Writes the codes. Recovering OS Engineer (BeOS, HiptopOS, Android, LK, Fuchsia). Embedded systems hacker. Hobbyist Digital Designer. Player of video games. Etc.
Public Key
npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Profile Code
nprofile1qqs2nkghtgpxcl6g3n84sycphzfjfrzkkdcxw6phx5kah0tuah96r2spz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerfw36x7tnsw43qvhjpjr
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Published at
2026-07-27T06:25:11Z Event JSON
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"created_at": 1785133511 ,
"kind": 0 ,
"tags": [
[
"proxy",
"https://chaos.social/users/swetland",
"activitypub"
],
[
"client",
"Mostr",
"31990:6be38f8c63df7dbf84db7ec4a6e6fbbd8d19dca3b980efad18585c46f04b26f9:mostr",
"wss://relay.ditto.pub"
]
],
"content": "{\"name\":\"Brian Swetland\",\"about\":\"Writes the codes. Recovering OS Engineer (BeOS, HiptopOS, Android, LK, Fuchsia). Embedded systems hacker. Hobbyist Digital Designer. Player of video games. Etc.\",\"picture\":\"https://assets.chaos.social/accounts/avatars/108/195/841/919/578/029/original/b9457c2da03bee91.jpg\",\"banner\":\"https://assets.chaos.social/accounts/headers/108/195/841/919/578/029/original/022b13a4493b86af.jpeg\",\"nip05\":\"[email protected] \",\"fields\":[[\"github\",\"https://github.com/swetland/\"],[\"frotz.net\",\"http://frotz.net/\"],[\"bsky / @swetland.frotz.net\",\"https://bsky.app/profile/swetland.frotz.net\"],[\"location\",\"Palo Alto, CA\"]]}" ,
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Last Notes npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland The "everyone's using AI so it's impossible to not use AI" argument feels a lot like "everyone's shoving screwdrivers up their nose now so I've gotta shove a screwdriver up my nose too!" npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland If you believe that "ai" makes you 10x (or 50x!) more productive, what this tells me is that you are utterly useless and I'd be better served hiring or working with just about anyone else (though ideally someone with critical thinking skills and an interest in actually learning things). npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland @nprofile…j9f5 They make me even more angry than usual that my time is being wasted by shitty advertising, if that counts... npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland Glanced at LinkedIn tonight (always a mistake) and saw a post from some asshole I've never heard of quoting some other asshole I've never heard of (and citing him as some industry luminary) saying that the only way to maximize productivity in the new "AI" coding world is *never* reading the code. npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland Anyone have favorite resources for modern vanilla (no piles of libraries, middleware, etc) Javascript / HTML / CSS techniques? Nice solid overviews, references, or cookbooks a plus. CSS, in particular, I've never fully wrapped my head around all the flexbox, grid, etc layout stuff. npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland @nprofile…j9f5 The source being enormous is kind of obnoxious, but a lot of these RTOSes pull in the entire vendor "bsp" library for every MCU they support and those are all pretty enormous. npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland I'm starting to think ergo (server) + halloy (desktop) / goguma (mobile) makes a credible alternative to discord for small community textual chat, based on some recent experiences. npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland Is the state of Mastodon (and most of the fediverse?) such that user/message signing keys are still all RSA? I've seen there's been some discussion of Ed25519 support, but it seems like not much progress? npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland @nprofile…j9f5 Yes, after a few attempts. I figured it might be nice to just instantly fail attempts using password auth, since anyone trying to login with password only is by definition a bad actor. npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland Is there an easy way to setup fail2ban to instaban any ssh connection attempts not using a public key? npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland @nprofile…7yuj The appliance-ization of computing really depresses and infuriates me. npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland The recent bugs-in-coreutils-in-rust kerfuffle has me thinking again about Future Shell Tools. npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland Is there a site somewhere tracking software that's remaining "AI"-free? Be it the original projects sticking to human authorship or forks made to preserve/maintain non-crapified versions? npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland Okay, building with WANT_WIN_CURSES=1 and throwing some assorted OPTIONS in one's .nethackrc makes things a lot nicer on larger-than-80x25 terminals. npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland Just built and installed NetHack 5.0.0 and holy cats, there's a tutorial now! npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland @nprofile…7yuj I also continue to be fascinated by the people convinced that "prompt engineering" or other "ai" usage is a viable career path when the whole agenda of proponents of this nonsense is to eliminate all expensive/bothersome/unsightly human involvement entirely. npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland Dear "slop code is fine but 'ai' art and writing is terrible" people, with all sincerity, go fuck yourselves. Slop is slop and it is indefensible garbage no matter what it's used for. "Slop is fine so long as it's not the slop for the thing *I* care about" is some impressive bullshit. npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland @nprofile…3q9y I have never thought about this, but perhaps I should have. npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland I'm realizing just how alike many of the "AI coding" enthusiasts or evangelists are to the people who think "AI art", being able to push a button and receive soulless regurgitated slop (be it writing, imagery, animation, software, whatever) is the future. That "art", "skill", "creativity", any investment of time, learning, practice, etc is some kind of gatekeeping conspiracy. npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland A recent trend in bloggery, etc, is criticisms of "ai" techniques by people who, it turns out, are themselves True Believers in "ai", just arguing about the "how". npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland Fascinating. Someone re-invented visualizing diffs *between versions* of code under review. npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland @nprofile…3q9y My favorite is making things I've never made before and learning new stuff along the way. npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland @nprofile…3q9y A coworker of mine who worked on VM stuff had "Virtual Machinist" as the title on his business cards back in the day, which I always thought was brilliant. npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland The codegen is really hideous right now. This is intentional. The stage1 codegen goal is simplicity of implementation and correctness of output. No optimization. npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland Watanabe wants popcorn. npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland @nprofile…sxu8 For me the case and keyboard were the big selling points of this one. MiSTer FPGA does very nice C64 emu, but doesn't capture the physical feel of the original critter. npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland The C64 Ultimate is a delightful recreation of the computer I grew up with. npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland I am probably old fashioned, but running into an open source commandline tool written in C that "requires" meson and ninja to build, in order to accomplish the equivalent of... npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland I am tempted to change credit card companies because it seems that every time Chase thinks my browser has changed, they SMS me a 2FA code, and then they force me to call them and provide CC#/SSA/name/address/etc to get *another* code, and then they actually let me login. npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland Became aware of this really slick 70ns 5v 256K DIP ROM emulator today, thanks to a friend who's using it for a hardware project. npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland @nprofile…py7t @nprofile…r2sm @nprofile…pqtk @nprofile…fda4 Very cool. I'm definitely more interested in non-security-related applications and very enthused about fully open-source gateware for PCIe. npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland One of the key things I fought for on Android was that AOSP (the open source release) could be built for and installed on the flagship Android devices. (Nexus, Pixel, etc). Sounds like that's no longer the case as of Android 16. Very sad. npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland So roughly once a week nowadays, Firefox on Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS just stops responding to all keyboard input. I haven't found anything I can do at this point besides killing it and restarting it. I haven't observed any obvious commonality to the failures. npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland Ruffle remains the most compelling argument for Rust and WASM as technologies. Anything that allows one to once again experience sbemails in their original vector-art glory is clearly a net positive for society. npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland @nprofile…zsaa Germany does appear to, though, so that fails to explain my Audi A3's situation. npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland It is one of two days in the year where I'm forced to ponder why my 2010 vehicle which has built-in GPS, etc, is incapable of dealing with daylight savings, so I have to manually adjust it, like my alarm clock from 1993 and my (thankfully not "smart") stove. npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland So, the waveform having finally collapsed on a Kickstarter I backed last year (poor impulse control?), I now am in possession of a Carvera Air desktop CNC machine. npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland Am I imagining things or didn't there used to be a way to attach spoiler-protected images to posts without putting the entire post behind a CW? npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland A discussion about modem sounds over on bsky reminded me that people seem to always reference diagrams or recordings of 33.6K or 56Kbps modems. I never had such a luxuriously fast modem. 1200bps and later 9600bps were the speeds of my dialup/BBS days. npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland @nprofile…xm42 @nprofile…uc38 The first thought to cross my mind here was "how were the ants convinced to move the object?" which the paper answered thusly: "We incubated the loads in cat food overnight and rubbed canned tuna on them, which made them seem like attractive food items to the ants." npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland Skeleton Crew continues to be a bunch of fun and continues to show, like Andor, that the best additions to Star Wars is stuff that explores new stuff rather than just repackaging existing characters and scenes over and over. npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland Just rewatched Lower Decks season one, episode one. It does feel a little try-hard in the humor, and Mariner is more out of control than T'Lyn even, but it just makes me smile to see the introduction to these delightful nerds again, even in their earliest forms. Going to enjoy rewatching the series. npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland I hate a lot of things about "AI", but one of the most infuriating things to me is people responding to questions (in chat systems, social media, forums, etc) by cutting and pasting ChatGPT or whathaveyou. npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland Happy Caves of Qud 1.0 Launch Day: npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland 七面鳥の日おめでとう！ npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland @nprofile…hujc I eventually gave up on deleting tweets as automated tools stopped working after a few thousand. Renamed my account, created a new placeholder account under the original name, then deleted the original account to finally nuke everything. npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland Is it just because I'm weird (or old?) that I find callbacks much easier to understand and reason about than all the async/await/Promise stuff? (looking at some modern-ish javascript example code) npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland Dear #ubuntu npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland @npub10fm…x0qg I still pretty reflexively save often in many apps. Depending how stable the app is. But I can't think of the last time I lost work because the whole computer crashed, not just the app I was using. npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland A thought: Which is the last generation that remembers (using) computers that just hard crashed all the time? npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland Heya @npub1s2r…7gng what's the best point of contact for archive.org feature requests? npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland @npub1can…0fm9 @npub16r6…p52f All the design files are here: npub148v3wkszd3l53rx0tqfsrwynyjx9dvmsva5rwdfdmw7hemwt5x4qldlzlw Brian Swetland Buttons!
