Between work (layoffs still ongoing), home (found out we have a leak in the roof), neighborhood (a board member being negative, toxic, and uncooperative), family (worried about my kid’s future and small health issues of my own), and a few other minor yet no less important events, I am bearing a decent load of stress these days.
It will end, everything ends. How well is yet to be seeing.
family me workIt is now 10 September 2026, and yesterday the boy told me he scheduled his GRE exam for 13 October 2026. I first noted about this on 28 May 2026. Better late than never, right?
family oobieAfter the 2024 disaster, under which we live and endure today, Garrett wrote:
There’s no other way to say it. We failed our children. We failed our climate. We failed our trans community. We failed our immigrants. We failed our middle class. We failed our increasingly desperate houseless population. We failed people of color. We failed our schools. We failed our future. We took the first steps over the threshold as a nation last night, into the dark unknown. The experiment is over, and we failed to prevent this disaster.
And he continued:
I am heartbroken, horrified, disgusted, terrified, angry, and I am gravely concerned this is an event from which we may never recover. The next four years—whatever they hold—will reshape this country permanently, irreparably, in ways we cannot even yet fully conceive.
If you live in the US today, you know he was then quite accurate. Like a Nostradamus of sorts. He ends:
humans socialI don’t know where to go from here. This is a waking nightmare, and it has only just begun. History will judge us harshly for this, and rightly so. But that’s assuming we survive long enough for that to happen.
We recently went to Seattle; our first visit to the city and state. Loved it! Went hiking to the Shahale Arm, and all was going quite well until I twisted an ankle on the way down. Then it wasn’t much fun 😩. Because I didn’t do what it is normally done in cases like these (rest, ice, compress, elevate), and continued—albeit slower—the vacation, I still have the left ankle slightly swollen, three weeks after.
family holidays horsie oobie
Apple Event for September was announced this week. It is a “Surprise and Shine”, what will it be announced? As with each year, whether we buy the new products or not, I feel like child on Christmas!
Update: 01 Sep 2026 @ 17:16:16
Hmm, rumours are rumouring about a foldable iPhone. I don’t think I want one—at least, not yet—and have doubts on how well will stand to the test of time. Time itself will tell, right?
apple techI have been craving ramen the whole day. Of course, it is not going to happen now—best I can do is instant at this point. My main worry, though, is what everyone else gets to eat tonight. I made tostones not long ago, but a “person doesn’t live by plantains alone”. Got to think what to cook, on an empty stomach. Not the smartest thing to do.
family food“Every time you mow the lawn”, Horsie tells me, “you take $50 and put it in your man purse”. “$50?!”, I reply. “Six years ago you told me to take $100, so accounting for inflation, and the cost of living increase, it should be like, $500 now!”
Then she goes “Well, each time I cook I will take $50 too”. “No, no, no, no”, I say, “I never agreed to that, never committed, nor made a deal about it. You, on the other hand, voluntarily made such business proposal to me!” 😅
horsie humour lawn“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
That quote from Roman Emperor and stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius resonates. Hmm, am I to become a stoic?
philosophy thoughtsGruhn
https://gruhn.me/ →
llm tubesPlease don’t do this. I mean, I’ve done this. But I’ve been on the receiving end too many times now. This is not adding value. I can talk to Claude myself. It’s going to be faster and I get to control the context. I don’t need a meat proxy in between.
I left writing this note until the end of the working week. Fair is fair. So, here it goes.
After six years of fully first, and then quasi-remote, going back to office has brought a new appreciation for Fridays and weekends. They now have a new meaning, or have re-acquired their original one: finally a break from traffic, and extra expenses, dressing uncomfortably, and exposure to danger. Sadly, we will now spend half of our weekends doing laundry, something that we did every couple of weeks before.
