bstar77

A project I took on about a month ago: How reverse engineering, deterministic conversion, a clean C engine, pixel-exact rendering, and real-time AdLib synthesis rebuilt Lemmings for a modern one-bit handheld.

Just wanted to share how reverse engineering old games for modern devices is surprisingly viable and detailed the techniques used to make it happen.

I have a Kindle Scribe Colorsoft. I’ve been able to upload pretty much any relevant media, primarily epub, pdf and images. I just use send to kindle via web or email. It’s not censoring or rejecting content. Not sure what benefit jailbreaking would have.

Part of it is that the data pipelines in the Mac are far more efficient with its soldered memory and enhanced buses. You would have to use something like Halo Strix on the PC side see similar performance upticks at a somewhat affordable price bracket. Things like Samba/VPN mounting should not matter much (unless your mac network interface is significantly better), but you might see a general snappiness improvement. Heavy compute tasks will be a give and take with modern PC hardware, but Apple is still the king of efficiency.

I still use an M1 MB Air for work mostly docked... the machine is insane for what it can still do, it sips power and has a perfect stability track record for me. I also have a Halo Strix machine that is the first machine that I can run linux and feel like I'm getting a "mac like" experience with virtually no compromises.

He was also a shill for Microsoft back when they were trying to destroy Linux.

I’ve moved to rust for some select projects and it’s actually been a bit easier… I converted an electron app to rust/tauri… perf improvement was massive and development was quicker. I’m rethinking the stacks I should be focused on.

Completely disagree. It’s like telling typists that they need to hand write to truly understand their craft. Syntax is just a way of communicating a concept to the machine. We now have a new (and admitidly imperfect) way of doing that. New skills are going to be required. Computer science is going to have to adapt.

I have been running dangerously, but I always make sure to start a new session, have claude read the docs (I have already generated) related to the project in question, and then scope the work to just those things in the current sandbox. It can technically go outside of the sandbox in this mode, but I've never had it happen.

IMO, if you are not running in the dangerous mode then you are really missing out on one of the best aspects of claude code- its ability to iterate. If you have to confirm each iteration then it's just not practical.

I have been primarily in the tiling window manager space for the past 5 years… that said I’ve been driving Cosmic on my NixOS workstation and I’m really impressed… it looks great, is simple, performs well and does tiling quite well. It’s not going to take me away from Niri, but it’s my goto suggestion now for any one getting into Linux.

Am I the only one that uses ohmyposh with fish? I have a killer custom posh theme that I’ve been using for years and the performance is fantastic.

I just had my iphone 12 mini battery replaced. This thing performs as well as the day I bought it. It will be a sad day when I have to "upgrade".

This guys is really on a mission. Is there really a war against SPAs? Well designed SPAs can be incredible.

Yeah, I should have made that more clear. You are 100% correct, I manage 5 other managers and they have about 10 devs each under them. I do work directly with virtually all of the devs and handle the majority of PRs so we are all one big team.

I have 5 manager under me, so the 60 are not direct reportees. I do interact directly with most of the devs, but the other managers do a good deal of the lifting too.

I'm the senior manager, I have about 5 managers under me so I don't have 60 reportees.

This article is pretty on point with my experience. I'm a "senior technical" manager (of about 60 engineers) and with that comes a ton of responsibility that pulls me away from coding at every turn. I have to be in every call, I have to know everything that's going on and I have to be able to be able to communicate all of this in ways that advocate for the team but also navigate the politics of the organization.

All that said, I often get criticism that I should not be picking up coding tasks every sprint. There seems to be some unwritten rule that remaining a coder is a net negative when you start tickling the upper management ranks. On the one hand I'm told that I need to train the other managers to be more like me and then on the other hand I'm told that I code too much, I'm going to burn out and need to find ways have others do the work.

I personally think being able to do all kinds of coding tasks (prototyping, bug fixes, major time sensitive features, etc) does a lot for me as a manager... the team respects me, I stay close to the code so I can speak about it as well as anyone can and I can contribute to just about anything if the need arises. If I ever get promoted to Director level then I probably will have to step away from coding as an official duty, but I'll happily keep enjoying that part of my job for now.

As it turns out, printer hardware/software is something I specifically don't want any innovation. My 10 year old color and B&W Brother (wifi) laser printers are part of a very short list of "just works" tech I use regularly that require no additional software or firmware updates.

I've been thinking about this a bit lately and I think it's actually less about fundamentals and more of an issue with process. I'm not saying that fundamentals are not essential, but we often don't have the time to learn all aspects of a complex system.

There is definitely a lot of overlap here, but I have a finite amount of time that I can put towards solving problems. I've been thrown into AI over the past 6 months and know none of the fundamentals of this space, but I can still be very productive.

My process now is to know how to pull up docs quickly (in my editor), take advantage of the LSP, use my debugger and learn the systems on the fly. I'm probably not going to take courses in AI, Data Science and other aspects of this discipline as it will only have a marginal affect on my daily activities.

My job is to understand the flow of data, so I need to focus on that and make sure my process, tooling and access to documentation are the best possible to accomplish that.

