hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr3964.txt

Episode: 3964
Title: HPR3964: Hacker Public Radio at OLF
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3964/hpr3964.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 18:06:26

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3964 for Thursday the 12th of October 2023.
Today's show is entitled Hacker Public Radio at OLF.
It is hosted by Fisera and is about 51 minutes long.
It carries an explicit flag.
The summary is, friends from Hacker Public Radio meet up to record an episode from the conference.
We don't ask permission, we just do.
Absolutely.
I think if you don't sit far to anything, you're really not going to care.
I'm hoping that that's the case. I'm not sure that it is.
Oh yeah, I can't assure you of that.
I mean, you know, safety third, that's our motto.
Safety third or safety at some point somewhere along the one.
Rule number one is don't be on fire.
Safety option.
Maybe this won't be on fire.
Lizard, with me and Taj and our buddy Pokey,
that needs to be rule number one.
And to be fair, it's like either one that being on a rule listed.
It's never actually followed. That's not a thing we actually do.
What not be on fire?
Not be on fire, not like safety, just in general.
I mean, literally what two episodes Pokey is like, yeah, I almost died this week.
Yeah, he's like, yeah, I crashed my motorcycle and almost died.
We're like, what?
Yeah, it was, it was suspenseful.
I mean, no, there wasn't a lot of suspense because we knew the end of the story.
Yeah.
The end of the story is he's fine enough that he didn't tell us before that and he was there.
He was talking to you, so you know, he was alive in the end.
Yeah, but how did he sell it?
He was like, oh, I have a story.
He sold it in such a way that was super bait and switch of it sounded super minimal and then it was like, oh, yeah.
Oh, shit, I almost died.
It was a big deal.
All right.
Are we doing this?
You're the intro king.
Are you guys recording?
It's recording right now, but I'll probably cut off this out.
Probably cut it out.
I don't know.
From the stupid aisle.
Hey, we got it.
Are you really going to do notes?
I mean, they're going to be bad notes, but that's on brand.
I mean, they're going to be as good as the notes as I do for our show.
So bad, but we do them.
Like everybody does their own notes.
And then we go clean them all up and make sure they form that right and stuff.
And then when you say that you're talking about Poké.
Well, but also all the things we talk about that aren't we didn't plan to talk about.
I don't know.
I don't actually like the show notes.
I don't know.
So you neither listen to the show notes.
I don't listen to the show notes.
I listen to the show long enough to edit it.
And that is it.
That is the only amount.
You could hear how much we care about our quality assurance.
It is basically we're doing this for fun.
And that's it.
Decentralized attention in editing.
So save the third.
Quality control fourth.
I mean, it really is quality control even really on the list.
I'm thinking no.
I mean, it's the fourth week thing we do when we have energy for one thing.
Yeah.
So once first on the list.
Fun.
Yeah, like all of us showing up at the same place at the same time.
Which recently has been a challenge.
Has been difficult.
Yeah.
We have generally recorded all of the same notes.
Oh, you know.
Just the thing is Saturday night where all three of us can be in the same spot.
It's temporarily in the same place.
Yeah.
It's our temple.
Temporally at the same time.
Yeah.
Let's go say you guys are far enough apart.
That's going to be like you do a quarterly show or what?
Getting polka night together wouldn't be too bad.
Yeah.
It's me living, you know, at the other end of the time zone.
Yeah, literally.
At the edge of the time zone.
So.
Did something more than to know?
I told them we were going to be in here.
Okay.
I'll go see where is that.
Right.
You can actually keep it big.
What's your guys' show calling it?
You random.
It's you random dash podcast dot info.
You guys hold me on the board.
You know, we recorded a show in Ombal, but.
You know, I just, it's a podcast that has an RSS feed.
You can say expect to expect to say.
What is the URL again?
Try all kinds of stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Somebody picked a bad URL.
No, I'm just kidding.
And I suspect you random is probably fairly on Google.
On top of it.
Yeah.
You random podcast.
I think comes up with us.
But.
I think of that.
But.
Yeah.
I'm sure.
Questionable on that.
Yeah.
I'm on.
Mastodon.
And.
That's what I mean.
On matrix.
And.
That was obviously.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You finally get back on matrix.
That makes me happy.
So I like matrix.
You seem.
Weirdly though.
Like.
Are they getting their act more together or less together?
Like one of the big use cases for me for matrix was that.
Like I was using the light bearer chat bridge.
Oh, yeah.
As a bound.
I do use it as a bouncer.
Oh, so was I big time.
And then they're like, yeah, we're shutting that off right now.
Well, there was a security problem.
Some for or some for a consent problem or something.
Which I'm like, okay, perfectly rational to shut this down.
But fix it.
Get it back.
Yeah.
And they're like, wait.
It will be closed for an indeterminate amount of time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was hoping that would mean like two weeks.
They don't know, you know, days plus or minus.
But that was what come up a month and a half ago or whatever.
Yeah.
It's like, it's not.
It means maybe.
That's what it means.
Yeah.
It's just been a receipt back up.
Yeah.
And then he persists.
I thought part of that was the light bearer guys were not pleased with the way that was going.
And they told them to shut it down until they fixed the crap.
Well, I mean, that's fair.
Yeah.
I'm not saying it's unfair.
But I thought that was the end of it.
So like, until matrix fixes their end, they're not going to reenable it.
I also think that most people want matrix for its bridging capabilities.
And that is not the primary thing that matrix project wants to do.
And there's this fundamental disagreement where the thing that your users want you for
and the things you want to build are different.
And in this case, I don't think either party's wrong.
But.
Yeah.
There are so many bridges and they do work so well.
And yet matrix still says this isn't the thing we want to be.
You got to pick a lane either commit to doing the bridges or commit to not doing the bridges.
