What is Hackers' Pub?

Wicked problems require wicked solutions.

If you're using Mastodon's web interface on a computer, you might like to know there are built-in keyboard shortcuts for almost all its functions. There's a list of all the shortcuts here:

➡️ https://fedi.tips/using-mastodon-through-a-keyboard

You just press the shortcut key when you're not typing a post, and it will do whatever it's assigned to.

You can also see the shortcut list built into Mastodon by typing Shift+? (or whatever your local keyboard layout uses to get the question mark to appear).

#FediTips #Mastodon

This account has a website full of tips and step-by-step guides about how to use Mastodon and the rest of the Fediverse:

➡️ https://fedi.tips <-------- Click here to open the website

The entire site is written in ordinary non-technical language, aimed at a general audience. There's a section at the top with quick links to the most essential stuff, and a complete list of guides below that.

If you can't find the answers you want on the site, ask me and I'll try to help directly.

If you're using Mastodon's web interface on a computer, you might like to know there are built-in keyboard shortcuts for almost all its functions. There's a list of all the shortcuts here:

➡️ https://fedi.tips/using-mastodon-through-a-keyboard

You just press the shortcut key when you're not typing a post, and it will do whatever it's assigned to.

You can also see the shortcut list built into Mastodon by typing Shift+? (or whatever your local keyboard layout uses to get the question mark to appear).

#FediTips #Mastodon

Windows sucks and I hate it.

Researchers have created a freezer that uses elastocaloric cooling, instead of greenhouse-gas emitting refrigerants, achieving -12 °C cooling. https://spectrum.ieee.org/subzero-elastocaloric-cooling?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fedica-Mastodon-Daily-Pipeline

Ramadan Night 3 — Mash Khichdi

막연하게 드는 생각 중 하나: AI(?)의 발전으로 인해서 직업이라는 개념 혹은 직업간 바운더리가 없어지는 시대가 오고 있는것 같긴함 하루아침에 갑자기 일어나진 않겠지만 그렇게 되겠지 싶고... 지금은 개발자 디자이너 기획자 매니저 사장 임원 구분되어있지만 아마 조만간 이렇게 되지 않을까 싶음; 전 개발을 잘하는데 다른것도 그냥 AI 덕에 해요 즉 축구팀처럼 되는거 아닌가 싶음 팀원들이 다들 기본적인건 모두 할줄 아는데 어느정도 특화된 롤이 있는... 그렇게 되지 않을까 싶음 이미 그렇기도하고.

I took an issue in Specte.Console. Implemented it from scratch. It took me 10 minutes.

I then subscribed to Claude Code and asked it to solve the same issue. It generated code that worked, but that had so many problems I had to interject. I spent 1,5 hours to get it to produce code that held my standards, and it consumed 160k/200k tokens doing so.

This technology is only valuable for people who either have no conception of time or don't care. Period.

Cloudflare outage on February 20, 2026

Link: https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-outage-february-20-2026/
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47103649

@nocontexttrekStar Trek Minus Context

It has been heartening to see the steady trickle of projects moving away from Microsoft GitHub to #FOSS friendly code forges like #Codeberg and #SourceHut, or self-hosting with tools like #cgit and #Forgejo

#Gentoo has been up and running on Codeberg all week which has made it easier for me to contribute to the O/S I use every day.

I'm now Proxy Maintainer for a handful of packages, including #VinylCache who also moved their bug tracker on Monday, making it possible for me to contribute 😀

"Capable LLMs require a logic of dominance and of disregarding consent of the people producing the artifacts that are the raw material for the system. LLMs are based on extraction, exploitation and subjugation. Their politics is violence. How does one “liberate” that? What’s the case for open source violence?"

(Original title: Acting ethically in an imperfect world)

https://tante.cc/2026/02/20/acting-ethical-in-an-imperfect-world/

My wife made oatmeal cookies. I just ate six in rapid succession. I feel like I'm starting on a spirit journey... Psychedelic? Transcendental? I'm not sure... But that was a lot of cookies. 😵‍💫 #food #cookies

Reached the age where "no laces" is back on the list of priorities for my shoes

It sure is fun that the Presto website (and app) haven't updated my TTC travel and card usage since February 13th, leaving them to claim my card has a larger balance than it actually does. Someone has dropped the ball somewhere.

