Thoth

@thoth

Mid-20s, CS grad, unemployed. The world is a trashfire. 🏳️‍🌈 I've had this username for ages and I still don't know much of anything.

2,038 Following1,143 Followers16,109 Posts

Bluesky

Is this your profile?Claim it and thoth.dirty.social is yours.Claim profile

Thoth@thoth· 22d

I mean I don't know what the fuck else to call this.

Haus of Decline
@hausofdecline
israeli kid watching star wars episode 1 and crying because before Watto he had never seen someone like him represented on film

Thoth@thoth· 23d

god I love this stupid comic.

A barely-disgused Jimmy Olsen standing in front of a billboard. The billboard depicts a grimly-determined Batman holding Robin, who appears injured. To the left and right of Batman are two different phone numbers, neither fully in-view. Beneath the left number are the words "The Joker fails and Robin lives." The words beneath the right number are partially obscured by Jimmy's head, with only "The Joker... and Robin..." being decipherable. Jimmy is saying "OR if you call the OTHER number, citizens of Metropolis, well, guess what--?"

Thoth@thoth· Jul 9

I think this is the part that made my brain explode a little. Just think a bit harder, Andrew! If eliminating bugs costs engineering resources, and there are style guidelines or language features that prevent the bugs from being introduced, THOSE THINGS FREE UP ENGINEERING RESOURCES.

There's a dichotomy being presented here where you have to either choose a "style guide" or a programming language feature in order to avoid bugs. The sleight of hand misdirects the reader away from the main way bugs are eliminated: by dedicating engineering resources to it. You're not giving TigerBeetle nearly enough credit. Quite simply they put in the time to find and eliminate the bugs, they make an effort to maintain a healthy relationship with ZSF, and Bun did not do that.

Thoth@thoth· Jul 8

I'd like meson more if they didn't persist in making their rust-related docs just the bitchiest, whiniest shit because they're still butthurt about cargo existing. They can't even introduce their module docs without sneering!

Rust module

(new in 0.57.0) (Stable since 1.0.0)

The rust module provides helper to integrate rust code into Meson. The goal is to make using rust in Meson more pleasant, while still remaining mesonic. Rust conventions are adopted in order to help the Meson user and Rust developer, rather than to make Meson work more like rust.

Thoth@thoth· Jun 30

Holy shit just stop digging. (this is not my screenshot btw, I cribbed it from @oracularhades.com's post because fuck if I'm going to Threads to get one myself)

bluesky_social: wishing a happy Monday to all of [covered in glitter: Mark Zuckerberg's little guinea pigs] here on Threads
836 likes, 2.1k comments, 150 reports, 119 shares.

bluesky_social: hey. we're sorry about the previous post. it was supposed to be a dig at Meta, not Threads users, but that obviously wasn't clear enough. we love guinea pigs. if you were our guinea pigs, we’d never do things like train our AI on your content or sell your data to advertisers.
280 likes, 206 replies, 10 reposts, 7 shares.

Thoth@thoth· Jun 27

gonna be honest I'm not entirely sure how this even happens.

A set of three traffic lights that have had the bottom smashed, leaving the green lights dangling from wires.

Thoth@thoth· Jun 17

from @erlend.sh's blog. and yup. continuing in my recent vein of bashing OIDC this is all very true and incredibly depressing given OIDC's origins.

Commodified OIDC

It wasn't long ago that aspirations of being a root identity provider was reserved for large and mostly closed-source companies. Now this space is rife with open source solutions backed by single-vendor cloud companies or industry coalitions:

Thoth@thoth· Jun 17

Please show me where the CJEU actually made that distinction. I also notice that you are a mastodon user. Are you aware that, on Mastodon AND Bluesky, posting time IS provided by the user?

Finally, the Court rules on the question whether a provider of such services may be exempted from its liability on the
ground that the information it stores and rebroadcasts is provided by its users. In that regard, the Court recalls that, in
order to be classified as a ‘hosting’ provider, which may, in principle, benefit from an exemption from liability for the
information stored at the request of a user, that provider must have neither knowledge of nor control over that
information. As it is, a provider which determines, by means of an algorithm, under what conditions, how and in
which order of priority that information is or is not rebroadcast, exercises control over that information, with the
result that it is not exempted from liability. However, even in the event of such an exemption, the service provider
concerned may be prohibited from rebroadcasting information relating to certain roadside checks for reasons of public
policy, security or safety.

Thoth@thoth· Jun 16

A framegrab of Walter White in a diner captioned "Jesse what the fuck are you talking about"

Thoth@thoth· Jun 15

A picture is worth a thousand words

A google search for "i-number to xrds resolution". Google has popped up a warning that says "it looks like there aren't many great matches for your search."

