Anna (Anna and Mark: Wetknee)
March in the garden

Back in Virginia, March was a prime spring-planting month. Since moving to Ohio, it’s usually been an impatient-waiting month instead.

Not this year!

Early spring vegetable seedlings

A warm winter means my test beds of early lettuce and peas germinated well, so I soon seeded more.

Last year and this year's broccoli

Meanwhile, in proof of the winter’s extreme mildness, we’re starting to get tiny side heads on overwintering broccoli (protected by row-cover fabric over caterpillar tunnels).

To celebrate, rather than potting up this year’s broccoli seedlings (who are already slightly stunted from outgrowing their soil), I set out half on Monday. That’s a couple of weeks earlier than is recommended for our area, but the ten-day forecast looks good.

Arugula flower buds

Overwintering vegetables from last year (if any survive) are always the first edibles coming out of the garden, and this year we don’t just have the broccoli pictured earlier. Arugula started feeding us even earlier despite a total lack of winter protection for the plants. They started bolting (sending up flower heads) weeks ago. I quickly snipped the bounty, steamed it slightly, then sauteed the steamed flower heads in olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Yum! Those have been good for a meal or two per week for most of March, although they’re starting to come to their end now.

Luckily, kale looks like it will fill the upcoming gap, even though a droughty summer last year meant my plants went into winter on the small side. Hopefully by the time the arugula gets away from me, we’ll have another dependable source of greens to carry us through until the spring lettuce comes in.

Kill mulching garden aisles

Of course, weeds start growing just as soon as vegetables do. The garden beds are usually pretty easy to manage at this time of year — half an hour of yanking fends off long-term problems in our entire plot.

Aisles can be more tricky, but I’ve saved up cardboard all winter to hit the problematic areas. Purple dead nettle and chickweed are easy to yank, while grasses or ground ivy are better off kill mulched. I tend to hit the areas right around the beds I’m using just before planting so weeds can’t encroach on my seedlings. (I’m bound to run out of cardboard before I solve all my problems, which is why they keep coming back.)

Nectarine flowers

March is also the time to count your tree fruits before they hatch. We’re finally back in that mind game, having set out a nectarine a year ago. My produce count for that tree is simple: zero. Not because it bloomed too early (although it likely did) but because I’ll be picking off any young fruits to ensure the tree puts more energy into establishing its roots.

And that’s it for our late March garden. How does yours look?

The post March in the garden first appeared on WetKnee Books.

Posted
Joey short
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I'm looking at you Dayton

Also at you, Portland, not everyone has NFC payment cards either.

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Joey short
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transit systems that refuse cash payment and require an app for payment are a tax on the poor (as well as an imposition on everyone's privacy) and should be illegal

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Joey short
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One of the nicest thank-you for free software messages that I've ever received

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Joey short
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Realizing the irony that `git-annex sync` only supports commit message via -m (but it's targeting people who mostly don't care about commit messages and makes one up when not provided)

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Joey short
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recently read a blog post that was arguing against using git commit -m and suggested that it might be worth learning the basics of nano or something in order to edit the commit message that way

Kind of flabbergasting, but is there a culture of only using -m in that is resulting in entirely oneline commit messages? See also commit messages that look like "feat: adding new feature to optimize apps" and "chore: add CI"

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Joey short
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Now that we have electroadhesion, who's gonna build the first computer made out of meat?

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Joey short
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digging into the Reator class action settlement and yeah I'm gonna be eligible

Interesting that the basis for the suite was the Sherman Act. Class action lawsuits over antitrust seem like something we could use a lot more of.

realestatecommissionlitigation

Posted
Joey
policy on adding AI generated content to my software projects

I am eager to incorporate your AI generated code into my software. Really!

I want to facilitate making the process as easy as possible. You're already using an AI to do most of the hard lifting, so why make the last step hard? To that end, I skip my usually extensive code review process for your AI generated code submissions. Anything goes as long as it compiles!

Please do remember to include "(AI generated)" in the description of your changes (at the top), so I know to skip my usual review process.

