rossabaker.com - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

`tail -f` continues to follow output as lines are appended to a file. `tail -F` additionally reopens the file when it becomes inaccessible. This is particularly useful when your logs are rotating multiple times per minute because you're trying to run a public service in the age of AI parasites.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Today, scrapers from Alibaba Cloud generated 150GB of tarballs on my Forgejo and downloaded 200GB of data. I played whack-a-mole with their IPs when they ignored robots.txt. When I rate limited, they fanned out and came back stronger. Enough. The entire IP range is now being served gibberish […]

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

[Idiomas de los EE.UU.] Puede que el inglés sea el idioma oficial de los EE.UU., pero la política exterior es toda la rusa. #uspol

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

My entry for the February 2025 IndieWeb Carnival, on affirmation, and struggling with not being the best. We're fifteen minutes into March here, but it's still February somewhere. https://rossabaker.com/blog/pareto-frontal-affirmation/ #IndiewebCarnival #Affirmation

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

[Emacs 30 scrolling issue] If you're using pixel-scroll-precision-mode and set scroll-margin, the problem is https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=66769. I decided to punt scroll-margin. Otherwise, a smooth upgrade. Great work by the maintainers. #Emacs

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

The HTTP QUERY Method proposal is still alive. Draft 8 just dropped: https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-httpbis-safe-method-w-body-08.html

submitted 7 days ago • 3 comments

Check it out, #HoosierSocial-ites: Indiana Public Broadcasting's state government news team has set up shop right here on our "little instance that could." Follow them at @ipbnews More and more local organizations, media, and content providers are noticing our little community! #News […]

submitted 13 days ago • 0 comments

I had given up GitHub for non-work use, but I'm coming back with a project under an explicitly non-AI license. It will be fun to see which tools respect it and which don't. https://github.com/rossabaker/goodbye-ai It will also be fun to dust off my Scheme enough to make the program less […]

submitted 16 days ago • 1 comment

Es tut mir leid, dass unser Vizepräsident bei Ihrer Konferenz auf den Teppich gekackt hat. Zu Hause macht er das genauso.

submitted 17 days ago • 0 comments

I use generated answers to security questions. Today I had to spell one for the customer representative to type. "I'm sorry. I have an infosec background. I usually get to paste this. No, my first pet's name did not look like something a fascist billionaire would name his child. Yes, 'A' as in […]

submitted 18 days ago • 1 comment

It may be as futile as robots.txt, but `export DO_NOT_TRACK=1` is a good addition to your dotfiles. https://consoledonottrack.com/ #Privacy #Telemetry

submitted 18 days ago • 0 comments

I like owls and football. Trivia: there are four major college teams named the Owls, and the UTSA Roadrunners played them all this past season.

submitted 22 days ago • 0 comments

Today I learned I can do a custom build of the Iosevka fonts. Relatedly, ``` load average: 57.26, 54.68, 41.85 ```

submitted 23 days ago • 0 comments

Day: complains about meetings Evening: voluntarily attends two-hour Emacs meetup followed by a three-hour Indieweb meetup

submitted 26 days ago • 0 comments

Searched Perplexity for an obscure term that likely appears only on my website. Was immediately hit by their bot, which is disallowed by my robots.txt, and served a barely paraphrased version of my CC BY-SA content. I was not cited in its sources, but it did link back to the Radio Advertisers […]

submitted 34 days ago • 0 comments

"Cold Steel on Ice," my entry in this month's Indieweb Carnival. The theme is the importance of friction. https://rossabaker.com/blog/cold-steel-on-ice/ #IndiewebCarnival #Hockey #SoftwareEngineering

submitted 35 days ago • 0 comments

Judge Judy now has distinct shows on two channels, and if she's the astute TV judge I think she is, she will sue herself in front of herself on a third channel. #JudgeJudy

