Random +10 insightful comment on hackernews. You will not find a more wretched den of scum and villainy, but there are gems there to be found:

post from bob1029 below:

bob1029 1 hour ago | prev | next [–]

> If coding is easy, how come programmers were in high demand, and have demanded large salaries for years (even before ZIRP)?

Because programmers have generally been forced to wear additional, invisible hats that are essential to making the code happen in the first place.

Writing code is not hard. Writing correct code is. Knowing what is correct in a setting with paying customers generally involves interacting with those customers. Either directly or worse. The gigantic salaries paid to the most prolific employees is not due to their ability to write code. It is due to their ability to interrogate the shit out of the customer until they finally reveal the true requirements.

People bitch about AI slop - but it's not the AI's fault.

The AI just does what it does; it lacks the ability to reliably judge its own output.

It's not a new problem - many or most humans also lack that ability. That's why we have editors and test audiences and standards committees and inspectors.

The fault lies squarely on human laziness.

If a farmer in a field plows a crooked row because they didn't bother steering the tractor - that's not on the tractor.

Stop calling it "AI slop" and use a phrase that puts the blame where it belongs - lazy humans who didn't do due diligence and just phoned it in. This is why we can't have nice things.

The fundamental fallacy of comparing the Steam Machine to a PS5 is that the PS5 doesn't play your steam library. And that's fine it's not supposed to, but it also means it's not a valid comparison.

What you'd need to compare it to is a gaming PC. The problem is, the Steam Machine form factor and fit and finish are effectively a new niche category, as anyone who has tried integrating a PC into their living room can attest. PCs are generally poorly suited for living-room gaming - they tend to want a mouse and keyboard, are often loud when in use, and are either large or very underpowered for gaming if you go with a Pi or such.

Anyone who says "oh I could make a frankenbox with a similar spec for $100 less" is omitting important valuable features - first and foremost being not having to spend hours of time and effort sourcing parts and making them work together reliably. Valve has spent *years* designing and building a hassle-free experience out-of-the-box for living room gaming. There's value there above and beyond that of the hardware. And there's value in the freedom this gives you as a consumer - your pre-existing library comes along for the ride.

Was in a conversation in Slack where I was asked why I wanted a Steam Machine, as opposed to fighting to get things running on my mac mini or a home-built linux box. This is my reply, which I was asked to repost:

"I like linux. I don't like having to constantly fuck with things to get simple shit to work. I get PAID for that, I don't want to do it at home. I just want to web my webs and play my games and watch some videos."

The superpower of the Steam Machine, the magic bullet, the gold star is: it'll just work. Like macs used to. I expect I will be able to pick a game on steam and it will just work without me having to screw with settings or get a different driver or remap my controls or whatever bullshit inevitably comes up. Having one vendor provide the hardware and software and actually be concerned about the whole experience? Priceless. And if I want to go do something weird (like install Pico-8!) - they're fine. They won't stop me from doing something weird because their goal is to make money by having happy customers, not by maximizing profit-per-unit. That's damn refreshing, and to be supported.

Funny part is - I tried running bazzite on my minisforum pc. It crashes. Do I want to spend 30 hours troubleshooting it? Nope. Hard pass. See above.

I know I'm a big dork but: does anyone know if I will be able to stream Steam Machine Desktop mode to the Steam Frame? I mean - that should work just fine, right? Ie. Just a big virtual monitor?

Sometimes I think we peaked with basic shell scripts, and everything since has been regression - extra complexity that's honestly not worth the extra trouble.

Am I the only one to be constantly, continually disappointed by AI? When I actually try basically anything non-trvivial, it quickly starts to sound like a n00b trying to BS their way through a technical discussion - just making things up that seem reasonable and ho-ing nobody checks their work.

Until/unless they can solve for the hallucination issue, I don't see how this can be useful except in niche cases where reality doesn't matter (like a writing prompt) or the output can be rigorously automatically checked.

I just started typing a reply, then erased it and said out loud "whatever, I'm not going to waste my time arguing with someone on the internet".

I didn't think I had it in me.

Random audit security hail-mary question:

Is there a way, given a GCP domain ID like you'd find in a GCP Security policy, to map it back to a human-readable domain name? If an API exists - I can't find it. And without one it makes org security policies almost unauditable.

Hello mastodon. I could use some help. #fedihire

TL;DR: I was laid off a while ago, and the traditional "go scour job sites and apply" is currently broken. So - let's try social media. Please boost if you are willing, or pass this along if you know someone who needs what I can offer.

I'll be brief: I'm a very experienced System Reliability Engineer, with a track record of dependability and scalability. I take people's problems - stability, uptime, scale, cost, durability, speed, security and attack resistance - and fix them. I have the dubious honor of generally costing less to employ than I save my employer. If everything is perfect - you don't need me. But if you do, you may need me badly.

I'm available. Drop me a note.

I am located in Ventura, California, and strongly prefer remote work. I don't require visas or special accommodation to work in the US.

