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In-reply-to » Just a small update, on my birthday (on the 5th), I accidentally deleted the main page, of my website, so I'm using that as an opportunity, to try something new, at https://thecanine.smol.pub or gemini://thecanine.smol.pub - depending on your preferred protocol.

@bender@twtxt.net to work through both https and gemini, the site is not written in HTML, but in Gemtext, automatically converted to HTML, when needed. Gemtext is nicely explained for example here: https://garden.bouncepaw.com/hypha/gemtext . In short, it is so limited, no line can be more than one thing, so no links in a list are possible, othar than doing it through something like this primitive workaround.

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In-reply-to » @lyse

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Uh, that actually looks not that terrible. Somehow, I remember Swing GUIs being way uglier.

As for Visual Basic, I only had to use VBA once in my life. That was in the beginning of my career when I inherited a project from a leaving coworker. Fuck me, was that awful. Just alone the damn compiler error dialog box popping up in my face all the time while editing and the compiler already trying to parse the unfinished and hence of course uncompilable code. Boy, that left a lasting impression on me. I ported everything to Java very quickly. Luckily, the code base wasn’t all that large at that point in time. I had to add a bunch of new features after that, so I was very glad that I convinced my workmate/project manager to do that first. We didn’t even need a GUI, the button in Excel was transformed to a command line program that just generated the large file.

But I cannot comment on the VB GUI designer, I never used that. Your screenshot looks very similar to the Delphi one, though. Only towards the end of my Delphi days I found out about the possibility to make the widgets snap to window edges and corners (I don’t remember how that was called), so that resizing the windows was actually possible without messing up their entire contents.

Switching to Linux, Delphi wasn’t an option anymore. For some reason I couldn’t use Kylix. Maybe it was already dead by the time I changed OSes. Or I couldn’t get it to run. I just don’t remember. I just recall that the unavailability of Delphi was the reason it took me a while to actually settle on Linux. I then fully switched to Java. The GridBagLayout was my absolutely favorite Swing layout manager. I reckon I used it 98% of the time, because it was so powerful and made the windows resize properly, just as I had learned to do in Delphi shortly before.

Up until discovering Swing, I used Java’s AWT for a short amount of time. That was very limited I think and I hit the limits fairly quickly. Later at uni, we had one project making use of SWT. Didn’t convince me either. I could be wrong, but I think there was also a SWT GUI designer plugin for Eclipse. If there really was, that one wasn’t in the same street as Delphi’s (there must be a reason I forgot about it ;-)).

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Labor is close to a deal on environmental law reforms, but there are troubling signs these will fall short
The Albanese government has hinted it is close to a deal with the Coalition over the long-awaited overhaul of Australia’s environment laws. Environment Minister Murray Watt plans to introduce new legislation to parliament in November. ⌘ Read more

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‘R360 could leave women’s players in limbo’
R360’s proposed four-team women’s event is an exhibition-style showpiece that could leave players short of form and fitness, says Premiership Women’s Rugby executive chair Genevieve Shore. ⌘ Read more

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In-reply-to » @lyse Great job!

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org In my case it was a silver necklace, a hummingbird with a wing connected with the cold welding I mentioned using thin brass wires.

It made it in a goldsmithing class (I went to a private craftmanship high-school) so no phones allowed (no photos of it) and no “take home” of the works.

Here’s a rough sketch of it drawn by memory, the dots in the wing is where it connects to the body.

Image

The technique is basically the same as i described, but the scale is much smaller, the whole piece was about 5-6 cm on the largest side.

The rivet was made by drilling a hole through the parts, than with a short and thicker drill you widen the hole on the surface to let the rivet settle flatter on the piece, then with a rubber hammer you hit it to flatten the head until it’s snug on the hole, lock them together by doing the same on the other side.

Note that widening the hole with a thicker drill head won’t make a difference with bigger holes, mine had holes of about 1-2 mm of diameter maximum.

Here’s a sketch of what is going on for clarity.