Don't say it's there, but we don't want to work on it.
That feels like that feels like the wrong answer.
Yeah.
And it's like they do the there's the official bridges that like matrix dot org will run.
But those aren't really the most useful bridges.
So you have to run your own server, which is what I did.
And it's kind of a pain in the ass.
Yes, it is.
So it's like, who's going to do that?
I did it for a while and then found that it didn't quite hit on my use cases enough to be worth it.
And stopped doing it because it annoyed me.
Yeah.
Which is why I haven't done it.
Intro it.
Go.
To.
We're doing a hacker pool.
We're doing this.
We're dropping us at HPR, right?
Well, let's just call it HPR.
And if we do it as a show, we'll do an intro for our show.
Or we will.
Which of that will be even funnier?
Or we literally just do it.
This is what we do.
We record this for HPR, right?
Yeah.
And then.
You and I later can record like,
an intro and be like, this is the you random intro.
So this is significantly different enough that we can post it on Hacker Public Radio.
Thank you, Ken.
No, you're welcome, Ken.
That's exactly what we do.
Yeah.
I didn't realize we did my production, maybe two, but there it is.
This is this is the extent of our like this shows you how much planning we do.
Almost none.
That was like, that was a solid minute and a half.
So that's, you know.
We berate each other when we actually prepare this for the show.
Like you did, you did fucking research.
That's not allowed.
Yeah.
What did Poki, one of us showed up with research recently and we're like, why?
I think it was Poki because it's so un Poki to do research.
Like, I think Poki is the most like, I don't prepare anything.
I mean, I don't prepare things so much as something interesting comes my way out.
And maybe I remember to put it in the document to talk to you about it.
Right.
That's not research so much as I had both the time and attention to be interested
and remember I wanted to share it.
The only time I think we do any kind of research that is like in depth and worth doing
is like, if we know that like, there's some kind of Linux shit storm that's going on
and we want to know what we're talking about.
At that point, I've done the research because I wanted to and then I turn around and share it.
Yeah.
That's the thing is we do research because we want to.
Because we know the other two won't.
So you have to like educate them on the problem before you talk about it.
Yeah.
First, let me tell you what the problem is.
Now, let me tell you why it's a problem.
Yeah.
For sure.
Since when do we do intros in the middle of the show?
Because I feel like we're halfway through.
I mean, I've been recording the whole time.
So we can.
You can fix it in post.
I can literally fix it in post.
Or you could not fix it in post.
I mean, the last time I did post was the last OLL show.
So I was there.
I took you.
You watched me do post.
I think I fell asleep while you did fall asleep.
That was so tired that day.
Well, that's because nobody knew how to use a mic.
And we brought like twice as many mics and a thousand people.
Yeah.
And we were trying to do it in a hotel room.
I'm not sure this is better.
Uh, sure.
I'm not sitting in your lap.
So.
Yes, there are cons to all of this.
But that one.
I mean, you say that as a con.
I'm saying I was distracted.
That's all I'm saying.
Okay.
Now I'm so happy.
I missed that.
It's a little too personal for other people to be involved in that particular show.
I don't want to be part of this.
I mean, it doesn't get any stranger than us.
Probably.
Yes, it does.
That's true.
I mean, more than ZB in here in a minute.
So.
We should pretend on an intro at some point.
Go.
Do do do do do.
Can I rant about how I want the original theme song back?
I hate the new theme song.
Like, I want the annoying, like, 70s newscast.
Like theme song back.
Translated to MIDI.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was so like low five and awesome.
And the new one is like actually good.
And I'm like, no, it's good.
No, it was because somebody wants to fall asleep.
And I'm like, what?
Why do we change a whole podcast because somebody wants to fall asleep?
I don't know.
So as far as the quality control goes, you have to make sure the level is low enough,
not high enough.
Yes.
Yes, that's.
Yeah.
I was unaware of how that scale worked.
Now I understand a little bit.
Since I'm going to do post, I should just insert an alarm.
Like in the middle of the show, just for trolling.
Why are you staring at me like that?
There's so many better visual jokes we can do when we're in the same room.
Hello, hacker public radio.
I'm Lyle.
This is Josh.
I'm Murphy.
I'm Shelby.
We are coming to you quasi live from OLF 23, which is I found out not Ohio Linux Fest.
No, it is not that anymore, which I was just like, oh, I've been calling it the wrong thing
for like as many years as they changed it.
So that's up for debate, actually, because I've been told that the organization is openly
free.
But the conference might still be Ohio Linux or vice versa or something.
It's very confusing.
Ohio Linux is still the organization.
Oh, is that what it is?
I have it backwards.
I only know that because I got an email from Ohio Linux today when I bought the shirt.
Well, it's probably because they're like a 501 3C.
It's probably really hard to change.
Oh, okay.
That's probably all but immutable at this point.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But yeah, I was surprised because who did I say it to?
I was like, oh, hi, I'm sorry.
It's not the call that anymore.
I knew that it wasn't called that anymore, but I know that they kept the branding.
Yeah.
The OLF and then just like, okay, we're not about Linux as specifically anymore.
What other words can we use these three letters forward to me?
Yeah.
I mean, there you go.
They hit on three that are pretty good though.
They all kind of mean the same thing except, well, Libra and Free.
Open is like contestable.
Yeah.
Well, in this community, those are three words.
Yeah, they're the same, but we can argue about the program.
Oh, no.
Like, they're the same except in the places where they aren't in.
Hey, let's fight about it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Let's go get this close together and let's argue about that margin.
You never go full-storming.
That's the...
I have to bring it up.
Of course you did.
Of course you did.
No.
Is this the first year they're in this...
This hotel.
Okay.
Yeah, because I think it's one of those.
I wasn't here last time though.
I can't vouch for it personally, but I believe they said this.
