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noelob.bsky.social
Noel O'Brien
@noelob.bsky.social
21 followers 66 following 33 posts
Software, Music, Woodworking
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Reposted by Noel O'Brien
mobiusstripper.bsky.social
Last Christmas
I gave you my heart
The very next day
Kali ma shakti de
The evil priest from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (no longer the worst Indiana Jones movie!) holding the still-beating heart of the sacrifice.
December 23, 2025 at 6:57 PM
noelob.bsky.social
I made a thing: a #tailscale extension for #osquery. Now you can use SQL to query different aspects of your Tailnet 🚀

github.com/noelob/tails...
GitHub - noelob/tailscale-osquery: A Tailscale extension for osquery
A Tailscale extension for osquery. Contribute to noelob/tailscale-osquery development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
December 19, 2025 at 3:17 AM
Reposted by Noel O'Brien
balderdash.bsky.social
Driving a steamroller over somebody is the most sincere form of flattery.
December 11, 2025 at 9:29 AM
Reposted by Noel O'Brien
kevlin.bsky.social
New on the blog: Think for Yourself

"You're about to commit a chunk of LLM-generated code into your product's codebase. Before you do, however, pause to consider and act on these questions."

kevlinhenney.medium.com/think-for-yo...
Think for Yourself
Understand and improve on LLM-generated code
kevlinhenney.medium.com
November 3, 2025 at 9:43 AM
Reposted by Noel O'Brien
b0rk.jvns.ca
TERM

wizardzines.com/comics/term/

(from The Secret Rules of the Terminal, out now! wizardzines.com/zines/terminal)
different terminal emulators use different escape codes terminal emulator 1: if you print out ESC[2J I’ll clear the screen! terminal emulator 2: for me it’s ESC[HESC[J! your system has a database called “terminfo” with escape codes in it how if plays out when you press Ctrl+L to clear the screen: program, with a little heart over it, thinking: ah, she wants fo clear the screen! I’ll look up how to do that in the terminfo database… (on my machine, the database is in /usr/share/terminfo) program: ESC[HESC[J terminal emulator, thinking: ok, clearing the screen! how programs know what terminal you’re using: TERM your terminal emulator sets the TERM environment variable when it starts fun fact: terminal emulators often say they’re “xterm-256color” even if they’re not this can break when SSHing into an old system with a new terminal emulator (in a VERY annoying way) happy little stick fiture: I am using ghostty program, with a little heart over it: NOPE never heard of it some ways to fix TERM install the terminfo file for your terminal emulator on the system use a different terminal emulator just set TERM=xterm-256color, it’ll often sort of work
October 14, 2025 at 3:08 PM
noelob.bsky.social
Who washes the washmen? 🤔
October 1, 2025 at 10:59 PM
Reposted by Noel O'Brien
bphogan.com
Yesterday I published Issue 45 of my monthly newsletter, and it's about why Markdown might not be the best way to implement content.

Read it and subscribe to be the first to read next month's issue.

https://newsletter.bphogan.com/archive/issue-45-markdown-is-holding-you-back/
October 1, 2025 at 8:53 PM
Reposted by Noel O'Brien
b0rk.jvns.ca
stty

wizardzines.com/comics/stty/

(from The Secret Rules of the Terminal, out now! wizardzines.com/zines/termin...)
your TTY driver has configuration you can see how it’s configured by running: stty -a for example it print out the current window size! Ctrl+S by default, pressing Ctrl+S wi(( freeze your terminal (and Ctrl+Q wi(( unfreeze) I have never wanted this in my life, you can turn it off with stty -ixon (fish turns it off by default) ###fun fact: changing Ctrl+C technically you can use stty to set a different keyboard shortcut for Ctrl+C, (ike “u” stty intr u this is extremely chaotic and I can’t imagine a reason that I would ever do this though programs have to configure the TTY driver to get friendly features developer: I want arrow keys to work in my program! other person: better tell the TTY driver to turn off canonical mode! (more on the next page) the TTY driver’s settings are called “termios settings” for the gnarly details: man termios but if you’re writing a terminal program libraries like readline or ncurses will handle setting up the TTY driver panel 6 smiling stick figure with short curly hair: I’ve only needed to use stty once in the last 20 years and I mostly don’t understand its output but I think it’s a fun view into terminal internals!
September 24, 2025 at 3:21 PM
Reposted by Noel O'Brien
gwenckatz.bsky.social
The three types of game dev job listings
RESPECTABLE AA STUDIO is hiring 25 different LEAD EXECUTIVE SENIOR C-SUITE DEVELOPERS for EXCITING NEW GAME THAT’S BEEN GETTING LOTS OF BUZZ Requirements: -At least two PhDs in game development -Shipped at least 25 AAA titles as a lead developer -400 years of experience with Unreal Engine -Expert in C#, Python, C++, Ruby, Swift, Rust, HTML, CSS, PHP, Perl, SQL, MATLAB, R, QBASIC, COBOL, FORTRAN, Assembly, punch cards, and operating Babbage’s difference engine -No, we are not fishing for one specific person who coincidentally just left their job at another studio. Why would you think that? THAT FAMOUS GAME STUDIO is hiring a developer for THAT BELOVED GAME FRANCHISE THAT WAS FORMATIVE TO YOU BECOMING A DEV! Benefits: -$150,000/year plus insurance, dental, a retirement plan, and a puppy -Hang with those famous game devs you saw at that GDC talk -We have a ball pit! Requirements: -A positive attitude 😊 -Passionate about our game! -Willing to learn -Some basic game dev experience a plus but not required -Onsite only on Pitcairn Island A 14-YEAR-OLD WHO DOWNLOADED UNITY YESTERDAY is hiring a developer for I DECIDED TO TURN MY DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS CAMPAIGN INTO A GAME -so im making this game and i have this rly rly good idea but i never made a game b4 so i need u to do all the engine stuff and the programming and fix the mechanics and do the sound and lighting and shaders and backgrounds, i drew my characters on the back of homework but can u turn them into pixel art for me, i cant pay u but we can do rev share and when this game is a big hit youll make millions of dollars
September 17, 2025 at 6:51 PM
Reposted by Noel O'Brien
b0rk.jvns.ca
job control

