Will Richardson

Software engineer, photographer, and general computer enthusiast.

Currently working at Google in Sydney. Personal opinions only.

Public Key

npub137ddq8nm77tmwhc6gkhugwfvn7f74fdrmn6tgd3nel777z5mr7qqsrf0xv

NIP-05 Address

willhbr@ruby-social.mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsglxksreal09ahtudytt7y8ykflyl25k3aea95xceull00p2d3lqq00paus

Author Public Key

npub137ddq8nm77tmwhc6gkhugwfvn7f74fdrmn6tgd3nel777z5mr7qqsrf0xv

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Last Notes

2025-01-21 04:30:41

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@nprofile…9324 yeah, the amount of compute and storage required to be part of their federation is huge compared to running an ActivityPub server for a small number of users

2025-01-21 02:10:46

the state of the world
https://cdn.masto.host/rubysocial/media_attachments/files/113/863/913/760/425/479/original/89c4262d99f1cad7.jpeg

2025-01-20 01:35:46

I think the worst thing about this is that the malware author *could* have made their installer script so much better, they basically have you do "install malware && install brew", why not have the malware installer pass off to a homebrew installer once it's finished? Why not serve the malware from the fake domain, instead of a random third domain?
Scammers really don't have care for their craft.
https://agora.echelon.pl/objects/310d887d-e111-48a4-9331-bc9e6b8cdd3b

2025-01-18 03:58:02

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Seemingly the way to do this with systemd is to use podman quadlets to generate service definitions for each container, but that's way more faff so being able to just push containers to a server and have them persist there is great

2025-01-18 03:56:21

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I think my fave thing about this is that the OpenRC podman config will auto-restart all containers with --restart=always on boot, which the systemd unit does not do (at least by default)

2025-01-18 02:23:57

I spent $0.15 in VPS time to work this out
@nprofile…02y9 remote rootless on @nprofile…j07q
https://willhbr.net/2025/01/18/configure-rootless-podman-remote-on-alpine-linux/

2025-01-17 12:38:26

I have spent a really long time trying to get rootless podman-remote connecting to an Alpine Linux server over SSH (turns out you need to enable TCP forwarding!) and I'm sure that this is a valuable use of my time

2025-01-15 10:48:12

Absolutely WILD thunderstorm in #sydney tonight!
https://cdn.masto.host/rubysocial/media_attachments/files/113/831/974/458/357/590/original/86a29a09530840e3.jpeg

2025-01-15 08:40:37

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@nprofile…x759 https://willhbr.net! New posts in the works!

2025-01-13 04:12:47

@nprofile…79ya I think it's unnecessary to show an empty opengraph preview image here, it would be better to just show the page title and URL, saving a little bit of vertical space and making it look a bit less like something is broken.
https://cdn.masto.host/rubysocial/media_attachments/files/113/819/094/998/644/097/original/77bd3456364e8af2.png

2025-01-12 12:36:53

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@nprofile…x759 I actually think a great dating tip is to understand that in many contexts, writing out the date name fully can lead to a more readable date that's still unambiguous

2025-01-12 03:28:31

@nprofile…5f2h you mentioned in your blog post the other day that RackNerd supports custom ISOs, is this only via the support tickets (https://my.racknerd.com/index.php?rp=/knowledgebase/59/Does-RackNerd-VPS-support-Custom-ISO.html) or is there a tier where it's self-service?

