defanor

@defanor@emacs.ch

A computer user (Debian GNU/Linux and Emacs are major parts of it), a programmer (primarily Haskell, C, PostgreSQL these days), occasional system administrator. Interested in CS and other STEM subjects, trying to catch up on non-STEM ones as well.

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defanor, to random

Noticed a redirect loop on the help.libreoffice.org website, but failed to find an appropriate address or page to report it (except for Bugzilla, which requires an account, and I see no "project" for the website there). Noticed a Mastodon contact though, maybe this will work. Or maybe somebody on Mastodon will point to an appropriate place to report website issues? Either way, it should be better to write here than to ignore.

@libreoffice, <https://help.libreoffice.org/latest/en-US/text/sdatabase/dabawiz02pgsql.html> redirects to <https://help.libreoffice.org/en-US/noscript.html> with a meta refresh, which then redirects to <https://help.libreoffice.org/latest/en-US/text/swriter/main0000.html> with the "location" HTTP header, which redirects back to noscript.html, as the first one did, and the loop goes on.

As another minor website issue report, icons are broken if pages are not allowed to set custom fonts. Some contrast ratios (e.g., in the footer) are very low, some elements (e.g., operating system choice on the "download" page) do not fit into the areas dedicated for them and overflow awkwardly if minimum font size is set (to 16, for instance). Some content (e.g., on <https://www.libreoffice.org/discover/templates-and-extensions/>) is simply unavailable with JS off, while with JS on it is just hidden behind an unnecessary click.

defanor, to random

Since pasteurized milk keeps at room temperature for months, I normally have a few packages hoarded. Used to queue the packages, to use older ones first, and put the new ones in the end of the queue, but that involved nudging them all, possibly even in O(n) steps to do so carefully. Now switched to a ring buffer, so that package addition is done in a single step.

Maybe someday I will manage to improve the organization of spices (which are in flat packets) as well. They can be simply placed in alphabetical order, just need a suitable container for that.

defanor, to random

Visited a doctor, interactions with those are awkward. Maybe that is supposed to motivate you to stay healthy and die unexpectedly.

The first point is rather unique to interactions with doctors, I think: it feels like no matter how hard you try to follow the suggested practices, it is never good enough; ideally you should quit your job and drop the hobbies completely, doing nothing but those healthy things -- scheduled swimming, sunlight, fresh air, no computers. Not too much of sunlight though. I thought I am rather overdoing physical activity, yet been prescribed to have more of it, though different kinds. But I am barely managing to do the daily routine as it is, so additions are unlikely. I guess exhaustion is not particularly healthy, either.

The second one is more common with all kinds of professions: some people are annoyed if you try to judge things on your own, to look anything up (even things like whether you should visit or call them), and seem to demand to trust them without questioning, even despite many of those professionals messing things up regularly, not agreeing with each other, criticizing each other's work. Doctors in particular seem to put you somewhere among anti-vaccine people if you look into CDC/NIH/WebMD/Wikipedia. But then many of those around here prescribe placebos, and apparently overprescribe antibiotics, making it hard to trust without checking.

That second point comes with a lesson to not be like that yourself, with your profession, especially if your job involves prescribing things others should follow.

defanor,

@holgerschurig Nice that there are doctors like that; I hope it was rather a bad luck for me so far, and that possibly it is different when it comes to serious illnesses (in this case it was merely eye dryness after conjunctivitis, and the doctor did not like that I have read that seeing a doctor and taking antibiotics is normally not needed or useful to treat viral conjunctivitis, so I did not do that at once; according to them, viral conjunctivitis nearly always leads to a bacteria buildup and requires antibiotics to treat, AIUI, though I still feel uneasy about that contradicting <https://www.cdc.gov/conjunctivitis/about/treatment.html>, but trying out those antibiotics now). Though survival rates for major cancer types seem to be about 20% lower here than in Germany, so maybe the doctors are not quite the same, either.

defanor, (edited )

@holgerschurig Oh, I am in Russia, not the US. The US actually has the aforementioned mortality rates comparable to Germany and other developed countries (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_quality_of_healthcare>). Though while reading about conjunctivitis treatment (I keep trying to find a connection between the doctor's words and general recommendations, (meta)studies I can find), I have also read about those overprescriptions in the US in particular.

