I actually worked at the same place as Andrew Tridgell, over a quarter-century ago. I got to know a few of the OzLabs folks during their immediate post-IBM years, and always had the highest respect for them in that way where you feel acute impostor syndrome when they're in the room.

Tridge almost walked backwards into implementing the Windows SMB protocol (he was just debugging some funny NetBIOS extensions IIRC). But his paper on the #rsync algorithm was groundbreaking, and actually writing the tool to implement it was brilliant. It's become one of those tools like #curl that just forms one of the major structural supports of the modern Internet. I still remember the day that the SSH transport became the default, and I remember being able to thank him in person when he came to the San Francisco office (although IIRC by that point he'd handed control of rsync over to mbp).

I remember at my next job he came to a summit of folks working on print driver/spooler software. When he pointed out that some problems were effectively a cache-consistency algorithm, we all kind of put our fingers to our temples and said "Oh wow, you're SO right!" He was always insightful and sharp, while being gentle and approachable.

I write in the past tense because I haven't crossed paths with him in two decades, and only know what I see him put out. A friend of mine in Australia noted that he hasn't posted to the Canberra LUG list since 2020, thanking someone for congratulating him on receiving the Medal of the Order of Australia. He's very much alive, but from what little I see I grow concerned for him.

In 2024 he took over maintenance of rsync once more. The 3.3.0 release was the last one from the previous maintainer, and Tridge is currently working on 3.4.x releases.

Well... Tridge and #Claude, it seems: https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@JeremiahFieldhaven/116654345332213390

The issue tracker for rsync has recently lit up with regressions, showing features that worked reliably for almost 30 years are suddenly coming crashing down in 3.4.2 and 3.4.3. People are scrambling to find ways to pin rsync to known-good versions. The considerate, incisive mind I briefly knew is letting the stochastic parrots do his work for him, and it just seems so astonishingly *unlike* the person I met back in the day.

I am still willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. I hope all is well for him, but I will not cast aspersions on his goals or his abilities. No, instead I draw this conclusion:

If TRIDGE of all people can't handle #LLMs without a slopocalypse, no one can.

That means you. That means someone you admire who is intelligent and careful and considerate. Not even someone whose opinions on technology you respect a great deal.

No one.

info on the github breach appears to only be available on xitter 🙄 , I fished it out for you.

#github

Silly #Poll: where are you along the #neckbeard pipeline?

(Note: the neckbeard is metaphorical. No actual facial hair required)

Also, please remember #DanesLaw: no matter how carefully someone attempts to construct a poll, the very first comment will usually expose a glaring oversight. That's just how it goes.

Why Americans Don't Walk To School - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lShDhGn5e5s

this neighborhood he filmed looks so much like America-as-I-know-her that it hurts. When I was a child, I lived in a housing development, a separate loop from the main road, nothing but houses on both sides for the whole loop. Sounds safe for kids, right? I was utterly forbidden from crossing the street ever, for any reason. In the three years I lived there, two children I knew were flattened by cars. One was in a wheelchair for years, the other had permanent brain damage. And we were lucky to have a sidewalk the whole length of the loop - which would quickly disappear beyond its edge; walking anywhere else was impossible, it was an island in a sea of high-speed roads.

The next development we lived in, the school had a street-by-street map of who was and wasn't allowed to walk to school. It was in theory a 15 minute walk, but we were forbidden because 10 of that would be on a highway with absolutely no accommodations for walking alongside it. There was a secret path through the woods that some kids used. There was a shopping center about as far in the other direction with, again, absolutely no way to walk there (and no busses). I grew up trapped in lonely fortresses in a sea of concrete, and I am still not used to the freedom I have in Europe to just... go places and do things.

How it started / how it’s going

#dog #dogs #dogsofmastodon