Yeah.
I was here.
The last time I was here was five years ago because scheduling has not lined up well for me.
None appended.
But...
But it was in the same...
The same conference center complex, but it was the other hotel and a different chunk of rooms.
The last time I was here.
Yeah.
I was over there at that one as well.
So on the other side of the skybridge?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So they used to be in the convention center consistently.
Yeah.
Then they were over in the hotel, which was a more reasonable space for them and now they're over on this side of the hotel.
Yeah.
So they moved, but they haven't moved like more than a couple of hundred feet in any direction.
You know, the thing I care about is we can still get over to North Market for Momos.
Yes.
Momos are definitely like the first...
That was the first meal we had.
Like...
It was like, Momos.
We just looked at each other and were like...
What's a Momos?
Oh, Momos.
Go.
Okay.
They are Tibetan.
Yeah.
Dumplings.
Ah.
And they're just... they're so good.
And the place that we go, what is it called?
It's called Momogar.
Yeah.
And apparently, like Diffietti's been there and rancid raves about it.
They're very highly regarded.
And it's just this little corner shop in North Market.
And they're so good.
Yeah.
Yeah, I missed the North Market this year.
I was busy doing stuff and because I spoke, they had meals for me.
So I...
Oh, yeah.
You know, it was like, little busy don't have the time to go and...
Yeah, they're feeding me so...
I can't hang out with the plebs.
I'm going to the center.
Well, I ran over there and passed once.
Like I say, time.
Time and there's food here.
Okay.
Yeah.
Roll with that.
I think I actually made it to North Market.
So I think I've now officially been to the North Market, the West Market, the East Market and the South.
I think.
Or at least three of those.
Oh, wow.
Are they all in town?
Is that, like, a little...
Yeah.
I forget exactly what there are, but there's like a North-South East West.
I didn't know that.
Last time I was over there, I got Kilbossian Sourcrown.
I'm so good.
Oh, man.
I mean, I was...
I figured I'm playing to the home crowd.
I was gonna say, this is so good, though.
This is definitely the area for that.
I mean, that's kind of the highlight every year.
Like, what is the food we're doing?
Mm-hmm.
Or at least that's what we think about all day.
So far, we're two for two on amazing launches.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, we...
Today we hit...
What was it?
Is it called hot chicken takeover?
Yeah, I think so.
And they were spicy chicken.
Very good.
I'm a little like...
Everything that I've eaten this year, I've eaten before.
Yeah.
So, like, that's the only thing.
I haven't eaten anything new this time.
But...
Yeah, I said that.
I wanted something new for lunch, but it was the hot chicken,
which is not new, but it was also really well executed.
Yeah, no, it was good.
I liked it.
I mean, case in point, when was the last time you were at like a chicken restaurant?
And you could get chicken thighs?
That's true.
Yeah, like almost nowhere.
Yeah.
Like, it's either tenders, breasts.
You very rarely can just get thighs.
And it made me so happy.
Because I think they're the best.
It's special about chicken thighs.
It's the best part of the chicken.
Yeah, it's the part with labor.
Should I open this and let people wonder?
Yeah.
Go for it.
It's after hours at OLF.
Actually, it's still current hours.
We just like...
Should we talk about the fact that we just like hijacked a room?
Yeah.
And we're just pirate radioing.
That's awesome.
Yeah, this room had been used yesterday.
I don't know if it was anybody even in here today.
Absolutely.
There was somebody teaching some developing today.
That's the day.
That's the day.
Yeah.
Well, that's my head in and said, okay, too much for me at this moment.
Yeah.
And like, OLF person like poked her head in the door.
I just stared at them.
And then he gave us a nod and left.
Yeah.
I haven't leaned.
I'm supposed to be here.
That's the way this works.
But yeah, we found a room that nobody was using.
Looks like people have cleared out of.
And Tosh said of his crate worth of audio equipment.
And here we go.
A much smaller crate.
Yeah.
It was definitely a much more restrained crate this year than last year.
Or not last year, but last time.
The shitty part is that the audio quality will be infinitely better.
Just for guys.
Just for guys.
Well, as we said, we're not in a hotel room.
Yeah.
And there's not 15 people in that hotel room.
Yeah.
Because it was like me, you 50, Tom Rampeamus.
A hookah was there.
A hookah was in there.
Somebody else was there.
I don't even remember.
Some folks I don't remember.
Yeah.
But we get three mics.
This is amazing.
Yeah.
It was great.
It was great.
But.
Anybody learn anything cruel this week?
I learned about the Fediverse.
Some cool guy talked about it.
I don't know.
I don't know why.
What that was about.
I'm curious.
You can't.
You can't have learned anything that important there.
So.
But you know, it was so cool.
I mean, at this point, we're kind of old timers.
Me less so because I've been there and back and there and back.
A couple of times.
Yeah.
But.
I was.
It was an identity.
Not quite in 2008, but it was probably 2010.
But you know, I was at one point.
I was contributing to Jezra's.
Hey, buddy client.
Oh, okay.
Mostly because I wanted to do things and he didn't.
They were things he wasn't opposed to it doing,
but he wasn't interested in building it.
Sounds very Jezra.
He was very.
He was very anti-features.
He didn't want to add features.
But he was okay with the things I wanted,
as long as I was okay doing it.
And so I learned some Python and added some features.
Nice.
I'm very good at that.
I recall that.
I never used it.
But now that you mentioned it, I recall the post of stuff
with Hey, buddy, I'm talking about it.
And I remember very badly clobbering things in there.
Something's never changed.
You guys define what the bed at first is.
That's actually a new phrase that came up.
But I didn't get to it.
Well, let's...
Yeah, there we go.
The man of the hour.
That's just the community adopted word for all of these services
and servers that interoperate together.
