Matthew Martin

Software developer in Washington, DC (Herndon, VA specifically)

Doing #govtech, #cybersecurity python, dotnet, aws, mostly Infrastructure as Code and cloud apps.

I tweet about software, programming, #python, dad jokes, DC, Fed government tech contracting

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My Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCw1p2a3LW1VG7DTZQaT8Oaw
Blog: https://blog.wakayos.com/
Github: https://github.com/matthewdeanmartin/
Pypi identity: https://pypi.org/user/matthewdeanmartin/

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[email protected]

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Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

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npub1d3u7t3fcdmsuhedcqvpugrud0qvrrmmckc7wwmrjds7qk3lkyt0qesr8n4

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Last Notes

2026-05-05 16:53:02 UTC

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The lawyers get paid in cash tho

2026-04-03 12:15:15 UTC

Ha, I just like what I'm used to seeing. I prefer Jetbrains Mono and Fira Code.
Find out which coding font you like best
https://www.codingfont.com/

2026-01-04 17:52:54 UTC

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flipboard's main feed is flooded with spam.
I'm going to guess you got caught up in a spam sweep.
https://flipboard.social/public/local

2025-11-25 03:24:49 UTC

Me shopping for a home server: It has to have 64GB
Me picking a ec2 instance type for my personal account: 500mb and 1/2 a cpu is plenty.

2025-03-29 15:43:16 UTC

Your periodic reminder that old #COBOL isn't only old COBOL. It is IBM assembler with some COBOL for the easier parts. Business apps written in assembler because the COBOL wasn't fast enough.
I can get the gist of code in most languages, but when I look at edin (assembler!) I can't figure out what is going on despite profuse comments.

2024-12-28 03:21:54 UTC

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Wow, this is huge. As a code racoon that has spent time digging through US Federal Agencies' public Github code & innersource code while doing contracting work, this has a lot of promise, like the shared web design but not possibly for everything
e.g. https://designsystem.digital.gov/

2024-12-27 23:01:58 UTC

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why not both, jetbrains SKUs all feel the same.

2024-12-27 22:18:39 UTC

#atuin wrapped
My commands were mostly `just`, `make` and `cd` and `poetry` - and they failed 1/2 of the time.
I should branch out I guess.

2024-12-27 21:36:26 UTC

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If you need to stop and google it, you're doing it wrong

2024-12-27 14:42:14 UTC

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just the easy stuff, like adding `command || true` to the terminal command so the window doesn't close on crash (or a process exit command somewhere)

2024-12-26 14:50:40 UTC

Family separation policies resume. Many children are still orphaned from the first time this policy was tried.
https://wapo.st/3VTkEol

2024-12-25 15:41:40 UTC

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- Influencers: This does seem to work, but the main job is creating content and growing your fanbase. The side project 3/4 of the time is selling more content, 1/4 the time an app that is nothing special but can sell because you have an audience, thing Sabine Hossenfelder's quiz app. Downside: you can't become famous quick, nor on purpose.

2024-12-25 03:13:51 UTC

testing
https://carbon.now.sh/CslPglWEUtKBv7faQMjd

2024-12-24 16:29:50 UTC

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AI as a real and potentially real thing for some reason generates emotional reactions from people unlike all the other things people could react to. I bet sociologists could nail down what the root issue is. My arm chair theory is that people are tribal and they don't like people (or people like things) that aren't in their tribe. The dozen anti-AI cliches are rationalizations for this automatic emotional reaction.

2024-12-23 22:56:59 UTC

Recruiter: "Quick we need a Junior developer from 2010 who spent 2005-2010 getting experience with .NET. We'd like to pay them 2010 salary, not adjusted for inflation"
Me: "That young, optimistic, uncynical man, he just isn't here anymore. You are 15 years too late. All that is left is this guy who knows .NET but has a 2025 mortgage. And python! Let me convert it all to Django-Postgres on AWS for you."