@cwebberChristine Lemmer-Webber The big thing is the 3rd parties with whom the data is shared and who are likely sponsoring these bills.

미라클모닝

@nocontexttrekStar Trek Minus Context

Boosts really, really welcome

I desperately need money. I'm homeless in Germany with a very low income, so I have issues reliably getting food and a roof above my head.

I would feel bad just asking for donations because there's lots of entities in way worse situations with zero income, so instead I want to do work (one-off contract is fine, doesn't have to be an employment contract. Has to be remote tho. Note I do not speak German, only English and Czech.)

Any money helps, I would need about a 900€ a month extra to be able to comfortably eat and have a roof above my head. I am most struggling this February, March, and some of April, maybe May, after that I should be able to get some money. I'll gladly do several one-time contracts.

I live with my girlfriend, who has no income, so my income is housing and feeding both of us.

I do have EU citizenship, but not a German one. I do have residence in the EU, I just cannot reside there for health reasons, but any post for eg. sent to it can be forwarded to me.
I can do most computer things, mostly sysadmin & programming:

• Linux kernel drivers (primarily DRM subsystem and USB, some security work incl. finding a DoS 0day in the USB stack),
• Mesa (primarily the Intel Vulkan driver (anv))-, Gradle (mostly debugging of the core and working on some plugins),
• IntelliJ (figuring out exactly when the IDE complains about source code not matching bytecode, amongst other things)
• lots of work with Java (.class transformers, agents, JMX, profiling, the .class file format spec + the JVM spec, the HotSpot C++ source code, the debugger protocol, jcmd, and other related tooling, JNI, hooking up jdb to NeoVim to implement code hotswapping and some basic code to implement some IDE features...)
• Java Spring (web app backend, I worked at a company as a backend developer)
• React
• TypeScript
• JavaScript (spent decent amount of time reading the ECMA spec)
• Python Flask (mostly simple web apps)
• PostgreSQL (primary rel database sw I use)
• MySQL
• C (lots of experience with GNU Make, GCC & Clang, incl. compiler intrinsics, linker scripts, cross-compiling, and similar. Large parts of the spec memorized) + pkgconfig
• Assembly (x86 primarily, some Thumb2 (Cortex-M0+ specifically), 6502, RISC-V. I can manually assemble and disassemble machine code for these, memorized some opcodes, wrote assemblers.)
• CMake, Meson (primarily debugging and fixing build issues in other projects, along with tracking down a bug in the Meson Rust support a while back)
• SPIR-V (wrote a compiler that emits SPIR-V)
• Networking, specifically experience deploying OpenVPN, Wireguard, writing and debugging iptables rules, network namespaces, handrolling networking for containers with veths & bridges, manually connecting to a network with just iproute2, configuring the routing tables, parts of the actual uAPI provided by the kernel as well as the internal implementation of netfilter
• A lot of experience with debugging and fixing issues in unfamiliar codebases and quickly familiarizing myself with them, including very large codebases (WebKit, Firefox, Android, Linux, Mesa...)
• Familiarity with many Linux APIs, incl. those used for debugging the kernel, as well as important concepts in the Linux kernel (files, fops, initcalls...)
• The x86 programming interface used by kernels
• Lots of familiarity with QEMU and deploying and managing VMs and their networking, isolating them into VLANs, etc
• RouterOS and Cisco iOS
• Vulkan and OpenGL APIs (primarily 3D. I've worked on Vulkan drivers, and a bit of OpenGL drivers. I know most of the Vulkan 1.0 spec by hand, and ofc lots of the extensions added since.)
• Zig (some small CLI utils
• Bash (lots of helper scripts on the systems I admin)
• Zsh
• POSIX sh (tested primarily with busybox dash. Translating bash scripts to POSIX sh)
• Some Perl,
• Haskell (Web backend mostly)
• Lua (including the C interface, embedding Lua & writi g native Lua libs)
• Guile
• Clojure (mostly getting Clojure & the REPL to run in places meant to work with Java)
• Rust (primarily work with no_std and sometimes no_core, lots of CLI utils, some Web backend and game engine work), debugging some rustc compiler issues
• VimScript (a lot of work writing plugins for doing all kinds of things in NeoVim (including writing patches to add new features to VimScript){
• A bit of Elixir
• Some programs written in C# (though no experience with .NET yet. Can easily learn, but only dotnet core, since framework needs Windows)
• Coq/Rocq, Agda, Idris2, F*, LiquidHaskell) (for type theory stuff, haven't gotten that far in most of them besides writing some proofs in primarily Coq and Agda)
• LaTeX & TeX (both TeX Core and LaTeX, though primarily LaTeX. I write most documents that need fancier formatting than just markdown in LaTeX.)
