@foone@digipres.club avatar

foone

@foone@digipres.club

Hardware / software necromancer, collector of Weird Stuff, maker of Death Generators. (she/they🏳️‍⚧️)

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. For a complete list of posts, browse on the original instance.

foone , to random
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designing my next keyboard PCB is going well

foone , to random
@foone@digipres.club avatar

Hiya! I'm a programmer looking for full-time work in the SF Bay Area (or remote!)
I'm primarily a Python programmer, but I've got significant experience in Java, C#, C++/C, Ruby, and Javascript.

I've focused a lot on Continuous Integration in recent years but I've got experience with in-house tool development, embedded software, back-end server stuff, and UI/Web/HIL test automation.
I've a lot of experience in digitization/archival work.

My resume & email:
https://wiki.foone.org/w/My_Resume

Thanks!

foone , to random
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I wanna see a 3d printer designed by woz.
No limit switches, it just bangs the print head against the casing on boot up like an apple II drive

foone , to random
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I could go down the long rabbithole of figuring out how to call g*mp's image manipulation tools from a commandline or API, or getting imagemagick installed on this PC and figuring out how to port it over there...

or I could be silly and take advantage of the fact that I'm applying gamma ramps to an 8-bit greyscale image. What's the difference between the "before" and "after" images? a different palette.

foone OP ,
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why do calculations when instead you could just do...
im.putpalette(gamma_ramps_applied_greyscale_palette)?

foone OP ,
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two of the best feelings when programming are:

  1. figuring out a really clever way to solve a problem
  2. figuring out a really stupid way to solve a problem
foone , to random
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It's funny how I've seen multiple people talking about how Microsoft Recall doesn't take pictures of DRM media, as if this was a conscious decision the Recall team made, and not just a natural consequence of how screenshots already work on modern windows.

foone , to random
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Bad idea that could still make a lot of money:
A small desk-size washing machine, with proprietary soap packets, designed to clean keyboard keycaps.

foone OP ,
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You might say "who would waste money on a dedicated appliance that only does that one thing?"

But I must remind you that mechanical keyboardists are the audiophiles of typing.

luckytran , to random
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North Carolina's House has rejected the anti-mask bill! The bill will now go through a compromise process, which could include re-adding a health exemption.

More work needs to be done, but this shows that advocacy is making a difference. Keep going!

https://www.cbs17.com/news/north-carolina-news/nc-house-votes-not-to-concur-with-bill-reinstating-mask-restrictions/

foone ,
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@luckytran finally some good news from my home state!

foone , to random
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So there's always the debate between QWERTY and alphabetical keyboards, but everyone is missing the obvious way to solve this disagreement.

There's no reason the alphabet HAS to be in that order. It's arbitrary, and English would work almost completely the same if the alphabet was in a different order, you know?

So, let's just put the alphabet in QWERTY order!
It'd solve all our problems from Q to M.

foone , to random
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Personally I only use the most legitimate of software.

molly0xfff , to random
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i...

foone ,
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@molly0xfff annoyingly I've written about this before. It's solely because of people who have copies of the blockchain stored on offline/unplugged computers that wouldn't get fried.

But let it be known that if society falls, me and my gang of roving bdsm-core warriors will be finding and smashing every one of those computers.

foone , to random
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I'm a "full stack developer", in that my stack is full and if you try to push any more tasks on me I'm gonna overflow it and start corrupting my own memory

foone , to random
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I just saw a job listing for a company doing "home defense using AI and non-lethal deterrence"

The company's name? Sauron.

foone OP ,
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come on, think about your name just a little, people.

also, even if you don't, think about IF YOU CAN GOOGLE IT

foone , to random
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The four most used operating systems:

  • windows
  • apple macos/ios
  • linux (legacy, deprecated, not for new projects)
  • systemd
foone OP ,
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I've seen people making the joke that it should be "systemd/Linux" or "systemd/GNU/Linux"

We have a saying over on Tumblr about this sort of joke: if you knock on enough doors, eventually the devil will answer

foone , to random
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the world needs more recreational programming.
like, was this the most optimal or elegant way to code this?

no, but it was the most fun to write.

foone OP ,
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cause like, yeah, it's good to know how to write optimal code and how to make it elegant and easy to maintain, sure!

but one thing you have to maintain is your brain. If you're constantly driving your programming brain at maximum speed, maximum awareness of all possible caveats and vulnerabilities, always considering "how will I maintain this code in ten years time?" you're going to burn yourself out.

foone OP ,
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You're associating programming with a high-stress high-attention activity. That's going to make programming something that's categorized in your brain as no fun, never relaxing, never something you do just cause it would be interesting... you're going to start dreading it, even just a little. "oh well, let's get this over with."

