People who want to solve a problem build a solution, and eventually solve it.

People who want to solve a problem, but don't know how, start with an experiment, and eventually they know.

People who don't know how to solve a problem, but want to look like they are solving a problem, build a process and look busy forever.

A quick not to my future self, on how to unfuck #wsl2 root file system:

1. Find the location of your disk image, for Ubuntu it would be something like C:\Users\aleks\AppData\Local\Packages\CanonicalGroupLimited.UbuntuonWindows_79rhkp1fndgsc\LocalState\ext4.vhdx.
2. Make a fucking backup!
3. Install a new wsl distro. Could be anything, if you have Docker Desktop, you probably already have docker-desktop distro, which would do.
4. Connect the image to our recovery distro: wsl -d docker-desktop --mount --vhd C:\Users\aleks\AppData\Local\Packages\CanonicalGroupLimited.UbuntuonWindows_79rhkp1fndgsc\LocalState\ext4.vhdx
5. Go into the recovery distro: wsl -d docker-desktop.
6. Figure out which device your image corresponds to: ls /dev/sd*.
7. Unmount it: umount /dev/sdX.
8. Actually unfuck the image: e2fsck /dev/sdX.
9. Exit wsl and shut it all the way down: wsl --shutdown.
10. With any luck, you can start your main distro and it will be fine.

Here, it was supposed be a long-ish rant about how AI (not today's LLMs specifically, though) is a fundamental component of a post-scarcity society, and how nobody seems to be seriously interested in applying AI in that way. As opposed to earning a fuckload of money. But fuck, I'm tired and irritated, and it should be self-evident that people shouldn't need to break their backs to have safe, dignified and enjoyable lives.

Do other people also have this? You randomly experience a spike of FOMO (usually on something really inconsequential), and then you go "fuck this, now I'm not doing it on principle"?

Also, ffs so much of the modern Internet is built on causing FOMO to make people buy your shit.

In 3 days Pocket is shutting down, so it's high time to worry about a replacement, if you haven't already. I know a lot of folks took this as a cause to try more sophisticated knowledge management apps (hey @obsidian@mas.to ).

Personally, I was looking to keep the experience of the simple reading stack. And boy, @readeck@mastodon.online is exactly what I was looking for, and better than I was hoping for:

• Open source, written in Go, simple frontend stack.
• Self-hosted, tiny resource footprint, very snappy.
• Does exactly what Pocket used to do, without any of the "discover random shit" nonsense.
• Browser extension and neat workarounds for mobile OSes that make saving pages for later quick and easy. This was where a lot of alternatives fell through for me, saving links was just too fiddly.
• Works equally well on desktop and mobile, supports PWA.
• Pretty well functioning readable mode! And if I find something that doesn't work I could actually go and patch it, if I care enough. Pocket tends to swallow or mangle code blocks more often than not, which was a big pain.

Last but not least, it can import your data from Pocket, so migration is pretty smooth. It did take a few hours to chew through ~2500 articles I've apparently saved over the years, since it had to fetch the links and re-extract the content. This is actually one gripe I have with the Pocket export: it just gives you a CVS with links and light metadata, but it doesn't export the saved article content. If you have a 10 year old link in there somewhere, ~pray~ donate to web archive gods that it has been saved there. If you care.

One thing that I wish worked differently is that it splits its state between database (SQLite or Postgres) and disk. I kind of wish everything went into the database, so that can be backed up together with the rest of Postgres index, but beggars can't be choosers. I'll take it.

Repeat after me: every life is precious, every death is a tragedy.

Had a discussion with some colleagues about the potential of using #AI for incident auto-mitigation.

It struck me that a lot of concerns boil down to the fact that we are not used to the idea that computers can also exhibit a failure mode we know as "human error". We are used to computers failing "as programmed". When framed that way, we've invented a lot of guardrails to prevent humans from doing dumb mistakes, and many of them can translate into the AI context.

I don't know where I'm going with it. Just a thought.

The thing about vibe coding is that it quickly gets you through the first 80% of the project, and slams you face-first into the second 80%.

Would you look at that! Another blog post about a command shell! It's almost as if being on vacation provides me with time to do something enjoyable

https://nevkontakte.com/2025/elvish.html

#linux #shell #elvish

What’s the best Linux distro with KDE these days?

#linux #desktop #kde