wizardzines.com/comics/job-c...

(from The Secret Rules of the Terminal, which is out now!)
your shell lets you run many programs (“jobs”) in the same terminal tab programs can either be: foreground background stopped (which is more like “paused”) & runs a program in the background for example I like to convert 100 files in parallel like this: for i in `seq 1 100` do convert $i.png $i.jpg & done jobs lists backgrounded & stopped jobs $ jobs [1] Running python blah.py & [2] Stopped vim use the numbers to bring them to the foreground or background (like fg %2), kill them (kill %2), or disown them when you close a terminal tab all jobs are killed with a SIGHUP signal you can stop this with disown or by starting the program with nohup: disown %1 (job number goes here) nohup my_program & a trick to kill programs if Ctrl+C doesn’t work press Ctrl+Z to stop the program run kill %1 to kill it (or kill -9 %1 if you’re feeling extra murderous) a little flowchart Three boxes, labelled “running in foreground”, “stopped”, and “running in background” Ctrl+Z goes from “running in foreground” to “stopped” fg goes from “stopped” to “running in foreground” fg goes from “running in background” to “running in foreground” bg goes from “stopped” to “running in background”
August 26, 2025 at 3:19 PM
Reposted by Noel O'Brien
thomasfuchs.at
It’s interesting to watch the arms race of LLMs ingesting the whole Internet illegally and countermeasures like this HTML zip bomb

ache.one/notes/html_z...
A valid HTML zip bomb - ache
<h1 id="a-valid-html-zip-bomb"><a tabindex="0" class="anchor" href="/notes/html_zip_bomb">A valid HTML zip bomb</a></h1><p><img src="/notes/res/zip_bomb_file.svg" alt="Illustration d&#x27;une bombe zi...
ache.one
July 25, 2025 at 2:45 PM
Reposted by Noel O'Brien
scott.hanselman.com
I just wanted to say, I’m probably more proud of this Ted talk than just about anything I’ve ever done so I’m gonna be absolutely useless for the next couple of weeks as I promote the shit out of this because I want you to watch it because it matters in the moment we are in youtu.be/dVG8W-0p6vg
Tech Promised Everything. Did it deliver? | Scott Hanselman | TEDxPortland
YouTube video by TEDx Talks
youtu.be
July 17, 2025 at 8:37 PM
Reposted by Noel O'Brien
scott.hanselman.com
We are back! #C64 www.commodore.net The first official Commodore 64 in over 30 years is here - a faithful recreation of the original motherboard on FPGA hardware. HDMI, WiFi, USB, but compatible with every existing cartridge and peripheral. Not an emulator - a recreation. Same price as my first $299
Home | Commodore
www.commodore.net
July 12, 2025 at 8:35 PM
Reposted by Noel O'Brien
cyberciti.biz
Overleaf is an open-source online real-time collaborative LaTeX editor. Use to create beautiful documentation for your school/college or professional work. You can host it locally. A very handy tool for developers and anyone looking easy to use collaborative LaTeX editor github.com/overleaf/ove...
GitHub - overleaf/overleaf: A web-based collaborative LaTeX editor
A web-based collaborative LaTeX editor. Contribute to overleaf/overleaf development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
July 8, 2025 at 3:03 PM
Reposted by Noel O'Brien
cyberciti.biz
Systemd manager TUI allows Linux developers and sysadmins to manage systemd services with ease. You can view logs, list services, view properties, and control their lifecycle (start, stop, restart, enable, and disabl) using this tool github.com/matheus-git/...
GitHub - matheus-git/systemd-manager-tui: A program for managing systemd services through a TUI (Terminal User Interfaces).
A program for managing systemd services through a TUI (Terminal User Interfaces). - matheus-git/systemd-manager-tui
github.com
July 7, 2025 at 7:02 PM
Reposted by Noel O'Brien
cassidoo.co
Here's a little overview of my app PocketCal, if you haven't tried it yet!

