shortercode

Zip files are an example of something that works, are used extensively, and have a number of weird design decisions. Some of this just history, other not so much. But good luck replacing them for customers or friends.

They have some cool advantages. Like being able to read directly from the archive without decompressing the whole thing, per file checksum, and skipping compression on parts which won’t benefit. You can also wedge large amounts of arbitrary data into the file without changing it which… is kinda weird and sometimes useful?

Nasty bits are they used 32 bit ints all over the place, so rely on hacks to support larger files. Can’t support true streaming decompression. Implementations can vary quite a lot, as can compatibility. They also have a number of old and weird features that people don’t really use. Like being able to split a zip file into multiple parts, some ancient compression techniques etc.

Defer is easier to fit into TS/JS as GC isn’t observable ( it kinda is with FinalisationRegistry but with a huge list of gotchas ).

Defer only cares if the variable leaves scope. At the end they mention the new “using” syntax which only requires you to mark the declaration, not requiring an additional statement for the cleanup. It’s kinda nice but the resource needs to implement a cleanup method making it less flexible than defer.

Oh cool I was working on something similar awhile back and couldn’t find much precedent. The project got retired as our use case went away. But I’d love to revisit it. It’s still on npm as “data-rambler”.

Idea was a DSL that could be loaded into a JS runtime, then fed data streams. Your module would transform that data into various output streams which could then be fed to a separate reporting library. Powering dynamic reports based on a template.

Our first iteration was already pretty powerful but I had some big plans to bring it into a more JS feeling syntax to reduce complexity.

There are also some cases where this can be magnified by certain write patterns or system behaviours.

I think there was a case of Teslas having these sorts of failures at one point due to them writing logs quite aggressively.

Another example was MacOS causing rapid wear due to virtual memory swaps if I recall on devices with smaller amounts of RAM.

Interesting, I experimented a bit with this when my daughter was younger. I used to walk around the room with her in my arms singing to get her to sleep. To ensure she would be settled I would then count 300 steps before putting her in the cot. I discovered I could count and sing at the same time by visualising the number in my head, instead of using my inner monologue. But it requires more focus to maintain.

Thankfully these days she can get herself to sleep. But I miss it sometimes

Yeah it wasn’t until I started pushing my daughter around in a pram that I started appreciating them. Crossing a road without them is a chore.

I saw a sibling comment mentioning about the drop curbs making the path awkwardly angled. Yeah they can be a real pain. Pushing a pram along on an angled path is hell on the wrists. But a lot of the troublesome ones are the wider ones for people to get their cars up to their front door.

Makes you think about how hard just going down the road with a wheelchair is.

Mmm so there’s 2 trade offs as far as I can see if you used a folder which both the user and app can access.

Firstly if an app does want a space that’s filesystem shape but does not want users/apps to have access for security or consistency reasons ( think Spotify offline storage of songs ).

Secondly if the user has access they can do the “easy” thing and just throw lots of files in, including things which are sensitive anyway.

It’s interesting to look at how Android and iOS have handled filesystem sandboxing in relation to this.

Both sides are valid. Is it a security risk? In the right conditions yes. But on the other side of it there’s user consent, limited per domain access, and the capability to do multi file editor style apps.

I think the WebKit take on this is good and a better fit for most apps. They instead implemented Origin Private File System. Which is based on the same API bits but the folder is only accessible by the website. The downside is the user loses some control over the files:

- can’t see what’s being stored

- can’t easily backup those files

- has to use that web app to access the files

- usual nonsense about important files being classed as “cookies” or some nonsense by cache cleaning tools, leading to users deleting their data without realising it

Arcane Scholar: a local first application for all your TTRPG needs. Create and manage characters, classes, spells, and more. Then package them up to share with your table.

In the style of Sauron I’m channeling all my frustration and hatred of slow loading tools that require you to pay a subscription, buy the digital book on every platform you want to use it on, and won’t let you use the physical book from your shelf.

For my first pass I decided on focusing on a character creator for a single game and streamlining the process.

I started with the 5.5e SRD but got frustrated with the sheer amount of text without much actual content ( 100+ A4 double column pages of spells, only 1 subclass per class ). Plus a number of weird and frustrating rules that make it hard to create software for. As I’m using Nimble RPG at the table a bit recently and it has a much nicer license I’ve switched to that and been getting on a lot better. Character creation is almost done and I’be moved to character sheets and persistent object storage now. This is the first major project I’ve done with sveltekit and I’m really enjoying it.

