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dustinkirkland

974 karma · joined October 2, 2013

SVP Eng at Chainguard. Former PM at Google, VP Product @Ubuntu at Canonical, Author of few dozen Open Source projects, including eCryptFS and Byobu
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dustinkirkland··on Show HN: An MCP Server for Manpages
man.cgr.dev has every manual page in Chainguard OS rendered as HTML, as you’d expect. It also has the original roff source and a Markdown version of every page. More importantly, it has an MCP server, so the same documentation is machine-readable and searchable from within your own AI development environment and by your agents.
dustinkirkland··on Byobu – text-based window manager and terminal multiplexer
Wow, I'm really sorry to here that. I'm 8+ years removed from leading Canonical's product management team, but I still love Ubuntu.
dustinkirkland··on Byobu – text-based window manager and terminal multiplexer
How so?
dustinkirkland··on Byobu – text-based window manager and terminal multiplexer
Oh no! Not that! :-)
dustinkirkland··on Byobu – text-based window manager and terminal multiplexer
Dustin Kirkland here, author of Byobu, among other things.

For me, Claude has brought the joy back to creating again. I have a very busy schedule -- working a full time job, managing a huge team, raising a family.

For many years (some have noticed the gap in git history) -- I haven't had the time to work on Byobu (or, my employment arrangement made it difficult to contribute to open source software).

But now, I'm employed by a company that welcomes open source contribution. And Claude has given me a small army of interns, for $20/month -- that have been working around the clock fixing bugs and adding features that I've always wanted to work on, but haven't had the time to do so.

dustinkirkland··on Vulnerability-Free Raspberry Pi Image on Chainguard OS
Dustin Kirkland here. I lead the Engineering team at Chainguard. We've just published a beta of a Chainguard OS image for Raspberry Pi (v4 and v5), built using the same hardened compilers, libraries, tool chains, and applications as our commercial catalog of container images. We're sharing here for HackerNews' most insightful feedback and comments!
dustinkirkland··on Tmux for Mere Mortals
(Author of Byobu here) Byobu does run "best" on Ubuntu + Gnome-Terminal + Tmux, mainly because that's the primary environment in which I test it. However, I and others have ported and used it on many other Linux and Unix systems, and I'm always happy to take bug reports and patches that fix issues on other OSes.
dustinkirkland··on SSH hacks – a little sanity for remote workers
Try using ssh-import-id to fetch your (or a friend or colleague's) public key from Github!
dustinkirkland··on Tmux for Mere Mortals
Hi there! I'm the author and maintainer of Byobu (byobu.org) here. Byobu started as "Screen for mere mortals", but eventually pivoted to work with Tmux, as well. Nowadays, Byobu is much more tightly tied to Tmux. You can think of it, as a super opinionated set of Tmux settings, easily portable across all of your machines. Happy to answer any questions here!
dustinkirkland··on Locked-down lawyers warned Alexa is hearing confidential calls
It's a very reasonable concern. I used to have a Google Assistant in my home office. I've muted the mic and just use it as a Bluetooth speaker.

However, the much bigger concern should be your phone, which has a mic, is internet connected, and almost always listening. You need to also disable the Google Assistant, Sciri, etc. there too.

Oh, and that doesn't just go for your home. That's in the office, at a client, on the train, in an Uber... Everywhere you take your phone.

dustinkirkland··on Working from Home – Lessons Learned over 20 Years and Shopping List
Blog post author here... I'm happy to discuss anything in that post here (rather than Blogger comments, which are pretty unmanageable). Cheers! Dustin
dustinkirkland··on Tmux Tutorial
Author/maintainer of Byobu here... Tell me more about your "byobu crash". Can you point me to any bug reports in either bugs.launchpad.net/byobu or github.com/dustinkirkland/byobu ? Thanks! @DustinKirkland
dustinkirkland··on A baboon who acted as assistant to a disabled railway signalman in South Africa
Reminds me of the Grateful Dead song I sing my kids when I put them to bed, "The Monkey and the Engineer".
dustinkirkland··on I Sell Onions on the Internet
Am I the only person who saw the headline and assumed this was about onion routing?
dustinkirkland··on How Sherry Became the Secret to Great Scotch
I do love single malt scotch whisky.

