anitil's comments

On: Bitter Lessons from the ISSpresso

[anitil]

I smiled my way through this entire thing. It's trivial and pointless, but what's the point of interstellar travel if we can't have a decent cup of coffee?

On: Scripty – A Minimal Scripting Language

[anitil]

There's a couple of examples in the repo [0] eg

  <ul :loop="$page.subpages()">
   <li href="$loop.it.link()" :text="$loop.it.title"></li>
  </ul>

Which allows you to inject scripting queries in the attribute strings (where you might, for example, define what 'page' and 'loop' mean in your state management code). There's also a markdown example too

[0] https://github.com/kristoff-it/scripty

On: How do I inform Windows that I'm writing a binary file?

[anitil]

Annoyingly I actually think '\r\n' is the correct line ending here - advance the paper and return the carriage, but I suppose unix took the simpler implementation which makes looping over characters, words (split by ' ') and lines (split by '\n') simpler as each loop only has a single comparison

[spauldo → anitil]

The carriage return and linefeed combo are the commands to move to the next line of a teletype. Other commands might (in theory) be used for this purpose on other devices. These are implementation details.

Text inside a computer doesn't need any of that just to signal a newline. UNIX chose to use a single line feed character as a line separator because there was no good reason to use two. MacOS chose a single carriage return for similar reasons. Anything going out to a printer or teletype would run through a device driver that would turn the newline character into whatever the device expects.

Windows copied DOS which copied CP/M which was a very basic program loader for 8-bit machines and didn't really have "drivers" like we think of them today. I'm guessing here, but I imagine they chose the teletype combo because that's what most serial printers understood and printing was a major use case for those machines. That was probably the right choice for CP/M, but I can't imagine Microsoft would choose it if they were developing Windows from scratch today.

[Joker_vD → anitil]

Yep, on Unixen the translation of CRLF to LF when printing to the terminal (and from CR to CRLF when reading input from the terminal) is done in the kernel, it's called "line discipline".

[poizan42 → Joker_vD]

And if you switch the tty from "cooked" to "raw" mode then it doesn't do the conversion, and a CR just moves the cursor back to the start of the line and a LF just moves the cursor one line down.

[fragmede → poizan42]

Which is how you do the fun spinny icons on the command line without having to invoke ncurses!

[freedomben → fragmede]

You can also just use a \r directly without a \n. For example:

    spin='/-\|'
    while true; do 
      i=$(( (i+1) % 4 ))
      printf "\r${spin:$i:1} Working..."
      sleep 0.1
    done

[freedomben → freedomben]

By the way yes, that is a subtle reference to the TOS computer, so it's best read in that voice :-)

On: Solod v0.1: Go ergonomics, practical stdlib, native C interop

[anitil]

I really like this idea because I like a lot about C (simple, little-to-no runtime) and a lot about go (multiple returns, explicit error checking, defer, struct tags, interfaces), but I like very little about C++, which people often suggest as a 'better C'. Of course you lose channels and goroutines, but depending on what you're working on that could be ok.

On: Scripty – A Minimal Scripting Language

[anitil]

I always enjoy reading about minimal languages and what they offer. In this case Kristoff has designed a small language that must define a single expression (no loops or variables etc). It reminds me a little bit of jq

On: I have officially retired from Emacs

[anitil]

Strangely enough I tried using vi mode for readline and hated it even though I use them constantly in vim. I just hated having to switch modes on my terminal

On: Why most product tours get skipped

[anitil]

Often I see that there's a new feature, and I'm interested in it, but my options are do the demo now, or hide it. But I want to do it later! I'm admittedly terrible at operating GUIs, so maybe it's just a me issue

[edoceo → anitil]

I want that too. Most of these tours interfere. A pattern I like is just a little dot indicator where the new thing is. It's not in the way. But if I click the dot, or it's menu item, then I see the tour.

Don't get in my face when I'm trying to get task done. Ain't nobody got time for that!

[plorg → anitil]

Perhaps I can interest you in the Firefox Mobile option: put a blue pip on the three dot menu and the "What's New" item that will never go away until you click on it.

[arthens → anitil]

I agree this is the silliest part! Even if you are interested in them, the only option is often now or never again. Even worse sometimes you open an app/site and the onboarding/what's new pops up with a delay and you end up accidentally dismissing it without even seeing what it was

On: Gap between national food production and food-based dietary guidance (2025)

[anitil]

For those wondering what the usual reason is - https://www.reddit.com/r/MapsWithoutNZ/

[rf15 → anitil]

That is just a subreddit, I don't really see where it describes the problem.

Anyway: It's because on the Mercator projection, it is a small point in the bottom right that easily gets overlooked or accidently cropped out.

[PinkMilkshake → rf15]

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

[anitil → rf15]

You're right I should have explained rather than throwing a link. Poor Tasmania suffers the same fate, even among Australians though I think the reason is more cultural

On: Data center land use issues are fake

[anitil]

I was going to comment about water issues, but of course that's already been covered as well [0].

[0] https://blog.andymasley.com/p/the-ai-water-issue-is-fake

On: Notes on a non-profit indicted for bank fraud

[anitil]

There's a few interesting threads in the article that I found interesting. One is about the aggregation of power using social pressure. I've heard whispers of similar things, but it was interesting to see the specifics of how it was built. The other is the use of Donor Advised Funds (which I hadn't heard about before) to have some anonymity over the direction of donations.