I've been experimenting with AI code generation for a side project written in Golang. The project has been implemented by Opus 4.6 (Claude Code) under my direction. This is the first time I've used Golang so I'm pretty slow and can't scrutinise the output as thoroughly as I could PHP. I've been thinking a lot about security. Are there processes we can follow to reduce risk, when working with machine-generated code? I think so. My high-level process has been to:

• Have a discussion with the model about a feature or a change, to identify a good approach. It often comes up with better ideas or refinements.
• Explicitly ask for an implementation plan, causing the model to break up the problem into a structured series of small steps, which I sanity check (read) and adjust.
• Ask the model to implement the plan (if it is complex, perhaps one phase at a time).
• Manually check that the change functions as expected.
• Explicitly ask the model to review the changes and evaluate if it is a robust solution (repeat if necessary).

This process works well for two reasons. Firstly, it breaks up the work into small, carefully scoped chunks that fit within the model's context window, keeping it focussed. Secondly, the review aspects (the manual check, and instruction to critically review the work) removes a lot of bugs, so you maintain a solid foundation to work from. Most of the time Opus will find a few bugs in its implementation, if you ask it to check, and it may take two or three rounds before it stops finding problems.

I have a new project nearing completion which is based on Golang, and with a Postgres backend. TLDR I wanted to add a compiled language to my skillset so that I could produce fast binary executables.

I settled on Golang because it is modern, memory safe (mostly) and provides highly efficient built in webserver functionality. Goroutines have a tiny memory footprint, fast start up time, and low CPU overhead, all from a single small compiled binary. Compared to Apache2 with its endless configuration options and complexity, it's quite a relief to deal with.

And Golang has not disappointed me. The efficiency gains are real and will allow me to deploy onto minimal hardware, thereby directly saving money. Even on a Raspberry Pi 5 development box (yes, really) my web app runs like lightning and has shockingly low CPU and memory footprints.

But there is a downside, and this is where PHP has the advantage: Maintenance. If a PHP site has a problem you can often login while it's running, poke around a bit and fix it, without much concern that you will torch the entire system. The files are human readable text, so modifying one or reverting a bad change is basically instant with limited blast radius. You can do emergency maintenance on the road from a tablet or even a phone.

Around the end of March there were widespread reports of a sudden jump in token consumption by Claude Code, mainly with Opus. People started burning through their usage limits in minutes, when previously they had hours.

This wasn't a problem for me, but I heeded the 'mitigation' advice and removed all plugins, skills, agents, and MCPs to minimise context injection. I also audited my configuration using the Context Audit skill you can download from Brad | AI Automation.

Around mid-April Anthropic claimed to have fixed it. Well, no. They haven't. I started experiencing the problem as soon as my usage reset and I had access to Opus 4.7, even though I reduced the effort to 'medium' from the default 'xHigh'.

It's terrible! Previously I could carefully steward my session limit through two or three hours of code work with Opus. Today? About 30 minutes and with a far smaller volume of work achieved.

It's insanely slow, ridiculously so. To get the files off quickly, just mount the transmitters as storage (Mac) and drag and drop the files onto your desktop. It's literally hundreds of times faster. If you plug the case into your computer with the transmitters inserted, they will mount automatically. (I presume that on Windows you can just open them as storage through File Explorer).

TLDR: Recommended for Raspberry Pi 4b...if you don't have issues with the USB connector (mine seems defective, which is a possible dealbreaker). Excellent construction but fan is noisy at high loads; can mitigate with an improved fan control script (provided). The S2Pi Aluminum NAS case provides a rugged housing for the Raspberry Pi 4b with M.2 SSD storage and an Ice Tower heat sink for strong cooling performance. It's an excellent package for upgrading your Pi to a lightweight server.

I have developed an improved fan speed control script that turns the fan off when not needed, and ramps with CPU temperature. Available for download within.

Well, it works great. Very cool. And free, yay!

I recently got dunked on for saying the Raspberry Pi 5 makes a great home lab server if you equip it with an SSD drive. And I don't really blame the guy, because until the Pi 4b, they were pretty awful, and for the 3B and below you were stuck with running the OS from a microSD card. His mental model was probably stuck somewhere around there.

The Pi 5 is a huge level up in performance, especially once you add SSD storage via its PCIe slot.

A minor patch to fix a bug in collection pagination.

A minor maintenance release to harden the WebAuthn service class.

A minor patch:

Tighten access-control-origin header, close open redirects, improve validation and add resource limits to JS.

Tuskfish CMS now supports login with Windows Hello, Touch ID, Face ID, iOS and Android devices, and hardware security keys like the Yubikey. This is implemented as a second factor after password check for two-factor authentication (2FA) login security.

Users can register and revoke their 2FA credentials by visiting Preferences => Two-Factor Authentication in the Admin panel. Registration of a credential only takes a few seconds. Once a credential is registered, two-factor login becomes mandatory, so it is a good idea to register more than one device to avoid lock out. Users can revert to simple password login by revoking all their 2FA credentials.