Fortunately in this case it is not life-threatening, and topical antibiotics are not that dangerous. This would be a tougher situation if the stakes were higher.

Edit: I guess the confusion arose out of my references to CDC and NIH. I looked into those, rather than local ones, since the local official recommendations--just as official standards, GOSTs--usually are not freely available directly from government organizations, but they are mostly translated or paraphrased versions of US ones, occasionally politicized and with general corruption reaching them. Though in this case it looks like a fairly straightforward translation upon skimming, with the same suggestions, just with locally registered trademarks filled in.

defanor, to emacs

There is this annoying behavior on editing SQL source blocks, where it adds a level of indentation to the whole block when you hit RET: not always, but frequently, and unclear why. I guess it may have something to do with subqueries, at least I tend to notice it more often with those (and with more complex queries generally). It happens in emacs -Q as well. I think I observed it years ago, and heard of the cause and a workaround at some point, but failing to look it up now. Does anybody here know why it happens, and how to fix it? Would be particularly nice to not disable automatic indentation altogether, but to get a sensible indentation. Maybe for sql-mode as well (aiming primarily--but not exclusively--PostgreSQL, if that matters).

defanor,

@yeti That appears to fix the issue, thanks! I think I briefly looked into it, but the "on export" bit sounded like it is only relevant to export.

@holl, @thuna_cing, @hajovonta, there is another option for you to try.

defanor, to random

It is the "world day", at least according to WorldBackupDay.com. I like the idea of having such a day, to serve as another nudge and a reminder to make and check backups, though WorldBackupDay.com is awkward, does not mention rsync in its software section. The "com" TLD looks suspicious, too, but it is better than nothing (except for potential private data leaks with online backup services).

I use primarily encrypted external HDDs ( or with ) and for personal backups, including rsync with "--dry-run --checksum" for scrubbing and checking before synchronization; quite happy that such tools are available, even though they are usually taken for granted, as are many other neat FLOSS tools we use regularly. Planning to add a USB stick to the list of storage devices, since it should be less fragile mechanically (even though less reliable otherwise).

defanor, to AeroPress

Earlier today I watched brewing videos, including a mention that the inverted method is dangerous, since the plunger can fall out, and the hot water would burn you. I use AeroPress with the inverted method regularly, for more than 8 years, and was not sure if that ever happened to me, so I thought it is not really an issue. And guess who burned his hand while inverting an AeroPress just now. Maybe I should give the non-inverted method another try, though it has its own awkward aspects.

It only splashed out though, most of the coffee was saved. But trying a new coffee now, which is roasted darker than I have normally (this is a sample that was included with a larger order from the coffee place), making it too bitter to my taste. Maybe will finally play with it, adding syrups, milk, cream, and so on: usually feeling like it is too wasteful to use a nice coffee for that, but must be easier to do so when the coffee is too bitter. I enjoy such sweet and flavored coffee served in cafes sometimes: it feels like a different beverage, pleasant in a different way. The distinction reminds me of that between dark chocolate and milk chocolate.

defanor,

@holgerschurig Indeed, and there are similar diagrams in English (or Italian; with more widespread names) around. Many of those use espresso and steamed milk in particular though, both of which are usually made with a coffee machine. I have a coffee machine stashed away these days, in part because it is quite cumbersome to clean, so currently inclined to just experiment with adding plain (non-steamed) milk or cream into non-espresso coffee, experimenting with different proportions and additives, but without following proper recipes. Although could still use those for inspiration.

yeti, to random
@yeti@emacs.ch avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    defanor,

    @yeti For me it is simply geo-blocked, "The site owner may have set restrictions that prevent you from accessing the site", since at least 2023. Maybe they decided to rebrand as an exclusive magazine.

    zyd, to random
    @zyd@emacs.ch avatar

    I'm reading the wikipedia page for the Server Side Public License and my first reaction is.... its good? I'm surprised its not considered a free software license considering it forces the hand of the service provider to make available the entirety of the software in order to run a fully copy of said service. That seems like a huge win. And if someone, a company, wants to make it proprietary, well it sounds like they should pay up for an alternative license from the copyright holder. Either pay or make your software fully free software, what's not to like, it seems like an even better AGPL, thoughts?

    Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Side_Public_License

    defanor,

    @zyd <https://opensource.org/definition-annotated#6> is the criterion OSI referred to. Supposedly SSPL can introduce those "license traps", and though not prohibiting commercial service provision explicitly, doing so effectively (as viewed by OSI and others). I think AGPL, GPL, and LGPL are on that spectrum as well, but apparently OSI draws a line somewhere. It would be interesting to read their more detailed reasoning, but I failed to look up anything like that quickly.

    louis, to random
    @louis@emacs.ch avatar

    GNV - the Gopher Web search engine - just got an update.

    https://gopher.emacs.ch

    • Now includes Gemini
    • Shows context snippet of the content where search query was found

    The crawler is still working through more than 60'000 found links, this will require a few more hours to finish.

    I've removed the Gopher image and binary proxy out of the following consideration:

    • It's a potential attack vector to external Gopher servers

    • GNV shall not replace functionality of Gopher, but encourage its use by using a proper client

    • I want to focus on providing features increasing discovery of Gopher/Gemini content and how it is interconnected with each other (inspired discussion by @screwtape - aka "How to link Gopher phlogs with each other")

    Those who follow me know that GNV is written in Common Lisp. A great learning exercise for me. It's incredibly suited for this task because I could modify the code for numerous edge cases while the crawler is running, without starting from scratch every time an exception is thrown.

    Sure, when the project is finished and the problem is modeled out properly, one could say: that would be easy to write in lang X.Y.Z! Sure, but it's not the end product where Common Lisp shines, it's the journey.

    With that, have a good night y'all.

    defanor,

    @louis "cheese NOT toast" does not yield any results, though simply looking for "cheese" yields those with no "toast" in sight, and more than "cheese AND toast".

    As for the interactivity, I enjoy proper lispy REPLs as well, but to be fair, with less interactive languages one probably would make the state needed for resumption persistent, and probably have fewer runtime exceptions: it would be odd to keep restating large-scale crawling on each adjustment.

    How much space does the crawled data take, by the way? If it is not too big, maybe you could also organize something similar to Common Crawl for Gopher, by publishing that as a single dump. Not sure how useful that would be though, but would have been useful for this project if somebody else did it earlier.

    louis, (edited ) to random
    @louis@emacs.ch avatar

    For insiders only: a very early version of my Gopher search engine can be tested:

    https://gopher.emacs.ch/

    That's my local SBCL process, which is currently crawling, but also exposes very basic search function.

    It's all in-memory, no database. Everything is just 160 lines of Lisp.

    Enjoy 🙂

    defanor,

    @louis A nice project!

    Looks like the URIs can use some adjustment though: there are ones like <gopher://NIL:NILNIL> and <gopher://null.host:1>, while those like <gopher://sdf.org:70/users/kudut/Metis_Library_Classification/> confuse the clients: the first character in the URI query string is interpreted as a Gopher document type, rather than a part of the selector string.

    holgerschurig, (edited ) to emacs

    What should I use nowadays in for IRC

    defanor,

    @holgerschurig Depends on your preferences. I think the usual description is that rcirc is the simplest and most lightweight, ERC is the most advanced, and Circe is between those (but not built-in). I currently use rcirc with minimal configuration, just enabling rcirc-track-minor-mode and configuring servers. I like that the things tend to be broken or awkward there because they are simply not implemented completely, as opposed to being broken or awkward due to a poor implementation. The former kind usually implies more predictable and understandable behaviors.