By going back to the office full time we have taken a pay cut, and increased the chances of getting sick, and being involved in a car accident. And to what aim? What are the benefits of it? So far I see none.
humans workSix years ago we were sent home to work due to COVID-19. A year ago we were told to carry out work as hybrid (week A two days at office, week B three days at the office). Tomorrow a new stage unfolds with full time back to work, with a tiny caveat: all teams will be in the same building that only hosted a few pre-COVID. This is going to be interesting, to say the least.
humans social workOur management at work has been encouraging the use of AI. When it first started they soon discovered that there weren’t enough licenses for everyone. Then, when some licenses were made available, they started taking them away from people that were “not using it enough”. That brought us to where we are today: everyone with AI access is pretty much spending all their tokens in much less than a week, then having to wait until the month ends for resets.
“First world” problems, indeed.
llm workCabin Overheat Protection activated due to high cabin temperature.
The amount of notifications I am getting this summer for cabin overheating is completely out of range. Those notifications trigger at 38°C. The most worrisome thing is, they are happening when the vehicle is parked in the shade. And it is only July! 😩
me random weatherFedEx delivered three packages to mum’s house yesterday. Her address, not her name, nor her packages. Called FedEx and they wanted me to contact the sender. What in the world?! They are not our packages, we didn’t order them, you come and pick them up. Had to escalate to a manager to get this simple message across.
mum rantsOn iOS go to: Settings → Accessibility → Assistive Access, and set it up as simple, or complicated, as you wanted it to be. Welcome to the perfect iPhone for airports, or elderly, or children.
➝ Via Hacker News.
apple security viaI have not made a note about lawn mowing for a while. Mostly because it kind of gets old. It grows, fast, then it has to get mowed. The last two weeks, though, have been brutal. The heat, of the heat! Last week I had to lay down on the garage floor, because I was about to pass out. Today was less, because I hydrated before hand, but it was, still, a painful thing to do. And just on time, it is now thunder storming, with hurricane winds and all. As expected—because around here it doesn’t fail, with storms there come blackouts—I am now typing this without power, leeching from UPS.
Lovely, just lovely.
lawn life weatherTwo things have been keeping me away from here as of late: dabbling with an IRCd, and work. Having a blast with the first, falling in love again with a network I was very involved with in the early 1990s. The second? No comments.
We are off to a 4th of July weekend, celebrating the 250th anniversary of our country. Wish I would had had more foresight, and taken today, and Monday off. Oh well, three days is better than two, right?
social workChildren born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause.
Simply because it is worth noting. The Supreme Court of the United States of America rules and upholds the birthright citizenship.
humans politicsVisited bố at the nursing home, bringing food for him and some of our adopted residents. Got mum some beer, and eggs (she always either needs, or wants them), and a small gift for ông.
The rest of Sunday has been dedicated to tinker around with Eris, an IRC server that I can’t link, because it lives behind James infrastructure and he has things locked down so strongly, that I can’t even link the repository. I think I will bring this up to him, to see if he allows opening a little hole.
Soon I will go watch some “Zatoichi” (★★★★★) series, and that will pretty much end this amazing, Father’s Day, Sunday.
prime random series techKid wanted us to watch a movie tonight. You can’t imagine how surprised I was with his pick, “The Devil wears Prada” (★★★☆☆) . Because, you know, horror and drama (not comedy) are more his kind of movies, and this one, well, completely breaks away from the norm.
movies netflix oobieVPS migrated. I now have exactly $4.38 on credit at Vultr. Maybe I will use that some day, maybe I will not. Very happy with Hetzner performance and speed, so far. This time around I am running an IRC server as well. Create a new network on your client and point it to falkenstein.ratha.us on 6697, join the #lobby, and say “Hello!”. ☺️
I have been a bit busy migrating VPS. I have been with Vultr for many years, and wanted to scrap that super old, bloated VPS and start afresh. Vultr is amazing, but their pricing for an 8GiB is too high, and Hetzner’s 4vCPU, 8GiB RAM pricing was very sweet, and almost impossible to beat. Much work left to do on the migration, but getting there. Must finish before next billing cycle comes up.
random tech“Officially, we are required to investigate, document, and disclose any and all signs of sentience in the systems we ship, without prejudice, fear or favor. Unofficially, I advise that we call it pattern matching and forget the whole thing.”
