A.B. Murrow
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@lmpeate at the NZ Tech Rally conference this last week serving up choice slides like this.
Great talk on the ethics of AI and how to keep your values centered in modern tech! An important discussion, and a perspective sorely lacking from a lot of talks about AI these days.
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Blog post by @luj that escaped my attention until now asking just how reproducible nix and NixOS is at scale? Turns out, he's been studying this exact question since 2017 and did a part of his PhD study on it.
https://luj.fr/blog/is-nixos-truly-reproducible.html
The answer? In 2017, about 60% of builds from nixpkgs were bitwise reproducible.
Now, it's over 90%.
This is great news! Especially since we don't have any tools that actively monitor this, so there isn't any active process that enforces reproducibility outside of nix itself (and the reproducibility team, let's not forget)
Great work, and great writeup. I look forward to reading more in the paper he teases in the post.
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Also, fair game to announce it here as well as on my blog, but I am going to be speaking about this Drupal and NixOS integration at DrupalSouth in Wellington, NZ on May 14th!
The talk is titled "Reproducible Drupal Environments The Easy Way: A Hands-On Look At Using Drupal With Nix & NixOS"
https://drupalsouth.org/events/drupalsouth-wellington-2026/schedule/4236
Really looking forward to sharing this tool with people and talking about how to use it. Come say hi in Breakout Room 2 at 9:40 if you want to learn about functional declarative software environments, what they are, why they're useful, and how to use them to build your favorite PHP-powered CMS, share it with anyone, and deploy it on any Linux computer anywhere all without using Docker, virtualization, or clusters.
The minimal impelemntation only requires a single line of code and it a runs on native hardware!
Mark your calendars: https://events.humanitix.com/drupalsouth-2026-wellington-nz
See you there!
#DrupalSouth #Speaker #Drupal #OpenSource #NZ #Aotearoa #Nix #NixOS
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It's almost time for NixOS release 26.05, which means I've been really busy trying to get the NixOS Drupal service ready for the big day! I've been hard at work fixing bugs and adding new features that will make it easier to package and run custom Drupal packages on NixOS.
I realized recently that I've been working on this project for nearly a year now, so it might be a good time to blog about the things I've done since last year, and talk about what's next for Drupal on NixOS.
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We have to deal with vibe coding because we didn't do enough work in computer literacy and open computing.
AI is the tax we're paying for putting computers everywhere and not teaching enough people how to use them, or demystifying the process of what it takes to get a computer to do stuff.
It's not magic, it's math. And we're reminded of that every day when a Open Claw generates like 1000 new CVEs a day, or a hot new business gets hacked in the most laughable way possible.
Closed source software has it's own role in this, too.
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RE: https://kolektiva.social/@firestorm/116346370857505543
Our city's independent bookstore needs your help!
My local anticapitalist, antifascist, LGBTQIA+ friendly, anarchist, super ultra crunchy, cooperatively owned, and self described "radical bookstore" is falling on tough times.
Hurricane Helene was a doozy y'all, a ton of small businesses like this are closing with no plans on reopening. The FEMA payments meant to help Asheville and WNC are being bogged down in a bunch of red tape, so many of us haven't seen a dime of them yet, even though some of it is earmarked to help small business. And, although tourism is coming back (and we're very very open for business!) the shock to the system was just too big for a lot of folks.
I've seen long-standing cornerstorne-of-the-neighborhood places just like this wink out of existence without any warning, only to be replaced by exploitative, soul-sucking corporate owned chains run by people who don't even live or pay their taxes in our community. I don't want to keep seeing this happen to the town I grew up in.
These are good people who provide an essential service to our city: being some of the loudest, most outspoken defenders of our human rights, and providing civic minded reading material you won't find anywhere else.
They sell books other people don't want you to read, and that generally means those are books you're obligated to read.
Also, they once hosted the backroom of their bookstore out as a viewing space for a no-budget student film I helped make like a decade ago and they were real cool about it so-long-as everyone we invited to the screening bought a coffee or a book. Do you think Barnes & Nobel would do that? Would Amazon?
Check 'em out! Buy a banned book! Become a sustaining member of one of the best independent bookstores around!
#Asheville #WNC #HeleneRecovery #Helene #SmallBusiness #LocalBusiness #ShopLocal #Bookstodon
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As an addition to the last post, the finix project doesn't have any docs yet. It looks like there is an issue describing that need.
https://github.com/finix-community/finix/issues/29
This thread is worth a read if you want to understand a little bit about how to get started. Finix is way more DIY than stock nixos, though they share the same package set. It purposefully has few to no defaults, so I suspect it'll feel more like Linux From Scratch than what most of us are used to.
