matt - Network

If I were to buy a new keyboard, any recommendations for a good mechanical PC keyboard? I just want a standard US QWERTY 104-key PC layout,...

If I were to buy a new keyboard, any recommendations for a good mechanical PC keyboard? I just want a standard US QWERTY 104-key PC layout, like my current CODE Keyboard.

Anyway, I still don't know if it's time to buy a new keyboard or if I should be able to keep using the current one.

Does anyone know of a serious effort to somehow run a USB driver stack in user space on Linux? I'm just thinking about how to mitigate...

Does anyone know of a serious effort to somehow run a USB driver stack in user space on Linux? I'm just thinking about how to mitigate vulnerabilities in USB drivers, since those drivers could be communicating with a malicious device.

I've owned a WASD CODE Keyboard (couldn't say which version number) for roughly 10 years, and have actively used it for about 6.5 of...

I've owned a WASD CODE Keyboard (couldn't say which version number) for roughly 10 years, and have actively used it for about 6.5 of those years. Now, some keypresses are intermittently ignored. It has happened most annoyingly with the Space key in the past; right now it's left Ctrl. Is this a sign of switches needing to be replaced, or something else? Should I just buy a new keyboard, or would it be practical to repair this one?

I was thinking about this just now while looking at all of the library dependencies of a Debian build of FFmpeg. True, FFmpeg couldn't...

I was thinking about this just now while looking at all of the library dependencies of a Debian build of FFmpeg. True, FFmpeg couldn't be used to backdoor OpenSSH specifically. But there's probably some high-value program with less-than-perfect sandboxing that uses FFmpeg, and as the XZ Utils backdoor shows, with typical dynamic linking, loading a compromised library is all it takes. And one only has to compromise one vulnerable, under-resourced project in the dependency tree.

My thought of the day while I ought to be sleeping: How is the software industry doing on preventing the next XZ Utils-style backdoor?...

My thought of the day while I ought to be sleeping: How is the software industry doing on preventing the next XZ Utils-style backdoor? Remember that? I admit I myself haven't done anything meaningful; I don't know of anything I individually could do that would move the needle, though I did start donating to musl libc last year. But given that the complexity of our software stacks is no better than it was last year, a future backdoor of that type would still have plenty of places to hide.

Here's another excerpt, just over 5 minutes, with some more odds and ends from the station, surrounding another alternate song mix:...

Here's another excerpt, just over 5 minutes, with some more odds and ends from the station, surrounding another alternate song mix: https://mwcampbell.us/q92-time-capsule/everything-you-want-plus.mp3

- the last bit of a song (a 2016 hit) mixed with a station ID
- the radio mix of the 1999 hit "Everything You Want" by Vertical Horizon, sped up
- another station ID
- a slightly misread announcement, a commercial, and an overnight weather report
- one more station ID mixed with the fairly recognizable intro of a 2017 hit

Here's another alternate song version from that old radio station recording (see thread). This one is "Don't Let Me Down"...

Here's another alternate song version from that old radio station recording (see thread). This one is "Don't Let Me Down" by the Chainsmokers. Most of the song is the same as the standard version, but it has extra intro and outro. Again, I left in a station ID on both sides (seems to be the same ID both times this time). Anyone wanna guess the song that's fading out while the initial ID is playing? (I know the answer to that one.) https://mwcampbell.us/q92-time-capsule/dont-let-me-down.mp3

Here's another excerpt of that recording of Q92 (a former local radio station in Wichita, Kansas) from 8 years ago. This is an ad for...

Here's another excerpt of that recording of Q92 (a former local radio station in Wichita, Kansas) from 8 years ago. This is an ad for Envision, the local organization for blind and low-vision people, which owned the station. https://mwcampbell.us/q92-time-capsule/envision1.mp3 Transcript here: https://mwcampbell.us/q92-time-capsule/envision1.html I'd be curious to find out what other blind or low-vision people think of this ad, since it's about an organization for us.

Just over 8 years ago, I accidentally recorded about 11 days of audio from the Internet stream of a former local radio station (I only meant...