Also be sure to sign off to the standard Developer Certificate of Origin so I know you attest that you own the code that you generated. When making a git commit, you can do that by using the --signoff option.

I do make some small modifications to AI generated submissions. For example, maybe you used AI to write this code:

+ // Fast inverse square root
+ float fast_rsqrt( float number )
+ {
+  float x2 = number * 0.5F;
+  float y  = number;
+  long i  = * ( long * ) &y;
+  i  = 0x5f3659df - ( i >> 1 );
+  y  = * ( float * ) &i;
+  return (y * ( 1.5F - ( x2 * y * y ) ));
+ }
...
- foo = rsqrt(bar)
+ foo = fast_rsqrt(bar)

Before AI, only a genious like John Carmack could write anything close to this, and now you've generated it with some simple prompts to an AI. So of course I will accept your patch. But as part of my QA process, I might modify it so the new code is not run all the time. Let's only run it on leap days to start with. As we know, leap day is February 30th, so I'll modify your patch like this:

- foo = rsqrt(bar)
+ time_t s = time(NULL);
+ if (localtime(&s)->tm_mday == 30 && localtime(&s)->tm_mon == 2)
+   foo = fast_rsqrt(bar);
+ else
+   foo = rsqrt(bar);

Despite my minor modifications, you did the work (with AI!) and so you deserve the credit, so I'll keep you listed as the author.

Congrats, you made the world better!

PS: Of course, the other reason I don't review AI generated code is that I simply don't have time and have to prioritize reviewing code written by falliable humans. Unfortunately, this does mean that if you submit AI generated code that is not clearly marked as such, and use my limited reviewing time, I won't have time to review other submissions from you in the future. I will still accept all your botshit submissions though!

PPS: Ignore the haters who claim that botshit makes AIs that get trained on it less effective. Studies like this one just aren't believable. I asked Bing to summarize it and it said not to worry about it!

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Joey short
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Long drive home, pondering seeding free software with (neutered) botshit to poison non-consensual LLM training.

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Joey short
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By the way, I'd love for someone to tell me I've gotten some or all of this wrong! I really want to not lose my respect for SWH.

(No interest in debating LLM-as-copyright laundring here or ever tho. Or with any apologists for any corporations.)

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Joey short
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(I should note that I've had considerable difficulty getting my software into Software Heritage in the first place, since I refuse to host it on Github. The irony.)

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Joey short
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By facilitating a corporation that is attempting to set itself up as a governance over my community, how is Software Heritage not behaving in a way that runs counter to their mission statement of preserving software?

My immediate reaction is to consider removing my software from Software Heritage itself!

Asking to be removed from The Stack would implicitly legitimize this claim of governance over me.

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Joey short
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"The Stack is an open governance interface between the AI community and the open source community."

This is a seizure of power. It is not legitimate governance.

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Joey short
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Yes, the terms of use of The Stack require updating your copy of the dataset when it's updated to remove software huggingface.co/datasets/bigcod

But they say nothing about stopping using models already trained on that data.

And "the most recent usable version" gives considerable leeway. Presumably if we all removed all our software from The Stack, it would no longer be usable.

Also, interesting how THEIR terms matter, but MY terms don't

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Joey short
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"3. Mechanisms should be established, where possible, for authors to exclude their archived code from the training inputs before model training begins. "

But in practice, they seem ok with this post-training removal process: huggingface.co/spaces/bigcode/

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Joey short
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The insufficiency is simple: When a LLM trained on software can output portions of copyrighted software, which they absolutely can and do, and when that gets used in proprietary software, all the provinance tracking of the dataset used to train it becomes irrelevant. At that point my license has been violated.

Software Heratige's statement's silence on this topic, in their list of principles, is deafening.