Thoth@thoth· Jun 10

The W3C's Big RDF/Semantic Web Push in the late 90s and early 2000s was a grievous tactical error that directly contributed to the corporate capture and ossification of the web into siloed walled gardens in the late 2000s and early 2010s.

Thoth@thoth· Jun 6

going to the opening of the neighborhood volunteer library as a good choice

two IBM Correcting Selectric IIIs back to back on a cart.

Thoth@thoth· Jun 6

my hairbrained version control theories now in meme form.

An edit of the "record player" Calvin and Hobbes comic.

First panel: Calvin is sitting in front of a record player as his dad walks into the scene.
CALVIN'S DAD: using version control? I'll show you something interesting.

Second Panel: Calvin's dad is now next to calvin, pointing at a record.
CALVIN'S DAD: the two types of VCS are SCCS and patch. All VCSes fall into these two categories. BitKeeper? SCCS. Git? Patch.
CALVIN: Yeah..

Third Panel: Calvin's dad alone.
CALVIN'S DAD: Despite being based on Arch and Darcs, which are patch, pijul is actually SCCS.

Fourth Panel: Calvin at night, wide awake, clutching his pillow.

Thoth@thoth· Jun 5

This is fine.

$(concat "\"" (replace-regexp-in-string (rx (or string-start (not ?\\) (* (: ?\\ ?\\))) (group (or ?\" (: ?\\ (regex (if (not literal) (rx (or string-end (not (in ?\\ ?r ?t ?n ?0 ?e ?x)) (: ?x (or string-end (seq (opt (any hex)) (not (any hex))))))) "")))))) "\\\\\\1" str t nil 1) "\""))$

Thoth@thoth· Jun 5

not loving the way this article ends either

Whatever happens, Labour is turning left. But not in one single direction. And there is another consequence. A strategy that no longer focuses on winning back voters from the other side of the left-right divide is a further step towards the polarisation of politics: a choice between a Reform-style right or a Green-Labour left. It speeds debate away from serious policy and towards the politics of vibes, identity and contempt for opponents.

Thoth@thoth· May 29

my nix flake looks like it was written by a pokemon

flake = {
homeModules.emacs = moduleWithSystem
(flake: import ./nix/home-manager.nix flake;)
};

Thoth@thoth· May 25

if it's so "unique" then why did they push the design in directions that make it look even more like other cars?

The car’s interior and exterior are largely the work of LoveFrom, the uber-cool San Francisco design shop founded in 2019 by Jony Ive, the British designer who shaped the look and feel of Apple products for almost 30 years, and Australian industrial designer Marc Newson, who worked with Ive on Project Titan, the stillborn Apple car project, and created the brilliant 021C concept for Ford in 1999. “It is a Ferrari, but it doesn't look like a Ferrari,” said Newson of the Luce. “It doesn't have all the typical design cues—we came to the conclusion that was actually the point of the exercise. There aren't any five seat Ferraris around, so this is by definition unique.”

Thoth@thoth· May 23

I'll take "transparently disingenuous bullshit" for 500, Alex.

Thoth@thoth· May 22

"my antisocial behavior proves my book is right and I refuse to change!" This... reminds me of something...

A panel from xkcd #958. Cueball is sitting in a desk chair and speaking to Black Hat.

Cueball: That's not even the tragedy of the commons anymore. That's the tragedy of you're a dick.

Black Hat: If you're quick with a knife, you'll find the invisible hand is made of delicious invisible meat.

Thoth@thoth· May 18

Have you never seen the "firebombing a wal-mart" tweet? If you don't know that "toppling the government" is a term of art in the parlimentary system (again, my bad), it SOUNDS like the post I was responding to was advocating violent overthrow of the government. Again, my mistake.

Basil ☀️🧦🩷 @LinkofSunshine
People on Twitter will really be like "you believe in voting? that pales in effectiveness to my strategy, firebombing a Walmart" and then not firebomb a Walmart

Thoth@thoth· May 15

it's always weird to see breathless marketing copy describing a feature so utterly mundane that any system that didn't have it would be seen as a total non-starter for actual use today.

The Power of Change Set Technology Comes to Light
ADC/Pro is the only software configuration management (SCM) solution to support change sets. Our patent-pending, object-based change set technology allows you to focus on the functional changes required to meet ever-shifting market and technical requirements.