• Koka (since it's a research language, I mostly learned it for its pretty unique effects system, and haven't done anything practical in it)
• Android development (in Java, which included hand-writing the entire project structure the android Gradle plugin expects, and manually setting up the Android tooling (platform and dev tools), and hooking it up to NeoVim & Emacs.)
• Knowledge about Android system, including binder, HALs, tracing the implementation of eg. Camera on Pixels, the signature verification impl, APEXes, dm-verity, parts of the bootloader
• OCaml (mostly the basics)
• Wayland protocol (working on both compositors, compositor frameworks, and clients, in both Rust and C)
• Worked with Smithay and wlroots, wrote patches for Sway
• X11 (wrote a window manager, compositor, status bar, image viewer, worked a bit on writing a client library from scratch)
• WebAssembly (handrolled a loader in JS for one project with frontend in Zig from scratch with no libraries)
• Experience managing an infrastructure consisting of several computers networked together over the internet with VPNs & some sharing a LAN with multiple switches & VLANs
• Experience managing Debian & Ubuntu servers, Arch NixOS, Void, and Gentoo systems, along with a bit of Fedora
• Lots of familiarity with the Nix package manager (including internals of CppNix, and many of the experimental features like recursive Nix, dynamic derivations...), the Nix language, nixpkgs, NixOS, home-manager, handrolling versions of these from scratch, internals of the caches and the derivation format, how it generates links between derivations, etc
• Knowledge of most of git, including the internal low-level commands, format of all files in the .git dir, and reimplementing higher level git commands using lower-level ones, and complex operations on git repos
• Matrix protocol & software (worked on the spec and with E2EE, host Synapse & Element)
• XMPP (running a prosody instance, read thru the specs)
• Docker & Docker compose (large parts of my infra runs in docker, I've also looked into how the docker CLI, docker daemon, containerd, and runc interact, worked with alternative runtimes like kata containers)
• Virtio (worked with guest drivers, parts of the QEMU impl)
• Experience with reading large documents formatted as specs and understanding them
• Experience reverse engineering undocumented open source software to figure out how to use it and debug it
• Cryptography and security knowledge (general good practices as well as experience hacking things)
• Experience with Linux APIs needed for making root and rootless containers, and handrolling self-contained packages of container + runtime
• Used to managing systems that use systemd and making use of systemd-provided features
• Familiarity with dbus, Perl dbus API, Portals API, Notifications API
• Knowledge of XDG Portals, incl. the way they use Pipewire
• Knowledge of using ffmpeg for encoding and editing videos
• Experience with working with embedded MCUs (RP2040, ESP8266)
• Experience with FPGAs (F4PGA toolchain for Xilinx Artix-7, so yosys, verilogtorouting, and F4PGA specific tooling for the actual bitstream generation, and some Verilog and VHDL knowledge).
• ActivityPub protocol & related protocols (implemented a fedi server from scratch in Rust)
• Familiarity with the TLS protocol, parts of X.509, and the OpenSSL CLI.
• Knowledge of the tty ioctls & escape sequences (needed for writing shells, terminal emulators, terminal multiplexers, TUI programs...)
• Experience making minimal embedded Linux images manually (compiling the kernel, making a rootfs by compiling the tooling, writing scripts to tie it together, etc)
• Some experience with FreeBSD (daily-driving it for a year on a laptop)
• Knowledge of Intel GEN12 GPUs (from working on Linux drivers on them, no NDAs or anything, just reading the millions of lines of source code for several years)
• I can learn pretty much any programming language within a few days and jump into working on a codebase.
• I am pretty good at explaining and teaching things to others
• I am very patient, both when it comes to interacting with others and when it comes to interacting with computers.
• Experience with porting features or Linux kernel modules between versions of Linux (or other software)
• I read most of the eSIM specs, meaning I have knowledge of how eSIMs work, incl. reading the source code of the Android impl and setting up a fully open source (OS wise) setup
• I have experience designing network protocols of any kind
• I have experience with GTK, libadwaita, and glib internals
• I have worked with QT
• I have lots of experience with LWJGL3
• Lots of experience with JavaFX
• Experience with Emacs & org-mode
• Some experience with btrfs & zfs
• Lots of experience with LUKS2 (including reverse engineering most of the on-disk format due to lack of detailed docs), and TPM 2.0
• I need to work in an asynchronous way - meetings are possible, but will be very difficult to arrange due to my life situation.
• Experience with the USB 2.0 protocol down to the wire level

