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Ewen McNeill

@ewenmcneill.bsky.social
96 followers 98 following 694 posts

Freelance IT consultant in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa. Chaotic Lawful. They/Them. I'm mostly using this account for reading rather than posting; my short form posts are on Mastodon -- cloudisland.nz/@ewenmcneill

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Reposted by Ewen McNeill
Luca @lucagalletti.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
….aaaand they’re OFF 🏁 #ASMR #OddlySatisfying IG: @marblebrosasmr youtube.com/@marblebros-...
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Kawaiicon @kawaiicon.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
Last chance to have your name on your badge! Double check you’ve grabbed your ticket and entered your handle (name) by the end of this weekend (Sunday 11th Oct). events.humanitix.com/kawaiicon-4/...
events.humanitix.com
Kawaiicon 4
Kawaiicon is one of the myriad technical computer security conferences in the Australia-Pacific region, and certainly the most adorable.
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Gavan Reilly @gavreilly.com · 09/10/2026
You know the xkcd strip about how all modern internet architecture is eventually built on something a hobbyist maintains for free? Someone went out and found them all. sheets.works/data-viz/hol...
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Ewen McNeill @ewenmcneill.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
On the other hand, 128GB is quite a lot of (local) storage for a terminal, or thin client... ;-)
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Ewen McNeill @ewenmcneill.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Much smaller than that, although I admire the optimism :-) Seems like this has been ongoing since 2025, with it being back in the news due to a High Court filing last week. (Hopefully they sieze the domains instead of ordering Cloudflare blocked NZ wide 😬) www.comcom.govt.nz/case-registe...
comcom.govt.nz
Top Reviews and Auckland Magazine | Commerce Commission
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Ewen McNeill @ewenmcneill.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
By contrast, when there are multiple possible completions and you hit tab, then bash will complete to the common suffix, then when you hit tab again bash just beeps (or visual bell's) at you to indicate it's non-unique. Either approach could be what you want, but the difference is jarring.
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Ewen McNeill @ewenmcneill.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
For tab completion, the most obvious zsh vs bash difference is that when there are multiple possible completions and you hit tab then zsh will first complete to the common suffix then if you hit tab again zsh completes to the first possible full match (I *think* tab cycles through possible matches).
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Armand Sarlangue @armandsarlangue.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
A new photo from the iconic Mont Saint Michel near home 🙂 #photography #art #nature
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Ewen McNeill @ewenmcneill.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
I think it'd be fair describe BNZ as the most "Mobile First" of the Aotearoa banks. It's currently still *possible* to use BNZ web banking... but only if you use the mobile app too, for 2FA (only 2FA option). At which point you're already using the mobile app, which has most of the same functions.
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Ewen McNeill @ewenmcneill.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
In partial defence, Apple hasn't exactly done themselves any favours by creating different names for iOS (phone) and iPadOS (tablet) despite the version releases basically always being in sync. Google calling both phone and tablet OS "Android" simplifies describing minimum requirements.
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Ewen McNeill @ewenmcneill.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I believe at present the biggest financial market concern is that "the metric is changing rapidly", as the rate of change suggests scalability issues exist in the system. And more worringly similar metrics in other systems (eg, Japan, UK, etc) are also rising rapidly, suggesting a systematic fault.
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Ewen McNeill @ewenmcneill.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Like most observability metrics, lots of other behaviour is directly or indirectly to the metric. This includes other loan rates (eg, mortgage, commercial) which are often directly "10 year Treasury + N% risk factor". But also indirectly "metric says system is under load" makes people risk averse.
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Ewen McNeill @ewenmcneill.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
The (USA) 10 Year Treasury bond (government IOU) is basically treated like an observability metric for the performance of the USA financial system. Lower (additional percentage to pay per year) is better (for the USA Government). Higher indicates "the system is under additional load" (eg, risk).
