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max-webster.bsky.social
Tech writer in California. Opinions all mine, not my employer's.
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SF Bay Area residents, whether you felt this evening’s #earthquake or not, please complete the “Did you feel it?” survey earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/...

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

TIL: there's a name for the wild-looking stratigraphic layers of rock that you see along the "gorge" sections of Rennie's River in Newfoundland: "flysch". (Must try that in Scrabble some time.) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flysch

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Shot (from #Snowflake Summit 2025)

submitted 5 days ago • 1 comment

As someone who was told this urban legend from earliest times, there's a lot I could say about this.

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

TIL: the $BASH_REMATCH array variable in bash lets you do the Pythonic operation: match a regex using ( ) groups, then retrieve the value of group 1, group 2, ... As Python evolves more towards numeric analysis, I'm using bash more and more for string processing use cases. medium.com/@linuxadminh...

submitted 29 days ago • 0 comments

Potatoes trending as fuel for athletes? About time! wapo.st/4dihulG

submitted 30 days ago • 0 comments

When I was growing up in eastern Canada, some people had a strong affinity for New York, others for Boston. I always wondered what the factors were. (More English ancestry = Boston, Irish = New York?) My granddad worked construction on the Empire State Building, which puts me in the New York camp.

submitted 33 days ago • 0 comments

TIL: Peter Weller got his PhD in Italian renaissance art history. Not that long ago either. That's in character for Buckaroo Banzai, not so much for RoboCop. escholarship.org/uc/item/0dm8...

submitted 37 days ago • 0 comments

Am I the only one who, given an address or a neighborhood in Manhattan, visualizes it in terms of what Peter Parker did or who Spider-Man fought there?

submitted 39 days ago • 0 comments

TIL: in vi, q/ to bring up a menu of recent searches that you can cursor through, edit, and run again. vi, always a new surprise waiting somewhere.

submitted 39 days ago • 1 comment

This is a new image from #JWST. The bright points with spikes are stars in the Milky Way. Everything else is a galaxy. Everything. Else. Is. A. Galaxy.

submitted 41 days ago • 631 comments

I check the little screen, I check the big screen, I check the watch screen, I check the tablet screen. I check the screen that reminds me of the good times, I check the screen that reminds me of the better times.

submitted 42 days ago • 172 comments

Holy shit I just found out that “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing,” by Leo Sayer, is basically a Steely Dan song. Drums: Steve Gadd and Jeff Porcaro Bass: Chuck Rainey Guitar: Larry Carlton - youtu.be/ex96q32A6UU

submitted 41 days ago • 11 comments

terminal escape codes wizardzines.com/comics/escap...

submitted 41 days ago • 6 comments

TIL: I usually use normal! in vi/vim to simulate sending keystrokes for movement etc. I didn't see a way to do the equivalent of Ctrl-R followed by a register letter, to insert the contents of a register. Solution: the feedkeys() function: let @a="hello" call feedkeys("i\<c-r>a\<esc>")

submitted 43 days ago • 1 comment

47 years ago today, the same day Steve Martin debuted King Tut, the Blues Brothers made their first official appearance.

submitted 48 days ago • 38 comments