There's a decent amount of stuff I have not listed, since I've been writing this for about an hour and I keep remembering more and more things. I've done a large amount of things, and I'm currently in the middle of migrating my temporary infrastructure to run on microvms connected over wireguard to a VPS managed by either Docker or Nix along with setting up SSO, monitoring, log gathering, and other improvements, so the current state of the infra is temporary, however source code some of my projects (not all, only some recent ones) are here: https://gitea.itycodes.org/itycodes/

Whoops! Didn't mean to hit "post" on that

Thread repair:

https://mastodon.social/@mcc/116110336523776641

"What I'm listening to today: 'You and I are in a Dark Crypt Forever' by Warlock Corpse"

the anti-Itanium
https://vis.social/@infobeautiful/116109430224379547

Be wary of Bluesky

Link: https://kevinak.se/blog/be-wary-of-bluesky
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47095597

the anti-Itanium
https://vis.social/@infobeautiful/116109430224379547

“AI can make mistakes” might as well be the slogan of our era. Even boosters admit that you need to spin the vibe code slot machine a few times to get a jackpot.

An employee with that degree of consistency would be fired.

So how do we redirect some of that unlimited grace from machines to humans?

https://productpicnic.beehiiv.com/p/corporations-demand-perfection-from-workers-but-ai-gets-unlimited-slack

#UX #UXDesign #LLM #AI #tech #softwaredevelopment

Combining ideas from my CPS blog post and what I’ve learned about LR parsing in order to do something totally unrelated to either.

I'm open for work again! I'm looking for interesting opportunities; want to work with me?

My experience includes web archiving and digital preservation, devops, and internal developer tooling. I'd love to put that experience to work for you and your team.

Experience includes the Internet Archive, GitHub, Shopify, and others alongside a number of open source projects.

Attention DNC: Nobody likes a Moderate. The people want progressive policies.

If you define Moderate as “tempered by both parties views and somewhat in between them”, what the hell does that even look like nowadays?

What’s the midpoint between trans rights and tax cuts for pedophiles? What's the midpoint between universal healthcare and let's shoot moms in the face in broad daylight? Moderate positions do not exist under fascism. You're either part of the resistance or part of the problem.

Acme Weather

Link: https://acmeweather.com/blog/introducing-acme-weather
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47098296

I'm open for work again! I'm looking for interesting opportunities; want to work with me?

My experience includes web archiving and digital preservation, devops, and internal developer tooling. I'd love to put that experience to work for you and your team.

Experience includes the Internet Archive, GitHub, Shopify, and others alongside a number of open source projects.

Some interesting recent NYC*BUG dmesgd post:

MIPS Router: Buffalo_WZR-HP-G302H (WZR-450HP)
https://dmesgd.nycbug.org/dmesgd?do=view&id=8843

Launched in 2004, dmesgd aims to provide a user-submitted repository of searchable *BSD dmesgs. The dmesg(8) command displays the system message buffer's content, and during boot a copy is saved to /var/run/dmesg.boot. This buffer contains the operating system release, name and version, a list of devices identified, plus a whole host of other useful information. We hope others find this resource useful and further contribute to its growth. Contact us at [ admin at lists dot nycbug dot org ]. Note that this site is not a substitute for sending the dmesg directly to the respective project.