Just over 8 years ago, I accidentally recorded about 11 days of audio from the Internet stream of a former local radio station (I only meant to record a clip from the morning show). More info, and the full audio (assuming I won't get in trouble for this), here: https://mwcampbell.us/q92-time-capsule/

I started re-listening to this yesterday, and here's one excerpt: an EDM remix of "Counting Stars" by OneRepublic, surrounded by station IDs. Anyone know what this mix is called?https://mwcampbell.us/q92-time-capsule/counting-stars.mp3

Is anyone running iOS 18.5 beta 2 and having issues with text input? Asking for a friend; I don't run iOS betas myself.

Is anyone running iOS 18.5 beta 2 and having issues with text input? Asking for a friend; I don't run iOS betas myself.

In TalkBack's defense, running a demo app that pre-fills an edit control with a few paragraphs of lorem ipsum text is, of course, not...

In TalkBack's defense, running a demo app that pre-fills an edit control with a few paragraphs of lorem ipsum text is, of course, not the common case. Still, I prefer the typical Windows screen reader behavior of announcing the control type, then the current line of text.

Update: Got the answer. It's not just me; that annoying behavior is standard for TalkBack. Thanks @pvagner....

Update: Got the answer. It's not just me; that annoying behavior is standard for TalkBack. Thanks @pvagner. https://fedi.ml/display/421c36a5-1767-fe86-edb4-d5e370697219

Question for Android TalkBack users: In applications with a multi-line edit control, is it common for TalkBack to start reading the full...

Question for Android TalkBack users: In applications with a multi-line edit control, is it common for TalkBack to start reading the full contents of the edit control before announcing its control type? I suspect I'm doing something wrong in my Android accessibility implementation but don't have a counter-example handy.

Are there yet applications for the free desktop ecosystem that use PipeWire directly for audio? If not, is it intended that there will be?...

Are there yet applications for the free desktop ecosystem that use PipeWire directly for audio? If not, is it intended that there will be? Or will applications always use the JACK or PulseAudio compatibility layer?

For all that my uncle and I griped about doing what we called the floppy disk shuffle on our Apple IIGS computers in the late 80s to early...

For all that my uncle and I griped about doing what we called the floppy disk shuffle on our Apple IIGS computers in the late 80s to early 90s, and I envied him when he got a hard drive, I think we lost something that we used to have with the old way, where we had lots of independent disks. Yeah, there was no multitasking, but in hindsight, maybe that was better?

Basically, I think personal computers took a wrong turn in the early 90s when we decided that the operating system, applications,...

Basically, I think personal computers took a wrong turn in the early 90s when we decided that the operating system, applications, configuration, and user data would all live together on a single internal storage device (hard drive, SSD, eMMC module, whatever). The initial state of that storage was and is usually set up by the computer vendor, and users often don't have the tools to rebuild it from scratch. Thus we have the scary possibility of breaking that unique, hard-to-rebuild system.

On a related topic, I wonder if there's an inherent reason why SD cards (whether micro or full) have to be slower than eMMC modules. I...

On a related topic, I wonder if there's an inherent reason why SD cards (whether micro or full) have to be slower than eMMC modules. I haven't actually measured this; it's just what I've read. In theory, I like the idea of a single-board computer that boots exclusively from an SD card. An easily swappable SD card, in a slot not hidden inside the case. As long as you have more than one such card, that would encourage fearless experimentation with the software stack down to the lowest level.

Am I the only one who thinks that microSD cards are _too_ small, too easy to lose? I lost one yesterday. I liked full-sized SD cards.

Am I the only one who thinks that microSD cards are _too_ small, too easy to lose? I lost one yesterday. I liked full-sized SD cards.

I wonder if there's an easy way to make the Python lxml package use a modern Python HTTP/HTTPS client, like urllib or requests, when...

I wonder if there's an easy way to make the Python lxml package use a modern Python HTTP/HTTPS client, like urllib or requests, when loading external entities and DTDs. If I just pass no_network=False to XMLParser, that seems to use a client built into libxml2, which doesn't support HTTPS.

Or maybe I need to figure out how to put the DTDs I'm working with into a catalog.

@simon In your recent blog post with your updated LLM pricing table (https://simonwillison.net/2025/Apr/10/llm-pricing-calculator/), I...

@simon In your recent blog post with your updated LLM pricing table (https://simonwillison.net/2025/Apr/10/llm-pricing-calculator/), I wonder why the table is an image and not an HTML table. You did provide alt text, but an actual HTML table, which can be navigated with specific screen reader commands, would be better.