Image

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I went on a short stroll in the woods and came across two great spotted woodpeckers. They were busy with their courtship display, I reckon, so it took them a while to notice me and escape into thicker parts out of sight. That was really awesome. There are a lot of apples and sloes now, looking really good. The cam issues still persist, though, I wish the photos were sharper. Also, I got the error that the function wheel was not adjusted correctly and alledgedly pointed between two options numerous times. And no, it was bang on a setting. https://lyse.isobeef.org/waldspaziergang-2025-10-07/

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Hiring in high-growth firms: Exploring the timing of organizational changes
High-growth firms (HGFs) refer to businesses that achieve rapid growth in terms of employees or revenue. Based on the established definition, HGFs are businesses with at least 10 employees and annual growth rates of 20% or more, observed over a period of three years. This three-year span is considered the high-growth (HG) period of the company. Even though this growth is often short-lived and difficult to sustain, it plays … ⌘ Read more

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Even short school breaks can affect student learning unevenly across socioeconomic backgrounds
The COVID-19 pandemic affected people worldwide disproportionately, with economically disadvantaged households facing a heavier burden. Children were also affected since schools and classes were closed to contain the virus. ⌘ Read more

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There are a couple of add-ons to block YouTube Shorts in the browser, but if you are using Firefox with uBlock Origin, you do not need to install anything extra. Just add this filter list to the uBO settings, and you are free from those annoying short videos! At least on the PC… Sadly, even with YouTube Premium, there is no option to just ban Shorts from the mobile app. ⌘ Read more

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** Read the Book **
There’s a whole lot going on, and I’ve been feeling myself develop bad habits concerning doom scrolling. I can’t reconfigure my life to not have a phone, so, instead, I made a thing to replace those things that invite me to doomy scroll. Meet Read the Book.

Read the book is a relatively simple website where you can read a book. The books are presented in short chunks so you’re never faced with a big scrolling wall of text. It has support for dark mode and light mode, and you can u … ⌘ Read more

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In-reply-to » @lyse Beautiful handwork, how did you seal the corners? I don't see and hole or anything.

Thank you, @alexonit@twtxt.alessandrocutolo.it! It’s not sealed at all. If you were pouring in a liquid, it would run out on all four corners. It’s just folded over and carefully hammered shut as best as possible. 03 is a bit blurred, but you can see the tab from the right (the short side) tucking in on the left (the long side). The hem on top clamps it in place fairly decently.

I decided against blind rivets, because they leave ugly looking and sharp backsides, which can also interfer with the contents of the box. However, they would be an easy solution to make the corners more rigid and prevent any movement from the short sides.

Unfortunately, I can’t weld or solder, so that’s not an option. It would be the by far best solution. I wanna learn it one day, though.

Yes, Ken is a really great dude. He’s the reason I gave this a shot in the first place. :-)

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I bought an iPhone (as my third smartphone)
I never thought I would do this, but I bought an iPhone. It’s a pretty cheap iPhone SE 2. Gen (2020) used from eBay, like the device I got issued from my work. It’s so tiny and it’s really difficult to type even a short text like this. ⌘ Read more

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In-reply-to » we are now parsing and recursively fetching remote feeds somewhat successfully, gotta work on the media proxy and markdown way more, so so many fucky edgecases....my friend's feed with like four posts parsed correctly so i tried this account's feed and well now im not going to bed on time

@zvava@twtxt.net it is amazing how much you have accomplished in such a short time. Take time to sleep, though! :-)

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Here’s an example of X11/Xlib being old and archaic.

X11 knows the data type “cardinal”. For example, the window property _NET_WM_ICON (which holds image data for icons) is an array of “cardinal”. I am already not really familiar with that word and I’m assuming that it comes from mathematics:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_number

(It could also be a bird, but probably not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinalidae)

We would probably call this an “integer” today.

EWMH says that icons are arrays of cardinals and that they’re 32-bit numbers:

https://specifications.freedesktop.org/wm-spec/latest-single/#id-1.6.13

So it’s something like 0x11223344 with 0x11 being the alpha channel, 0x22 is red, and so on.

You would assume that, when you retrieve such an array from the X11 server, you’d get an array of uint32_t, right?