You know, that started back in the Identica days when people say,
oh, you know, the Fediver started in 2016,
you know, master them.
Yeah, not exactly.
Yeah, it predates that by like a decade.
So it's just sort of the fact of name for anything you can lump in
and talk with the common protocol.
The time that protocol was those status and or pump IO,
now it's activity pump.
And activity pump IO, great and better than these other things,
is also flawed.
Eventually, at some point, they will either upgrade that protocol
or adopt a new protocol.
And then people lose that.
You know, it's a community...
What's its biggest flaw?
What's its biggest flaw, people?
Besides that, because that's a given.
It's a discoverability.
I discoverability and continuity of message threads.
Yeah.
If there's too big of a disjoint between different servers
that people are talking on a thread,
you as a third person might see off of that conversation
and not the other half.
I think that's almost worse than the discoverability thing,
because discoverability, you could do out of fan.
Yeah.
The conversation thing really can...
I mean, the solution is to follow someone from the server
that the other party is talking on,
but you almost don't need to know you need to do that.
Right.
There's an almost clear direction.
I mean, that's a good conversation.
See that it's broken and clearly someone is talking to someone,
but you're not seeing the other...
Right.
And you need to try to get on one of their servers
and oh, this is where this conversation is happening
and follow another person.
Yeah.
That's the problem.
That's the problem.
And care enough to solve it.
Yes.
Yeah, and like I couldn't...
And hope that it's not...
They're not on a server that your server is blacklisted.
Yes.
Yeah.
There are a lot of...
Like I said, I think that's even worse than discoverability,
because like I say, discoverability could do somewhere else.
You'd say, hey, I'm looking for this person
and someone could answer you.
Yeah.
The thread being broken in the middle, you might not know.
You might not know what's happening,
and you might not know how to fix it.
And it's like I say, now that I'm thinking about it,
yeah, I couldn't even give you clear directions on how to fix it.
I can give you stuff to try.
Yeah.
But I'm not 100% sure that it's always going to work.
I think the...
I think that...
Especially on the maston on type.
I think that that is...
While we think it's a bug, it's a feature.
And the feature is push everybody to run their own instance.
No.
And you're doing blocklists on your own.
I don't think that's masked.
One of masks about skulls.
I think you've been as fine with running the gigantic instances
and having that be more centralized than you might think.
Really?
Yeah.
Because he's...
I mean, in the...
In the mobile clients, you know,
that they initially didn't have any way to browse the local time wall.
That's right.
Yeah.
And that's very anti-community.
If you're in a smaller instance,
that's one of the big appeals to it,
is that you can view your local instance feed
and get a sense of what your community is doing.
And you've left that out completely.
Now, I think in later revision to...
In fact, I've used it.
You can go into a search and scroll over
and there's a local so you can still get to it.
But that's more...
It's still not front and center.
Oh, it's waiting.
It's hidden in the back by the discount stuff.
I will say that...
By most standards,
I objectively use mastodon wrong
because I mostly don't care about my local timeline
and don't care about my federated timeline.
I want to know what the people I've subscribed to are saying
and the hashtag I followed are saying.
I don't think that's wrong.
I'm not using it the way I'm not using all of the features.
I'm not connecting in the way that they envisioned,
but I'm getting what I want out of it.
If you're getting what you want out of it,
you're doing it right.
I mean, if you...
Now, it's going to be harder for you to find new people
because you're looking at only who you've already subscribed to.
But the hashtags solve that problem a lot.
Well, that's true.
Hey, you know, honestly, like I said in the talk,
there's no shareholders or investors
to...
Why doesn't it have to keep going up?
Yeah, if you're using it, you're happy with it.
It's good, and you're using it right.
There's no question about that.
If something we talked about last night
in the either end or after the buff session,
but after reflecting on Zonker's talk,
it's...
Things being community and project-driven
means we are not beholden to the same measures of success
as corporations and products.
It's not a symmetric game.
It's not a zero-sum game.
We can win without them having to lose.
I don't know if the opposite is true.
Right.
But, at the same time, maybe it is
because there are some people
that I'm going to use Twitter as an example.
There is nothing Twitter could do
to get them over there.
Where are recipes?
So, they were never going to win those eyes.
Yeah.
In the same way that there are some people who are...
There's nothing mastodon could do
to get them there.
Right.
You're never going to get 100% of even the potential
because there are some people that are just not interested
in social networking at all
or in federated social networking.
Right.
But, as you said, we have different measures of success.
They're measuring it in dollars.
We're measuring it in.
Do we have a nice place to gather
and talk to each other?
Right.
So, they want dominance.
We want existence.
Right.
And so, it's just...
It's a different thing.
And that's okay.
Yeah.
As far as I'm concerned, anyway.
Yeah.
The...
Well, and it's like the discoverability thing
that I think everybody talks about.
Like, it even came up today.
Um...
Christine?
Is there a name, I think?
That asked the question about, like, discoverability.
Oh, yeah.
You amongst ourselves.
And even that, we needed an out of balance.
Oh, really?
I was sitting there thinking.
And, like, instantly, I just searched for the hashtag O-L-F.
And she had posted O-L-F.
And I had.
And you had.
And I...
I was like, there you go.
That's like...
But, that's not a thing that you would do on Twitter.
So, it's not...
Oh, which...
You know, the odd thing about Twitter?
The odd thing is I'm not on Twitter.
So, when you say you can't do that on Twitter, I'm like...
Really?
That seems like...
You know what they say?
Mastodon is missing all these things.
They don't do that.
That's stunning.
Well, it's like...
Twitter does it automatically.
Twitter shoves discoverability in your face.
Where they almost have to go looking for.
What is it actually?
Do you actually get the stuff you want out of that, though?
I mean, what they want you to see.
A lot of people are looking for the popular people or, you know, celebrities and stuff.
