jk

jk, 8 months ago to random

i reckon all software developers should read this thread. it's incredible. literally everything is here. entire books could be written about it
https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=120627&p=515618

jk, 10 months ago to random

its funny how we have to have 27" monitors now rather than 15" ones since all the UI designers have put too much whitespace into all the designs

jk, 10 months ago to random

i think a lot about how apparently, someone visiting pink floyd's studio in the mid-70s noticed they had several minimoogs set up with gaffer tape all over them, because when they got a sound they liked, they'd put the tape over the knobs so the settings wouldn't get changed, and invoice the record label for another fresh minimoog. i think this is how you're actually supposed to manage python software installations, just buy a new computer every time you finally get the correct packages set up

jk, 9 months ago to random

shame that something like "make a linux distro which is 1) quite normal and approachable, but 2) everything is statically linked" is sufficiently outside the overton window that nobody who wants 2 would care about 1, so they will never coincide and and i am condemned forever to DLL Hell

jk, 5 months ago to random

you know when you accidentally cat a binary file and despite your lightning-quick ctrl-c reflexes, something in it triggers that old vt100 command that tells your terminal emulator to shoot a spring-loaded boxing glove directly into your face

jk, 5 months ago to random

if you had to spend an entire month on a desktop computer using the internet for the same kinds of things you usually use it for, but without using a web browser of any kind, do you think you could do it? are there enough different (official or unofficial) native desktop apps to fill the gap? and if so, what are they?

(for the purposes of the discussion i don't include mobile/tablet apps. also i suppose electron apps are really treading a fine line, so let's arbitrarily say they're not allowed)

jk, 4 months ago to random

a couple of years ago the hard drive crashed in my 1993 compaq 486 and i just haven't had any luck getting any kind of modern storage device to work with it. i've tried two different types of SD-to-IDE adaptors and a CF-to-IDE adaptor and none of them even show up. maybe the disk controller is fucked or something?? or maybe theres just something stupid and obvious that i've missed

jk, 1 month ago to random

powered up my 2010 imac for the first time in 5+ years and tried to get anything whatsoever other than os x to boot, and it just won't? apparently it can only boot off optical discs, not flash drives, but the built-in DVD drive doesn't work anymore, so i'm using an external, and OS disc I use does appear when i hold alt on startup, but when I try to actually boot from them I just get "No bootable devices found", like the early part of the boot sees the external drive, but the later one doesn't

jk, 5 months ago to random

its so funny that apple still offers computers with 8 GB of RAM. imagine being like. ah yeah sorry ive just spent $1000 on a brand new computer with a "neural engine", just unboxed it. yeah. but yeah sorry, i cant see the page you just sent me. no no its because i have to use lynx as my browser on this thing. yeah websites are too heavy now to run on a $1000 brand new computer. yeah its weird isnt it

jk, 6 months ago to random

maybe it's just because i grew up with it, but i find the original bitmap ms sans serif (sseriffe.fon) way more readable than it has any right to be. it's a helvetica-alike in origin except unlike the macintosh 'geneva' they just went buck wild with the x-height and all these weird touches at small sizes that go way beyond hinting. when windows changed to tahoma it definitely lost a lot of the character imo. less friendly-looking, very slightly less dense, and no more readable

jk, 3 months ago to random

there's been almost twenty years of work on optimizing javascript engines with JIT and complex heuristic-based GC and a wealth of feature-rich profiling and analysis tools and validation and testing frameworks for deployment and integration and syntax improvements and functional and higher-order primitives and serverside transpiled code. and it's all enabled some amazing new stuff, for example github now takes 10 seconds to display a plain text file, and you cant search properly anymore

jk, 6 months ago to random

welcome to linux. your screensaver is set to ‘none’. the display power management settings UI is set to never switch off the screen. and the screen switches off every half an hour. this is because the “real” settings are in 19 bullshit files somewhere, and they all override each other. because it’s linux you can edit all 19 files yourself, it only takes a couple of hours! but by the time you’re done there’s been a package update that resets your changes. it also changed the config file format

