Clothespin Sculpture by Mehmet Ali Uysal in Belgium. <3 9 Amazing Sculptures That Blend With Nature: https://streetartutopia.com/2026/04/15/artists-who-use-nature-in-their-sculptures/

Every time I get frustrated with work I'm doing, I'm going to migrate another repo from github (and later, gitlab) to codeberg.

Who wants a free ticket for #rustweek? I can’t attend it finally and my ticket is no longer refundable, but I can change the name on it :)

You can find all my videos on my blog, including today's video: Implementing gunzip from scratch in Rust Jez and Andy get together for crazy programming hijinks, trying to figure out from scratch how gzip compressions works, starting by making a valid minimal gzipped file, then trying to unzip […]

Rabbit Escape has moved off github to https://codeberg.org/andybalaam/rabbit-escape !

What was so great about Google Reader? Surely someone can write and host something similar? (I never used it)

“It's making me dumber for sure,” the fintech software developer told me. “It's like when we got cellphones and stopped remembering phone numbers, but it's grown to me mentally outsourcing ‘thinking’ in general. I feel my critical thinking and ability to sit and reason about a problem or a […]

'Tech is full of people who care deeply about their area of chosen specialism, and we’re all struggling in a world where doing lots of stuff really fast has become the most important thing.' Keep caring and wait it out. rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/202...

Question on an issue[1] + summary of my answer: > How much of the solution here is Element-specific? Is it possible for other clients to re-use ...? The vast majority of the implementation is in matrix-rust-sdk which is released under Apache 2, and is donated to the Matrix Foundation, making […]

The Matrix Governing Board Elections! https://youtu.be/S1bJBtV5KxE?si=OrREMT51dKbpDx8i

Google claim that their upcoming laptop is the "perfect partner to your Android phone" because you can "access files from your phone as if they live on your laptop" - but did you know that this is already possible, no special laptop model needed? KDE Connect is completely free and open source […]

Hey, so I use Audacity a lot, and on my old machine I use the compressor effect with these settings. On a newer machine I have a new dialog that looks like the second screenshot. In the old version, just hitting Apply would make the volume right, even if […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Prayer: the axe is at the root https://wrestleswithgod.org/2026/05/10/the-axe-is-at-the-root/ #prayer

"Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper says the government needs to reflect on the results so far." May i suggest that the time to reflect was during the last few years where we kept telling you that being a right-wing government with a red logo was bad? You know, shutting down protests, supporting […]

Changelog Builder[1] is explicitly NOAI.md[2]. No harmful effects so far! [1] https://codeberg.org/andybalaam/changelog-builder [2] https://codeberg.org/andybalaam/noai.md #softwaredevelopment

Jez returns for programming language chat! https://video.infosec.exchange/w/ddh8hoaL2qJj4hvXgS9RUm Veteran super-coder @jezhiggins is back, and claims he has "finished" implementing Cell, Andy's toy language, in Rust. Jez and Andy basically gossip a bit, about code type stuff. #video #coding

Changelog Builder 0.10.1 released! We can do --dir and --config now, and you can launch the tool as a Rust function as well as on the command line. https://codeberg.org/andybalaam/changelog-builder/releases #softwaredevelopment

RE: https://social.coop/@cwebber/116533971761510944 Excellent, thoughtful thread about how even many of us getting by quite well are doing so within a system that is doing its best to see that we don't. We are not as well as we *could be* and .. that's not our fault, but it's something we still […]

There's another article in the New Scientist with more details about how #mythos spooked the #nhs into shutting down its brilliant #opensource projects. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2525315-backlash-builds-over-nhs-plan-to-hide-source-code-from-ai-hacking-risk/

I am thinking of a video series going through the Rust book, talking through everything. Would likely be less advanced than recent stuff. Think it's a good idea? If I really got excited I might make slides based on the book to make it much nicer. I should put more effort into my videos... but […]

I just deleted my most popular repo from github.

A little project I've been working on is ready for light testing: https://codeberg.org/andybalaam/changelog-builder Changelog Builder makes a changelog for you from snippets in separate text files. It reimplements parts of the awesome towncrier Python app, but it's built in Rust so may be […]

Just recorded for 3 hours with @jezhiggins . We had a whale of a time. We'll see whether any coherent video comes out of it...

