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Drew

@drewdevault.com

I write free and open source software for fun and for a living.

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20.01.2026
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Latest posts by Drew @drewdevault.com

Obviously you SHOULD read the privacy policy, particularly for anything you depend on to maintain your privacy and security, but it's victim blaming to insist that Protonmail isn't in the wrong here because this person should have read the privacy policy.

06.03.2026 09:51 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Protonmail fails to do this. And it's a moral outrage because, thanks to their marketing, Protonmail is the only thing standing between some people and a noose.

06.03.2026 09:49 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

The deception is in the marketing.

I am of the opinion that if you market your tool as a means of protecting vulnerable people (e.g. activists), you have a moral obligation to clearly communicate how to use your tool effectively, maintain good opsec, and explain the limitations of your protection.

06.03.2026 09:49 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Sure

06.03.2026 08:52 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
Proton Mail Helped FBI Unmask Anonymous β€˜Stop Cop City’ Protester A court record reviewed by 404 Media shows privacy-focused email provider Proton Mail handed over payment data related to a Stop Cop City email account to the Swiss government, which handed it to the ...

www.404media.co/proton-mail-...

Can I have an "I told you so" for all of the times I've criticized #Proton for misleading consumers about privacy? Privacy is implemented with math, not trust.

06.03.2026 07:38 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
Matrix.org Matrix, the open protocol for secure decentralised communications

Does the #matrix homeserver at matrix.org still have a lot of issues? For non-technical users who end up there not knowing how or where to find a good alternative homeserver.

02.03.2026 09:48 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

For women, one of the very difficult things about the Epstein emails is having all our worst professional suspicions confirmed.

You wonder in darker moments if men say this kind of awful stuff about us (individually, and as a class) to each other, and here it is all confirmed in writing.

23.02.2026 18:56 πŸ‘ 1899 πŸ” 592 πŸ’¬ 41 πŸ“Œ 18
GitHub warning: "A user you've blocked has previously contributed to this repository." listing the account "claude"

GitHub warning: "A user you've blocked has previously contributed to this repository." listing the account "claude"

If you block an account on GitHub, you get a helpful warning on every repository it's morged to πŸ‘

(sorry, I can't find who to credit this idea I saw a few day ago)

18.02.2026 12:51 πŸ‘ 11 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

I can’t believe you lefty Luddites hate tech so much that you embrace mRNA vaccines, heat pumps, electric bikes, hybrid work, renewable power (and awesome advancements in storage), space telescopes, and hot/cold running water but reject the planet destroying plagiarism enrich the worst people bots!

18.02.2026 13:07 πŸ‘ 10984 πŸ” 2797 πŸ’¬ 148 πŸ“Œ 95
What's cooking on SourceHut? Q1 2026 sourcehut is a network of useful open source tools for software project maintainers and collaborators, including git repos, bug tracking, continuous integration, and mailing lists.

What's cooking on #SourceHut? Q1 2026

sourcehut.org/blog/2026-02...

18.02.2026 11:38 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

nice, good luck :)

18.02.2026 08:32 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Planning to work with hare-vt or starting your own thing?

17.02.2026 12:53 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
Hare 0.26.0 released

Hare 0.26.0 Released

- Loop values and for..else
- #DragonflyBSD support
- Explicit syntax for ignoring errors when needed
- Replacing @offset with fields named _ for padding structs
- Support for explicitly uninitialized variables

harelang.org/blog/2026-02...

#HareLang

13.02.2026 13:11 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

My doomer-worry about AI is not that the LLMs become omnipotent and take over the world but that the wealthy and powerful use it as a means to consolidate power and marginalize or lay off skilled workers and also everything about our technological and political and social life gets worse

11.02.2026 20:20 πŸ‘ 4062 πŸ” 808 πŸ’¬ 113 πŸ“Œ 62

But if this is the final nail in the coffin for you, then we're ready to welcome you to open platforms like #Matrix. But, expect the exodus to be small and underwhelming.

11.02.2026 17:36 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

None of the bullshit Discord pulls matters if your friends are there. The network effect is insidious and underestimated. Anyone can look up the shit Discord gets up to and make a moral choice, but they don't, because their friends are there, and that's _all that matters_.

11.02.2026 17:36 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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WhatsApp and the domestication of users WhatsApp's rise and recent PR efforts highlight a class of business models that I call "user domestication".

