Diane Bruce

@DianeBruce@bsd.network
353 Followers
340 Following
2.4K Posts

I live in #Ottawa, Canada (Unceded territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation)

My interests are Amateur Radio, (de va3db) Photographer, BSD, real-time embedded and maker of universes (Apple Pies).

#nobot

“This isn’t accidental. It’s cultural. We’ve created an industry where complexity is celebrated. Where cleverness is rewarded. Where engineering sophistication is valued more than clarity, usability, or commercial effectiveness.”

https://www.jonoalderson.com/conjecture/javascript-broke-the-web-and-called-it-progress/

JavaScript broke the web (and called it progress)

We replaced simple websites with complex apps nobody asked for. Now it takes a complex build pipeline just to change a headline.

Jono Alderson
When the crew say they'll mount a WiFi access point on the cabin wall. This unit does have the usual screw hole slots on the rear yet they thought they should drill straight through the top. Luckily they totally missed the PCB. 🙄

I am once again asking companies to not be absolute shitbags about their data breach disclosures, such as deliberately blocking search engines from seeing the page by using a "noindex" tag in its HTML.

Today's edition: Australian airline Qantas.

My story: https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/02/qantas-hack-results-in-theft-of-6-million-passengers-personal-data/

friends, I am in a six hour call that’s supposed to be a high level overview of a certain embedded software runtime. The current slide contains a discussion of the garbage collection subsystem and heap management, and also a diagram of how an individual cell of static ram works with the electrons shuffling around between the 0 and 1 states. There are several hundred words in a tiny font talking about voltage and whatnot.

engineers please learn to value soft skills like “expressing your expertise clearly and concisely” a little more 😭 this is like trying to share your grandma’s cake recipe through the medium of a textbook on organic chemistry

@feld Yes the very first Beastie like I guess I should have said. He wasn't the artist for the rest but it was very startling to hear Foglio's name mentioned!
Boost if you're old enough to know why I have one of these on my computer desk.
The state of programming in 2025 that makes vibe coding so attractive is IMO the result of terrible decisions in tech over the last couple of decades. Non-existent stdlibs that normalise the use of a thousand micro dependencies, blindly pulled. Constantly mutating frameworks as performance art. Untyped languages that need huge test suites to prevent basic errors. It all generates mountains of boilerplate that *of course* people want to offload any way they can, even if it’s wrong half the time
My Western music composition mentor specialized in composing using Markov chains.
Why is there no safeguard against shooting yourself in the foot like this? Well, Unix feels that anyone dumb enough to do this doesn't deserve to be its friend. Various people keep trying to put Unix in therapy for this type of antisocial behavior, but it just isn't interested.

What alternatives to Dropbox/GoogleDrive/OneDrive etc are available today, that are EU based?

- Nextcloud Files is one
- any others people would recommend?

Hosted is fine, if within EU. German User Interface is essential.

https://european-alternatives.eu/de/ueber-uns

Background:

My accountant needs to make a per-customer data share available for ~400 different customers. Almost all of these are Windows, with a few macOS, and ... one FreeBSD person. Erm.

They are planning to consolidate 400 different customer ways of transferring data, to a single standard one.

We had a long and fruitful discussion today, about AI, privacy, and GDPR.

They would like to use Google Drive, and I said that all the USA companies make GDPR compliance very problematic, both due to their pro-AI stance, and also to the generally shakey stance of the various legislative frameworks that have been successfully challenged in recent years.

https://umatechnology.org/european-court-of-justice-rules-the-u-s-safe-harbor-data-sharing-pact-is-invalid/
https://iapp.org/news/a/schrems-addresses-emerging-questions-around-eu-us-data-privacy-framework/
https://www.hoganlovells.com/en/publications/latombe-case-first-hearing-for-annulment-of-the-euus-data-privacy-framework
https://iapp.org/news/a/european-commissioner-discusses-eu-us-data-privacy-framework-potential-gdpr-reform

Über uns | European Alternatives

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Boost if you're old enough to know why I have one of these on my computer desk.
@PastaThief sometimes 720k just isn't enough!
@PastaThief oooof. Never saw any uned but I can guess :)
@temptoetiam @PastaThief (I have one for binders, and my dad used to own the specific one used for horse races betting cards)
@MaitreCrevettes @PastaThief I suspect it was used here to punch holes in punchcards computer programs, but I might be wrong.