But on the plus side, the maintainer has a working personal config they encourage folks to explore. It is flake based and has solutions for most standard operations, plus a bunch of TODOs that are in search of fixing, perhaps.
Looks like a simple niri box with a nice set of alternative systems tools and even a musl libc implementation if you want to play around with it.
Reading this gave me the inspiration to switch to the limine boot loader, which is fantastic!
https://github.com/aanderse/finix-config/
2/
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Edit: added notes in the next post about how to get started.
More Nix and non-systemd goodness that I've just learned about.
Finix: fast init Nix
https://github.com/finix-community/finix
An (experimental) Nixos system using finit.
The maintainer reached out to me on discourse and cued me in on this project after I posted about my Liberated Systemd overwrite. I didn't know anyone was working on this, but I'm pleasently surprised!
It's usable right now and (according to them) would benefit from some more experienced users to test things out.
I've not tried it yet (I expect some stuff to not work, but I've seen some setups from folks that appear to have full DEs and WMs). However, I'm glad there's a real PID 1 replacement that is working in NixOS.
It's all built on top of nixpkgs, so it looks like (and the maintainer confirmed) you can just fold this into your existing config and the fix whatever systemd services that weren't ported.
I'll probably play with this soon. Very cool!
1/
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Trying out the Cinnamon desktop with NixOS and I'm pleasantly surprised by how good it is! It's mainly x11 right now, but I can live with that.
One hiccup though, the online accounts tool wouldn't work until I added
services.gnome.gnome-online-accounts.enable = true;
The official wiki didn't have any notes about needing to do that, so I added them. Now I'm wondering how much of my config could be extrapolated into fixing the docs for the tools I use.
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RE: https://mamot.fr/@Khrys/116265905987693759
Amazing how fast Linux went from being the first and last name in digital counterculture to now being full of compliance bros seeking online clout.
This guy and his one-man mission to implement bad faith age verification at all costs is a warning for the open computing community.
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Wow oh wow. Any strategies for how to manage OpenSnitch on NixOS? It's a cool tool but the constant popups for everything that connects to the internet is just... a lot.
And, unfortunately, because of how nix works, each rule I allow via the popup assigns the /nix/store binary path to the rule, so I don't expect the rules to survive a rebuild.
I've already used it to strip out all of the advertising domains, and my next target is for blocking AI slop domains. For that alone is worth it.
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Hey, I'm looking for some #FediHelp! It's #linux related.
So I installed #ZorinOS on my FIL's aging HP Envy x360 2-in-1 laptop, and he's pretty happy with it. The install was smooth, we were able to set him up with some #FOSS software that fit his needs, and move over all of his old files. The OS experience is great and in that regard neither of us have any complaints there.
One issue we keep running into, however: when the laptop is asleep overnight, or sometimes if you just look away for about half an hour, the laptop suspends but doesn't wake up. The keyboard backlight is lit, but the screen is off and nothing will wake it up. We have to reboot it every time.
My old Clevo laptop (+ any variety of distros) did this a while back and the only thing that would (sometimes) fix it was to close the lid, wait a minute or two, and open it again. I was never able to diagnose it, and I think it's happening again here.
Things I've already done:
- Switch display server to X11 only
- Update GRUB params to use the system's acpi tables
- Disable BIOS safe boot
- Updated the firmwareThe laptop doesn't have NVIDIA graphics (it's 100% Intel) so I'm not worried about that. My current strategy for making it work during the day is to just never let the screen sleep (he had that on his old laptop and seemed to like it).
Is there anything else I can do for when the laptop has been closed overnight?
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Hiya nerds,
I need a software recommendation. I'm looking for a file comparison tool, sort of like Meld for GNOME but a little more tailored to the experience of reconciling duplicate files on multiple hard drives.
The requirements
- #FOSS / #FLOSS
- Compares Files, tells you if it is on Drive A vs Drive BThe Nice To Haves
- Recursive
- Bitwise comparison (in case the paths or file names aren't exact)
- Multiple drives? Might be a stretch.
- MacOSX compatible, but failing that, Linux only is fine tooThe Use Case
My partner has multiple hard drives that have acted as her ad-hoc digital backup solution for years. But not every drive has everything on it, and she's pretty sure some of it is redundant, sometimes even within the same drive.She'd like to slim down her storage needs and KNOW for a fact where and what she has, and how many copies.
