Remote

John Goerzen

@jgoerzen@floss.social

mastodon 4.7.3

Hacker, dad, pilot, amateur radio operator, activist, guy that is susceptible to new hobbies. Former president of Software in the Public Interest.

I live miles from the nearest paved road in #Kansas.

Interests: #rust #debian #linux #pilot #flying #hamradio #emacs #orgmode #kansas #floss #kansas #raspberrypi #programming #parenting #retrocomputing

SRE at Google. I do not speak for my employer; views expressed here are my own.

0 Followers

0 Following

22 Posts

Joined November 19, 2020

Blog:

https://changelog.complete.org

Homepage:

https://www.complete.org

Highlights of my past posts (thread):

https://floss.social/@jgoerzen/109269147405130359

John Goerzen @jgoerzen@floss.social

· 2d ago

I was down to 10MB free on the 130MB drive in my 486SX/25 (I'm the original owner of it!). I had a nice 8GB drive sitting around. Oh the horrors of getting DOS to see more than 500MB, sigh. It's fun to play with things I haven't used in decades. But it's also a reminder of some of the reasons I switched to Linux, and how much better hardware and software is now.

Spent a few hours deconflicting IRQs and DMAs for my SoundBlaster 16 earlier in the week, too.

John Goerzen @jgoerzen@floss.social

· 3d ago

The last version of #Windows I personally used regularly was version 3.1. After that, it was OS/2, FreeBSD, and then #Debian, which I have stuck with since 1996.

So when I was installing Windows 98 on my old K6-3/400 machine last night, it was probably the first time I had ever installed Windows 98.

Much to my surprise and amusement, one of the installer's splash screens touted built-in support for Usenet newsgroups. Probably for both the first and the last time. 1/

John Goerzen @jgoerzen@floss.social

· 1mo ago

In which I attempt to have a nuanced discussion about #AI and #LLM, which I will probably regret. But whatever, I don't think that black-and-white thinking tends to be useful. So grab a cup of your beverage of choice and settle in for a reasoned conversation. https://changelog.complete.org/archives/44740-ai-in-debian-the-vote-proposals-and-nuance

changelog.complete.org

AI in Debian: The Vote, Proposals, and Nuance | The Changelog

John Goerzen @jgoerzen@floss.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

Also see my dedication to Frank da Cruz in the changelog at https://github.com/OpenKermit/ckermit/releases/tag/v11.0.506 . Frank was one of the designers of #Kermit in 1981, and was actively involved in the project until last year -- 44 years, which I believe is a record for the involvement of a project founder in an Open Source project!

GitHub

Release v11.0.506 · OpenKermit/ckermit

C-Kermit 11.0 announcement (11.0.506) August 3, 2026 This is the public announcement of the release, and is a summary of all changes since the last full release, 9.0.302 in 2011. Dedication I dedi...

John Goerzen @jgoerzen@floss.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@paul_ipv6@infosec.exchange Right on! I asked my first question about #Kermit on Usenet in 1996! If you happened to enjoy using #BBSes back in the day, Kermit's character set translation feature makes it really easy to connect to a telnet #BBS and see ANSI CP437 graphics in today's UTF-8 world. https://www.openkermit.org/ckermit/bbs/ tells how. One command does it: "set terminal character-set cp437 utf8". Also it's bidirectional!

Open Kermit Project

Using C-Kermit to connect to a DOS BBS

Using C-Kermit to connect to a DOS BBS DOS BBSs typically use the DOS CP437 character set, while modern terminals use UTF-8. The line-drawing characters often used on a DOS BBS won’t show up properly on a terminal expecting UTF-8. C-Kermit can translate live. It also supports the XModem, YModem, and ZModem protocols often used for file transfer by BBSs (you may need to install a package called lrzsz or rzsz to enable this.)

John Goerzen @jgoerzen@floss.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@NanoRaptor@bitbang.social I resurrected Gopher just before it faded into total oblivion. Now #gopher and #GeminiProtocol are communities with many implementations and are used by probably hundreds of people worldwide.

John Goerzen @jgoerzen@floss.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@thomholwerda@exquisite.social #Debian. I've been using it for literally 30 years. In all that time, it has remained community-owned, with assets held by a non-profit. Its founding documents say that the priorities are its users and Free Software. I personally have used it for everything from large-scale deployments, Rasberry Pis. Its policy of backporting security fixes means things like automated security patches are much more practical than with rolling releases.