pocketcal.com
June 24, 2025 at 9:26 PM
Reposted by Noel O'Brien
astrokatie.com
Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.
June 19, 2025 at 11:21 AM
Reposted by Noel O'Brien
simonwillison.net
If you use "AI agents" (LLMs calling tools in a loop) you need to be aware of the Lethal Trifecta

Combine access to private data, exposure to untrusted content and the ability to externally communicate and an attacker can trick the system into stealing your data simonwillison.net/2025/Jun/16/...
The lethal trifecta for AI agents: private data, untrusted content, and external communication
If you are a user of LLM systems that use tools (you can call them “AI agents” if you like) it is critically important that you understand the risk of …
simonwillison.net
June 16, 2025 at 1:21 PM
Reposted by Noel O'Brien
emilyoram.bsky.social
This is incredible
June 11, 2025 at 1:34 PM
noelob.bsky.social
Ah, the rare Common Crane 🤭
www.rte.ie/news/ireland...
Rare cranes return to Offaly bog for seventh year
A pair of rare common cranes, which have previously nested at a bog in Co Offaly, have returned for a seventh consecutive year.
www.rte.ie
June 3, 2025 at 3:42 PM
Reposted by Noel O'Brien
glaforge.dev
It's good to reinvent the wheel sometimes!
endler.dev/2025/reinven...
Great post by Matthias Endler.

It helps understanding how wheels work, how you can fix them when broken, how to make better wheels if really needed, or how to find creative use cases for wheels by thinking outside the box.
Reinvent the Wheel | Matthias Endler
One of the most harmful pieces of advice is to …
endler.dev
May 25, 2025 at 10:49 AM
Reposted by Noel O'Brien
b0rk.jvns.ca
I think I have finally managed to articulate this very fundamental but slightly counterintuitive fact about how shell redirection works
when you redirect, the shell opens the file BEFORE the program starts sudo echo blah > file.txt first I'll open file.txt... THEN I'll run sudo echo blah this is why file.txt isn't opened as root!
May 23, 2025 at 7:07 PM
Reposted by Noel O'Brien
b0rk.jvns.ca
more terminal fun: canonical mode

wizardzines.com/comics/canon...
panel 1: the terminal driver: an interface that hasn't changed since the 80s person: “I pressed an arrow key and it just printed out ^[[D???” terminal driver: “what's an arrow key?" panel 2: when you're typing text, there are two situations 1. by default: the terminal driver (part of the OS) is responsible "canonical mode" 2. the program is responsible “raw mode” panel 3: "canonical mode" is a terrible way to edit text because the terminal driver hasn't changed much since the 80s, you can only do: 1. backspace 2. Ctrl+W (delete word) 3. Ctrl+U (delete line) panel 4: how canonical mode works 1. you type "helll" + backspace 2. the terminal emulator turns what you typed into bytes 3. the terminal driver passes on "hell" and interprets the backspace 4. the program gets "hello\n" In canonical mode, terminal driver doesn't send anything to the program until you press Enter. In raw mode, the terminal driver just sends “hell\xFFo\n” without changing it panel 5: how to try out canonical mode Run `cat` and type some stuff! Interactive programs almost never use canonical mode because it's so limited. But if you run into it `rlwrap $COMMAND` can help
May 6, 2025 at 3:07 PM
Reposted by Noel O'Brien
b0rk.jvns.ca
terminal escape codes

wizardzines.com/comics/escap...
Panel 1: a program's input and outputs are streams of bytes everything you type goes into standard input all the output you see comes from either standard output or standard error your terminal emulator can only communicate with programs by reading/writing bytes panel 2: some inputs/outputs are text and some are special instructions in: mouse position, ctrl+left arrow out: make text green, make cursor invisible panel 3: these special instructions are called "escape codes" they're called "escape codes" because they all start with the ESC character panel 4: example: how colours get set program: “^[[31m” Terminal emulator: “ok, I'll make text red from now on!!” (there are also codes for bold, underline, background colour) panel 5: programs can easily "break" your terminal by printing escape codes program: “oops I made your cursor disappear” It's easy to fix though, run reset to print a special escape code that resets everything It's easy to fix though, run reset to print a special escape code that resets everything
April 29, 2025 at 3:10 PM
Reposted by Noel O'Brien
adamurb.bsky.social
Hid this bad boy somewhere in the yard for the egg hunt today.
April 20, 2025 at 11:55 AM