Connecting an Airthings Radon Detector to Home Assistant with Python and MQTT

Adding a Radon Detection to your Smart Home

Continue reading on Level Up Coding »

Alpine Linux on a Bare Metal Server

When I began work on 📨🚕 (MSG.TAXI), I kept things deliberately low-key, since I didn’t want it turning into a playground for architecture astronauts. For the web console’s tech stack, I went with the most boring yet easy-to-master CRUD stack I could find, that doesn’t depend on JavaScript. And while deploying Rails in a sane way (without resorting to cOnTaInErS) is a massive PITA, thanks to the Rails cargo-cult mentality and the author’s followers latching onto every half-baked wannabe-revolutionary idea, like Kamal and more recently Omarchy, as if it were a philosopher’s stone, from a development perspective it’s still the most effective getting-shit-done framework I’ve used to date. Best...

SEGV License

TERMS AND CONDITIONS

TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR USE, COPY, MODIFICATION, PREPARATION OF DERIVATIVE WORK, REPRODUCTION, AND DISTRIBUTION:

This section defines certain terms used throughout this license agreement.

1.1. “License” means the terms and conditions, as stated herein, for use, copy, modification, preparation of derivative work, reproduction, and distribution of Software (as defined below).

1.2. “Licensor” means the copyright and/or patent owner or entity authorized by the copyright and/or patent owner that is granting the License.

1.3. “Licensee” means the individual or entity exercising permissions granted by this License, including the use, copy, modification, preparation of derivative work, reproduction, and distribution of Software (as defined below).

1.4. “Software” means any copyrighted work,...

Updates 2025/Q3

This post includes personal updates and some open source project updates.

Q3 has been somewhat turbulent, marked by a few unexpected turns. Chief among them, changes to my home base. In mid-Q3, the owner of the apartment I was renting abruptly decided to sell the property, effectively giving me two weeks to vacate.

Thanks to my lightweight lifestyle, moving out wasn’t a major ordeal. However, in a global housing landscape distorted by corporations, wealthy boomers, and trust-fund heirs, securing a new place on such short notice proved nearly impossible.

Embracing the fact that I am the master of my own time and destiny, and guided by the Taoist principle...

IoT in Python For Beginners: MQTT and Home Assistant Integration

Let’s Work with Hardware (no Soldering is Required)

Continue reading on Python in Plain English »

Cloudflare bankrolls fascists

US politics has been pretty fascist lately. The state is filling up concentration camps, engaging in mass state violence against people on the basis of racialized traits, deporting them to random countries without any respect for habeas corpus, exerting state pressure on the free press to censor speech critical of the current administration, and Trump is openly floating the idea of an unconstitutional third term.

Fascism is clearly on the rise, and they’re winning more and more power. None of this is far removed from us in the FOSS community – there are a number of fascists working in FOSS, same as the rest of society. I don’t...

Thoughts on Cloudflare

As many of you know, I am skeptical of the concept of relying on someone else’s computer, especially when a service grows to the point where it becomes an oligopoly, or worse, a monopoly. Cloudflare is, in my view, on track to becoming precisely that. As a result, I would argue they are a net negative for the internet and society at large.

Besides the frustration they cause to VPN and Tor users through incessant captchas, Cloudflare’s infamous one more step pages have dulled users' vigilance, making them more vulnerable to even the most blatant malware attacks.

Moreover, under the guise of iNnOvAtIvE cLoUd InFrAsTrUcTuRe, Cloudflare not only enable phishermen...

I Bought a Trinitite Online - Is It Real?

Let’s Combine History, Physics, and Some Fun

Continue reading on Never Stop Writing »

Atomic Distros

Hey, does anyone here have strong opinions or real experience with atomic distributions, like Fedora Silverblue? I am considering it for a professional laptop, where I want to avoid components breaking so the immutability and containerization is something that sounds good. And I have come to terms with GNOME, so that is not an issue for me at least. What I worry about is, e.g. with Fedora Silverblue, that my previous experience with regular Fedora always degraded after an upgrade or two, and I don't know if this is something that Silverblue can help me here.

A better future for JavaScript that won't happen

In the wake of the largest supply-chain attack in history, the JavaScript community could have a moment of reckoning and decide: never again. As the panic and shame subsides, after compromised developers finish re-provisioning their workstations and rotating their keys, the ecosystem might re-orient itself towards solving the fundamental flaws that allowed this to happen.

After all, people have been sounding the alarm for years that this approach to dependency management is reckless and dangerous and broken by design. Maybe this is the moment when the JavaScript ecosystem begins to understand the importance and urgency of this problem, and begins its course correction. It could leave behind its sprawling...