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chias

3,601 karma · joined November 24, 2013

I like cheese.

ojensen.net

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chias··on Ten lines of code that changed my world
if you're using firefox, you can generally juts ctrl-click on the page. It'll draw outlines around every child element without reflowing.
chias··on Salesforce Global Outage
Generally, no.

Ignoring for now how you are synchronizing the database and filesystem, and how doing so may well result in your duplicate experiencing the same failure as the original, you can maybe recover from a small class of availability issues that could knock you out of an SLA.

But that assumes you can get online and can fully orchestrate the transition within less than 53 minutes of it starting. Including the time you took to become aware of it. And including the time to diagnose and decide that a switchover would resolve the problem. Including the time it takes for DNS caches to expire and point to the new host. Including the DNS caches which may ignore your TTL. And including all these things again when you switch back.

And assuming, of course, that it doesn't happen again for a whole year.

chias··on Astra and Fable still hack on simple variants of alignment evals from 2025
Perhaps to you. But that's because you have prior cultural knowledge of chess, and what it means to "play" something. It seems to me to be perfectly reasonable for an ai agent to define "play chess" as "behave in a way that this arbiter indicates that you have done well"
chias··on Household Laser Cuts
I really love boxes.py, and have contributed several designs. The flexbook, shadowbox, coinbanksafe, and frameloom are all mine :)

I'm really proud of the loom.

https://boxes.hackerspace-bamberg.de/FlexBook

https://boxes.hackerspace-bamberg.de/Shadowbox

https://boxes.hackerspace-bamberg.de/CoinBankSafe

https://boxes.hackerspace-bamberg.de/FrameLoom

Recently I've been on a kick making bracelets with that frame loom. The rotating heddle bar makes it super quick to warp up. I've written about how to go from woven rectangle to bracelet here:

https://ojensen.net/musings/bracelet-on-frame-loom

chias··on The ChatGPT/Codex app bundles a full copy of LibreOffice
> I agree that it would be the right thing to do. Which is why you have to make the best attempt to make it the legal thing

Do you believe that in an ideal world, any instance of not "doing the right thing" should be illegal?

chias··on Dwarf Fortress' creator says the industry's in shambles over AI
The number of dickovers[1] this website pops up while you're trying to read the article is truly astounding. I gave it my best shot, but after the third one i figured I'd probably gotten enough of the gist of it and gave up.

[1] https://daringfireball.net/2026/05/what_is_a_dickover

chias··on Framework discloses data breach via Metabase 0-day
The url was to transfer log data from metabase to framework. It is not something that is intended for end user access.
chias··on I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux
The author mentions this in the second paragraph...
chias··on Atom is better than RSS, in ways that matter
Not relevant to the overall discussion, but this VHS vs Betamax thing is actually a myth, borne from confusing Betamax (a home consumer version, comparable and inferior to VHS) with Betacam (a professional format, which could use the same physical tapes as Betamax, albeit at much shorter runtimes so not suitable for movies).
chias··on Don't credit the LLM
There is a difference between crediting the LLM (which i agree is silly) and disclosing the use of an LLM, which I think is important. The author seems to conflate these two.

A disclosure is appropriate whenever the reader might feel differently about the result of armed with this information. For example, "this research on the non-addictive nature of tobacco, funded by the tobacco industry".

Moreover, not citing the LLM is plagiarism. Maybe people outside academia have an oddly narrow understanding of plagiarism, and (for example) cannot understand how it is possible to plagiarize yourself. It is hard to explain the importance of citing LLM contributions to people with this view.

chias··on Open-weight AI is having its Kubernetes moment
I was in this state a few weeks ago. I spent a bit of time familiarizing myself then wrote up my learnings as a series of exercises.

If you think of docker as "kinda like vms except not really" and k8s as "kinda like deploying and composing docker containers but not really", this may be for you:

https://ojensen.net/infra/understanding-k8s-1

It's actually really neat, i wish i had bothered to learn it years ago.

chias··on Pebble Mega Update – July 2026
the contrast ratio of a black-and-white e-ink screen is significantly better than the contrast ratio of a color e-eink screen when displaying black and white. It's a very noticeable difference between black-and-white vs dark-grey-on-light-grey. The P2D is much more comfortable to read indoors with the backlight off.

https://i.imgur.com/Z2Yrkl1.jpeg

chias··on Pebble Mega Update – July 2026
I had my PT2 shipped to Germany. Watch cost $225 and then I had to pay an additional $58.54 in taxes / customs fees.
chias··on Pebble Mega Update – July 2026
The watch I really want is the Pebble Time 2 with a black-and-white screen.

The Pebble Time 2 is a huge step up from the Pebble 2 Duo in almost every conceivable way, but the contrast ratio on the latter is so much better that I still wear the P2D instead of the PT2, and just resign myself to deal with the lower resolution screen and inferior build quality.

chias··on Google Search lets creators know more about their reach
That and it's wild to celebrate innovation that was literally default behavior 20 years ago, which they themselves worked hard to break.