    RogerBW, to rust
    @RogerBW@emacs.ch avatar

    I've finished 2023 day 25 in . https://codeberg.org/Firedrake/adventofcode2023/src/branch/main/25

    defanor, (edited )

    @RogerBW Finding the edges to sever was the tricky part for me, but your solution just has them hardcoded at once. How did you get them?

    Edit: Oh, I see a.rs prints a Graphviz graph definition. I actually tried that, but it seemed huge, and the layout was not great. Will try it again now, curious whether it would have worked if I did not give up too quickly.

    Edit 2: I see the 3 edges in Graphviz now, though failing to find the nodes they are connected to. But it seems it should be possible to do somehow. How did you extract them?

    defanor, to random

    In the past few years I listen mostly to an online radio, rather than to my offline music collection, primarily to discover more music and to monitor Internet connection that way. To the radionetz.de reference rock "radio" "station" in particular, but in the past few days they play the same few tracks and over and over again. Radio stations can be annoying that way, overplaying certain songs, but in this case it seems that something just went wrong there: unlikely that it is done intentionally.

    For now I switched to YouTube instead. Its autoplay soon stirred towards some violin music compilations, but they are nice. And there are plenty of good performances of classical music in general, with good sound and everything. Among others, André Rieu produces those, Netherlands Bach Society uploads plenty and regularly. And there are the aforementioned channels like Trailer Music Empire, with hours-long compilations of lively and well-recorded violin music. Plenty of piano music, including that mixed with jokes, like Vinheteiro. Smooth jazz compilations may be nice for background music as well, maybe I will try having those playing. And now noticed that Projekt Records has a "listening booth" on YouTube, which even includes a band named AREA, which I suspect might be the same as the one that recorded the "Our Corner Drowning" song (I tried to look for those a while ago, but failed to: multiple bands use that name).

    Though maybe I should start looking for other online rock radios again. dir.xiph.org helped me to find radionetz, maybe it will help to find something nice once again. Well, actually pretty much any generic rock radio will do: I do not hope to find something particularly fitting, playing more obscure bands, mixing in some classical music, but otherwise--and for new music discovery--I think radio stations playing the same genres are not all that different from each other.

    defanor,

    The radio is back to normal, but I noticed that the lively trailer music works well for aerobic exercises, while relaxing jazz compilations (sometimes with cafe and nature sounds) work well for yoga, meditation, and as a general background. Never bothered with separate playlists for different activities, but perhaps should have.

    mms, to reddit
    @mms@emacs.ch avatar

    Once again I am thinking of leaving . I hate the site, the discussions are pointless and all
    It does is maje me angrier.

    Too bad that I will still need to stumble upon it, as it’s the face of the “open” web

    defanor,

    @mms If you dislike it so, what keeps you there?

    Never had a Reddit account myself, only briefly considered it around 2010, I think. But centralized systems did not look great back then, either, and then it seemed to follow the way of other systems like that. Now I only find it somewhat annoying to run into Reddit from a search engine, occasionally having to add "-site:reddit.com" when the Reddit results drown others (which is the opposite to what I hear some people are doing: they restrict search to Reddit, rather than exclude it). But it is still not completely closed, the UI is even usable without JS (with the "old" subdomain, and unlike GitHub, the default Mastodon web UI, and many other websites).

    defanor,

    @mms Ah, I view Hacker News that way, and it appears to be a common situation: people often mention "signal-to-noise ratios" of such communities and periodicals. I think that when in doubt whether to keep following a certain source, it might be helpful to take a break from it and see how that goes: whether you manage to fill the time with something more rewarding. Making use of the fact that you do not have to decide at once whether to follow or quit it forever, and can adjust the time spent on it.

    RogerBW, to rust
    @RogerBW@emacs.ch avatar

    I've finished 2023 day 23 in . https://codeberg.org/Firedrake/adventofcode2023/src/branch/main/23

    defanor,

    @RogerBW This is rather neat code! My solution is similar, but the code is much messier, as for the other AoC puzzles, and mixed with equally messy comments. Actually noted it a few times that my AoC solutions are much worse than what I would normally write, even in a hurry, but the combination of having a self-imposed deadline and writing what essentially is throwaway code nudged me towards that mess.

    galdor, to random
    @galdor@emacs.ch avatar

    Ubuntu logic: nooo you cannot use root! But you can use ubuntu. Which can sudo to root and thus can do exactly the same thing as root. Makes total sense.

    defanor,

    @galdor Does it lock the root user's password by default, or is it about something else?

