swordsmanluke @ swordsmanluke @programming.dev

Posts

2

Comments

310

Joined

2 yr. ago

Learn as many languages as you can!

The first language we learn is always the hardest because we are learning both the syntax and the concepts of programming at the same time. Most languages have a pretty large overlap in concepts, so you'll mostly just be learning syntax, which is easy to pick up.

Each language that you learn will likely introduce you to some concept you haven't used before, which makes it that much easier to learn the next language and gives you a new way to think about problems no matter what language you're using!

I try to learn one language a year, even if it's not directly applicable to my job. In past years, I've learned Go, Rust, Rockstar, Perl (and more). This year I'm learning Lisp and it's a ball so far!

Well, partial good news for you, friend! (Assuming you're in the US)

California's new CPRA law went into effect at the start of the year. As part of that law, CA residents can request to see their data, be deleted or edit it. Since it's hard to validate whether someone is actually a resident or not, most places just allow everyone to do those things now.

But there are some big caveats. One is that getting access to your data can be complicated. There's a risk of, e.g. an evil-ex requesting your info in order to stalk you, so some places will just confirm or deny the info you send. "Do you have my name? How about this email address?", etc, but you can't say "Gimme everything for ".

You can ask for all your personal data to be deleted. But the law says to delete everything... Which includes the fact that you made such a request, so the next time data about you arrives, the company has no record to indicate they should not collect it.

It's a start.

Disagree. Privacy should be the default.

Collecting information should be legal only in so far as it supports the customer's use of a product/service. E.g. It's nice if my doctor can keep a medical history on file, or my mechanic can do the same for my car.

Selling/disclosing information to third parties should be illegal.

Boop Boop!

There are a number, actually! But there are way more companies that hold data than everyone can integrate with.

Everybody (well, in the US) has to comply with the law, and there are standards for API-driven requests, but there are hundreds of thousands of companies out there. Everybody from your bank to your email provider to whatever POS software your mechanic uses is hoovering up data. And a lot of SAAS platforms for small businesses package up their data and sell it onward.

The major unsubscribe-y services, (like incogni mentioned by someone else) are integrated with all the major data brokers and even a large number of smaller ones, but if you're using any modern service at all, your data trail is going to be built back up and probably reconnected with some obscure dataset that didn't get purged.

I'm not saying it's pointless, just that its A) impossible to be sure that you got it all and B) that every scrap that can be linked to you eventually will be, by somebody.

I wouldn't say they're a scam! They are submitting your name automatically to everyone at once - or at least everyone who follows the law.

It's just not a long-term solution. Data Brokers are incredibly incestuous. Any data that one owns will find its way back into all the others.

If you want to try to clean up as much as possible, unsubscribe from as much as you can. Close every account that you reasonably can.

Then setup a monthly reminder to ask incogni (or similar) to nuke your data from the web. It'll work, just not forever.

It's going to be an eternal effort against a constant tide.

I know what you mean. The difference being that I lived through the eighties... I watch shows like Stranger Things and remember how awesome (parts of) the eighties were. Staying out late with my friends, basically running around unsupervised for hours at a time? Awesome. But most of that vision of eighties never really existed.

Oh, there was definitely a time when our cars were mechanical and we played our music at 78 RPM, but there was plenty wrong with the eighties.

Among other things, we were all pretty confident the world was going to end in a nuclear holocaust with Russia. The rhetoric was incendiary and nobody thought peace was realistic. It was only when Russia's economy suddenly imploded and the whole thing collapsed that everyone took a collective breath of relief. It's impossible to communicate how incredible the collapse of the Soviet Union was. They were the second most powerful nation in the world - and their vision for the future was diametrically opposed to the American counterpart. There were clashes and proxy wars. Only the threat of total annihilation kept open war from being declared.

...and then one day, they just...vanished. They were more unstable than anyone knew. And when one too many little things went wrong... The whole thing crumbled.

The reason there's so many great comedies from the eighties? Everyone was desperate for some good escapism. In hard times, comedies sell well. (In good times, we want dramas.)