John Goerzen @jgoerzen@floss.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@paul_ipv6@infosec.exchange Also given your username, I should mention I added IPv6 support to Kermit, and have a whole page about it at https://www.openkermit.org/ckermit/ipv6/

Open Kermit Project

IPv6 in C-Kermit

IPv6 in C-Kermit C-Kermit introduced IPv6 support in version 11.0. This support includes full IPv6 support for Kermit’s own sockets (raw, telnet, and SSL/TLS) as well as the FTP and HTTP clients. The FTP client adds support for EPRT and EPSV as necessary for IPv6. Notes on usage SET TCP ADDRESS-FAMILY lets you configure whether to use IPv4, IPv6, or both (the default). When giving a string that contains an IP address and a port number separated by colons, an IPv6 address (which itself contains

John Goerzen @jgoerzen@floss.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@desantis@mastodon.bida.im Yep, I love it for just that reason! I have two pages talking about it. There's a quick tour as part of the intro at https://www.openkermit.org/ckermit/intro/#quick-tour-as-a-ssh-wrapper and then a more elaborate exposition at https://www.openkermit.org/ckermit/ssh/ .

Open Kermit Project

Introduction to C-Kermit

Introduction to C-Kermit This is a modified version of the page I initially published at https://www.complete.org/kermit/ in August 2023. I have lightly revised it for use here. - John Goerzen, July 2026 C-Kermit is one of those things I’m fond of that’s really hard to describe. It is: A file transfer protocol for running over serial lines, modems, or TCP/IP. The protocol is quite flexible, supporting everything from tiny embedded devices with 90-byte packets to large packets and streaming o

John Goerzen @jgoerzen@floss.social

· 7mo ago

Long before #LLMs, two of the biggest uses for #AI were (and still are):

To show us ads we don't want to see (on the web)

To block ads we don't want to see (in email)

Funny how so many uses of AI are to make things we don't want.

Maybe in the future we'll burn a bunch of gigawatts with the ad-blocking AIs fighting the ad-injecting AIs, all to capture the attention of humans.

Or, who am I kidding, they'll probably be fighting to capture the attention of agentic AIs.

#FridayThoughts

John Goerzen @jgoerzen@floss.social

· 6mo ago

In which I try to look at #AI with a balanced frame of mind: https://changelog.complete.org/archives/42503-artificial-intelligence-shades-of-gray

I also discuss building a LLM email classifier using solar-powered local models, which a useful degree of success.

I'm neither a cheerleader nor a doomsayer. More a tinkerer.

changelog.complete.org

Artificial Intelligence: Shades of Gray | The Changelog

John Goerzen @jgoerzen@floss.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@babble_endanger@freeradical.zone @thomholwerda@exquisite.social Actually both! There are translation teams for human languages. And there tends to be team maintenance for programming languages that have large package ecosystems outside Debian (eg, Python, Go, Rust)

John Goerzen @jgoerzen@floss.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@babble_endanger@freeradical.zone @thomholwerda@exquisite.social Absolutely! A lot of packages are on salsa.debian.org, and language teams in particular might be easy places to jump in. I am happy to help you find a place to plug in with your interests also if you like.

John Goerzen @jgoerzen@floss.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@alienghic@timeloop.cafe @thomholwerda@exquisite.social Agreed, she is right about that!

John Goerzen @jgoerzen@floss.social

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@mirth@mastodon.sdf.org Quite right, and as a published author, I am quite well aware of this, unfortunately.

John Goerzen @jgoerzen@floss.social

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@Yung_Lyun @climagic On mobile, but this is to be expected if /home isn't a symlink. https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/readlink.2.html

man7.org

John Goerzen @jgoerzen@floss.social

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@Yung_Lyun @climagic Feel free to ask more questions and tag me! Low-level Linux is something I'm familiar with.

John Goerzen @jgoerzen@floss.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@KimCrayton1@dair-community.social It was surprisingly difficult to find the actual RSS feed of this podcast, so I could listen to it. For others, the link is https://anchor.fm/s/10490423c/podcast/rss

anchor.fm

John Goerzen @jgoerzen@floss.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@EricAlper@mastodon.social The ignorance and lack of thought on this is so astounding. Even if you don't remember how old England is, if you remember the USA gained independence from someone, surely it stands to reason that country is older?

John Goerzen @jgoerzen@floss.social

· 7mo ago

Replying to

@njsg@mementomori.social @jgoerzen@changelog.complete.org Yes, exactly. If you have more insights, I'd welcome them!

John Goerzen @jgoerzen@floss.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@alienghic@timeloop.cafe @thomholwerda@exquisite.social I think that headline and article conflates the unique demands of the DPL with the general contributor experience.