Ross A. Baker

Functional programmer. Open source, open web. Never daunted.

#Typelevel #Emacs #Nix #Indieweb

Languages: en,de,es

Public Key

npub1czpkpsxezx7c4q200yddahd26uv8uamw7acal93f8zer5qsf4jhqrnkryv

NIP-05 Address

ross@social-rossabaker-com.mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsvpqmqcrv3r0v2s98hjxk7mk4dwxr7wah0wuwljc5n3v36qgy6etspz4f4p

Author Public Key

npub1czpkpsxezx7c4q200yddahd26uv8uamw7acal93f8zer5qsf4jhqrnkryv

Show more details

Last Notes

2025-03-27 03:08:47

I've been relentlessly negative toward one git forge lately, so here's something positive: I've joined the Codeberg e.V. as a supporting member and invite you to do the same.
https://join.codeberg.org/
#Codeberg

2025-03-01 05:20:06

My entry for the February 2025 IndieWeb Carnival, on affirmation, and struggling with not being the best. We're fifteen minutes into March here, but it's still February somewhere.
https://rossabaker.com/blog/pareto-frontal-affirmation/
#IndiewebCarnival #Affirmation

2025-02-18 03:07:27

- reply

I activated my Scheme brain, which formed too close to my Perl brain, and now my non-AI project is a lot more fun.
https://github.com/rossabaker/jahsh/blob/e6e11851156b602edc4b1ead0ef89e5222607407/jahsh.scm
The title is only a spoiler if you're old.

2025-02-15 18:00:18

I had given up GitHub for non-work use, but I'm coming back with a project under an explicitly non-AI license. It will be fun to see which tools respect it and which don't.
https://github.com/rossabaker/goodbye-ai
It will also be fun to dust off my Scheme enough to make the program less trivial and more obviously copyrightable. Pull requests welcome, but only under the MIT NON-AI License!
#AI #Licensing #Scheme

2025-02-14 16:21:51

I use generated answers to security questions. Today I had to spell one for the customer representative to type. "I'm sorry. I have an infosec background. I usually get to paste this. No, my first pet's name did not look like something a fascist billionaire would name his child. Yes, 'A' as in 'alligator...' I'm ruining your Friday, aren't I? I'm so sorry."
Every part of this is true except the "A." Please don't h4x0r me.

2025-02-13 17:19:49

It may be as futile as robots.txt, but `export DO_NOT_TRACK=1` is a good addition to your dotfiles.
https://consoledonottrack.com/
#Privacy #Telemetry

2025-01-05 23:12:15

- reply

@nprofile…f5su Mastodon was the most complicated, but I had enough practice, I nailed it the first try. Libravatar was the biggest struggle, because I didn't understand that `try_file` doesn't imply `file_server`.

2025-01-05 21:54:33

Just migrated my last service from Nginx to Caddy. The docs are good, and whenever they weren't enough, the forum archive turned up what I needed. What a delight.
#Caddy

2024-12-31 16:53:30

Languages I used in 2024 and on my radar for 2025, with brief commentary on each:
https://rossabaker.com/blog/code-2024/
Aside: I'm shocked this old tradition from former social networks doesn't thrive with the Fediverse postetariat.
#Code2024

2024-12-24 21:29:45

One of my life's regrets is that I learned about El Caganer only after I visited Catalonia.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caganer
#Christmas #Caganer

2024-12-18 22:39:24

Some uBlock Origin rules to block unwanted Copilot elements from github.com. Add to "My Filters".
https://codeberg.org/rossabaker/github-copilot-filters/
[Edit: moved from personal OpenGist to Codeberg for collaboration.]
#GitHub #Copilot #UBlockOrigin

2024-12-17 17:45:42

Careful. When you post absurd AI-generated code in your name, people may think it's yours.

2024-12-12 13:36:10

Indianapolis is often in the freezing rain between the snow and rain of a large winter storm. Or it may snow without covering the ground. Or it snows a lot and quickly turns to slush. It's enough to inhibit regular activity, without offering enough winter play. This season is nicer both south *and* north.
Go is Indianapolis winter as a programming language.

2024-11-24 03:08:19

What do we do when we think we're going to be sad? Get up early and barbecue!
Today we fight aging pellets and some things found at the bottom of the freezer.
https://rossabaker.com/blog/2024-11-23-bbq-journal/
#BBQ

2024-11-16 02:05:08

Bridgy Fed is discussing a change to opt-out from Bluesky. This would be great on the Fediverse side, but raises moderation questions for Bluesky users. I accepted these risks the other direction, but by opting in. A recurring challenge with bridges is that content can be bridged more readily than safety controls.
https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/1471
#BridgyFed

2024-11-14 01:46:51

I'm interested in running Caddy, but I have a non-trivial Nginx setup. My strategy is to proxy Caddy wth Nginx while I shift and test individual services, and then promote Caddy to port 443 in a final step.
#Caddy

2024-10-27 22:28:52

Open source red flags icon starter pack
https://social.rossabaker.com/system/media_attachments/files/113/381/730/960/986/168/original/974f07bcc6fb0234.png

