dammIT

A rantbox by Michiel Scholten

#link Articles


"Is This Project Still Maintained?"

If you - like me - regularly check out sourcecode (read: Git) repositories of projects that you stumble across or use in a hobby project/product or at work, you will now and then find one or more issues in their tracker with a title similar to the above, often with remarks …


GitHub Spam is out of control

Dan Janes writes: Spam is nothing new, spam on GitHub is also not particularly new. Any site that accepts user-generated content will need to figure out how to prevent people from submitting spam, whether that is for scams, malicious software, or X-rated material. I have been getting tagged in Crypto …
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Free Public WiFi

Remember Free Public WiFi? Once, many years ago, I stayed on the 62nd floor of the Westin Peachtree Plaza in Atlanta, Georgia. This was in the age when the price of a hotel room was directly correlated with the price of the WiFi service, and as a high school student …


Tiktok's enshittification

Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, and it is a …
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OpenSSL gave everyone alarm fatigue

I'm worried that this is going to be seen as a reason to not take "CRITICAL" disclosures seriously at first glance like we should. A "CRITICAL" bug MUST be treated as if it was critically bad. From a community health perspective, people have been told that something really bad is …

There is no “software supply chain”

Good piece on how a (hardware) supply chain is something completely different from the software stack what we tend to call a 'software supply chain', but which really is not. The problem is mostly that the providers of the moving parts that people (read: companies) are so dependent on and …


Different Ways to Use Column Command in Linux

According to manpage, the column command “columnate lists”. In simple words, the column is a simple utility that can format your output into a column format (rows and fields) based on the structure of your source file. The column command is part of the util-linux package.

Making a LEGO Domino Machine

Building and testing a LEGO machine for making domino runs. Each 'domino' is a stack of 5 1x3 LEGO bricks. Turn on captions for some insight into the design and build process. Skip to 5:14​ to see the machine being used to set up a domino run.
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The Voyeur's Motel

Gerald Foos bought a motel in order to watch his guests having sex. He saw a lot more than that. Fascinating story, lots of (un?)expected things happening, and the author having to consider multiple times whether to intervene, contrary to his long-standing agreement with the owner. (Might need some …

Presenting presenting

Tips and thoughts on preparing and giving engaging presentations. As a person who does not give presentations often (lots of reasons), the points and pointers in this article sound really helpful. Also, one of the better explanations about why a full, information dense slide is unhelpful: Now imagine the audience …


NestDrop: Presets Collection – Cream of the Crop

After my piece on projectM last year, I installed it on several computers, not really thinking about extra .milk preset files (which contain the animations). Today, after some short searching thinking there might be more out there, I found this little gem of a collection: Presets Collection – Cream of the …
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Modern retro computer terminals

3D printed, retro-futuristic looking computer terminals. Not all as practical as the other, but inspiring and great looking at the least. I now kind of want an ultrawidescreen terminal on our table now.
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Wintergatan

There's this Martin Molin guy that is a wonderful nerdy musician. He build the original Marble Machine and has been building a Marble Machine X ever since. His channel is a really nice documentary of the process and progress of this project, and provides a lot of detail of the …

Slightly sad about a big dish

Almost a week ago, the massive Arecibo Telescope (part of the Arecibo Observatory) collapsed. It used to be an impressive dish lying flat in the lush green forests of Puerto Rico. The construction already was deemed dangerous and was planned to be demolished, but the event still came as a …
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Energy: Shirobon's album 'Warp'

This excellent album by Shirobon gave me the energy to finish my day. I woke up with aching shoulders, neck, and upper back, so it was a fun day working at my desk. Listening to these retro-inspired tunes while cooking some dinner wrapped that part of the day up in …