So, about the Apple Event today, I am planing to get an Apple Watch 11, likely for Christmas, or Epiphany. Tempted by the AirPods Pro 3, but not quite sure I will get them. Excellent event, as always!
apple techI am absolutely loving Perplexity AI. I have gotten to a point on which I treat everything with an “AI” on its name with reservation, even disdain. Perplexity is a different kind.
“Perplexity AI is an advanced AI-powered search engine designed to provide accurate, well-sourced, and real-time answers to user questions in a conversational format. It uses cutting-edge language models, such as GPT-4 and Claudine, combined with real-time internet searches to synthesize responses from authoritative sources and always cites these sources for transparency. Unlike traditional search engines that just list links, Perplexity delivers direct summaries and supports features like document uploads, contextual follow-up, and the ability to handle both factual and complex queries for individuals and teams.”
Emphasis mine. Authoritative sources, and citing them, is paramount. This one might be the first AI (ugh, that acronym!) I will be willing to pay for.
llm techYep, it is happening again—like each year, LOL. Christmas is (might?) coming early, everyone! Add the Apple event to your calendars, and be there or be square!
apple techThis section from the NetBSD man page for the sleep command cannot be funnier, yet completely valid. I mean, quite useful if you have the time, right?
BUGS
This sleep command cannot handle requests for durations much longer than
about 250 billion years. Any such attempt will result in an error, and
immediate termination. It is suggested that when there is a need for
sleeps exceeding this period, the sleep command be executed in a loop,
with each individual sleep invocation limited to 200 billion years
approximately.
This is the first search result—at least for me—on Google when searching for “call bank of america”. A Google sponsored scam. Yup. 🤯
Update: 02 Oct 2025 @ 11:20:24
I reported this to Google, and it took them less than a day to remove it. It doesn’t show on my search results anymore. One down…
google tech“hi <my GitHub nick>, I noticed you stargazed <repository I starred>. Seems like you’re interested in the same kind of productivity software. I’d love your feedback for <web page for product they are advertising>.”
Getting more and more of these type of emails. They must be getting that information from some kind of GitHub API, right? I mean, sometimes they are plainly inventing things, but sometimes they are right on the spot. Is GitHub selling us out? Microsoft would never do such thing, wouldn’t they?
tech tubes“You might not need tmux”, said no one, until now. I don’t subscribe to that point of view, I use tmux heavily. The author’s solution? Install shpool, which adds yet another daemon. No, thank you, tmux is just fine. Heck, tmux is superb!
➝ Via Hacker News.
tech viaWhile on the topic of LLMs, I can’t stand “thinking” models. It is possible to set think to false on the CLI in Ollama for thinking models, but I haven’t found a way to set it as a variable. Their newly released application doesn’t have such feature. Granted, only DeepSeek and Qwen models are “thinkers”, so perhaps I will stop using them.
Providing an LLM a streamlined, but overall complete initial prompt is vital not to get perplexing answers. It will also greatly diminish the possibility of having the model astraying away, diluting the results. Though I believe this applies to all models, SaaS or local, it is specifically important when using local models, as processing and memory are more finite.
llm techI have added the ability to use emoji as a note marker. For example, this one has a hammer and wrench emoji. It’s simply an entry on the front matter of the note. I will not abuse it, but I think it is going to be useful. If ends up not to be, removing it will be pretty simple, thanks to sed.
To speed up browsing on Chrome—yes, only available on Chrome at the moment—simply add these lines somewhere between your website’s <head>. Allegedly it provides “a near-instant loading experience”.
<script type="speculationrules">
{
"prerender": [{ "where": { "href_matches": "/*" }, "eagerness": "moderate" }],
"prefetch": [{ "where": { "href_matches": "/*" }, "eagerness": "moderate" }]
}
</script>
➝ Via Hacker News.
html techCame across a static site (like this one) using Webmention, and got reminded of Pingback and TrackBack. There are also comments which are, arguably, more direct. I want none of it.
staticgen techIt has been over a month since Google revamped Snapseed and, though I am fine with the changes—many people aren’t—I am getting a bit tired of seeing updates almost every week, with no changes on the changelog; that is, the changelog has been the same since it was revamped.
You might notice some new things sprouting around here. Not only did we freshen up the app to help make editing a breeze, but we also swat away some pesky bugs for a smoother experience. Oh, and remember to give the new film filters a try for some sweet, vintage looks. As always, these are free of charge.
Yes, we know, now, quit it! Geez!
google techHashing known_hosts is a good idea, as it reduces the amount of information an attacker will collect, if/when (ha!) your machine gets compromised. Usually, a line on the known_hosts file looks like this:
less ~/.ssh/known_hosts
...
tilde.team ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAID1zw6+VOW8L4Rr3swbUVju3GGcknaV/fyhSJwH7NLfu
...
After running ssh-keygen -H it will look like this:
less ~/.ssh/known_hosts
...
|1|c6NiIH06AidrkPUman0oPEx6+6Y=|rPhYjXlkLgYaNR8jwaNMy7mur4I= ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAIJsJP1XDyRhEPdtgBeXYm2hf4GKG9aLlqA1+ZPgBadbl
...
