/dev/chat

7:00 PM

@Jesse_b hah, that is a nice command. I like journalctl -fu for similar reasons :-)

Yeah unfortunately it's also unnecessary :p
`-f` forces an update of the cache and returns everything
`-u` forces an update of the cache and returns nothing

Fabby

@Jesse_b The DS (French: Déesse=goddess) is a relly nice car and was way ahead of its time, so if you have the patience and the technical knowledge: go for it!

Jesse_b

so sysinfo -fu is no different than just sysinfo -u :(

derobert

... I would suggest monitoring if sysinfo is working right (I presume that's some internal thing?), maybe that actually gains something. Not sure.

@Jesse_b ah, well journalctl -fu «whatever.service» not only needs both the -f and the -u, then have to be in that order since -u takes an argument

I mean, you could write journalctl -u «whatever.service» -f, but... why?

Fabby

@JeffSchaller US International keyboard layout with dead keys

Jeff Schäller, Stéphane,

Jesse_b

7:03 PM

@derobert Yeah we definitely could use more monitoring and have plans for it but there are a whole plethora of reasons that isn't possible right now. Some valid, others maybe not so much

derobert

Though I'd be really tempted, ok, probably would, just have the system try sysinfo -f a few times in a loop at bootup if that's when its failing to get whatever info. A little bit of work with grep & sleep can solve a lot of services that sometimes don't respond :-(

Fabby

Can do all of this @JeffSchaller

Jesse_b

There is currently only really one person that handles this entire monitoring stack and I believe I have sort of been tasked with assisting/possibly taking over (yeah I know things aren't perfect over here) and I have never had contact with the vendor, nor do I know that much about our setup

derobert

@Fabby Aha! If I put ⅓ in my username, you'll be thwarted!

Jesse_b

That one person is also possibly taking over an entire department that also just got broken into multiple other departments. Our main customer (who also happened to buy our entire company) is becoming increasingly more demanding and unsatisfied with seemingly everything

Fabby

7:07 PM

@derobert Only of the first letter would be. Otherwide I would still type @ d e (without the spaces) and then [Tab]

:P ;-)

derobert

Yes, unless I were to become @⅓derobert. Wonder what the other ⅔ would be...

Jesse_b

Our monitoring system doesn't currently miss anything (I mean it could be better at a lot of things but as it currently is we definitely have the ability to effectively monitor the entire infrastructure) <- I think this point alone is worth highlighting.

derobert

Yes, that is a good thing. And quite an achievement, really. So easy to miss things...

Jesse_b

I'm currently on shift entirely by myself. I am monitoring 9000+ (probably 10000+ at this point) servers, probably ~1000 WAN connections, easily 1000+ switches, 100+ routers, firewalls, loadbalancers, etc

I am completely confident that nothing will be missed and I can handle it entirely by myself

Fabby

@derobert Now I could say something to that, but for once, I'm going to keep my big mouth shut.

0:-)

Jesse_b

7:10 PM

So since that is pretty awesome, and we have issues that are astronomically more pressing, I think it's fair the monitoring system gets put on the back burner

Fabby

@Jesse_b In how many countries?

derobert

@Jesse_b Yeah. Sounds like it is.

Fabby

that's impressive though... Until last Friday I was just in charge of 6 sites...

Faheem Mitha

Hi @Fabby. I see you're still addicted to emoticons.

Jesse_b

@Fabby four. US, Amsterdam, Singapore, and Korea

three different US states

Fabby

7:12 PM

@Jesse_b I used to be in charge of Amsterdam sites as a DC Manager

Lost the job, so looking for something else.

Jesse_b

@Fabby Damn I'm sorry to hear that. Isn't that the job you just got?

Fabby

@FaheemMitha I can do worse!

@Jesse_b Yup...

Faheem Mitha

@Fabby You lost your job? Sorry to hear that.

Fabby

@Jesse_b But I'm still glad it got me out of the hell-hole my previous job was...

Faheem Mitha

@Fabby Oh dear.

Fabby

7:14 PM

@FaheemMitha Kharma: *It was meant to be. Had an interview for another job yesterday already.

