Today I Learned

Blog tonsky.me · tonsky.me [1] Niki has one of the coolest yet simple personal sites that I have seen in a long time. We need more of this on the internet! hover over his face, try dark mode, submit personal data, there are so many really cool Easter eggs to discover! Note This post is a thought [2]. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts References: [1]: https://tonsky.me/ [2]: /thoughts/

We shouldn’t have needed lockfiles Lockfiles are an absolutely unnecessary concept that complicates things without a good reason. Dependency managers can and are working without it just the same. tonsky.me · tonsky.me [1] I wholeheartedly agree that packaging is broken, semver is broken, expecting much better from a system of oss that is built on top of volunteers, passion projects, nights and weekends is a fools errand. With that I disagree that we we dont need lockfiles. Maybe its Nikki’s experience in java and my lack that puts us on this opposite spectrum, but without lockfiles the world changes underneath us as we release. One small change to your source can introduce a whole set of new features/bugs that you did not plan on without a good locking system. It can also cause you to need to do dependency resolution at application build time and not ahead of time. Note This post is a thought [2]. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts References: [1]: https://tonsky.me/blog/lockfiles/ [2]: /thoughts/

[1] Fantastic write up on their experience in ai, opinions on ai being a hoax with a veil of reasonable usefulness. Arguing that most people do not understand enough to see the difference, and thought leaders see where it is now, see where it was yesterday, it must be going to general intelligence tomorrow and you all will loose your jobs without this. I appreciate the satirical language here. Note This post is a thought [2]. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts References: [1]: /static/https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/?ref=wheresyoured.at [2]: /thoughts/

- Letting Ai drive code feels like giving up so much control. It feels like its leaving so many brain cycles open for other things, yet its not quite good enough to do production level things on its own, so we must watch it, we must review it, yet its code can be some of the worst to review left unattended. I’m feeling this right now as I’m avoiding writing a bit of js that I could probably do myself. Some day this is likely to flip, and it will get better and we will spend our brain cycles thinking about architecture, security, marketing, big picture ideas about the problem we are trying to solve, but we are not yet there and as long as we still need to review I find it a much more pleasant workflow to have in a separate window than have it change the whole fucking project for a simple change. Note This post is a thought [1]. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts References: [1]: /thoughts/

A quote from greyduet on r/teachers I teach HS Science in the south. I can only speak for my district, but a few teacher work days in the wave of enthusiasm I'm seeing for AI tools … Simon Willison’s Weblog · simonwillison.net [1] Woof, ai is sucking the soul from everything, being forced onto teachers who don’t want or care about it and are simply sharing ai-slop to their kids without giving it much thought. remember that it is rude [2] to share ai-slop with others that you have not vetted, It’s next level to turn this into teaching material for children who are forced into your classroom and have no choice about the matter, you should be ashamed. Note This post is a thought [3]. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts References: [1]: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Aug/5/greyduet-on-rteachers/#atom-everything [2]: https://distantprovince.by/posts/its-rude-to-show-ai-output-to-people/ [3]: /thoughts/

I have a couple of use cases for simple qr codes in python coming up. One is for blog posts, the other is for auth into a new server application logged to a terminal. I tried the qrcode [1] library and it does not look as nice to me and I found pyqrcode [2] to be quite nice. import pyqrcode url = pyqrcode.create('https://waylonwalker.com/qr-codes-in-python') url.svg('qr-codes-in-python.svg', scale=8) print(url.terminal(quiet_zone=1)) url.svg('qr-codes-in-python.svg', scale=12) url.svg('qr-codes-in-python.svg', omithw=True) # width is controlled by the container url.svg('qr-codes-in-python.svg', omithw=True, module_color='#ffd119') url.svg('qr-codes-in-python.svg', omithw=True, module_color='#ff69b4', background='#2b034c') result # [3] Here is the final svg result. Here is what it looks like in the terminal. [4] If you want fancier qrcodes check out https://mydigitalharbor.com/ References: [1]: https://pypi.org/project/qrcode/ [2]: https://pypi.org/project/pyqrcode/ [3]: #result [4]: https://dropper.waylonwalker.com/api/file/c644bd34-b5da-48a3-b6cf-c89efb546114.png