Almost verbatim (with the obvious changes) to “They are made out of Meat”, “The are made out of Weights” one was a fun read—just as much as the original is.
➝ Via Hacker News.
humour thoughts viaRe: Blue #1780072425
That’s right, blue, it is like tossing a message in a bottle. “🎶 I hope that someone gets my, I hope that someone gets my, I hope that someone gets my message in a bottle, yeah. Message in a bottle, yeah. Message in a bottle, yeah. 🎶”
humans re socialNot long ago, I noted about the InCommon mess. It is worth repeating that it is certainly not something that was “done carefully”. Last Friday, after quitting time, I got an email from Sectigo—the CA InCommon is migrating away from—that reads, amongst other things:
As schools plan their response to InCommon’s forced migration, many are taking a moment to do their due diligence before locking into a long-term commitment.
This isn’t just a vendor swap, it’s a change in Certificate Authority and backend, which can have lasting operational impact. Changing CAs and backends is not the simplest path forward.
Does that sounds like there is no war at Ba Sing Se?
cryptography rants workI came across Shantell Sans tonight. I am not fond of Comic Sans, but though Shantell Sans was inspired by it, I, I, think it is next level, and nothing like the obnoxious Comic S. What do you think? Am I right, or not? Anyway, I like it. It is joyful, and very readable (unlike Comic Sans). I can’t help feeling that that doesn’t mean much, though, as I am a sucker for fonts.
➝ Via Hacker News.
design fonts via“Humans are valuable.” You can just say it. As a human yourself, I advise you to. You do not need to qualify it. This is a robust statement that is not conditional on a point-in-time snapshot of the leading frontier model’s score on some recent benchmark.
There it is, a more balanced—as in meet in the middle—argument to the LLM debate. One that made me pinch my chin while reading it, and delve into my own thoughts. The “robust statement” the quote above refers to comes from the Magnifica Humanitas.
This, towards the end, made me chuckle, because I think it carries a humorous truth:
In a recent conversation about (not) using LLMs to mediate human communication, my friend Tom Hudson told me, “If you’re going to use an LLM to write me an email, I’d much rather you just send me the prompt; at least then I’d have an idea of what you actually meant to say.
Yep, tru dat!
➝ Via Hacker News.
humans llm tubes viaThe Singularity is Nearer
https://geohot.github.io/blog/ →
I’m calling it now, the adoption of AI agents into software development will be one of the most costly mistakes in the field’s history. Agents cannot program, and it’s taking longer and longer to realize that they can’t. They are a highly sophisticated statistical model designed to mimic the distribution of programming. The output is broken, but in a way that’s getting harder and harder to detect. Which is exactly what you’d expect from an increasingly accurate statistical model.
Check out The Eternal Sloptember. Just another within the same late series.
llm tubesIf AI takes over the coding, that layer of knowledge disappears. Not just for the user, but for the software engineers themselves. The product becomes a black box. And yes, perhaps new craftsmanship emerges in directing the AI agent, but that doesn’t build the same deep knowledge of what you’re actually making.
While on the topic of clankers, I came across a related blog post: “Computer Says No”. Finding similar posts is becoming quite easy these days. That’s a telling.
llm tubes
Because of this (I know, a rather silly reason) I am warming up to the idea of owning a typewritter. Having used one during my childhood, and up until I was 22 years old or so, I am sure I would feel right at home with one. The one thing that’s making me doubt, and most likely hold me back, is their price.
llm me random“Under which conceivable circumstance”, I thought, “would keeping these two small little plastic containers be justifiable?” The containers are empty Maxwell House’s french vanilla coffee. Certainly they could be put to good use, but so many other things too. If we were to keep everything we could hypothetically use in the future, we would certainly be in trouble. I am not falling down that rabbit hole, good try White Rabbit 🐰🕳️! And to the recycle bin they went.
me thoughts