@temptoetiam @MaitreCrevettes @PastaThief Maybe you had a single-sided 5 1/4" floppy drive and you punched a second hole in your floppies to be able to use the backside by placing them rotated in your floppy drive.

I did that in 1982 or so.

Single sided, 34 tracks, single density were about 80 KByte capacity per side. I still have that drive in my cellar.

@temptoetiam @PastaThief obviously.

(Note that some knitting machine also ran on punch cards, so you can find such items in knitting tools on Etsy I guess, though they are probably different because you punch in the middle of the card, not only on the sides like this one or the "pince à tiercé")

@MaitreCrevettes @temptoetiam I actually used them mostly with floppy disks, although you could use them with punch cards, yes. :) A friend of mine actually operated a Jacquard Loom for demonstrations at the local at the local science centre for a time! (I don't know if she's still doing that.)
@temptoetiam @MaitreCrevettes There are those who used them for that; I used them for making 5.25" floppies double-sided. :)
@PastaThief @temptoetiam trust us both to read all the comments to your post. We both live in *that* corner of the fediverse, and Abie has a thing for finding the best oddities.
@MaitreCrevettes @temptoetiam @PastaThief betting shops used to have floors "carpeted" with losing betting slips. I suppose that's all on phones these days.
@PastaThief PROTIP: These don't work on SSDs.
@kevin @PastaThief Best post of the week.
@kevin @PastaThief Underrated comment of the day.
@PastaThief Oh ye gods. Another way for me to feel how old my bones are XD
@PastaThief I know what it is, but I keep three three-version on MY computer desk.
@PastaThief i was never fan of GCR. For MFM drives (of shugart flavor) you could not operate without the index pulse.
So we opened the sleeves, removed the media and drilled that 2nd index hole.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_coded_recording
Group coded recording - Wikipedia

@PastaThief Like the little wad of paper to push in the hole in the side of the cassette tape :-)
@zipkid @PastaThief I just used Scotch tape over the hole
@PastaThief why you have one on your desk, now?

I have no idea... you like to feel old?
@dat I mean, I still have two working 80s-era computers on my desk (an Apple IIe and an Atari 130XE).
@PastaThief Ha! I know exactly why you have one of these on your computer desk.
@PastaThief
Classic debugger 😂
@PastaThief the holes in punched cards or paper tape were rectangular , not round. Thinking this was perhaps used to destroy floppy disks ? (Prior to the 3.5 inch ones).
@jfmezei @PastaThief not destroy: double their capacity
@olivier_aubert @PastaThief ok remember now. Turn single sided to double sided. One if the corners, right?
@jfmezei @olivier_aubert On the side a bit beneath the corner, but yes. :)
@jfmezei @PastaThief paper tape used round holes
@PastaThief in case of impromptu weddings.
@PastaThief Although it wasn't strictly necessary (punch on ticket machine), I have used one of these in the past.
@PastaThief Old enough, but I was fancy. I had the one made for the task.
@PastaThief takes me back to about 1984...
@quadrivial @PastaThief Snd I keep thinking 1984 was only a few years ago.
@PastaThief you'll face consequences for stealing artifacts from museums! 😅

@PastaThief

My floppy of choice back in the day...when I could afford them.

@JamesMDonohoe Elephant was nice, although I was a bit of a Dysan afficianado.
@PastaThief Yepper - Dysan also a fantastic choice.
@PastaThief I recall punching holes in the case with one of these, in my old computers, to reduce weight, and therefore increase speed.
@PastaThief I am not old enough, but it's for making 5.25in diskettes double-sided, right?

@PastaThief

You can make the flip side usable or, if you’re bad enough at it, both sides unusable.

@rk I see all the references to 5.25" floppies, which I knew well, but I have never used a punch with one. What does it do with a floppy?
@PastaThief

@shriramk @PastaThief

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/F/flippy.html

You could use a hole punch to make another write notch on the other side of a single-sided floppy, doubling your disk space (though at the time most drives could only read one side at a time).

Some disks were also shipped without a write notch at all, so that you couldn’t replace whatever was on them; a hole punch gave you a free reusable floppy!

flippy

@rk I used to own a square hole punch that had a spacer that aligned the floppy to the exact position for the hole. I was a hit at the BBS parties, let me tell ya.

@shriramk @PastaThief