pbohun

This is so cool! It's funny because open source devs are making Windows better while MS is actively making it worse. If MS removed all telemetry and AI (and restored win10 functions in context menus), I would probably move back to it.

I've recently started playing around with Janet, and it's a great language. I think it's inspired by Clojure and Lua, and somehow manages to be better than both (in my opinion).

That's one of the best intro pages I've seen for a language. I really like how it has tabs for different practical examples (http, generics, coroutine, etc.).

I've started experimenting with Odin for some personal projects and it's been great. The built-in vendored libraries make creating certain programs trivial. For example, just `import rl "vendor:raylib"` and you can use `rl.InitWindow(800,600,"Test")`. No need to install Raylib, add to path or use special linker directives, just `odin build .`!

Also I think Odin struck the right balance of features while trying to keep to the spirit of C.

Whose money do you think is being sent to scammers?

Also, decent human beings care about things that are unjust/immoral/unethical regardless if it affects them or not.

9front, the modern fork of Plan 9.

I think this kind of control mechanism is not a great idea and could lead to easy bugs.

I think it's a better idea to write a function that applies a function to the elements of a tree. Ideally you'd make a function for each traversal order. This makes it obvious what is happening.

map_tree_pre(my_tree, my_func);

map_tree_in(my_tree, my_func);

map_tree_post(my_tree, my_func);

map_tree_bfs(my_tree, my_func);

Other people may have other opinions, but I think it's generally a bad idea when you automatically "fix" input for a user. Notice how nobody complains about typing suggestions on phones, but there are plenty of complaints about autocomplete. Whenever you "correct" what someone was deliberately trying to do, you'll cause rage.

It reminds me of an experience I had at work. I wrote some tests for a feature that would store some values in a database. However, my tests would always fail. Retrieved data would never match the input data. I eventually decided to trace exactly what was happening in the database and found a stored procedure ran whenever I entered data. It "fixed" my input data. When I told another dev about this they said their "database expert" said it was "good design".

Absolute insanity. Never, ever, "correct" deliberate input. Validate it and tell the user what is wrong. 1) This raises awareness 2) The desired behavior is easier to test.

The thing I like about software dev is that as I get better at it I get better at thinking and problem solving.

I use AI rarely, but I use it to try to learn. For example, gnuplot is pretty complicated, so I'll ask it to create some examples and that's allowed me to learn way faster than trying to parse out the man page. AI is great for this, even though that's not how most people use it.

Some parts of software dev will likely be automated away (just like compilers automated conversion to binary and some parts of optimization), but I think ultimately software dev will become more important over time. Natural languages have low information density and high ambiguity. Programming languages are the opposite. So I think programming will always be a thing.

Think about music. It's not written in natural language, even though it could. We continue to use musical notation because it is the best way to communicate music. I believe the best way to have unambiguous, information-dense, logical communication with a computer is with a programming language.

"I’ve seen many of these people approach implausible tasks, [...] with reflexive and brilliant usage of AI to get 100X the work done."

I will bet this CEO $1 billion that one of his employees using AI for 3 days will not be able to out-produce me working for a year.

This argument doesn't really make sense. Imagine if someone said "You really need to learn assembly language for the VAX! Someday we'll have Windows 11 on a completely different architecture which is nothing like the VAX, but if you don't learn it now you're not gonna make it!"

Either what we have now is important and will be used 20 years from now and you should learn it, or things are improving so fast that our future interface will be very different.

How many of the "prompt-engineering" tricks that people gained from 2 years ago are relevant today? Almost none? So why should anyone waste their time on something that isn't very good today?

Use LLMs. Try them out for sure. But don't buy into the VC hype. They're just trying to 10x their money by spreading FUD.

Oh yes I absolutely agree. I would definitely like to completely replace the web. It's just that in order to (currently) do my banking, pay my bills, book airline tickets, order from Amazon, etc. I must use a browser. If I could escape all that I would run Plan 9 exclusively without another OS or hacks to access a browser from another OS/virtual machine.

Someone needs to convince Russ that it would be hilarious to have a full featured web browser in Plan 9.

I really like the idea of bottles. I wish there was a way to bundle that up into a distro and make it invisible to the user so I could setup my friends and family with it.

This is great! Someone else mentioned binfmt_misc. I didn't know about that.

Hahaha amazing! This is better than the some of the presentations our junior hires do at work.

This saddens me because I think the concept behind Upspin is powerful. Is it really that much of a resource drain to drop the key server? I imagine it could run on a $10/mo VPS.

This is the talk that introduced Upspin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENLWEfi0Tkg

We've seen this type of thing happen with Ring, where the police want video from people's private cameras. Do police have the legal right to access/take people's private property like this? I thought the 4th amendment of the constitution protected against unreasonable searches and seizures?

Something I don't understand is why don't any scammers ever go to prison? For example, people like Logan Paul have run multiple scams now and have had zero repercussions (except making loads of money off of naive people). Is scamming legal?

I would rather have all bills and laws be put into a git repo. We could see all the diffs and do a git blame to see who's adding all the pork :P

In the old days, I could search for something niche on Google and get blogs/enthusiast websites. Does Kagi do that, or will I only get commercial results like modern Google?

The future is unknown, and often is different than what we predict. What I do is build and live. I worry about what I can control. Worrying about things outside my control is harmful and useless. If AI comes for me, I will cross that bridge when I get to it.

"...compatibility is not the primary goal of BASIC-DOS. The true goal is to demonstrate what could have been achieved as the first IBM PC operating system, not to create a "clone" of PC DOS and endlessly chase compatibility problems."

Are arenas internal to sbcl only or do user programs have access? The current sbcl manual (v2.3.9) doesn't mention arenas.

The 3DS is one of the coolest consoles ever made. If Nintendo made a "Super 3DS" that had the same clam-shell form factor as the new 3DS but updated internals and 720p screen(s) I would definitely buy it.

I like this story because a lot of times when you're doing something correctly, there are "black triangles" in the beginning. People tend to want to skip the "black triangles" by using frameworks and other things that give the appearance of quick progress, but I've found they often create long-term slowdowns.

Maybe it's just my perception of things, but the changes back then were exciting and usually made things better for users. Today changes makes my user experience worse, with spyware on top. I'm exaggerating a bit, but you get my drift.

I didn't realize some of these elements existed. Neat! However, I think if we want an open/federated system to win, we need to make it compelling to normal people. That means making it fun and entertaining. I've found that no argument about freedom, privacy, or anything actually important will work.

This is the first time I've been excited to learn about a new web technology in a while. I'm going to have to play around with this to see how I want to use it. I wonder what other little things like this could be used to simplify webdev?

I think the public really needs better education about these things. They're ascribing abilities that they just don't have.

Eliza is a bot from the 60s, and the last I knew there was a version from the early 2000s. Responses were based on simple patterns and psychiatrist-like reflection.

Example: Me: I like green. Eliza: Why do you like green?

If you start talking about suicide, Eliza has no clue and will give a seemingly callous response.

Already people are relatively illiterate when it comes to computers and this new AI stuff is just going to make things worse.

I've used Terminator for years, and it is by far my favorite terminal emulator.