umbraroze

Yup. The robots.txt file is not only meant to block robots from accessing the site, it’s also meant to block bots from accessing resources that are not interesting for human readers, even indirectly.

For example, MediaWiki installations are pretty clever in that by default, /w/ is blocked and /wiki/ is encouraged. Because nobody wants technical pages and wiki histories in search results, they only want the current versions of the pages.

Fun tidbit: in the late 1990s, there was a real epidemic of spammers scraping the web pages for email addresses. Some people developed wpoison.cgi, a script whose sole purpose was to generate garbage web pages with bogus email addresses. Real search engines ignored these, thanks to robots.txt. Guess what the spam bots did?

Do the AI bros really want to go there? Are they asking for model collapse?

I’m using Finnish keyboard layout (same as Swedish basically).

I like how AltGr+7/8/9/0 gives me { [ ] }, it’s a very nice grouping. The key next to Z is < > and you get | with AltGr, which is very handy.

Only thing that’s mildy annoying from programming viewpoint is that for tilde and backtick, the keys do diacritics - you need to press the diacritic key and space. Backtick is especially fun, because it’s shift+acute, space. Meanwhile, the key next to 1 does § ½, which aren’t that handy most of the time. I often just stick backtick on that key if I’m particularly assed to customise keyboard keyouts. Similarly, shift+4 is ¤, which is another not a particularly useful character (but I don’t mind that, because £ $ € all need to be produced with AltGr, which is at least consistent).

Oh content from this blog has been popping up in random places. Methinks it’s le epic trole.

So yeah, Xfce looks the same as it did 10 years ago.

And?

Desktop environment is meant to launch apps and give me windows and maybe have a file manager. Xfce does that. It’s a desktop environment.

Hey, “modern” desktop environment enthusiasts, if you bring Compiz back from the dead, give us luddites a call, will you? Ohhhh you kids should have seen it back in the day. Windows and Mac users saw Compiz in action and were, like, “wat.” You don’t get them to react that way to modern Linux desktops, no. And all that is lost now. Thanks Wayland.

Yeah, there’s an important distinction. Just because you could use Linux doesn’t mean you can at any particular moment.

I don’t really do music production; I’m more into writing and visual arts and photography. I could do all of those things on Linux and be perfectly productive. But there’s a difference between being productive and being optimal. My current process happens to be based on software that runs on Windows. (Heck, a lot of the software I use already runs on both Windows and Linux, anyways.)

The key here being that you shouldn’t lock yourself too much to just one tool and one approach, and that actually goes both ways.

Error in Moderation

Could have been worse. Could have been an Error in Excess.

Well, since it seemed to be a way to support the site and get to see new features ahead of time, so yeah, why not? I only decided not to renew my gold access when it became very clear Spez wouldn’t ban the hate subs he loved.

As for getting gold otherwise:

I’m an introvert, ok? I mostly only comment if I have something worthwhile to say.

So the only comments I ever got gilded by others were drunken shitpost. And in one instance some random off the cuff post. …I don’t get it.

Anyway. Basically, I didn’t want to post any Gold Baits™. because that way lies madness.

Been using a Suunto 5 Peak watch since May and it’s been absolutely great. Dunno if 250€ counts as inexpensive, but like we say in Finland, poor people can’t afford to buy cheap shit that breaks right away. (I think they have cheaper options?) Suunto watches talk to phone app which at least on Android is pretty great, and the app can talk to other services which can analyse stuff further.

I was a reddit user for ages. Reddit search always sucked. Heck, Reddit could barely make their own data available to the users (which is why their user histories are so limited and why the GDPR takeouts take a week). Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, used external search engines.

Do they want to block external searches? Literally enshittify their shit further? Are they willing to hold back progress?

Just today I was thinking of Reddit Gold - back when I actually paid for it, the marketing spin was “you get to test new features before we add them to everyone else!” Literally none of the Gold features I’ve ever used made to the unwashed masses. I take it back, saving comments did.

So yeah, they will hold back progress. In fact, progress isn’t on the cards. It’s just regress. AND you can be a premium user and PAY for it.

Technically, SQL is case-insensitive.

Practically, you want to capitalise the commands anyway.

It gives your code some gravitas. Always remember that when you’re writing SQL statements you’re speaking Ancient Words of Power.

Does that JavaScript framework that got invented 2 weeks ago by some snot-nosed kid need Words of Power? No. Does the database that has been chugging on for decades upon decades need Words of Power? Yes. Words of Power and all the due respect.

I use Debian because it runs on everything, and XFCE because it runs on everything and I’ve never wanted to waste much of the oomph on the GUI anyway. Looks and feels and works well enough, and that’s all I care.

Ah ! TP-Link! Or, as I’ve always said, Toilet Paper Link.

(Extremely drunk)

I don’t remember any more.

(Fishes out a SanDisk Extreme SD 128GB card from the box)

Was this the one? I think this was the one.
The one that fucking failed.

…fuck. I had more money than sense a few years ago.

Scrivener is still the absolute best word processor for ginormous writing projects. There are FOSS projects that do some parts of it right, but fall far behind in the others. It’s particularly frustrating because my usual FOSS approach would be to use other tools that make up for the inadequacies, but Scrivener pretty much nails the “what to include and what to leave out” equation. It’s a great combo of a word processor, project management tool and a research/notes tool, all rolled into one.

/serious Well, yes, most APIs are meant for system-to-system interaction, that’s kind of a given. But since this particular API is clearly meant for human-to-system interaction, returning a human-readable response is adequate. Yes, a better design would probably allow the client to specify additional parameters about the desired response.

/back-to-jokes Yeah, well this kind of sums up most of my job applications. I send an application and the recruiting people are all like “OK”.