But I will say...Sherry by itself is totally underated.

I spent a week in Jerez a few years ago studying Sherry and it is truly an art.

If you like Single Malt and Sour Beer, you owe it to yourself to seek out a Sherry bar and explore the magic of Fino, Amontillado, and the ever evasive Palo Cortado.

dustinkirkland··on Dustin Kirkland leaving Canonical...and joining Google!
...and joining Google!
dustinkirkland··on RFC: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Minimal Images
You're looking for Ubuntu Core.
dustinkirkland··on RFC: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Minimal Images
LXD containers make fantastic replacements for VMs! Just try 'lxc launch ubuntu:'. Then 'lxc list'. And then you can either exec into, or ssh into your machine container!
dustinkirkland··on RFC: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Minimal Images
Stay tuned :-) That's my next post...
dustinkirkland··on RFC: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Minimal Images
Thanks! I'll make sure that gets to the right team!
dustinkirkland··on Meltdown and Spectre Linux kernel status
Actually, Ubuntu created the term "LTS" in 2006, for Long Term Support releases. Greg started using the term himself just a couple of years ago.
dustinkirkland··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (January 2018)
Canonical/Ubuntu | Product Managers | Remote US or Europe timezone | Full time

Product Manager

Canonical leads the development of Ubuntu. If you’re inspired by: shaping the daily software experience of millions of users, and their billions of customers around the world, high stakes, tough, distributed problems in the cloud and on all sorts of devices, seeing your skills and talents make a meaningful difference in the world, and craftsmanship in everything around you and the work you do, then read on.

Role description

We’re seeking a detail-oriented and articulate product manager to spearhead the roadmap of cloud and IoT products from Canonical.

Working with the head of product strategy, engineering managers and lead designers, you will deliver a distinctive product in a high profile category in the cloud market that delights our users.

You’ll love this job if...

You are familiar with the cloud computing industry, excited about the dynamism and competition currently characterizing the industry and keen to define products that will capture attention in a crowded marketplace.

You are business oriented and commercially minded - you understand the needs and motivations of key players in the industry, across the hardware, software and service landscapes, as well as the needs of users. You believe that the last word in cloud computing has not been written and are keen to dive into the market to see what else is possible.

You are intrigued by open source and free software, and believe in the importance of free software in everyday computing, regardless of the device. You’ve used free software platforms like Ubuntu before, but have an appreciation for the challenge and difficulty in tastefully defining paid, commercial products, the success of which ensures the future of the free platform.

dustinkirkland··on Introducing Kubeflow: Composable, Portable, Scalable ML Stack for Kubernetes
Anyone interested in test driving KubeFlow on Ubuntu, can follow this tutorial:

https://tutorials.ubuntu.com/tutorial/get-started-kubeflow

dustinkirkland··on Fingerprints are usernames, not passwords (2013)
Original author here. This article is more pertinent today than ever before!

Your face is your username, not your password.

Use it like you use your username. But never as something secret, personal, unknown like your password.

The same goes for any biometric. Fingerprints, voice, iris, gait, DNA, etc. No matter how much they try to sell you authentication through biometrics, it's total b.s.

@DustinKirkland

dustinkirkland··on Prodigy: A new tool for radically efficient machine teaching
This could be a headline from 1987 :-) (cue the dialup modem sound)
dustinkirkland··on Ask HN: Ubuntu Desktop Default Apps
If you'd prefer, you can fill out the survey here:

https://ubu.one/apps1804

dustinkirkland··on Canonical and Red Hat, collaborating on Gnome 4K, multimonitor support
This collaboration was one of the key results of the AskH thread back in March!

- https://ubu.one/AskHN

- http://bit.ly/thankHN

dustinkirkland··on Ubuntu displays advertising in /etc/motd
That's right!

You can also edit the URLS variable in that file, to point to more, or different sources of MOTD news.

dustinkirkland··on Ubuntu displays advertising in /etc/motd
That's exactly right! Think of it, like Google's doodle that sometimes appears above the search bar. Interesting, fun facts, that likely have nothing to do with what you're Googling ;-)
dustinkirkland··on Ubuntu displays advertising in /etc/motd
I can officially confirm, 100% beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Canonical did not receive any money to post this story ;-)
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