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Marks Polakovs

@markspolakovs.me

DevOps person | recovering amateur broadcast engineer | Latvian in England | they/them

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29.04.2023
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Latest posts by Marks Polakovs @markspolakovs.me

A map of London King's Cross station, with the locations of platforms 8 and 9 circled in red, as well as Platform 9¾ between and below them, under which is the caption "sort your shit out JK"

A map of London King's Cross station, with the locations of platforms 8 and 9 circled in red, as well as Platform 9¾ between and below them, under which is the caption "sort your shit out JK"

15.02.2026 16:10 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
A photo of a computer keyboard on a desk in a theatre. It is being lit by a very visible beam of light from the ceiling far above it. The beam of light is shaped to perfectly outline the keyboard.

A photo of a computer keyboard on a desk in a theatre. It is being lit by a very visible beam of light from the ceiling far above it. The beam of light is shaped to perfectly outline the keyboard.

“I can’t see my keyboard”
The humble 19,000 lumen vl2600 profile:

05.10.2025 10:08 👍 0 🔁 2 💬 3 📌 0

Melodrama, the album that you are.

18.12.2025 22:40 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

i think we can all agree that god isn't setting the foundations of my games through me, but maybe satan is

16.12.2025 20:21 👍 221 🔁 13 💬 9 📌 0
Preview
Beg Bounties When someone passed me hundreds of thousands of records on kids taken from CloudPets a few years ago [https://www.troyhunt.com/data-from-connected-cloudpets-teddy-bears-leaked-and-ransomed-exposing-ki...

*sigh*

www.troyhunt.com/beg-bounties/

28.10.2025 08:38 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Summary of today at work:

IhategpgIhategpgIhategpgIhategpg

15.10.2025 19:06 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
A phone in a case absolutely covered with drawings of trains in various pride themed liveries.

A phone in a case absolutely covered with drawings of trains in various pride themed liveries.

Absolutely _had_ to get this phone case from @nattj.bsky.social - think it's my entire personality in phone case form

18.09.2025 17:28 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0

You’re going to need to elaborate on this one Brannan.

19.08.2025 17:49 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 2 📌 1
Preview
Reflections on the React community | Lee Robinson Some thoughts after working with React for 10 years.

Great read from @leerob.com

leerob.com/reflections

12.08.2025 17:57 👍 56 🔁 9 💬 6 📌 1
apt_auth.conf(5) — apt — Debian testing — Debian Manpages

Not sure about RPM, but apt supports HTTP basic auth, so you could have something as simple as a htpasswd for authorised users manpages.debian.org/testing/apt/...

04.06.2025 18:11 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Slack conversation:

Someone whose name is blurred: "In prod or dev? I can try testing now if u want?"

Marks Polakovs: "Let me put it this way"
"We have a dev instance"
"It happens to also be the prod instance"

Slack conversation: Someone whose name is blurred: "In prod or dev? I can try testing now if u want?" Marks Polakovs: "Let me put it this way" "We have a dev instance" "It happens to also be the prod instance"

11.04.2025 21:22 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Had an oddly similar experience, except this time the top result was the bug tracker of a popular Linux distro, and the person who has filed the bug was…

me

23.03.2025 00:01 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

You know it's good when you're troubleshooting something, you google the error message, get only one result, that being a link to the source code, and said link being purple.

13.02.2025 13:26 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 1

Pseudo-mathematically:

Performance of LLM at task = (Amount of input you give it) / (Amount of output you're expecting)

20.01.2025 22:44 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Great summary of what LLMs are and aren't good at:

* Turn text into less text than you started: great
* Turn text into the same amount of different text: so-so
* Turn text into more text than you started: forget about it

20.01.2025 22:37 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Post image

Happy 2025. Have fun, seek out joy, and don’t give a shit. Be your authentic you. Crack on!

01.01.2025 00:29 👍 118 🔁 6 💬 2 📌 1
A VS Code menu with the "JavaScript Debug Terminal" option selected.

A VS Code menu with the "JavaScript Debug Terminal" option selected.

Open the menu to add a Node.js run configuration, select "JavaScript Debug Terminal", hit F5, bosh. Run your Node app and it'll automatically have a debugger attached. Magic.

27.12.2024 10:15 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Things I should have discovered much sooner: the Node.js vscode debug terminal.

Opens a terminal, and any Node process you run from it has the vscode debugger automagically attached. Handles child processes of child processes as well. No faffing about with --inspect, it Just Works.

27.12.2024 10:12 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
A cracker of a show | Untitled.mov Episode 6
A cracker of a show | Untitled.mov Episode 6 YouTube video by Untitled․mov

Our Christmas special just dropped - it’s the most wonderful time of the year, so why not spend it listening to @itscfox.bsky.social @markspolakovs.me @mstratford.net @koryanderson.co.uk and Jamie talk rubbish for an hour?

youtu.be/KomMjPaJ75U

26.12.2024 21:15 👍 8 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 0

Punctuation matters. Way more than you think. Bad punctuation can be devastating.

Don't believe me?

Alright, then gather around, children, because I'm going to tell you a short true story about how not understanding ONE punctuation mark once cost a company millions of dollars in a lawsuit.

24.12.2024 13:35 👍 1284 🔁 372 💬 67 📌 122
Cat.

Cat.

Cat.

23.12.2024 19:16 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Failing to start a show for 35 seconds
Failing to start a show for 35 seconds YouTube video by Untitled․mov

@un.titled.mov: we’re a serious show having serious discussions about serious topics in serious tech
Also @un.titled.mov: www.youtube.com/watch?v=scKv...

19.12.2024 18:13 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Captain Haddock looking very frazzled, saying, “What a week, huh?” 
Tintin leans into the frame and says, “Captain, it’s Wednesday.”
Snowy is very excited about the drink he has found.

Captain Haddock looking very frazzled, saying, “What a week, huh?” Tintin leans into the frame and says, “Captain, it’s Wednesday.” Snowy is very excited about the drink he has found.

18.12.2024 10:42 👍 469 🔁 157 💬 3 📌 6

Moonlighting as a podcast editor now apparently.

If you’re interested in some very (very (very)) in-depth football analysis, go listen to these geezers.

12.12.2024 10:46 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 1

@itscfox.bsky.social has an interesting thesis: "twitter" should be a genericised trademark for "social networking site made up of short-form text content". X is 'a twitter'. Mastodon and Bluesky are 'twitters'.

24.11.2024 21:49 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0

ok, uhhh i've got like 3 more hours in the sky club to kill. every like == 1 hot take about observability

22.11.2024 05:25 👍 240 🔁 28 💬 10 📌 7

God grant me the serenity to accept I am cooked,

The courage to say fuck it we ball,

And the wisdom to know when we are so back

11.11.2024 02:24 👍 13401 🔁 3919 💬 102 📌 78

Nonsense abounds.

10.11.2024 18:28 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Marks Polakovs

Got tired of spending longer making my personal site than writing content on it, so here's the new and improved markspolakovs.me

(still under construction)

09.11.2024 21:17 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

And for some reason prefer it to the original.

09.11.2024 11:51 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0