Another US Company called Digital Realty.

Faheem Mitha

@Fabby Karma. And there's no such thing.

Jesse_b

@Fabby Meh. The best job I've ever had was on the maintenance crew of a golf course. The grass has never been greener since. Literally or figuratively

Faheem Mitha

What happened? Downsizing?

Fabby

@FaheemMitha I know, but in this case, It is as I'm still glad to be out of Germany and out of the TPM job.

@FaheemMitha We mutually decided Oracle's attitude was not for me and my attitude was not for Oracle...

derobert

@FaheemMitha 🙼😀😁😂😃😄😇🙽

Fabby

7:16 PM

0:-)

Faheem Mitha

@Fabby What does Oracle have to do with it?

Fabby

@derobert :D :D :D Starred!

Faheem Mitha

@derobert That wasn't intended as encouragement.

Jesse_b

@Fabby hah. I think everyone else had come to that conclusion a decade ago :p

Fabby

@FaheemMitha That was the company I worked for until last Friday...

Faheem Mitha

7:17 PM

@Fabby You worked for Oracle? I didn't realise that.

Jesse_b

Oracle is pretty much "those who must not be mentioned" in my company

Fabby

@Jesse_b I was convinced by an ex-colleague it was much better than the hell-hole I was in...

And he was right: Just out of the fire and into the frying pan for my personality.

Jesse_b

This company was founded by the aftermath of the oracle acquisition of Sun

derobert

@FaheemMitha Now I'll have to figure out how the variation selectors work, so I can get them in different colors :-P

Fabby

@Jesse_b The Sun guys ~~are~~ were really nice to work with...

.. it's the other people.

0:-)

Faheem Mitha

7:19 PM

I should learn to keep my big mouth shut. Though it's a bit late in the day for that.

I blame my mother. She should have bought me up better.

Fabby

@FaheemMitha I have the same problem: Every now and then when I open my mouth, my mother comes out!

0:-) ;-)

@Jesse_b I've been googling and can't figure it out... Care to enlighten me?

Jesse_b

@Fabby Joyent

Fabby

Never heard of them. Googling now.

Jesse_b

I honestly don't know the exact situation that led to the founding of this company but I know that almost all of our original engineering team was from sun

Fabby

@Jesse_b Funny. I used to work for Virtustream until 2 months and 1 week ago and Oracle Cloud Infrastrcture until 1 week ago

('Virtustream is the Dell Technologies Business Critical Cloud arm: also a niche player...)

derobert

7:26 PM

@Fabby Hah, so we used to have equipment colocated at a Virtustream facility (which we had before Virtustream acquired the colo). Until earlier this year, when they got rid of colo and we moved to Google Cloud.

Fabby

@Jesse_b Huh... Didn't know Joyent was ~~the originator~~ a contributor of ZFS...

derobert

I thought that was Sun?

Fabby

@derobert Corrected.

@derobert In the US?

Because I decommissioned UKDC2...

derobert

@Fabby Yeah, Tysons Corner (Vienna) in US-VA

Fabby

But that was 2 years ago, not one.

@derobert That was Steve's decom project.

(maybe the name rings a bell, not putting his full name here)

I canned him Steve "the voice" because when he spoke up, he drowned out anyone on a conference call)

Even me, and I'm a loudmouth! >:-)

derobert

7:30 PM

There might have been a Steve, not sure. I hardly ever spoke to the Virtustream people. Mostly our servers just sat there, doing their thing. Hardly ever needed to talk to the Virtustream folks, beyond opening a ticket to go and replace a disk or whatnot. And that was by email.

Fabby

@derobert And I was in Project Management and I would have reached out here if I ever would have talked to a "De Robert"

So you were a customer while I was still working there, but we never met...

derobert

Apparently

Fabby

@derobert And only the first 3 letters of my handle coincide with my first name as it's quite rare...

Jesse_b

@Fabby They named an air freshener after you

Fabby

@Jesse_b I know it's a brand of Italian toiletry bags too.

