HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

mcookly

73 karma · joined December 31, 2025

submissionscomments
mcookly··on The open-plan office is a terrible idea (2018)
Cal Newport lays out a pretty good criticism of these types of offices in Deep Work.
mcookly··on Topologist's Map of the World
This is super cool. I'd love to see it in a vintage style like that of old T-O maps!
mcookly··on The creator of Jujutsu has joined ERSC
Would the CLA makes it easier to move away from Google and transfer the ownership to a new organization (if Google is willing)?
mcookly··on Apple Maps Changes Lake Ontario to Lake America After Trump Order
That was fast.

In these situations, what do OSM and the like do? Add an alternative name? Ignore the change?

mcookly··on Firefox 155.0
> Very interesting change. I’ve yet to see CSS more than 20 levels deep. Good to put a stop to such insanity.

I wonder what made them attempt to support such deep nesting in the first place.

mcookly··on Morrow, a social network where you build your own feed
If suggestion algorithms cannot be swayed by payment, sponsorship etc., people will probably try to boost visibility via numbers (i.e. bots). I wonder whether such a website would benefit from the invite-only model of lobste.rs.
mcookly··on Firefox 155.0
> I’d pick Edge, if I had to pick either, after this experience

Doesn't Edge have the same problem?

mcookly··on Tim Cook Sold Out Steve Jobs (2025)
For people who use the phone for everything, this is great. But I hope we will start to see at least some smaller options return to the market for those who just want a simple communication device / have small hands.

I recently booted up an old Samsung S10, and the size is just chef's kiss.

mcookly··on Lion-man
It's probably because, unfortunately, anthropologists don't play much.
mcookly··on Emacs 31.1 will release on 8/24
30.2 is the currect release, but I expect that it will be updated shortly after Emacs 31.1 is officially released. If you're _really_ impatient, it seems that there are nightly builds here: <https://emacsformacos.com/builds>.
mcookly··on Emacs 31.1 will release on 8/24
Agreed! I've been building from source for now, and I can't wait to return to the MacPorts version as soon as it is available.
mcookly··on Emacs 31.1 will release on 8/24
For those who use Emacs on macOS, I highly recommend upgrading to 31.1 ASAP since several memory leaks have been fixed by Przemysław Alexander Kamiński [1] et al.

[1]: Author of "Emacs: The macOS Bug" (<https://xlii.space/eng/emacs-the-macos-bug/>), which surfaced on HN some time ago.

mcookly··on Defeating Git Rigour Fatigue with Jujutsu
I'm not an expert in Magit by any means, but I bet there's a way to accomplish this in only a few keystrokes.
mcookly··on The Emacsification of Software
I've often wondered when Emacs would become the term used to describe hyper-personalized software. While it is true that LLMs give access to software that fits like a glove, it seems to me that there is still a glaring difference -- at least when one looks at GNU Emacs: a shared software tradition. To my knowledge [1], LLMs don't provide that.

Maybe it's best to call this movement in LLM-generated software "software individualism" rather than "personal software"?

[1] I don't know much as I haven't vibecoded before, and my .emacs is painfully crafted by hand.

mcookly··on Reimagining the mouse pointer for the AI era
I wonder what sort of monstrous power would be unleashed if Google used Plan9 as a foundation.
mcookly··on RaTeX: KaTeX-compatible LaTeX rendering engine in pure Rust
I agree re. LaTeX. I've tried Typst for some complex projects, and it's just not quite there yet. ConTeXt on the other hand ... chef's kiss.
mcookly··on The Vatican's Website in Latin
I've heard the same re. the Irish.

Regarding the Novus Ordo, I believe that the key document from Vatican II (Sacrosanctum Concilium) still preferred Latin as the dominant language in liturgy, while readings etc. stayed in the vernacular, but clearly that is not what happened.

There's been an uptick in numbers for Tridentine Rite, so tides might shift back as Catholics realize the wealth of their liturgical tradition.

mcookly··on The Vatican's Website in Latin
Thanks for sharing this! My wife and I have been interested in refreshing our Latin from high school, and we've been looking for good resources.

We've also toyed with the idea of learning it as a living language, which seems to be an increasingly-popular method among autodidacts these days.

mcookly··on The text mode lie: why modern TUIs are a nightmare for accessibility
Emacs is a seemingly [0] excellent compromise between modern TUIs and accessibility since it keeps the text-centric paradigm but allows for much cleaner accessibility. [1]

[0]: I do not need any accessibility features myself.

[1]: https://diesenbacher.net/blog/entries/speaking-emacs.html

mcookly··on The Gregorio project – GPL tools for typesetting Gregorian chant
> Around 15 years ago I would typeset orders of service in tex for our college chapel

Your chapel was very fortunate.

mcookly··on The Gregorio project – GPL tools for typesetting Gregorian chant
Happy to share! There's nothing quite as distracting as a blurry scan of a chant/hymn.

You might be interested in an online editor [1] for small items. (I haven't used it much, but it seems good.)

[1]: https://www.sourceandsummit.com/editor/alpha/

mcookly··on The Gregorio project – GPL tools for typesetting Gregorian chant
If anyone is interested in playing around with this wonderful tool, there's an online editor (edit: no affiliation). [1] It is much more responsive than compiling in TeX.

[1]: https://www.sourceandsummit.com/editor/alpha/

mcookly··on The Pentagon Threatened Pope Leo XIV's Ambassador with the Avignon Papacy
I'm not sure why this is on Hacker News, and I'm even less sure why the papacy is so important to MAGA right now.

In any case, perhaps we will soon see the return of Catholic persecution in the U.S. due to "conflicting" loyalties between Pope and country...

mcookly··on Why are we still using Markdown?
Djot is great so far, and I'm eager to switch to it from Pandoc Markdown since editor support for Pandoc Markdown is lacking.

Looking at the repo's issues, I'm a bit concerned that it's already fragmented since some enthusiasts have implemented features far beyond, or against, Djot's spec. People seem impatient for v1.0...

mcookly··on Emacs-libgterm: Terminal emulator for Emacs using libghostty-vt
I wonder if I'll ever see the day when Emacs's several terminal implementations are unified. How nice would it be if one could use term.el with libvterm, libghostty etc. as a backend?

On another note, as a light terminal user, I've had great success with MisTTY. [1]

[1]: https://github.com/szermatt/mistty

mcookly··on CodingFont: A game to help you pick a coding font
> That is usually configurable at the terminal level

And if you use Emacs, it's configurable at the buffer level. [1] This lets me build a version of Iosevka where `~=` and `!=` both become ligaturized but in different major modes, avoiding any confusion.

[1]: https://github.com/mickeynp/ligature.el