Kerrick

We never got a new edition of Programming in Lua for 5.4... does that mean we won't ever get one for 5.5?

With O'Sassy specifically, the end of life problem solves itself. If the original vendor stops offering the software, a third party offering the software is not competing with the original vendor. Thus, the third party can offer paid hosting for the software if the original vendor does not.

Or am I reading it wrong? I am not a lawyer.

Do you accept contributions?

Consider Hashcards: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46264492

I think that's a good thing. If you learned a false fact based on a typo, you may want to treat the true fact like a brand new fact to be learned.

"We use AI to build the tools because we use them in cursor or Visual Studio or code or wherever else people are making our stuff. I use AI a bunch." https://37signals.com/podcast/listener-questions/

"Today we’re introducing Fizzy. Kanban as it should be, not as it has been. [...] we’ll host your account for just $20/month for unlimited cards and unlimited users. [...] And here’s a surprise... Fizzy is open source! If you’d prefer not to pay us, or you want to customize Fizzy for your own use, you can run it yourself for free forever." https://x.com/jasonfried/status/1995886683028685291

I've been having a hard time finding an (in-production) mp3 player that doesn't have a web browser.

I don't understand. They've seen the contributions. How can they possibly do a clean-room implementation to avoid copyright infringement? (Let alone how tangled up in the history of the codebase they must be...)

Macs used to come with iWeb. https://www.apple.com/welcomescreen/ilife/iweb-3/

These days you can buy paid software to do this:

- $110 https://blocsapp.com

- $90 https://realmacsoftware.com/rapidweaver-classic/

- $80 https://sitely.app

- $30 https://bootstrapstudio.io

- $0 https://www.silex.me

- $0 https://wordpress.org/plugins/simply-static/

- $0 until recently, https://web.archive.org/web/20240410200646/https://grapesjs....

RapidWeaver Classic calls itself a subscription and sets up autopay, but you can immediately cancel and keep that version forever, like Jetbrains.

> rural areas where cars are a necessity

> It's not clear that it's still possible to function in society today with out a cell phone

Like I said... I've likely suggested cutting something you now consider necessary consumption. If you thought one "can't just give that up nowadays," I'm not saying you're right or wrong. I'm just hoping you acknowledge that what people consider optional consumption has changed, which means people consume a lot more.

---

As an aside, I live in a rural area. The population of my county is about 17,000 and the population of its county seat is about 3,000. We're a good 40 minutes away from the city that centers the Metropolitan Statistical Area. A 1 bedroom apartment is $400/mo and a 2 bedroom apartment is $600/mo. In one month, minimum wage will be $15/hr.

Some folks here do live without a car. It is possible. They get by in exactly the ways I described (except some of the Amish/Mennonites, who also use horses). It's not preferred (except by some of the Amish/Mennonites), but one can make it work.

You can consume a lot less on a surprisingly small salary, at least in the U.S.

But it requires giving up things a lot of people don't want to, because consuming less once you are used to consuming more sucks. Here is a list of things people can cut from their life that are part of the "consumption has gone up" and "new categories of consumption were opened" that ovi256 was talking about:

- One can give up cell phones, headphones/earbuds, mobile phone plans, mobile data plans, tablets, ereaders, and paid apps/services. That can save $100/mo in bills and amortized hardware. These were a luxury 20 years ago.

- One can give up laptops, desktops, gaming consoles, internet service, and paid apps/services. That can save another $100/months in bills and amortized hardware. These were a luxury 30 years ago.

- One can give up imported produce and year-round availability of fresh foods. Depending on your family size and eating habits, that could save almost nothing, or up to hundreds of dollars every month. This was a luxury 50 years ago.

- One can give up restaurant, take-out, and home pre-packaged foods. Again depending on your family size and eating habits, that could save nothing-to-hundreds every month. This was a luxury 70 years ago.

- One can give up car ownership, car rentals, car insurance, car maintenance, and gasoline. In urban areas, walking and public transit are much cheaper options. In rural areas, walking, bicycling, and getting rides from shuttle services and/or friends are much cheaper options. That could save over a thousand dollars a month per 15,000 miles. This was a luxury 80 years ago.