As other people have said the community is divided. I try not to be too negative about AI frankly because a lot of people I know are excited about it and are using it. But it’s safe to say I have strong feelings.

For me HN became a lot less interesting when AI became popular. I don’t want to read about OpenAI’s incremental improvements, or see an AI generated landing page that fails to tell me what a project is about. Maybe the people who love the craft have also reduced the amount they are writing…

Strangely enough kids did fine before social media, and I would say as an adult I also do fine without it.

Concerns about age gating etc are true but as we’re already experiencing that nonsense without social media bans it’s kind of a moot point.

Fun thing about random is that these things happen. UUIDv7 is less prone to this as it includes both a time component and random. I’ve been using ULID in a few project which has similar attributes to uuidv7 but more space efficient.

Having lived through the changes from callback hell, early promises and then async/await I only ever found each step an improvement and the negatives are very minor when actually working with them.

Now function colouring is interesting but not for the reason these articles get excited. Recolouring is easy and has basically no impact on code maintenance. BUT if you need that code path to really fly then marking it as async is a killer, as all those tiny little promises add tiny delays in the form of many tasks. Which add up to performance problems on hot code paths. This is particularly frustrating if functions are sometimes async, like lazy loaders or similar cache things. To get around this you can either use callbacks instead or use selective promise chaining to only use promises when you get a promise. Both strategies can be messy and trip up people who don’t understand these careful design decisions.

One other fun thing is indexeddb plays terribly with promises, as it uses a “transactions close at end of task” mechanism, making certain common patterns impossible with promises due to how they behave with the task system. Although some API designers have come up with ways around this to give you promise interfaces for databases. Normally by using callbacks internally and only doing one operation per transaction.

Near to me they are planning a new data centre. As part of the proposal they have included a solar power plant, and running coolant from the data centre to houses in the village for heating. This then relies on a heat pump which does top up and heat exchange. As part of it they are also intending to run fibre lines with the pipes for “high speed internet”.

District based heating is generally much more efficient than per building heating, and this side steps many of the issues that you would have installing/maintaining servers on your property.

Honestly my only concern is the impact of having a data centre nearby. They are asking for people to put a deposit down for the heating. I won’t encourage it, but I will make use of it if they put it in!

Push push push. When your customers are livid at you take a small step back. Wait for a moment then come back at them from another angle.

I hate this philosophy. But it’s seems to be the preferred path for Microsoft.

I have quite a few sets of dice for D&D, nearly all of which favour aesthetics over balance. But saying that I prefer to use simpler plastic with rounded edges at a table. Sharp edge dice stop very abruptly and tend to show bias based on how they were held. The same is true of metal dice which are heavier, and tend to land instead of roll. This isn’t really the outcome you want.

I feel both great and awful about this. For over a decade I’ve said that nearly anyone that uses a computer could benefit from some programming understanding. A little bit can go a long way to solving problems like this. Problems that collectively slow down and block the ambitions of a huge number of people worldwide.

But instead we’ve found a way to circumvent the process. Losing the understanding of your own problem and the new ideas that come off the back of it.

I’m reminded of the story that NASA had a research project to make pens that would work in space, and Roscosmos just used pencils. I always thought NASA came off worse in that anecdote, but I wonder what they learnt while making the pen…

As I understand it they discovered a long chain molecule which was highly inert and wouldn’t stick to anything. Which was a useful feature but you know makes it hard to attach to anything. So they created a similar smaller chain molecule which had a reactive tip but was still super stable. Unfortunately it’s also a bit amino acid like. So we ended up with a molecule which is very durable and accumulates in living things.

Then of course we produced it at industrial scale for decades flooding the entire planet with this stuff.

All valid points, but I don’t miss having a tangle of wire in my pocket or that wire failing after a couple of months meaning I have to get a new set of headphones.

We used reusable nappies for our daughter and introduced the potty very early. The reduction in waste is many times larger than you expect particularly with a very young child ( we started with disposable, but switched in the first few months. Here’s some notes:

- Put your child on the potty during changes, and first thing in the morning. Build’s association and encourages bladder control. Do this long before trying to get them out of nappies.

- Reusable wipes are also a massive win. We have face wipes and bum wipes, basically just soft cotton. Bit of water under a tap and your good.

- Our biggest hurdle for moving away from nappies was nursery, as they wouldn’t consistently put a younger toddler on a potty.