Colors • Pico CSS Pico comes with 380 manually crafted colors to help you personalize your brand design system. Pico CSS · picocss.com [1] A great alternative to tailwind colors that has everything defined in one colors file for only 0.3kb. it feels well worth the weight if you are trying to skip a build step or avoid npm/node. It has even more colors than tailwind. I appreciate that there is a grey palette that is fully desaturated. Note This post is a thought [2]. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts References: [1]: https://picocss.com/docs/colors [2]: /thoughts/

GitHub - rushter/selectolax: Python binding to Modest and Lexbor engines. Fast HTML5 parser with CSS selectors for Python. Python binding to Modest and Lexbor engines. Fast HTML5 parser with CSS selectors for Python. - rushter/selectolax GitHub · github.com [1] Selectolax you have my attention! I will be giving this a try for markata which often suffers from slow beautifulsoup. It appears to have everything I need for my simple use cases. [2] Note This post is a thought [3]. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts References: [1]: https://github.com/rushter/selectolax [2]: https://dropper.waylonwalker.com/api/file/b5d8930f-59e0-4947-9500-717f66ce33dc.png [3]: /thoughts/

If you’re into interesting projects, don’t miss out on selectolax [1], created by rushter [2]. Python binding to Modest and Lexbor engines (fast HTML5 parser with CSS selectors). References: [1]: https://github.com/rushter/selectolax [2]: https://github.com/rushter

I like rqlite’s [1] project rqlite [2]. The lightweight, user-friendly, distributed relational database built on SQLite. References: [1]: https://github.com/rqlite [2]: https://github.com/rqlite/rqlite

How To Build The Tallest Building In Town There are two ways you can build the tallest building in town. Once you understand this, things get really good. Gary Vaynerchuk · garyvaynerchuk.com [1] Have some positivity! “Just Build the Tallest Fucking Building” is one of my favorite Gary Vee quotes. Build good community, bring others up, and stop tearing everyone down, listen to the vid. Note This post is a thought [2]. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts References: [1]: https://garyvaynerchuk.com/build-the-tallest-building-in-town/ [2]: /thoughts/

External Link meetgor.com [1] Yes, I can review the code and make changes, but who in the world loves reviewing code? Do you love reviewing peers’ PRs? really? I’m with MeetGor here 100%. reviewing the nuance, not being as involved with the process of creating the architecture design, not solving the problems that arise in development make it hard to effectively review and not turn into LGTM man. Note This post is a thought [2]. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts References: [1]: https://www.meetgor.com/thoughts/i-kind-of-hate-agentic-ides-for-the-sake-of-productivity/ [2]: /thoughts/

I’ve got a few samba shares going in my homelab [1], and I’m struggling finding a great app to scroll through vacation photos with my wife. I want something intuitive, non intimidating, and just works. Turns out that the default file browser application for hyprland works great, but you need to enable previews for remote storage for it to work for my use case here. [2] References: [1]: /homelab/ [2]: https://dropper.waylonwalker.com/api/file/3940267e-3727-4e7b-8f7f-aebb49d79326.png

External Link meetgor.com [1] Sometimes, all you need is a mindset shift, a blocker in your mind that holds you back from doing certain things. And for me, I have consumed enough tutorials and posts about Kubernetes, that I need to put to use and create. I have been stuck in the learning cycle, lets push to prod with kubernetes. This hurts. I know others with this learning style that need to see the full picture before actually doing something with new tech. The way I first got into kubernetes I was looking for the easy route and somehow k8s came up several times as a suggested route Looking for a Heroku replacement, What I found was shocking! [2], So I dove in head first with k3s [3] and kompose [4]. What I found was that it was not all that hard once you start to see how the pieces fit together, no amount of reading tutorials would have gotten me there. Does anyone care if you use simple yet fragile bash scripts or heavy weight Kubernetes cluster for just clicking buttons and creating and updating rows in a database? No! You know what, let’s fucking use Kubernetes. Let’s Gooo. Use what is right for you and stop parroting kubernets is hard, heavy, for big companies, maybe...