And then maybe that works for you.
But I know if...
Mastodon started shoving that at me.
I would look to turn that feature off immediately.
Because that's not what I'm looking for.
Yeah.
Another discoverability thing I found is...
A lot of times what I want is friends of friends.
Or, like, I'll reconnect to a service.
And a bunch of people I want to talk to, I know Taj has friended.
And so, I just go to his friends list and be like...
Who are all of the people that I want to reconnect with on this list?
And then you can rebuild your web that way.
Because you know...
Okay, I know this person.
I know that they know these other people.
Let me connect from there.
And I know they know these other people.
Right.
And I'm going to do that because I haven't been connected with...
I don't want to either of both of you on Mastodon.
I'm going to look through your list and be like, oh, whose other people I'm missing out on?
And take a look.
Well, I know that you and I are connected because we had the framework conversation there
that we turned around and had yesterday.
Right.
Right.
Do you have another account, too, right?
No, I don't know.
That's Matrix.
Okay.
Matrix, I had a couple of accounts because I tried a couple of different things.
It's all well left.
It's a bit of a blur.
Yeah.
Can we stop naming these communication protocols with M's?
Maybe.
Maybe.
Because we got Mastodon.
We got Matrix.
We got Madermost.
No, it's still not Madermost.
It's still not Madermost.
But...
No, but like one of the things that I was thinking is, like, the way I discovered people I think
was I would follow somebody.
Like, I followed the Gibson.
Right.
And then I see the conversations that are going on there and it's like, well, who's part
of this conversation?
Okay.
I need to add this person.
Add this person.
We're like Christine Lumberweber.
Like, follow her.
Absolutely.
And now I'm tied into everybody in the activity, public world.
Yeah.
And like, seeing all that behind the scene stuff.
Well, that's how you fix it.
You know, I...
How do you guys think that slide was for that?
Like, how do you find people?
Did that encapsulate it reasonably well, you think?
I didn't see the slide because I was in the...
There's no excuse.
Murf, the slide was amazing.
It changed my whole life.
That's a correct answer.
So what is your thing?
It's good.
It's one of those things that, like, you can show somebody how to do something a million times
until they do it themselves.
Right.
And see it.
Do you think I got the steps in there, though?
Yeah.
No.
Okay.
It made perfect.
That was a more or less unreviewed slide that came out.
There were a couple of slides actually last night and that was one of them.
Yeah.
No, I think it was perfect.
I mean, people at my table were talking about it that weren't on.
Well, Thomas was sitting next to me and I know that he's setting one up in the process of doing that.
But, yeah, people were genuinely like, okay, let's try this fedaverse thing.
Cool.
I hope, see, now that's something I didn't mention in the talk, but it was mentioned afterwards when we were chatting.
If you're setting up an instance for yourself or a half dozen of your dear friends, do yourself a favor and don't do mass stuff.
Yeah.
For all of you at home, do miskey, do one of the forks of miskey, if that is what makes you happy.
Mastodon, you know, you're taken an 18-wheeler to the convenience store and pick up groceries.
It's built to scale.
It is built to scale for four people.
Yeah.
If you're looking at a small group, it's way overkill for everything you're doing.
And more complicated.
Yeah.
It's just way more moving parts than you need.
Yeah.
So I will counterpoint with one thing, unless you're doing it to learn how it all works.
Oh, well, yeah.
That's kind of an implicit counterpoint.
Almost everything is.
Right.
Don't do this unless you're doing it to learn how it works.
Or unless you have an unlimited credit card associated with your VPS provider.
Yeah.
How am I going to burn all of these credits?
Yeah.
It's just incredible.
And then set up a matrix and leave that open to people on top.
Yeah.
Between the two of them, you can burn a lot of credits.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I wish, and I think matrix is trying to come up with a simpler server than because Synapse is the one.
Yeah.
And as I ran that for a while, and it was just, it was a lot of work to make the couple of things I wanted to work badly.
Yeah.
Well, I think the new one is supposed to be more lightweight and it's supposed to, I think it's called dendrite, because that makes sense.
Yeah.
But I wouldn't mind trying that.
I do want to like doing a Fediverse instance of some kind for just an alt account, like just a half as a backup.
Yeah.
And you know what's on matrix's long term plan, or at least it was.
And I remember this when I was following one of their live podcast things, is they want to get matrix to be actually distributed, actually decentralized.
Sorry.
Yeah.
They want to make it so, if you start up matrix on your phone, you are actually a node of your own with your identity following you.
And when you fire that up, you are actually on your own.
You're not connecting to a server to make your thing.
You're actually running a version of matrix.
Yeah.
Again, they're not there.
That sounds like they, but that was something they're trying to do.
Well, that's, that's almost exactly what they were supposed to be doing.
They would look intriguing.
And I said in the talk, I don't entirely get it.
I watched the thing and I couldn't completely understand everything was going on.
But what's it look promising?
That really looks like something.
The thing I feel like I would miss there without us always on server is the asynchronous nature of messages.
Yeah.
Right now with matter most with matrix, even with mastodon, I can send Taj a message when I'm, you know, I can't sleep at two in the morning.
And then he can read it at 10 a.m. when he has Tom.
Right.
If I can only send or receive messages when I'm online, like if when I have the phone app open,
I don't recall the implementation details of that.
Or my phone is always running a server.
And that's not bad.
No, I don't recall all the implementation details of it.
But that was sort of what they were shooting for.
Yes.
Somebody, they may have some way to solve that.
I don't know.
But I'm interested in looking at it because I like the idea.
But it's it solves some problems and introduces other ones that I'm interested in.
How they've considered those problems.
So they can't imagine they haven't.
But they could consider the trade off with it.
Right.
Yeah, I don't recall the answer to that.
You know, like I say, it was a live thing.