That's not a good way to think about it in the long run.

foone OP ,
@foone@digipres.club avatar

we often say that programming is more an art than a science, but we need to treat it like one too.

Sometimes you need to paint a sunset not because someone paid you to paint a sunset, but because it'd be fun to paint a sunset.

foone OP ,
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we need a bob ross of programming

foone OP ,
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PBS's The Joy Of Programming

foone , to random
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Fun fact about microfiche:
One of the first uses of it was due to pigeons.

During the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871, Paris was under siege and they got dispaches out by using microphotography to make them small enough that they could be attached to pigeons and flown out of the city.

foone , to random
@foone@digipres.club avatar

using a floppy disk image creating tool to create a virtual floppy disk image using a file that I had to load off a floppy disk, so I can put it in a VM and turn it into a PCX, then put that on a real pentium-60 windows 95 PC

sometimes I think I'm going backwards

foone OP ,
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it didn't work so I made it into an ISO

foone OP ,
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ugh. how am I supposed to get files off of the system when the floppy drive doesn't work? it can't burn CDs, it's windows 95!

I can't put it on the network, it's WINDOWS 95

foone OP ,
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okay so floppies sorta work. I was able to get my files off that way

foone OP ,
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FILES ARE READY

gsuberland , to random
@gsuberland@chaos.social avatar

so as for why the PuTTY P-521 bug happened: they wrote the implementation in September 2001, which is a month before Windows XP was released. Win9x had no good random number generator APIs, so they came up with an alternative trick using SHA512 to generate deterministic but non-predictable nonces. but, of course, SHA512 outputs are 512 bits long, not 521 bits, and they just left the other 9 bits at zero, which resulted in this problem. the code was not reviewed since, so it never got fixed.

foone ,
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@gsuberland ah, one of the downsides of targeting old OSes: you have to build your own versions of APIs, and you might get it wrong. Whoops.

foone , to random
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You know how the entire OSS infrastructure was recently saved by someone noticing a 0.5 second slowdown where there shouldn't be one?

Sometimes I think certain jobs are specifically designed to find people who are Like That and kill them.

luna , to random
@luna@pony.social avatar

alright I've got a new take on the the GIF/JIF debate:

GIF is pronounced with a hard G — if you pronounce it JIF then I'm going to obtusely assume you're referring to the JPEG Interchange Format

foone ,
@foone@digipres.club avatar

@luna my terrible take on the gif/jif debate is that JPEG is "Jay-pheg".
The P stands for "photographic"!

foone , to random
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I finally lugged my Highscreen SkyTower AT tower up to my office. This machine is beautiful, even when it's yellowed and dusty and grimy and rusty.

foone OP ,
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I did manage to get it starting to scrape the 2gig drive.
ddrescue has been running for 78 minutes and has saved 716kb.

So, it'll finish around March 24th

foone OP ,
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left it running overnight and I'm now up to 6.6mb recovered!

also it slowed down. It's going to finish around July 7th

foone OP ,
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hooking up a mastodon bot to post whenever it updates

currently at 7036k

foone OP ,
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@hennichodernich found an advert for (almost) this exact model!

https://radiosocial.de/@hennichodernich/112050921975858783

foone OP ,
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I paused it to implement some tmux nonsense so I could actually make this bot if I want to, which made it slow down.

So now it's estimating it'll be done August 15...

2028

foone OP ,
@foone@digipres.club avatar

it has somehow sped up to the point where it thinks it'll finish within the next 2 hours, despite having only copied 2.48% (51mb) of the drive. It's getting an average read rate of 510 bytes a second

foone OP ,
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I wonder if I could adjust the IDE timeout without having to recompile my kernel

foone OP ,
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I made a program to scrape the status from ddrescue, just in time for it to error out and drop the drive from the bus:

Copied 52400 kB of 2048 mB (2.48%) at an average rate of 501 B/s. ETA: 1h 27m

foone OP ,
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I was able to do the trick I did before where I repeatedly reset the SCSI host device until it is recognized.

the problem is that it keeps falling right back off the bus when I try to run ddrescue

foone OP ,
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sdb: detected capacity change from 2111864832 to 0

awww, my bytes are gone

foone OP ,
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oops. I accidentally hotplugged the hard drive

foone OP ,
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I dunno why this drive isn't working

foone OP ,
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ok I'm officially giving up on this drive.

I was able, in the end, to capture about 54mb of the drive. 2.48%

foone OP ,
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I was able to get info and find out that this machine hosted this website at some point in 2005:

https://web.archive.org/web/20040325064945/http://www.windowsacademy.net/

foone OP ,
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I realized I need a serial mouse to reinstall NT4 onto this machine. but that shouldn't be a problem, right? I've got a whole drawer of old mice, I just need to grab the first serial mouse out of there.

This was the first one I found.

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