2024-10-17 14:42:22

We had a vulnerable dependency affecting versions `< 9.4.54` and patched it with `9.4.54.v20240208`. The CVE is declared in the Maven ecosystem, and while this version is correct according to Maven's rules [^1], it does not satisfy the predicate according to SemVer [^2], and the vulnerability scan continues to fire.
[^1]: https://maven.apache.org/ref/3.9.9/maven-artifact/apidocs/org/apache/maven/artifact/versioning/ComparableVersion.html
[^2] : https://semver.org/#spec-item-11
#GitHubSecurity #SemVer

2024-10-11 03:15:50

- reply

@npub1h56…ch5t Nice!
I grew up in the Chicago suburbs and still think of Central Illinois as "south". I sometimes go to Peoria, and have to remind myself that it's quite a bit north of Indy!

2024-09-20 02:53:36

I just received my first PGP-encrypted phish.
#AchievementUnlocked

2024-09-07 23:16:07

Wiktionary proposes shit-for-brains, but I'm leaning toward shits-for-brains, or maybe shit-for-brainses. We need the vocabulary to alert when we are dealing with more than one.
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/shit-for-brains
#ShitForBrains #AskFedi

2024-08-11 03:12:08

I use html5validator. Like many packages, it broke when nixpkgs unstable moved to Python 3.12:
> error: openstackdocstheme-3.2.0 not supported for interpreter python3.12
A crude but effective fix is just to override the python3 parameter to the package.
```nix
pkgs.html5validator.override { python3 = pkgs.python311; })
```
#Nix

2024-08-05 15:02:16

We're hiring a senior software engineer for a Typelevel Scala team at Jack Henry. Remote, US only. DMs are open, or e-mail me at ross@rossabaker.com.
https://careers.jackhenry.com/job/united-states/senior-software-engineer-jack-henry-digital/42859/66259602592
#Scala #Typelevel #FediHire

2024-05-31 23:59:17

When I first moved to Indy, I used to attend a music listening group of people thrice my age, run by a forensic accountant who shared an office with my wife's newspaper. I learned about an obscure Swedish composer, Helena Munktell, who appears on the ISO's program tonight. Back then, import CDs from an obscure European label were the only way to listen. This is going to be good.
I'm going to try not to think about what it would mean to be thrice my age now.
#Indianapolis #IndySymphony

2024-05-22 15:49:08

- reply

@npub1h56…ch5t The OSS I'm most known for migrated over my dissent. I partake sparingly via an overseas Matrix bridge, because every account I set up locally gets banned. 🤷

2024-05-22 15:05:52

1. processes with a ® symbol
2. unpinned dependencies
3. projects with a Discord
4. Microsoft

2024-05-10 17:54:18

I'm starting to see a wave of single-PR users on GitHub submitting updates to copyright dates. There is nothing obviously malicious about them, though they have a metallic whiff of bot. Is there any reason to avoid these?
#GitHub

2024-04-26 03:46:06

I reimplemented Scalatra with delimited continuations about a decade ago. I was stoked when the tests passed, but when I tried to use it, I found three gotos in a trenchcoat. I don't feel any differently today.
#Scala

2024-03-27 14:26:41

Every time a company rug pulls a license, block the principals, on GitHub and elsewhere. If you build your product on the back of the commons, and then delete your product from those commons, you delete yourself from collaborating on the next generation of the commons. Trust matters.
https://social.rossabaker.com/system/media_attachments/files/112/168/069/234/821/347/original/37d375a15f98f885.png

2024-03-26 03:11:59

- reply

@npub1h56…ch5t I have plenty of leftovers and have already shared, but I might get into trouble if I added the local hashtag...

2024-03-26 02:31:05

Another successful smoke today. This was my first venture into making rib tips, which will definitely be added to the repertoire.
https://rossabaker.com/blog/2024-03-25-bbq-journal/
https://social.rossabaker.com/system/media_attachments/files/112/159/634/470/018/167/original/9bf63bf277e670f1.jpg

2024-03-22 13:30:20

- reply

@npub12jq…hq6m Meanwhile, I have two highly respected colleagues calling it an "accessibility problem", one to the point of "would need to find another language". What matters is it set back tooling and sharply divided the community.

2024-03-20 11:40:28

> At the Conference of Badajoz–Elvas of 1524, where Portugal and Spain discussed the location of the meridian that divided their respective hemispheres, a young boy one day asked the delegates if they were trying to divide the world. The adults answered they were. The boy then responded by baring his backside and suggesting that they draw their line through his butt crack.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mooning

2024-03-14 16:39:11

- reply

@npub1q0k…k9gm Is that excitement in the air, or military drones?

2024-02-25 15:52:53

- reply

@npub1j6j…up5h @npub12jq…hq6m And whenever YouTube pulls the plug in the free tier, the blast radius will be orders of magnitude greater than SkillsMatter. Centralization stabilizes today, and concentrates the catastrophe later.