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Andree Toonk @atoonk.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
This weekend’s project: DPDK + WireGuard 🤓 I wired wireguard-go up to my packetio library and got a single tunnel to ~30M pps clean, peaking 40M pps. That’s 70× what kernel WireGuard can do! Wrote it all up here if you’re into that kind of thing: toonk.io/wireguard-dp...
toonk.io
WireGuard at 40 Mpps with DPDK, in Go
Over the last few months, I’ve been spending a lot of time experimenting with high-performance packet processing in Go. A lot of that work turned into packetio, one Go API for sending and receiving pa...
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Ewen McNeill @ewenmcneill.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
If you mean the macOS "Screenshot Preview" for a few seconds before it creates the file, you can turn that feature off. It's one of the first things I turn off on a new Mac. (With that off, I get a file in "disk IO time", typically sub-second.) derflounder.wordpress.com/2025/11/27/d...
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Ian Coldwater 🧊🚫 @lookitup.baby · 23/09/2026
everything you depend on in modern civilization is run by furries and that is an actual fact
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Ewen McNeill @ewenmcneill.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
As pointed out down thread, the NZD is also at a 10+ year low compared with the AUD. So I think a fair bit of this is the NZD weakening. (And some of that the AUD strengthening.) But the USD has also been fairly volatile in 2026 for... a bunch of reasons. www.xe.com/currencychar...
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Ewen McNeill @ewenmcneill.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
It's not quite as low as the lowest point in late June 2026 yet. But yeah, disappointing for anyone spending NZD on USD priced items that we've reverted the relative gains of the last few months. (November 2025 was also noticably lower.) www.xe.com/currencychar...
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Violet Blue® @violetblue.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Thanks to @queenoliviaiii.com I now know that the Wellington Public Library lends out CO2 meters! www.wcl.govt.nz/services/at-...
wcl.govt.nz
CO2 meters
Borrow CO2 meters to monitor air quality and ensure a healthy environment.
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tef @tef.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
it's kinda funny how the report is very insistent on "but it was only possible in these exact circumstances! only a millisecond either way and it might not have broken!!" rather than "almost every successful operation was a millisecond away from failure"
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Ian Coldwater 🧊🚫 @lookitup.baby · 14/09/2026
A 40-year-old kernel bug got discovered while on stage at DEF CON and the writeup is glorious
yuvalino.com
How can you not be romantic about UNIX domain sockets?
A 40-year-old kernel bug discovered on the DEFCON 34 main stage.
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Ewen McNeill @ewenmcneill.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Rule 34
Photo of "The Daddy Cool Collection" CD, featuring 4 long haired men against a yellow background.Photo of Mommy "Be Your Own Pet" CD, featuring a women in black latex leaning on a table with three men seated.
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Ewen McNeill @ewenmcneill.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
My guess is that at least some of that is the ~3 week transport time to Aotearoa (from Singapore / Japan / etc), which means we're probably based off 3 week older prices with a *partial* adjustment to "expected new rates". But yeah, I too expect it to go up a bunch here soon.
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Ewen McNeill @ewenmcneill.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
/me *attempts to manifest this "one insanely cool UNIX fact, every single week" service into existence* 🙏
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Ewen McNeill @ewenmcneill.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
In the case of Mikrotik, that's a lot of work compared with just triggering ssh rekey to glitch past the authentication phase of ssh -- CVE-2026-67279. (The Mikrotik zeroday seemed to be using CVE-2026-67279 and CVE-2026-86060; the later is the "-2 username as FD flag".) github.com/advisories/G...
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Tom Eastman @tom.eastman.nz · 07/09/2026
No matter how much you hate the tech industry, you do not hate it enough. www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IFV...
youtube.com
216,000,000 Spy TVs | The LG Smart TV Problem
YouTube video by Gamers Nexus
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Techdirt @techdirt.com · 03/09/2026
Hackers Had A Live Feed Of Every ID This Verification Company Scanned. For Over A Year. From the very beginning of this recent obsession with identifying everyone online... www.techdirt.com/2026/09/03/hackers…
techdirt.com
Hackers Had A Live Feed Of Every ID This Verification Company Scanned. For Over A Year.
