Notices by Eva Winterschön (winterschon@mastodon.bsd.cafe)

Women's Safety Online: Why I'm No Longer on LinkedIn or Twitter: https://prose.winterschon.com/2025/05/29/womens-safety-online-why-im.html

The vast and varied subject of ‘Women’s Safety Online’ is a topic which impacts many facets of daily life, including emotional and physical well-being. This post is not a primer on the concepts, rather it offers a short timeline to explain why I am no longer on LinkedIn or Twitter social networks for reasons of personal safety and privacy.

eBay... look... I really do want this Teradata rack, but I'm moving in two weeks. What a classic though, an original from back in the early stage columnar databases, precursor tech to Big Data Processing and the vast accumulations which are now commonplace in this analytical economy. This is a piece of computing history.

> Teradata began to use the term "big data" in 2010. CTO Stephen Brobst attributed the rise of big data to "new media sources, such as social media." The increase in semi-structured and unstructured data gathered from online interactions prompted Teradata to form the "Petabyte club" in 2011 for its heaviest big data users.. composed of various analytics engines on a core relational database, including graph database and a machine learning engine.. Spark and TensorFlow..

#bigdata #homelab #vintage #computing

@david_chisnall agreed, and it's infuriating. I wrote a translator script many years ago,, when sysD was officially in RHEL, to handle most of the generic commands that systemctl requires, simply to avoid the nonsense. I work with the init system of servers hundreds of times per day during dev/eng/test.. so those little "death by a thousand cuts" become apparent very quickly.

the same applies to so many package managers, I ended up writing a translator so that I could reduce context switching when moving from FreeBSD to Debian/clones to RH/clones.

I'll post the package manager and service unification translator one of these days, it's probably the type of thing which would save a lot of people a lot of otherwise wasted/inefficient brain cycles.

the comedy of sysD never ends, and if one looks for it, the regular "service" command and regular "rc.local" and init.d stack still persists despite all of their attempts to own the system from the ground up M$FT style. I wrote a couple of ttyS getty service handlers back in.. a few months ago.. easier and faster and more reliabkle than the sysD unit file interpreted garbage.

@mrhamel It's funny that you think I tinker with my production systems, or with any system in the enterprise pipeline. the negging attitude isn't necessary.

All of my corporate and enterprise work is handled though the equivalent of ITIL change control, with rigorous stages of testing which occurs from dev unit testing, through several layers of automated load-testing (hundreds of simulated workloads, batch suites, traffic replay, tens to millions of simulated client (using DPDK and TRex, among several other loadgens) with network traffic running via several Tbit/s of concurrency. Then it's off to staging, where every generation of hardware which is actively in production gets loaded and must pass multi-day to multi-week reliability validations. I don't discuss that on social media because most of it is under strict NDA.

The majority of the load test architectures that I've built involve hundreds of machines, thousands to tens of thousands of cores, nodes costing $8K to $180K according to role and spec, with substantial budgets for a sufficient team of engineers to run the environment, while coordinating dev and production teams, all so that the org can pass compliance requirements. These architectures have absolutely influenced global infrastructure, and some of them really have had FreeBSD involved, so I'm not sure what your point is about hating on one operating system in particular, but it's unnecessary and I honestly don't care.

The complaints that I usually discuss on social media are on test bench systems, ones that do not have global internet traffic, and most of them are mine - where I usually use rolling releases or test/edge repos. I expect breakage, but I don't care for the low standards of engineering laziness which is present in much of the modern changes to OS and service management which have occurred over the past decade.

systemD is another story, and it's always been garbage wherever it runs. that's not debatable, just look at the CVE list.

@mrhamel I'm sure this is a joke, but otherwise, yes.

perhaps most people are unaware just how prevalent FreeBSD is throughout the world, and part of the reason for silent unawareness is that the BSD license doesn't require the same chattiness of the GPL. so BSD often exists under the radar, hanging out on the internet backbone, posted up in critical IXPs, serving all those meaty-binary-DRM blobs from streaming services, computing the cycles of the Playstation devices, running embedded firmware the world over... or peering down and back at us from space probes...

yes, FreeBSD kmods are actively developed, despite all of the attention that linux demands, despite all of the anger that microsoft rages on about, and still it persists at being more efficient, more stable, and more user friendly without making a fuss about it -

FreeBSD exists without the constant interjections of the no-one-cares classic statement, "btw, I use <linux distro>" or other comedic tragedies...

It didn't used to be this way, linux used to be great, it was inspirational, it was enjoyable, it had not yet been invaded by the worst closed-source fear-mongers the world has ever seen... but now we see these systemD/microsoft infected linux systems staggering around demanding reboots and crashing their kmods in a flaming wreckage of repeated death spirals with a garbled single last gasping demand to "LOOK AT MEEEEEEEEE!" 😆

sometimes when I can't sleep, one of the best ways to lull myself into a calm dream state is to browse Chem Lab equipment upgrades.

