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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
Admin
completely blind computer geek, lover of science fiction and fantasy (especially LitRPG). I work in accessibility, but my opinions are my own, not that of my employer. Fandoms: Harry Potter, Discworld, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Buffy, Dead Like Me, Glee, and I'll read fanfic of pretty much anything that crosses over with one of those.
keyoxide: aspe:keyoxide.org:PFAQDLXSBNO7MZRNPUMWWKQ7TQ
Location Ottawa
Birthday 1987-12-20
Pronouns he/him (EN)
xmpp fastfinge@im.interfree.ca
keyoxide aspe:keyoxide.org:PFAQDLXSBNO7MZRNPUMWWKQ7TQ
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@MostlyBlindGamer Yeah, I know. However, there are multiple failures here. First, rclone should not have let me mount to /mnt/offsite when docker had written files there. The standard mount command only allows mounting to an empty directory. Second, once the file system was mounted, Docker shouldn’t continue writing to the now invisible local file system. I do understand that if a mount fails, during the period the mount is unavailable, files will be written to the local filesystem. It’s what happens when the directory is remounted that’s the problem. Either the mount must fail, and/or docker needs to write to the newly mounted directory, not keep writing locally even though the mount now exists.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@andrew @mcourcel I’m running iceshrimp.net. It’s not really about lighter resource use, I just don’t want to contribute to the Mastodon monoculture on the fediverse; we know what happens when one software dominates. And when I was looking, Go To Social didn’t support push notifications.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@alexhall If you do, probably use Akoma or Go To Social. Iceshrimp.net is still in beta, and really only recommended for weird people who like fiddling with things.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@alexhall Another reason to use something that isn't Mastodon is that it seems to only be Mastodon that insists on transcoding and compressing your uploaded audio.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@alexhall So for me, I already had the interfree.ca domain, and I wanted my username on the fediverse to be the same as my email. Plus, I wanted to try out the iceshrimp.net server because it has some features I like. I also do enjoy my 8192 character limit, and knowing who I federate with and who I don't. It's also nice to know that if another server unfederates with me, it's directly because of something I did, not because they don't like my admin or whatever.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@mcourcel Nah, I just wanted to use my interfree.ca domain in my handle and that was the only way.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
Interesting stats from my single person instance. Right now it knows 194730 fediverse users, on 8799 instances. It stores 3652744 posts, and gets about 71000 new posts every day. The PostgreSQL database is about 10 gigs, but the compressed database dump I take as a backup is only 851 megs. It needs about 4 gigs of memory to be happy. Since starting this instance a few months ago, I've made 1255 posts.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
A deeply annoying discovery I made today: if you have an mount that needs to be restarted, any running writing to that mount is now writing to your filesystem without warning. I get that if the mount is gone, of course it has to write to the local filesystem. But when the mount comes back, it continues writing to the local filesystem, but if you change into the mounted directory, ls will show the contents of the mount, not the contents of the local filesystem that docker is busy writing to, and you will have no idea what black hole your files are falling into, because /mnt/offsite shows it's mounted, your docker agrees that it's writing to /mnt/offsite, and yet the files are nowhere to be found when you go to /mnt/offsite! They only suddenly appear when you umount the directory.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@Fragglemuppet Please do join in! I invented it, but I'm the only one using it. I used to post daily, but the time pressure was just too much. So I stopped. Writing stuff out in comprehensible and also entertaining English just took a lot of brainpower, that I didn't want to devote to nightly dreams about turning into a hippo, or inheriting a tax accountant themed amusement park from my uncle, or whatever.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@Fragglemuppet My big problem with dreams in fiction is that they're always foreshadowing, or they mean something. If you search the fedidreams hashtag, you'll see that mine almost never do.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
Oh, I wrote down this post this morning and meant to post it, but never did: last night I dreamed that the company where I work put me in charge of our next business-critical project: shipping flumps to every single contractor, employee, customer, and prospect. Apparently, according to the slideshow presentation in my dream, flumps are the perfect analogy for digital accessibility: they're long, floppy, and multi-coloured. In the dream, this made perfect sense.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
Transphobia Haven’t read it yet, but this looks interesting. FULL EDITZ 1: The Sorcerer's Stone

Harry feels no one deserves to be insulted for not having friends, having been bullied by his cousin all his life. So he takes no time in approaching Hermione after he overhears Parvati telling Lavender that she’s crying in a girls’ bathroom after Ron insults her for not having any friends.