I could keep going, but by this point I've likely suggested cutting something you now consider necessary consumption. If you thought one "can't just give that up nowadays," I'm not saying you're right or wrong. I'm just hoping you acknowledge that what people consider optional consumption has changed, which means people consume a lot more.

> as a starting point

That's the thing... Agile processes do position themselves as a starting point, and suggest that once the team understands it by living it (but not sooner!) they might adapt it and customize it.

From The Art of Agile Development, 2nd Edition by James Shore et al. (the most recent eXtreme Programming book, if you will):

> As a result, although it’s tempting to customize your Agile method from the beginning, it’s best to start with a by-the-book approach. The practices that are the least familiar are the ones that are most tempting to cut, but they’re the ones you need most, if you’re really going to be Agile. They’re the ones that involve the biggest change in philosophy.

> Mastering the art of Agile development requires real-world experience using a specific, well-defined Agile method. Start with a by-the-book approach. Put it into practice—the whole thing—and spend several months refining your usage and understanding why it works. Then customize. Choose one of the rough edges, make an educated guess about what happens, and repeat.

From The Scrum Book by Jeff Sutherland et al.:

> It’s important to understand the rules, and it’s even useful to follow them most of the time. But reading the rulebook of chess won’t make you a great chess player. After learning the rules, the player then learns about common strategies for the game; the player may also learn basic techniques at this level. Next is learning how to combine strategies you learn from others while maybe adding some of your own. Ultimately, one can transcend any formalism and proceed from the cues one receives from one’s center, from one’s instinct. [...]

> Some day, long from now, you may even outgrow these patterns as you evolve them and define your own. There are no points for doing Scrum, and these patterns are the gate through which a highly driven team passes on the road to the top echelons of performance.

> Working in an office as a preference is one that naturally relies on the control of other people.

Not at all. Working in an office as a preference is one that can instead rely on working with other people who also share that preference. No control is necessary.

My blog.

- I blog with my real name, which includes an uncommon first name. It's easy for hiring managers to search the web for.

- My blog is linked from the website I host on the domain name I use for my email address, including for job applications. Anybody I email is likely to follow that thread.

> giving them justification to deny other people the same opportunity you have

I don't fear they'll deny others the opportunity for remote work. The company is "headquartered" in California, but I don't know if they even lease an office anymore. The CTO lives in the upper midwest, the architect lives on the east coast, my manager lives along the Mississippi River, and I live in the Ozarks.

> enjoy the benefits more than you suffer the drawbacks

Yes. I'm sorry, I thought I made that clear in the post. The benefits of remote work include, but are not limited to: no stress or time from commuting, an opportunity for geographic arbitrage, and the ability to build a better lifestyle around the lack of a commute. Beyond just the remote worker themself, a society that transitioned all office work to remote would also gain more benefits: more efficient use of real estate with entire office buildings rendered unnecessary, less chance of land value distortion due to centralization of workers, and less pollution due to fewer commutes.

I'm glad to also criticize in-office work for having other drawbacks. For example, I was rear-ended commuting to work more than once, the family needed the expense of two cars, we spent more on clothing, and the ambient level of noise being above 35 dBA was annoying.

For some reason I'm able to say "I don't know" to coworkers and superiors at work with no problem, but I have a much harder time online where it may affect future employers' opinions of me.

I wonder how much of that comes down to culture. Since going remote I have come to wonder if a direct-message-first chat culture is harmful to collaboration.

I am indeed learning, working to close those gaps.

For automated testing, I'm in the middle of reading Developer Testing by Alexander Tarlinder, with xUnit Test Patterns by Gerard Meszaros coming close behind. I'm also working through Test-Driven Development: By Example with my wife as we have time.

For SQL, I read Grokking Relational Database Design by Qiang Hao last winter, and I started SQL Queries for Mere Mortals by John Viescas this week. Sadly, my flub with "left inner join" was not a joke.

For OOP, I've been on a whirlwind tour: OOA&D With Applications by Booch et al., Object Thinking by David West, POODR and 99 Bottles of OOP by Sandi Metz, Domain-Driven Design by Eric Evans, IDDD and DDDD by Vaughn Vernon, Design Patterns in Ruby by Russ Olsen, Clean Architecture by Robert C. Martin, and Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns by Kent Beck. Still on the docket are Design Patterns by the Gang of Four, PoEAA by Martin Fowler, Smalltalk, Objects, and Design by Chamond Liu, and Object Design by Rebecca Wirfs-Brock.