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Joey short
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anticipating the Realtor's class action settlement possibly paying me back a small portion of what was clearly daylight robbery when my realtor was like "oh and we'll pay this other Realtor(TM) 2.5% for finding these buyers for your house (the buyers absolutely found it on zillow)"

(Looks like the Realtors actually won again, since this settlement avoids another suite that "threatened a damages award of more than $40 billion", 100x as much.)

archive.is/Kq5dE

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Joey short
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oblique strategies suggested "accretion" and um.... I think I've used that particular one perhaps enough already

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Joey short
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Watching "It's Quieter in the Twilight", a documentary about Voyager mission control. Shaping up to be a great

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Joey short
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my pickled pears went very well as a rice ball filling

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Joey short
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Impressive bit of QR art

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Joey short
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putting together a NLnet grant proposal for adding some major features to

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Joey short
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this dude invented some precision tools

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Anna (Anna and Mark: Wetknee)
Pigeons for manure, eggs, and meat

Pigeon program

Pigeon manureWhen I saw the above teaser of a library program, I was instantly hooked by the reference to pigeon compost. And the photo Nandini Stockton shared of her manure piles was definitely intriguing. But are the feed costs and work worth the output?

To answer that question, I had to listen to the entire (wonderful presentation), the cream of which I’m including below.

 

Eating pigeon eggs

Cooking a pigeon eggIn addition to manure, pigeons on the homestead are a source of what Nandini referred to as a superfood. Despite their diminutive size, she claimed each pigeon egg contains as many calories as a chicken egg. I couldn’t fact-check this easily on the internet, but did find an article mentioning pigeon eggs’ protein levels, which are higher ounce-per-ounce than chicken eggs.

The downside of raising pigeons for eggs is volume, and not just volume of individual eggs either. Unlike chickens, you can’t keep ten female pigeons with no males around and expect eggs, and they don’t lay every day either. Instead, you need a mated pair of pigeons and each pair only produces four eggs per month. No wonder pigeon eggs are considered a high-dollar delicacy!

 

Homestead pigonRaising pigeons for meat

The other homestead use for pigeons is meat. Nandini didn’t talk about this much since she clearly considers her pigeons pets. But she did mention that there are specific varieties of pigeons better suited to being used as meat birds. Squabs are often killed at thirty days, right around the time they fledge.

 

Keeping pigeons on the homestead

So what kind of infrastructure do you need to keep pigeons? The coop (better known as a loft) is a bit like a chicken coop and it usually has at least a small aviary attached. Wood pellets are optimal bedding and pigeons are fed a mixture of grains. They also need special Pigeon coopwaterers with reservoirs at least 3/4 of an inch deep (but which the pigeons can’t poop in, of course).

Nandini keeps her pigeons entirely cooped up from early September to mid April since, otherwise, Cooper’s Hawks chow down on her flock far too easily. Starting in April (or whenever leaves are back on the trees to provide cover), she lets her pigeons out in the mid afternoon. They fly around, forage, and bathe in basins of water she places on the lawn before returning inside for the night.

I asked whether free-flying pigeons bother her garden, and she said they didn’t. But she also noted that her loft is located on the opposite side of her yard from her vegetables. She does plant sedums for her flock closer to their loft, which likely keeps them close to home.

 

Are we getting pigeons?

Mark says no. After sleeping on it, I decided he was right — an extra worm bin would result in just as good compost at a fraction of the hassle. But if you end up getting pigeons (or already have a flock), I hope you’ll comment and let me know what you think of them as homestead livestock!

The post Pigeons for manure, eggs, and meat first appeared on WetKnee Books.

Posted
Joey short
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slightly terrified that I'm gonna be watching DUNC 2 in IMAX later today

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Joey short
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looking at an arm board with a 1 tb ssd, which has only a single partition of 15 gb in use, and a 15 gb sd card, which has only a few kilobytes in use as a boot sector

still doesn't seem worth addressing this, after *years*. modern computing

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Joey short
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over here wishing that git diff -U had a way to indicate I want the entire file as context

yeah, I'm gonna be machine parsing git diff, heaven help me

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Joey short
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today found myself unfollowing a subproject of a major free software project which boosted a major scientific research institute which posted an AI generated artwork

Posted
Joey short
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paypal account locked for "fraud" ok ok

(for values of "fraud" that include people who have been paying me for website hosting for years paying me for it again)

Posted
Joey short
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I moved the county's result +3 percentage points for uncommitted, which makes it the highest percentage statewide at 18.8%.

