Status update, April 2020

Wow, it’s already time for another status update? I’m starting to lose track of the days stuck inside. I have it easier than many - I was already used to working from home before any of this began. But, weeks and weeks of not spending IRL time with anyone else is starting to get to me. Remember to call your friends and family and let them know how you’re doing. Meanwhile, I’ve had a productive month - let’s get you up to date!

In the Wayland world, I’ve made some more progress on the book. The input chapter is now finished, including the example code. The main...

Самая короткая программа вывода десятичного числа

В 1984-ом году вышла культовая книга Стивена Леви “Хакеры: герои компьютерной революции”. Существует любительский русский перевод, но он далёк от идеала. Я было взялся исправлять неточности в нём, положив рядом английский оригинал (кстати, и он не без греха), да забросил после второй главы. Так или иначе, хочу обратить ваше внимание на фрагмент (можно прочитать его в виде отдельной статьи), посвящённый подпрограмме печати числа в десятичной системе. Насколько можно уменьшить такую программу? Каков предел?
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Ending my support for Python 2

My unorthodox, branchless git workflow

I have been using git for a while, and I took the time to learn about it in great detail. Equipped with an understanding of its internals and a comfortable familiarity with tools like git rebase — and a personal, intrinsic desire to strive for minimal and lightweight solutions — I have organically developed a workflow which is, admittedly, somewhat unorthodox.

In short, I use git branches very rarely, preferring to work on my local master branch almost every time. When I want to work on multiple tasks in the same repository (i.e. often), I just… work on all of them on master. I waste no time creating a...

Time-based One-Time Password tools

The Polygons of DOOM: PSX

How DOOM was implemented on PlayStation 1!

Designing and 3D printing a new part for my truck

I drove a car daily for many years while I was living in Colorado, California, and New Jersey, but since I moved to Philadelphia I have not needed a car. The public transit here is not great, but it’s good enough to get where I need to be and it’s a lot easier than worrying about parking a car. However, in the past couple of years, I have been moving more and more large server parts back and forth to the datacenter for SourceHut. I’ve also developed an interest in astronomy, which benefits from being able to carry large equipment to remote places. These reasons, among others,...

The reckless, infinite scope of web browsers

Since the first browser war between Netscape and Internet Explorer, web browsers have been using features as their primary means of competing with each other. This strategy of unlimited scope and perpetual feature creep is reckless, and has been allowed to go on for far too long.

I used wget to download all 1,217 of the W3C specifications which have been published at the time of writing1, of which web browsers need to implement a substantial subset in order to provide a modern web experience. I ran a word count on all of these specifications. How complex would you guess the web is?

The total word count of the...

Менеджер Python для macOS

Правильный способ установки нескольких версий Python, не нарушающий работу системы и позволяющий легко переключаться между версиями. Краткое изложение оригинальной статьи Устанавливаем менеджер Python с помощью менеджера пакетов brew. С помощью переменной окружения PYTHON_CONFIGURE_OPTS разрешаем фреймворк (это нужно для YouCompleteMe): Устанавливаем …

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GitHub's new notifications: a case of regressive design

Disclaimer: I am the founder of a company which competes with GitHub. However, I still use tools like GitHub, GitLab, and so on, as part of regular contributions to projects all over the FOSS ecosystem. I don’t dislike GitHub, and I use it frequently in my daily workflow.

GitHub is rolling out a new notifications UI. A few weeks ago, I started seeing the option to try it. Yesterday, I received a warning that the old UI will soon be deprecated. At this pace, I would not be surprised to see the new UI become mandatory in a week or two. I’m usually optimistic about trying out...