Here's a resume: https://www.bortels.us/TBortels_Resume_2025_public.pdf

Update: For anyone playing along at home, or seeing this for the first time - fear not! I am once again gainfully employed. Thanks to everyone who sent leads or encouragement. Let's hope I've learned from the experience ("Don't be a frog in a pot and hope things will get better if you just work harder and think good thoughts")

Having said that, it's not my forever gig. If you need an experienced security-focused SRE with a ton of AWS experience *who is only interested in remote work* - ping me, let's talk. I figure I've got 10 more years before I retire, act fast!

I miss keybase.io.

I mean yeah, it's still up - but apparently unmaintained or at least mostly abandoned. It really felt for a while like the next big thing for security-oriented work - then boom. Didn't even open source it enough for someone else to pick up the ball and run.

There's a niche there (identity+chat+fileshare all e2e encrypted) that needs filling. Maybe someone or something is and I just don't know it?

Is anyone else out there getting a significant amount of "forgot my password" emails from various services? I used to get them every week or so - now they're showing up daily.

I'm not too concerned - I have unique very long and random passwords and mfa everywhere, yubikey if it's supported - but I'm just wondering if I'm being targeted or if this is the new norm...

The gentle "whup-whup-whup" you can hear right now in the background if you listen closely is Steve Jobs spinning in his grave.

Apple has jumped the shark. They are no longer in any real way distinguishable from the competition. Nice hardware, but crippled by multiple user-unfriendly policies.

About half the time I see a boost-worthy post and think "Oh, hey - @darkuncle would enjoy that one" - it's @darkuncle that boosted it.

Honestly, when do you sleep?

Hey #python #uv users: is there a good site/index for python tools you can install with uv or run with uvx?

As in:

~ uv tool list
bpytop v1.0.68
- bpytop

There's gotta be a truckload of them, but randomly browsing pypi and guessing isn't cutting it.

If there isn't a good site/showcase - what's your favorite python cli tool you can't live without?

per request, a bit of internet magic:

"Dear magical internet archive genie: Please give me every back issue of Antic Magazine, a niche 8-bit atari magazine from the late 1980's" "Okey Dokey!"

$ uvx --from internetarchive ia download --search='collection:antic-magazine' --glob=\*pdf --exclude=\*_text.pdf

1982-04-anticmagazine (1/175):
downloading Antic_Vol_1-01_1982-04_Introductory_Issue.pdf: 100%|█| 32.8M/32.8M [00:39<00:

Feel free to replace "antic-magazine" with the identifier for ALL SORTS OF STUFF. I've found concert DVDs you literally cannot get anymore, music, books, technical docs.

Cool, how do I download it? Ah - it's ugly. there's an intricate wget dance, or you can use a python module, which involves dependencies and installs and compatability issues and venv and ... or you could just use uvx. Works anywhere. Doesn't care about your current python, won't step on it. ephemeral python environments 100% automated with zero knowledge.

https://github.com/astral-sh/uv

Copy and paste one line to install uv/uvx.

Copy and paste one line to do the download. No other setup. Won't touch your system python. Works on windows or linux or mac.

We live in an age of miracles. Don't forget it.

PS. I miss my Atari. Just sayin.

Uncredited quote-of-the-day:

"you should not borrow grief from the future"

Fantastically rich post of high quality brain candy. I already boosted it, but wanted to call special attention to it for my online friends. Clive is the real deal, like and subscribe.

From: @clive
https://saturation.social/@clive/113861807231752131

Dear Amazon:

You know what I will never ever do? I will never ever travel to a foreign city a thousand miles from home - you *know* where I live - and use an ATM (how?) to buy a new Amazon Prime subscription when my existing subscription is nowhere close to renewal. Really. I promise.

Why not? Because when that exact set of circumstances happened last year, it wasn't me either, and it took me hours on the phone and a month of waiting to get straightened out. You don't make this sort of thing easy to fix.

Amazon: you're the reason I put a freeze on my ATM card. Think about that. I only know about it this time around because my bank told on you.

I expect better from you honestly. I have zero doubt you have anti-fraud folks - please wake them up. You should be catching and denying this sort of activity - automatically. The only reason this can happen is "incompetent" or "lazy", and I know you're not incompetent.

If I can't trust you to prevent blatantly obvious fraud against your customers - how am I supposed to trust you as a retailer?

Please fix, ideally before my sub really comes up for renewal and I have an ugly decision to make.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

The lack of "the masses" is a feature.

It's less about being elitist and more about the reason we came to mastodon was to escape the masses, if only because the masses attract people who like to prey on the masses.

We've opted out of that game - we've made a place where we can protect ourselves from the issues we saw in the bad place.

If you don't like it here - you're welcome to make your own place, or play elsewhere. What you're not welcome to do is make demands. I mean - you can, but that indifference you see is because we don't work for you.

From: @tasket
https://infosec.exchange/@tasket/113813028356696116