I was.
And they tend to have the things during work hours.
So my attention is defined at best.
So I heard it sounded like a cool thing.
Did I get all the details?
No, I did not.
It's in that same thing.
Same thing with the valet thing too.
They did that.
I was at work.
So I'm like, how do I know that's when I sat in general?
Yeah, because I was watching it while I was.
The valet is in the same like headspace as Spritely.
Like I understand that this is going to be super cool.
I don't understand how any of it works or like why it's cool.
I just know that like it's going to be cool.
Yeah, I think I understand valet a little better.
But yeah, spread the air every time I go.
That looks awesome.
I have no idea how any of that's going to work.
Yeah.
Wow.
Is it well caught out?
It looks really interesting.
Yeah.
So we have a wild mornancy.
You just walked into the room.
Hello.
Hello.
Are you familiar with anything you can say of the valet drive?
Today.
How about you?
Yeah, I like the names.
I like the names.
We have opinions.
We have opinions.
You know, it's funny.
So when we were at the boss and then the guy that was doing the thing,
I didn't realize because it had slid into a different component.
I had a NixOS USB key.
We should have thrown that on.
You want to go down the road of pain?
Here.
Try this out.
I can't decide if I think it's brilliant or absurd or both.
Say it.
Maybe both.
Yeah.
I like the idea of a declarative system.
I don't know how I feel about a system that needs a full several-minute rebuild
every time I want to install a package.
And learning programming language to install.
To do anything.
Yeah.
Because that was an honestly, I was deceived.
I said, hey, this is NixOS thing.
The Jupiter guys are talking about it all the time.
Like, let me try it out.
I throw it in the installer.
It's so ordinary.
Just do your thing.
And then, before I was coming here, this was last week.
Let me install a vert manager because I would pull up a virtual machine in case I wanted to do something I could destroy it on.
I can't figure any of this out.
This looked like a destroyer.
I expected a little more pain.
And I knew it was going to be, you could figure your system in the new room.
Like, I sort of understood the principle.
But the practicality of it was just an opaque wall.
I'm going through the docs.
All right.
I know I can't just install a thing.
So how do I get the name so I can put it in the config file if I ever find the config file that's supposed to belong in?
Oh, here's the thing.
You do Nix.
And if I have the wrong thing, I did it quickly.
Nix, something, search, name a package.
That's an experimental feature.
You can't use it.
Right?
Why is it in the docs?
Search for package is an experimental feature.
Yeah.
And I got very front.
That was a serious rage quit.
I fought with that for about 45 minutes.
I grabbed that Ian.
Okay.
I can at least make this do what I want.
Because I'm coming here on a couple of days.
I can't mess with this forever.
I need a working system at some point.
Let me do something I can deal with.
The big sell for me on a lot of different perspectives is the reproducibility.
I can take that config file, format my computer,
put it in the USB key.
Like install the OS, drop that config file on go,
and it brings me back to a known, basically known good state.
Yeah.
And think about that both from a personal computing standpoint,
but also the implications for any kind of,
you know, we're talking less like the pets versus cattle.
Yeah.
And moving towards that cattle,
what you can do is basically define classes of machines.
This is my web server configuration.
This is my proxy configuration.
This is my Java app server configuration.
And then, like, spin up 10 copies of exactly the same machine.
Right.
Or for your laptop, you put it in the XOS thing and install it.
It installs to the hardware you have.
Uh-huh.
And then you put it in the rest of the configuration,
and then it gets all the software you want.
You can't, you know, take Fedora, clone it,
and put it on the laptop.
Yeah.
Probably it'll work.
And it's just like that.
What's going to happen is most of the stuff's in the kernel.
So you're going to get functionality,
and then you'll have to run some stuff to be like,
okay, now figure out where you really are and what else you need.
Right.
But that, you know, it sounded so appealing to me.
And, you know, I was really expecting something.
Now, I'm not expecting it to work like I expected it to work.
I was expecting it to work.
Because I use a lot of Fedora.
I'm not going to be able to DNF install stuff.
Okay.
I can accept that.
The software center may not be there.
But I was expecting something like software center,
where you say, okay, these are the applications we support.
You want to install this?
Take this string and put it in this file,
and then rebuild your system.
I mean, I was accepting some degree of pain,
but the whole, you can't search for things
because it's experimental.
Okay.
Now you've gone by on my live.
How am I supposed to figure this out?
I was poking through the docs.
Not really finding any answers to speak of.
You know, and I conveyed some of that to him.
He's like, yeah, that's some of the rough edges
that are still there.
Yeah.
You know, I'm not exactly an uber this stuff.
I can opaque walls that I eventually had just,
I need a usable system today.
So.
Well, I think that it's a fair thing to be able to say.
I want to like this.
Here are the, here are the pain points.
And, you know, that's not an insult.
That is me telling the developers the things I need.
The things I need to be able to use their system.
And then they can choose to do with that what they want.
Yeah.
They can choose to prioritize those things
that they can more voices than one,
that the community voice says,
these are the things that make it not well usable.
Or they can choose not to.
And neither one of those is necessarily the wrong thing.
It just may or may not make it right
for my use case or your use case.
Yeah, exactly.
And, you know, if I was having that conversation
with a developer instead of renting out a podcast about it,
if that developer said to me,
what do you mean?
Look, we're not going to fix that now.
Well, you're not going to fix this anyway.
You know, we're not going to fix this now because
that's not our priority.
We're working on X, Y.
Other things.
Okay, I'm going to step back in this for a while.
And I'm going to maybe keep an eye on things
and when some of the usability corners have been shaved down
to the point where I can use it,
maybe I'll come back.
My, my concern with NYXOS is that it has a,
a, a, a rabid fan base.
Like, I'm trying to think of a play way of saying it.
But like, what?
