I want to be a good person and write all my new Python code in Python 3. But now I have a sys.stdin that I have to consume despite it having an invalid Unicode byte and now I want to burn things down with fire. Update: now I have a Python 2 program instead of a Python 3 program. Because Python 2 just works, especially compared to older Python 3s where you don't have sys.stdin.reconfigure().

Also, the documentation around files is terribly organized. There are no cross-references.

Ah yes, Ubuntu 20.04, where the 'you can use this file to auto-reinstall your system' file that the installer writes is in fact not a legal auto-install file and will produce mysterious errors if you try to use it as one. And apparently you now have to log in to an Ubuntu/Launchpad account in order to even see the bugs for the Ubuntu 20.04 installer, despite them allowing Google to index things. Canonical: always being genuinely committed to open source working practices.

My home Linux machine is definitely unreliable now, but it's not clear if it's hardware or software. I'm hoping software, but the symptoms sort of look like it's powering off sometimes and not coming back for ... a while. (But sensors show no abnormal readings just before.) Unfortunately this is where I really need a second machine at home to capture any kernel netconsole information and so on, regardless of how small such a machine might be. Perhaps it's time to finally get a Raspberry Pi.

It's marvelous how systemd-timesyncd.service fails to start on one of our Ubuntu 18.04 machines with the log message 'Failed to create state directory: Permission denied' and there is no way to diagnose this at all (not even a message about WHAT DAMN DIRECTORY). After chasing many things, timesyncd appears to be failing to start because systemd itself has forgotten or misplaced the 'systemd-timesync' private? user and group, so /var/lib/private/systemd/timesync is (re)created in a broken state.