External Link meetgor.com [1] If you want to use it for the purpose of learning it, please do use it. Kubernetes as usual is a tool like others, you can’t use one tool everywhere. Where bash scripts work, they just work, where they don’t they fall apart too, kubernetes works like a charm. Use your grug brains a little and choose wisely! In the end, who the hell cares if you use kubernetes or bash scripts to scale if your users are happy? Well Said! Note This post is a thought [2]. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts References: [1]: https://www.meetgor.com/thoughts/kubernetes-isn-t-for-you/ [2]: /thoughts/

Kubernetes Isn Kubernetes isn sliplane.io [1] This post feels like it was written by someone who has never tried kubernetes, someone who reads twitter, listens to t3.gg and thePrimeagen (who cant even container let alone kubernetes). If you cant run linux, use bash, build your own docker images, run docker comfortably. If infra is not your thing kubernetes is probably not for you. Kubernetes Was Built for Google Just like how react was built for facebook to solve facebook problems with many teams contributing effectively to the same interactive interfaces. Turns out that react is actually a pretty good product if you have a highly interactive page, and if this is your bread and butter, you can make overly heavy static sites with too much build very effectively. It works and runs much of the internet now. We are getting serious. We need serious tools. Big companies use Kubernetes. We should too. It feels more professional. It sounds like we know what we are doing. If anyone uses these reasons to pitch kubernetes to me they don’t belong in a position to make any sort of decision. The first one could be a heading with maybe something under it. But Kubernetes should not be y...

csi-driver-smb/deploy/example/smb-provisioner at master · kubernetes-csi/csi-driver-smb This driver allows Kubernetes to access SMB Server on both Linux and Windows nodes. - kubernetes-csi/csi-driver-smb GitHub · github.com [1] Great guide to setting up a samba server right in kubernetes. I tried it out after too long of playing with trying to get connected to a samba share on ucore, no idea what was wrong, but this just works, and will live in my homelab [2] no matter what distro I’m on, no playbook required to set it up, just good ol k8s manifest. TBH I cheated and haven’t set up the secrets yet, so its not quite in argocd or in my github repo, but POC is there and it works as advertised without issue. Note This post is a thought [3]. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts References: [1]: https://github.com/kubernetes-csi/csi-driver-smb/tree/master/deploy/example/smb-provisioner [2]: /homelab/ [3]: /thoughts/

External Link X (formerly Twitter) · x.com [1] The message so many of us need to hear, stop scrolling and start creating. I’m not sure that I have a heavy issue with this, I barely scroll the socials anymore, I have my own rss reader curated with people that I enjoy consuming from. YT is often done as a family activity (with my wife) or listening while doing something like dishes. But I think I’ve been on the other side of this for awhile. There’s something that ticks my brain by twiddling with linux nonsensically or pip install thing-i-heard-about-today and try it. I’m not imune though, I often fill gaps in the day with nonsense short content, but try to avoid the short trap. Note This post is a thought [2]. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts References: [1]: https://x.com/dhh/status/1950462181331349688 [2]: /thoughts/

- How many times in one video can Prime say dude just use arch, dude arch would be way easier, dude you know how hard you are making this on yourself. I do not envy those who desire full size configurability but stuck with the opinions of GatesJobs. Windows and Mac are so rigid, that it makes it impossible to do any level of customizability that I would want to do for productivity. Unless you Must work on win/mack for some reason of work, you make something for one of them, you use Adobe, or you play competitive online multiplayer with easy anticheat there is a distro for you. The number of things that you need a win/mack for is greatly shrinking, you don’t have to submit yourself to the pain of Gates that this guy has done. Note This post is a thought [1]. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts References: [1]: /thoughts/

- Copyparty looks like a feature full self hosted [1] file server, putting this into my check out later when I get back to my desk. Impressive number of features I didn’t even know were a thing all from one .py file. Note This post is a thought [2]. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts References: [1]: /self-host/ [2]: /thoughts/