Jesse_b

7:34 PM

ouch

Although what is a toiletry bag?

Oh I see, that's not so bad

derobert

@Fabby It's possible you dealt with my boss (who has both a common first and last name, so that's not going to help), I didn't deal with any of the business stuff.

Fabby

@Jesse_b What do you lot across the pond call it then? (a "Toiletry bag)

Jeff Schaller

@Fabby derobert isn't just any Robert, he's the Robert (if I'm remembering my 3 words of German correctly)

Fabby

@JeffSchaller Der Robert in German, De Robert on Dutch or French.

Hi BTW!

Jeff Schaller

@Fabby oh! I thought "de"(German) was "the"(English)

derobert

7:36 PM

Hah, it's actually just the first 8 letters of my last name, DeRobertis... Which is Italian, not German.

Jeff Schaller

@Fabby and hi! Thanks for the glow-in-the-dark keyboard :)

@Fabby maybe "dopp kit"?

derobert

Unfortunately it's not anything interesting. Just everyone knows usernames have an 8-character limit. Well, or at least they did when I first picked it...

Fabby

@JeffSchaller YW! It's a but upsetting at first when you switch as " and ` and ' are dead keys, but you get used to it withing 2 weeks.

Jeff Schaller

@Fabby you'd be amazed at how slowly I change :)

Fabby

If it's just for Stéphane, don't change...

Jeff Schaller

7:38 PM

@Fabby done!

Fabby

but if you need €, ß, ² ³ , it's worth it...

derobert

@Fabby That sounds really annoying, with the amount that ', ", and ` are used in programming and Unix

Compose key doesn't have those problems :-)

Fabby

@derobert you just have to type a space after them.

Jeff Schaller

now, besides going to the top user list, I can just come to /dev/chat and check the star board

derobert

@JeffSchaller Eventually it'll just be filled with emoticons to @FaheemMitha's eternal regret.

Jesse_b

7:40 PM

@Fabby The military calls them a hygiene bag but I had never heard of them at all before then

I don't think they are widely used in the US

Jeff Schaller

@derobert we'll have to ask if he prefers happy faces or monkeys

Fabby

@Gilles I'm bailing out as an active member...

derobert

Pretty sure toiletry bag is the name in the US. E.g., amazon.com/Toiletry-Bags/b?ie=UTF8&node=387321011

Jesse_b

@JeffSchaller Just come to /dev/chat and ask me to hold down my é key

Fabby

@derobert I wonder why @FaheemMitha dislikes emoticons that much?

Jeff Schaller

7:42 PM

@Jesse_b thanks for the backup, Jesse :)

Fabby

The problem with me is that I have a satirical sense of humour and if I don't use them, I'd offend many more people...

Jesse_b

@derobert yeah a search for "hygiene bag" is auto corrected to toiletry bag

In my neighborhood they would have been called "Hey lets go beat up the guy with that man purse"

derobert

@Fabby Don't know, maybe he's like 🙄 or 🙁 or even 😠.

Jeff Schaller

I was going to say, it's called "the bag I don't have because I just throw my toothbrush into the larger suitcase"

@derobert or 🙈 or 🙉

Fabby

@JeffSchaller I started using one since my shaving foam was all over my underwear after coming out of the airplane.

derobert

7:46 PM

@JeffSchaller Might have even achieved 😒 by now... Let's hope not 😱

Fabby

(In the previous millennium when you were still allowed to transport shaving foam)

>:-)

My favourite smiley

derobert

@Fabby I have one in my suitcase just so I can quickly find all the stuff to toss in the bathroom. Rather than digging through all the clothes and stuff to see where the toothpaste decided to hide.

Fabby

It used to get me in all sorts of trouble, so I've changed it to this one instead

Jesse_b

I'm reminded daily that a watched zpool never resilvers

derobert

@Jesse_b I've always wondered what happens if you set two teapots on adjacent burners, watching each other.

Jesse_b

7:50 PM

@derobert I legitimately lol'd

My teapot is opaque so I can't watch it

derobert

Mine is electric, so I'm not sure it counts. And opaque too, but if I open the top I could watch it.

