Essays on Linux, Rust, privacy, and leaving rented software behind.https://jcrenshaw.dev/https://jcrenshaw.dev/posts/the-last-default/https://jcrenshaw.dev/posts/the-last-default/The always-on laptop running my home network kernel panicked on Ubuntu, and I took the crash as the excuse I'd been waiting for. Here's the security-first Proxmox server I rebuilt in its place, and why the last machine in the house running on someone else's defaults doesn't anymore.Sun, 12 Jul 2026 14:00:00 GMThttps://jcrenshaw.dev/posts/i-built-my-own-door/https://jcrenshaw.dev/posts/i-built-my-own-door/Why I pulled my applets out of the COSMIC store and went to hosting them myself. The short version: they bolted an AI gate onto a repo a maintainer admitted didn't need one, and I'd rather hold my own keys than depend on a gatekeeper's mood.Wed, 10 Jun 2026 13:00:00 GMThttps://jcrenshaw.dev/posts/say-their-names/https://jcrenshaw.dev/posts/say-their-names/I'm sixty-nine, and most of the men I'm about to name are dead, killed by a country that wouldn't say the word while they died. They're running the same machine now on trans kids and drag queens. So let me say their names.Tue, 09 Jun 2026 14:40:00 GMThttps://jcrenshaw.dev/posts/flathub-banned-the-wrong-thing/https://jcrenshaw.dev/posts/flathub-banned-the-wrong-thing/Flathub had a real slop problem and aimed at the wrong target. The line was never AI or no-AI. It's whether the person shipping the code can read it and stand behind it.Sun, 07 Jun 2026 16:30:00 GMThttps://jcrenshaw.dev/posts/the-gap-runs-both-ways/https://jcrenshaw.dev/posts/the-gap-runs-both-ways/Wed, 06 May 2026 23:30:00 GMThttps://jcrenshaw.dev/posts/ai-is-not-the-enemy-its-not-the-savior-either/https://jcrenshaw.dev/posts/ai-is-not-the-enemy-its-not-the-savior-either/Thu, 23 Apr 2026 15:22:48 GMThttps://jcrenshaw.dev/posts/the-gap-between-looking-finished-and-being-finished/https://jcrenshaw.dev/posts/the-gap-between-looking-finished-and-being-finished/The code was broken, but that's not the real problem. The developers copied code they didn't understand, didn't review, and if they did, they didn't or couldn't understand what they were reviewing. That is the problem.Thu, 09 Apr 2026 20:12:05 GMThttps://jcrenshaw.dev/posts/theyre-not-building-child-safety-theyre-building-infrastructure/https://jcrenshaw.dev/posts/theyre-not-building-child-safety-theyre-building-infrastructure/Before this law, your operating system had no idea how old you were. That data relationship did not exist. Once you've built that pipe, you don't get to unscrew it.Fri, 06 Mar 2026 13:17:31 GMThttps://jcrenshaw.dev/posts/one-week-door-to-door/https://jcrenshaw.dev/posts/one-week-door-to-door/My System76 RMA ExperienceFri, 20 Feb 2026 18:45:53 GMThttps://jcrenshaw.dev/posts/building-my-system-piece-by-piece/https://jcrenshaw.dev/posts/building-my-system-piece-by-piece/My career in backend development taught me how systems work from the inside out, but I spent those years using systems other people built. Now I get to ask what if we did it differently, and actually find outMon, 09 Feb 2026 23:11:44 GMThttps://jcrenshaw.dev/posts/still-skidding-broadside/https://jcrenshaw.dev/posts/still-skidding-broadside/I'm 69 years old and most of my friends are gone. Not from age, but from AIDS. This is the story behind the blog, the Arch install, and a lifetime of building my own things because nobody was going to build them for me.Sun, 08 Feb 2026 05:41:05 GMThttps://jcrenshaw.dev/posts/the-desktop-outgrew-the-distro/https://jcrenshaw.dev/posts/the-desktop-outgrew-the-distro/Wed, 04 Feb 2026 19:11:35 GMThttps://jcrenshaw.dev/posts/death-by-yes/https://jcrenshaw.dev/posts/death-by-yes/I've Spent 43 Years Securing Systems. Here's Why I Don't Trust Software That Can't Say No.Fri, 30 Jan 2026 05:00:00 GMThttps://jcrenshaw.dev/posts/you-built-a-network-of-snitches/https://jcrenshaw.dev/posts/you-built-a-network-of-snitches/You didn't get hacked. You just bought a bunch of devices that were designed to spy on you. Time to take your network back.Wed, 28 Jan 2026 18:53:04 GMThttps://jcrenshaw.dev/posts/why-i-started-writing-rust-in-retirement/https://jcrenshaw.dev/posts/why-i-started-writing-rust-in-retirement/Sun, 25 Jan 2026 19:43:11 GMThttps://jcrenshaw.dev/posts/wayland-in-2026-the-not-stable-myth-needs-to-die/https://jcrenshaw.dev/posts/wayland-in-2026-the-not-stable-myth-needs-to-die/The arguments against Wayland are frozen in 2020. The technology moved on.Thu, 01 Jan 2026 20:10:00 GMThttps://jcrenshaw.dev/posts/why-i-left-github/https://jcrenshaw.dev/posts/why-i-left-github/Microsoft is training AI on your code without consent. I moved to Codeberg.Fri, 26 Dec 2025 20:31:00 GMThttps://jcrenshaw.dev/posts/distro-hopping-to-nowhere-how-i-landed-on-vanilla-arch-for-cosmic/https://jcrenshaw.dev/posts/distro-hopping-to-nowhere-how-i-landed-on-vanilla-arch-for-cosmic/A year of bad decisions, documented for your entertainment.Wed, 24 Dec 2025 20:37:00 GMT