Notices by argv minus one (argv_minus_one@mastodon.sdf.org), page 3

One thing I miss about the #KDE 1 / #GNOME 1 / #MacOS 9/X days is that there were a zillion different #GUI themes, each with cool and unique looks for widgets. Gradients, drop shadows, brushed metal textures, buttons that look like glass vials full of blue liquid, you name it. GUIs actually looked cool.

Now custom themes, where they exist at all, are nothing but flat, solid, desaturated colors and rounded rectangles. It's dreadfully boring.

@steter

I've done that too. 😅 Complicated problems sometimes become less complicated after you sleep on them.

@Alice @jrconlin @tezoatlipoca

@Alice

Programmer here. It *is* a simple request. I've written code that inserts an extra space, for exactly the sort of reason you're talking about, on many occasions.

There is a catch, though. If the text with the extra space is then fed to some code that trims all extra spaces off, then yeah, it's gonna trim that extra space too. In that case, the code needs to insert the extra space *after* trimming.

Perhaps your colleague isn't allowed to change that code?

@jrconlin @tezoatlipoca

@cell

Hey, that's not fair. KDE Plasma can be made very not-modern if that's what you're into.

The rise of smartphones has created an interesting phenomenon: #computers communicating optically by scanning barcodes on each other's screens.

This has some interesting #infosec properties:

* Humans can see when communication happens and control which devices are communicating (by pointing them at each other).

* Only a few bytes of data can be exchanged. This limits attack surface: there's no room for a non-trivial attack payload.

* This requires line of sight. No attacks through walls.

Once, when I was a little kid of about 10 years old, I was poking around Matlab on my dad's computer. One of the things it could do is display the waveform of a sound file. This is what taught me what PCM is and how it works.

I didn't learn much else from Matlab—it was (and probably still is) way over my head—but for whatever reason, its demonstration of digital audio made perfect sense to me.

Kid brains are weird like that.

Just ssh'd into two computers and started a #backup running on both of them.

One of them backs up onto a USB hard drive plugged into it. The other one ssh's into the first one and backs up onto that same USB HDD.

It struck me that this would have been impossible back in the day when we used tape for backup. Network backup was a thing, but each tape drive could be used by only one computer at a time, and each tape held only one computer's backup(s).

#retrocomputing

@hellomiakoda

For that last one, run the command with systemd-inhibit.

Modern phones are better in almost every way than the phones I grew up with, but they're missing one feature: repeatedly coiling the cord around your finger while you talk.

USB charging cables exist, but they're too thick to do this with.

@botvolution

The source file names aren't changing, only the folder structure.

If I wanted to keep a copy on my desktop of the photos on my phone, and organize those photos into several folders, how would I avoid re-copying photos I've already copied?

If I drop all my photos into a single folder, this is trivial: if there is already a file with the same name in the destination folder, then don't copy that one.

But if I drop the photos into multiple folders, that simple check won't work—the photo might have already been copied into a different folder!

What do?

#Linux

#Linux: dropping support for Apple HFS/HFS+. Apparently nobody cares enough about this file system to bother maintaining the kernel driver for it. Even though HFS+ was used in production less than a decade ago.

Also Linux: still has (presumably maintained) support for Amiga FFS. The last time someone used Amiga FFS in production was, what, 1994?

🤨

@hellomiakoda

I mean, yeah, there are reasons why you shouldn't use any given distro.

For example, if you want a macOS-like experience where you can do everything without ever directly touching a command line or configuration file, then Arch is probably a bad choice. But it is popular among people who want to get their hands dirty and fully control all aspects of their system.

The goal is to find the distro where none of the reasons-not-to-use-it apply to you.

So, if AI scrapers could share their scrapings with each other instead of DDoSing the entire web, that'd be great.

@bignose @rossquantum

The quirk in question is that macOS scanning happens on an Apple server. App publishers must submit their apps to that server for scanning. If the scan checks out, the server generates a cryptographic signature of the app, certifying it as malware-free.

App publishers must agree to a giant wall of legalese and restrictions, and pay $99/year, for the privilege of scanning their apps. FOSS developers generally won't do this.

The existence of the #Commodore PET implies the existence of Commodore CATTLE.

#shitpost

#Debian when I was young: “Look at me! I'm new! I can do cool things, like package management! Isn't that cool?!”

Debian now: “I am the Distro of Ages. I was born in the Before Times and shall endure long after all other distros have crumbled to dust.”

@wyatt

So what do you recommend?

@wyatt

So, what I'm getting from this answer is “🤷♂️ Framework is probably the best, but that won't stop me from complaining about it.”

I have a 15-year-old laptop. It is painfully slow. It requires a proprietary charger. The spinning-metal drive will probably have a head crash if I ever drop it. The battery lasts about 12 seconds. It's theoretically repairable except nobody manufactures replacement parts so in practice good luck with that.

In what way would a Framework be worse than that?

RAM in the oldest computer I've used: 655360 bytes

RAM in the newest computer I've used: 34359738368 bytes

Semiconductor manufacturing has come a long, *long* way.