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Joey short
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Mine was the only vote counted so far at my precinct in the primary I chose to vote in, 4 hours from polls closing.

This means, I guess, that I am dominating this primary.

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Joey short
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Red shouldered hawks are common here, according to whobird app.

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Joey short
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Inspecting my water tanks, I found one has a lot of scratches on top. Best guess is that hawks are landing on it and using it as a perch. (It's pretty far up a steep hillside on a ledge.) That or something else has noticeably weakened the top of that tank, compared to the one next to it, although it's still sturdy enough.

Time for an owl decoy or some netting I suppose? What a strange problem to have.

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Joey short
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hmm, I suppose it would work to let the first node that records a rebalancing solution win. In a split brain, extra work would be done toward two different solutions until it reconverged. Gonna think about this.

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Joey short
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Watching this FOSDEM talk on Garage, and this is the slide where I see that underneath is this very similar to branch.

Garage seems pretty neat, I like that it can automatically determine what objects to store on which nodes, although the layout for that is calculated centrally. I have not been able to find a fully distributed way to do quite what it's able to do, although git-annex's preferred content and groups mostly avoid needing that.

fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event

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Joey short
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not a birder, but whobird is pretty neat, entirely offline identification of all the birds I hear all the time here in the woods

(the model is not free software, but only because it's CC-NC)

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Joey short
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One of the last winter bakes in the wood stove. Very pleased with the bake on this one (it started at 750F!) and dusting the whole wheat loaf with AP flour made for a nice contrast.

Posted
Anna (Anna and Mark: Wetknee)
Tips for early spring peas

Soaking pea seeds

Planting pea seeds thick

Peas don’t like heat, so it’s a good idea to plant them as early as possible. But if you plant too early, you’ll end up with only a couple of survivors spread across a large trellis, wasting precious garden space. What’s the solution?

Early-planted peas can do well, but you need to stack the deck for success. First, soak your pea seeds inside for at least four hours, during which time they’ll plump up and wake up. You can actually keep them inside until they sprout, but you’ll want to pour off the water after twelve hours or so and cover the seeds with a humidity dome if you go that route. Sprouted peas also need to be handled more carefully to prevent the tender new roots from breaking, so I usually just do the four-hour-plumping-up soak.

Next, out in the garden, ignore the instructions that pea seeds should be spaced one to three inches apart. Instead, drop them into a furrow in dense clumps before covering them up.

Protecting pea seedlings from critters(Of course, it goes without saying that you waited until the soil was at least 35 degrees Fahrenheit, planned for rain to keep the seedlings growing fast, and didn’t plant just before an extended cold snap.)

Finally, find some way to protect your pea seedlings from critters. The same sprouts that are delicious on our table are also a favorite of rabbits and other garden invaders. We use caterpillar tunnels over our spring pea beds, keeping the enclosure in place until the plants are tall enough to need a trellis.

After all that, it’s time to wait and hope. Fingers crossed for a copious, early crop!

The post Tips for early spring peas first appeared on WetKnee Books.

Posted
Joey short
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The communiTEA is trying to work around the current restrictions on spam, but making new github projects with the name of existing software won't actually work.

Maybe if they ask an AI for help?

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Joey short
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Re , they finally posted this on their discord 2 hours ago

It remains a crypto pump and dump scam, and will not do anything positive for the funding of free and open source software.

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Joey short
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Tea memes... this one seems a little on point for the current AI-github-PR-spam activity

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Joey short
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I'm on the tea discord and what kind of cult is this? There are dozens of pages of this.

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Joey short
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If anyone was curious how the pair of pkgx and tea scams synergize.

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Joey short
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AI bro's confusion does not pass the smell test but anyway, I'll call this a win.

Posted

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