[Unlocked] Bonus Drop #2 (2023-02-10)
Discover more from hrbrmstr's Daily Drop
[Unlocked] Bonus Drop #2 (2023-02-10)
A Rosetta (Stone) For Docker; Search For The Fediverse; Yurt Yearnings; Odds & Ends
The thumb is better but still on the mend. So, I’m releasing another Bonus Drop from the archive. Typography Tuesday should still be on for tomorrow. 🤞🏽
This is the second bonus drop for folks who have been amazingly kind and generous enough to financially support the Daily Drop. M-F regular editions will always be gratis and the Bonus Drop content will eventually wind its way to the free editions. Generally, the items included in the Bonus Drop are what made it to the cutting room floor during the week.
Today covers some new capabilities in Docker for folks running Apple Silicon Macs, a new (and somewhat disruptive) Fediverse full-text search service, and some offbeat alternative housing, plus some odds and ends.
A Rosetta (Stone) For Docker
One of the huge downsides of running Docker on Apple Silicon is that, until now, one had to suffer through rebuilding containers to work with the arm64 architecture or hacky use of QEMU.
Starting in release 4.16.0, users on Apple Silicon running macOS 13 (Ventura) can enable “Rosetta for Linux” for faster emulation of Intel-based images.
You do need to add some command line options to tell Docker you want to use this experimental feature:
docker build --platform linux/amd64 -t super-awesome-image .
docker run --platform linux/amd64 super-awesome-imageI had started to use my home “data science” server for amd64 Docker work, and will likely do so for most of the heavy lifting, though it will be very nice not having to.
If you provide Docker instructions for things you build or showcase, make sure to provide --platform linux/amd64 guidance for the ever-increasing number of Apple Silicon users out there.
Search For The Fediverse
Tootfinder is a new, opt-in full-text search engine for the Fediverse. While I’ve caught both Google and Kagi indexing and surfacing posts from various Mastodon instances.
It’s…not going well:
Full disclosure: I tapped “authorize” on my mastodon.social account, since I treat Mastodon as a zero-trust service. “Zero-trust” in this context means that about the only thing “secret” on it is my salted, hashed password. Nothing but the HTTPS communications are encrypted, and every instance is one, clever social engineering attack away from having DMs exposed to everyone besides you, those you DM with, and the instance admins.
“Everything” gives Tootfinder access to all these read scopes. It’s…alot.
After interacting with the Tootfinder devs, it appears they’re considering either changing this or being way more up-front about what “Everything” means.
Many of us — including app devs — are still getting used to the Fediverse norms, customs, and tech, so pseudo missteps like this are expected.
If you aren’t comfortable with the devs potentially having read access to All The 🐘 Things, then you may want to wait for them to tidy up their OAuth dance before saying “OK”.
Yurt Yearnings
We’re nearing the stage where the last of the primary offspring will no longer be in the abode. While that marker is a few years away, we’re preparing for it by seeing just how feasible it is to go even more rural than we already are.
Getting away from everything (but internet access) requires quite a bit of planning. While poking around for how to build a super-efficient abode, my odd search term entries in Kagi also led me to this fascinating site dedicated to “temporary buildings”. The page I linked to is everything you never wanted to know about Yurts, which are “portable, round tents covered and insulated with skins or felt and traditionally used as a dwelling by several distinct nomadic groups in the steppes and mountains of Central Asia.” (what would we do without Wikipedia?).
I’ve come across tons more interesting “off grid” / “out there” resources, and more that are aligned with the tech-focus of these Drops, so there will no doubt be more of these in the dailies and bonus ones.
Odds & Ends
If you have a recent-ish Apple HomePod, it’s now also a temperature and humidity sensor for the room it resides in (provided the update managed to install).
FOSDEM is a free event for software developers to meet, share ideas and collaborate. Every year, thousands of developers of free and open-source software from all over the world gather at the event in Brussels. The organizers work hard and fast to get the talks up for everyone to see, and the link at the beginning of this entry goes to the full index. I have been truly enjoying the Rust track, but there’s something there for every interest.
In the “better late than never” category, it turns out there is an API for Groundhog Day b/c ofc there is. (h/t Data Is Plural) I’ll be playing with the data from this over at Observable in the next few days.
FIN
The Bonus drop came a bit early, since I’m fairly certain this weekend will get away from me rather quickly. As always, leave feedback for things you liked/despised to help ensure these Bonus Drops aren’t just clutter for your already overfilled inboxes. And, thanks to all again for the support! ☮