2025-01-12 02:43:04

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My project: https://pod.willhbr.net/

2025-01-12 02:38:32

I realised I was doing just this (copying config from project to project) with my podman wrapper/config manager. Over the last few days I've been making some changes that cuts out some BS required before you can get a dev container running, which is going well.
Although the more I tinker with this, the more I want to create an all-encompassing containerified build system, but I've only got so much free time.
https://blog.yossarian.net/2025/01/10/Be-aware-of-the-Makefile-effect

2025-01-12 01:02:34

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@nprofile…vv5u those windows better be wobbly

2025-01-11 23:28:15

It's in beta, remember.
https://cdn.masto.host/rubysocial/media_attachments/files/113/812/313/842/663/144/original/e568e91dad034666.jpeg

2025-01-10 10:01:57

I missed a vital tmux command and now my sudoku solver runs faster than tmux can process input
https://willhbr.net/2025/01/10/how-did-i-miss-run-c/

2025-01-10 05:40:40

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@nprofile…9324 hmm now what does that remind me of
https://cdn.masto.host/rubysocial/media_attachments/files/113/802/453/705/479/726/original/2d1c1065ed15565d.jpeg

2025-01-10 01:05:14

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@nprofile…aduy you've got a dangling footnote reference: "Meta hopes will still happen with Community Notes.[^1]"

2025-01-08 11:35:54

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(It runs on NZ time so you can see tomorrow's map already!)

2025-01-08 11:34:25

I made a very silly little website & bot to highlight random corners of #newzealand #topomaps
Blog post soon™ but go and appreciate the maps right now!
https://mastodon.social/@nz_topomap/113792461103040336

2025-01-08 11:31:51

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@nprofile…m7vg there seems to be an undercurrent of "US officials will talk like this and we don't want to ban them, so it's a free-for-all now.

2025-01-08 05:24:38

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@nprofile…s40g had the same crappy server in my cupboard for like 8 years, it's great. Wouldn't use it for email though as I don't want to expose to the outside world

2025-01-07 00:49:44

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@nprofile…3kuv @nprofile…pf0n oh no, are AI generated people the 2020s version of the 2010s tiny-head people?

2025-01-06 22:42:43

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@nprofile…rqx0 please add termites and the phaser: https://archive.org/details/The_Stress_Game_201711

2025-01-06 12:23:07

I just spent 40 minutes copying a 10GB zip file to a VPS, only to realise that I've only got 14G of free disk space so I can't store the zip *and* the unzipped contents. Currently waiting for rsync to upload the same contents 🙄

2025-01-06 08:10:30

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My #zsh config loads in 56ms and I think that's pretty good

2025-01-06 08:07:36

It's 2025 and your shell startup should be fast.
https://willhbr.net/2025/01/06/lazy-load-command-completions-for-a-faster-shell-startup/

2025-01-06 02:13:19

@nprofile…79ya the post status shortcut action seems to omit the server from the account identifier, so if you have two accounts with the same username, it'll get stuck in a loop of selecting an account with no way to select one (I have this account and @nprofile…5m7r signed in)
https://cdn.masto.host/rubysocial/media_attachments/files/113/778/989/081/160/546/original/dec7e7d68df9f11e.png

2025-01-01 11:13:33

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@nprofile…x759 I've used Zencastr for multi-end recording and it's very easy, and libsyn is fairly cheap for hosting (if you'll end up going over the bandwidth cap of a normal VPS host)

2024-12-31 08:30:03

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I put my email in a mailto: link because I like to live dangerously and I know that no bot would ever bother scraping my website

2024-12-31 08:28:31

Has anyone done a study comparing the amount of spam received when publishing your real email on a website versus some "me at example dot com" thing?

2024-12-29 04:09:30

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@nprofile…5fju can't you do a 'rescue nil' suffix? (I know you can in Crystal so I assume Ruby does as well)

2024-12-27 12:07:08

Copilot doesn't know shit
https://cdn.masto.host/rubysocial/media_attachments/files/113/724/700/932/621/126/original/d51807c139920fc5.png

2024-12-27 08:11:18

It's done! Read all about how to solve a sudoku using nothing but a tmux config file
https://willhbr.net/2024/12/27/solving-sudoku-with-tmux/

2024-12-27 06:00:31

Mining bitcoin or solving sudoku?
https://cdn.masto.host/rubysocial/media_attachments/files/113/723/255/747/137/876/original/ffcf7b1815b3fb0f.png

