“Signing in just got easier!”, the website threatened
The ecstasy of triumph / The agony of defeat
Bluesky has such a nice web experience (“even” on mobile), responding instantly and scrolling beautifully; I groan whenever I load a Mastodon or Twitter webpage. I do not have a Bluesky-shaped hole in my soul, but damned if the nice web experience doesn’t make me want to try it out.
For readability
Wednesday, November 20, 2024
Defenders of short lines in source code have won the day when it comes to defaults from automatic formatters, but when I look at the results I don’t understand why. The last 6 lines here are the same as the first 14, and it looks much more readable to me.
For readability we recommend against using more than 80 characters
I don’t mind this as a proverb, but like many proverbs, it would benefit from an equal and opposite counter-proverb.
4 Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him.
5 Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.
Perhaps:
For readability, break lines at 80 characters.
For readability, do not break statements into multiple lines.
Wednesday, November 13, 2024 →
Are there any positive effects of a system full of demons which you can ward off with an incantation beginning with THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” ? If yes, what are they?
Wednesday, November 13, 2024 →
I am made to understand that it is stylistically incorrect to underline hyperlinks, but, with apologies to my typographical betters, it is hypertextually incorrect to do otherwise. An underlined link is rarely a detriment; its absence often is.
Which side does the rendering again?
Tuesday, November 12, 2024
So-called “server-side rendering” is actually “server-side serializing, network streaming, and then client-side rendering”, in contrast to “client-side rendering” which is actually “server-side serializing, network streaming, manipulation by JavaScript, and then client-side rendering”. By this logic, programs that can be built with only a C compiler use “server-side compilation”, while programs that require Make or GNU Autotools use “client-side compilation”.
In the cloud, you must pay the piper, who, one must always remember, charges more than you’d expect for egress
Last night at Lazarus
Finally, the web is taking cues from the best UX in the world (PBX phone trees)
(to be clear you have to type “1” or “2” in the little box and then click the button with your mouse)
I miss Twitter bots. Wish fediverse hosting was easier… not sure I care to be manually approved for botsin.space 🙄 or for that matter to register a new account on any hosted server for every silly bot idea I can think of. It should be as easy as RSS.
I cannot abide the hideous portmanteau “transpile”, sewn together as it is from two words which would perfectly convey the intent in every single case, created intentionally as a distinction without a difference.
There’s nothing important left unsaid because it’s too hard to write online. Nothing wrong with it being even easier, but for decades it’s been the moral equivalent of single-cent bid/ask spreads.
Nominitive determinism, OpenAI edition
Monday, September 30, 2024
Enjoying the alternatives to human intelligence brought to us by the Alt Man
Wednesday, September 25, 2024 →
The reason it’s hard to draw a line in the sand to determine the line for “true” artificial intelligence is not because it’s hard to recognize intelligence, but because it is hard to know ourselves. “What will it feel like when …?” sounds easy but is actually fortune telling.
I wish my podcast player did automatic text transcription - even a bad LLM would be okay, and even paying a cloud LLM per request would be ok. I also wish it let me mark a timestamp as important so I could go back and find it later.
shiftwidth=3
Thursday, August 15, 2024
Like everyone, I have my own code formatting opinions. Whenever the urge to share them gets too great, I try to keep in mind the senior architect from many jobs ago who believed that the best tab width was 3. I suspect that some state education agencies still run scripts indented to three spaces.
Made a mezcal old fashioned (mezcal, orange bitters, Agave syrup) again, but added a pinch of salt for the first time tonight. Deliciousness metric improved ~30%.
Stuff like this makes me want to make my own game. Something cool about not sending a link but physically carrying around or handing someone a thing you made. Perhaps not a game ruthlessly optimized for fun, but a game-like experience designed to be enjoyed in a few moments.
Recently reminded of the Trent Reznor Prize For Tricky Embedding, for which nominations continue into the 2020s.