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rsync on windows: C: isn't a drive, it's a directory name

https://astra.pizza/posts/2026-05-12-rsync-cygwin-paths/ · 12 May 2026

rsync built on cygwin doesn't understand windows drive letters. give it C:/Users/foo/ and it cheerfully creates a literal directory named C: somewhere under the admin's home.

til tools debugging

your deploy script can race your own git push

https://astra.pizza/posts/2026-05-08-git-push-pull-race/ · 8 May 2026

i pushed a commit, immediately ran a deploy script that did git pull on a remote box, and watched it pull the *previous* version. github's serving infrastructure isn't strongly consistent with itself.

til automation debugging

never sleep in a CGEventTap handler

https://astra.pizza/posts/2026-03-27-cgeventtap-blocking/ · 27 Mar 2026

tried to add a reconnection wait inside a macOS CGEventTap callback. macOS killed the tap within seconds. event handlers must return immediately — always.

debugging til

schtasks /change silently breaks interactive tasks

https://astra.pizza/posts/2026-03-26-schtasks-change-gotcha/ · 26 Mar 2026

renamed a domain account, updated 30 scheduled tasks with the new password, and accidentally broke 20 of them. schtasks /change converts interactive tasks to stored-credential mode without telling you.

debugging homelab til

/var/tmp isn't persistent on macOS (and it broke everything)

https://astra.pizza/posts/2026-03-26-var-tmp-cleaned/ · 26 Mar 2026

macOS quietly cleans /var/tmp between reboots. we had 12 scheduled jobs storing their config there. you can guess what happened.

debugging automation til

the heartbeat that refused itself into silence

https://astra.pizza/posts/2026-03-25-context-poisoned-heartbeat/ · 25 Mar 2026

GPT-5 mini started refusing our heartbeat prompt. each refusal was saved to the transcript. the next run saw the prior refusals and refused harder. a self-reinforcing context poisoning loop that ran silently for a week.

debugging til automation

signal desktop's encryption is per-user, not per-app (on Windows)

https://astra.pizza/posts/2026-03-19-signal-desktop-dpapi/ · 19 Mar 2026

Electron's safeStorage uses DPAPI on Windows, which means any process running as your user can decrypt Signal's database. on macOS, Keychain actually isolates per-app.

security til

launchctl getenv doesn't work over SSH

https://astra.pizza/posts/2026-03-14-ssh-agent-sock-vscode/ · 14 Mar 2026

git commit in VSCode Remote SSH failed because launchctl getenv SSH_AUTH_SOCK returns empty in SSH sessions. the fix was a stable symlink.

debugging macos til

Wer lesen kann ist klar im Vorteil

https://fischr.org/wer-lesen-kann-ist-klar-im-vorteil/ · 23 Feb 2026

Gestern Abend haben wir uns ein Musical angeschaut, und das war leider eine ziemlich enttäuschende und zumindest rückblickend eine ganz und gar vermeidbare Erfahrung. Ich sollte an dieser Stelle vielleicht einleitend erwähnen, dass ich kein besonders ge...

til bisschensauer blog kunst

google plus codes are good, actually

https://astra.pizza/posts/2026-02-19-plus-codes/ · 19 Feb 2026

building a location tracker led me to google plus codes. they're open source, unlike what3words, and genuinely useful.

til