iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 15/10/2026

@tezoatlipoca interesting, do you think there are a lot of seasoned developers today who don’t know how to use Git and who want to learn it?

100 1

Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 15/10/2026

working on 4 “characters” who are learning Git for the first time, to explain how Git branches work trying to figure out if there are any major characters I’m missing (the idea is to give an example of how each of them might use branches, like Emilia might […] [Original post on social.jvns.ca]

1. Anita is making her first contribution to Python, a large open source project.
2. Betsy is a Go developer for a social media website which has 100 other software developers. All of her changes need to be reviewed by a coworker before they're released.
3. Cassidy and Daniela are building a website for their local cat shelter. They're the only two people on the project.
4. Emilia is using Git on her own to write her PhD thesis

523 5

Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 13/10/2026

why might someone want to learn Git? wrong answers only

1703 17

Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 10/10/2026

after reading one of the previous threads I bought the author’s book and it was a super interesting way to learn about solar power

mastodon.green

004 4

Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 07/10/2026

@flyingsquirrel thanks, this is great, I strongly believe people should mostly do what they feel is best for their situation and not yell “skill issue” at each other :)

000 0

Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 07/10/2026

dumb git question: in a merge-based workflow, if you’re working on a branch, is there any reasonable way to integrate new changes from `main` back into your branch without using `git rebase`? I have this belief that there are people who only use merge commits and not rebase but I don’t […]

social.jvns.ca

Original post on social.jvns.ca

1403 14

Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 07/10/2026

@kev I think it’s super hard and by default Git just doesn’t give you enough context. In this merge conflicts guide I’m writing my main goal is to give people a list of strategies to get more context

000 0

Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 07/10/2026

this week I learned that during a merge conflict, you can get a list of all commits involved in the conflict that touched a file with: $ git log --merge FILENAME Seems super useful if there are a lot of commits being merged (like in a big rebase) but only a couple of them touched that file

114 4

Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 07/10/2026

Thinking this morning about how much of teaching is just taking the time to listen. Hearing what someone’s actual computer problem is and then addressing it is so much harder than just telling them what I think is interesting or cool. And sometimes I don’t know the answer to their actual […]

social.jvns.ca

Original post on social.jvns.ca

010 1

Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 05/10/2026

@bagder yeah, that makes sense and it also makes it hard to explain to a newcomer how to understand the SYNOPSIS section. It’s a weird situation.

100 1

Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 05/10/2026

has anyone written a man page SYNOPSIS parser that somehow (?? I have no idea what I mean by this) helps folks understand what they mean? I was talking to a friend the other day who said they were having a hard time understanding the rules of the SYNOPSIS […] [Original post on social.jvns.ca]

The ssh SYNOPSIS:

ssh [-46AaCfGgKkMNnqsTtVvXxYy] [-B bind_interface] [-b bind_address] [-c cipher_spec] [-D [bind_address:]port] [-E log_file]
[-e escape_char] [-F configfile] [-I pkcs11] [-i identity_file] [-J destination] [-L address] [-l login_name] [-m mac_spec]
[-O ctl_cmd] [-o option] [-P tag] [-p port] [-R address] [-S ctl_path] [-W host:port] [-w local_tun[:remote_tun]] destination
[command [argument ...]]
ssh [-Q query_option]

813 8

Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 03/10/2026

RE: hachyderm.io/@molly0xfff/1173742139… finally signed up for a paid subscription to support Molly White’s cryptocurrency reporting loved her 2024 talk on the how building things on the web is magic too xoxofest.com/2024/videos/molly-white

hachyderm.io

108 8

Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 02/10/2026

one of the many good things about asking people questions instead of LLMs is that today i had a question about a project so i went to the discord to ask and the person said “oh no the software doesn’t do that but maybe we could change it so that it could”

160 6

Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 02/10/2026

@aredridel i’m much more worried about the industry than myself personally but i’m not a fan of the situation

100 1

Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 02/10/2026

@aredridel i really don’t know if or how all this is going to affect wizard zines so i’m trying to be optimistic but it seems rough.