2024-12-22 15:22:08 UTC

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These tools exist for the same reason low-code programming languages like UIPath exist... your department needs a bug fix or feature in an app, but the team ignores you, has a delivery time horizon of years, the team was all fired 10 years ago. And all you need is a bulk export or some fix that is possible if only you could script the app, even if only via the GUI.

2024-12-22 15:20:10 UTC

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Workflow products are for solving large **bureaucracy** problems. It is a **social** problem. You have 3 huge apps and you need code to call all three of them in a long running script/application. None of the teams want to help you with this feature, maybe none of these 3 teams can call each other directly. So you hack together a visual code "script" that glues together these three *teams*

2024-12-22 15:18:06 UTC

I'm thinking about AWS Step Functions. (Also so many similar workflow things, like .NET 3.5 Workflows). They store state in what in python would be a pickle. They seem to be for programs that take months to run. But why not be stateless and store the workflow steps in a regular database?
Epiphany....

2024-12-21 21:04:46 UTC

Is your python code full of `):` ?
Go search for it and add the annotation for the return type.

2024-12-20 19:50:28 UTC

I got an Orcid. Unemployed arm chair philosopher. Not yet published in a Peer Reviewed Journal, but I got peer reviewed Pull Requests.
https://orcid.org/0009-0009-0893-7539

2024-12-20 13:02:53 UTC

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And my LinkedIn page
https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewdeanmartin/

2024-12-20 13:02:08 UTC

I'm on the job market again, anyone need an Python/AWS developer for an IC or Tech Lead role?
- For remote, my jurisdiction is Virginia, USA
- In person in Norther VA, DC
Resumes, portfolio, contact info here:
https://github.com/matthewdeanmartin
#fedijob #fedijobs #hiring #hiringnow #jobsearch #hireme #fedihire #fedihired #getfedihired #layoff #lookingforwork #opentowork
#forhire #techjobs #techishiring

2024-12-19 02:42:19 UTC

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I'd add to this list some more high cost big guns for squashing/preventing bugs
- typeguard (I got frustrated and stop using this)
- hypothesis (This is hit or miss if it adds value)
- mutatest/mutmut (I haven't used these)
- 100% coverage
- pyta (pre/post condition checking)
- mypy for None safety (not sure this is achievable like in other languages with null safety)

2024-12-19 02:34:32 UTC

Railroad programming with `returns`.
I think this makes sense for that chunk of code in your app that is
- super complicated
- flaky
- lots of code paths
- and has to work or the whole app & project fails
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkxf583t4Vc&ab_channel=ArjanCodes

2024-12-17 00:22:25 UTC

People, you're killing me
```python
class FatalConversationError(Exception):
```

2024-12-16 20:20:33 UTC

TODO: Write MATTLAB, which just sends me emails with your math problems and I reply that I don't know, it's over my head.

2024-12-16 20:19:36 UTC

Why don't people who like minimalist code editors use here strings in the terminal? Too high level? Maybe a byte stream editor. Too high level? Toggle switches? Go used toggle switches, show us how macho you are.

2024-12-15 22:14:39 UTC

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There are roughly 2 models for selling software
- Tech companies (e.g. Google makes Chrome), (ex)-developers are the Board, Prez, VP all the way down the org chart.
- Big Org hires a "Service" company (GM or US Gov't hires Booze Allen)
The 2nd is managed by the non-technical bureaucracy. Prolly no one else can be the customer, but the project quality & risks suffers for the seam between a non-technical org and a technical org.

2024-12-14 21:53:12 UTC

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The shelf fungus? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polypore
Too blurry to see if there are lichens there. The green bits are probably moss.

2024-12-14 15:23:28 UTC

On mastodon the truth that left/right policy bundling is based on irrational (neo)tribalism is more obvious that usual because it is an even mix of Europe and US & the left & right of each don't bundle issues the same.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYoA1R38cuc

2024-12-12 23:35:17 UTC

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Oh yeah. One big pain point is the task definitions. If you want to update them in a ci pipeline say to push image:v2, you have to fetch the task definition, edit the doc and put it again. If terraform owns the task definition, it will revert to image:v1. You can't tell terraform to ignore just the image in `container_definitions`
https://stackoverflow.com/a/75062076/33264
So I think it is painful for all approaches.