> confessing that you don't know something and gleefully stopping there is not much better [...] we shouldn't let shamelessness about what we don't know limit us either

I promise you, this was not gleeful and this was not shameless. Shame and fear affected me for months on these issues. And I'm not stopping there... From the end of the article: "I’m going to continue to work on skill building, but now I feel free to write about it. If [...] you’d like to help me fill [my knowledge gaps], [...]"

> if you want to write a blog about a topic, then part of the requirements here is that you do hold yourself to a high standard

A high standard of writing, maybe. But plenty of great stories come from those who are striving for a high standard, not just those already in the upper echelon. It's what makes this place different from academic journals.

That incident catalyzed the fear that suppressed my desire to participate online for months. I figured that if I couldn't talk about it now, I might never participate again.

I suppose I included the last section as a "confession" because I spent years pre-pandemic wishing I could go remote, talking loudly about how open office spaces were bad, etc. That, plus it's embarrassing to admit that I dislike remote work even though I am a remote worker. And not just a remote worker, but an enfranchised remote worker living 3 hours away from the nearest city with an international airport. I made the mistake of rebuilding my life around remote work before I had experienced it long-term.

> Somehow we were better at using remote tools while literally in the same office than some teams are at using them now while fully remote.

I couldn't agree more. I pushed to get the place I worked for to use Slack when it first launched, moving us off AIM (ha!). Our use of Slack when we shared an office in the twenty-teens was so much better than the use I've seen of Slack/competitors on fully-remote teams.

I wonder if it's because the failure mode was, as you said, to "drop by." Now the failure mode is... just failure.

> made me roll my eyes, and it's reductive in the same way as saying office work "sucks."

Yes, "remote work sucks" is reductive, but I elaborated beyond the heading. Also, I wouldn't disagree with "office work sucks." Remote work simply has its warts, too.

> just another problem you can solve with practice

Perhaps, but practice alone clearly isn't enough. I've been working remotely since 2020 and it hasn't gotten more enjoyable. I would love to solve that problem, though. I read Remote: Office Not Required by Jason Fried in the past, but that was written a long time ago. I've added more recent works (Effective Remote Work by James Stanier and The Async-First Playbook by Sumeet Gayathri Moghe) to my reading list.

"Windows NT" the brand, not "Windows" with NT the kernel.

It could be following PLAI:

https://plai.org/

I've been using a featureful dumb phone (Sunbeam F1 Pro, Juniper) for a few weeks now. Before this I've been using an iPhone since iPhone 6s, and before that an Android phone since Nexus 4. My new phone runs BasicOS, an Android remix that removes Google Play, removes all web browsers, and comes with a suite of custom default apps built to nice with physical buttons (T9-style).

My phone has calls, SMS, MMS, email (IMAP), calendar (CDAV), contacts (CDAV), navigation (offline and Waze), note-taking, voice memos, a music player, weather, and voice-to-text via Azure's AI models. The only things I've missed so far are:

- Two-factor authentication via TOTP and HOTP. I loathe SMS-based 2FA, and not every service supports Email-based 2FA. This has been so annoying I've considered jailbreaking it, learning Kotlin and Android development, and releasing an MIT-licensed application for the company to bundle with the phone.

- A way to scan QR codes. It would be fine if I could just extract the text into a Note.

- The ability to record a call without an additional device. I've been dealing with a medical billing kerfuffle and it was much easier to disclose and press record, than to disclose and find another recording device.

- The ability to send and read SMS/MMS messages from my MacBook Pro. It should be possible with the Bluetooth HFP, which many cars use to enable the same thing. Sadly, Tunabelly Software's app "Handsfree 2" was pulled from the market and I could not get Sustainable Softworks' app "Phone Amego" to work. I've considered building a TUI for this purpose.

- At first I missed Audible, but then I learned two important facts. First, I can listen to my Audible books on my Kindle as long as I connect a bluetooth speaker (including Ford SYNC). And second, Audible and iTunes for Windows integrate with each other to allow me to burn Audible books to CDs, 80 minutes at a time.

