em-dash's recent activity
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Comment on Dragon Con 2026 in ~hobbies
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Comment on Dragon Con 2026 in ~hobbies
em-dash Link ParentThe engineering is most of the fun for me, so a destroyed bot is mostly just an invitation to do more engineering. Spicy Donut has been through like five revisions at this point, and has...The engineering is most of the fun for me, so a destroyed bot is mostly just an invitation to do more engineering. Spicy Donut has been through like five revisions at this point, and has alternated between being a ring and shell spinner. I think shells are easier to build, but I never got the not-being-flipped-over part working well enough, so for this one I've gone back to the one that can just drive upside down.
The event itself is from 10:00-14:00, I think. (We get there earlier for setup.)
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Comment on Dragon Con 2026 in ~hobbies
em-dash Link ParentI have a 1lb (Flippin' Heck, a lifter) and a 3lb (Spicy Donut, a ring spinner) with me this year. You would have missed last year's exciting ending where the previous iteration of Spicy Donut took...I have a 1lb (Flippin' Heck, a lifter) and a 3lb (Spicy Donut, a ring spinner) with me this year. You would have missed last year's exciting ending where the previous iteration of Spicy Donut took a sawblade directly to the battery and filled the arena with smoke :D I'm not entirely confident in the redesign, but it's kind of my "fuck around with new ideas and see how they go" platform, so it'll be fun regardless.
It's a fun and surprisingly welcoming hobby. There are antweight kits you can get if you want to try it out without diving directly into fully custom everything.
Feel free to come say hi if you're there! I'm usually the only purple-haired transfem in the room, probably will have a table near the middle of the pit area.
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Comment on Dragon Con 2026 in ~hobbies
em-dash Link ParentI'm on my way there right now! Fourth year for me, I think? The big event for me is the robot battles on Sunday (I have two robots I'm running). My group is also doing one of the swordplay...I'm on my way there right now! Fourth year for me, I think?
The big event for me is the robot battles on Sunday (I have two robots I'm running). My group is also doing one of the swordplay workshops this year, which should be fun. Other than that, mostly wandering.
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Comment on Claude Code is the ceiling on vibe-coded software in ~tech
em-dash Link ParentI'm not sure it follows that the people who make a tool will necessarily be the best at using that tool, especially for something with this much adoption. I believe that they are among the...I'm not sure it follows that the people who make a tool will necessarily be the best at using that tool, especially for something with this much adoption. I believe that they are among the heaviest users of it, but that's not going to be perfectly correlated with output quality, especially in the very likely case that the best results with LLM coding tools come from people who don't delegate 100% of their thinking to them.
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Comment on Introductions | July 2026 in ~talk
em-dash Link ParentYou should not attempt to bite the TiC apple.You should not attempt to bite the TiC apple.
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Comment on Do you cook with cast iron? Is it the hassle everyone says it is? in ~food
em-dash Link ParentI just pull my smoke alarm off the ceiling and leave it outside until I'm done cooking. (My kitchen was designed by morons so there's no ventilation anywhere near the stove. At some point I want...I just pull my smoke alarm off the ceiling and leave it outside until I'm done cooking. (My kitchen was designed by morons so there's no ventilation anywhere near the stove. At some point I want to add a range hood.)
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Comment on Do you cook with cast iron? Is it the hassle everyone says it is? in ~food
em-dash LinkOn cleaning: if you pour water in it while it's still hot, ideally immediately after you finish cooking, the burnt food bits get much easier to scrape off with a spatula. Even if you're going to...On cleaning: if you pour water in it while it's still hot, ideally immediately after you finish cooking, the burnt food bits get much easier to scrape off with a spatula. Even if you're going to use soap on it afterward, it means you have much less scrubbing to do at that point.
Deglazing to make a pan sauce is the same thing except you usually use other liquids and don't discard the result.
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Comment on Commodore Callback flip phone in ~tech
em-dash Link ParentTwitter and Instagram aren't the only kind of social media. We're having a conversation on a social media site right now. There are several people I primarily communicate with on Fedi/Mastodon....Twitter and Instagram aren't the only kind of social media. We're having a conversation on a social media site right now.
There are several people I primarily communicate with on Fedi/Mastodon. Turns out Twitter-style feeds aren't so bad when you have the ability to curate them.
But also, I have little faith that people won't try to put e.g. Discord in that group, just because it's closer to that line than most IM apps are.
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Comment on Commodore Callback flip phone in ~tech
em-dash Link ParentPracticalities aside, I am so very tired of this "clearly the solution is to just not have social media" attitude all the minimalist-phone manufacturers seem to have. This isn't the first time...Practicalities aside, I am so very tired of this "clearly the solution is to just not have social media" attitude all the minimalist-phone manufacturers seem to have. This isn't the first time I've seen it.
It's a communication device! Banning one of the main ways I communicate with people makes it useless to me!
I don't need or want protection from myself, I want protection from companies trying to override my preferences for their own reasons.
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Comment on We're so back in ~tildes
em-dash Link ParentStill doesn't beat that time the site broke because we had a thread about software that misinterprets the text "null" as an actual null value, and then we found out Tildes had that exact bug. -
Comment on Your URL bar can be a CLI for searching websites in ~tech
em-dash Link ParentI also insist on split address/search boxes, but for an entirely different conceptual reason: URLs are just a different sort of thing than search strings in my mind, and so entering a URL is a...I also insist on split address/search boxes, but for an entirely different conceptual reason: URLs are just a different sort of thing than search strings in my mind, and so entering a URL is a different action than searching and belongs in its own UI component. It's the same reason it would never occur to me to try to search for files from a shell with
cd search terms.I'm oddly fascinated by this thing where you've arrived at the same conclusion via a path that is completely alien to me.