2024-02-20 01:58:54

Didn't have the day off like many folks, but squeezed in a holiday smoke anyway. Experimenting with a barbecue journal.
http://rossabaker.com/blog/presidents-day-bbq-2024/
Tomorrow, I need to experiment with more things that are green.
#bbq
https://social.rossabaker.com/system/media_attachments/files/111/961/315/300/974/112/original/6cbbe2a18f62553d.jpg

2024-02-19 05:32:58

- reply

@npub1h56…ch5t It's specified in DOT syntax in an Org Mode source block, and ob-dot invokes graphviz to render the SVG.
Yeah, I threw in the strverscmp when going through comments. It really does cast a pall over things!

2024-02-16 18:59:29

A deeper dive than anybody wanted into Semantic Versioning, how its ordering conflicts with standard practice, and how to unify spec and practice. Includes examples for SBT (Coursier and Ivy) and Maven.
https://rossabaker.com/blog/version-number-ordering/
#SemVer #SBT #Maven

2024-02-03 05:14:33

After a furnace failure and an oven failure and an aquarium failure last month, I thought my luck might regress to the mean, but instead my luck is currently leaking out the water heater.

2024-01-29 16:38:49

- reply

@npub1h56…ch5t I've never been too comfortable in front of a camera, but after the fish move in, maybe I'll owncast them!

2024-01-29 15:14:18

Rebooting an aquarium for the first time since I got on my Indieweb kick, so why not start a tank journal? Either blog or tank may end in failure, but both are fun to try.
https://rossabaker.com/blog/new-walstad-aquarium/
#Aquarium #WalstadMethod

2024-01-13 21:55:15

Confronting one of the hard problems in computer science today: running other people's Python.

2024-01-12 15:42:11

I can't remove the stress of job hunting when employment is so central to our identity and basic needs. But if an interviewee feels worse at the end than the beginning, then I have abjectly failed as an interviewer. It's a duplex conversation, not a hazing ritual.

2024-01-03 21:57:04

Lots of posts lamenting how much knowledge will vanish as Discord enshittifies. True, but it's already lost to searchers, the privacy conscious, and the people it locks out for no damn reason at all. (Tag yourself, I'm all three.) It's *already* smothering your community. Open source belongs on the open web.
#FOSS #Discord

2023-11-23 19:43:37

- reply

@npub1yy8…yfzq How far back are we going for "actual" origins? The Puritan feasts strike me as a mix of nice sentiment and something everyone's cranky uncle would plan.

2023-11-23 15:21:39

Thanksgiving has a gross origin myth, but a day to pause and give thanks is beautiful, and it's our last oasis in the Holiday Shopping Season™. I hope you find the good side of it, and if you don't celebrate today, I hope you have another day like it.
#Thanksgiving

2023-11-21 13:54:36

I need a smoother workflow for working on my server config. TRAMP for remote files is a delight, but tangling from Org to the remote doesn't work. I'm working locally and then pushing intermediate git commits. Maybe sshfs is the answer?
#Emacs #Tramp

2023-08-24 22:58:13

Writing Scala to render Markdown embedded in Bash embedded in YAML, as one does.

2023-08-06 23:25:19

I'm delighted that software I wrote runs far and wide, but each time someone tells me their employer forbids any contribution back, even on personal time, I see more appeal in Copyleft.
#FOSS #Copyleft

2023-07-10 14:48:43

- reply

@npub1w66…rc58 I find myself one floppy closer to being able to install Slackware.

2023-06-23 02:54:10

sbt-dependency-submission is a nifty GitHub Action to report dependencies at build time for vulnerability scanning. It even sees your transitive dependencies. But it can be hard to debug why a dependency was submitted.
In ~/.sbt/1.0/sbt-dependency-submission.sbt:
```
addSbtPlugin("ch.epfl.scala" % "sbt-github-dependency-submission" % "2.1.2")
```
Now you can run `show githubDependencyManifest` to debug!
#Scala #Dependabot

2023-05-28 03:59:02

- reply

@npub1nd8…2zkd As a Scala veteran, I have vast experience with communities that tolerate bigotry. It's difficult, unrewarding, and most of all, unscalable, to license passive use. Digital copies are abundant, and some of them will be bad.
But my time is scarce, and I can guard that. Nobody is entitled to our support, our reviews, or our interop. I block aggressively and hope my work is a net positive.

2023-05-21 16:29:18

In Extreme Programming, we picked a new pair programmer every day. I decided that was nonsense, and adopted Pete. We paired for the next nineteen years. He preferred the title "alpha" to "principal staff," but he shared his opinions whether you wanted them or not. He logged off this morning. Rest easy, friend.
P.S., this is what he thought of YAML.
#TuxedoCat #RIP
https://social.rossabaker.com/system/media_attachments/files/110/407/601/890/811/380/original/4383dc053d8a4aaa.jpg

2023-04-12 03:33:28

There's an underpopulated place in open source right now between the rabidity of the FSF and the foolishness of "join our Discord." Where are the communities that will be relevant in a decade?
#[0]