From the very beginning of this recent obsession with identifying everyone online (yes, they like to call it "age" verification, but it always ends up as identity verification), we've been pointing out that it was a huge privacy nightmare waiting to happen. Or maybe it wasn't waiting. Maybe it was already happening. This week a...
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gloriouscow.bsky.social @gloriouscow.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Read the story of how the NEC V20's microcode was decoded. martypc.blogspot.com/2026/09/deco... #retrocomputing #vintagecomputing #reverseengineering #x86
martypc.blogspot.com
Decoding the NEC V20 Microcode
reenigne's decoding of the 8088 microcode in 2020 opened the doors for extremely accurate emulation of the 8088 CPU.   Although I had added...
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Ewen McNeill @ewenmcneill.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
The recommended work around for the impatient seems to be: "In the meantime, those eager to make the jump can do so at any time by running: $ do-release-upgrade -d" Quotes from the release notes: discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-26-...
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Ewen McNeill @ewenmcneill.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Since I had this question too (after waiting patiently a few days): "Users of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS will be offered an automatic upgrade to 26.04.1 LTS via Update Manager a couple of weeks following this release after some planned backports to address regressions in a recent version of rust-coreutils."
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Ewen McNeill @ewenmcneill.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Given the filename is a leading ".", followed by a bunch of NUL (0x00) characters, my guess is that the camera "made" that by not completing the write of a photo to the filesystem. (Presumably a hidden temporary file name until the write completes.) Weird you cannot Trash it though!
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Ewen McNeill @ewenmcneill.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
On the other hand, if the legislation is poorly drafted it's entirely likely that *other* smaller social media will decide that blocking Aotearoa entirely is the cheapest method of compliance. This has already happened to UK users and Australian users. I do agree there's 0% chance Facebook blocks.
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Rachel Leggett @rleggos.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
I got the shot. I've been scheming and hoping the conditions would work out for this for two weeks!! 🪶
A broad-tailed hummingbird hovers next to an anise hyssop plant framed by purple blooms and with a rainbow behind it!!! The bird also has a little bead of water on its bill because it is raining.
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Bluesky @bsky.app · 27/08/2026
Now you can opt out of having your posts shown to non-followers in the Discover feed. We know not everyone wants to go viral. Sometimes you're just posting for your followers. This is one of a few updates we're working on to give you more control over your experience and help you find your people.
Instructional image titled "Hide your posts from non-followers in Discover" accompanied by a screenshot of the "privacy and security" options from the Bluesky settings menu. "Ask apps to hide my posts from algorithmic recommendations" is toggled to the "on" state.
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Ewen McNeill @ewenmcneill.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Until you mentioned it, Gumroad seemed fine. Now... not so much 😱 For those also finding out this way, Gumroad seems to have gone All AI, All the Time recently :-/ Apparently thanks to a new CEO. gumroad.com/gumclaw (via bsky.app/profile/lomg... from the thread linked elsewhere in this thread)
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Ewen McNeill @ewenmcneill.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Until you mentioned it, Gumroad seemed fine. Now... not so much 😱 For those also finding out this way, Gumroad seems to have gone All AI, All the Time recently :-/ Apparently thanks to a new CEO. gumroad.com/gumclaw (via bsky.app/profile/lomg... from the thread linked elsewhere in this thread)
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Ewen McNeill @ewenmcneill.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Yup, that was one of the first things that came to my mind to strongly recommend writing into any legislation restricting access to social media: any level of Government, or emergency response, public information *must* be posted *first* (or at least simultaneously) to an accessible platform.
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Ian Coldwater 🧊🚫 @lookitup.baby · 25/08/2026
Dolly Parton was universally loved because she was a rich person who knew what it was like to be poor, stayed down to earth, and spent her life giving back to others who were less fortunate. The oligarchs who don’t understand why everyone hates them probably won’t learn from this. But they should
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patak @patak.cat · 25/08/2026
nitter.net is down. xcancel.com may go soon, too. all the respect to the folks at nitter for their services so far, but to be honest, X completely locking itself out of the web is probably a net positive for us all in the long term
Cease and desist
On 24 August 2026 cease and desist letters have been sent by X Corp. demanding a permanent takedown of Nitter instances and the project's repository.

