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1981 was a different time for computing. It was expensive (both hardware and software), and it was far from a given that machines from one vendor would be able to talk to those from another. In fact, Columbia University had just such a problem, so in 1981, Frank da Cruz and Bill Catchings designed a … Continue reading Celebrating 45 Years of Kermit with the First New C-Kermit Release in 15 Years (and working with a decades-old C codebase) →
AI sure is a hot topic right now, and I see a lot of people arguing about it. To a lot of people around here, I’m the “computer person” they know and I get asked a lot about AI. I’m going to suggest a lot of things can be true at once. For instance: LLMs … Continue reading Artificial Intelligence: Shades of Gray →
I just made up a Debian trixie setup that has no need for a GUI. In fact, I rarely use the text console either. However, because the machine is dual boot and also serves another purpose, it’s connected to my main monitor and KVM switch. The monitor has three inputs, and when whatever display it’s … Continue reading Screen Power Saving in the Linux Console →
Like many, bot traffic has been causing significant issues for my hosted server recently. I’ve been noticing a dramatic increase in bots that do not respect robots.txt, especially the crawl-delay I have set there. Not only that, but many of them are sending user-agent strings that are quite precisely matching what desktop browsers send. That … Continue reading A Twisty Maze of Ill-Behaved Bots →
Here on a summer night in the grass and lilac smell Drunk on the crickets and the starry sky, Oh what fine stories we could tell With this moonlight to tell them by. A summer night, and you, and paradise, So lovely and so filled with grace, Above your head, the universe has hung its … Continue reading Dreams of Late Summer →
More in programming
In this video, we look at why fork() needs copy-on-write, how it works inside the kernel, and a memory usage problem that Instagram encountered with Python.
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In his Rails World keynote, David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) declared the end for writing code by hand for professional work – at 37signals at least. Is this change now unstoppable?
My last official contribution to GitHub was something I’ve wanted for a long time: Writing the code to display an ACCESSIBILITY.md file’s contents on the repository landing page. This content lives in the same tab component that the README, License, Code of Conduct, Security, and important information is surfaced. For example, I’m using an ACESSIBILITY.md file located in ./github to communicate my accessibility statement on my a11y-webring.club repository. Here’s an image of it in action: The file only appears if it is supplied, so it is not a required part of creating or maintaining a repository. However, it is my hope that the act of providing one becomes more commonplace the same way providing those other special kinds of files are. Another broader hope I have is that this promotion of content helps to normalize accessibility as a consideration and practice in some small way—something that helps to send a signal of a mature software project. I’m excited to see how people use this new addition to the platform. I would also like to extend a huge thank you to Jan Maarten and Maria Lamardo for their help getting this effort across the finish line.