2024-12-11 14:24:54 UTC

I think the first challenge of running a sprint or agile retro meeting is over coming everyone contempt for the exercise give past experiences with it.

2024-12-11 14:19:37 UTC

Days since bash punched me in the face: 0.

2024-12-10 16:18:07 UTC

Terraform: "Still destroying..."
Never give up Terraform! Something better will come up out of the ashes!

2024-12-10 02:34:48 UTC

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2015 - track pad shows up as mouse *
2024 - track pad shows up as mouse **
When mac sees a mouse you get arrow motion, click and double click. That's it. Like a mouse without a scrollwheel
* https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7297989?sortBy=rank
** https://www.reddit.com/r/applehelp/comments/1gpcf68/bought_a_magic_trackpad_is_recognized_as_mouse/

2024-12-10 02:00:46 UTC

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I honestly am astonished that Apple, who designed their computer to be incompatible with all trackpads except Apple trackpads can't coordinate with themselves to distribute drivers to Macbooks.

2024-12-10 01:58:08 UTC

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They run cool to the touch. That is about all I can say good about them.

2024-12-10 01:57:49 UTC

Been using mac for a month again and OMG I hate it.
- Magic Trackpad acts like a mouse w/o scroll
- The keyboard is the dvorack of keyboards, about as pleasant as accidentally setting the a windows keyboard to Icelandic
- The keys are so flat and cramped.
- mac terminal and iterm2 are both a step down from windows Terminal

2024-12-09 22:36:22 UTC

I've had #unitedhealthcare as an insurer before, I didn't know there was a 30% chance they won't pay out. That's like scam level. If a life insurance company didn't payout on 30% of deaths, it would be considered a scam.
We shouldn't be asking why the shooter shot them, we should be asking why we aren't all shooting UNH, legally-like, by passing laws with capital punishment for finance crimes involving customer deaths.

2024-12-09 13:40:31 UTC

When the same person does implementation and design, design documents will be completed after implementation.
Design is governance. The best way to design code is to use code. If you want design to be governance, it needs to be a different person.

2024-12-09 12:43:16 UTC

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You don't need AWS Certification. But what are the 5 Pillars of WAF? Ah, wrong answer, we can't consider you for any positions.

2024-12-09 03:48:27 UTC

Health and Transit savings accounts are likely scams. The whole employee benefit system is mostly a scam. The employers are giving so much money to benefits management companies and employees get crumbs.

2024-12-09 02:18:34 UTC

A nuanced take on Ghost Developers.
And look, you can't both believe that bullshit jobs exist and that there are no ghost developers. Also it is possible these people aren't bad people, but they still aren't doing any work.
https://wapo.st/3Vv8NfQ

2024-12-08 18:05:18 UTC

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My recent experience with my current job makes me think knowing all the services is a prerequisite to setting up a secure account. You can't secure the things if you don't know they're there. Also I think new accounts should have multiple speedbumps to using a service for the first time, which AWS doesn't.

2024-12-08 18:01:28 UTC

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"For each of AWS's 200 services, please indicate a skill rating 1-5 and years of experience."

2024-12-08 16:52:51 UTC

Don't hire rabbits as software developers. They're always going down rabbit holes, can't stay on task.

2024-12-08 16:07:34 UTC

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lipu linja li nasa lukin.

2024-12-08 14:37:36 UTC

Reminder, the Assad regime used the medical system to torture opponents. The new guys would have to try really hard to be worse.
https://www.newarab.com/news/syria-regime-used-hospital-torture-kill-opponents

2024-12-07 17:18:41 UTC

Despite high safety scores/crash ratings, Tesla is the deadliest car manufacturer with the Y doing the worst
https://jalopnik.com/these-are-the-deadliest-cars-on-the-road-1851713665/slides/11

2024-12-07 15:04:21 UTC

This winter, do the AOC programming challenge to write some code that will shift the overton window and political center of gravity to the left.