Nope.

Xlib is so old, they use char for 8-bit stuff, short int for 16-bit, and long int for 32-bit:

https://x.org/releases/current/doc/libX11/libX11/libX11.html#Obtaining_and_Changing_Window_Properties

That is congruent with the general C data types, so it does make sense:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_data_types

Now the funny thing is, on modern x86_64, the type long int is actually 64 bits wide.

The result is that every pixel in a Pixmap, for example, is twice as large in memory as it would need to be. Just because Xlib uses long int, because uint32_t didn’t exist, yet.

And this is something that I wouldn’t know how to fix without breaking clients.

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I have a Python script that transforms the original YouTube channel Atom feed into a more useful Atom feed by removing the spam description and replacing it with the video duration, filtering out videos by title, duration, etc. I just updated it to exclude the damn Shorts garbage more efficiently. Finally, YouTube updated their Atom feed generation, so that the video URL contains /short/ if it’s of this useless kind. Never thought that they ever actually will improve their Atom feeds. Thank you, much appreciated!

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Status 2025-07-21
Morning, computer! Spending my days off trying to figure things out.
Some of them will occur in this post. I think best when I’m writing,
after all.

Intro

I’m back from a short vacation since a couple of weeks. I’m still
going to take a few days off every week for a while. I need the break.
It’s been way too many 12-16 hour workdays. I’m nominally working 80%
(~6 hour days), so I figure I’ve been working a lot for free.

Yeah, well, I like the TKey project to succeed. The ideas behind it
have implicatio … ⌘ Read more

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In-reply-to » The lack of suckless-like simple, hackable software these days is appalling.

@prologic@twtxt.net Yeah, this really could use a proper definition or a “manifest”. 😅 Many of these ideas are not very wide spread. And I haven’t come across similar projects in all these years.

Let’s take the farbfeld image format as an example again. I think this captures the “spirit” quite well, because this isn’t even about code.

This is the entire farbfeld spec:

farbfeld is a lossless image format which is easy to parse, pipe and compress. It has the following format:

╔════════╤═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║ Bytes  │ Description                                             ║
╠════════╪═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╣
║ 8      │ "farbfeld" magic value                                  ║
╟────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╢
║ 4      │ 32-Bit BE unsigned integer (width)                      ║
╟────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╢
║ 4      │ 32-Bit BE unsigned integer (height)                     ║
╟────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╢
║ [2222] │ 4x16-Bit BE unsigned integers [RGBA] / pixel, row-major ║
╚════════╧═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝

The RGB-data should be sRGB for best interoperability and not alpha-premultiplied.

(Now, I don’t know if your screen reader can work with this. Let me know if it doesn’t.)

I think these are some of the properties worth mentioning:

  • The spec is extremely short. You can read this in under a minute and fully understand it. That alone is gold.
  • There are no “knobs”: It’s just a single version, it’s not like there’s also an 8-bit color depth version and one for 16-bit and one for extra large images and one that supports layers and so on. This makes it much easier to implement a fully compliant program.
  • Despite being so simple, it’s useful. I’ve used it in various programs, like my window manager, my status bars, some toy programs like “tuxeyes” (an Xeyes variant), or Advent of Code.
  • The format does not include compression because it doesn’t need to. Just use something like bzip2 to get file sizes similar to PNG.
  • It doesn’t cover every use case under the sun, but it does cover the most important ones (imho). They have discussed using something other than RGBA and decided it’s not worth the trouble.
  • They refrained from adding extra baggage like metadata. It would have needlessly complicated things.

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In-reply-to » OH, FUCK ME DEAD! On the way home from today's walk I saw easily 800 fireflies! Yes, over eight hundred! That was absolutely amazing. First time this year and already this many. Crazy! They were just fricking everywhere in the entire forest. I counted to one hundred and then stopped. The darker it got, the more fireflies came out and glowed around. :-) There were spots where in under ten seconds I counted 20 glowworms. Super sick. Soooo beautiful. <3

Thanks @bender@twtxt.net! Yeah, so super cute. I couldn’t pet them, though. Despite very curious, they were also very restless.

