natanlao

It turns out that the order of the --exclude and --include flags passed to aws s3 sync and aws s3 cp matters, so

aws s3 sync 's3://my-bucket' . --include '*' --exclude '*.png'

won't download anything but

aws s3 sync 's3://my-bucket' . --exclude '*' --include '*.png'

natanlao

For those who prefer to avoid solutions like iCloud Photos and Dropbox for backing up photos, you can sync your iPhone photos with Syncthing. To do this, you'll need two things:

• Möbius Sync is, to my knowledge, the only actively-maintained Syncthing client for iOS. It's free to sync up to 20 MB, and only $4.99 (one-time) to remove that limit.

• PhotoSync is a nifty iOS app for syncing photos to a number of different destinations. It's free for low-quality

natanlao

Going to come back to this at some point far in the future, forgot to keep track while I was doing it.

1. Add `zfs` to `environment.systemPackages`
2. Set `networking.hostId`, do `boot.supportedFilesystems = [ "zfs" ];`
3. Force import pool
4. Reboot
5. Things work

natanlao

Some people recommend sending follow-up emails after submitting job applications to improve your chances of getting a response. This /r/cscareerquestions thread comes to mind: I raised the response rate to my applications from 14% to 50% just by sending follow-up emails.

Here's a list of techniques I use when writing follow-up emails. YMMV.

Finding the right person to email

natanlao

The best way I've found to automatically merge Dependabot PRs is to use actions/github-script to comment @dependabot merge on Dependabot PRs. There are a few reasons why I think this approach makes sense:

• Commenting @dependabot merge on a Dependabot PR instructs Dependabot to merge the PR after tests (if any) pass, so we don't need to encode that dependency in a workflow file.

• Unlike using an auto-merge action, nothing happens if the workflow runs on a

natanlao

Guide to the Defined Contribution Plan for UCSC undergraduates

First, a disclaimer: I am neither a lawyer nor a financial adviser, and if I were, I wouldn't be your lawyer or financial adviser. This is neither financial advice nor legal advice. I didn't even study this stuff.

That said, I've provided sources where appropriate. In particular, I'll refer to these documents:

• this UCSC Career Center [Defined Contribution Plan documentation][cc], which

natanlao

I host side projects on a DigitalOcean droplet running Dokku. For reference:

One-time setup of Lets Encrypt

$ ssh root@platform.natan.la sudo dokku plugin:install https://github.com/dokku/dokku-letsencrypt.git
$ ssh dokku@platform.natan.la dokku letsencrypt:cron-job --add

Creating an app

natanlao

Problem

Cannot add Apple recovery key

Reproduced on

iPhone XR, iOS 14.2

Symptoms

natanlao

If you receive a Vanilla eGift Card, you should know that the link to the page with your eGift card details will expire after some weeks. The link can supposedly be reissued, but it must be requested by the person who purchased you the eGift card over the phone. So, best to save the card details somewhere once you receive them.

The eGift Card funds are advertised as never expiring. It's not clear to me if that guarantee holds for funds left inactive for a long period of time.

natanlao

I spent some time recently looking for a cross-platform filesystem to store some personal data. After some deliberation, I settled on a single-volume ZFS "pool" and I'm pretty happy with it. Here's why:

• Strong cross platform support. Works natively on Linux, macOS, and Windows.

• [Native encryption][encryption]. ZFS supports encryption out of the box. It would have been possible to use something like VeraCrypt to encrypt a