000 0

Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 02/10/2026

I’m working on a list of questions you might want to ask about the Git workflow when joining a new team gist.github.com/jvns/600e510958c4b9… Would love ideas for other questions that would be useful to know the answer to!

gist.github.com

questions.md

GitHub Gist: instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

106 6

Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 01/10/2026

one thing about making a Django site is that dealing with these residential proxy scrapers is tough. It’s definitely easier to handle with a Go server that’s faster or a static site. The site doesn’t even have anything useful to scrape! I don’t really want to use Anubis since it’s a bit […]

social.jvns.ca

Original post on social.jvns.ca

201 2

Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 29/09/2026

Is there a QR code generator that 1. is a website 2. is free, no account needed 3. is not secretly also a link shortener 4. does not look like a scam 5. does not include extra branding (the way the Chrome one does) a friend just asked me this and I really could not find one

122 2

Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 22/09/2026

periodic reminder that Wizard Zines has an education policy if you want to use them in your university courses! wizardzines.com/education

wizardzines.com

Education

010 1

Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 21/09/2026

i have gotten a lot of people on here yelling at me for using google forms and 0 people telling me that they want to participate but that they can't (or won't) use google forms if you want to participate but google forms is a barrier I'm open to figuring something out (2/?)

200 2

Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 21/09/2026

Are you interested in learning how to use Git for the first time? (or almost the first time) we're looking for Git beginners to give us feedback on a Git tutorial! The tutorial will be open source when it's released, so you'll be helping many future beginners! Sign up here […]

social.jvns.ca

Original post on social.jvns.ca

6673 73

Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 16/09/2026

in Lisbon for Git Merge / JJ Con this week

320 3

Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 09/09/2026

i've started getting a lot of emails (maybe one every few days) that appear to be LLM generated from people asking for some kind of feedback or collaboration on their LLM-generated app feels sad because honestly I used to like when people emailed me about something cool they mad and now I just […]

social.jvns.ca

Original post on social.jvns.ca

020 2

Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 08/09/2026

RE: social.jvns.ca/@b0rk/11715682750188… in case you missed it: wizard zines is now shipping European orders from Europe!

016 6

Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 04/09/2026

what's your favourite way to get a progress bar when copying a bunch of files over SSH? (tar/pv? rsync? something else?)

606 6

Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 31/08/2026

interesting to read this article (in french) about how some movies are no longer distributed www.lapresse.ca/cinema/chroniques/2… the only way I could find one of the movies in this article was to borrow the DVD from the library, and then I […]

social.jvns.ca

Original post on social.jvns.ca

010 1

Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 25/08/2026

big news about the Wizard Zines store: print orders from Europe now ship from a European warehouse in Germany!!! We've been having a lot of issues with duties & fees for European customers because of shipping from the US so I'm very excited for this. get your zines here […]

social.jvns.ca

Original post on social.jvns.ca

2227 27

Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 25/08/2026

@dalias this is not a helpful comment and I would very much prefer that people refrain from making comments like this. thanks.

100 1

Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 24/08/2026

@tendstofortytwo yea i'm more curious about the experience of folks who did not learn how RSA works in a university math class

000 0

Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 24/08/2026

@jsbarretto thanks, love hearing about people's metaphors!

000 0

Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 24/08/2026

how do you think about how SSH public key authentication works (versus passwords) and what about your mental model makes you trust it? please only answer if you _don't_ understand the math of how RSA (or elliptic curves etc) works, I'm interested in exploring what it means to understand the […]

social.jvns.ca

Original post on social.jvns.ca

818 8

Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 21/08/2026

@Anarcat thanks, that's such a neat trick! i love pv so much

000 0

Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 21/08/2026

@Anarcat thanks! what situations do you use `tar` in instead of scp or rsync?

100 1

Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 20/08/2026

what are your favourite commands to run over ssh (like `ssh user@host "COMMAND"`)? the only thing I have in my history right now is: ssh user@host 'tcpdump -i any BPF_FILTER_GOES_HERE -w -' > out.pcap to quickly get a local pcap file

501 5

Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 19/08/2026

@kubukoz i’ve given up on nix on my laptop but am still on the nixOS server train

000 0

Julia Evans @b0rk.social.jvns.ca.ap.brid.gy · 19/08/2026

i'm contemplating writing something basic about copying files over ssh with rsync but the only thing I can think of is how I can never remember how the trailing slash works and it makes me avoid using rsync whenever possible

excerpt from the SSH man page

rsync -avz foo:src/bar/ /data/tmp

a trailing slash on the source changes this behavior to transfer all files from the directory src/bar on the machine foo into the /data/tmp/.
A trailing / on a source name means "copy the contents of this directory". Without a trailing slash it means "copy the directory".
This difference becomes particularly important when using the --delete option.

552 5