Notices by Joe Cooper 💾 (swelljoe@mas.to)

@foone the Perl codebase I work on, which is probably a couple hundred thousand lines of code, still has quite a few Perl 4-isms in it. Works fine on current Perl versions.

@jwz @cstross the problem is that a lot of that money is going to go into the pockets of the very grifters who started the bubble, and who are currently working to elect a fascist regime by hook or by crook. It's going to wreck the "normie" economy, in a way that Bitcoin tried and mostly failed to do, and a bunch of money will be relocated from productive use by companies that employ people to grifters who'll replace those workers with vastly inferior technology that pretends to do the work.

The Republican candidate sure is old. Oldest presidential candidate in history, I hear. Aren't they worried about how he rambles incoherently sometimes? Seems like a real concern.

@thomasfuchs also reminded me that it was invented at Kodak! They could have ruled the digital camera revolution, but the innovator's dilemma killed them.

@thomasfuchs it's beautiful. I like that it has a pull-focus handle (I assume that's what the lever is). They were thinking ahead to digital cinema cameras.

@tokyo_0 a fixed-rate mortgage (which is what most folks choose, after a bunch of fuckery from lenders over the past couple-few decades with variable rate mortgages cost people their homes), so their payments never change for the life of the mortgage. They probably pay higher property taxes over time, and maybe higher insurance premiums, as those are subject to inflation and rising home values, but most of their housing cost is fixed.

@tokyo_0 but, all that assumes good intentions on the part of policymakers and regulators, which is hard to assume these days. These days, capital is being protected from inflation and unregulated cartels are price-fixing, while workers aren't often getting higher wages to keep pace with it. So, lower is probably better for everyone? I dunno.

@tokyo_0 you reckon it's too high or too low? Some inflation is probably good for working class folks, as long as wages keep pace with it (which isn't a given, see the current US minimum wage that hasn't changed in 15 years), as it devalues assets of rich folks and working class folks assets, like a house with a mortgage, act as a hedge (cost of housing stays the same, while wages go up). But, too much inflation is an economic shock and wages tend to lag way behind, hurting workers.

Heartbreaking

@thomasfuchs xD: weird shape. Dimensions are wrong. People don't like that.
SmartMedia: contacts too exposed, looks naked.
(Probably still just about cost of manufacture and licensing. Price and availability makes a big difference.)

@thomasfuchs small and flat. People like that. (Probably actually just cheaper to manufacture or has better licensing terms, or both.)

@rodhilton @Migueldeicaza Biden is not negotiating for votes, he's simply doing what he's always done. But, if he were, this would still be a stupid calculation. The people who want an isolationist nationalist America-first agenda will not choose a light version of that just because Biden got a little fascist at the end of his first term. Fascists want fascism, not merely a few policy concessions. Trump says it with his whole chest. Catering to them merely shows weakness and empowers them.

@tokyo_0 I mean, it's always gonna be a pain in the ass somewhere. Software is hard, and most of the time is spent learning, no matter what path you take. There are plenty of smart people using React, Vue, and all the other eleventy thousand JS/TS frameworks. I just don't like pulling in that much code I don't have familiarity with. But, you'll never hurt your value on the job market or ability to work on a lot of OSS projects by learning more JavaScript/TypeScript.

@tokyo_0 I may dislike the JavaScript development ecosystem more than you, though. I hate how even simple projects balloon into millions of lines of code almost instantly the moment you use something like React. Really, any time you're using npm/yarn/etc. you're gonna have an explosion of dependencies, now you need WebPack, tree-shaking, etc. For me, being able to add one line to pull in HTMX and then do everything requiring smarts on the backend, with possibly no JS, is ideal.

@tokyo_0 also quite large and JavaScript-heavy, and needs all the usual JavaScript tooling, but it does seem to be where people overwhelmed by the weight of React, but who still want a full-featured JavaScript frontend framework go. To me, it has most of the same negatives as React and a smaller ecosystem. But, I wouldn't use either for small projects, unless I was joining an existing project that was already using it.

@tokyo_0 if you hate JavaScript, maybe HTMX is the way to go. React is for people who like JavaScript and don't really like HTML. Also a heavy lift for a small website, a lot of learning and a lot of code and tooling needed to get something off the ground. React has some job market value, though, if that matters to you.

My FedEx driver has just decided they don't deliver packages anymore. I spent all day Sunday and today waiting on a package scheduled for delivery; each time, they never showed up and the status changed to "Customer not available or business closed". Happened a week ago, too, but they actually delivered that package on the second attempt. If they don't show up tomorrow, they're sending the package back after zero attempts to deliver. Of course, FedEx has an AI chatbot for "customer service".

It feels revisionist to suggest no one knew Saudi Arabia was involved in 9/11. Evidence was there even as hawks pushed for war elsewhere. It was ignored because it was politically and economically expedient to do so. Saudi Arabia continues to wage war on the US (and democracy in general), but because they have a lot of money and a lot of ties in business (tech, too) everyone pretends the Saudi royal family isn't plotting to murder Americans and destabilize democracy. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/05/september-11-attacks-saudi-arabia-lawsuit/678430/

Going through old photos, and it's incredible that even seven years ago, a casual snapshot taken with a mid-range phone (a Moto X4) could look like this. We have 4-6x more pixels now, even on phones. Bonkers. Dunno why I'm not shooting more photos (maybe because my neck of the woods in Dallas is not very photogenic, gotta get back on the road).

@nasamuffin living the dream. Both of them.