2024-12-07 14:09:12 UTC

What should I say when I need to fart out a vacuous, information free cliche?
"It depends"

2024-12-05 21:18:53 UTC

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There is literally nothing anyone in the US can do as an individual to address the unfairness in the system through the legal system. We are spitting in a hurricane and telling ourselves we can change the direction of the storm.

2024-12-05 19:17:50 UTC

Did the earth move for you?

2024-12-05 18:43:54 UTC

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Also I think no types mean "mypy, make your best guess" and it think it is too conservative and makes to much implicit Any.

2024-12-05 18:42:39 UTC

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I want to start using this https://github.com/Instagram/MonkeyType so the machine can do it for me (non llm). LLMs can't do this reliably yet (maybe Aider can)

2024-12-05 01:37:13 UTC

guy on internet: bots don't know or reason anymore than a book
other guy: how do you know your brain can know or reason
guy on internet: I'm not a physicalist...
Ok, ghosts have entered the chat room. If you believe in souls, ghosts & nonphysical thinking thing, that's magic, go consult your preferred authority on magic. Before LLMs, we just never had to think about it (do others things know), other than animals and foreigners.

2024-12-03 12:30:49 UTC

Celebrate the 25 days of Advent by assigning yourself 25 tickets from the jira backlog

2024-12-03 02:08:06 UTC

gnireenigne - That wasn't that hard, I didn't even use code. I don't know why everyone says it is so hard.

2024-12-02 20:14:13 UTC

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Indulgences. I guess like ice cream that you didn't really need.

2024-12-02 18:07:34 UTC

Using jira is easy, you just have to open 200 tabs and remember which of the 200 3-chevron symbols mean. Fortunately the tickets are all 5 digit numbers, so that is just 1000 meaningless digits to keep track of.

2024-12-02 14:07:32 UTC

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I'm copying her style by saying everything 3 times.

2024-12-02 14:06:52 UTC

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I think she did the nuance that "this guy (and his fictionalizing biographer) made himself out to be far worse than he actual was", but to get to the nuance, you have to watch past the 1st hour.
Her thesis is everything about Feynman is fictional except the physics and the stories reported by people *other than *Feynman & Leighton, so if anyone is judging something by a past standard, they're judging a fiction.
Do we care about the reputational harms to a fictional personage?

2024-12-01 19:44:14 UTC

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Publishers should make it clear when a book is fiction or borderline fiction. I remember seeing the Feynman books on a shelf in every public library since forever. I didn't read them, as it turns out, for the better.

2024-12-01 19:42:43 UTC

Lemme save you almost 3 hrs. (spoilers!)
- Richard Feynman told tall tales about himself (and stories that have to be false)
- His biographer took these tales and wrote 2 pop books that make Feynman out to be more macho & misogynistic & an ass than he was in real life
- He wasn't as a bad as his macho persona, but he wasn't a perfect angel
- He was an academic whose tall tales/lies and biographer created a physic bro that never existed but is emulated by jerks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwKpj2ISQAc

2024-11-29 12:44:15 UTC

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That possible? Ci.yml is so much easier to say

2024-11-28 12:17:01 UTC

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And TypedDict.

2024-11-26 15:27:56 UTC

I keep doing control-c on one machine and then moving to another machine and doing control-v and I get nothing, because it turns out the clipboard is not inside my fingers.
But why not? Why can't I have a distributed clipboard that posts the copy to a remote server so I can paste on a 2nd machine?
Surely someone has already written this.

2024-11-24 14:30:45 UTC

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Inspired by https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZyGUgJHulo which I will live tweet.