Regardless of need, or want, it's a process of comparative analysis, visualization of how the new hardware would fit into my extraction and synthesis workflows, imagining the potential for new creations or higher purity outcomes.

There's a soothing, meditative sequence involved with this pattern of reevaluation - identifying efficiencies, acknowledging compromises, engaging with long held desires for optimization ... and then the dream world overtakes the conscious realm into the long dark or nothingness. I love it, this state of beautiful thoughts.

🤦♀️ Kernel Ops or Kernel Oops 🤦♀️

- Which group makes more sense?
- Which group tab-completes to show you all of the associated commands within the same sub-class of purpose?
- Which group is backwards and tragic and requires rote memorization over associative structs?

The following example is one of the many reasons why engineers prefer FreeBSD over Linux. It's the simple usability on a day to day basis.

Cognitive load matters, and efficiency of memory matters, effeciency of keystrokes matters, and it's present everywhere. Backwards thinking is wasteful.

kldstat
kldconfig
kldload
kldunload

~ or ~

lsmod
modprobe
insmod
rmmod

#freebsd #linux #kernel #engineering

💗 Tuesday PsyTrance 💗

There's an entire album, from all the way back in 2018, which exemplifies a canonical example of perfectly designed patterns and focused, driving beats which have defined the PsyTech sub-genre ever since.

It also features some of the best and most appropriately sci-fi / zen audio samples used since the mid-2010s. The descriptives on it are effectively precise:

> The purest of progressive vibes are invoked by expertly crafted sonic palettes, laying comfortably on raging basslines, rhythms and pulsating arpeggios.. haunting yet beautiful vocals that lead you dreamily into another dimension; filled with mystical pads and stabs; killer percussive patterns, fierce synthesizer lines, breathtaking ethnic instruments and mind blowing vocals. It pierces the soul, infiltrates the mind & body, elevates our energetic field and unites us as listeners...

Artist: Mindbenderz
Album: Tribalism
Purchase (IONO): https://ionomusic.bandcamp.com/album/tribalism
Streaming (soundcloud): https://soundcloud.com/mindbenderz/sets/mindbenderz-tribalism
Beatport: https://www.beatport.com/release/tribalism/2414293
Spotify: it's on there too!

While we're at it... they're follow-up album "Cosmic Package" deserves an equally attentive listen, especially if they're combined into one back to back playlist.
- https://ionomusic.bandcamp.com/album/cosmic-package

#psytrance #music #edm #progressive #trance #electronic #focus #meditation #streaming

Homelab Rule #212

The amount of patience required for installing aftermarket server rails must be inversely proportional to the monetary cost.

#homelab #servers

Oh, the joy of technical documentation trying to sound like the cool Dad down the block, who just wants the kids to keep those spirits up! and don't forget to be inspired! wow! Internet is fun again! 😐

> That was how the Internet all used to work, believe it or not! Sadly, developers have stopped building peer-to-peer apps..

- https://tailscale.com/blog/how-tailscale-works

Yes Dan, I too am old, and I too remember when the internet used to work like that, back when computers ... used to... internet each other directly... to... something something big bad cloud providers. Dan, if you mean dialing up each other by modem then no, that's not "how the internet used to work", and P2P apps still exist and are still actively in development. The trite style of authorship in those docs is such a distraction; it reads like an infomercial.

I recall when Tailscale came out, looked at the architecture, looked at the pricing, dug through the repo source, and promptly used both Zerotier and Nebula Mesh*, for similar but slightly different purposes.

Let the technology speak for itself, and let the cheesy sales pitch stay at the used car dealership.

[*] SlackHQ https://nebula.defined.net, not the Zyxel router app

Memories of Harmonic Distortion, Descending Carson Pass: https://prose.winterschon.com/2025/05/19/memories-of-harmonic-distortion-descending.html

While training for The Death Ride one year, so many years ago, I had quite a surprise while descending Carson Pass in the Sierra Nevada.. harmonic distortion set in, rippling faster and faster through the bike’s frame, speed-wobbles had begun at 45mph and continued through to 54mph…

Sometimes, after a long or stressful day, retreating to sit and relax in bed, often my thoughts drift back to riding in The Headlands - most recently spring 2017, and reaching back to the early 2000s.

It wasn't just the memory, but the feeling of the endless pulse where every moment is beautiful, every hill climb is perfect, and you never want to stop. Six days per week, 1000kcal per ride on moderate days, every perfect morning a perfect sunrise.

#sanfrancisco #cycling #memories #sunrise #riding #photography #fitness

Manufacturers of Pharma, Supps, Foods, Makeup, Sunscreen, etc:

"Gosh, you know what we really need more of in our products, the ones that the consumers ingest, or rub on their skin, or use for medication delivery, well it's definitely gotta be .. MORE TITANIUM DIOXIDE!"