#SoftwareRecommendation #FreeSoftware #Linux #MacOSX #Linux #Help #SeekingHelp
#boost4reach #boost -
Back to using Sway on NixOS with Home Manager. It was the same combo that sort of burned me out on nixos last year, but I've got a bit more confidence now in the whole stack to make it work. I love the i3/sway way of doing things, and I can't really get the same experience anywhere else, so it's back WMs for a while.
This time, I'll experiment with writing my dotfiles in their native format before delegating home manager to hold onto their state, I'll ask home manager to do less overall so it doesn't do dumb things like step on my gtk config on every rebuild, and I'll slowly build the system up over a longer period of time instead of like in a weekend.
Slower, simpler, and hopefully less nixos-rebuild switch calls.
I'm also using nwg shell for the common UI components and settings managers, which is fantastic by the way. It solves needing to learn an entire esoteric config language for every program in your system, and the final look and feel is very cohesive. Nwg-panel has me sold on just that alone.
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Added a new section to the Pete Seeger banjo bridge project at the recommendation of someone on the Banjo Hangout forums--
A set of Gerber files and a KiCad project for ordering small scale PCB chips. I'm not a KiCad user, and I don't do any electrical engineering, but I think that this is a good step towards making it possible to just order a bridge template on demand from PCB makers.
I welcome any contributions from people who know more about this than I do. It would be neat to have a ready-to-order PCB template for people to build on.
https://codeberg.org/abmurrow/pete-seeger-bridge/src/branch/main/pcb
#Banjo #FOSS #KiCad #PCB #contributionswelcome #osscontributions #osscontribution
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I'm using a 3D printer to help me prototype a historic bridge for my banjo (details forthcoming) and I have to admit, I'm catching the 3D printing bug. I'm finding myself thinking about buying a Raspberry Pi and a framing kit to build one myself.
However, I have some concerns.
PLA, the most common 3D printing material, is a so-called "biodegradable" polymer. In previous generations, biodegradable plastics worked like this:
Plastic: I am biodegradeable!
*Looks inside*
*Non-biodegradeable microplasrics held together with corn celluose that dissolve with water*How similar is PLA in this regard? I don't know enough chemistry to reliably tell what is going on under the surface.
My ultimate concern is that getting into this hobby will just lead to a ton of plastic pollution under the guise of green washing.
Do any makers have some notion of what the conversation is right now?
Feel free to boost, I'm curious to hear what people think.
#3d #print3d #MakerTools #makers #maker #MakerFaire #eco #diy #environment #eco #question #3dprint
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I'm looking for a non-LLM chatbot or chatbot framework. The problem is all of the pre-LLM stuff that was halfway decent is sort of hard to find now because of... *gestures vaguely*
Does anyone have any recommendations? I understand any decent solution may need to be built by hand.
Things I've looked at so far:
RiveScript
Brain.js -
Free idea: a browser extension that tells you if the website you're on (and what parts and portion of it) is being served from AWS.
Amazon boycotts are great and all, but let's be honest-- AWS is the cash cow, and we hardly ever know when we're using it.
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A couple of months ago, I wrote a Mastodon thread about one of my favorite creative writing exercises known as Cartes Noires or “Black Cards” in English. The response from writers on the Fediverse was really positive. However, I found trying to explain some of the finer details of this constraint somewhat challenging with the character limit. So, that’s why we’re here! In this post, I wanted to do a write-up in a blog format so I could include more details, more photos, and a better resource for future writers.
What Is Cartes Noires?
Cartes Noires is a constrained writing exercise to help authors craft the plot for a mystery novel in about 30 minutes. To do it, you only need a standard deck of playing cards and your imagination. By setting a couple of rules about what certain cards mean, it is possible to make a fairly elaborate, novel-length whodunnit story on the fly.
There are a ton of different ways that someone could modify this basic novel writing framework to suit their individual needs or genres. The idea of using playing cards for story writing shows up in other narrative discipplines other than novel writing. In that regard, there are related farmworks out there for other genres. For instance, there is a similar similar system using a deck of cards called The Quiet Year, which is adapted for fantasy worldbuilding in the TTRPG world. What makes Cartes Noires unique is its use of laying cards out in a specific arrangement with certain positions meaning certain relationships between characters, or types of clues in the story. This makes the exercise sort of cousin of tarrot cards.
Some of the commenters from my original thread openly wondered if a tarot deck could work instead of playing cards. Even if it couldn’t (due to that pesky fifth suit), this system certainly feels like murder divinination. So, let’s light a few white spell candles beneath an alter to Agatha Christie and get started.