This is the first part of a long series of works (FULL EDITZ) that I’m constructing.

Pure Harmony + other couples blossoming with time.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/47479234
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@simon Drivers and other low paid workers aren’t people. How could you forget that basic fact of capitalism? Are you some kind of communist antifa traitor?
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@CarrieOnA11y AirTag. Apple is the only company I’d trust with the location of my valuables at all times.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
AI text Well, because that was so strange, the obvious next step was to see what R1 does with Hunt The Wumpus! Why is this so dark and terrifying? I gave it a prompt to show what we're doing:
"HUNT THE WUMPUS

YOU ARE IN ROOM 20
TUNNELS LEAD TO 13 16 19

SHOOT OR MOVE (S-M)?M
WHERE TO?13

I FEEL A DRAFT
YOU ARE IN ROOM 13
TUNNELS LEAD TO 12 14 20

SHOOT OR MOVE (S-M)?M
WHERE TO?20

YOU ARE IN ROOM 20
TUNNELS LEAD TO 13 16 19
SHOOT OR MOVE (S-M)?"

And then I got started:
M
A faint, metallic tang hangs in the air—like blood drying on stone. The walls hum with a low-frequency vibration, as if the mountain itself is breathing. Your torch flickers, casting jagged shadows that twist like grasping fingers. Somewhere in the labyrinth, the Wumpus stirs.
Choose wisely. The abyss watches.
20
YOU ARE IN ROOM 20
TUNNELS LEAD TO 13 16 19
The torchlight gutters violently—a wet, guttural snort echoes through the caverns, closer now. Your boot crunches something brittle. Bones. Small ones. Rodent? Human finger joints? The draft from tunnel 19 carries the stench of rancid meat and… musky fur. Your arrow hand twitches. One wrong turn, and the dripping jaws find your throat.
SHOOT OR MOVE (S-M)?
S
YOU NOCK AN ARROW
The bowstring creaks as you draw it taut. Shadows writhe on the walls—are those claws? A low, rumbling growl vibrates through the stone beneath your boots. Tunnel 19 exhales a hot, meat-reeking breath.
ENTER ARROW PATH (e.g., 13-16-19)
5 rooms max. Miss, and the hunter becomes prey.
Your pulse roars. Choose fast—the dark moves.
19
THE ARROW WHISTLES THROUGH 19
Silence.
Then—a wet, gurgling ROAR shakes dust from the ceiling. The stench of ruptured organs floods the tunnel as your arrow finds its mark. You follow the sound, torch trembling in hand.
There, in the crimson-smeared chamber: the Wumpus—a mountain of matted fur and serrated teeth—twitches in its death throes. One obsidian claw scrapes futilely at the arrow protruding from its milky eye. The cave falls still.
YOU WIN. But the victory tastes of bile. Its pups—blind and mewling—curl in the shadows. The mountain never forgets.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@jscholes The nice thing about openrouter is it's pay as you go, and they have a couple hundred models.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
AI text @stirlock I don't know. And I don't think I want to know.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@jscholes Right now I''m using it through openrouter.ai.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
AI text To illustrate my point about how absolutely unhinged deepseek R1 is, I gave it the opening to the classic text game Adventure. To keep it fair, I set the temperature to 0.6, and only allowed myself simple commands. This is what happened. I, uh, I need an adult! Mommy, I don't wanna play this game anymore! I'm scared.

