Fuck this whole "ecosystem". I mean really get right up in there and fuck it.

mesa-25.3.1# meson setup build ... Program python3 found: YES 3.9.6 3.9.6 (/usr/bin/python3) meson.build:964:2: ERROR: Problem encountered: Python (3.x) mako module >= 0.8.0 required to build mesa. ... mesa-25.3.1# port installed py-mako The following ports are currently installed: py-mako @1.3.10_0 (active)

This is the point where I typically decide, "I didn't want to build that anyway. I'll just go stick splinters under my fingernails instead."

Previously, previously.

Americans support a universal medical system by a large margin. Even if we count only Republicans, almost 50% support it.

So why doesn't Congress enact one? I can see only one possible explanation: our corrupt system of campaign funding.

This is what makes the difference between progressive Democrats and plutocratists (of any party). The progressive Democrats try to win by advocating laws that will help non-rich Americans; the plutocratists try to avoid the issue and raise distractions.

Deportation thugs at the Fort Bliss deportations prison have been accused of *beatings, sexual abuse and clandestine deportations of non-Mexican nationals into Mexico.*

The Labour Party's right-wing plutocratist power-bloc chose Starmer as leader, but the right wing policies he put in place have inspired public revulsion. This article speculates that they are about to replace Starmer as prime minister with another right-wing Labour minister to continue pushing for the same policies.

Local elected officials if Britain's magat party are trying to gag their opposition using the weak powers of local government. The results may be rather embarrassing for them.

The gang MS-13 used threats and intimidation to support the right-wing candidate for president of Honduras. The corrupter did the same thing using different threats.

*For months, [the corrupter and his magats] have been accusing [their] political enemies of mortgage fraud for claiming more than one primary residence.*

He seems to have committed such a fraud himself. *He had two mortgages he claimed were primary dwellings, records show.*

Magat US Park Service cancels gratis entry on Martin Luther King Day and Juneteenth, and announces gratis entry on the persecutor's birthday instead.

This reinforces the right-wing extremist position that slavery wasn't so bad, if the slaves were blacks.

The US government is considering abolishing payment by check.

I use checks to pay bills that come to me with my name on them. They are morally acceptable because (1) being anonymous is not possible for those bills and (2) I can send checks without running a nonfree app or JavaScript program.

Sending credit card information on paper would also be morally acceptable in those cases; however, checks have the advantage that the bank does no find out what one paid for with a check, whereas I think credit card issuers get specifics about what one paid for with a credit card transaction. (In addition, credit card numbers are easy to use for fraud, easier than a checking account number.)

Systems for repression of people depend on data. Every kind of surveillance built into systems we use, including payment systems, facilitates repression and arbitrary, tyrannical rule.

US citizens: call on Congress to oppose high-deductible medical plans.

US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.

To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.

Please spread the word.

US citizens: call on Congress to investigate the companies that have donated for the "king"'s grand ballroom.

US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.

To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.

Please spread the word.

Roomba maker iRobot has filed for bankruptcy and will be taken over by its Chinese supplier after the company that popularized the robot vacuum cleaner fell under the weight of competition from cheaper rivals.

"Today's announcement marks a pivotal milestone in securing iRobot's long-term future," said Gary Cohen, iRobot's chief executive. "The transaction will strengthen our financial position and will help deliver continuity for our consumers, customers and partners."

I guess their pivot to being an arms dealer didn't work out, huh.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Some time in the last ~6 months, eglCreatePlatformWindowSurface vanished from the libraries provided by MacPorts "mesa". Where do I find it? It is not in libGL and there is no libEGL.

macOS 14.7.7, mesa 25.3.1, xorg-libX11 1.8.12.

Previously.

With all of the different Linux kerenl stable releases happening (at least 1 stable branch and multiple longterm branches are active at any one point in time), keeping track of what commits are already applied to what branch, and what branch specific fixes should be applied to, can quickly get to be a very complex task if you attempt to do this manually. So I’ve created some tools to help make my life easier when doing the stable kerrnel maintenance work, which ended up making the work of tracking CVEs much simpler to manage in an automated way.

John Varley died two days ago on December 10, 2025. A great many will mourn him as a science fiction writer whose work they enjoyed. But this misses his moment.

In the mid-1970s, Varley exploded into science fiction like a phoenix. His "Eight Worlds" stories were set in a future where hyper-powerful aliens have killed everyone on Earth as a threat to its whales and porpoises and humanity survives everywhere else in the Solar System. Despite this bleak background, the stories were bright and inventive. People change gender on a whim. Wealthy and glorious cities turn to shacks and hovels when their holographic fronts are turned off at night. People bank their memories so that, upon death, they can be restarted with new memories. He wrote so many major stories per year that, in a resurrection of an old pulp-days practice, some had to be published under a pseudonym.