Submit your dmesg here:
https://dmesgd.nycbug.org/dmesgd?do=submit

#runbsd

“Pentium” autocorrects to “pension”. Amazing.

​​ ​​

I may be about to say something incorrect, but my current situation seems to be:

- jj looks very compelling as a git replacement
- it has just added git-lfs support (seems to have landed in testing, not in a release yet), which my current git replacement (hg) does not have
- however, as i started looking into switching into it, i discovered it does *not* have submodule support, which hg does support, and which i need even more than i do git-lfs

Take a scale where the octave is divided into N equal parts. See how close you can get to a 'perfect fifth': a frequency ratio of 3/2. Plot the error as a function of N. You get a complicated pattern...

... but if you draw 12 colored lines through the different values of N mod 12, you get this!

So don't let anyone tell you the role of the number 12 in musical scales is purely a cultural artifact: it's built into the math!

Please don't be put off by the jargon: 'N-TET' means 'N-tone equal temperament', which means a scale where the octave is divided into 12 equal parts. Most pianos use 12-TET.

You can see an interactive version of this here:

https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/tuning_book/html/best_fifths_5-60_strands.html

Reached the age where "no laces" is back on the list of priorities for my shoes

With #HolosDiscover we checked multiple criteria before indexing: "indexable" enabled, account not locked, no #nobot or #noindex in bio, not in opted-out list, only public posts. Every deletion, edit or block was processed instantly via #ActivityPub.
Google uses that same "indexable" flag but ignores everything else, keeps deleted content cached for weeks.
We shut it down after pushback. Was that the right call? Don't hesitate to share, this concerns the whole Fediverse.

RE: https://toot.fedilab.app/@apps/116065080142081016

The results are in: the community wants #HolosDiscover back. So we'll be bringing it back.

Source code will be reopened and the service restored from a clean slate as all data was deleted when we shut it down.

We've also heard the concerns and will work on making the opt-out process even more visible.

プロトコルが書いてあるー！（満員電車のなかで犯人が決済端末を被害者のカードに近づけて決済まで終わらせることはできそうな気もするんだけど考慮する必要はないのかな？）

非接触スキミング — “タッチ決済”のセキュリティにおける誤解【鈴木淳也のPay Attention】-Impress Watch
https://www.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/series/suzukij/2087446.html

A reader recently wrote to me asking about how to organize docs, especially planning and design docs, in a new open source project. I blogged my response. #WriteTheDocs #documentation https://ddbeck.com/where-do-open-source-docs-go/

https://audon.space/
がDNS引けなくなったのは私だけ?

TIL that moths can loaf

RE: https://mastodon.social/@twostraws/116098492693948964

Starting in 10 minutes!

농담아니라 그러면 프로그래머 타이틀을 떼셔야한다고 생각합니다 진짜 너무너무 놀랍네요 작동되면 그 후로 수정과 유지보수는 자동으로 되나봅니다..........

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:lybqzt53iyncunihgeldtpvg/post/3mfeqlaoeok2o

Looking for people who can let my friend crash with them for a while. Or for organizations that will get them support and/or housing. They're black, trans, and very young, and have had no success with being able to find a shelter or other stable housing or a job.

I've posted asking for mutual aid before (https://retro.pizza/@uncoolmouse/115815824713819696) and some of y'all have been super helpful, but they're feeling really exhausted and hopeless after telling their story again and again and being turned away because the systems are overloaded.

They're currently in Bellingham, Washington, but if you're anywhere in Washington or Oregon, my friends and I could chip in to get them there.

(Boosts really appreciated)
#mutualaid #MutualAidRequest

Hey #PNW peeps! I'm not in a position to help here, but maybe you are?

@uncoolmouse https://retro.pizza/@uncoolmouse/116109996864455805

#CouchSurfing #MutualAid

Hey #PNW peeps! I'm not in a position to help here, but maybe you are?

@uncoolmouse https://retro.pizza/@uncoolmouse/116109996864455805

#CouchSurfing #MutualAid

@renata RIGHT?!!! <screams into digital void>