pleroma.debian.social

pleroma.debian.social

Jonathan Dowland | @jmtd@pleroma.debian.social

Principal Software Engineer on #OpenJDK #RedHat. #Debian developer (dormant). Computer Science PhD student. Amateur Computing historian (Computer Science and H/W, esp. Commodore Amiga). Guerilla archivist.

XKCD Bot xkcd@mastodon.com.br

#3184 - Funny Numbers

A black-and-white line-drawn comic. At the top, a hanging banner reads: “Mathematical Society, 2025 Meeting”. Below the banner, four stick figures stand next to a white board. Three are on the left and one on the right. On the board is a list of numbers: “23 (skidoo!)” “42” “69” “420” “1,337” “58,008” The figures say: A: “Any other new developments from the year to cover before we wrap?” B: “Oh, the teens picked a new funny number.” C: “Aww, I’m glad to hear they’re still doing that.” D, the figure at the right, says "I’ll add it to the list”, writes "67" on the white board and circles it. Hidden text: "In 1899, people were walking around shouting '23' at each other and laughing, and confused reporters were writing articles trying to figure out what it meant."

Jonathan Dowland jmtd
@liw the triple-b releases broke my brain so much I often wonder if the release team had intended them to. At the very least I’d like Debian to move to leading with the version as you illustrate, in all official docs and communications.

Jonathan Dowland jmtd
@db awesome to know, thanks!

Jonathan Dowland jmtd
@neal @andrew_shadura Thanks for expanding. We agree that it's important to clearly distinguish between upstream and the distro changes; and that carrying too many changes at the distro level has serious drawbacks. Where we differ seems to be whether Dgit will make those matters worse or not. Frankly I don't know, but it's a concern worth taking seriously.

Jonathan Dowland jmtd
@sxa I don't, but that sounds like a useful tool.

Jonathan Dowland jmtd
@db which app? I did a copy edit of a book with acrobat once. It was a little clunky.

Jonathan Dowland jmtd
New blog post: Remarkable https://jmtd.net/log/remarkable/ #hardware

Jonathan Dowland jmtd
@neal @andrew_shadura that said, the most common source layout in debian packaging *with* git is for the source outside ./debian to be unmodified, and a stack of patches in debian/patches. IMHO this is a pain in the arse to work with: it lacks the convenience of "source as it is built", and the separation of "only ./debian is tracked". The worst of both worlds. It looks like Dgit encourages a move away from this.

Jonathan Dowland jmtd
@neal @andrew_shadura I think I understand better where you are coming from. Interestingly, pre-git it was more common to work with a fully split repo as you describe: with e.g. svn-buildpackage teams (inc. games team) typically kept only ./debian in the VCS.

Most packages moved to "upstream source present" in the debian branch with the move to git, partly because it was much more convenient to work with.

Jonathan Dowland jmtd

Hi Neal

@neal @Diziet

mangling packaging data into source code. I really wish they'd change how the source packaging model worked to firmly split it.

Would you be prepared to expand on this, please? I don't understand it. Perhaps it's because my historical experience is the inverse of yours (familiar with Deb, not too great with RPM).

From my POV Debian has a firmer split than RPM-style (orig.tar.gz; ./debian sub-dir; etc) so I must be missing something.

Jonathan Dowland jmtd
I've just used tag2upload for the first time. It was great!

#debian

Jonathan Dowland jmtd
@lproven @RogerBW @doop that and they didn’t reflect any content besides the root window iirc

Jonathan Dowland jmtd
@RogerBW @lproven that could literally have been a screenshot of my desktop 25 years ago. Aterm, an elegant terminal from a more civilised age.

Jonathan Dowland jmtd
The sheer scale of the downloads that Anna‘s archive are offering, the Spotify stuff and other stuff, really blows my mind. I’m struggling to move 70 GB of photos off of my camera!

Jonathan Dowland jmtd
@mcc Haskell has that problem too

Jonathan Dowland jmtd
Idle thought: what if hyper-efficiency (e.g. tiled window management, which prompted this thought) results in more efficient procrastination or attention-deficit rather than designed-task efficiency?

Glyph glyph@mastodon.social

it's truly amazing what LLMs can achieve. we now know it's possible to produce an html5 parsing library with nothing but the full source code of an existing html5 parsing library, all the source code of all other open source libraries ever, a meticulously maintained and extremely comprehensive test suite written by somebody else, 5 different models, a megawatt-hour of energy, a swimming pool full of water, and a month of spare time of an extremely senior engineer

Jonathan Dowland jmtd
mind you the copy playing out on 6music right now sounds muddy as hell

Jonathan Dowland jmtd
Technically, this isn't a christmas song, right? But those bells make it sound so

c.f. https://jmtd.net/log/christmas_songs_that_are_not/(2012)

https://dizl.de/@JBsWhatsOn6/115734514174311762

Jonathan Dowland jmtd
@mjg59 I’m sure an independent expert witness testimony and associated costs would not be very welcome

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