Notices by glyn (underlap@fosstodon.org)

@sam @RadicalEdward Oh yes, I remember now. The same team used to call "finalizer" the "f-word", because of the possibility of a finalizer making an apparently dead object live again. The uncertainty of when a finalizer runs was an extra complication.

@sam @RadicalEdward I worked with some developers who had to maintain that collector. They used terms like "floating garbage" to describe parts that didn't work too well. IIRC it wasn't type accurate so you could get false positives when marking.

An #introduction for any new folks, to whom: welcome and please take your time to build up a good network!

I'm Glyn Normington, a retired software developer. I worked for IBM (26 years), Interface21->SpringSource->VMware->Pivotal->(!)VMware (13 years), and then did a bit of uni teaching. I edited an IETF RFC.

I have a blog, mostly about software: https://underlap.org.

@marqle I must admit to being suspicious of blockchain, but from an environmental angle when proof of work is deliberately very costly. The W3C DID standard seems like a much more efficient approach.

What would it take to add decentralised identity (e.g. W3C DIDs) to the Fediverse? Who is already working on this?

Bluesky's AT Protocol is a great proof of concept, but probably isn't the endgame. Abstracting Fediverse identity using hostnames and WebFinger is another useful experiment, but again probably not the endgame.

#DecentralizedIdentity #ATProtocol #W3C #ActivityPub

@annika Huh! I read the linked docs and still don't understand the difference.

"standard error was made a copy of the standard output" seems wrong/weird as a description of 2>&1 in the second case.

Does anyone reading this thread claim to understand?

@galdor The British actress, film-maker, and poet, Michaela Coel was the first black woman to win an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing. In her acceptance speech she said this:

"In a world that entices us to browse through the lives of others… [and] to be constantly visible (for visibility these days seems to somehow equate to success), do not be afraid to disappear, from it, from us, for a while, and see what comes to you in the silence."

(From today's Lectio365 devotional by Pete Greig.)

New blog post: Incremental IndieWeb

"As I evolve this site incrementally, I find I'm aligning with several IndieWeb principles. The incremental approach suits my software development instincts. But my taste for abstraction, information hiding, and modularity has also guided the way I've developed this site.

I'll list the principles in turn and explain what they mean for this site."

Read more here: https://underlap.org/incremental-indieweb

#IndieWeb

Thanks @asynchronaut, @fbiville, and @henrikjernevad for your recommendations!

I've expanded the blog post a little and noted your suggestions, all of which look preferable to the two SSGs I initially tried out.

https://underlap.org/static-site-generators

New (short) blog post: Static site generators

https://underlap.org/static-site-generators

#LessIsMore #StaticSiteGenerator

@cammerman The choice is to pay up front to write code properly or pay much more when it's too late, if the code survives that long. The companies I worked for understood this, but I know not every company does.

I wonder if the bad practice you describe is more prevalent in application software? If you are developing libraries and tooling, for example, poor quality really costs a lot when users hit problems and these need diagnosing and fixing.

@tokyo_0 @ben The UK landline network will be switched off by the authorities at the end of 2025. It's up to individuals how late they leave it to sort out any alternative.

@ben This is common, but (older/vulnerable?) people who want to use current phone handsets (after the landline network is switched off next year), will need to power a router, a (powered) adapter and a phone (or base station) into the adapter. Some will also need a backup power supply. The alternative is, of course, to retrofit or surface mount a phone extension to near a power socket or retrofit power to near the front door. Oh dear!

Just emailed my favourite think tank to suggest they join the Fediverse. Fingers crossed...

#deshittification

@tokyo_0 Spark email app for Android similarly.

@hcj The Firefish docs talk about account migration but don't describe importing posts from Mastodon. Do you happen to know where this is documented, claimed, blogged about, etc?

@hcj Nice. I tweaked the wording correspondingly.

@henrikjernevad I've been reflecting on the fact that most of the products and open source projects I worked on over my career failed, sooner or later.

OTOH I suspect much of my code in a 54 year old product (!) is still alive and well (although I know a lot of new stuff I wrote was ripped out).

This is an effect of working on new/interesting stuff. I am comfortable with my contribution, even as a senior staff developer, as my skill was good engineering rather than technical direction.

Account portability and the social web https://underlap.org/account-portability-in-the-social-web

I believe this is an important topic for the Fediverse. Please boost for visibility.

Thanks to @dottorblaster @jamesravey @hcj @mima @hirad @devnull for commenting on my earlier survey on this topic (https://fosstodon.org/@underlap/111617691764389915)

#ActivityPub #ATProtocol #AccountPortability #Fediverse

Use boring technology 🥱 · @henrikjernevad

https://henko.net/blog/use-boring-technology/

When I worked in CICS development and customers said the product was really boring, especially when installing new releases, we knew this was high praise.

This is why I love arch and xmonad. Rarely is there anything unusual in an upgrade. Just run one command and reboot - job done. Zzzzz.