I persuaded my dad to check out the fireflies with me tonight. He only wanted to go for a short trip, so we came just across a couple hundred of them. Otherwise, the thousands mark would have been exceeded in no time. He was super glad I talked him into that. :-)

It was also my first time to see them over the meadows. Those numbers don’t compare to the ones inside the forest, no question, but we probably saw 60 or so. Haven’t come across them there before, I only heard and read about that.

Note to future-Lyse next year: Leaving at 21:45 seems like a good time. We left earlier and had to wait just a few more minutes for them to come out in masses.

Too bad it’s impossible to share photos or videos. My camera isn’t made for that at all, not even close.

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In-reply-to » OH, FUCK ME DEAD! On the way home from today's walk I saw easily 800 fireflies! Yes, over eight hundred! That was absolutely amazing. First time this year and already this many. Crazy! They were just fricking everywhere in the entire forest. I counted to one hundred and then stopped. The darker it got, the more fireflies came out and glowed around. :-) There were spots where in under ten seconds I counted 20 glowworms. Super sick. Soooo beautiful. <3

@movq@www.uninformativ.de That short segment is fairly close to reality, even though it obviously looks heaps better in person: https://youtu.be/u8YVorNRcDM?t=66

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Community services buckling under demand for mental health support
Mental health support services in regional WA are in such short supply that severely unwell residents are turning to grassroots community service groups, which are struggling to cope with surging demand. ⌘ Read more

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Accused Australian drug smuggler’s family wants a ‘just outcome’
In a short statement given to media on Friday, Stephanie Ahchee thanked Indonesian authorities for their “professionalism and impartiality”. ⌘ Read more

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Would you accept seven weeks without bank access? Why is super different?
Australia’s superannuation pool is worth nearly $4.2 trillion — the funds are undoubtedly extremely adept at taking members’ money. But when it comes helping members to access it, they are falling short. ⌘ Read more

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10 Iconic “Temporary” Structures That Still Stand Today
Some of the world’s most iconic structures were never meant to stick around. Built for the World’s Fairs, quick fixes, or temporary exhibitions, these buildings were supposed to be dismantled or demolished after serving their short-term purpose. But fate—and sometimes public opinion—had other plans. Whether due to popularity, practicality, or sheer indifference, these “temporary” constructions […]

The post [10 Iconic “Temp … ⌘ Read more

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In-reply-to » @kat I don’t like Golang much either, but I am not a programmer. This little site, Go by example might explain a thing or two.

@bender@twtxt.net Here’s a short-list:

  • Simple, minimal syntax—master the core in hours, not months.
  • CSP-style concurrency (goroutines & channels)—safe, scalable parallelism.
  • Blazing-fast compiler & single-binary deploys—zero runtime dependencies.
  • Rich stdlib & built-in tooling (gofmt, go test, modules).
  • No heavy frameworks or hidden magic—unlike Java/C++/Python overhead.

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i wish it was realistic for me to learn golang but every single time i try to comprehend any go code i’m like What the fuck am i looking at. why is all of this so short and condensed GIVE ME VERBOSE CODE

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“Forgive me for the harm I have caused this world. None may atone for my actions but me and only in me shall their stain live on. I am thankful to have been caught, my fall cut short by those with wizened hands. All I can be is sorry, and that is all I am.”

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Thanks to @kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz and her shelf I finally spent several hours in the woodshop. I wanted to build two drawers for the workbench and thought that I will complete this project in no time. I’ve been so wrong again. ;-)

I didn’t draw any plans, just measured a few times and then went to cutting a bunch of particle board leftovers at the table saw. I routed rebates on the sides, fronts and backs to lap the boxes and sink in the bottom. It turned out that having no plans was a stupid idea. I cut exactly on the lines as I calculated and measured, however, the math in my head fell apart when it eventually met reality. The bottoms are too short, so I gotta glue on some strips. Also, with the longer fronts, the sides won’t work either, I have to fix them as well. :-D

Finally, the lid of my cyclone bucket broke when the negative pressure got too large. Oh well. It was just an old wood glue bucket, I’ve got another empty one, so I can use that lid but strengthen it first with some plywood. Something for future Lyse to deal with.