Jesse_b

haha

man

was just watching this zpool. Was sitting at 95% claiming almost 2 hours remaining

less than 1 minute after I logged off the resilver finished

Fabby

@Jesse_b Are you familiar with a microsoft minute.

Jesse_b

@Fabby yeah

Fabby

Ah...

Jesse_b

7:53 PM

zfs is actually pretty good at estimating the time remaining except for in the last hour or so

Fabby

Well, what you saw is the opposite: a Linux hour: That finished in under 1 minute

Jesse_b

The estimated time remaining is basically 100% made up in the last hour

derobert

@Jesse_b Better than the company-who-shall-not-be-named's storage pool, which will tell you it'll be 15 minutes, come back in an hour and hope.

Jesse_b

@derobert =)

Fabby

@derobert Does Microsoft do storage pooling nowadays? They must've run out of drive letters...

>:-)

Jesse_b

7:55 PM

@derobert Regardless what pool I'm using I always cross my fingers and hope whenever I run zpool detach...

derobert

@Fabby No, the other company that shall not be named. The one we were talking about earlier, and I'm afraid if we say any more times we may summon them. Or worse, one of their products.

Though I guess they do sort of own ZFS now :-(

Fabby

@derobert Ah, the one I used to work for: a pemanent blame on my CV... ;-(

derobert

Their database has its own storage manager, or at least did at one point...

Jesse_b

their database was so unruly they had to release their own operating system to package it with

Fabby

I used to be a DBA on their DB back in the version 5-6-7-8 days...

@Jesse_b First version I ever ran, ran on Novell Netware...

(That's how old I am)

derobert

7:58 PM

I think the oldest one I ever used was 7 or 8.

Fabby

Hi Magic mushroom!

Gilles

@Fabby Are you still going to read notifications here?

Fabby

@Gilles I've stopped reviewing queues, answering questions, ... still around for the people I know....

Gilles

@Fabby I don't know who you're referring to. I'm a mushroom's reproductory apparatus.

Jesse_b

@Fabby I didn't know @Gilles was into the dark arts

Gilles

7:59 PM

@Jesse_b Well, I use emacs and vi

Fabby

You both cracked me up! 0:-)

Jesse_b

@Gilles BLACK MAGIC!

derobert

I used to play a mushroom on Seasoned Advice. But I haven't been active there in ages.

Fabby

I forgot Gilles was the reproductive apparatus of the mushroom.

@derobert 10K user nonetheless!

double of my rep there!

Gilles

So how can we keep in touch, form an interest group? How would we even define this interest group?

Faheem Mitha

8:01 PM

@Fabby I don't dislike them. I sometimes use them. But moderation in all things.

Gilles

I think the best way to summarize my own interest would be: a Wikipedia of the non-notable.

Fabby

@Gilles That's the issue with platforms: My personal web site is down, so I cannot open that any more.

Jesse_b

@Gilles A group of people interested in exchanging information originally related to software stacks but then eventually bleeding into almost all aspects of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

Fabby

@Gilles We can open a discord group, or a free Slack channel, but those are platforms too.

Gilles

@Jesse_b sandraandwoo.com/2009/11/19/0113-freedom-justice-cookies

Fabby

8:03 PM

So unless you have a web server with your own forum software IRC chat, ...

Gilles

@Fabby 1. I don't and 2. I really don't want to collect people's PII

Fabby

@Gilles Please elaborate "PII" (Pentium IIs? Pee?)

derobert

@Fabby personally identifying info

Gilles

Personal data

Personal data, also known as personal information, personally identifying information (PII), or sensitive personal information (SPI), is any information relating to identifying a person. The abbreviation PII is widely accepted in the United States, but the phrase it abbreviates has four common variants based on personal / personally, and identifiable / identifying. Not all are equivalent, and for legal purposes the effective definitions vary depending on the jurisdiction and the purposes for which the term is being used. Under European and other data protection regimes, which centre primarily...