In Discord's defense, maybe the new rules will curtail some of this behavior. But I don't think age verification will cause a mass exodus that "kills" Discord, because Discord's users have been domesticated.

seirdy.one/posts/2021/0...

11.02.2026 17:36 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Children are constantly being groomed for sexual exploitation on Discord. Several dozen incidents are escalated to Discord's safety team every month - how many aren't caught? These are the latest numbers as of June 2024, the last transparency report. Who knows how bad it is now.

11.02.2026 17:36 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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Transparency Hub | Discord Safety Discord transparency reports cover data and insights on the work we’re doing to keep Discord a safe place.

Of course, the real problem on Discord is child sexual exploitation. You should read their transparency reports. Over 7,000 servers were banned for "child safety" reasons between January and June 2024. 100k accounts were banned for distributing CSAM in the same period.

discord.com/safety-trans...

11.02.2026 17:36 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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Gaming and Extremism: The Extreme Right on Discord ISD found Discord is a hub for extreme right-wing socializing, community building, and harassment, providing a safe space for sharing ideology.

There have always been great reasons to leave Discord, for instance the fact that Discord is a key part of the funnel for the far-right, hate groups, and modern fascists to bring young people into the fold and organize their activities.

www.isdglobal.org/publication/...

11.02.2026 17:36 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

I heard some noise being made about people fleeing #Discord over the new age verification requirements. Personally, I doubt this is going to be what kills Discord, it's too entrenched in people's lives.

11.02.2026 17:36 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
A mock-up of a SourceHut page showing the control panel for an organization.

A mock-up of a SourceHut page showing the control panel for an organization.

Cooking something up for #sourcehut

11.02.2026 17:10 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

you could simply leave the β€œJewish” part out of this

it is a choice and it is a bad one and I would really, truly prefer that people ostensibly on my side of the political spectrum not make it

11.02.2026 05:41 πŸ‘ 2654 πŸ” 359 πŸ’¬ 37 πŸ“Œ 7

One objection I have to this post is that, well, he worked at a defense contractor, so I don't think he should have had to ask "why" he was building something to understand that its purpose was, ultimately, to kill people. That's the only thing defense contractors _do_.

10.02.2026 10:49 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Don't Get Distracted I’m going to tell you about how I took a job building software to kill people. But don’t get distracted by that; I didn’t know at the time.

calebhearth.com/dont-get-dis...
Caleb Thompson: Don't get distracted

10.02.2026 10:49 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
Post image Post image Post image

The fourth book is live! It includes the Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, and PlayStation Portable studies.
I'm really happy with the result. You can get a copy here amazon.com/dp/B0GLP3Q8HB

08.02.2026 09:41 πŸ‘ 57 πŸ” 16 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
The cults of TDD and GenAI

The cults of TDD and GenAI

drewdevault.com/2026/01/29/2...

#blog #genai #llms

29.01.2026 13:45 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
A terminal session begins by listing the contents of the current directory, which contains three files; "hello", "world" and "hello world". The filename variable is set to "hello world" and then rm $filename is executed, without quoting the variable. The directory contents are listed again, showing "hello" and "world" left behind.

A terminal session begins by listing the contents of the current directory, which contains three files; "hello", "world" and "hello world". The filename variable is set to "hello world" and then rm $filename is executed, without quoting the variable. The directory contents are listed again, showing "hello" and "world" left behind.

26.01.2026 09:35 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
A terminal session demonstrating features of the xc shell. A list of three items, "echo", "hello", and "world", is assigned to a variable, and then various ways of utilizing this list are demonstrated. $x prints "hello world". Two printf commands are used to show that $x expands into three arguments, but $"x expands into just one. The use of $x(1) and $x(2-) demonstrate access to individual list items and a subset of items respectively.

A terminal session demonstrating features of the xc shell. A list of three items, "echo", "hello", and "world", is assigned to a variable, and then various ways of utilizing this list are demonstrated. $x prints "hello world". Two printf commands are used to show that $x expands into three arguments, but $"x expands into just one. The use of $x(1) and $x(2-) demonstrate access to individual list items and a subset of items respectively.

Can your shell do this?

26.01.2026 09:31 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
~sircmpwn/xc - A simple shell - sourcehut git

I've renamed my shell project from rc => xc and started doing a bit of clean-up work to inch it towards a release:

git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/xc

Started daily driving it again and it's really quite pleasant!

26.01.2026 09:25 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0