2024-11-24 14:30:00 UTC

Time to write a short book.
```markdown
# Maintainable Bash
## By Matthew Martin
Keep programs under two characters, e.g. `ls`
If that fails, try to keep it shorter than that.
```

2024-11-23 13:41:16 UTC

My current job is hourly pay. So vacation time & sick leave are a reduction in paycheck for that week. Everyone else on the team is salary & follows salaried work norms. I think we're headed for some friction on unpaid overtime & work outside of core hours. (Also doesn't help that I'm hourly and there is no clock to punch)
work under 40 hrs: the clock protects the employer
work over 40 hrs: the clock protects the employee

2024-11-23 03:19:22 UTC

Quantum-like poll to measure if people have ever taken a poll. The measurement affects the system.

2024-11-18 14:12:31 UTC

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When I was 8 I got a computer & learned to code, with very little outside help. Now, as a parent, I'm astonished that my kids which much better hardware need so much poking and prodding and external motivation to learn to code. I've tried neglecting them, ignoring them, giving them total freedom, I've tried "not forcing them" and nothing works.
I think this is why CEO in frustration are doing the RTOs, even if it in the short run means losing some high performers.

2024-11-18 14:09:59 UTC

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But Matt, what about all-remote companies that are doing okay? I bet those are all staffed by people who a proven high performers who probably were juniors, at an office, when they were younger.

2024-11-18 14:08:19 UTC

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* When a rich man pays a guard to unnecessarily guard his office, he shows off his status and gets warm fuzzies. When a rich man pays a guard to work from home, the company's productivity doesn't drop, the guard wasn't productive, but now the guard is on payroll and not projecting status for the chain of command. A rational rich man would order the guard back to the office or fire them.

2024-11-18 14:06:20 UTC

My theory of remote work:
High performers productivity went up.
but
Entry level productivity tanked
Some people stopped working because no one was looking anymore
BS jobs continued to exist, but they were now a form of accidental private charity.*
In net, the two effects cancelled each other out.

2024-11-17 19:00:35 UTC

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I gotta track that down down. Lots of pacific islander recipes call for it.

2024-11-17 15:07:32 UTC

I need the hot takes of somone who:
- knows history of bad governments
- knows about current bad governments around the world
- and how they switched from good to bad and bad to good
- and how much damage occurred in the middle
Likely relevant: Germany, Spain, Chile, England have had flipflops
Russia somehow feeds themselves despite bad governance essentially forever

2024-11-16 18:46:02 UTC

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Which bot writes text like a ESL writer?

2024-11-13 01:32:26 UTC

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Oh I hate tweets that try to steer the conversation, but please, suggest who else to give $ to. I don't know what it accomplishes to say, gee "Matt, those mostly liberal money-targets are to the right of *my* personal politics"

2024-11-13 01:28:47 UTC

Well who else to give $ to
Independent Journalism
- SomeMoreNew
- NPR
- Others, probably the ones my wife watches
Local Politics
- DLCC (dems in state houses around the country)
- Dems in my state (VA dems & specific candidates)
- Other down ballot things as I find them
- Any populists that show up on the Federal level (Jon Tester for prez?)

2024-11-11 17:34:38 UTC

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This joke had 2 bugs. I need to write unit tests for my jokes.

2024-11-11 17:23:01 UTC

```python
def flex(x):
return x^100
# flexing my abs to make them 100x more powerful
print(abs(flex(2))
```

2024-11-10 17:20:07 UTC

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Global macroeconomic trends mattered more than anything else this time around.

2024-11-10 13:12:51 UTC

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Matches my experience, too. I think on current consumer hardware the 7b models are less for asking questions about JS & more for the gap between things ordinary code can't do but LLMs find easy even with a 7b model, things like Named Entity Extraction, parsing dates out of a totally arbitrary pattern. Anything that needs to be like a skilled software developer you need a frontier model like 4o or Claude.