submitted 35 days ago • 0 comments

Experimenting with XDG support for Emacs' no-littering package. Unsure whether it's better as a PR or a friendly fork. https://github.com/emacscollective/no-littering/discussions/252 #Emacs

submitted 37 days ago • 0 comments

There's no single greatest piece of music, but there is a list, where each time I hear something from it, I'm pretty sure I just heard the pinnacle. Beethoven's Seventh is on that list. Indy, they're playing it again tomorrow night. #IndySymphony #Indianapolis #ClassicalMusic

submitted 45 days ago • 0 comments

Since Pixelfed is hot right now, I'm also @[email protected]. I may be a mediocre photographer, but my dogs are adorable. #Pixelfed

submitted 47 days ago • 1 comment

We all know @rit's GIF game was unmatched. I don't even really like memes, but Brendan was an artist who transcended genre. More than the years we shatpost together, I'll remember our first meeting. The conversation turned to hockey, naturally. I […] [Original post on social.rossabaker.com]

submitted 48 days ago • 0 comments

This would be a lot better as an HTTP code.

submitted 48 days ago • 0 comments

Nennt man eine Hündin auf Deutsch "Hündin“? Auf Englisch klingt das furchtbar!

submitted 51 days ago • 0 comments

In den 1990er, als ich Deutsch lernte, fuhr ich mit meinem Hund Ski und sprach mit ihm auf Deutsch. Jetzt spreche ich nicht mehr viel Deutsch, aber heute Morgen schrie ich meiner Hündin an, "Nein, wir gehen diesen Weg!“

submitted 51 days ago • 0 comments

Hey it's bill filing season in the #Indiana legislature. If you're an LGBTQ person - particular if you're #trans - it can feel like you're just waiting on the firing squad. If you, like me, can't seem to look away, remember that not everything gets a hearing and some of it is definitely bait […]

submitted 52 days ago • 0 comments

Patterns in konnakol - a post-in-progress exploring South Indian rhythms. Feedback and requests welcome! https://algorithmicpattern.org/patterns-in-konnakol/

submitted 54 days ago • 1 comment

Attended my first IndieWeb Homebrew Website Club this evening. Good people. Let the record show that I was not the first to say "Nix" or "Perl." https://events.indieweb.org/ #Indieweb

submitted 54 days ago • 0 comments

Fastmail acquired the email redirect service I use without me noticing. It has a terrible false positive rate, does not send me a digest, and its filter can't be disabled while I'm using the redirect. I guess I just acquired another inbox. #Fastmail

submitted 55 days ago • 0 comments

[Google Gemini's two-point conversion chart] Query: down 4 go for two? Gemini: > If you're down by 4 points in a football game, according to most analytics, the strategy is to "go for two" on a touchdown, as this gives you the best chance to tie the game and potentially win, especially late […]

submitted 56 days ago • 1 comment

Spent too much of my evening trying to get an async Python server to shut down cleanly in Docker until I discovered https://github.com/cjrh/aiorun. #Python #aiorun

submitted 56 days ago • 0 comments

Few things cleanse the soul like a long ski through the woods and a good jazz playlist.

submitted 56 days ago • 0 comments

Just migrated my last service from Nginx to Caddy. The docs are good, and whenever they weren't enough, the forum archive turned up what I needed. What a delight. #Caddy

submitted 57 days ago • 1 comment

I'm too wiped for a nixpkgs PR, but in case you're running Pixelfed on NixOS, this was enough to get me from what's there to 0.12.4. https://paste.rossabaker.com/ross/8756f9e29bf443609008ede2680a10c2 #Pixelfed #NixOS

submitted 58 days ago • 0 comments

[Caddy try_files surprise] ``` root ${avatars} try_files {path}.jpg =404 ``` If /avatars/{path}.jpg does not exist, we get the expected 404. Great. If it does, instead of the file, we get an empty 200 response. This is because `try_files` only rewrites the request. It still needs a […]

submitted 59 days ago • 0 comments