Stefan Wintermeyer

Call me paranoid, but I'm starting to see signs that there's folks actively sabotaging my work on JRuby... advising conferences not to accept my talks and projects to drop JRuby support. So disheartening to me after dedicating so many years to the Ruby and JRuby communities. 😢

A cool way to watermark network packets is to (very subtly) adjust the timing. Packet comes in a tiny bit late, maybe that’s a 0. Packet arrives on time? Maybe that’s a 1. Of course, the neat part is that everything can remain entirely encrypted / the side channel doesn’t “touch” the underlying data flow, so it looks relatively normal. You can actually get this timing to survive through multiple network hops + switches, because statistically they are (mostly) adding fixed delays. Queueing can mess you up, but as long as your information is above the network jitter noise, you can still decode it. There’s basically an arm’s race going on. Some networks attempt mixing flows with traffic shapers to preserve anonymity…but you also can’t infinitely pad/delay packets without users getting really annoyed. So, so many ways to hide a bit when you think about it. …also a lot of ways to detect it too.

It feels a bit sad to see the robot displaying no feelings at all. Just checking out after a shift while the humans in the background celebrate. @adcock_brett Please next time make the robot simulate a little bit of joy. 😉

Ich habe für die deutschrechtlichen Llegal Plugins und Skills für Claude Cowork in GitHub Plugins für alle Fachanwaltschaften in Deutschland angelegt, noch sehr oberflächlich, aber sicherlich ausbaufähig, vielleicht ist das ja für manche Leute interessant. Hier: klotzkette.github.io/claude-fuer-de…

Elixir v1.20.0-rc.6 is out and it implements inference across applications, fully delivering on the ~15 weeks roadmap established at the beginning of the year. Please give it a try, it should be our last stop before the actual v1.20.0 final: elixirforum.com/t/elixir-v1-20…

When I worked at SuSE Linux around 1999, the distribution was still sold on CDs. I always had this ridiculous idea: record a Christmas song and include it on the release CD. The goal? Get a Linux distribution into the Top 100 music charts. Given how many copies we sold in the first days after a release, it probably would have worked. 😂

Asked ChatGPT to create a 90s country music album cover for me as a joke, but now that I see it I'm thinking I really should probably record this and go on tour.

A lot of people underestimate how important web performance was to Google’s success. The homepage felt instant, and Google obsessed over keeping it that way. Modern AI tools make interfaces slower and heavier — but ideally far more useful. It’s an interesting trade-off.

Claude Skills für deutsches Recht: github.com/Klotzkette/cla… Ein kleines Experiment, alles umgepolt, auf deutsches Recht, vielleicht ist ja was brauchbares dabei…

Personal update: I've joined Anthropic. I think the next few years at the frontier of LLMs will be especially formative. I am very excited to join the team here and get back to R&D. I remain deeply passionate about education and plan to resume my work on it in time.

In Äthiopien ist der Import von Verbrennern-PKW verboten. taz.de/Verbrenner-Aus…

@tecmint You might want to have a look at github.com/wintermeyer/he… which helps sysadmins a lot.

What if you had an AI pair programmer that lives in your terminal? Claude for Linux course teaches you to use Claude Code for real sysadmin tasks: writing scripts, debugging configs, and automating your Linux workflow. pro.tecmint.com/claude-code-fo… #Linux #ClaudeCode

I just had the craziest experience at the airport. We are about to board a flight to Atlanta when the pilot from the incoming plane walks out of the jetway. Guy is probably late 50s, salt and pepper hair, military look. The kind of pilot you instantly feel good about seeing on your flight. Pilot walks over to the counter, gets on the PA system, and starts addressing everyone. “Folks, I’ve been doing this a long time. Flying one of these jets is easy. The hard part is looking at 130 people and telling them their flight is going to be delayed.” Audible groans throughout the boarding gate. Most people here are flying to Atlanta as a layover before another flight. 130 people just had their day become a complete mess. The pilot goes on. “I get it, trust me. But here’s the deal: During our landing, we had a small mechanical issue. I’m not your pilot for the next leg, but I don’t feel confident the jet’s safe to fly until we have a mechanical team look it over, and I don’t feel comfortable asking the next pilots to fly you guys until we get confirmation.” He points at the agents next to him behind the counter: “Now, none of this is the agents’ fault. Please be kind to them. I’m the one who made this decision, not them, so any inconvenience you experience is my fault. Just please know that I don’t do this lightly, and I’m only doing it because I believe it’s in the best interests of everyone’s safety.” Now this is where the story gets crazy. The pilot puts the microphone down, grabs his suitcase, and all the people in the gate… Start clapping. I’m not joking, everyone starts clapping for the guy. 130 people who just had their travel plans ruined give an ovation to the guy who made the decision and delivered the message. All because he addressed them with decency and transparency, took ownership of the decision, made it clear that it was necessary, and explained why it was in everyone’s best interest. It’s honestly one of the best examples of strong communication—of strong leadership, for that matter—that I’ve seen in a long time. @Delta, whoever your Atlanta to Wichita pilot was this morning, he’s one of the good ones. Please tell him the delayed passengers of flight 1637 appreciate what he did.

Back in the early 90s, before the Internet, we had "Defrag and Chill". You'd start Disk Defragmenter on your 540MB hard drive, dim the lights, crack open a Surge, and just vibe while the little blue bars crawled across the screen like they were solving world peace. Forty-five minutes of pure, unfiltered anticipation. No notifications. No algorithms. Just the two of you, the gentle grinding of the hard drive, and the sacred promise that your Solitaire games were about to feel 3% snappier. This is MS_DOS 6.22, which I worked on, but I honestly have no idea who wrote defrag. Iconic utility though!

Hiring in Germany 🇩🇪 for my Startups Applied AI team at @OpenAI. Come build with frontier startups & shape the future of AI I'm building an incredibly talented group (all are ex-founder/CTOs, AI PHDs, research eng, DS, MLEs), who I genuinely love spending time with. We work pretty hard, so that latter point is critical. (Same role in London 🇬🇧 is still open for a bit longer - i'll leave that below) Apply or reach out if you’re obsessive about startups, high agency, and deeply technical. Role says Munich, but Berlin also works.

The whole Anthropic kerfuffle would have gone much smoother if they had been upfront about it. "Hey, we know this is unpopular, but we are moving programmatic access to API pricing. To easen the transition, we are giving API credits that match your subscription value. We also expect this change to increase capacity, so we are doubling the limits throughout Claude products for the next 2 months". The reason they made it sound like an upgrade was because the announcement was not for developers. It was for investors and enterprise customers. Impacting devrel is just collateral damage, which is on par for a company which believes coding is going away any time now. And this is extremely disapointing because they want to position themselves as a company that we should trust. But if they can't be honest about pricing changes, it is really hard to believe them on anything else.

Elixir v1.20.0-rc.5 is out with our latest batch of typing and performance improvements. We are really close to the final release, so please give it a try and report what you find! elixirforum.com/t/elixir-v1-20…

We're dealing with a major malicious attack on @rubygems right now. Signups are paused for the time being. Hundreds of packages involved - mostly targeting us, but some carrying exploits. The team has been on this for hours. More details to follow once we're through it. #ruby

Here's that ad in Chrome. The original screenshot was done with Safari.

The people behind the @ROLEX ad campaign in the @nytimes have done a fine job! It is always good to see the work of professionals. 🤦‍♂️😂

“I’m sorry doctor, he’s just afraid you’ll blame all my problems on him.” “I’m not here to blame anyone.”