Notices by ARGVMI~1.PIF (argv_minus_one@mastodon.sdf.org), page 3

@prettygood

Using dd makes me nervous in general.

Maybe I should start using some GUI program to write disk images…

The existence of @doskel implies the existence of @windowskel and @os2kel.

#retrocomputing #shitpost

@whitequark

Yeah, that too. WebAssembly shouldn't need JavaScript glue code to manipulate the DOM. JavaScript should be entirely optional.

@whitequark

I'd call it a wasted opportunity. But 🤷♂️

@whitequark

That's problematic. Anything other than a browser that needs to read the XML is going to be confused by the presence of an HTML script element.

I don't even want to know what would happen if you tried this trick with an RSS feed or XML sitemap. Google itself would probably reject it as invalid.

I'd much rather they replace it with an HTTP response header that nominates a WebAssembly preprocessor program.

@whitequark

My only complaint here is that they're not replacing it with some generic way for the server to specify a client-side (WebAssembly?) program to transform an arbitrary response body into HTML, like you could do until now with XML and XSLT.

That'd be a hell of a lot cleaner and more elegant than sending a mostly-blank HTML page with a script that separately fetches and transforms the actual content.

And it would be easier on the server than server-side rendering.

When I run `sqlite3 -bail path/to/database .dump` if there is an error, the exit code is still zero.

I'm running this as part of a backup script, so if the dump doesn't work for whatever reason, I do need it to set a non-zero exit code!

Anybody have any idea how to make it do that? Or perhaps a different program for dumping SQLite databases?

#SQLite #programming #DBA #sysadmin #backup

@prettygood

Wild.

My employer's website uses SQLite for its shopping cart system. I hadn't paid much attention to the choice of RDBMS until now, but it's been running for over 15 years and never went corrupt.

They do keep backups, though, just in case.

I must confess I'm really liking #SQLite right now.

The database is just a file. You can put it anywhere, even on a network file system. There is no user name, no password, no IP address and port number, no certificate, and no separate RDBMS process to babysit.

And yet it's still a proper database with SQL and ACID and all. I can query it like any other database, even if there is some other program writing to the database at the same time.

Beautiful.

#programming

Oof. Repeatedly, rapidly switching my right hand between mouse and keyboard is hard on my shoulder.

Middle-aged programmer problems. 😅

How the hell did we ever live with 640×480?

I'm running 3840×2160 on a 28-inch screen and I still sometimes turn on my second screen to get more space.

At 640×480 I would surely go mad.

#retrocomputing

Happy Friday to all who celebrate.

That's neat how I can scan a bunch of papers into a 57MB PDF and the whole thing fits easily into RAM, let alone disk.

There was a time when people (by which I mean me) dreamed of scanning all the things and storing them microscopically in the computer. Well, the future is now!

Slightly disappointed that it's called #LibrePhone and not “GNA's Not Android”.

#FSF #GNU #shitpost

At #Microsoft in the 2000s, the Recycle Bin wasn't just an icon on the desktop. They had actual recycle bins throughout the campus too.

When it came time to dispose of them, #RaymondChen saw to it that the recycle bins were, themselves, recycled. He tells the story in this installment of #OldNewThing. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20121016-00/?p=6323

If a toot is written in all caps is it called a honk?

#shitpost

If #BIOS vendors could standardize on one key to get a boot menu, and give me enough time to see on the screen which key that is and press it, that'd be great.

Back in the #retrocomputing days, this wasn't a problem because computers did a lengthy memory test at power on, but that's long gone now. Also, the screen came to life right away, whereas now the computer is already most of the way through the POST sequence when it gets around to initializing video.

The existence of a system call named “fork” implies the existence of a system call named “spoon”.

#Unix #shitpost

@tony

Character-cell pseudo-graphics! This was done back in the 1980s to get #CGA to do 16-color #graphics. (Normally you'd need #EGA to do that.)

But of course this is the 21st century, so we can do it in 24-bit color now.

Fun fact: #kitty has a straight-up 24/32-bit pixel graphics protocol too https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/graphics-protocol/ although it does not support lossy compression (MPEG, AV1, etc) and therefore requires tons of bandwidth to play video.

@ryanc

#retrocomputing

@tony

I wonder if #terminal s like #kitty should add a sound protocol as well? 🤔

@ryanc