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Alex Willmer

@alex.moreati.org.uk

Python and Ansible developer. Recovering Sherlock. Armchair supervillain. Pun usually intended. He/they. https://moreati.org.uk 🐘 https://social.moreati.org.uk/@alex

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21.10.2024
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Latest posts by Alex Willmer @alex.moreati.org.uk

Tried Asahi Linux for the first time. It's close to Willmer Ready, but not quite. I just want DisplayPort over USB, which isn't enabled yet. Scrolling/graphics may have been jerky in places, or might have been my imagination. One casualty of the trial: I'm now stuck with macOS 26 and Liquid Ass.

07.03.2026 10:52 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Removed the access panel and gave the insides a good dusting. No more buzzing (for now).

06.03.2026 17:22 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Python Unplugged on PyTV – Free Online Python Conference Watch Python Unplugged, a free online conference bringing together top Python community leaders – open to developers of any level.

PyTV Python Unplugged starts in 11 hours. A free Python conference streamed online. It's free and registration is still open lp.jetbrains.com/python-unplu.... Kicks off 10 AM in the UK (UTC), 11 AM in Europe (CET).
#PyTV #PythonUnplugged

03.03.2026 22:57 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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MacBook Pro 16" 2021 Speaker Assembly Replacement Use this guide to replace one or both speakers in your MacBook Pro 16" 2021. Replacing the speakers requires you to remove the logic board and...

My 5 year old M1 Macbook has developed its first fault - the left speaker buzzes/rattles. Just a loose screw, right? Nope. The speakers are glued in & of course require near disassembly to get at. www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBoo...

02.03.2026 22:45 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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Anonymous credentials: an illustrated primer This post has been on my back burner for well over a year. It’s been sitting here unwritten, not because the topic is unimportant β€” in fact, with every single month that goes by, I become mor…

I wrote a new post on anonymous credentials and how to build them. All of this is in service on a longer future post on how these will fit into age verification systems. blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2026/03/02/a...

02.03.2026 18:39 πŸ‘ 53 πŸ” 24 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 2

Gold: Β£123/gram (+Β£5). DDR5 64 GB DIMM: Β£626 & out of stock = Β£42/gram (-Β£3). RAM-gold gap has widened again, or -infinity depending how you calculate

25.02.2026 10:23 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Web NFC | Can I use... Support tables for HTML5, CSS3, etc

#TIL There's an NFC API for web browsers. Only Chrome for Android and Baidu Browser support it, even partially caniuse.com/webnfc

23.02.2026 19:15 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Can I prove I’m over age, on the Internet? Yes. Provided I share my name, date of birth, driver’s license, and inside leg measurement with every .com, .click, and their 1443 Harrys. I’d …

I blogged moreati.org.uk/blog/2026/02...

23.02.2026 17:09 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Misspelled Nemesis Club Homepage and blog of Alex Willmer.

Resurrected my homepage/blog moreati.org.uk

20.02.2026 22:21 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

If my Mastodon goes down today, it's pre-meditated DNS. I'm attempting to resurrect my blog on that VM.

20.02.2026 11:21 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
An electronic price label for LIDL Parkside Safety Glasses. New price: Β£2.99. Crossed out price: Β£NaN.

An electronic price label for LIDL Parkside Safety Glasses. New price: Β£2.99. Crossed out price: Β£NaN.

0.0/0.0 of the LIDL

16.02.2026 22:55 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
An XKCD-style cartoon with 2 stick figures talking.
Her: XKCD is second nature to us nerds, so it's esay to forget that the average person probably only knows KXCD 327, 386, 927, 936, and 2347
Him: And 2501, of course
Her: Of course
Caption: Even when they're trying to compensate for it, experts in anything wildly overestimate the average person's familiarity with their field.

An XKCD-style cartoon with 2 stick figures talking. Her: XKCD is second nature to us nerds, so it's esay to forget that the average person probably only knows KXCD 327, 386, 927, 936, and 2347 Him: And 2501, of course Her: Of course Caption: Even when they're trying to compensate for it, experts in anything wildly overestimate the average person's familiarity with their field.