Technically this is an implementation of the FIDO 2 / WebAuthn standards. Users register passkeys from platform authenticators (Hello, Touch ID etc) or hardware security keys (CTAP2 authenticators). Credentials are public-key based and origin-bound; no shared secrets are stored.

Minor bugfixes:

Reverted cache writes to avoid use of remove(), as this function is normally disabled in php.ini; tidied cached file names (prevent param separator being used on first param); fixed bug in gallery logic that prevented dynamic changes in columns to suit display width.

TLDR: Recently ChatGPT just started wildly lying, inventing rubbish and disregarding my instructions. The root cause seems to be that OpenAI has instructed it to reduce use of the search tool (you can see references to this in the chain of thought). I imagine this is to conserve resources, but without some factual context to go on ChatGPT hallucinates like hell.

But there is a better way: Use the command line version of your preferred AI tool. Watch NetworkChuck's video for details! These are available for Gemini (free), ChatGPT and Claude (both of which require a standard subscription). Why is it better? You can force the AI to remember rules and context for any given project, agent workflow, or output style, making it much more reliable.

According to the marketing materials, the proprietary Firewalla WIFI-SD USB dongle/antenna only works with their (excellent) hardware firewalls. But I needed an external WIFI antenna for a Raspberry Pi, so I inserted it into a USB port to see if it would work, and yeah it does. The downside is that the Pi only seems to have drivers to use it on the 2.4 GHz band, while the antenna is supposed to be a WIFI 5 device.

It is apparently based on the dual-band RTL8821CU chipset (802.11ac). Probably you could get it working on 5 Ghz if you were prepared to tinker with drivers but I'm told this chipset is notoriously difficult to work with, and kernel updates would probably keep breaking it, so I'll pass. Anyway, if you login to a Firewalla box via SSH the default username is 'pi', so you can probably guess why this works.

Tuskfish V2.2 brings a lot of improvements, including a group permissions system to control access to routes and individual content items, fourteen new colourful themes, and a new default theme preference for flipping the look and fee. of your site. All content types can now be set as 'static' with a new 'in feed' toggle switch, there is optional support for better thumbnail generation and colour space support with ImageMagick 6 available. The entire codebase has been reviewed with AI assistance for bugs, security issues, and compliance with PHP 8.4/8.5, Bootstrap 5 and HTML5. Core libraries have been updated. Note: I pushed a minor bugfix update so the current version is 2.2.1.

I like FontAwesome (I'm a backer), but I'm so over subscription services, there's only so much many times I want to pay for the same icon collection, you know? I'm also annoyed that they withdraw access to the subsetter app once your subscription expires. That's miserable, given that subsetting the icons is mandatory to control file size, as the full icon library is too large to use.

IcoMoon has a free online tool that lets you convert icon collections into a custom font. You upload your icon SVGs, select the ones you want to use, and export them back out as a font, which is trivial to incorporate into your project. The files are much smaller, and do not require any Javascript. I will probably remove the FontAwesome script from Tuskfish and re-implement the icons as a font. This will also allow other icon sets to be integrated, as you aren't limited to the FontAwesome set.

I upgraded to the Forerunner 965 from a 945. After using the 965 for a couple of weeks I would say there are two significant improvements, neither of which is a 'must have':

1. The new AMOLED display of the 965 is a lot better. It is very bright and clear compared to the previous MIP displays found on previous generation watches, including the 945. It also has  a much higher resolution (454x454 pixels vs 240x240). On dynamic apps like the compass it really does look great.
2. Touchscreen functionality. You can swipe to navigate through screens and select items, and on maps you can pan around and zoom with your fingers, which makes the limited screen far more useable for navigation. On previous gen watches like the 945 you have to use buttons for everything, which is slow and clumsy at least as far as maps go.

So: Is it worth the upgrade? If you use the mapping applications a lot then I would say yes. Being able to pan with your finger is a game changer.  Otherwise, the functionality is very similar to the 945. There are a few more apps but nothing that you are likely to miss.

I keep thinking there is nothing left to do...then I think of something. So here's the latest developments:

• Fourteen new colourful themes from Bootswatch!
• New 'default theme' preference for fast site-wide changes!
• Any content type can now be designated as static.

Release will follow an appropriate period of testing.

I've nearly finished the native multi-lingual branch of Tuskfish. It turned out to be much more complex than I thought, touching nearly every operation. Extensive review and testing will be necessary, as it is quite a large divergence. I found myself wondering if I really want to rebase future Tuskfish development on the multilang branch or not, and the answer seems to be that I need to think about it. Maybe I'll keep it as a parallel project that I wheel out when needed, for a while. We'll see.

I will add a couple more block options for V2.1 to enable placement of a feature video block, and maybe a feature audio block as well.

I will also add a few attractive open-source themes. I always thought that everyone would want to use their own custom theme, but turns out no, most people just want something they can use out of the box. The default bootstrap starter theme is a bit grim (black and white), so I'll add a couple of nice themes you can tweak without having to replace them. Shout out to Bootswatch and Start Bootstrap for offering open source themes, thank you!