All in all, it was still good fun. Wood (haha) do it again, but at least with some sketches on paper. ;-)

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Tea & Peaches: KubeCon + CloudNativeCon London Recap, Atlanta Sneak-Peek
KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2025 in London was nothing short of historic. As the biggest KubeCon to date — with 12,418 attendees, including 46% first-timers — it was a moment of celebration, reflection, and connection for… ⌘ Read more

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i started a little thing on my dreamwidth and called it a flash prompt box. basically it’s a limited time thing where people can prompt me for stuff i’m offering, like short fanfiction, photoshop-edited user icons, music recs, and a bit more! i’m having sooo much fun with it so far it’s been a blast just making stuff for friends :)

also more friends are making their own posts with the same concept which is SO cool to see

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[$] Hash table memory usage and a BPF interpreter bug
Anton Protopopov led a short discussion at the 2025 Linux Storage, Filesystem,
Memory-Management, and BPF Summit about amount of memory used
by hash tables in BPF programs. He thinks that the current memory layout is
inefficient, and wants to split the structure that holds table entries into two
variants for different kinds of maps. When that proposal proved
uncontroversial, he also took the chance to talk about a bug in BPF’s call
instruction. ⌘ Read more

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In-reply-to » Confession:

@movq@www.uninformativ.de @kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz @quark@ferengi.one In 2014 one person created protocol ii. Later it forked in IDEC. Why i said this? Because it’s simple “federated” forum-like protocol where from your station fetch another every 5-10 minutes. Stations has topic-based channels like idec.talks, linux.16, haiku.os, zx.spectrum. In short it’s FIDO but.. more modern? Documentation: https://github.com/idec-net/new-docs (mostly Russian, but you can use translator, also protocol already translated to english)

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In-reply-to » China plans to build a nuclear power plant on the Moon + 2 more stories China urges Korea to restrict rare earth exports to U.S.; global coral bleaching spreads due to record ocean heat; China plans a nuclear power plant on the Moon. ⌘ Read more

About the nuclear power plant on the Moon, they are beating us. There was a time we were ahead, but I understand nothing lasts forever. Now, being a world power for only one hundred and twenty some years, and a super power for around seventy sure is a record (as in short-lived). The Roman Empire lasted over 500 years!

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In-reply-to » Some A hole has been trying to pull every single Twtxt feed that existed/still exists since forever. How do I know? Welp' They've been querying my Timeline™ instance for all of it, every single twtxt file and twt Hash they can find. 😆🤦 It must have been going on for days and I have just noticed... + it's all coming from the same ASN AS136907 HWCLOUDS-AS-AP HUAWEI CLOUDS

@prologic@twtxt.net This shi_ is as fun as it is frustrating! 😆 the bot is poking at me from a different ASN now, Alibaba’s.

  1. Short term solution: I’ve geo-locked my Timeline instance since I’m the only one using it (and I only do so for reading twts when I’m away from terminal).
  2. Long term: I took a look at your Caddy WAF but couldn’t figure things out on my own; until then, I’ll be poking at Caddy-Defender, maybe throw in a Crowdsec for lols… #FUN

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Earth’s Atmosphere Faces ‘Thirstwaves,’ Scientists Warn
Paige Bennett,  Contributing Writer  -  EcoWatch

_Stephan: I had never even heard of Thirst Waves, and I doubt if you have either, but this is going to be a big deal as we go through climate change. I read a technical paper on this phenomenon and then found this article that explains it clearly. If you live in an area where it is dry and water is in short supply, I am afraid your life is going to get a lot more diffic … ⌘ Read more

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Catanzaro: Dangerous arbitrary file read vulnerability in Yelp
GNOME contributor Michael Catanzaro has written a blog\
post about a noteworthy vulnerability in GNOME’s help browser, Yelp.