jk, 9 months ago to random

you know those people who organize their bookshelves by colour? and everybody gets really angry about it? i could be the computer version of that guy. if only i had a MIPS version of Windows NT that would run on my SGI Indigo2. not only would the desktop background match the computer perfectly, everyone would get really pissed off about it

jk, 6 months ago to random

i tend to try out new, magical-looking technology really early on, before everybody else. and ultimately, it doesn't work properly because the technology isn't there yet, and i write it off as a scam and a waste of time. then ten years later, when it does work, i have an aversion to using it, because in my mind it must still be a scam product that doesn't work

jk, 1 year ago to random

literally all local news ive seen for the last year or so in multiple places i've been in the UK is just "dont go in the sea, theyres too much sewage im afraid" or "if you live near a river, don't" or "regional water company suggests you should not even look at your local lake"

jk, 9 months ago to random

im amazed that ive still only ever seen "Help > Search for menu option" in mac programs. they've had it for years. its literally a 'command palette' but any program with menus can get it for free. so why the hell don't i ever see it on windows or linux, it's such an obviously good idea that saves a crazy amount of time for the user

jk, 1 year ago to random

when i was a kid i never had access to a proper computer until i was at least 11, so i was always trying to get my hands on things that were Not Quite A Computer. there was no way in hell i'd be able to afford my own Actual Computer, but the idea of something that could-kind-of-hackily-be-used-like-a-computer seemed attainable. after 20 years of having an Actual Computer now i'm thoroughly bored of it, yet i'm still inexplicably drawn to any of those devices that are Not Quite A Computer

jk, 7 months ago to random

i reckon installing a python package has about a 2% success rate in 2023. it used to be at least 80%, perhaps ten years ago it was close to 100

jk, 7 months ago to random

i saw a post today, oh boy

jk, 8 months ago to random

cool that in 2023 we have the technology for me to pull out my phone and point it up at the night sky and see labels for all the wonderful celestial objects out there right now such as STARLINK-3716, STARLINK-8755, STARLINK-1644, STARLINK-5244, STARLINK-6152, STARLINK-7361, STARLINK-1672, STARLINK-1739, STARLINK-5123, STARLINK-6321, STARLINK-7551, STARLINK-1540, STARLINK-1527, STARLINK-8223, STARLINK-2311, STARLINK-3080, STARLINK-3130, STARLINK-6581, STARLINK-8580, STARLINK-7001, STARLINK-5150,

jk, 9 months ago to random

it sucks that if you don't use extremely, pedantically-correct terms for everything all the time, if the topic is remotely technical, some nerd will show up and be like "actually, that's not an X that's a Y which is a subset of X but not quite" and all you can say to them is "i'm afraid my philosophy of communication is more loose than yours, and you totally knew what i was talking about, so what's the problem" and whatever they say in response decodes to "it's morally wrong to be imprecise"

jk, 4 months ago to random

browsers used to let you access ftp servers. it was a thing you could count on that was useful sometimes, but at some point, it just went away. for example, chrome got rid of it a few years ago probably, which kinda sucks. anyway i thought "i bet firefox still has that, they're the Good one" so i opened firefox, and nope! not only did they also remove their ftp functionality too but the fucking "Recommended by Pocket" spam had reappeared since i last used the browser. cmon it's just embarrassing

jk, 7 months ago to random

every 2 years i think "i should try using an IDE again" and i find some IDE that looks good, and i set myself a 1 hour time limit to get an existing project of mine set up in it as a 'project' or a 'solution' etc, all the build config, includes, libraries, debugging, etc. and without exception i always time out without getting anything working, and go back to using a text editor. it's frustrating because i actually believe IDEs are better in theory, i can just never get them to work

jk, 17 days ago to random

interesting that "portable computer with a really good keyboard and a really good battery life" doesn't exist since the two trends went in opposite directions

jk, 3 days ago to random

i had an app on my iphone which my phone's operating system randomly decided to delete off my phone. thankfully, they replaced the icon with a shortcut to re-download the app from the app store. when i tapped it, it said "sorry this app no longer exists on the app store so it's gone forever". so they deleted my app! not the developer's app, sure the developer made the app but the app was mine, it was on my phone! and they deleted it!