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ksherlockon The GitHub website is slow on Safari

Github is completely unusable on old Safari so it changes everything.

ksherlockon The GitHub website is slow on Safari

Firefox 115 is the last version that runs on 10.12, 10.13, and 10.14 (also Windows 7 and 8). At this point 115 is 2 years old and GitHub is only tested on bleeding edge browsers, apparently.

So GitHub is usable but there are a number of UI layout issues and searching within a file is sometimes a mess (eg, highlighting the wrong text, rendering text incorrectly, etc. maybe that's true for all browsers. you're better off viewing a file as text in raw mode)

ksherlockon macOS dotfiles should not go in –/Library/Application Support

On the 68K Mac applications, the executable code was also a resource ('CODE'). When they switched to PPC, PPC code went into the data fork.

ksherlockon M-x spook (Emacs mail amusement)

I found compose-email by accident when I accidentally typed C-X M (probably meant to ESC-X msomethingsomething). 95% of my init.el is disabling crap and re-binding keys to #'ignore.

ksherlockon Tesla insiders have sold more than 50% of their shares in the last year

If you think cars + robots is the future, Boston Dynamics is owned by Hyundai these days. (That was a ~$1 billion valuation 5 years ago.) Watch some of their videos. None of them feature a guy in a leotard doing the robot.

ksherlockon XSLT removal will break multiple government and regulatory sites

With xml/xslt, the browser fetches, eg, somefile.xml that looks like:

    <?xml version="1.0"?>
    <?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="somefile.xsl"?>
    ...

Then the browser fetch somefile.xsl and uses that to transform the xml into html (which is then rendered as per the uzhe).

Whether the browser does all that in C or C++ or Rust or Javascript or by sending it to an LLM is an implementation detail.

If the browser drops xslt support and just displays it as text (or syntax-hilighted xml), I, as the xml author, can't polyfill that by adding javascript to the xml because it won't be executed. You need to back up a level.

You could set up a web page that fetches the xml and fetch the xslt and transforms it into html and then displays it (so a browser in your browser so you can browse while you browse) but I wouldn't call that a polyfill exactly. If you're going to do that, it would be less work and a better user experience to do the transform server side.

ksherlockon Code formatting comes to uv experimentally

Long options are more of a GNU thing and GNU's Not Unix.

ksherlockon Margin debt surges to record high

The Federal Reserve will lower interest rates to keep that big, beautiful bubble. Donald Trump thinks interests should be 1%. There are 2 FRB governors (jockeying for a new chair) that have publicly called for lower interest rates. One FRB member (Adriana Kugler) unexpectedly resigned a couple weeks ago and will be replaced by the WH economist.

Just yesterday, the guy who was found liable in court for financial fraud demanded an FRB (Lisa Cook) resign after being accused of mortgage fraud. Do you suppose somebody in the WH is digging up dirt?

And of course, weekly rants, accusations of fraud, and musings of firing JPo.

ksherlockon Sequoia backs Zed

I hate to break it to you, but emacs was a product of the MIT AI lab.(prep.ai.mit.edu anyone?).

ksherlockon Digg.com is back

it's the missing link between slashdot and reddit.

ksherlockon How I Made Ruby Faster Than Ruby

You're the man now, dog.

ksherlockon Left to Right Programming

I don't know man. If a programmer can be replaced by a big old Tab key and a Homer Simpson keyboard bird, maybe LLM should take your job.

ksherlockon What would you name a new programming language?

imp. But only if it imperatively imports the implication operator.

ksherlockon My inbox is a mess from signing up for everything. How do you handle it?

Have you considered not signing up for shit?

ksherlockon Ask HN: Will Grok win as it will eventually train on data from Optimus androids?

Grok will win because the Boring company will find the mole people's secret underground lair where they keep a record of all human knowledge as well as socks that have gone missing from the dryer.

ksherlockon Print, a one-line BASIC program

And for those who do know ASCII off the top of their head, it's actually PETSCII. 205 (0xcd) is a right diagonal and 206 (0xce) is a left diagonal.