I don’t normally blog about particular CVEs, but Yelp CVE-2025-3155 is
noteworthy because it is quite severe, public for several weeks now,
and not yet fixed upstream. In short, help files can rea … ⌘ Read more

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10 Rare & Interesting Versions of Common Animals
The animal kingdom is never short on variety, with over 1.5 million living animal species in existence today. And yet, our interests tend to focus on a common few—the black bear, the ring-tailed lemur, the gray wolf. But for every common species, there is an equally uncommon and interesting variation that hardly anyone pays attention […]

The post [10 Rare & Interesting Versions of Common Animals](https://listverse.com/2025/04/16/10-rare … ⌘ Read more

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[$] Approaches to reducing TLB pressure
The CPU’s translation lookaside buffer (TLB) caches the results of
virtual-address translations, significantly speeding memory accesses. TLB
misses are expensive, so a lot of thought goes into using the TLB as
efficiently as possible. Reducing pressure on the TLB was the topic of Rik
van Riel’s memory-management-track session at the 2025 Linux Storage,
Filesystem, Memory-Management, and BPF Summit. Some approaches were
considered, but the session was short on firm conclusions. ⌘ Read more

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** Late March Snow **
The forecast predicted snow, but even with that knowledge I held out hope that it wouldn’t. The shade over the window in the bedroom doesn’t close all the way. It always stops short of totally covering the window with about an inch further to go. It is too short. When I woke up this morning there was a flat grey line of light streaming into the room through the gap left by the too short shade. So, I spent some time shoveling this morning. Probably sooner than I ought to have since it’s still coming down. It’s 80ish de … ⌘ Read more

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Erlang Solutions: My Journey from Ruby to Elixir: Lessons from a Developer

Why I Looked Beyond Ruby

For years, Ruby was my go-to language for building everything from small prototypes to full-fledged production apps. I fell in love with its elegance and expressiveness and how Ruby on Rails could turn an idea into a working web app in record time. The community—with its focus on kindness and collaboration—only deepened my appreciation. In short, Ruby felt like home.
… ⌘ Read more

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10 High-Tech Projects Made Possible Only by Global Partnerships
In an increasingly interconnected world, many of humanity’s greatest technological achievements didn’t come from a single nation—they came from global collaboration. Whether the goal was to explore space, contain disaster, or decode the building blocks of life, these projects demonstrate that when countries pool their resources, talent, and innovation, the results can be nothing short […]

The post [10 Hig … ⌘ Read more

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China, Russia eager to fill void as Trump axes US-funded media
,    -  Agence France-Presse (France) | Raw Story

_Stephan: Because the fascist oligarchal coup now underway in the United States is led by an ignorant psychopath and greedy short-sighted oligarchs, it is being carried out incredibly stupidly. The Putin dictatorship, of course, is very happy, because they have something that controls Trump in matters in which they are involved, i.e., the Ukrainian w … ⌘ Read more

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wahhh i wanna work towards my dream of offering pay as you can web hosting (static & dynamic) but i don’t know how!!!!! i keep drifting towards hosting panels but i don’t exactly have fresh linux servers for those nor do i like the level of access they require. so i’m like ok i can do the static site part with SFTP chroot jails and a front-end like filebrowser or something…. but then what about the dynamic sites!!!!!!! UGH

granted i doubt i’d get much interest in dynamic sites but i’d like to do this old school where i can offer people isolated mySQL databases or something for some project (i’m thinking PHP based fanlistings), which means i could do it the old school way of… people ask me to run it and i do it for them. but i kind of want to let people have access to be able to do it themselves just short of giving them SSH access which isn’t happening

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We had a very sunny day, peaking at 19°C. This not only decoyed me out, but also plenty motorcycle terrorists. Eh fuckwits, nobody wants to listen to your bloody engine and exhaust noise, keep it quiet for fuck’s sake! Many of your rider collegues can manage it, too, so should you.

I had some sore muscles after yesterday’s waste paper collection with the scouts. So, I only went for a short trip to my closest backyard mountain. Watching two rock climbers was interesting. That’s not something I see very often.

