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mslaon VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage

Like how GNU Emacs is completely saturated with AI now?

(That's sarcasm, in case anyone wants to pretend I'm being serious.)

mslaon Why IPv6 is so complicated

For the same reason we, in 2026, are still talking about Java.

mslaon Do_not_track

Then it's my responsibility to feed them fake data.

They didn't opt out of my data, after all.

mslaon Do_not_track

Hey, it's a list of services to feed fake data to!

mslaon Ghostty is leaving GitHub

This isn't 1998 anymore.

mslaon AI uses less water than the public thinks

The other part of this problem is the idea that if you disagree with someone about the facts you're interpreted as disagreeing with them about the thing they're mad about: You disagree that AI somehow destroys fifty billion-trillion gallons of pure water every time someone asks Claude something, therefore you're fully in favor of Grok making nudes of underage girls.

Some people get an Angry. They love their Angry, and nobody will take it from them.

mslaon Mahjong: A Visual Guide

This is generational. Of course, the generation of Westerners who played a lot of four-hand Mahjong is dead now, but still...

https://bamgoodtime.com/blog/history-of-american-mahjong

> What followed was one of the biggest game fads in American history. Between roughly 1922 and 1924, mahjong exploded across the United States. Department stores couldn't keep sets in stock. Demand grew so quickly that bone and bamboo tiles had to be imported from China in enormous quantities. Newspapers ran columns explaining the rules. Eddie Cantor performed a hit song called "Since Ma Is Playing Mah Jong." Fashion designers created mahjong-themed clothing. Entire social calendars reorganized around the game.

mslaon Firefox Has Integrated Brave's Adblock Engine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome#Manifest_V3_2

> However, DeclarativeWebRequest is limited in the number of rules that may be set, and the types of expressions that may be used.[336] Additionally, the prohibition of remotely-hosted code will restrict the ability for filter lists to be updated independently of the extension itself. As the Chrome Web Store review process has an invariable length, filter lists may not be updated in a timely fashion.[337][338]

Is that not true?

mslaon Using the internet like it's 1999

Also, tabbed browsing was still a couple years off for most people, although some browsers got there earlier than others:

> In 1994, BookLink Technologies featured tabbed windows in its InternetWorks browser.[citation needed] That same year, the text editor UltraEdit also appeared with a modern multi-row tabbed interface. The tabbed interface approach was then followed by the Internet Explorer shell NetCaptor in 1997. These were followed by several others like IBrowse in 1999, and Opera in 2000 (with the release of version 4 - although an MDI interface was supported before then), MultiViews October 2000, which changed its name into MultiZilla on April 1st, 2001 (an extension for the Mozilla Application Suite[11]), Galeon in early 2001, Mozilla 0.9.5 in October 2001, Phoenix 0.1 (now Mozilla Firefox) in October 2002, Konqueror 3.1 in January 2003, and Safari in 2003. With the release of Internet Explorer 7 in 2006, all major web browsers featured a tabbed interface.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_%28interface%29

Also, Opera had a Multiple-Document Interface from the start, so 1995 or so. That's not "tabs" per se but multiple mini-windows inside the main window; much the same "Hey, I can have multiple things open!" deal

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

My point is, you think more about clicking a link when it'll monopolize your whole UI and you can't just stash it in a background tab or mini-window.

mslaon Email could have been X.400 times better

Yes, the TCP/IP protocol stack beat the OSI protocol stack comprehensively, even down to four layers beating out seven unless you're so wedded to the Magic Number of Seven that you see Session as distinct from Application in the modern world, like how Newton was so wedded to seeing Seven Shades of Light in a spectrum he was sure to note indigo as distinct from violet in the rainbow.

(Presentation and Session are currently taught in terms of CSS and cookies in HTML and HTTP, respectively. When the web stack became Officially Part of the Officiously Official Network Stack is quite beyond me, and rather implies that you must confound the Web and the Internet in order to get the Correct Layering.)

https://computer.rip/2021-03-27-the-actual-osi-model.html - The Actual OSI Model

> I have said before that I believe that teaching modern students the OSI model as an approach to networking is a fundamental mistake that makes the concepts less clear rather than more. The major reason for this is simple: the OSI model was prescriptive of a specific network stack designed alongside it, and that network stack is not the one we use today. In fact, the TCP/IP stack we use today was intentionally designed differently from the OSI model for practical reasons.