Uh, okay.
Fair enough, excuse me.
They're worked up about what they like.
Right.
I mean, they're like right below arch people, right?
And I am an arch people.
I know we've been arch people.
I am an arch people.
Um, it can't be that hard for somebody to write
some decent documentation.
Like, somebody in that, that cult has to be able to write,
like, a markdown file.
Abel and willing are different things, though.
If that's the barrier that's keeping people
to take up the gospel,
they're not going to fix it.
They're not going to fix it.
They're not going to fix it.
They're not going to fix it.
They're not going to fix it.
They're not going to fix it.
If that's the barrier that's keeping people
to take up the gospel that you want to breach, like,
it's got to be a priority.
Yeah.
Well, that's the thing.
Documentation is the least interesting thing to do,
but also the most important.
And it's the, it's the lowest hanging fruit.
But being simple and being easy are not the same thing.
It's simple to do.
It's not easy to do because the people who are, like,
good at building systems are not good at staying engaged
long enough to write documentation because it's boring.
That's basically been my career for this point is just here.
They don't want to write it.
So why are you to write it?
That's fantastic that, you know,
you can get involved enough to do that documentation
because that's super valuable work for basically any space
that has documentation.
Well, what I'll say too is another problem with many projects
is that not only do the same people that are good at developing
the project, not writing good at writing documentation,
but they also tend to be resistant to even explaining
to anybody what they did.
So one of the biggest held I dealt with in QA.
I guess QA is kind of double as technical writer
because we have to write like test cases and stuff.
I usually, every job I was, I kind of was technical writer.
Even if that wasn't my official job title.
I didn't know what else would do it.
And I just would go crazy even if I don't do it.
Just to record what little bits of information I could get
from developers because they weren't going to tell it to you again.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, in their defense,
I don't know what stage of their development they're in.
Are they in aid is still building things
and still working on issues
and they're not looking at growing their user base?
If they're at that point, well, then okay,
it's alright if your documentation is deficient
because you're not looking to bring in new people
and say, I want new people to be able to come in
and use this.
You're not worried about that yet.
Well, okay.
Because that's what it looks like to me.
That's the right thing.
You know, when I can't say if it's opaque enough
that I have that much trouble with it,
if that's not your concern yet, okay.
You know, let me know what it is
because then I might step in and give it another throw.
Yeah.
But right now, you know, it depends if I'm just looking
to fill time and play with it.
Alright, maybe I'll try to learn it.
What the guy that did the presentation on Nick said,
well, maybe install the Nick's package manager
on your system and you'll get a better feel for that.
Well, okay, that's a fair thing to try.
But as far as the operating system goes, you know,
it's, you know, it's in the end.
I might tinker with it, but that's where it's at now.
I'm not going to be able to actually
be interested in what, how that middle ground is
where you're using it to manage packages.
But not your part of your system,
but not the entire system.
Me too.
I don't know.
But what's the difference between that
and like writing a script that runs Pakman,
the fires off Pakman commands for what you want to install?
I thought you crossed my mind as well.
I guess it's like an appkit script.
Like part of it, potentially, the depth at which
Nick's can go.
The configurations.
The configuration on the fly.
I was just going to say, and you know,
that is something I distinctly got out of his talk
was he said, you don't even install the software.
You just say, hey, this is how I would like this package
configured.
And it says, well, to get this configured package configured
this way, I need to pull in the software.
There was a switch where you had to say like service enabled.
You don't say software installed.
You say service enabled.
Right.
But that's a good service for a service.
That's a good, that's a configured,
that's like a system configuration thing where you say,
enabled.
So if you wanted to install the web server,
you could just put a system control star
or enable HTTPD.
And then the implication is, oh, to start HTTP,
I need to install it first.
If it doesn't already exist, it needs to be installed.
So I will install it.
And I thought that was intrigued like that.
I said, oh, that's interesting.
So you don't even tell it.
That's the difference between a list of appgetter
or Pac-Man commands is you just tell it what you want.
And it brings in those, it's sort of like a package manager.
You don't tell DNF or Pac-Man, hey,
install this thing and install these required dependencies.
You just tell it, give me the top one.
And it sorts out the dependency.
This is a level above that.
I'm saying, I would like this web server
to be configured this way.
And if the requirement of configuring that web server that way
is installing the software, that's what it does.
Yeah, that's part of that process.
I just know when he was talking about the configuration
and like you're writing all this configuration
in mixed language instead of like,
natively what it's supposed to have.
I started having anxiety.
I'm like, and this is not going to work.
And the funny thing is, oh, this is just how you do it.
And he's typing out the incarnations.
The incantation.
And I'm like, okay, I have no idea how to do that.
Yeah, the one step I'm going to add, there is.
And this is how you go find that thing.
That would have been really cool.
Because yeah, it's great that you've got that shoved
in your memory banks.
I've been doing this.
I've been a Linux admin in some way
or shape or fashion for 15 years, almost.
I still don't have a bunch of the things
that I do shoved in my memory banks.
I do dash dash help or I Google it.
I don't need to know what every switch to our sync does.
What I need is to know how to find it.
Yeah.
Because like, my brain is one of those that,
it's just, it's never going to stick.
I'm never going to know what every single switch does
and how to use it exactly correctly.
What I do know is how to go get that information
when I need it.
Yeah, well, the same thing I'm working on my RHD again.
And yeah, there are plenty of things like,
I know I'm going to have a system with the ManPages.
Where can I find this in the ManPages?
I can't go out Google.
But I can read the ManPages.
But I can read the ManPages.
So it's like, okay, I know there's this one tricky line
to this Essie Linux thing that's like,
never going to remember it.
But I know where it is in the ManPages.
ManPages go down to the bottom with the examples.
What I need is sitting right there.
If I know where that is, I'm all set.