Image

https://lyse.isobeef.org/waldspaziergang-2025-03-09/

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iOS 18.4 to Include AI-Generated Review Summaries in App Store
Apple has begun rolling out AI-generated summaries of App Store reviews in the latest iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 beta releases. The feature uses large language models to analyze user reviews and condense common themes into a short paragraph.

Image

First spotted by _[Macworld](https://www.macworld.com/article/2628166/ios-18-4-beta-introduces-ai-powere … ⌘ Read more

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it’s been while since I’d stopped #window-manager hopping and just settled with #Herbstluftwm but I’m NGL, the River #Wayland compositor is starting to grow on me… I’m still not sure if it’s just me but something about it feels clean and snappy. The shortcuts in the vanilla/example configuration feel a bit clunky, but then again, it’s just me being used to the same old ones I keep adopting and replicating across WMs. I’ve got 0 energy for ricing so I’ll just roll with the vanilla config as is (maybe add in a short-cut for a launcher but that will be it).

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Mathieu Pasquet: slixmpp v1.9.0
It has not been too long since 1.8.6 and here we are with 1.9.0, which is kind of a major release (following the well-known pridever numbering scheme).

Long story short, there are at least two major changes warranting the new number (and plenty of other things, read on!):

  • switching the cython jid implementation for a rust one, which will be faster and more correct
  • removing the xmpp.process() method (planned since the 1.8.0 release)

Special thanks to nicoco … ⌘ Read more

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In-reply-to » This document is the result of a series of discussions between Robert "Uncle Bob" Martin and John Ousterhout, held between September 2024 and February 2025. The text addresses three main topics: method length, comments, and Test Driven Development (TDD). https://github.com/johnousterhout/aposd-vs-clean-code/blob/main/README.md This is something to read and reflect on for days.

Amd of course, TDD! I tried that, but it doesn’t work all that great for me in its strict form. I have the feeling that coming up with a single new failing test, making it pass, maybe some refactoring, rinse and repeat wastes significantly more time than doing it in – what they call – the “bundle” approach. Coming up with several tests in advance and then writing the code or vise versa is usually much quicker. I do find that more enjoyable, it also helps me to reduce smaller context switches. I can focus on either the tests or the production code.

As for the potentially reduced code coverage with a non-TDD approach, I can easily see which parts are lacking tests and hand them in later. So, that’s largely a specious argument. Granted, I can forget to check the coverage or simply ignore it.

I agree with John, TDD results in less elegant code or requires more refactoring to tidy it up. Sometimes, it’s also not entirely clear at the beginning how the API should really look like. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. Especially when experimenting or trying out different approaches. With TDD, I then also have to refactor the tests which is not only annoying, but also involves the danger of accidentally breaking them.

TDD only works really well, if you have super tiny functions. But we already established that I typically don’t like tiny methods just for the purpose of them being extremely short.

When fixing a bug, I usually come up with a failing test case first to verify that my repaired code later actually resolves the problem. For new code, it depends, sometimes tests first, sometimes the productive code first. Starting off with the tests requires the API to be well defined beforehand.

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In-reply-to » This document is the result of a series of discussions between Robert "Uncle Bob" Martin and John Ousterhout, held between September 2024 and February 2025. The text addresses three main topics: method length, comments, and Test Driven Development (TDD). https://github.com/johnousterhout/aposd-vs-clean-code/blob/main/README.md This is something to read and reflect on for days.

@andros@twtxt.andros.dev Just before the pandemic, we watched Uncle Bob videos once a week in the lunch break. While almost all of my old teammates agreed with his views, I partially found them to be very odd and even counterproductive.

I didn’t come across John Ousterhout or any of his work before, at least not deliberately. So, this document is my first contact.

I only finished the chapter on comments and I totally agree with John so far. This document just manifests to me how weird Bob’s view is on certain subjects.

I always disagreed with the concept of a maximum method length. Sure, generally, shorter functions are probably better, but it always depends. And I’ve certainly seen super short methods that just made the code flow even worse to follow. While “one function should only do one thing” is a nice general rule, I’m 100% in team John with the shown examples. There are cases, where this doesn’t help readability at all. Not even close.