"Great idea Steve! Time for a raise! Great, really great!"

Fuck off. Realizing that you've been taking something critical for health, and which has few alternatives, contains a whole mess of Titanium Dioxide (for coloring)... and it's been a necessity for years... I hate that feeling, that realization.

I hate knowing that this rather useful industrial chemical is being abused along with the people who are inadvertantly (or without choice) having it inside their bodies where it only does harm to the metabolic and neurological systems.

Why, because what? The company was too cheap to use a calcium derived alternative filler. Not cool, super not cool.

💻 ISO a decent Python IDE again 💻

Before the important question...
- often I use emacs (-nox)
- sometimes vim or vi
- blah on micro, neovim, ed, ee, etc

This isn't about terminal IDEs, rather it's about standard desktop IDEs running on Xorg, primarily for python, shell, ansible, sql

Eclipse + PyDev
1) Ages ago, Eclipse with PyDev ... crashes often and I have no more patience

JetBrains PyCharm Pro
2) PyCharm Pro for a decade, JetBrains ruined it with the UI redesign and critical plugins no longer work when running "just use the old UI mode it's still fine"

Spyder well...
3) Have been messing with Spyder but it's rather limited (no markdown native? the plugin is unstable when it's even recognized). Verdic is still on the fence.

Something else, what have I missed in my search? I have no quals paying for a license on a truly good product, which used to be PyCharm Pro - but no longer.

OSS Note: I never use MSFT products for any reason, so fans of vscode should not bother.

#linux #freebsd #developer #engineering #software #foss #desktop #programming

🧠 Awakening Again to the Dream 🧠

In a continuation of the daily amalgam, the "surprise, this is reality, really-really it is!", another substantial change of pace and place has arrived in due-time.

Returning to California, after one year and two states in-between, could only be induced by accepting an offer from Cerebras Systems - the supercomputing company.

The role is quite nice, as I'll be the first hired "Storage Architect, SMTS", focused on research and design of integrated solutions for Ai/HPC Cluster Infrastructure. Super fun stuff! It's really quite a dream job, and I'm very excited about all of it - more so than any other job I've had in the past twenty five years.

Perhaps not widely known outside of the sector, Cerebras powers research at CERN, Los Alamos, Sandia, Argonne, Lawrence Livermore, DoE, Mayo Clinic, AstraZenica, GSK, Nference, Aleph Alpha, and many others.

More on the science aspects here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebras#Deployments

💻 Mozilla Thunderbird - The Failure of a Once Great Client 💻: https://prose.winterschon.com/2025/05/14/mozilla-thunderbird-the-failure-of.html

Thunderbird, wtf are you doing where you need 83% CPU plus ~50GB (virt) and 20G (res) of RAM allocated? You’re an email client. You handle IMAP. This has become absurd, the slow death of a once great product.

Hilariously, but not in the funny way, during that time period of resource load it turns out that not only was Thunderbird functioning poorly, it was also DOS'ing (not distributed) the email service provider's connection pool, which caused them to port+IP block my CGNAT address. 😶

💾 Data Processing Existentialism 💾

there's a certain feeling which occurs, when calmly scripting an EXIF metadata analysis function, and a sanity-test loop returns an array with one photo's 'date_created' field set all the way back in 2016, and you suddenly think...

holy fuckin hell it's been nearly a decade?!

nine years and nine pounds, no more straightening my hair, no more size four, but that's life. getting older is never anything new, and I felt similarly the prior decade before. all throughout there's rarely been a dull moment, but nine years ago was just before the neuro-endocrine functions changed, before Tokyo, Fiji, Costa Rica, Victoria, and so very many places in-between.

I shared an introduction on social media, twitter and mastodon a few months apart in 2022, discussing whether I'd make it to this year, whether my diagnosis would find resolve. I really didn't know how any of it would turn out, didn't live with expectations or engage with hope; and so this year when treatment finally completed — after all of the trials and scans and tests — it's done. finally, finally done.

I don't have to worry about those things anymore, which is a beautiful thing, and an entirely new spectrum of emotion that's impossible to convey. now life can return to normal, however that's defined going forward. 💝

@blaise are you using a fermentation air lock?

aside from looking interesting and being fun to watch bubble on occasion, they prevent gas expansion from causing issues, and the jar can stay closed during the full time span of the fermentation process without needing a manual venting process (which increases probability of contamination). (contaminated ferments are super disappointing, which I had to learn the hard way for some reason 😅)

The non-Controversial Controversy of BTRFS: https://prose.winterschon.com/2025/05/11/the-noncontroversial-controversy-of-btrfs.html

Some clarifications on some points here about the history of BTRFS as it relates to Oracle, Sun Microsystems, RedHat, ZFS, and a DARPA funded filesystem research project which concluded with a ghastly murder.