Fabby

Oh. Never seen it called PII before

derobert

8:05 PM

@Gilles truth, freedom, justice... and a hard boiled egg :-)

Fabby

Liberté, égalité, fraternité? (or is that too socialist???)

I need a smoke! BRB

derobert

@Fabby Well, it'd be good if we could lose fewer heads than the first several French Republics. Though looking at my avatar, possibly I'm immune. Probably all of us are...

overexchange

0

Q: volumes_from instruction - docker compose

With the below docker-compose.yml file: test: build: ../../ dockerfile: docker/dev/Dockerfile volumes_from: - cachev cachev: build: ../../ dockerfile: docker/dev/Dockerfile volumes: - /build entrypoint: "true" cachev service in above file launches volume container that...

Is my understanding correct? as per this question...

Fabby

@Gilles We coud do Mastodon

Faheem Mitha

@derobert Is snapshot.debian.org still a thing? It seems to be experiencing some stress.

derobert

8:11 PM

@FaheemMitha So far as I know it is. Working here. At least the main webpage.

Gilles

@derobert what does your avatar represent, anyway? Google image search just thinks it's “darkness”

@FaheemMitha I remember it not being very fast, which is understandable since it's not something a lot of people need

derobert

@Gilles It's a partial image of the Mandelbrot set

Fabby

@Gilles Mandelbrot

derobert

Funny Google tells you its darkness, it tells me its "orange"

Jesse_b

I always thought it was lightning

Faheem Mitha

8:14 PM

I thought it was lightning too. Till Anthony explained.

Fabby

I once pushed all RAM of an HP UX machine to disk by running my own PASCAL Mandelbrot program in debugging mode (30 years ago) @derobert

I wanted an A1 plot of the full Mandelbrot set...

and the only plotter with more than 4 colours on University campus was in the engineering department...

and the algorithm to convert pixels to lines was not very afficient...

Got me banned from that system forever (and I never got the plot).

But I was allowed the use of the Olivetti PCs with Mathematical coprocessor instead. (8087: that's how long ago it was)

derobert

30 years ago, that'd be a pretty big framebuffer if you did it any of the obvious ways

Faheem Mitha

@Gilles So, are you still a SE user for now?

Gilles

@FaheemMitha for now, yes, but I can see the writing on the wall

Fabby

@FaheemMitha He obviously is still talking to us...

Faheem Mitha

8:18 PM

@Fabby Hmm?

Fabby

@Gilles Same here...

Jesse_b

@Gilles The facebook wall? That doesn't seem like the right platform to move to

Faheem Mitha

@Gilles The pronouns thing? Or more general issues?

Jesse_b

trollface.jpeg

Fabby

@FaheemMitha If he would not be a user any more, he would not be able to log on...

Faheem Mitha

8:19 PM

@Fabby Replace that with "active user".

Fabby

8 mins ago, by Fabby

@Gilles We coud do Mastodon

Sorry Faheem! Clicked wrong!

Gilles

@FaheemMitha It's many things, but mostly the general hostility from SE: they jump when someone blinks on Twitter but do nothing when people who actually use the site raise concerns; they have no qualms to push scammy and offensive ads; they're fine with slandering one of the most devoted volunteers; and now the xenophobic pronoun policy

Faheem Mitha

@Gilles That mostly sounds on target, except for the ads, which I haven't noticed.

Perhaps because I use an ad blocker.

Gilles

@FaheemMitha Neither have I, because I use an ad blocker

Jeff Schaller

@FaheemMitha meta.stackexchange.com/users/398063/…

Faheem Mitha

8:23 PM

I notice they mostly ignore feature requests, for example. And possibly bug reports too.

Though I don't keep overall track, so it's possible they do fix bugs.

Gilles

@FaheemMitha Check out recent questions at meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/advertising

Faheem Mitha

@Gilles Ok.

Jesse_b

@JeffSchaller: How close is this to your results: gist.github.com/jessebutryn/d9b52345cc849b82442ed86a70f242d4

derobert

Yeah, I've also only seen reports of the ads, for the same reason. At least that one I can understand though — they just signed up for an advertising network, and they don't want to hand-review everything. And even if they did, they don't have the experts to do it...