To me, a function always has to justify its existence. Either by reusing it at least at another place or by coming up with dedicated tests for it. But if it is just called once and there are no tests, I almost always decide against it. Personally, I don’t mind longer methods. We just recently had a discussion about that and I lost against two other workmates who are more in Uncle Bob’s camp, they refactored one medium sized method into three very short ones. Luckily, we agree on most other topics.

Lol, what!? The shorter the method, the longer the variables inside? I first thought I misread or the writeup mixed it up. I’ll always do it the other way around.

I’ve been also bitten badly by outdated comments in the past, but Bob must have worked on really terrible projects to end up with such an attitude to dislike comments. Oh well. No doubt, I’ve come across by several orders of magnitude more useless comments, in my experience (autogenerated) JavaDocs fall in the category more frequently than not. So, I know that there are different types of comments. A comment doesn’t automatically mean that it is good and justified.

But I also partially agree with Bob and John and think that a good name has a proper chance to save a comment. Though, when in doubt, I go John’s route and use a shorter name with a comment rather than use a kilometer long identifier. Writing good comments typically takes some time, sometimes much longer than writing the code. It regularly takes me several minutes. It’s a hard art.

I perhaps should read up on John’s work. He seems to be more reasonable and likeminded. :-) Let me continue to complete this document.

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Short summary of Project2025 and Trump’s plans for the US:

  • Abolish the Federal Reserve
    Why? To end what is seen as an unelected, centralized body that exerts too much influence over the economy and monetary policy, replacing it with a more transparent, market-driven approach.

  • Implement a national consumption tax
    Why? To replace the current federal income tax system, simplify taxation, and increase government revenue through a broader base that includes all consumers.

  • Lower corporate tax rates
    Why? To promote business growth, increase investment, and stimulate job creation by reducing the financial burden on companies.

  • Deregulate environmental policies
    Why? To reduce government intervention in the economy, particularly in energy and natural resources sectors, and to foster a more business-friendly environment.

  • Restrict abortion access
    Why? To align with conservative pro-life values and overturn or limit abortion rights, seeking to restrict the practice at a federal level.

  • Dismantle LGBTQ+ protections
    Why? To roll back protections viewed as promoting LGBTQ+ rights in areas like employment and education, in line with traditional family values.

  • Eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs
    Why? To end policies that are seen as divisive and to promote a merit-based system that prioritizes individual achievements over group identity.

  • Enforce stricter immigration policies, including mass deportations and detentions
    Why? To prioritize border security, reduce illegal immigration, and enforce existing laws more aggressively, as part of a broader strategy to safeguard U.S. sovereignty.

  • Eliminate the Department of Education
    Why? To reduce federal control over education and shift responsibilities back to local governments and private sectors, arguing that education decisions should be made closer to the community level.

  • Restructure the Department of Justice
    Why? To ensure the department aligns more closely with the administration’s priorities, potentially reducing its scope or focus on areas like civil rights in favor of law-and-order policies.

  • Appoint political loyalists to key federal positions
    Why? To ensure that government agencies are headed by individuals who are committed to advancing the administration’s policies, and to reduce the influence of career bureaucrats.

  • Develop training programs for appointees to execute reforms effectively
    Why? To ensure that political appointees are equipped with the knowledge and skills necessary to implement the proposed changes quickly and effectively.

  • Provide a 180-day transition plan with immediate executive orders
    Why? To ensure that the incoming administration can swiftly implement its agenda and make major changes early in its term without delay.

Do y’all agree with any/all/some of these poliices? Hmmm 🤔

#Project2025 #US #Trump

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Some of the country’s most coveted voters are fed up with American democracy
John Sakellariadis,    -  Politico

_Stephan: This, I think, encapsulates where American voters stand in both parties. I think much of this is driven by the research paper on Humanity’s Precognition that I posted to SR a short while ago. If you haven;t read it I suggest you do (go to the SR archive). WHat I don’t understand is why the Democractic Party cannot seem to compreh … ⌘ Read more

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