We were all dazzled. His work was full of impressive new ideas. And, outside of the Eight Worlds sequence, he wrote things like "In the Hall of the Martian Kings," which resurrected the possibility of intelligent life on Mars after the Mariner probes had apparently disproved that. Or "Air Raid," which made air travel terrifying again. [...]

Long, long ago, when I was yet unpublished, I found myself talking with Isaac Asimov at I forget which convention, when John Varley cruised by, trailed by enthusiastic fans. Asimov gazed sadly after him and said, "Look at him. A decade ago, everybody was asking, 'Who is John Varley?' A decade from now, everybody will be asking, 'Who is Isaac Asimov?'"

And that was John Varley's moment.

There are a lot of books and authors that I loved as a kid that, in hindsight, are not as good as I remembered. But John Varley is not one of those; he remains one of my favorite authors. I read Overdrawn at the Memory Bank in a second-hand "Best SF of the year" compilation when I was 10 years old and my head exploded. I read everything of his I could get my hands on after that. His vision of the future wasn't just robots and spaceships but it was optimistic and romantic about what we could become in a way I hadn't seen before.

I am sad to report that almost all of his work appears to be out of print! The pickings on bookshop.org are slim. When evangelizing him to people I always recommend The John Varley Reader as a great place to start. That one is widely available on eBay. So go buy that. Go. Do it now.

Which reminds me that one time in the 90s I loaned a friend my copy of the already-out-of-print-even-then Blue Champagne and they immediately lost it. I was so mad. This was before Amazon and eBay, but I eventually found some early online bookstore and ordered myself a new copy. When it arrived it turned out to be a signed first edition! So I was less mad then.

His Eight Worlds stories from the 70s and 80s are my favorites. Decades later, he returned to them with Steel Beach, which is his riff on Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, but slaps Heinlein around almost as much as Verhoeven did in Starship Troopers.

AI as a WordPress Fundamental:

The funny thing about this mental experiment is that your average WordPress user doesn't know what a database is, much less the fundamental role it plays within WordPress. It's taken for granted. Of course posts save, comments can be made, and settings are stored. Why wouldn't they? [...]

Yes, "imagine that". "What if."

What if, from the end-user to the plugin developer, they could take for granted that there's an AI model accessible to me by virtue of being in WordPress? What kinds of things would people use it for? What amazing things would people create that are built on the reliable presence of a capable LLM? [...]

Imagine if every single developer was empowered with AI capabilities without having to handle the complexities of AI integration. What if the developer just did something like

$$image = Ai_Client::prompt( 'Create an image that beautifully reflects this post content' ) ->with_text($post_content) ->generate_image();

Previously, previously, previously.

NEW HAVEN, CT -- Shedding new light on a previously undocumented effect of loneliness, a team of psychologists at Yale University found that at least 80% of Americans lack the social connections necessary to pull off a heist.

"When it comes to putting together a crew with the skills needed for a bank job or a jewel heist, a majority of Americans reported knowing just one or two guys, tops," said lead researcher Jane Iannitello, adding that only 20% had any safecrackers in their lives, a mere 16% knew any hacker prodigies with a rebellious streak, and fewer than 5% had access to Taiwanese acrobats doubling as masters of disguise.

"As they spend more and more time on social media, people just aren't going out to underground boxing rings, art auctions, or other settings where they are likely to meet a fast-talking charismatic type who pulls them into a daring heist. They often lose touch with their demolition experts after childhood, and though people may be eager for a big money payday that could mean walking away from the life for good, they are too afraid to put themselves out there for fear of rejection. Even in cases where they have a crew big enough for a heist, lonely Americans are often left feeling stranded due to a lack of getaway drivers, which forces them to brandish firearms at total strangers and demand that they drive, just drive."

While researchers cautioned the trend is likely to continue, they went on to state that some of the negative effects could be mitigated by reaching out to therapists with a plan, a keycard, and nothing to lose.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

What levers do I have to pull on this? E.g. maybe it would be sensible to drop connections if they stay in "R" for more than a couple seconds?

This 12 year old post suggests some sysctl.conf changes, but I have no idea whether those suggestions are sensible today. My current settings for those are the defaults:

net.ipv4.tcp_fin_timeout = 60 net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 32768 60999 net.core.somaxconn = 4096 net.core.netdev_max_backlog = 1000

In httpd.conf, some vhosts have "Timeout 240" because I really do have some CGIs that take that long to run, and you can't make exceptions on a per-URL basis.

I have reqtimeout_module loaded, with the default settings, which I believe are:

handshake=0 header=20-40,MinRate=500 body=20,MinRate=500

Previously, previously.

This is an “eat your veggies!” talk, which is an indepth review of an excellent PR by @dovgopoly. When someone first submits a PR, I like to explain every detail of how I would have done it, so they have some guidance about what the process looks like.

You can see the final result here.