That’s it! Oh, and don’t forget to add to your ~/.ssh/config the following, so that future entries are hashed as well:
Host *
HashKnownHosts yes
Because I work using Ubuntu, and do personal stuff using macOS, I am always confused and going nuts with keyboard shortcuts. From copying and pasting, to closing windows, to locking the machines. So. Very. Hard! I need to find a solution that will make Ubuntu (Gnome, actually) mimic macOS keyboard shortcuts.
techgrep -i passwd *.log | awk {'print $7'}
...
/etc/passwd
/..%5c..%5c..%5c..%5c..%5cetc%5cpasswd
/....//....//....//etc/passwd
/..%2f..%2f..%2fetc%2fpasswd
/.htpasswd
/config/.htpasswd
/.env.passwd
/backup/.htpasswd
...
With almost 2,000 different tries—of which the above is a small sample—it seems someone is hell-bent on finding a passwd of some sorts. I don’t have one, OK?!
It has been almost 14 years since Mark Pilgrim disappeared akin to what has been described as an “infosuicide”. I still miss his writings, and hold the hope that he may, one day, come back. I hope and wish all is well with him, and family.
tech tubesI don’t think I have noted about this before, it doesn’t come up on the few searches I have run. I have been procrastinating a move to a newer VPS. This one has been running since Ubuntu 16.04, and it is now at 22.04. It is running out of space, and I truly need to replace it. Hmm…
I figure the only way to get me moving is by renting the new server, and then having to worry about paying double expenses. Then my partner will make sure I do something about it! 😂
me techI am starting to wonder if 17 pixels is a tad too small of a font size for these notes. Under macOS the font size looks fairly legible, but under Ubuntu it seems a tad too small. I will need to check, and make sure screen resolution is the same for both, before doing any further fiddling.
Update: 03 Oct 2025 @ 21:08:04
My main mistake is to use pixels for font sizes. This evening I will be changing them all to use rem/em instead. Still, everything will look smaller at higher resolutions.
Microsoft’s “Blue Screen of Death” (BSOD) is sunsetting in the near future. Soon it will change colours to become the “Black Screen of Death” (BSOD). Get it? LOL.
“The simplified BSOD looks a lot more like the black screen you’d see during a Windows update. But it will list the stop code and faulty system driver that you wouldn’t always see during a crash dump.”
I dont think the change is enough. The message should be something more substantial, specific, and clear.
random techProject Indigo is a pretty neat camera. As a “toy”, it is something I have installed, and probably use to compare photos from time to time. Yet, installing apps that duplicate features available out of the box on iOS/macOS is something I do not like to do.
tech
Tesla launched its Robotaxi—which isn’t the Robotaxi, but a Tesla with a Robotaxi logo—service in Texas. There are just a few, all operating in a small section of the city, and with “a human safety operator in the passenger seat”. LOL. So, just a taxi.
“As expected, only a handful of vehicles are available right now, they only operate in a small part of the city and there’s a safety driver in the vehicle in case it encounters situations it cannot handle autonomously.”
A real Robotaxi should have no glass windshield, and a blocking divider between the passenger area and the “driver”. After all, it is best not to see what’s coming your way. Surprise! 😅
friends tech teslaI have automated the process that adds a notice and timestamp when I edit a note, when adding more content to it at a later time. It works great, as it uses the git lastmod timestamp. The unfortunate side effect was, all timestamps got reset because I actually modified all notes that had an UPDATE notice. 😩
This bash code is what I use to count the amount of notes per year, ever since I started babbling in here. I first move to the content/posts/ directory, then run it. It works great under macOS.
for file in *.md; do \
head -n 5 "$file" | \
grep 'date:' | \
sed 's/date.*\([[:digit:]]\{4\}\).*/\1/' >> count; \
done && \
cat count | sort | uniq -c && \
rm count
Well, this is something you don’t see everyday day, from left to right: Mark Russinovich, Bill Gates, Linus Torvalds, and David Cutler. Bill and Linus meeting in person, and making it to the same photo. Yeah, a first?
tech tubesI have not mentioned Headscale before, even though I use it every day. I have my iPhone (on demand), my Mac, my Linux laptop (on demand), and my two VPS connected to it. Headscale is an open source, self-hosted implementation of the Tailscale control server. You can use the Tailscale client—which is available for all platforms—to connect to it. It is amazing, and worthy—at the very minimum—of a star on its GitHub repository.
selfhost tech tubesA simple test, using verses—in modified format—from Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer’s poem, “¿Qué es poesía?” I may delete this note, as it is only a test. Yes, like many, many others, I “test in production”. 😅
I am trying to implement a workflow, so that I can use a graphical editor for creating new notes while in front of the computer, that is, not over an SSH connection. Let’s see how it goes.
Update: 02 Oct 2025 @ 16:49:20
Yup, it works quite well. I really don’t know why it took me this long to implement something as simple as this (I am using Obsidian now to create and edit notes if not over SSH). I guess I usually create notes on Terminal, on Bash, and didn’t have the need for anything else. Until now!
hugo tech