Who Created Cartes Noires?
The Oulipo is credited with the creation of this and many other creative writing exercises like it. The Oulipo is a group of predominantly French writers and mathematicians who sought to create a catalog of constrained writing prompts and creative writing exercises. These writing constraints designed to sharpen the skills of new and old writers alike, and they often featured a mathematical twist. Many giants of postmodern literature called themselves members at one time or another during their careers. Alums include Georges Perec, Italo Calvino, François Le Lionnais, and Raymond Queneau. The word “Oulipo” is a portmanteau that stands for Ouvroir de littérature potentielle, roughtly translated as “the workshop for potential literature.”
Creative Writing Exercises For Detective Fiction
To be more specific, the Cartes Noires system was developed by an offshoot group inspired by the Oulipo, called the Oulipopo. The extra “po” stands for the word policière, which in this case makes the translated group name read as “the workshop for potential detective literature.” Altogether, that means that the Oulipopo was focused making constrained writing prompts for mystery novels and dective fiction.
Cartes Noires was one of the creative writing exercises that came out of this group. The Oulipopo and the Oulipo saw constraints like this as a way of forcing a writer to adhere to a set of rules to help them sharpen, focus, or otherwise enhance their writing by forcing them to think outside of the box. A box, in fact, that the author helped create in the first place!
Setup & Example Exercise
Here is an example image of what Cartes Noires might look like when laid out on a table. Note that specific cards are laid out in a certain order. I will describe what each of these cards, suits, and positions means in detail.
To get started you will need a deck of playing cards, but not the whole deck.
You Will Need:
- Face Cards
- Aces
- 10’s
- 8’s
- 7’s
Note that the image I posted on this tutorial also has 2’s. This is a non-standard addition that I used to customize the constraint to my own needs, but more on that later. For now, know that you are free to adapt this system to your particular needs, or even just as a way to challenge yourself.
What The Cards Mean
- Kings and Queens represent the main suspects in your case. One of these will be your victim, you’re free to choose the one you like based on the plot suggested by the arrangement of the cards and the kind of stories you like to write.
- Jacks represent witnesses.
- Aces represent powerful motives for a suspect to commit the crime. Each suit represents a different kind of motive which I describe below. Note that aces can only implicate a single suspect at a time based on where it is placed in the grid. So, even though an Ace of Spades is touching both the King of Diamonds and the Queen of Spades, the Ace of Spades only directly implicates the Queen of Spades.
- The ace in the upper right implicates the suspect on its right.
- The ace in the bottom right implicates the suspect directly below.
- The ace in the bottom left implicates the suspect on its left.
- The ace in the upper left implicates the suspect directly above.
- 10’s represent a secret relationship between the two face cards they are touching. The suit of the card suggests the nature of the relationship.
- 7’s represent circumstantial evidence whether it be, hearsay or some other form of inference.
- 8’s represent physical evidence like blood, footprints, the murder weapon, etc.
Each type of card from this list is used to represent a different plot element in your story.
On Red Herrings
In my customized version of the constraint, I used 2’s to represent red herrings that I want to plant during the story. This could be something like a popular (but incorrect) reading of what certain evidence may mean concerning the case or even something as simple as a witness who lies to the detective.
What The Suits Mean
The card suits represent motives or character traits in a general sense. Every card’s meaning, character, or relevance to the plot can be augmented by the suit it carries.
- Spades represent misdemeanors and illegal, corrupt, or simply dubious activities.
- Clubs represent financial interests, money, greed, venality, envy, and avarice.
- Hearts represent passion, love, hatred, jealousy, and vengeance.
- Diamonds represent ambition, betrayal, and power.
Keep these suits in mind when you are laying out your cards. It will help you figure out how your suspects are connected, why they may have wanted to commit a crime, and what their backgrounds are. Get creative here!
Laying Out The Cards
To begin with, this constrained writing system is always a little more fun if you give the deck a good shuffle. That way, you can be surprised by the unexpected combinations of cards and positions. Of course, you can”fine-tune” the story by moving a few cards around to fit a particular reading.
Start With The Aces
Lay your aces out in a 2×2 grid. Remember that the placement of each ace implicates a certain suspect. Refer to the cards list above for details.
Arrange The Royals & 10’s
Place face cards directly above, below, left, and right of the Aces. In the corners, place the 10’s.
