gauntlet's microblog

[23:49] My laptop is dying on me. It will occasionally just freeze and require a hard reboot plus the keyboard recently began to fail me. Since I bought this machine second hand and got precisely zero info about its age (apart from the fact that the model -- ThinkPad L412 -- was being manufactured between 2010 and 2012) I had to find out myself. First I found the serial number, then I queried Lenovo for more info. Turns out the poor old thing is just two months shy of being nine years old, which is kind of impressive for a laptop.
I already have a new-ish replacement here (second hand again) that I got set up halfway, only have to migrate my home directory over there. Still, I find myself clinging to my recent laptop. I guess I'll try and keep it alive either way. It may be old, but since my requirements are low it still serves me well.
[21:01] Unusual bit of honesty from Facebook: social media users can't expect privacy.

[21:21] Back from a visit at a friend's place in a pretty provincial area. Since I live in a major city I'm used to having a decent internet connection basically wherever I go. At this place, not so much. My phone was constantly struggling to connect to any mobile network at all, and whenever it got connected, the downstream was slooooooow. I actually began to value small sized websites even more.
I also did not dare to connect to the wifi in the hotel, since the hardware I saw there was el cheapo stuff which probably was never patched since it was acquired ten years ago or so. Plus the stuff was installed in a public area within arm's reach, so anything could have been done to the network. I may be paranoid in this regard, but I'd rather be safe than sorry.
On the plus side, there was no light pollution whatsoever. Hadn't seen such a dark night's sky in years.

[22:46] Turns out Comic Sans is actually a useful font: it may help dyslexic people.
[22:39] tilde.red is back online, but apparently someone else is in charge now. Not sure if it is a tilde server again or something else.

[21:31] I did not see a single other person carrying a towel today, and the one who asked about mine never read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. That's a bit sad.

[21:43] Ha, cool! Recursive Powerpoint Presentations.
[21:15] The Anti-License.
[19:53] Next time someone asks me why I don't want my picture to be taken, I'll point them to this.

[21:03] Weird realization from a few days ago: RSS is about as old as the first Matrix movie.
[20:14] Embedding third party scripts on your website is a bad idea. Here is another prime example for this. You're basically issuing a blank check to the third party. Don't.

[23:45] Lego is going to release a set of Braille bricks. Cool idea.
[08:43] I do this stuff for a living and I know I should probably take this all for granted, but it still amazes me to be able to VPN into my personal network from across country. I love this technology.

[21:40] I knew URL shorting is a thing, but URL lengthening is new to me.
[21:38] Here is a robot proving it is not a robot. :)
[16:55] CSS Naked Day may be a thing of the past, but I still like the idea. (Obviously.)

[22:55] When using ASCII smilies within parentheses, what is the right syntax? (... :-)) or ( ... :-)? Is this kind of like an ipv6 address, collapsing redundant values, or would the second version constitute a syntax error? Really, this is bothering me.

[22:35] Sooo ... birds aren't real? Bummer. So much for RFC 1149.
[22:22] Another new tilde server: aussies.space. Hey there! (Updated my list of tildes.)

[18:15] When people use your wireless network without permission, you can either lock them out or mess with them a little.
[18:09] X-Clacks-Overhead is "a non-standardised HTTP header" that contains GNU messages.
When the header is set, you can read it with curl: $ curl -sI gnuterrypratchett.com

[18:06] So this is how you make computer bugs? I see. Seems I had a completely wrong idea about how they come into existence. :)
[17:42] Update on the History, Evolution and Future of Public Access Unix Systems: there is a GitHub repo now.
[17:38] I had my user name on tilde.town changed (thanks again, ~vilmibm!), so I'm now ~gauntlet over there, too.

[20:21] I'm not one for jewelry, but USB earrings are worth mentioning.
[20:12] I was informed that thunix.org is not actually down but lost the .org TLD and can now be found at thunix.cf and thunix.net. I updated my list of other tildes.

[23:35] cmccabe is writing a paper on the "History, Evolution and Future of Public Access Unix Systems", linked here. My own project The Swintons of Tildeverse overlaps with this on some parts, so we decided to join forces on this. Currently we're discussing how exactly we want to move this forward. More on this as soon as I know which direction the project will take.
[01:49] I spent a little time manually checking the status of the tildeverse, listing all the tildes I know of. There have been quite a few over the years, and I'm happy to see that there are still more than 40% online.
Update: tilde.wiki has a list, too, including two servers I totally missed.
[01:13] Hey, RetroNET is back! Not sure how long the server was offline. Good to see you again!

[19:29] HackersCurator.com is a website for people who "take their fandom several steps further", going into detail on the tech used in the movie, the clothing et cetera. There is also an interesting Youtube channel.

[22:14] Oh, very cool: a bass guitar built into a C64.
[21:50] I kind of want this laptop.
[18:59] Rickroll as a service. I'm not even surprised that this exists.
[18:27] So, it is Check your backups Day. (Mine work.) Also, I read about Schrodinger's backup today. :)

[20:09] I toyed with a little bash script yesterday, trying to check the list of all the tilde servers I know of (a total of 44) to find out which of those are still up and running, but there was little success in that. Of course, I can check wheter or not I can ping the URL or wether curl returns an http status code, but the server replying is not necessarily the tilde I was looking for. For example, I was surprised to see a response from tilde.center, which had been out of service for a while. Also, at least one former tilde domain was not renewed and now is home to NSFW stuff. Sad.
Interesting concept on tilde.center though, I'm especially curious how the distributed LDAP will turn out.

[19:22] Accessibility is hard, and even those with best intentions screw things up sometimes. The other day we got hardware for a user with a vision impairment, among this a calculator. An actual hand held one, no software. The device came with a big display and high contrast buttons, accompanied by a manual. The latter was written as these things usually are, just the tiniest bit larger than fine print. Again, this is a device intended for people with vision impairment. Someone did not think that through.