Someone pointed me to marshdeer.github.io/xkcd2501-gen..., so obviously I had to

16.02.2026 20:36 πŸ‘ 5 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Violets are blue
Roses are too
When they're moving
Relativistic to you

14.02.2026 19:55 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Giving Ubuntu 26.04 snapshot a spin, to see how well Mitogen plays with sudo-rs

10.02.2026 16:58 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

#TIL GitHub Actions runners don't guarantee presence or absence of AVX512 or other instruction set extensions

03.02.2026 14:15 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Remember: Once finished with your Zamboni, dismount and push it to its parking area. Never ride it off the ice.

Don't derink and drive

02.02.2026 15:25 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

19 480 inbox, 1 775 unread, 52 802 archived

27.01.2026 16:27 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Post image

@cstross.bsky.social has the entire Hugo-Campbell-Clarke-BSFA-awarded novel 'Accelerando' free for reading on his website:
www.antipope.org/charlie/blog...
It starts with mind-uploaded lobsters and ends with a galaxy filled with Matrioshka brains.

24.01.2026 22:09 πŸ‘ 26 πŸ” 7 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0

Gold: Β£118/gram (+ Β£10). DDR5 64 GB DIMM: Β£670 = Β£45/gram (no change) uk.crucial.com/memory/ddr5/.... The RAM-gold gap has widened.

24.01.2026 20:04 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
Wait, fiber optics are how cheap now?! | All Confirmation Bias, All The Time

DIY this cheaper aredridel.dinhe.net/2026/01/23/w...

24.01.2026 15:26 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Emmanuel Macron: Why was the French president wearing sunglasses indoors at Davos? The French leader drew attention for his rebuke of Trump's tariff threat - and also his choice of eyewear.

"J'en ressens le besoin, le besoin de vitesse" doesn't have quite the same ring www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

21.01.2026 16:13 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

A 100 watt equiv. bulb is about 1 600 lm. One downlight is about 500-750 lm.

21.01.2026 16:08 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

I'm currently lit by 5 metres and 120 watts of LED tape. About 9 500 lumens if the specs are accurate. It's not the most cost effective way to get lots of light, but I do like the softer shadows and ability to do it without calling an electrician.

21.01.2026 16:08 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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Redirects Over time, a documentation project may want to rename and move contents around. Redirects allow changes in a documentation project to happen without bad user experiences. If you do not manage URL stru...

Linking to some Python package docs? Replace <pkg>.readthefinedocs.io with <pkg>.rtfd.io to save a few precious characters. It's an official redirect docs.readthedocs.com/platform/lat... #Python #ReadTheDocs

21.01.2026 11:29 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Testing behaviours of io.BytesIO, io StringIO, cStringIO.StringIO, and StringIO.StringIO Testing behaviours of io.BytesIO, io StringIO, cStringIO.StringIO, and StringIO.StringIO - memio.py

Python 2's StringIO.StringIO was weird. It accepted a mix of bytes and unicode input, then changed the return type of its getvalue() method based on them gist.github.com/moreati/6e02...

20.01.2026 16:58 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

rats, wrong Cambridge

17.01.2026 16:52 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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InvisiLight Home Fiber Kit – Lightera Unlock Your Internet’s Potential with InvisiLight Home Fiber Kit. Easy, invisible connections using an ultra-thin fiber optic cable. BUY NOW SecureConnection BroadCompatibility NearlyInvisible Ease of...

Surface mount fibre network kit that promises to hide in plain sight; thin enough to blend into door frames, skirting board, etc lightera.com/invisilight-.... 1 Gbit with provided media converters/SFPs, 10+ Gbit if you add the right SFPs. Thanks to @apalrd for the vid www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2Fb...

14.01.2026 00:51 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

#TIL Python str.splitlines() takes an optional keepends argument

>>> 'foo\nbar\n\n'.splitlines()
['foo', 'bar', '']
>>> 'foo\nbar\n\n'.splitlines(keepends=True)
['foo\n', 'bar\n', '\n']

01.01.2026 13:11 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Happy New Year. Please rinse out your used years, then sling them with great force into the provided yellow-and-mauve bins. Used years contain hazardous chroniton residue. Do not atttempt to disassemble, puncture, burn, crush, freeze, phase, lase, repair, replicate, or reactivate any used years.

01.01.2026 09:26 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Since 1984 exposures to Last Christmas have rocketed worldwide. Scientists believe Global Whamming is to blame.
#Whamageddon

30.12.2025 21:11 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0