2024-11-09 18:10:03 UTC

Are you illegal in your own country (the US)? Are the two main parties blowing up real estate, the job market and the pensions system and you will need to retire on what you can sell your house for?
- Costa Rica
- Albania
- Panama
- Georgia
- Portugal
Will let you retire or work remote for some foreign company.
Why live in a banana republic when you can live in a republic with actual bananas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjmxTZCLfG4

2024-11-08 04:28:38 UTC

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Anyhow, build houses, gentrify the neighborhoods, build anything! Make some radical laws that says you can't be evicted from your house if your mortgage is upside down, so people don't have an incentive to create artificial scarcity by never letting any houses be built. Guarantee people proper pensions so their house isn't the pension.

2024-11-08 04:25:02 UTC

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The people with houses don't want to fix the housing problem because then the $2million or $500,000 house you just bought on a 30 year mortgage would be $200,000 and you'd have millions of people with a deeply negative net worth.
Even if the price of eggs were "fixed", housing decimates your disposable income.
Us people with houses told the people without houses, "Fuck You! We Got our house!"
And we're really surprised when they voted "Burn it all down, fuck you all!"

2024-11-08 04:21:58 UTC

Theory: New coalitions
New Right
- Billionaires, Christian Right & Business who don't care who is in their coalition
- People who don't own a house/can't afford rent. Apoliticial because they're trying to make this months rent, no time read a 250 page book about policy.
New Left
- old school educated republicans
-the educated liberals with good paying jobs
People who own a house and can afford rent, but as a group, don't want to do anything about housing....
#uspol

2024-11-06 13:49:42 UTC

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Is Finland going to have to do this single handed?

2024-11-03 02:26:02 UTC

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The shape would go well with these wavy edge noodles
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/416/650/425/264/835/original/37952a311100d513.png

2024-10-30 18:16:02 UTC

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Regular shoes are expected to last about 300 miles. On days when I putter around the house, I walk 2500-3000 steps or about a mile. So these are well over 300 miles. Maybe watch if Saucony will make a home slipper version of their Triumph model for people that walk a lot in the house

2024-10-28 23:36:41 UTC

Technology is decelerating. The M4 chip has a number after the M that is only 33% larger that the last generation. When the M3 chip was introduced, the post-M number increased by 50%.

2024-10-27 15:31:50 UTC

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Everyone is running for Congress
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/380/104/951/139/001/original/1ca999d112025585.jpg

2024-10-27 10:58:36 UTC

One hour left to train for the marathon.

2024-10-23 13:57:26 UTC

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In otherwords, everyone is already, in the semantic sense, already using calendar versioning (larger version means later in time and that is ALL), just not everyone is putting the actual dates into the version.

2024-10-23 13:56:32 UTC

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Not sure. I never payed attention to the parts of PEP 440 that was incompatible with semantic version. And no one knows when a change they made broke backwards compatibility, so semantic versioning promises are all lies. And people put all sorts of strings into the version number. Imho, the rational way to look at this is that version numbers are ordered strings. Greater than, less than, equals are meaningful but that is all they mean.

2024-10-23 12:47:45 UTC

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options I've seen/tried
- regex to bump versions - so fragile
- git tags - what if there is no git?
- running code to get metadata- why so much code for a constant?
I'm using this now & it is pretty low pain. I use poetry to bump the version and generate the about file and then copy it to the destination.
https://pypi.org/project/metametameta/

2024-10-20 14:08:35 UTC

Which meme is now too old to use

2024-10-16 03:04:08 UTC

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So to get a python3 alias on Windows without buying a mac, I wrote a library. I don't have a Mac handy, but this will *not* work on Unix, creating the cli command conflicts with the pre-existing python3 symlink.
Works on windows, in particular, works when running `shell python3 ...` inside of Makefile.
#python
https://pypi.org/project/python3-alias/

2024-10-16 02:02:21 UTC

When `python3` doesn't exist, are maintainers planning to send everyone a mac?
https://docs.python.org/3/library/venv.html#venv.EnvBuilder.setup_python