The Dread Pirate Robert Nozick
http://existentialcomics.com/comic/631
#ExistentialComics

We could house everyone. We could feed everyone. We could care for everyone. We could build devices designed to last as long as possible. We could align our manufacturing around the needs of the people and the planet.

We materially have the resources to do so.

That's why leftists are so angry. The resources we need to build a world everyone can thrive in literally already exist. We are just using them mostly to pamper the rich or murder the poor.

Your `pip` unwrapped 🎇

- you tried to install `requirements.txt` 18 times this year. Doing better than last year!
- of the packages you installed 67% started with py, 11% python, and 6% Py. You guessed wrong 85 times.
- your love for building source has no bounds, except maybe the 92 failed compiles
- you updated `requests` 18 times. Urllib is feeling lonely.
- the average time between updating `pip` was 97 days. But we warned you 338 times!

@drscriptt @dwm that's not a bad idea, actually!

@dwm haha, yes indeed. Now, to figure out how to remember this when I next have to pay attention to it in another decade or so...

@dwm @fanf yes, this does indeed look like that I should have done. Ah well 🤷‍♂️

Got a notification from my registrar that I was using an outdated DNSSEC key algorithm for my domain, so decided to re-learn how DNSSEC signing actually works in Bind.

Discovered that there's now a mode where Bind will manage keys and signing automatically. Yay! Only problem is, the domain in question was not configured that way.

Decided to use the occasion to swap over the config to that mode. Which of course caused Bind to generate new (managed) keys without doing any of the smooth gradual rollover that it otherwise implements. Oops!

Ah well, everything is set up correctly now, and it'll only be a single TTL until the whole world agrees. Should be fine; right? 😅

#DNS #DNSSEC #OpsFail

As pointed out on an irc channel, yet another example of kernel developers having to do crazy things to paper over hardware bugs: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=f076ef44a44d02ed91543f820c14c2c7dff53716

December again. Christmas is getting near, winter is coming*, and... The call for proposals for the eBPF Devroom at FOSDEM'26 is about to close. Today is your last chance to submit! If you have things to say about eBPF, send an abstract ⚙️ 🐝

https://ebpf.io/fosdem-2026.html

* Subject to availability in your hemisphere

#fosdem #fosdem2026 #eBPF

In 2017 Randall Munroe posted a strip called "Seven Years" about being the caregiver for a loved one dealing with cancer:

https://xkcd.com/1928/

That strip literally made me cry, it was such a clear telling of what that experience is like; much of it could have been about my own life.

Except that my own experience had a different ending.

Today he put out "Fifteen Years":

https://xkcd.com/3172/

This one made me want to cheer. What a joy to see a story that has played out so differently, so much better. I have never crossed paths with Mr. Munroe, but I rejoice in his and his family's good fortune as if he were a good friend.

Here's to many more years.

@GrapheneOS is being threatened by French authorities for refusing to add backdoors and they're dealing with coordinated attacks in French media right now. They're pulling out of France entirely, moving all their servers, and fighting off a wave of bullshit one-sided reporting that makes them look like they're helping criminals.

They need us to fight back. Support them however you can, whether that's a dollar, sharing their story, pushing back on the garbage news coverage when you see it, or just telling someone you know about what's happening. All of it matters because they're drowning in attacks from governments and media and bad actors who want them gone.

This is the only Android OS that actually makes me feel like privacy isn't just marketing. They fight for us now they need us to fight for them.

The EU is allowing this, governments think they can just threaten developers into compliance, and if we stay quiet we're letting it happen. Show up for them in whatever way you're able to.

#grapheneos #Privacy #NoBackdoors #encryption #security #chatControl

Recent discussion about the perils of doors in gamedev reminded me of a bug caused by a door in a game you may have heard of called "Half Life 2". Are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin.

I feel this needs to be repeated 🍪

The annoyance of cookie banners
doesn't come from the regulations, but from the malicious compliance of the corporations who want to exploit your personal data.

No data-harvesting cookies = No banner.
Simple.

My websites have no cookie banners,
because they don't use any non-essential cookies and don't track visitors.

Yours shouldn't either.

#Privacy #Cookies #PrivacyLaw

On some visceral level the incompleteness theorem is awe-inducing and wildly optimistic, to me. The simple elegance and total comprehensibility we might want doesn’t exist. It can’t. Embrace complexity and your arms will never get all the way around it. There is always more, and there will always be more.

The world is provably beyond comprehension and somehow still full of structure and beauty. Simplicity is only self-delusion. Empathy is infinitely more real than categorization.

In a depressing tale as old as time, we're seeing the sole dev who made the #Pokemon ROM hack called Pokémon Lazarus (who goes by 'Nemo') stepping back from the public

They shared their 𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘦 work free, and the vocal minority crawled out of the sewers and spewed hatred

Homophobia (because there is one scene with pride flags), bigotry, even disgust at Nemo deigned creating audio tracks from the ground up

You can read my thoughts on it here:

https://gardinerbryant.com/pokemon-lazarus-when-a-fan-game-becomes-a-conversation/

Unsure Calculator: calculate with numbers you're not sure about

Pretty neat!

https://filiph.github.io/unsure/

#LibreQoS is an example that you can develop a world changing startup from the borderland. We are thankful to KTSM 9 NEWS for highlighting our work on fixing #latency, #bufferbloat & #jitter for Internet Service Providers and their customers around the world:

https://www.ktsm.com/news/el-pasoans-operating-software-startup-designed-to-improve-internet-connectivity/

We would like to dedicate this to our beloved colleague #DaveTaht (1965 - 2025) that was instrumental in the global effort on fixing these issues for the #ISPs & their customer everywhere!

#OpenSource #FLOSS

One of the best pieces I've read in awhile. Emily Bressler in @mcsweeneys.net writes "I Work for an Evil Company, but Outside Work, I’m Actually a Really Good Person":

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-work-for-an-evil-company-but-outside-work-im-actually-a-really-good-person

The current Pope in 1982. He's even from Chicago: obviously a Blues Brother.

As someone elsenet remarked, "He looks like he spent the 80s hunting undead gangsters and complaining about the wind."

After six momentous passes in a small aircraft, skydiver Gabriel C. Brown completed his mission. He and his photographer friend Andrew McCarthy created this stunning image that shows the adventurous subject falling in front of the sun.

https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2025/11/andrew-mccarthy-skydiver-sun-image/

#photography #nature