- Introducing a potty earlier means less poopy nappies, turns out even a toddler dislikes pooping their pants.

- Expect a stupid amount of laundry, and the nappies to leak a bit ( so more laundry ). You also can’t use a drier with them as it damages the water proofing layer.

- Travelling is harder… Used nappies should be cleaned within 3 days, so expect to take dirty nappies away with you for washing plus clean nappies/boosters/cloths/bags.

- It’s easy to buy new/almost new/good condition second hand. Either people want to do it but don’t get on with it, or never start, or potty trained. Means a significant reduction in cost. But expect ones that have been used less to be more water proof and Velcro to work better etc.

- Our daughter loved playing with the clean ones, putting them on toys, using cloths etc. Probably helps they have cool designs on the outside. I expect a disposable wouldn’t work well after it had been played with.

- If you need to use disposables while you’re away etc the chemicals can cause rashes after your child has adjusted to their absence.

- When they start weaning you have to “remove the solids” before washing. Yes this is unpleasant, but more often than not is just upending it over toilet. You get used to it. Same as nappy changes in general and washing nappies.

- When we did swap to pants we didn’t do anything special. Just stop nappies, ensure you have a potty nearby, and deal with it for a few days. It’s uncomfortable for them and they learn fast. Expect a bit of frustration and wanting the old routine back.

A languages syntax and its error messages are its user interface. Yes you can have a good tool that you don’t enjoy looking at. You can also have a good tool that’s frustrating to learn because its user interface isn’t clear and doesn’t do what you expect. Can I not hope for something that does what I need, is easy to use, and looks good?

I dislike the “you can change the syntax” argument because that just doesn’t happen. Closest thing is a new language that compiles to another.

Very interesting article, but the website is a mess. Kept reloading and crashing on my iPhone. Gave up in the end. Probably the excessive amount of ads.

I looked into this and the issue is the inbuilt SecurityAgent briefly taking focus. For me I believe it’s related to some management setting our company has added not getting on with Tahoe.

I recall standing in CEX one day perusing the cabinet of random electronics ( as you do ) and wondering why the Intel CPUs were so cheap compared to the AMD ones. I eventually concluded that the cross generation compatibility of zen cpus meant they had a better resale value. Whereas if you experienced the more common mobo failure with an Intel chip you were likely looking at replacing both.

Assuming that the lines on the road are in good condition or even exist. Uneven roads, potholes, and corners/junctions with no signage can all be a challenge is poor conditions with old style headlights ( our 2 cars have old and new style lights respectively ).

That being said while I don’t struggle much with the glare from oncoming headlights I find that visibility beyond the oncoming vehicle can be severely limited by the bright light. This often causes me to slow down and squint to be careful of any dangers beyond the vehicle.

Every job I’ve worked in the last 10 years has asked to see my passport so they can check I’m allowed to work in this country. I expect employers who aren’t checking don’t care, and digital ID isn’t going to change this.

I would assume the issue is all the variation in different distros. Plus the driver/hardware combinations. While some setups would just work they don’t see it as worth spending the time doing the validation/patching required. The steam deck is 1 device to test, with a single software stack. Much easier to target, and with a known customer base. Which brings up the other issue that they would be unlikely to make their money back on a general Linux release. Companies have cited this as a reason for not doing macOS releases in the past and based on the last steam survey Linux usage is in a similar ballpark (2.6% vs 1.8% for Mac ).

Despite all this I think it’s still a move in the right direction.

Kinda yes kinda no? Most PWAs have some idea of offline support but it tends to be an afterthought. The argument of local first is that you design the app to work against a local database ( normally stashed in indexeddb or OPFS ) meaning that you don’t have to wait for data to load or network requests to complete. Your backend is then just a dumb storage engine which accepts changes and sends push messages to the client to indicate things have changed.

The only “big” local first app I’m aware of is Linear.

I used to be a big fan of Twitter, I followed a number of excellent programmers who regularly posted. But then they messed with the algorithm so I couldn’t actually see what the people I was interested in were posting. I just got generic meme style posts. Whatever good content that still reached me gradually decreased as people realised it wasn’t worth posting anymore. So I left and haven’t found any suitable replacement tbh.

So yeah entirely unsurprised that people aren’t engaging with science on X

I used to work on this stuff! Cool to see open projects looking at it. Always wanted to do more, was great fun working on the visualisations and data streams.