    I tend to lock it myself, so that there are fewer active users and passwords to manage and worry about, especially on servers. But since Ubuntu is advertised as being user-friendly, perhaps it also makes sense for them to nudge users away from running everything as root, as particularly newbie users may be tempted to do.

    defanor,

    @galdor Oh, did they rename "root" user into "ubuntu"? I thought in your first toot you mentioned "using ubuntu" jokingly, as having sudo(1) available in the system, but now it sounds more like there is an "ubuntu" user. It is also tricky to search for, an "ubuntu" user on Ubuntu systems.

    peterbutler, to cooking
    @peterbutler@mas.to avatar

    Homemaker ProTip

    If you need to thaw something quickly, put it on a cooling rack, even a simple short one for cookies

    I wish I learned that much earlier. It's remarkably fast

    defanor,

    @xvf17 @peterbutler Indeed: cold water is supposed to cover almost all of the frozen item's surface, increasing the heat transfer from it, while still keeping even its surface fairly cold. While with a cooling rack it seems that the edges may thaw and stay near room temperature, which is usually said to be unsafe, particularly with meat or fish, and if it takes more than 1 or 2 hours. I guess a cooling rack may work well for smaller pieces though.

    defanor, to random

    I use a public email service () for work mail, so that neither personal (hobby) server issues would affect the work, nor issues with work infrastructure disrupt communication channels needed to fix those. But with my domain name, so that there is no vendor lock-in. That worked fine for a while, but now Yandex decided to charge for using own domains, and disabled SMTP. Warnings were sent to the administrator account, which I have not checked after setting it up more than a decade ago, while the actually checked inbox only received warnings about discontinuation of a service I never used.

    So I went looking for alternatives. The situation with those keeps worsening: many smaller email services are blocked here, or do not serve users from around here. The few large remaining ones tend to require phone numbers. I know a couple that work without a phone number and are not blocked, though not sure for how long. And no custom domain names there. Though if things will not improve soon, it would be tricky for me to renew the domain name, being disconnected from payment systems.

    Maybe I will request a company-provided email, or set sending (SMTP) via a work server and keep receiving (IMAP) via Yandex. Could also switch to paid services, though a single email account (at Yandex or elsewhere) costs like a remote VM (aka VPS, VDS, a cloud thingy), at which point the latter would be preferable. But I would normally consider foreign hosting providers, and there is the issue with payments again: proxy payments must be possible, yet reliance on those makes this setup less reliable.

    Though it looks like some Russian hosting providers have servers in Europe; likely those are accessible to various local entities, and local laws on checking clients' identities and spying on them apply, possible future weird laws will apply as well, but I wonder whether connection blocking applies to those servers. Apparently to some of them it does not, yet, so those may be an okay option.

    defanor,

    @louis Good question. For work email alone, there is no need for it to be outside: being outside would be useful primarily for a VM, and a VM looks like a better value for a paid service, but then it is a tangled mess of additional preferences and conditions again, not an ordered list of priorities.

    I have also remembered that the used domain name registrar provides some mail service, though not sure if it has IMAP and SMTP, or why I did not use it. And in the long term a free mail service supporting a custom domain would not be of much use, since paying for the domain is likely to be as tricky as paying for hosting (which is complicated by me not being a fan of the recently common cryptocurrencies), unless I will transfer it to a local company, though not aware of reputable ones. Although long-term planning may be an inappropriate kind of planning for unstable conditions.

    For now I have set sending via a work mail server, by setting smtpmail (via a mu4e context) to invoke a remote sendmail program over SSH, configuring OpenDKIM to handle that domain name as well, editing the DNS RRs.

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