Used to be you'd look at your server logs and see referrer headers of google.com/?q=search+terms

Then they broke that (deliberately, well before cross origin header concerns were a thing) so you'd have to sign up for their webmaster tools.

chias··on Leaking YouTube creators' private videos
Ah yes - the cure for world hunger: eating food.
chias··on Free the Icons
Mine (11th gen framework 13) is.

I have to keep it in battery saver mode or the fans just spin up when it's idle. They come up anyway (and irregularly) when watching a movie, loud enough to be heard over the movie -- though that may also be partly the fault of the milquetoast speakers that also inexplicably point down (so if you're watching something in bed you'll need to find a hard surface to put it on so that the sound isn't completely muffled).

That said, i have a macbook pro for work and macOS infuriates me, i would not trade my framework for any apple device under any circumstances. I love my framework more than any laptop I've ever owned. I just wish the hardware was more polished.

chias··on Curl will not accept vulnerability reports during July 2026
There are no "rules" for responsible disclosure. We have guidelines that we have broadly accepted, but at the end of the day whether or not you discussed responsibly is in the opinion of your peers.

There's no such thing as "responsible disclosure on a technicality". Don't be a dick, and work in good faith to keep users safe.

chias··on Amazon CEO's talks with U.S. officials triggered crackdown on Anthropic models
I have no insider information so this is all appreciation, but:

When it comes to legislative things, there is pretty much always a timeline in which to become compliant. I do wonder if there was opportunity to give warning etc. but Anthropic decided to perform an immediate full stop deliberately causing the metaphorical three-car pileup, because the more painful for the users, the more pressure from the people there will be on the government to undo this.

See also: those painfully annoying cookie banners that are malicious compliance in the most irritating way possible, which GDPR does not require, in order to make people think GDPR is dumb.

chias··on German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews
Sounds like a win win to me
chias··on 1k Data Breaches Later, the Disclosure Lag Is Worse
There is a vast difference between it not being 100% impossible and data holders not doing the absolute basics to keep it safe.

I could imagine if, after a data breach, there was a government-run cyber investigative task force that would come into an organization, and be tasked with investigating and fully understanding the nature of the breach. We already have forensic detectives for other crimes, why not this one?

And if it turns out that the failure occurred due to the company acting negligently, a la (whoopsie all the records were in an open S3 bucket) then humans would be found personally liable.

--

But in principle, i also agree with the other causes you list. These are very much what GDPR was aimed at improving. It really is a shame when you look at what GDPR could have accomplished if not for malicious compliance by American tech giants, and shitty enforcement (instigated by American tech giants)

chias··on Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions
As Cory Doctorow is fond of saying

> The thing that determines whether you’re the product isn’t whether you’re paying for the product: it’s whether market power and regulatory forbearance allow the company to get away with selling you.

Or more simply:

> Companies don’t make you the product because you don’t pay — they make you the product because you can’t stop them.

As far as feature development goes, Meta isn't looking under the couch cushions for change. If they want to invest in a feature, they will.

chias··on Where to buy a non-Apple, non-Google smartphone
I've had this conversation for real. The server's recommendation was that I scan the QR code.

That was my last time going to that restaurant.

chias··on When the cheap one is the cool one
I excitedly bought a Framework 12 when it first came out, since I figured it'd be a nice thing to travel with (my typical laptop is the 11th-gen 13). However the 12 has just sat under my bed since it arrived. It's actually the same size and weight as the 13 so there's no real reason to use it when traveling, and everything about the 13 feels better in general. Overall I'm fairly disappointed by the 12.

I haven't held a Neo myself, but it seems like a solid device. Personally I would probably go for the Neo.

chias··on If more than 50% press blue, everyone survives. Red pressers always survive
but why would anybody choose blue? there is no moral benefit to doing so.

If you altered the game to say that only some fraction of the population get the choice, and everyone who doesn't get the choice is assumed blue (or, is killed if less than 50% of voters choose blue) then there's some question to be explored here. But at it stands there is literally no reason to choose blue.

chias··on Framework Laptop 13 Pro
This is great! Though in my case, since i have the very first generation they made, i probably need to upgrade every part of the thing so might as well just get a new one
chias··on We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do
I'd bet that a significant majority of prediction market revenue comes from people who bet big.

So I expect your solution would fix all of it, as a second order effect, in that running one would stop being a viable business model.

chias··on France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app
What would you track them with? Follow them with helicopters and/or boats?
chias··on Wired headphone sales are exploding
I recently upgraded my 4a to a 10 two months ago. Besides getting security updates again, it feels like a downgrade in every way that matters to me.

Can't lie flat due to camera bulge. No headphone jack. Fingerprint sensor on the front that screen protectors interfere with. No sim slot. Ai bullshit triggers if i keep my thumb to close to where you touch to switch apps. Ai bullshit also replaces the old power menu, which now requires a combo button press.

Such a let down.

chias··on Google Street View in 2026
Not sure this is the reason but: it is generally not easy to get a satellite over the poles. You launch close to the equator in the direction of Earth's spin to take advantage of the (very substantial!) speed you already have due to the rotation of the planet. Getting from an equatorial orbit to a polar one requires a huge amount of fuel / energy. You can't just sort of "drive it over".

Source: played a bunch of Kerbal space program

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