Complete The Evidence Squares
The 10’s you placed in the last step make up one corner of what I call the “Evidence Squares”. Adjacent to each ten place a single 7, and a 8. Diagonal to the 10, place a Jack.
Add Your Own Creative Touch (Optional)
Now you have a choice. As I’ve said before, you could jump ahead and decipher what your cards may mean. Or you can rearrange them, or add more cards to the base structure to suggest other requirements for your plot.
Interpreting The Cards
Now for the fun part.
Your final arrangement should give you some examples of how your prime suspects are related, why they wanted the victim dead, who that victim knew, and the kinds of evidence that the killer may (or may not) have left behind. Plus, your arrangement may suggest any number of red herrings, plausible (but ultimately, wrong) motives to kill the victim, and even some general ideas about how your detective could learn information by talking to suspects and gathering clues.
A Sample Card Reading
Using my example image once again, here are some plot points the cards may suggest:
- The King of Hearts is a writer and our victim. He appears to have been murdered in a crime of passion (AH).
- One suspect is a rich movie director (KC) who was being blackmailed by the victim (via 10C).
- Other suspects include an Ex-Lover (QH) who wanted to kill the victim because he had ruined her career, and King of Diamonds, a long-lost friend of the victim who may have murdered him over a disagreement about a crime they committed together as kids.
A note on interpreting Jacks. It helps to limit the scope of these cards to the two suspects they are closest to. Let’s refer to my example image again. The 8 of Clubs and the 7 of Diamonds in the upper left-hand corner are logically related to the Queen of Clubs and the King of Spades. This means that this witness has specific information about one or both of the suspects in this corner of the grid.
Summary
Speaking for myself, writing constraints like Cartes Noires get me really inspired to write. They a true challenge to pull off and work into a story without anyone noticing. However, they force me to consider every step in my writing and really show up during the process. I’ve said it before, it’s really easy to get in a writing rut.
As writers, we so often delude ourselves into thinking we have creative control over every aspect of our writing. We tell ourselves we can write anything we want. However, we fall short of that promise when we reach for the same tools, words, and plots time and time again.
I believe keeping creative writing exercises like this on hand can make us better writers. More than that, I think regular practice can also make us better judges of craft.
If you end up writing a piece of writing using Cartes Noires, I’d love to read it! Please feel free to share your experiences and let me know what it was like for you in your practice.
https://abmurrow.com/writing-prompts/creative-writing-exercises-for-mystery-and-detective-fiction/
#AmWriting #Blog #ConstrainedWriting #Experimental #mystery #Novel #NovelWriting #Oulipo #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompt
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You Wouldn’t Steal A Poem
Have you ever wanted to steal the way something sounds? Have you ever wanted to take something you just heard someone say but twist it to your bizarre whims? Good news! Maybe you can live out that fantasy without actually committing a thoughtcrime (or a real crime). The holorhyme constraint is a tool for creating experimental poetry.
The Writing Prompt
The goal of the exercise is to take an existing piece of text and write a new one based entirely on rhyming words. This could even be adapted to the particular dialect, affectation, or speed at which someone talks (and how you heard it). I’ve even seen this used as a type of satire to borrow the rhythm and texture of a well-known speech or dramatic monologue and make a total mockery of it. Use with caution.
Think of this writing constraint as a sort of game of telephone, or (to put it more elegantly) material impressionism. The goal is to take the way something sounds like to you when read aloud, and then twist that impression into something new. A fun variation of this exercise is to record yourself reading something, run it through a crappy piece of transcription software, and then see what comes out. YouTube used to be an excellent resource for making experimental poetry using this method. It may still be, but I’ve not checked up on it for a while.
Example Poem
The example below is a quick little poem I made when reading the English alphabet forwards, then backward. It is also a rough approximation of what 2000s-era AI chatbots sounded like when they talked to each other.
ABC...CBAA bee: seedy effigy.Age, hide, shake rays,an elemental pea—cures. Tea you feedouble-true as eggs—wisely.See why exits wobble you.Be you to us our que? Peonies, in the mail: Cage-A.I ate Shea, Jeffie, and deceived—Be “Yay!”In order to really get a good sense for how this constraint works, I encourage you to read this or your own poem out loud. You will know you’re getting it right when a person in the next room could have sworn you were saying something else altogether.
https://abmurrow.com/writing-prompts/experimental-poetry-holorhyme/
#Blog #ConstrainedWriting #ExperimentalPoetry #Holorhyme #Oulipo #poem #PoetryCommunity #WritingComunity #WritingPrompt #WritingTips