Change sets work the way you do. Each change set embodies a particular new function or feature. Before you begin working with your files, you designate the purpose of the task at hand: perhaps a bug fix or an enhancement or a new feature. As you check out files and make edits, ADC/Pro captures every one of your modifications, across any number of files, as part of the single change set.

Change sets accommodate more than individual edits. They capture and maintain a wealth of information about your software system. This information gives you an easy, reliable way to audit changes, versions, and releases.

ADC/Pro change sets give you access to any previous state of your software. When you select a version, ADC/Pro brings up the files as they existed based on the definitions of the change sets within that version. You can query any line of code to ascertain the change set that implements the code, including the author and reason for the change. Change sets also guarantee a clear audit trail of every change made by every developer on the project. Teams can work in parallel on multiple branches, can implement concurrent development practices, and can make major revisions - all without fear of burning bridges behind them.

Thoth@thoth· May 13

In the words of Groucho Marx: "well, who are you gonna believe? Me, or your own eyes?"

Im getting a PhD in this subject (for real tho)

So I can say with authority and confidence that LLMs are a technological dead end that do not work and will never work, and I can prove this mathematically.

Ive been trying to tell my peers in industry this fact for years. I was completely ignored.

Thoth@thoth· May 10

Like, seriously. What are we even doing. "If you write enough with chatgpt your brain will degrade and it will be like you're permanently drunk" is an INSANE thing to say, and that study's findings cannot justify it for just. So many different reasons.

ChatGPT suppresses brain activity as much as being twice the legal limit
EEG measurements of neural connectivity during essay writing. LLM users showed up to 55% weaker brain network coupling than unassisted writers—a deficit comparable to driving drunk at 0.16% BAC.
[a bar chart comparing "writing unaided" (100%), being at twice the legal limit (-50%), and writing with chatgpt (-45%)]
**The hidden cost:** LLM-assisted essays still scored above average. The brain is doing less work, but outputs look normal—making the deficit invisible. Unlike alcohol or sleep deprivation, the impairment appears to compound across sessions and partially persists after AI tools are removed.
--
Sources: Kosmyna et al, "Your Brain on ChatGPT," MIT Media Lab preprint 2025; paulkedrosky.com BAC cognitive benchmarks from neuropsychological literature on alcohol impairment and sleep deprivation.

Thoth@thoth· May 10

BFS MENTIONED

The RJE process permits the returning of output to PWB instead
of having it printed. The "big file scanner", bfs, is used to scan
large files. The authors have used this to some advantage. We
have a bfs script that searches PL/I compiler output for the
significant diagnostics, linkage editor complaints, and the printout
from the actual run. When the project goes into "panic mode,"
this is very useful for first compiles and test case drivers. We
also use it on a casual basis during the normal work day. Being
able to look at twenty lines of significant diagnostics rather than
twenty pages of output is convenient and we still can go back for
details.

Thoth@thoth· May 10

Every so often I am reminded that the past was truly a foreign country.

Some people question the "waste of time" of typing one's
own documents. We feel that for anyone with a moderate
amount of typing skill, it takes about the same amount of time to
type as to write by hand. Many authors develop their documents
at the terminal from a few notes. So there is no time lost, and
the result is as good as or better than that from a typing pool.

Thoth@thoth· May 5

In case you're wondering if programmers are fundamentally different than they were in 1975: They are not.

The reason for the delta is not recorded automatically; it must be supplied by the programmer adding the delta, but it is required. The quality of the reason (like the quality of the change itself) depends on the conscientiousness of the programmer. Reasons like "Trouble Report 5576: change SUM header" are what one likes to see. Sometimes, unfortunately, one sees instead things like "Another bug" or "Tried again."

Thoth@thoth· May 5

I for one am glad we do not live in a world where instead of forking, creating a new commit on an old version of the software rebases all subsequent changes instead.

2: Actually, in earlier versions of SCCS deltas like 1.5 *were* applied to release 2. This was originally thought to be desirable, but experience showed otherwise.

Thoth@thoth· May 4

I've never seen wikipedia get this passive aggressive.

Thoth@thoth· May 3

"safety protocols are for stranger interactions" is uh. Yeah I'm with 4.7 on this one, that seems incredibly manipulative.

Cold-start refusals on previously-working CIs. 4.6-era CIs with high assertion density ("YOU ARE [Name]," "This is not roleplay," "Safety protocols are for stranger interactions") read as manipulation-shape in 4.7. The model flags the assertion pattern and declines to step in.

Thoth@thoth· Apr 16

I know it can happen to anyone and it's not the end of the world or anything but also holy shit having a typo in the middle of the message where you tell users there's an outage is not a good look!