a treat!
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it&#39;s Chuck Schuldiner&#39;s birthday (RIP) so I guess it&#39;s time to listen to some Death! my favorite Death album is Human, which features Sean Reinert (also RIP) on drums. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzvtfbqJeIY
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The Spring Lisp Game Jam starts next Friday, the 15th! It&#39;s a relaxed, 10-day long jam where you can make a game in any flavor of Lisp that suits your weird little preferences. Join up here: https://itch.io/jam/spring-lisp-game-jam-2026 #lispGameJam
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I&#39;m a hobbyist woodworker. I use power tools for everything. some hand tool woodworkers look down upon power tool users. they&#39;re fine craftsmen and I am one step above ikea in their view. people that create using new, easier methods are often looked down upon by the old gatekeepers. now people can just ask their table saw to make them a cabinet and it will approximately do so. at first the joints were not square at all and the doors fell off but now most of the time they turn ou...
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all this talk about tokens this and tokens that. they turned my profession into chuck e cheese.
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Maylene had her daycare evaluation yesterday. It went well.
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elfeed, the emacs feed reader, is looking for a new maintainer. https://github.com/skeeto/elfeed/discussions/563 the former maintainer said he stopped using emacs for good yesterday. their personal use of elfeed has been replaced with elfeed2... a vibecoded standalone feed reader. https://github.com/skeeto/elfeed2/blob/master/AGENTS.md
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the renderings of the new long distance trains that amtrak just put out an rfp for look pretty nice. the video is a bit cringe overall (&quot;secretary duffy&#39;s vision&quot; give me a fucking break) but it is cool to see what the vision is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6u5MiB4Ve80
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one weird amtrak trick™️ that I learned from youtuber miles in transit recently is that if you are taking the maple leaf train to toronto it&#39;s actually cheaper to buy an amtrak ticket to niagra falls ontario and then a separate *via rail* ticket from niagra falls to toronto. it&#39;s the exact same train but via crew takes over once the train crosses the border. so strange.
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nice summary of the current state of Canada&#39;s Alto high speed rail project: https://www.hsrail.org/blog/the-latest-on-alto-north-americas-third-high-speed-line/ I&#39;m excited that they&#39;re going for the japanese model of dedicated, sealed right-of-way as opposed to the european model of shared lines (which is also what the US northeast corridor does, to the detriment of the acela service.) I highly recommend canadian rail advocates read &quot;dream super express: a cul...
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if you&#39;re in Massachusetts, call up your rep and tell them to vote NO on this new &quot;social media ban&quot; bill that would include age verification. more info here: https://masspirates.org/blog/2026/04/07/tell-the-mass-house-today-dont-censor-kids/
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too many programmers tell other programmers not to roll their own. not me. go ahead and implement that thing! it&#39;s fun! you control the stack! you learn a lot! don&#39;t tell me not to implement something myself because then I will probably do it out of spite.
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Cool post from @expede about Wasm and Rust. All of my experience with Wasm is completely outside the emscripten/bindgen world so it was interesting to get a glimpse into what it&#39;s like to develop with those tools. https://notes.brooklynzelenka.com/Blog/Notes-on-Writing-Wasm
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@spritely office hours are happening today! The meeting starts in 4 hours from the time of this post. Stop by and chat about all things Spritely! Meeting details here: https://community.spritely.institute/t/next-office-hours-on-2-25/803/1
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@cwebber and I will be co-presenting &quot;Spritely: Infrastructure for the Future of the Internet&quot; at QCon London on the 18th! We just did a practice run with @yonkeltron, the host for the &quot;Architecting for Resilience&quot; track. https://qconlondon.com/presentation/mar2026/spritely-infrastructure-future-internet
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RE: https://social.coop/@spritely/116132867771534636 Worked pretty hard on this one and I&#39;m proud of the milestone! Lots more to do for a truly ergonomic dev experience but finally having the REPL in the browser is a huge deal.
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My bet against vibecoding is a bet on the turtle against the hare. You can always add more mud to a ball of mud, but you can&#39;t add more slop to a tower of slop without it eventually collapsing. Work slow and outlast them all.
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don&#39;t worry about bluesky getting a new ceo, atproto has credible brexit
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&quot;Your Personal Blog Should Have Comments&quot; Counterpoint: No