ASCII / (0x2f) and \ (0x5c) has three problems:

1. They're not as conveniently located (chr$(47+(rnd(1)*45) isn't quite as pretty)

2. They don't fill up character cell so there are gaps in the "maze"

3. PETSCII doesn't have a \ (0x5c is £)

ksherlockon A spellchecker used to be a major feat of software engineering (2008)

https://blog.codingconfessions.com/p/how-unix-spell-ran-in-6...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42752604

ksherlockon I tried every todo app and ended up with a .txt file

One bonus from just using sticky notes or plain paper: you might discover that note, 10 or 15 years later, in a long forgotten jacket pocket. 'Those were the days', you'll muse to yourself, as you crumple up and discard a shopping list: pizza; beer; condoms (12 pack).

ksherlockon GitHub is no longer independent at Microsoft after CEO resignation

Let's think about MicroSoft back in the 90s. There are no agent factories, whatever they are, but non-programmers are using Visual Basic, Excel, and Access to write their own software. Maybe throw in some ASP as well. (What if ClippyGPT had been available back in the day?) So thinking about that, if you ignore the buzzwords and squint, it kind of looks familiar.

Of course, none of this has anything to do with GitHub. Will they ~~agentify~~ enshittify Visual Source Safe as well?

ksherlockon GitHub is no longer independent at Microsoft after CEO resignation

They could spam you with low-quality AI (but I repeat myself) PRs. Maybe add some vaguely plausible but utterly incorrect bug reports as well.

Look at the some of the AI slop curl deals with -- https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2025/07/14/death-by-a-thousand-s... -- and imagine your issues list filled with that.

ksherlockon Ask HN: How can ChatGPT serve 700M users when I can't run one GPT-4 locally?

It's not waste heat if you only run it in the winter.

ksherlockon Someone keeps stealing, flying, fixing and returning this man's 1958 Cessna

It's probably just that new startup, Aero. It's like Turo, except airplanes instead of cars. Also, they don't tell the airplane owners.

But seriously, there are lots of airplanes sitting on ramps for months at a time with no security so it's a minor miracle it doesn't happen more often.

ksherlockon The BLS can't be replaced by the private sector

With this and SCOTUS neutering Humphrey’s Executor (with Federal Reserve penumbras -- for now) I'm wondering if there will be a push in the future to establish a 4th branch (call it the deep state branch) to protect what should be non-political stuff like the federal reserve and BLS statistics. Like the judiciary, nominated by President, confirmed by the senate, funded by congress, impeachable, limited executive authority, etc.

ksherlockon A fast, growable array with stable pointers in C

The cppreference documentation specifies "Random access - constant O(1)" (same as std::vector). There's a slight overhead from going through 2 pointers instead of 1 and keeping track of how many items are in the first bucket (so you know which bucket to check), but that's a constant and the big O don't care about constants.

ksherlockon Ask HN: How to Extract Shell Commands from Raw PTY Sessions? (Rewindtty)

For bash, you can use `trap [code] DEBUG` to run your code before the command executes. $BASH_COMMAND should be the set to the command that's going to run.

Alternatively, look at the $PROMPT_COMMAND which runs before printing the $PS1 prompt (so maybe you could check `history 1` to get the command afterwards)

ksherlockon The Dollar Is Dead

Those are based on what the government says the inflation rate is, not on what the inflation rate is. The CPI is published by the BLS. Did you know that? Erika McEntarfer probably knew that.

ksherlockon Show HN: OnlyFeets – AI-Powered Custom Foot Image Generator

Here's some feedback: Generally speaking, there should be 10 toes. You go to 11.

ksherlockon Ask HN: Do you have a library card?

With HBO (and Netflix before it) I got to the point where I would spend 20 minutes scrolling (when I should be sleeping...) and not find anything worth watching. I don't need to pay $20 a month for that!

Like 200 channels on the TV and there's nothing good on. Somehow that's less of an issue with physical media. Did anybody ever go to blockbuster, browse for 20 minutes and then declare they don't have any good movies?

ksherlockon Ask HN: Do you have a library card?

Yes and yes. In person for books, CDs and DVDs. Online for Libby (audiobooks), Hoopla (movies, great courses), and O'Reilly (books).

"Why" should be self explanatory but I canceled my HBO subscription last year when they jacked the price (and House of Dragon was so awful and it had turned into reality tv central). I actually signed up for HBO to watch the last season of GoT (since the library didn't have it yet). So it started bad and ended bad.

ksherlockon FDA has approved Yeztugo, a drug that provides protection against HIV infection

Wikipedia says:

In 2024, lenacapavir was named the "2024 Breakthrough of the Year", citing its "astonishing 100% efficacy" in one large efficacy trial in women to prevent HIV and "99.9% efficacy in gender diverse people who have sex with men,"

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

It's curious that the article (and wikipedia) specifically refer to sexual acquisition.