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Comment on What change would make you quit Tildes? in ~tildes
em-dash Link ParentI am here for the April 1 joke where we all post ASCII art renditions of memes for a day.I am here for the April 1 joke where we all post ASCII art renditions of memes for a day.
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Comment on Tildes Survey #7: What is your gender identity? (Results) in ~talk
em-dash Link ParentGrammatically, it's just a clarifying adjective, much like the floof I'm currently petting is both "a cat" and "a black cat". I treat it as a weak unidirectional signal that the person saying it...Grammatically, it's just a clarifying adjective, much like the floof I'm currently petting is both "a cat" and "a black cat". I treat it as a weak unidirectional signal that the person saying it is somewhere on the "ally" half of the ally-to-bigot spectrum, nothing more.
By "unidirectional" I mean its presence is meaningful, but its absence isn't. It's the same sort of thing as corporate rainbow logos: not making a rainbow variant of your logo doesn't mean you hate gay people, and making one doesn't really materially benefit anyone, but the act of doing so implies you're at least not the sort of people who refuse to do so on principle.
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Comment on Any fellow XCP-ng users here? in ~comp
em-dash Link(hi, I am the one who invited you, welcome!) I'm a "pile of containers on bare metal" sort of girl, which feels odd sometimes in a sea of hypervisors. You've seen the sort of deployment short...(hi, I am the one who invited you, welcome!)
Any odd homelab setups to share?
I'm a "pile of containers on bare metal" sort of girl, which feels odd sometimes in a sea of hypervisors. You've seen the sort of deployment
pipelinesshort tubes I come up with :)My switch toward NixOS is relatively recent; before this I ran mostly Alpine servers with a custom "rsync-with-hooks" script. I talked about it briefly here when I wrote it*; it later gained more exciting features like "secrets management by dumping part of my bitwarden vault to /etc/secrets". My main home server is still using that mostly because I am lazy and it's not bothersome enough to replace it.
(* That post mentions moving toward ARM machines. This never happened because support for Linux on most SBCs continues to be in the form of "here's a SD card image with a weird Debian fork, we support nothing else".)
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Comment on Any fellow XCP-ng users here? in ~comp
em-dash Link ParentCuriosity: what's the use case for nested hypervisors?Curiosity: what's the use case for nested hypervisors?
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Comment on Help me test my chess bot in ~games
em-dash Link ParentIt is also no longer accepting my challenges (just spins forever waiting for opponent). I choose to believe I am just so amazing that it finds me intimidating.It is also no longer accepting my challenges (just spins forever waiting for opponent). I choose to believe I am just so amazing that it finds me intimidating.
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Comment on Help me test my chess bot in ~games
em-dash Linkhttps://lichess.org/HzV5SQ7O - Not my best game ever, but I did win, largely because it missed a lot of obvious moves (in particular 33. Ne4???, turning what I thought was a queen trade into a...https://lichess.org/HzV5SQ7O - Not my best game ever, but I did win, largely because it missed a lot of obvious moves (in particular
33. Ne4???, turning what I thought was a queen trade into a free queen capture for me).https://lichess.org/wNliXQCf - Feels like it played better in this one, but also I destroyed it more thoroughly.
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Comment on Tildes Survey #1: How old are you? (Results) in ~talk
em-dash Link ParentTo be clear, that's a thing where you shoot lasers at CDs to put data on them. Please do not set CDs on fire in an attempt to summon us. It won't work and the fumes are probably bad for you.To be clear, that's a thing where you shoot lasers at CDs to put data on them.
Please do not set CDs on fire in an attempt to summon us. It won't work and the fumes are probably bad for you.
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Comment on AI Coding agents are the opposite of what I want in ~comp
em-dash Link ParentMy job is the thing I do to make people give me money, which I then spend on doing the things I actually want to do. I optimize heavily for low (time+stress):money ratio‚ and seek enjoyment and...My job is the thing I do to make people give me money, which I then spend on doing the things I actually want to do. I optimize heavily for low (time+stress):money ratio‚ and seek enjoyment and fulfillment elsewhere.
I do prefer certain types of work (interesting puzzles > arguing with CSS) but that's a secondary goal within a job, not something I would switch jobs over.
on burnout, depression, and how I got here
The shortest tenure I've ever had at a job was also the only job I've actively cared about beyond this purely transactional mindset. I left finance tech and moved over to education tech. But that care led me to accept far more of a time and stress commitment than I would have for any other job, and I did not handle it well. By the end of the one year I worked there, I burned out hard. I quit and took a few months off, and now I'm back to relatively boring business-y software. There's only so much emotion I can put into it, and that limits how badly it can hurt me.
This is, of course, a terribly depressing way to look at things. I certainly don't claim anyone else should actively try to feel this way. If you don't, I'm legitimately happy for you and I hope you stay that way.
But for me specifically, it's a mental health self-preservation thing.
Okay but important question: if that's where you're doing security, do you still get to participate in enforcement of the Frankenstein Rule?