Jeff Schaller

@FaheemMitha they also fixed things that no one asked for (meta.stackexchange.com/questions/312365/…)

6 hours ago, by Jeff Schaller

4: 1
7: 2
9: 2
a: 53
b: 8
c: 47
d: 32
e: 62
f: 18
g: 19
h: 17
i: 35
j: 2
k: 11
l: 37
m: 33
n: 36
o: 32
p: 31
q: 12
r: 37
s: 46
t: 55
u: 29
v: 6
w: 10
x: 10
y: 4
z: 1

Jesse_b

8:26 PM

doh

Gilles

@derobert Yes, but: I remember reading a meta post where they said they'd chosen an ad provider that was supposed to not carry scammy or malware ads. But when such ads came through, they did not stop using that ad provider.

Jeff Schaller

@Jesse_b but I think we gathered different data

ilkkachu

@JeffSchaller that wasn't too bad though, except for the hiding of the "newest questions link" (the whole sidebar)

Faheem Mitha

@JeffSchaller Yes, I think I remember that. Isn't that the cross-site "redesign" that got TeX SE so upset?

Jesse_b

@JeffSchaller Yeah I'm looking at all the commands in my /bin's as well as all keywords and builtins

$ sort -t \: -nk2,2 jeff
4: 1
z: 1
7: 2
9: 2
j: 2
y: 4
v: 6
b: 8
w: 10
x: 10
k: 11
q: 12
h: 17
f: 18
g: 19
u: 29
p: 31
d: 32
o: 32
m: 33
i: 35
n: 36
l: 37
r: 37
s: 46
c: 47
a: 53
t: 55
e: 62

Jeff Schaller

8:28 PM

@FaheemMitha several sites upset, if I recall

Jesse_b

seems to be not far off though

Faheem Mitha

@JeffSchaller TeX was particularly vocal.

derobert

@Gilles I suspect there really isn't an ad provider that doesn't have at least a few scammy ads. At least when scammy includes all scams, not just ones that happen to be illegal.

Fabby

@JeffSchaller 100% useless, but 100% entertaining and fun!

:-) ;-)

Gilles

@derobert You're probably right. And this is where a non-evil company would have decided “this is not ok, we need to revise our business plan”.

Stack Overflow was non-evil in its first few years, but that's over

Faheem Mitha

8:32 PM

@Gilles They probably have limited ways of making income off the site.

Gilles

@FaheemMitha That's why I'd prefer a donation-based model like Wikipedia

derobert

@Gilles The ads strike me as one of the smaller complaints. But maybe that's because I use adblock. But I've got to imagine anyone who doesn't already knows to ignore them.

Gilles

To me the ideal solution would be to find a way to fit in Wikimedia

derobert

I wish they'd gone with a different model, too. But unfortunately ads seem to be the most successful model on the Internet.

Gilles

@derobert Sure, “get an adblocker” is the #1 advice I get to people when they ask me how to be secure online (#2 is to do security updates, #3 is to write down passwords)

@derobert That's changing. Joe Schmoe uses an adblocker these days.

statista.com/statistics/351862/adblocking-usage

Fabby

8:35 PM

@Gilles #1 is to use FireFox with AdBlockplus

I also block all cookies, except for sites I specifically allow and disable all Javascripts, except for sites I specifically allow.

(but that's a bit much for the average joe)

derobert

Is it? I think Joe Schmoe probably browses the web on a phone more nowadays, which is probably running Android. And those people are probably using Chrome, which doesn't have one...

(No doubt because it's in Google's financial interest for it to not have one)

Gilles

@derobert Not every Joe Schmoe, but it's no longer a thing only geeks do

derobert

@Gilles That link is behind a paywall here :-(

Fabby

Firefox with AdBlockplus again...

derobert

@Fabby Indeed, but last I heard Firefox's market share on mobile was in the single-digit percentages

Gilles

8:38 PM

@derobert oh? partial paywall for me, I could see the top stats. Basically ~33% of adblocker adoption in Europe in 2019.

