Notices by Will Thompson (wjt@mastodon.me.uk)

Is there anyone in/near London who is going to @fosdem in a few weeks and would be able to take some (somewhat bulky) stuff for the @gnome stand?

Another week, another new & unsettling recipe for making a computational sausage. Today it was this massive text file enumerating how every button and axis from every known gamepad is reported on every known platform in order to map them to a standard taxonomy:

https://github.com/mdqinc/SDL_GameControllerDB/blob/master/gamecontrollerdb.txt

I guess I should have known that ultimately it must boil down to this...

One of the things I hate most about Git workflows which involve my patches being rebased when they are landed on the main branch is that `git branch --merged` correctly doesn't consider my local branches to be merged. I know how to write a crappy shell loop with `git cherry` to see if all patches on a given branch are textually identical to some patch on the 'main' branch, but surely someone else must have written this tool before?

@1ace @mcc they look better in prose than plain quotes, and it is very difficult for a normal human who has not studied the X compose tables to type “ ” ‘ ’ ?

Yes, thank you, Tuba, I know how hyperlinks work in AD 2023.

In the last year or so I read an article thoroughly investigating whether the idiom

[ x$foo = x ]

is still needed in modern-day /bin/sh, concluding that it is not if you quote the variable. But it's surprisingly hard to search for. Does anyone happen to have a link lying around?

Edit: found it! https://www.vidarholen.net/contents/blog/?p=1035

TFW you get a letter addressed "TO LANDOWNER / OCCUPIER" from the local council, explaining that they are planning to designate your area as a Conservation Area, and the letter begins “Dear Sirs”.

I guess they believe the distinctive local character includes the assumption that only men can own or occupy a house!

@wingo I had a consultation for this earlier this year (before cancelling for uninteresting reasons). They were adamant that it would be impossible for me to work for a minimum of 48 hours after the procedure. "But will I be able to sit at home and use a laptop?" "Sure, of course." 🤔

Ah yes, the two genders:
- wears a dress correctly
- wears a dress upside-down

@mattl Celeste has an assist mode but gently reminds you that the game is meant to be challenging before you enable it. A nice balance, I think.