Notices by Mark Stosberg (markstos@urbanists.social)

@aral So what browser do you recommend?

@vancura @aral @Vivaldi That’s the recommended alternative to Firefox, a browser engine made by Google and reskinned by Vivaldi?

@vancura @aral @Vivaldi There’s no perfect browser, and it’s good to hold Firefox to a high standard along with all the others, but context matters.

It seems like there are two primary options: either a browser based on Chromium or one based on Firefox.

And the Chromium family already has more than 70% market share, creating a kind monoculture.

Maybe one day there will be a strong third option based on LadyBird or something else, but that’s not today

@vancura @aral @Vivaldi Orion, WebKit-based, is interesting. It claims to support some Firefox and Chrome extensions.

@ozzelot @Ninji Once you get through the dangerous slightly-out-date era, there are years of calm waters when you are so out of date even the exploits quit supporting your OS.

Browsers are tinkering with ways to display multiple web apps at once: An AI chatbot in a sidebar or "workspaces".

A more flexible solution that allows you to mix and match windows as you please are tiling window managers like Sway for Linux or Amethyst for macOS. They support many virtual desktops first-class options for supporting windows side-by-side.

https://swaywm.org/
https://ianyh.com/amethyst/

Shouldn't need different ways to switch normal apps & web-apps within a browser.

#Linux

355 small and mid-sized towns in the US now have AI-generated newsletter sites that appear to local. They make money by summarizing local news and adding ads.

Here’s the story of how investigating one such site led to discovering a whole network of doppelgängers with questionable practices.

https://limestonepostmagazine.com/today-in-bloomington-not-local-newsletter/

#ai #journalism

Bookshop.org launches a way to buy #ebooks that supports local bookstores

…with the catch that they don’t support eReaders. Reading on iOS, Android and the web is supported.

I will not be surprised if Apple and Google earn more from eBook purchase than the local bookshops do.

https://bookshop.org/ebooks

Tip for getting a change you want into an #opensource project:

Given limited time to triage a busy project, maintainers are more likely to focus their time on "pull requests"--- proposed code changes-- than bug reports and feature requests.

Yes, A contributor risks more time by creating a PR that will get ignored or rejected, but they also waste time assuming some volunteering is standing by implement their feature request or fix their bug. Sometimes they are, often the aren't.

#coding

The #Nix docs have a reputation for being not-great, and I got to experience that after reviewing the "Ad hoc Shell Environments" page and attempting to try some things there:

https://nix.dev/tutorials/first-steps/ad-hoc-shell-environments

```
❯ nix-shell -p nodejs-20_x
error: getting status of '/nix/var/nix/daemon-socket/socket': Permission denied
```

Now, why would creating an env specific to my current user require access to a socket owned by another user?

I read somewhere that to solve this #Nix error I needed to add my current user to the `nix-users` group, which I did, but then I got another error:

```
❯ nix-shell -p nodejs-20_x
error: creating directory '/nix/store': Permission denied
```

Again, I'm not running the command as root or with `sudo`, so it's unclear why Nix insists on attempting to run as another user.

`nix-shell` could also provide more useful error messages than "permission denied".

Not a great first impression.

So I created that directory and there's a new error:

```
❯ nix-shell -p nodejs-20_x
error: creating directory '/nix/store/.links': Permission denied
```

Created that directory, and there's another error:

```
❯ nix-shell -p nodejs-20_x
error: creating directory '/nix/var/nix/temproots': Permission denied
```

#Nix has an missed opportunity to here to check for these error states and produce a more useful diagnostic message than "permission denied".

I manually resolved those directory issues with #nix, only to reveal a new category of error:

```
error: file 'nixpkgs' was not found in the Nix search path (add it using $NIX_PATH or -I)
```

Sorry, if trying Nix was supposed to a step towards using #NixOS, the out of the box experience has been poor for me on Arch Linux.

Apparently this issue might be that first `nix-channel` needs to download something? That could have been done automatically or the diagnostic message could say that.

#MechanicalKeyboard fans

My favorite keycap and colorway is on sale now on eBay: MT3 Susuwatari.

The tactile design of this keycap helps keep my fingers centered on the keys, improving accuracy. That’s my story.

The F and J are dished slightly deeper as homing keys.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/156354474534?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=cfOE165ZTta&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=c4DN55D8TBW&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=MORE

After decades of consistency, #Apple is killing the square checkbox. https://tonsky.me/blog/checkbox/

@jimcarroll Adding context:

"pg_repack is a PostgreSQL extension which lets you remove bloat from tables and indexes, and optionally restore the physical order of clustered indexes. Unlike CLUSTER and VACUUM FULL it works online, without holding an exclusive lock on the processed tables during processing. pg_repack is efficient to boot, with performance comparable to using CLUSTER directly."

https://reorg.github.io/pg_repack/

Reminder: The reason that some email apps don't show images by default is for your #privacy

The images are not part of the email. They are hosted on remote servers controlled by the email publisher. The URL for the images contains a unique ID in it.

The result is that when you click "load images", the publisher can track that you specifically opened their email.

This is also why nearly every newsletter contains at least one image.

@reallychris I finally got booted into Hyprland.

The Easymotion plugin I was excited to use was very laggy to start. Then, either "Escape" couldn't be used to exit that mode, or it was very slow to do so. Even when it work it would frequently leave the overlaps up on other windows instead of closing them. Alternatives like `wmfocus` and `sway-easyfocus` start without lag on the same hardware.

The Expo plugin was nice, but also did not allow quitting with Escape by default.

@reallychris That may be the end of my #Hyprland experiment for now.

My issues with Sway are relatively minor and familiar. I've got a lot of other initiatives to pursue besides tuning my desktop.

Still, plenty of interesting ideas in #Hyprland. Besides that it has a plugin system, I liked that you can add formal descriptions of your keybindings and then introspect them via API.

Beginner #SwayWM users have long been interested in a way to search and run their key bindings.

@drewdevault And it's not like it's a binary choice either, like pointing the finger at the single worst cause of climate change and ignoring all others.

There are a lot of developers in the world. Enough to work on Rust-in-Linux and a Rust-only kernel as well.

A small, Rust-only kernel could try out some ideas that might actually spend up Rust-in-Linux development.