> The OSI model is not some "ideal" model of networking, it is not a "gold standard" or even a "useful reference." It's the architecture of a specific network stack that failed to gain significant real-world adoption.

mslaon Email could have been X.400 times better

Plus, having to change email addresses when you physically move, in addition to when you change providers, would be immensely annoying.

mslaon Laws of Software Engineering

"Why is this person testing that Arizona does such bizarre things with time? Surely no actual state is like that! Such complexity! Take it out!"

mslaon GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

I wonder how robust they are against people sending them fake data.

mslaon Laws of Software Engineering

It's a counterpoint to the maxim, not the post I'm replying to.

mslaon Laws of Software Engineering

> Similar to the "code should be self documenting - ergo: We don't write any comments, ever"

My counterpoint: Code can be self-documenting, reality isn't. You can have a perfectly clear method that does something nobody will ever understand unless you have plenty of documentation about why that specific thing needs to be done, and why it can't be simpler. Like having special-casing for DST in Arizona, which no other state seems to need:

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

mslaon The electromechanical angle computer inside the B-52 bomber's star tracker

Since the article doesn't mention: I've read that ICBMs used celestial navigation. Is this similar to what contemporary missiles used? Do we even know at this point?

mslaon Claude Opus 4.7 Model Card

Also, just to be clear: This links to a PDF, for some reason.

mslaon Claude Opus 4.7 Model Card

Do you think your comment adds anything?

mslaon Claude Opus 4.7 Model Card

PDF, because it isn't marked.

mslaon Want to Write a Compiler? Just Read These Two Papers (2008)

It made me drink myself Venetian blind.

mslaon Write Your Own Copy

Your comments read like they're AI generated. Using "spend" as a noun, for example.

mslaon Want to Write a Compiler? Just Read These Two Papers (2008)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10791521

mslaon Want to write a compiler? Just read these two papers (2008)

fanf2 on Dec 25, 2015 [dead] | parent | prev | next [–]

I quite like "understanding and writing compilers" by Richard Bornat - written in the 1970s using BCPL as the implementation language, so rather old-fashioned, but it gives a friendly gentle overview of how to do it, without excessive quantities of parsing theory.

mslaon Franklin's bad ads for Apple II clones and the beloved impersonator they depict

> But Franklin Computer Corporation’s hardware, software, and ad concepts were stolen intellectual property, which, I think, qualifies as “bad.”

"Intellectual property" is doing a lot of work in this sentence, in that it's a legal-sounding blanket term which somehow fails to mention which actual law Franklin broke. It's implying something is illegal without actually making the case. The cancerous growth of the vague concept of "intellectual property" leads to things like the DMCA, where formerly legal acts are outlawed in a kind of "penumbra" or "emanation" from acts which are concretely illegal, because they're getting "too close" to the imaginary line.

mslaon Franklin's bad ads for Apple II clones and the beloved impersonator they depict

> Reviewers were even able to pull cards out of an Apple ][ motherboard, plug them into an ACE machine, and they’d work without any other modifications.

My God, such an Architecture might have become an Industry Standard!

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

> The ISA term was coined as a retronym by IBM PC clone manufacturers in the late 1980s or early 1990s as a reaction to IBM attempts to replace the AT bus with its new and incompatible Micro Channel architecture.

mslaon Municipal water fluoridation, adolescent IQ and cognition across the life course

> In contrast to studies cited in recent decisions to end CWF in Utah, Florida, and elsewhere, we find no evidence that CWF is negatively associated with adolescent IQ or adult cognitive functioning.

As if we didn't know.

Not being snarky at the scientists, but the people who passed insane, invasive laws against fluoridation.

mslaon Android now stops you sharing your location in photos

Interestingly, the Wikipedia app devs prevent you from opting out of sharing supposedly-anonymous data with their app. Supposedly-anonymous because I think we all know how deanonymizing works by now, and how easy it is:

https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T356260

Just more push and pull on privacy, mostly pulling it away from you, it seems.

mslaon Michigan 'digital age' bills pulled after privacy concerns raised

> The UK is not part of the US (yet?) nor the EU, but they're currently fining US companies

Are they going after money they have in the UK or are they delusional enough to think they can successfully fine a company with no ties to the UK?

mslaon JVM Options Explorer

It makes perfect sense: Rust compilers will never beat a human at scheduling every single opcode perfectly based on the deepest microarchitectural analysis short of decapping the chip and breaking out the ol' electron microscope. Whether it's worthwhile to be that efficient over a whole program, as opposed to a preternaturally tight compute kernel, is definitely questionable.

mslaon Mexico's President Sheinbaum Decrees Universal Healthcare for 120M

> My bad. I used that as a stand in for a single payer system like Medicare. Good idea, yes? Or do you object to that?

My objection to that is putting too much power over healthcare in the hands of the Federal government ends badly when someone like RFK Jr is in power in the Federal government.

My ideal is closer to the German system, with state-level public options which preserve private insurance.