rain

rain, 17 days ago to random

Recommend a keyboard shortcut that more people should know about! Any environment, any OS, any kind of software.

I've talked about M-. in shells before (last word of last command, absolutely incredible). But here's a completely different one in the most common programming environment on the planet:

In Excel, and Google Sheets, Ctrl-Shift-1 through 6 applies various display formats to cells. For example Ctrl-Shift-4 ($ on qwerty) formats a cell as currency.

rain, 20 days ago to random

More and more websites have anti-adblock measures these days, some going so far as to tell you to uninstall your ad blocker altogether. I understand the impulse, but you are basically telling your users to meaningfully reduce their security for your benefit.

rain, 20 days ago to random

Continue to be impressed with the Flydigi Vader 3 Pro. Played on it:

2D/Dpad: Animal Well
2.5D: Tunic
3D: Rise of the Tomb Raider

And I never want to use an Xbox or Nintendo controller again.

PS5 maybe -- would still use the DualSense for PS5 or PC games that have extra support for it. (I don't think the FlyDigi can connect to a PS5 yet)

rain, 20 days ago to random

If Rust version N stabilizes some kind of format/feature/etc, then using RUSTC_BOOTSTRAP to access the same feature in versions N-1, N-2 etc seems pretty unobjectionable. It's hard to see how that could cause any issues other than possibly bugs in the earlier implementations.

rain, 23 days ago to random

Haider is such an all-time great movie, one of the best of Indian cinema. It's an adaptation of Hamlet set in Kashmir, and the struggles of identity it grasps with are just as much about Haider/Hamlet as the Kashmiri people.

Plus, the adaptation of the gravedigger scene is spectacular. (And also the adaptation of the play within the play, which I won't spoil.)

https://youtu.be/YVq0L_I9tIk

rain, 26 days ago to random

Got unreasonably excited about this new, incredibly straightforward count-distinct algorithm. The CVM algorithm is a direct replacement for HyperLogLog, it nerd-sniped Donald Knuth for weeks, and it can easily be taught in an entry-level CS course.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/computer-scientists-invent-an-efficient-new-way-to-count-20240516/

rain, 28 days ago to random

Got a FlyDigi "Vader 3 Pro" controller from AliExpress. Stunned at how good it is, it utterly annihilates every standard controller

rain, 1 month ago to random

I did a poll on here a while ago asking whether classifiers and LLMs were considered ML and/or AI respectively. Most people said classifiers were ML but not AI, and LLMs were both.

Well, Google's marketing team appears to disagree, calling a classifier "AI-powered" :)

https://blog.google/products/android/android-theft-protection/

rain, 1 month ago to random

Traditionally, Unix has used in-band color and other terminal signaling via VT100/ANSI escape codes, while Windows has used out-of-band signaling through separate function calls.

There are pros and cons to each, but I think overall I come down on the Unix side simply because in-band signaling has built-in synchronization.

You can actually see this with Windows today -- if you write to an unbuffered terminal (e.g. Rust stderr) and rapidly change colors, you'll see it get desynced very quickly

rain, 1 month ago to random

Most of my old IRC crew, all of whom were obsessed with Linux, use Macs for work these days. I, who used to make fun of them for being so obsessed with Linux, have used nothing but that since 2019 or so. How the tables have turned

rain, 1 month ago to random

Animal Well is pretty stunning

rain, 1 month ago to random

It's interesting how much of the best of CS is realizing that a problem is hard or unsolvable in general, but using that as the start rather than the end of the discussion.

For example, the halting problem is unsolvable in general, but we have tools that can answer that question for many practical problems. Similarly, SAT is NP-complete, but SAT and SMT solvers are extremely fast for practical problems.

rain, 1 month ago to random

Is there a good, well-argued article on why OOP is a good fit for UI code? I've heard this talked about many times, but want to read something meaty from an experienced dev who has seriously considered alternatives to OOP

rain, 1 month ago to random

My bank in India has its own gTLD -- I've never seen a bank in the US do this. Wild

rain, 1 month ago to random

disconcerting that "reading a lot of code and thinking really hard" is still unparalleled as a way to find bugs

rain, 1 month ago to random

We're past the "name source control systems after a very specific asshole" era and are now in the "name source control systems after martial arts" era

rain, 1 month ago to random

"Are we supposed to start policing who is allowed or not allowed to use open-source and free software projects, which goes against these licenses themselves and their requirements?"

FOSS lets anyone use your project, but you can (and should) have lines on who you allow to participate in the project

rain, 1 month ago to random

Still can't believe basically every new Linux kernel version makes my computer go faster. Complete opposite of the general IT experience where updates just make things slower

rain, 2 months ago to random

Apparently SFMOMA is doing a noise art exhibition?!

rain, 2 months ago to random

Why is Netflix's 4k HDR bitrate such garbage. I'm watching the 3 body problem show, and the title card is full of horrible artifacts

rain, 2 months ago to random

What is this

rain, 2 months ago to random

I'd give the world for a principled relaxation of Rust's orphan rules

rain, 2 months ago to random

What's really made me appreciate the rich diversity of human experiences, even more than being trans and knowing trans people, is being close to plural systems/entities. What's stigmatized as "DID" is a not-very-illuminating lens into how plural systems interact with the world.

For example, a plural system I deeply care about has somewhat different cooking styles when each system member is fronting, and it's not hard to tell.

I don't consider myself plural, but it's clearly real and legit

rain, 2 months ago to random

(Not a lawyer)

Genuinely the most clueless thing US citizens say about immigration is for people who have negative interactions with the legal system (e.g. H1B lottery): to walk across the border from Mexico instead.

In reality, an unauthorized immigrant who entered legally is in a significantly better situation than one that didn't. For example, the former can marry a US citizen and get a green card despite their history, and the latter can't.

rain, 2 months ago to random

(a) steelbotting [1] through weakening is a very good strategy: often, a weaker version of a claim is much better supported

(b) it is a one-time, one-way mulligan: you cannot go back to the stronger position once you've done so

lots of people do (a) but forget that (b) comes along with it

[1] gender neutral version of "steelmanning", the opposite of "strawmanning"