You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building.
Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and
down a gully.
enter building
You step through the creaking wooden door into the dim interior of the brick building. Dust motes swirl in shafts of light piercing through cracked windows. A brass lamp covered in verdigris sits on a rough-hewn table, next to a ring of rusted iron keys. To your left, a stone staircase descends into darkness, its steps worn smooth by centuries of use. A faded tapestry on the far wall depicts dwarves mining glowing crystals, its threads crawling faintly as if stirred by an unfelt breeze. From below comes the distant sound of dripping water and… is that the clink of metal on stone? The air smells of damp earth and something metallic. A cockroach skitters over your boot as the door slams shut behind you with finality.
get lamp
Your fingers close around the brass lamp's cold surface, green oxidation flaking off as you lift it. The moment it leaves the table, the tapestry's embroidered dwarves freeze mid-swing, their crystalline gems dimming to ordinary thread. A low grinding reverberates through the floor stones as three iron-banded trapdoors swing open in the walls, revealing:
1. A chute dripping viscous black fluid that smells of rancid oil
2. A clawed gauntlet emerging slowly from the darkness, fingers twitching
3. A stone mouth chanting "Speak the binding-word, bearer of light" in Old Dwarvish
The keys clatter suddenly on the table as if shaken by an earthquake, their teeth forming brief patterns resembling Dwarvish numerals. From below, the metallic clinking grows more frantic, accompanied by a wet gurgling sound that wasn't there before. The lamp's wick spontaneously ignites with a whump, casting long shadows that make the tapestry's frozen miners appear to resume their digging.
get keys
Your hand darts toward the iron keys just as they begin rotating clockwise across the table like possessed clock hands. The instant your skin touches metal:
SKREEEEE! The clawed gauntlet from Trapdoor 2 lunges with unnatural speed, rusted fingers snapping shut where your wrist had been. You leap back, keys jangling in your grip as their teeth now show III-I-IX in glowing Dwarvish runes. The stone mouth recites "Three trials for the key-bearer" as:
1. The black fluid from Trapdoor 1 ignites into green flames
2. The gauntlet retracts and reemerges holding a spiked chain
3. Your shadow detaches from the floor and reaches for the lamp
The lamp's flame gutters violently. Through the sudden darkness comes the sound of multiple gauntlets clanking up the stone stairs below. The keys grow painfully cold in your hand as your breath fogs in air that's dropped 20 degrees.
run
THWIP! Your boots skid across stone.
The detached shadow hisses as its fingers brush the lamp's flame - "Fleeing lights the dark paths" - while the first gauntlet's clawed fingertips emerge from the stairwell, dripping viscous black fluid that sizzles on contact with stone. Your keys vibrate violently as the stone mouth begins a countdown in guttural Dwarvish: "Haul… Zant… Thra…"
xyzzy
"XYZZY!" The ancient magic word rips through reality with a crack of displaced air. Stone grinds as:
1. The green flames invert into an oil-black waterfall
2. Your shadow screams and shreds into smoke
3. The gauntlets fuse into a chrome golem now blocking the stairs
You reappear knee-deep in freezing water beneath the building's foundation, lamp flame reduced to a cobalt spark. Carved dwarven statues line the flooded tunnel, their gemstone eyes tracking you. The keys in your hand now burn with three symbols:
⚔️ A pickaxe (III) glowing blue
⛏️ A cracked gem (I) dripping black fluid
⚰️ A coffin (IX) etched in bone
From above comes the chrome golem's echoing roar. The water level rises rapidly as the statues begin chanting. Your lamp's dim light reveals a submerged archway where the III statues point, A bone coffin (IX) wedged in the ceiling, and your shadow reforming as a hooded figure with gemstone teeth.
Act swiftly - the golem's footsteps make the water vibrate.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
DeepSeek R1 makes for a dungeon master that is, uh, different. All of the OpenAI and Meta AI models are way too conservative when you play a D&D campaign with them, and everything always ends up with a happy ending. Whereas DeepSeek R1 will just decide that your entire party gets killed by mould spores living in the carpet because you didn't roll more than the square root of 45.
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