nitter.net is offline and development has stopped for the time being. I'm seeking legal advice and won't be commenting further on the specifics for now.

Thank you to everyone who used, hosted, packaged, donated and contributed to Nitter over the past seven years.

— zedeus, 25 August 2026
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NZ Council for Civil Liberties @nzccl.org.nz · 24/08/2026
Media Release: NZCCL opposes National's planned social media ban for the under 16s: nzccl.org.nz/media-releas...
nzccl.org.nz
Media Release: NZCCL opposes social media ban for the under 16s
The New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties opposes the National Party’s bill to ban social media sites for people under the age of 16.
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Ewen McNeill @ewenmcneill.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
I'd expect the chances of leaving an airworthy airframe idle for two weeks are about zero. My guess is it'd have a ferry flight somewhere nearby (Central/South/North America) and then fly regular flights for a couple of weeks, until it's time for the "charter" return flight.
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Ewen McNeill @ewenmcneill.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
In replicated datastores a "tombstone" is a "deleted" marker for a record, that can go into a write ahead log and the replication stream. My guess is they mean writing that tombstone marker to replication *instead* of deleting the data 🤷‍♂️ (link is example) jeromatron.medium.com/apache-cassa...
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Ewen McNeill @ewenmcneill.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
My mother used to say that her blood salts being higher (which happened a few times trying to address other things) would make her tinnitus *way* more noticable. So it might be worth getting those levels tested (easy blood test) a few times to see if there's a correlation for you too.
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Rust Language @rust-lang.org · 20/08/2026
⚠️ A few hours ago, a malicious crate was discovered on crates.​io which spread as a dependency of `arrayref` and some other crates, likely due to compromised credentials. The affected versions have been deleted. For details and how to see if you are impacted, see: blog.rust-lang.org/2026/08/20/s...
blog.rust-lang.org
Supply chain attack on arrayref | Rust Blog
Empowering everyone to build reliable and efficient software.
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Ewen McNeill @ewenmcneill.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Technically it doesn't say *who* is unconditionally surrendering, just that *someone* will.... and the rest can be read as plausible if *either* side unconditionally surrendered 🤔 (I do agree the odds of who gets to "unconditonally surrender" have changed since March 2026 😀)
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Ewen McNeill @ewenmcneill.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Oh it's better than that. It's a company where the proposer is one of the (two) directors. (Some of the summaries implied it was the *other* director who seconded on behalf of the company, but even so not a whole lot of degrees of separation there.) app.companiesoffice.govt.nz/companies/ap...
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Ewen McNeill @ewenmcneill.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Thanks for the link! Supposedly the results will be announced around 06:00 BST (so around 05:00 UTC / 17:00 here). That livestream suggests they're done with the "physical bits of paper" stage, so presumably vaguely on schedule for results soon. BBC Live Blog: www.bbc.com/news/live/c5...
bbc.com
Nigel Farage claims he has won Clacton by-election 'overwhelmingly' - votes still being counted
The Reform UK leader resigned from Parliament in order to trigger the by-election, which he stood in - alongside another 33 candidates.
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Ewen McNeill @ewenmcneill.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Yet *especially with TikTok* many of those commentators probably were not even alive during the period that floppy disks were in (regular) use... so it's all just "second hand" history. Given 3.5" HD, and more rigid than 5.25"/8", I can kind of see how 3.5" got wrongly categorised with "hard disk".
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Ewen McNeill @ewenmcneill.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
In my case the unique voter code was in an email late last night, titled "InternetNZ Annual General Meeting 2026" from mi-voice[.]com (the unique number is about 2/3rds of the way down the message, after the voting instructions)
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Ewen McNeill @ewenmcneill.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
You could possibly work around that by grouping the mail folders into (collapsable) categories (basically make an empty top level folder, and then drag other folders into it). For IMAP folders it's annoyingly slow to do the reorg, but for local it's probably okay. (I have an "archived" category.)
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