Via A Book of Creatures, things I didn't know: "imp" as a term actually derives from horticulture and was originally a word for tree shoots -> children -> children of satan/devils specifically -> modern usage.
Etymology is fun :)
Three elections today.
BRAZIL: Judging by first round results Lula needs a huge boost in nonvoters to catch up to Flavio Bolsonaro. Probably won't go well.
SERBIA: The wildcard of the day, authoritarian nationalist Vucic faces down an anti-corruption, pro-democracy Student List. I think SL will get more votes, but a high chance Vucic will cheat.
BULGARIA: nationalist-centre-left president will easily win, her former boss is now Prime Minister & in honeymoon period.
Anyway here's something I saw this week in my short trip to Oslo - a new bird for me, in the form of a nutcracker!
These hoppy little corvids (crow/magpie relatives) live in cold and high mountain climates and bury nut stashes, digging them up from under the snow with their long heavy beaks during the winter months. They're also very speckledy, and have a very different balance to most of their cousins with a much longer beak and a short tail.
Can't actually tell today if I a) have a bug, b) have a chronic flare of the usual kind, c) have a chronic flare of the other kind, or d) am actually just kind of a bit tired and useless and environmental conditions have exacerbated regular issues a bit.
Why is health like this?
And why do things like this always reliably happen on days when it's the maximum amount of time before one can go to a GP if needed?
Since #PHP is at the top of peoples minds, a short diversion.
In the Before Times of 20+ years ago, I worked for a smallish tech company that did some of everything. One of the #consulting jobs we took on was to #audit a #codebase for a company that was buying another company - the application was the acquiree's crown jewels, and the purchaser wanted a good solid analysis of it.
It was in PHP. I was not looking forward to it. As a betting person you are unlikely to go wrong with "very #niche market-specific software application developed in-house by small company working in that space is likely to be pretty terribly #designed and #implemented", and most of the PHP I had looked at by that point was, well, bad.
And it absolutely was not. It was in the then-new PHP v.5. And it was cleanly designed, nicely modular, very #readable #code and well documented, good #development practices. Sure, there were some things in it that could be improved, mostly more efficient algorithms / data structures IIRC, but all software can be improved *somewhere*. The final report was fairly glowing about it.
Anyone who tells you all code written in $LANGUAGE is awful, or all #programmers who use it are idiots, is showing you their whole ass. Languages are #tools. Some are easier to use for certain purposes than others, but they're all useful for something. Don't be closed-minded.
#engineering #software #SoftwareEngineering #RightToolForTheRightJob #homily
I just saw this new paper on the arxiv:
AI and The Enclosure of the Scientific Commons
Very interesting and worth a read!
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.27251
Do I know anyone who has the knowhow and spoons to help work out why an SMF forum website can't send email? I've been not getting round to solving this for like a year now and tried everything I can immediately think of and I am very worn out and lacking in spoons.
Boosts appreciated.
(People keep telling me I should be better at asking for help, I can't help feeling that part of the problem is that)
The unifying feature of a lot of things that have happened to me lately is that they have further exacerbated the clash between the part of me that fiercely wants to make good things in a world set against that - whether that's making better, more accessible histories, writing stories and songs, winning elections, etc etc - and the part of me that is just desperately desperately tired and overstretched and lacks energy or self-belief that can be applied to making good things happen.
Anyway in memoriam for #BioWare, here's a very silly song I wrote a few years ago about a mashup of Dragon Age's titular creature and Dragon Age's most famous adorably weird little meat sources:
And now BioWare is gone.
What is *with* today?
Genuinely really sad news for the RPG sector, and in no way necessary: it feels like corporate vandalism. Even kinda knowing it was coming, which I think we all did for the last few years.
Also this is a sour PSA, but I'm inevitably seeing people going "oh I'm so glad I don't use (thing having problem)" or "this is why you should all have used (my preferred alternative that isn't having problem)"
This really isn't a great time to do that. It can across as smug or lecturing to people who are cooking themselves fixing stuff urgently in difficult circumstances, and people often do have valid reasons for not using or knowing how to use whatever your preferred technology is.
Anyway I have shoved a bunch of sites into what might very generously be called maintenance mode in that they just throw 404 errors now because I renamed the public html folder.
Feeling tired and bombarded from having to work & think through the options for like five wordpress installs, an smf forum, two metavus sites, a few other random PHP sites & subfolders I run.
And I can't even just go to bed now because I have a meeting at 8pm.
Seeing appeals to "we're all in it together" when it comes to solving security issues online... tis a nice sentiment but doesn't feel very true?
Some folk will be well paid for overtime to deal with this, some people are at least professionals, some people are having to *drop* paying work to deal with this w/o recompense, some people run sites for small communities or themselves noncommercially, some hear far slower than others leaving them more open, etc. It's a wildly unlevel field.
Right, I'm finally at a desk, I am sleep deprived and have just travelled halfway across the continent: people dealing with this #PHP shit, what should those of us who aren't sysadmin types but are running PHP sites on shared hosting from big vendors do?
I'm seeing a lot of "take your website offline" but that's not actually very helpful without clarification - does that mean "put it into maintenance mode" or "scrub everything off the server" or somewhere in between?
OK about this php/ssl security thing, I can’t tell if *I* need to do anything about it. I have a couple of sites, on shared hosting from a big hosting vendor. One has ssl through that host, the other is from Comodo. One is Wordpress, the other is plain html. I would *hope* the big host is doing what’s needed, but they haven’t posted any notice about it. Both sites are currently working. Is there any sort of test, or a step you’d recommend taking as a precaution?
Edit: thanks for the advice. My host (InMotion) only lists php version 8.4 (no further digits) both for what’s installed and (n.n) for what I can select to install. My WP site is 8.4.26.
I actually don’t know how to “take it down”. How do you temporarily take down a WP site?
#php #ssl #4 #wordpress
Know anyone based in the US who might be interested in a paid #internship at @wikimediafoundation ? Applications are open for the 2027 scheme - 4 months starting in late Feb.
https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/wikimedia/jobs/8268853
[boosts welcome]
Morning light in Oslo's Slottspark today:
Heading to Norway again today. I have ended up with my flying spiking this year and next year with a mix of work and family commitments and not being able to afford the time and money for multiple day overland routes, which I don't feel great about.
Am pretty tired, too, but it should be an interesting few days - the kick off workshop for the Coding History project is tomorrow, and I'm looking forward to seeing what information we get from this year of work.
Daft thing that I think Fedi will like: an internet controlled bubble machine in a Florida backyard. It's got a webcam.
Apparently been going since 2001.