- I really miss having O'Reilly Learning Platform. I used to listen to audiobooks on there all the time, and now I've got no good solution for it. I've replaced that time with Audible books (which are rarely about software). I still get plenty of software book reading done when I can focus my eyes on it, though.

There have also been some UX problems, which are livable:

- The camera is not extremely high quality. I've taken to borrowing my wife's iPad to take photos of my whiteboard when I need to preserve something before I erase it. It's fine for texting photos to friends, but not for document scanning.

- The music player is good for music, but not great for audiobooks and podcasts. It doesn't remember where you are in the middle of an audio file when you play it again later (which would, admittedly, be weird for music).

But the benefits have been incredible:

- I no longer stay up way too late every night pushing pixels past my peepers. Instead, I stay up way too late only some nights, reading technology books.

- I no longer browse social media, play puzzle games, or browse news headlines every time I'm bored for a few minutes. Instead, I contemplate (what my plans for tomorrow are, a recent problem I failed to solve, what that odd sound is, how pretty the clouds are, etc.).

- I no longer have to put up with Liquid Glass. (I also replaced my Apple Watch with a Casio LWS2200H and downgraded my MacBook Pro to Sequoia.)

- I no longer have to be concerned with anybody but my carrier tracking me.

- I've been less aware of state, national, and world news--which has been a huge boon to my mental health. Conversations with friends and coworkers still keep me apprised of the things that are important enough to need to know. All the other crap just passes me by. Nothing is shoving headline notifications at me, and the easy moments to browse headlines have been replaced by devicelessness.

That's really interesting to me. I consider writing to be a "raw technical skill." Programming and writing are inextricably linked. The lexicon of software borrows heavily from writing: language, syntax, grammar, statement, and expression. Even the way we critique code heavily overlaps with how an editor critiques writing: consistent, readable, elegant, concise or verbose, and follows a style guide.

> Just because you're not emotionally ready to do something doesn't mean you're not trying enough

The author specifically addressed this.

> My approach [...] was the only one that seemed available given my spiritual and psychological resources at the time. But my orientation to the problem became fixed in time at that point of low agency, and it never occurred to me to revisit it as my capacity for action increased.

They acknowledged that one's capacity to Actually Try is sometimes limited. The article is about getting stuck in that mindset and assuming you're still limited, even when you do later have the emotional resources to bear against the problem.

I was still on my iPhone 12 mini until about a month ago. I was ready to buy an iPhone 16 Mini on launch day if it existed. My wife was on her iPhone 13 mini until about a week ago, and would have bought an iPhone 17 Mini if that was on offering instead of the iPhone Air. Apple's continued refusal to offer a newer Mini, combined with the iOS 26 bug & accessibility nightmare, got us to switch. We now each carry a Sunbeam F1 Pro.

The closest I've found is VeraCrypt, which is near the edge of what I'd call layperson-friendly. But if you store a VeraCrypt drive on the cloud, you'll need to re-upload the entire encrypted file--usually quite large--every time you change anything at all. That's a _lot_ of bandwidth, and likely to be quite slow to sync.

My personal preference is 24" nominal for 4K (a 23.8" 4K display has 185ppi), running at @2x (1080p equivalent), because I keep my monitors a bit further back on my desk than others do. I run a triple Dell P2415Q setup. It was great when I started, but as more websites assume 1080 CSS pixels of width means I want tablet mode, its utility has decayed. Because of that I've gone from 3 vertical to 1 horizontal flanked by 2 vertical. These aren't made anymore, and for years nobody else was making monitors at this density. It seems they've become popular again since COVID, and ViewSonic even released the VP2488-4K this year, complete with Thunderbolt 4 and DCI-P3. Asus's offering at this size & resolution is the PA24US.

Another great option is 22" nominal (a 21.5" 4K display has 204ppi), also running at @2x. This is better if you keep the monitor closer to the keyboard side of your desk, or if your desk is not very deep. These are hard to find, and even when you do they're likely to be a portable monitor. Asus has a page for a PQ22UC but I can't tell if it is no longer available, or no longer sold in the US.