Philip Guenther @guenther@bsd.network
he/him; recovering system/network admin; hacking on email and OpenBSD since the '90s
Joined Sep 2019
Pinned post
This is your periodic reminder that when looking for assistance, "What problem are you trying to solve?" is what your question should be centered on.
'problem' here refers to the highest level of goal you can describe. Some chain of events led to you looking for assistance; what was the start?
Putting that answer in your request cuts down on the "you asked for X but you obviously want Y" sidebar and should help center your query on *your* motivation, making it less confrontational.
OH: “pestobismal, the green stuff”
Philip Guenther
boosted
“The thing that made open source maintenance joyful was that someone cared enough about your work to try to improve it. You mentored them. They learned. The code got better. The community grew. That's the social contract.
AI slop doesn't add work. It replaces human connection with mechanized noise.”
https://ryancheley.com/2026/08/17/what-if-maintainer-burnout-isn-t-burnout/
Philip Guenther
boosted
oh no-- John Crowley died today
his novel _Little, Big_ is one of my all-time favorites, just a profound and amazing work
No, I haven't been thinking dark thoughts and having dark conversations about my profession and my hobby. Why do you ask?
2029: Open Source licenses' disclaimer of warranties is invalidated under "attractive nuisance doctrine" as "vibe-coders, as public LLM users, are, per Does-vs-OpenAI-Anthropic-et-al [2029], effectively children with no adult cognizance or _capability_ [stress added] of responsibility or liability: therefore, leaving source code available for them to hurt themselves and others with is recognized as negligence regardless of prior warning and disclaiming of any warranty"
We encountered a couple adult praying mantises on our hike today. Here’s the first, which was pretty fine with walking onto an open hand, with no “be scared of me!” arm waving. We guided back onto a star thistle like it was before and left it to its hunt. 
This morning the cats were both “no, we’re fine in the sunroom, no need to visit the living room like we have done every other morning. No need to go past that fell fan-beast” 
The cats apparently challenged the box air-filter** to a judo match, which it won decisively after it did a somersault throw sending them both fleeing to a far room, unwilling to go back even when I made kitty-treat-bag noises.
“Pure of heart; dumb of ass”
Picture is of box filter back on its bottom with filters back in place…
** inanimate
Philip Guenther
boosted
An owl, perhaps 45cm (1.5’) tall, landed on the telephone line downslope from our front porch. Camera didn’t do well in the evening gloom, but best wishes on your night hunts, friend!
The soap root is well into its yearly evening flowering. Ahhhhhhhhh
Philip Guenther
boosted
Philippe Ensarguet on AI slop and open source:
The beautiful lie....
The open source model is built on a beautiful lie: code is the contribution
It never was
The code was a proxy, for understanding, for investment, for belonging The friction was the filter
The butterflies were out and it was apparently Bug Sex Sunday today, so we caught two couples "in the act". Should I post photos?
Philip Guenther
boosted
Remember to update your libc for the new AI errno(2) values that just dropped:
Slug Saturday
(Found while moving log pieces to build a retaining wall/edging for a path)
Amazon East being down resulted in an annoying meeting being canceled because everyone was screaming^W scrambling on fixing things
My evil plan was a success^U
Philip Guenther
boosted
cryptobiotic soil is one of my favorite things out in the desert
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_soil_crust
alt: camera slowly pans over a nearly black cryptobiotic crust
he/him; recovering system/network admin; hacking on email and OpenBSD since the '90s
Joined Sep 2019
