∞

If you use Python 3.14’s venv module to create a virtualenv, it adds an Easter egg.

ᐅ python -m venv my-venv
ᐅ lsd -1 my-venv/bin
 activate
 activate.csh
 activate.fish
 Activate.ps1
 pip
 pip3
 pip3.14
 python ⇒ python3
 python3 ⇒ /Users/kirk/.local/bin/python3
 python3.14 ⇒ python3
 𝜋thon ⇒ python3
∞

One of our credit card companies, acting as “Californians for Medical Privacy”, is opposing CA’s AB 2746. They say:

Lenders could need to know what medical services you received, if they were “medically necessary”, and potentially, even your private treatment details, if AB 2746 (Schiavo) were to become law.

Liars.

California’s existing law basically says that you can’t use a person’s medical debt against them when making credit decisions. Someone getting sick and racking up an enormous medical bill because their insurer denied, defended, and deposed, is not something they could have reasonably foreseen and avoided. It’s a different category of debt than, say, maxing out your credit cards in Las Vegas.

The new changes would clarify and expand the definition of “medical debt” in reasonable ways. The members of Californians for Medical Privacy claim they’d need to know why you borrowed money on a credit card to pay a hospital bill. While it’s not completely wrong, it’s a flashback to COVID times when people said dumb things like “I’m not allowed to tell you whether I have a fever because of HIPPA1” to avoid getting kicked out of a bar for having the plague.

See, if you’re allowed to tell them that you charged $10,000 to pay an emergency room to fix a broken arm, then they can’t hold that against you when you apply for a mortgage. They’d much rather hold your future in their greedy little hands while you sell your car to pay for a root canal. Their explanation of the law is probably more or less correct. Their claims about the implications of it to us, the residents of California, the patients, and the borrowers, are complete lies.

I didn’t know about AB 2746 until our credit card — which we’re closing today — told us about it. And now that I know what it is, and the lies lenders will tell to oppose it, they’ve convinced me to be in favor of it.

The icing on the cake was their email footer:

ABOUT THIS EMAIL: This email was sent by [lender] to provide important account servicing information regarding your [lender] account. You may receive account servicing emails even if you have requested not to receive marketing offers by email for your [lender] account.

This was an political astroturfing campaign, not an “account servicing email”.

Again: Liars.

  1. Always misspelled that way, of course. ↩︎

∞

I am disappointed that we still have to have this conversation in 2026, but apparently we do. Listen and heed:

When you get off an escalator, get the hell out of the way.

I don’t want to have to say this again.

∞

Grammarly Is Facing a Class Action Lawsuit Over Its AI ‘Expert Review’ Feature

“We built the agent […] to give experts new ways to share their knowledge and reach new audiences.”

I couldn’t care less about a disembodied clone of myself running on someone else’s servers reaching new audiences. Bluntly, whats in that for me?

∞

A vendor asked us to “add a quick DNS record for them”:

TXT	_dmarc	v=DMARC1; p=none;

Basically, this says “turn off all of your domain’s anti-impersonation features so that any phisher can trivially trick your customers and employees”.

Nope. Time to find a new vendor.

∞

In a shop window in Berkeley.

Photo of a log bench with a bunch of black and white photos of people with their faces cut out. They’re next to a Manila folder labeled “Redacted”. The window glass appears to be streaked with blood.
∞

Frozen BBS v1.5.0 is out now. The biggest new feature is multi-node accounts. If you access the BBS from 3 different radios, you can see the same unread messages on each and write new messages from the shared account. Check the changelog for more updates.

∞

“Hey Droid, generate 10 random AKC show dog names.”

  1. Stormfield’s Crown Imperial
  2. Belcanto Dancing With Thunder
  3. Windhaven’s Midnight Sonata
  4. Greystone Park Avenue Affair
  5. Donamire’s Royal Proclamation
  6. Silverpine Leap of Faith
  7. Braeburn’s Whiskey Business
  8. Halcyon Starlight Express
  9. Thistledown’s Grand Illusion
  10. Cedarbrook Fortune Favors

Nailed it.

∞

Proton Mail Helped FBI Unmask Anonymous ‘Stop Cop City’ Protester

Privacy-focused email provider Proton Mail provided Swiss authorities with payment data that the FBI then used to determine who was allegedly behind an anonymous account affiliated with the Stop Cop City movement in Atlanta, according to a court record reviewed by 404 Media.

This is a definition of “privacy-focused” with which I am not acquainted.

∞

Use Snyk? Use OpenTofu or Terraform and wish you could use it to manage which repositories your Snyk monitors? Sure you do! We did, too.

I just shipped the first public release of Factory’s Snyk provider. It adds the snyk_monitored_repo resource that the other Snyk providers miss.

∞

Say hello to MacBook Neo

This is really cool and they’re going to sell a gazillion of them. It’s what I’ll tell my relatives to get to upgrade off old Windows laptops.

And yet, I’m kind of bitter that for years I’ve been told that my iPad Pro can’t have a Terminal.app because it’s not powerful enough and it would be a bad experience and that’s why Apple’s saving me from myself.

∞

This weekend, I agent-coded a two-way sync between Linear and my favorite task manager. Now all my work tasks live in our company’s project manager, but I can use a fast, local UI to work through them.

I’ve wanted these to play well together for ages. This feels magical.

∞

Happy birthday, Mom. This is the first time I haven’t been able to tell you that. 💔

∞

I cannot overstate how much I did not want to hike up this hill.View across a small valley at a hiking trail going straight up the side of a still, heavily wooded, lushly green hill.

∞

Steve Austin would be the Forty Five Point Five Million Dollar Man, adjusted for inflation.

∞

Team rescues missing Putnam County man found shoulder deep in quicksand

As a Gen-Xer raised to believe the stuff was everywhere, I feel validated.

∞

“Would you like to join us for an exclusive dinner event?”

Yeah, I’d love to!

“At Applebee’s.”

How dare you?

Crop of a postcard advertising an "exclusiver dinner event" at Applebee's, if you listen to their speech about timeshares.
∞

I’m standing in the office kitchen, slowly munching a snack donut and watching traffic. A big delivery truck stops in front of me for a red light. The driver, bored, looks around. He sees me see him. I nod and wave my donut. He laughs and waves. I smile and wave back. He gives me a thumbs up, then drives off.

I love those little moments when you can briefly connect with a perfect stranger and have a fleeting instant of shared humanity.

∞

The Tic Tacs website is nostalgic in many ways:

SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

PC: Operative system Microsoft Windows Windows 7/8.1/10. PLUG-IN Adobe Flash Player 9 downloadable from the site

MAC: Operative system Mac Os MacOS 9/10/11. PLUG-IN Flash 9 downloadable from the site

I just wanted to buy some Dr Pepper Tic Tacs, but alas, I don’t have Flash.

∞

Snow on Mt. Diablo, as seen from Brentwood.

The foreground is a brown, leafless vineyard, then a line of trees. In the distance is a large mountain covered with grass and trees, and its peak has lots of pockets of snow.