man ✅
@gentoorebel@fosstodon.org
- Age
- Owned an 8-track
- Politics
- Freedom
- Passions
- Dogs, free software, baseball.
- Pixies
- Angry AF
GNU+Linux sysadmin, Gentoo evangelist, systemd skeptic, IRC die-hard, keto chef, dog-dad, techno-redneck, natural born rebel. Live free (as in software) or die.
Joined Oct 2018
Pinned toot
Pinned toot
GNU+Linux sysadmin of many years. Dedicated Gentoo user. Ask me about my USE flags!
Daily IRC user for ~15 years.
Amateur keto chef.
Born and raised in the city, but a country boy at heart.
Dog-dad to two rescued mutts who changed my life.
Technological redneck, in the sense of "why yes I rewrote that in bash, why?"
I never did very well with rules.
Live free (as in software) or die.
man ✅
boosted
anyone ever told you "premature optimization is the root of all evil"?
let me tell you a story. about computers and javascript and hitler and the soviet union.
a friend of mine just dug up some numbers and did some math for my dyscalculic ass and came up with the conclusion that just by transmitting the minified version of jquery around (not even executing it!), Planet Earth is likely using up somewhere between 7-14 billion kWh of power every year.
let's put that into some perspective.
world war two was the single deadliest conflict in human history. it killed somewhere around 80 million people, which at the time was three percent of *all humans, everywhere.* it left europe in ruins, and nowhere was the damage so intense and horrific as the Soviet Union.
the Battle of Stalingrad is one of the most famous battles of the war. two million people died there alone. in the opening salvos the entire city was flattened by nazi and soviet bombs alike. eventually the Union prevailed, at a tremendous cost.
but Stalingrad was only one of the cities flattened, only one of the battles fought as Europe burned. the devastation was so comprehensive that nearly every western nation had to rely on aid from the US, one of the only powers on either side whose economy was intact, to rebuild. (it didn't help that American wartime policy was designed more to inflict as much Nazi death and destruction as possible on the Soviets, of course).
if we add up the energy of every single explosive device detonated over the course of that terrible war, from hand grenades all the way up to the two atom bombs the US detonated over japan, slaughtering civilians en masse and turning two cities to rubble in the space of a moment, we get the figure of about 3 megatons. or in kilowatt hours, 3.4 billion, spread out across all those years of war.
compared to 7-14 billion kWh just to transmitting the same tangle of bytes around again and again. every single year.
and that's just jquery. not the cost of executing it. not the mass of other garbage javascript and analytics and social media spyware, which now often adds up to megabytes per page. not the cost of rendering or running any of that.
just to zap jquery back and forth across the internet to every computer accessing a website that uses it.
a final point of comparison, now that i have your attention: bitcoin uses up 46,000 billion kilowatt hours per year. a number which is likely to keep on growing.
draw your own conclusions about web design & software optimization.
let me tell you a story. about computers and javascript and hitler and the soviet union.
a friend of mine just dug up some numbers and did some math for my dyscalculic ass and came up with the conclusion that just by transmitting the minified version of jquery around (not even executing it!), Planet Earth is likely using up somewhere between 7-14 billion kWh of power every year.
let's put that into some perspective.
world war two was the single deadliest conflict in human history. it killed somewhere around 80 million people, which at the time was three percent of *all humans, everywhere.* it left europe in ruins, and nowhere was the damage so intense and horrific as the Soviet Union.
the Battle of Stalingrad is one of the most famous battles of the war. two million people died there alone. in the opening salvos the entire city was flattened by nazi and soviet bombs alike. eventually the Union prevailed, at a tremendous cost.
but Stalingrad was only one of the cities flattened, only one of the battles fought as Europe burned. the devastation was so comprehensive that nearly every western nation had to rely on aid from the US, one of the only powers on either side whose economy was intact, to rebuild. (it didn't help that American wartime policy was designed more to inflict as much Nazi death and destruction as possible on the Soviets, of course).
if we add up the energy of every single explosive device detonated over the course of that terrible war, from hand grenades all the way up to the two atom bombs the US detonated over japan, slaughtering civilians en masse and turning two cities to rubble in the space of a moment, we get the figure of about 3 megatons. or in kilowatt hours, 3.4 billion, spread out across all those years of war.