Yeah.
That's been one of my big things.
I've thought about a lot about because it's like,
I'm not a tech person.
That's not my career.
My career is education.
And like, how much of that is missing in this space?
Like that we do not have professional educators
other than like your LPI's and things like that.
It's helping these projects do that kind of outreach and stuff.
Well, that's also been a not insignificant concern
I've had in my career.
Is so much of what I know has just been learning the things
I need to solve the problems in front of me.
I am regularly concerned that there are things
that I don't know that I don't know.
They're going to keep me.
That is me every time I touch the computer.
That is good.
Oh, no, we know you don't know that.
Yeah.
I'm like, wow.
What do you call this thing that I need to know?
No, but I guess my concern are there are things
that don't know that I don't know that I'm going to set up
in some way that's going to bite me in the ass in three years.
So far that hasn't happened.
But all that means is that I haven't hit the bad condition yet.
I just imagine three years from now you listening
to this podcast and like fuck.
So you mean by the time you dig it off of the hard drive
freezer and get it uploaded?
Hey, we're almost done with the audio bug club.
There's three more.
Two of them are edited.
They're going up.
It's happening.
That way Ken can stop bugging me about it.
Spoilers.
Okay, never mind.
I'm just going to put it off for another 10 years.
No, I met spoilers that you were telling people that.
Oh.
Oh.
I'll fix it post.
It's fine.
I think the new model of the show is Alex in post.
I mean, that is current.
I mean, that's one of our two models.
I think it's not the subtitle for the show.
Basically, it's you never go full installment and we'll fix
in post like.
Safety third.
Safety third.
That's another one.
And don't be on fire.
Don't be on fire.
Don't be on fire.
That's more of a guy.
That's more of a guideline than actual rule.
We don't actually follow that law.
But where you would have told me whether to say I'm fire or not.
You're not my mama.
Don't tell me.
All right.
So how long until Mad Dog comes on?
Because we haven't.
Yeah, we've only got a couple of minutes.
So Mad Dog comes on and I didn't even look at the title of the talk.
That's not true.
I did.
But that was not part of why I decided to go to it.
It's Mad Dog.
Yeah.
The equation is is equal to Mad Dog.
Then yes.
Yeah.
We'll go.
So for all the fine folks who either didn't get to go didn't get to see all the talks they wanted.
I know all all question mark of the main stage talks should be on YouTube.
And I think someone said that some or they're doing a bit.
They did the best effort in the other room with like a webcam.
So.
But so who knows what that's going to look like.
They tried them.
Yeah.
So your talk march should be on.
I've been told it will be on.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I look forward to going back and watching it because I was in the the Rocky Linux one which was.
And also I was trying to leave room in the talk for you who didn't already know about the Fediverse.
You could reach more new people.
Nice.
You know that.
I appreciate that.
No.
From your perspective, you know about the Fediverse.
I did.
You went to a room where we didn't think a recording was being made.
I think that's fair.
I'm not picking.
Well, yes, I picked on you for many things.
Good.
Not for that particular thing.
Like I get it.
You know, that's fine.
Not this thing.
But other things are still very good.
Other things are.
All right.
You want to get over here and say something before we leave or you're just going to sit back
and just stoically look awesome.
Well, thank you.
Well, okay.
There you go.
More than she's been like our food guru for the week.
So.
Yeah.
Food guru.
No, thank you.
Food guru.
Sorry.
I'm so thankful that all the people who were working out there.
Really?
The food guru.
I think that.
You want to.
I have a blog in here with all the local restaurants.
I can say people must go to the people from the past.
Here?
Well, they promise.
Oh, dope.
Okay.
I'm going to reach a blog.
Yeah.
Well, no, no.
So.
So you have this thing but you don't have this thing.
It's what you're telling me.
I have it.
I have some wine over it.
I'm going to leave it.
So.
So he has a blog and he just doesn't know which blog it's on.
It's some of our things to ask me and I'll go get it,
pop it all in and send it.
You know.
This is another blog.
But to get it to people, you copy it and send it in an email to them.
That's an interesting work for them.
And this is another example of when people are like nothing,
the internet forgets nothing.
Yeah, it forgets stuff all the time.
The internet only forgets the things you want to remember.
Yes.
Exactly.
Yes.
The stuff you'd like it to forget will be there forever.
It's in the next cloud document because I saw it earlier.
When somebody comes.
That's not a blog code.
I don't think.
It's not.
Hey, we can use our next class together because it's federate.
It has activity pub.
We can.
We can federate our next class.
There you go.
That look.
Okay.
I don't even know what that means.
Like they said they put it in there.
I'm like.
Why?
Like how?
What?
Where?
Where are we?
Are we federating our calendars together?
No, I see it.
I see it.
He was over that.
The pilot sends a local instance.
And it sends it to somebody else's house.
Oh.
And just.
We're at the.
Separate.
Onside.
Offside.
Further offside.
Yeah.
Two is one.
One is none.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I guess I have none.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I guess I have none.
A lot of things.
Me too.
Actually, I just.
I just.
I have a decent back of strategy in the last six months.
Everything before there.
Like the episode that we lost that I briefed out.
Like.
Now.
Now I'm better.
I have a lot of.
External hard drives on the shelf.
That's my strategy.
Hey.
It's not a good one.
That was my strategy for a long time.
Yeah.
It's always one problem.
I create so many others.
Well, I think if we're going to be able to.
I create so many others.
Well, I think if we want to get this cleaned up in time for Mad Dog, we should sign off.
Yeah.
Let's do it.
Well, Hacker Public Radio.
I've been Lyle.
It's Dodd.
Murph.
Shelby.
Gordon Z.
At a LLF 2023, we will see you later.
You do do do do do do do do.
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On the Sadois status, today's show is released under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.