The article is just saying a sedentary lifestyle is not healthy. I easily sit for 10 hours per day, but I also work out 6 days per week. I'm sure I'm fine as long as my circulation is good. Exercise is the silver bullet.

Thanks, I will give them a look. I have yabai installed, but I really need this machine to be stable and secure and yabai is neither.

I have a Mac and a Linux box for work. I have been using my Macbook for some AI work I'm doing, but my workflow has been a mess. I had 4 desktops going, 2 projects opened w/debugging, many browser tabs opened to various docs, MS Teams, Outlook, etc. I don't even run Apple music anymore because it makes my laptop too hot.

On my mac the desktops constantly change position for unknown reasons. Managing windows is a huge pain on each desktop because it's very easy to obscure them... there is also a ton of wasted space with so much gui noise. CMD tabbing through apps is tedious and inflexible.

I posted some screenshots of my Linux setup in a different comment. My Linux workflow is night and day. All of my projects are streamlined on their own workspace, I can jump between tasks with no mental effort, everything is at my fingertips, I make less mistakes (working in the wrong terminal or editor), everything is done with vi bindings, etc. I have custom shortcuts set for things I need and I have multiple browsers that I can overlay on any workspace if I need to.

I can't quantify my productivity increase, but I know it's there. I also know I'm much happier when I'm working now because I'm much more organized and focused. I'm also not dealing with a Laptop (Macbook) that sounds like a rocket about to take off. My Linux box operates under 1% CPU load all the time. My point is not to say my setup is better (I'm not an evangelist on these things), but that I found a huge productivity boost for my needs with a minimal setup. I was very skeptical when I started out and it was a combination of being out of my comfort zone and being incredulous to a radically different way of using a computer.

When I pair with other developers the difference is obvious. Being able to work efficiently in a complex environment is a skill that not many have unfortunately.

This is what my desktop looks like: https://i.imgur.com/Mo9ku4W.png https://i.imgur.com/pq3fwBk.png

I use Kitty for my terminal, i3 for my window manager, vifm for my file manager, vim/neovim for my editor and Firefox. All of my virtual desktops handle different things, like watching movies, doing AI projects, web work, game development, graphics work, etc.

You can do all of this stuff in Windows or on a Mac, but I'm using minimal resources with a highly streamlined workflow. Everything that I can script, I script. I also use Zsh with quite a few plugins so the terminal itself isn't so important. I use Kitty because it's fast, can render graphics, is well documented and has a ton of features.

Two years ago, I transitioned to a minimalist tiling window manager (WM) despite my initial reservations about them. This change was prompted by my desire to experiment with high-end hardware and a 4K multi-monitor setup in a tiled environment. Surprisingly, the switch turned out to be a game-changer, boosting my productivity significantly, with around 90% of my tasks now occurring in the terminal. Traditional criticisms of terminals, such as memorization challenges and lack of guidance, no longer apply, thanks to modern features like auto-completion, interactive history, suggestions, and plugins like Git integration. Unfortunately, the reluctance to embrace this minimalist, terminal-centric approach may hinder power users from unlocking its full potential due to long-standing biases and a fear of change.

I could not (respectfully) disagree more. It's true that you can get a (seemingly) working system out of the gate, but that's rarely where I experience issues with Gnome or KDE. My issues usually happen after errant updates.

To address all of the issues you are listing, I just use NixOS and call it a day. I have snapshot support, I can change channels on a whim, swap out kernels on a whim and rebuild everything on a whim. If I want to nuke everything, I can have a new system up and running in under an hour because I just build on my meticulously configured configuration.nix and various flakes.

My point is that I don't want my DE to dictate how my system works. I mainly use CLI tools and configs, but also use Gnome and XFCE tools for select things. In the past 2 years I've never had a build issue and I run on bleeding edge versions.

You stating that you use your PC to get work done (and not r/unixporn notoriety) insinuates that those that don't agree with you are obsessed with superficial things. I can just as easily say you lack the knowledge of how your computer works so you lash out to mask your ignorance. Remember, this isn't Reddit, some of us here know what we are talking about.

Openbox is a good floating wm if tilers aren't for you.

This is my DE free terminal-centric setup:

https://imgur.com/a/8mAoT2u

It took me about 3 weeks to figure everything out. You ideally need to use a distro where you can build from scratch (Arch/NixOS/Void/etc) if you want to truly be minimal. If you are OK using NixOS I can give you my configuration.nix.

That's fine, but you will gain that time back after the initial setup is done. Pretty soon you will be fighting the system rather than it working for you.

The point where Gnome tends to go to shit is when installing the new major/minor update.

This is all trivially easy to setup in any environment.

Apple probably wants to tap into the "Apple Watch Edition" crowd that will spend absurd money for the exclusivity and not complain much.

For someone that only runs 3 programs (terminal, emacs and firefox) gnome is a terrible choice. In fact, a desktop environment is a terrible choice.

> I want good text rendering and windows and buttons with rounded corners

You don't need gnome or KDE for this. I run a primarily terminal oriented desktop, but my GTK apps still look great. I still run picom and could easily do rounded corners if I wanted.

My point is that there are much better options than gnome if you want a beautiful minimal setup especially if you get into tilers.