Why I don't vibe code by Jacob Harris: https://jacobharr.is/personal/i-dont-vibe-code Feels like a perfect companion to my article: https://artificialworlds.net/blog/2025/12/16/why-i-dont-use-ai/ Jacob talks about ways LLMs probably don't work and are no fun, and I talk about the ethical […]

"... this new guidance is in direct contradiction to the UK's Tech Code of Practice point 3 "Be open and use open source" which insists on code being open." https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/05/nhs-goes-to-war-against-open-source/

Using anyhow to handle errors in my Rust changelog builder More bumbling around coding in Rust: https://video.infosec.exchange/w/vhHv6Ns7wGpUt1MZyN6KGW #video #rustlang #coding

We've been really enjoying Film Club on BBC. All the characters have plausible inner lives, are very interesting, and mostly very kind.

I am having a lovely time running Debian.

I'm endlessly confused by the wave of legislation to ban children from accessing social media, rather than banning social media companies from harming children. And yes I know Free Speech but now we know that we can torture and sicken people, including kids, in this medium. Some of the things […]

If you don't want AI contributions to your project, here is a standard NOAI.md file you can add: https://codeberg.org/andybalaam/noai.md Contributions and suggestions welcome on the repo. Please do boost! #noai

For a NOAI.md, how about something like this? https://codeberg.org/andybalaam/noai.md

I was going to register noai.md but it's £60/year which is a bit much for me.

Is there a standard .md file people add to their code repos to say they don't want AI contributions?

Enthusiastically embracing test-driven development as always, we attempt to write a minimal clone of a useful tool, towncrier, which allows us to build changelogs out of individual "newsfragment" files. By the end we have the outline of a decent solution that passes our first and only testcase! […]

Remind me why we use proprietary software again?

There is another DDoS happening against mastodon.social, status information is here and the team is working on countering it -> https://status.mastodon.social/cmobau3jq000p4zzkke9kub6d

Cherish the humans around you: friends, family, colleagues, yourself. They are imperfect, you are imperfect. Cherish them anyway, as best you can, when you can.

The UK government has put out a consultation asking about * Social media age restrictions * Age verification technology * Restricting dark patterns like autoplay * Phones in schools * "Digital age of consent" This is our chance to make our voices heard and influence legislation & […]

The billion row challenge: splitting lines using SIMD in Rust https://video.infosec.exchange/w/oyJg67E2P8HfuAcxPDboSm I was scared to do it, but it was actually fine! This time we look at the quickest way to split up massive text files into separate lines, first the easy way, then with SIMD […]

Tips for avoiding "async bloat" from Dion https://tweedegolf.nl/en/blog/235/debloat-your-async-rust * Avoid async fns that don't actually need to be async * Use -> impl Future for async 'pass-through' functions (and return Future::ready()) * Use the futures crate to allow more async fns to be […]

All corruption, all the time in Trump world. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/09/pentagon-ai-xai-emil-michael

How is `wc -l` SO FAST? I mean, it would definitely help if I built the code in release mode. But still. https://video.infosec.exchange/w/hC32rdos46nZkXCtYvkGzi #rustlang #coding #video

We've pushed back the date when Element is going to enforce MSC4153 Exclude Insecure Devices[1]. Some of our customers weren't ready for it, and our code (especially around bots and bridges) is not ready either. We are taking it carefully, making sure that everyone is able to verify their […]

Fixing the Internet's typos one PR at a time https://github.com/RazrFalcon/memmap2-rs/pull/166

IT'S HAPPENING GITHUB, THE FIRST ENTERPRISE CLOUD SOLUTION TO REACH ZERO NINES RELIABILITY https://mrshu.github.io/github-statuses/ #github

Getting more realistic in our Rust performance mission! https://video.infosec.exchange/w/rxF6huWj4RahRP3gsb2BU1 Making our code parse whole lines of the Billion Row Challenge. #coding #rustlang #video

People keep assuring me that LLMs writing code is a revolution, that as long as we maintain sound engineering practices and tight code review they're actually extruding code fit for purpose in a fraction of the time it would take a human. And every damned time, _every damned time_ any of that […]

More Rust coding video goodness! https://video.infosec.exchange/w/mjqCDN6XfG4mHLVULUvTnK We're working on the Billion-Row Challenge, trying to measure as we go, and ensure correctness with tests. #rustlang #video #coding

Last night I recorded 2 videos following on from the Billion Rows Challenge[1] one I made before. First we expanded the benchmarks a little and attempted some improvements to the temperature parsing code. Then we extended the implementation to cover parsing the whole line, not just the […]

git diff for images https://freakspot.net/en/git-diff-for-images/