No idea how they measure it, and I'm sure different sources will have different figures, but my point is the order of magnitude: it's not restricted to a tiny part of the population.

anyhow...

derobert

@Gilles Any idea of trend, though? I would guess declining, due to greater % mobile. In which case... it doesn't threaten the business model.

Gilles

@derobert I remember it sharply increasing in 2017–2019, when mobile was already growing

What's the adblock situation on iphone?

derobert

I think Safari has some built-in one finally

Gilles

On Android you can install firefox, which IIRC has adblock built in now. I don't know how many people do that.

Fabby

Smart people do... :-) ;-)

derobert

8:43 PM

@Gilles gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/mobile/… tells me Firefox's mobile market share is <1%

Gilles

netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx says not many: 60% Chrome, 25% Safari

yeah, I do wonder how this reconciles with adblock stats

Fabby

@Gilles Less than one percent: Wikipedia

Urgh, I'm slow...

derobert

@Gilles It probably doesn't. A bunch of numbers from not rigorous research not matching.

Gilles

So anyhow... Where can we communicate?

Slack is free, but doesn't keep much message history

everyone has email, but that means someone needs to have everyone's email address

derobert

And no one uses usenet anymore :-P

Jesse_b

8:54 PM

aol instant messenger

Gilles

usenet is public

bbs

messages written on the shaved heads of slaves

derobert

Yeah, not sure where to have a private, archived conversation. Other than email.

Could do a private mailing list, but I'm not sure who provides those anymore. Other than one of the big your-data-is-our-business Internet companies.

Gilles

> Our list hosting starts at $3.25 per list per month.

derobert

Google will do it for "free"

Gilles

There are two privacy aspects: protecting the list of all subscribers, and protecting the sender's email address. I don't think a mailing list would help with the second.

Question is, do we care?

It's not that hard to set up a pseudonymous email address.

derobert

8:59 PM

I've never really considered my email address private.

Gilles

I have various firstname.lastname emails which I am not sharing here.

I also have an email address that I'm willing to share, I just prefer not to advertise it too much to avoid email spam (it's still a thing, although not much) and also to avoid people contacting me to answer their questions

derobert

I'm just saying I'm not the right person to ask about that, I don't care. Though I think some mailing lists can hide the sender address (though always beware of your own email clients or servers putting it in a header somewhere that gets through, or at least parts of it)

Fabby

@Gilles Let me look into more depth into this federated server platform.

(Reading user docs now, admin is next but not today any more)

23:02 now, going to finish watching my film and then sleep and continue tomorrow.

Gilles

Every time you email a file to yourself so you can pull it up on your friend's laptop, Tim Berners-Lee sheds a single tear.

seems that “sending email” is getting hard these days

Fabby

I'm in-between jobs anyway, so I have time

derobert

9:04 PM

The annoying thing about social network platforms is that it's yet another place to check for updates. Email is nice, it's all one place.

Fabby

@derobert The one I'm looking into right now is federated, but I remember one being distributed a few years ago.

derobert

(I suspect that on most providers, the email list admin would be able to see the subscriber list too.)

Fabby

Then it would just run partly on your own machine

derobert

@Fabby That doesn't really help. It's still another place to check for updates. (I mean another place for me to check, regardless of what machine it's on) It's still (if I want it on my phone) another app. Etc.

Annoying thing about web forums too.

Fabby

@derobert I'll see if you can send updates in your inbox.

Gilles

9:07 PM

@Fabby @derobert @anyone interested in building a platform for knowledge sharing with community-based governance: feel free to contact me at the gmail email address gilles.stackexchange. This is NOT an offer to answer Unix questions or anything other than building a new platform.

Fabby

@Gilles Want a star?

Gilles

@Fabby not really — I don't know how big a risk it is, but I don't want to be inundated with people asking me unix questions

Or, for that matter, with pronoun hate mail

Fabby

@Gilles i just sent you a smiley.

derobert

@Gilles ping sent

Fabby

and I'm the Unix Admin of one system, so I'll never ask you any questions about Unix administration...