compared to 7-14 billion kWh just to transmitting the same tangle of bytes around again and again. every single year.
and that's just jquery. not the cost of executing it. not the mass of other garbage javascript and analytics and social media spyware, which now often adds up to megabytes per page. not the cost of rendering or running any of that.
just to zap jquery back and forth across the internet to every computer accessing a website that uses it.
a final point of comparison, now that i have your attention: bitcoin uses up 46,000 billion kilowatt hours per year. a number which is likely to keep on growing.
draw your own conclusions about web design & software optimization.
man ✅
boosted
current motto: "Everyone has a testing environment. Some people are lucky enough to have a seperate production environment."
man ✅
boosted
Every Mastodon article is like "But what about my follower counts! There's no celebrities on this platform! People don't talk about Trump all the time!"
Yeah. Those are all features.
man ✅
boosted
Happiness is when what you think, what you say and what you do are in harmony. ~ Mahatma Gandhi
So tonight I:
- set up two #pihole containers in #docker
- reconfigured my home #DNS to use em
- configured #nginx reverse proxy to the containers
- set up #mumble in a docker container because the ebuild is giving me grief
- updated firewall, etc. that comes with running public services
- fulfilled a "can you find me a..." request for a friend
A wizardly evening on the ol' internets.
Truly an honor to be followed by your mutuals' backup accounts. #fediverse
man ✅
boosted
My brain is mining bitcoin that my body can’t cash
*posts Mastodon link in IRC*
"Who the fuck still uses Mastodon?!"
Pic related.
man ✅
boosted
All things that are, are with more spirit chased than enjoyed.
-- Shakespeare, "Merchant of Venice"
man ✅
boosted
yeah i use vim *mashing my keyboard* *doing sick triple-key combos* *dvoraking at 200WPM*
heres my code. if it detects systemd on your computer it wipes your home partition. its a little thing called preserving the unix philosophy.
man ✅
boosted
I was wrong about Google and Facebook: there’s nothing wrong with them (so say we all)
It’s always difficult admitting you’re wrong. But sometimes you have to in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. So, today, I admit that I was wrong about Google, Facebook, & surveillance capitalism in general being toxic for our human rights and democracy … it simply cannot be true given how they are endorsed by some of the most well-respected organisations in the world.
man ✅
boosted
@aral If anyone is attending the first copyleft conference, which I suppose will be a landmark, I would suggest a talk topic such as:
"A survey of tech conference sponsors: the ethics of influence"
"A survey of tech conference sponsors: the ethics of influence"
man ✅
boosted
"You see", the professor says with a smirk, "all of you are generating data with your devices and sending it to companies"
"Not me!" I yell from behind my Arch Linux™ laptop filled with entirely free and open source software which respects my freedom. "Tell your M1cr0$0ft sponsors that the future is libre and it's coming"
"NOOOooooo..." he screams as his Windows Surface Pro Disintegrator™ Uploads™ him to the cloud for going against the Terms of Service* which forbids the knowledge that it is truly the year of the linux desktop
man ✅
boosted
It's 2019. How do you know you're being robocalled? The phone is ringing. :(
man ✅
boosted
"I'll slip into something more comfortable"
*goes back to bed*
man ✅
boosted
Oh wow, Steve Klabnik (author of #theRustProgrammingLangauge book and #rust core team member) is leaving Mozilla. https://words.steveklabnik.com/thank-u-next
Key quote:
> I could say a lot of things here, but I won’t get into the details. What’s really important is this: I’m not proud to be a Mozillian anymore.
I've heard some negative things about Mozilla lately, but this is something that personally moves the needle in a anti-mozilla direction more than, e.g., ads on the new-tab page
man ✅
boosted
wow, this is a new one
if you need my “personal data” to pay your staff then you need to find a more ethical fucking business model
Old-man life hack: pain relief cream as hand lotion.
- Age
- Owned an 8-track
- Politics
- Freedom
- Passions
- Dogs, free software, baseball.
- Pixies
- Angry AF
GNU+Linux sysadmin, Gentoo evangelist, systemd skeptic, IRC die-hard, keto chef, dog-dad, techno-redneck, natural born rebel. Live free (as in software) or die.
Joined Oct 2018