The eighties were stressful as hell.

But the TV/Movie version of the eighties looks fucking awesome. I wish I'd lived there too.

If you already happen to have a generic server in your house, you can run it in a docker container. Since I already had a file server in my basement, I threw the pihole image on there, directed my router to use my server for dns and done! It took like an hour and most of that was just reading the instructions. Actually setting it up was stupidly easy.

And I love it. My smart tv no longer shows ads in the sidebar. All my devices load websites faster...

The only downside is sites that refuse to load if I refuse to watch their ads. No great loss.

It is virtually impossible to remove yourself from advertiser's rolls.

Thanks to the new CPRA regulation, you can ask companies to delete everything they know about you. Great!

Except that the way the law is written, that often includes deleting the fact that you asked to have your data removed. So the next time they get your data from a broker, (or the next time a broker gets your data), you're right back at square one.

In theory, if you managed to send simultaneous requests to every company that's holding your data, you could wipe the slate clean...until the next time you used a website.

There are so many data sets out there that we are all a part of. And if your data is in just a single one that didn't get wiped, everyone will end up with it again as a matter of course.

Fortunately, my PC is a gods damned packrat. I had a half million extra daggers, several great swords and so forth sitting in my camp chest. One quick detour and Astorion's got a shiny new dagger...

I make my own! From real roots!

How do you make your own key caps?

3D printing?

The preponderance of evidence is that humans are generally, good, kind and helpful (most of the time). Our evolutionary superpower is fucking cooperation!

I genuinely believe that - in spite of the if-it-bleeds-it-leads news cycle - humanity is rising to the challenges of our time.

Our time is hard, but there are so many people working to improve the world. They don't get into the news cycle, but they're out there.

Mr Rogers related a story about his mother, who told him that when he saw disasters on TV, to remember to "look for the Helpers." They're always there. No matter how bad things get, the Helpers seem to come out of the woodwork whenever aid is needed. Look for them.

DM: Your rapier finds the tiniest of gaps in the Demon King's plate armor and ...tickles his armpit lightly. The Dark One emits a surprisingly high pitched giggle and takes one point of psychic damage.

There is a monster in the mountains near my home. It's known to have killed many people across history.

There are instances where these things are known to have hunted humans. They're incredibly strong, weigh as much as a car and can take your head off in a single swipe.

Few people who encounter an angry one survive.

They call this beast... A grizzly bear.

I'm gonna pile in with yet another option that isn't a language that compiles to bash...

Consider Ruby for easier shell scripting. With its back tick syntax for executing shell commands, it's quick to use when you want to glue together a series of commands. ...and then you get to use a sane syntax for your script's logic.

Ex:

    
# Check my history for all usages of the xsv command
# and extract the filename
csv_files = `grep ~/.zsh_history "xsv" | awk '{print $3}'`.
                     split("\n").
                     map(&:chomp)

# list any csv with my phone number
csv_files.select { | filename|
  `grep #{filename} "555-1234"`.chomp != ""
}.each {|filename| puts filename}
                     
  

I actually wrote a prototype for an IPFS-based FB replacement. It... kinda worked. I could get posts to share some of the time, but I reached a point where I realized I'd need to rip out a bunch of my backend and start over to fix it and I just didn't have it in me at that time.

Since then, however, a new IPFS framework has come out that'll replace a lot of the crappy code I'd written for interfacing with IPFS. I'm thinking of blowing off the dust and trying again.

Attending PAX with my family. My kids have managed to have fun and not get too punchy despite having been walking around the convention floor for six hours.

And we've found three games we're insta-buying so far!

Air and heat remain; balloons cancelled. Two outta three ain't bad!

..."tone down the Kyle..."

Harsh! But it also put me in mind of a couple kids in my daughter's class. They are twin boys and clearly suffer from ADHD. At a recent Pokemon card game event, the instructor told them, "You guys are just like a 12 outta 5, aren't ya..."