Gilles

9:10 PM

got them

Fabby

(For me, it's a hobby; for you, it's a job)

I have to deal with Windoze all day long, so for me my ~~dumb~~ private Ubuntu system is just an escape from reality)

Gilles

I've never done sysadmin professionally. Or at least it's never been part of my job, even when I did it for my employer.

Fabby

Next thing you're going to tell me is you're actually the CIO of a small company!

>:-)

Gilles

@Fabby @derobert Are you ok with sharing each others' email? with being included if more join?

Fabby

@Gilles Yup.

Gilles

9:13 PM

see, that's the problem with PII, it keeps wanting to spill over

derobert

@Gilles fine with me

Fabby

gmail is to write emails... (only ready it when looking for jobs)

Faheem Mitha

@Gilles Pinged as well. Though I don't know much use I could be. And I don't have much time these days.

Gilles

ok, now I have to figure out how to organize stuff on gmail... I mostly use it for read-only emails

Faheem Mitha

What's a good way to convert a text file to PDF?

Gilles

9:15 PM

a while ago I'd have said a2ps | ps2pdf but surely there must be something better these days

Print buffer in Emacs

Oh, markdown

derobert

@FaheemMitha pdflatex?

Gilles

That's lightweight enough that if you have ordinary text with a blank line to separate paragraphs, it's probably markdown

Faheem Mitha

I just trying pandoc, and it scrambled the text.

Kusalananda

@FaheemMitha pdflatex? If your text file contains LaTeX markup that is :-)

Faheem Mitha

@derobert I was wondering if someone would say that. :-)

Gilles

9:16 PM

@FaheemMitha just put a blank line between paragraphs

Fabby

@FaheemMitha DeRobert beat me to it.

Kusalananda

@derobert Oh, I'm slow today...

Fabby

And looking at Kusalananda, everyone wanted to say that!

Faheem Mitha

@Kusalananda It doesn't, but I could easily add boilerplate and wrap it in a verbatim environment.

derobert

I mean, if you just want to dump plain text to a PDF file, then yeah there are a bunch of tools that will do that. Enscript followed by ps2pdf comes to mind

Faheem Mitha

9:17 PM

I'm not sure why I seem to end up using TeX for everything, though.

Kusalananda

groff?

Gilles

ed?

Kusalananda

I mean, there are many ways to skin that cat.

derobert

Or... it's a one-off thing and you care about the formatting, LibreOffice

Jesse_b

@Kusalananda I thought you didn't want to see the contents of your cat?

Faheem Mitha

9:18 PM

Yes, it's pretty much a one-off thing.

Fabby

LibreOffice it is then!

Kusalananda

@Jesse_b Metaphorical cat.

derobert

@Kusalananda I'm not sure the contents of a metaphorical cat is any better.

Jesse_b

Aug 9 at 18:16, by Kusalananda

I don't want to know what's in my cat.

Faheem Mitha

@derobert Does enscript preserve formatting? And if so, what's the syntax if I want to turn foo.txt to foo.pdf?

Kusalananda

9:20 PM

@Jesse_b I got to know what was in my cat today actually. Poop... on the floor in the hallway.

derobert

@FaheemMitha Plain text doesn't have formatting.

Faheem Mitha

Normally I'd try to read the man page, but it's the middle of the night and I'm on a bit of a self-imposed deadline.

Jesse_b

@Kusalananda :( my cat does that from time to time

They say it's an act of aggression but I think the poop sometimes just gets stuck on his butt fur

Kusalananda

Well, this was our sick missy. She does that when her tummy doesn't want to the game.

Faheem Mitha

Never mind, Libreoffice seems to produce good enough output. Moving on...

Gilles

9:22 PM

@FaheemMitha Do you want to preserve line breaks? Try sed 's/$/ /' | pandoc -o foo.pdf

Faheem Mitha

@Gilles Yes, I do want to preserve line breaks. That's what I meant by formatting. Though wrapping is good too. Thanks for the tip.

Hurray. My weird LuaTeX code works!

Gilles

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