2024-12-27 03:10:52

I tried Ghostty since that's what everyone's doing today, it's really good! Defaults are very sensible, this is everything I adjusted so far:
font-family = "Fira Code Retina"
cursor-style = "block"
cursor-style-blink = false
macos-option-as-alt = true
background = "#2b2b2b"
foreground = "#e7e7e7"
shell-integration = none

2024-12-27 01:04:19

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@nprofile…639z Good Sudoku is delightful for a quick game as well

2024-12-24 09:31:18

The write up for #sudokuwithtmux is over 1800 words already and I've still got so much more to write 🙃

2024-12-23 22:42:20

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@nprofile…a2vf in a world of mostly-HDMI TV inputs, I don't know why overscan is still the default.
I guess the lesson is that TV makers have no taste and the average person doesn't care.

2024-12-23 22:29:28

@nprofile…ay6k I *constantly* swap to a different chapter while trying to scroll to the show notes. Can you shrink the touch target or something?

2024-12-23 11:28:48

Remember when everyone had ultra-glossy 15.6" laptops that somehow all had the scaling set wrong so they were using Windows all weird and stretched out.
Those were the days.

2024-12-23 04:21:14

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Fun fact: while solving the sudoku, tmux produces 6MB/s of network traffic (over SSH) purely redrawing the terminal

2024-12-23 04:14:56

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Now I've just got to do the easy part: explaining how it works in great detail.

2024-12-23 04:14:20

Ok and there we go, #sudokuwithtmux is done! Only 34 lines of tmux config (that includes some _very_ long lines)
https://cdn.masto.host/rubysocial/media_attachments/files/113/700/170/305/713/349/original/a23f237892a91690.png

2024-12-17 22:14:40

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@nprofile…spxs I'm doing my part for your health by leaving apple intelligence disabled 😆

2024-11-04 21:14:55

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@npub198t…hasj if you want to further your containerising adventures, I'd check out using podman—you can install via apt/etc and it runs containers as your own user instead of root

2024-09-24 00:16:27

I would like to curse the world with an alternate #mastodon logo
https://cdn.masto.host/rubysocial/media_attachments/files/113/189/649/259/516/083/original/3cd44b50d91995a8.png

2024-08-19 14:06:00

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@npub1rky…0xq2 every few minutes

2024-08-18 23:11:33

@npub1rky…0xq2 the TF build seems to keep forgetting my "purchase". Quitting the app usually makes it remember for a bit. I assume this is an Apple/testflight issue that'll be fixed at some point

2024-07-06 02:39:47

@npub1rky…0xq2 are Apple Watch notification times being wrong an Ivory issue, or an Apple issue? When I get a notification on my watch the time reported is usually ~14h in the past

2024-06-18 21:48:54

@npub1rky…0xq2 I'm not able to open a link to a toot from within the web view in Ivory, on the latest TF. Have to open the webpage in safari, close out of the browser in Ivory, and then the link works to open the toot in Ivory.

2024-06-07 06:20:41

@npub1rky…0xq2 some fun typing glitches on the report page on the latest TF build
https://cdn.masto.host/rubysocial/media_attachments/files/112/573/889/725/123/345/original/7560c5ff7d9409a2.mp4

2023-09-27 13:03:35

I want some large-scale study about the impact of APIs and lower-level abstractions and how those impact the user-facing features built on top of them. Files (as in this post by @npub1j46…3gm7) are a great example, but ease of error reporting/error messages is something I see all the time—if you tell the user "operation failed" what you really mean is that it was too hard to report a good reason (or you just don't care).
https://jenson.org/files/

2023-06-27 02:41:14

@npub1eee…e209 I'm not sure I understand what you mean by foldables "not supporting a case"; there seem to be plenty of cases for foldable (and flippable) phones, for example: https://www.androidpolice.com/best-google-pixel-fold-cases/