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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • Mostly just as a wrapper for Docker. The main issue I’ve run into is Docker’s union file system functionality doesn’t work when backed by ZFS, so disk usage can balloon out of control. I wouldn’t use this in production but don’t tell me how to live my life mom.

    Beyond various Docker stacks I also have a Certbot container that uses Snap (sigh), and Hashicorp Vault container which runs as a vanilla SystemD service. I run Wireguard as part of my OPNSense VM. That’s something I would run in a VM since it’s exposed to the internet. I have an older MinIO and Concourse CI Docker Compose config that I’d love to run in LXC but I suspect that isn’t realistic.

    Note on Vault, I haven’t been able to get mlock to work (used to prevent sensitive memory from being swapped). By all accounts it should just work in LXC, but since it isn’t and there’s no swap on the host I just turned it off. I may migrate Vault to a VM at some point.

    I’m personally just interested in lightweight environments with good enough isolation and don’t break all the time over nothing. Docker mostly accomplishes that for me. LXC + Docker also mostly accomplishes that.

    (My heart yearns for FreeBSD Jails but with decent tooling)


  • I originally excited by Podman, but ultimately migrated away from it. Friendship ended with Ubuntu and Docker -> CentOS and Podman -> Proxmox + Debian LXC (which has its own irritations but anyway). Off the top of my head:

    • Can’t attach a containers to multiple networks. Most of my Docker Compose stacks have an Nginx reverse proxy and a network for each service.
    • But you can use pods. However since they share the same network interface if you have multiple legacy services that both insist on, say, port 80 they can’t be in the same pod. They also don’t isolate services, nor can you assert a specific pod is the one listening on a forwarded port.
    • Pods also have DNS issues with Nginx. It kept crashing since it couldn’t resolve the hostnames of the other containers in the pod, even if they were already running. If you launch a shell inside an Nginx container the other container hostnames resolve fine. I suspect the problem is the container is launched before its behind-the-scenes DNS infrastructure is ready.
    • Podman lets you use secrets on normal containers (yay) but if the secret changes you have to recreate the container. Amazing synergy with rotating TLS certificates.
    • Endless issues with SELinux and bind mounts. My Nginx container kept crashing because SELinux didn’t like the TLS certificate bind mount. This is where I reflected on the endless parade of random issues that I had no interest in solving and finally threw in the towel.

    I brought all this up in another community and was told the problem was [paraphrased] “people keep trying to use Podman like they use Docker” - whatever that means. I do like a number of design choices in it, like including the command used to create containers in the metadata, and how it’s easy to integrate into SystemD for things like scheduled updates.

    Cockpit is pretty slick though, need to install it on my bare metal Debian host.


  • The Fun part of ADHD is there’s nothing unique to ADHD. Being overwhelmed with anxiety doesn’t mean you have anxiety disorder. It’s when you have frequent overwhelming anxiety and it’s interfering with your life.

    Having a tendency to put things down and lose them doesn’t mean you have ADHD. Constantly having to find that screwdriver that was just in your hand and realizing that desk has been half complete for six months because you keep spending thirty seconds looking for it before getting distracted by other tasks? That’s ADHD. Unless it’s focus issues rooted in something else. Like anxiety or depression, which can cause ADHD like symptoms. But also ADHD can cause anxiety and depression, or be comorbid.

    That said, you are here voluntarily on an ADHD community finding common ground with an ADHD meme. If you’ve wondered specifically about ADHD or more broadly felt there’s something different about you’ve just never been able to put your finger on - this is your sign. My advice is to find a psychiatrist who really understand it, dig as deep as you can for hard evidence that you have or don’t have it, and keep an open mind to alternative explanations. A diagnosis of “no you don’t have ADHD” is also important information.





  • Embrace, extend, and extinguish (EEE) - We don’t think they can. If anyone can explain how they technically would, please let us know. Even if Meta forks Lemmy and gets rid of the original software, Lemmy will survive.

    It doesn’t start out with maliciousness. The rank and file technical staff at Facebook aren’t evil. Facebook understands the value of top tier tech talent and top dollar buys you smart people.

    The initial federation is rough, but the problems are resolved surprisingly quick. None of the doom and gloom comes to pass, and Facebook consistently acts as a trustworthy actor. Their employees aren’t really different than their open source counterparts. They make good faith contributions to open source codebases. Their collective experience with distributed systems proves useful in solving growing pains as the Federation grows.

    They eventually start to make proposals to ActivityPub. There’s outrage but no one can come up with good technical objections, so they are approved. The doom and gloom didn’t come to pass, and looks like it never will.

    Facebook doesn’t need malicious intent for what’s going down. It slowly, maybe quickly, becomes the dominate actor in the space. Facebook is pouring money into making Threads the best it can be, and what’s wrong with them trying to build an audience?

    Thread’s improvements set an increasingly high standard for what people expect. More uptime, cleaner UI, more responsive API calls, more personalized frontpage algorithms, higher resolution videos - more and more features. More and more cost. Even people who kneejerk reject Facebook recognize how much better their site is. There are still important reasons to go with Lemmy or Kbin over Threads, but FOSS projects have never been good at making their case in ways random-not-technical people can understand, let alone why they should care about them.

    After a while, Facebook starts walling people into their platform. Starts with little things like how Reddit added video and picture hosting to replace Imgur et al. It’s not malicious, but rather from TPMs who are under pressure to increase engagement. After a while what else is there? Just don’t turn the heat up too many degrees at once.

    It’s wrong to think of Facebook as a uniquely bad actor. This isn’t 90s/2000s Microsoft with blatantly transparent EEE aims. There have always been bad actors. There will always be bad actors. There are bad actors with us right now.

    Facebook needs to make money, and they won’t do so by directly charging users. There’s only one path forward for Facebook in this, and it will come at the expense of its users and everyone else in the Fediverse.

    Build something useful, then put up walls around it, and then exploit it for profit; the internet’s monomyth. You don’t have to read the writing on the wall, but it is there. Federating with Threads is signing your own death warrant.

    If the Fediverse experiment is going to survive, it needs to be able to withstand these bad actors. One of the ways it can do so is to recognize and reject them. Facebook has so many resources and so much power and we don’t have to run the experiment to know where this will go. It is important to explicitly say “your goals do not align with what we are trying to build, and therefore we will not voluntarily interact with you.”


  • You are voluntarily here and finding common ground with an ADHD meme. If you’ve felt like there’s something different about you and have been waiting for a Sign, this is it.

    Just keep an open mind, since a lot of different things can cause ADHD like symptoms. “I actually don’t have ADHD” is also important information, and a good psychiatrist or therapist can help guide you to wherever the truth lies.


  • I don’t have a medical background, but my suspicion is the process of formulating a thought, deciding what meaning you want to convey, and then settling on what words accomplish that is far more complicated and delicate than we give it credit for. I suspect any sort of issue can wreck the whole process, which might explain why really good communicators are so rare.

    For myself, ADHD medication really helps slow my brain down and thinking things through before opening my mouth. Turns out that’s an important part in (properly) verbalizing thoughts.