argv[-1]

https://mastodon.sdf.org/@argv_minus_one

Previously @argv_minus_one@mstdn.party
Also [@argv_minus_one](https://fedi.absturztau.be/users/argv_minus_one )

Public Key

npub1k6ykawdchynr4qhzka4wk3qpj09g0p2kgcprd4y20mgrnlxxmucq5mm3fx

NIP-05 Address

argv_minus_one_at_mastodon.sdf.org@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqstdztwhxutjf36st3tw6htgsqe8j58s4tyvq3k6j98a5pelnrd7vqpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsg9mmj7

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1k6ykawdchynr4qhzka4wk3qpj09g0p2kgcprd4y20mgrnlxxmucq5mm3fx

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Last Notes

2026-08-15 18:01:06 UTC

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Possible solution: design all file system drivers such that they can be compiled for either user or kernel mode. That way, every file system has a FUSE equivalent with the same code.
Not sure how feasible this is, though.

2026-08-15 17:55:58 UTC

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Problem: user-mode file system drivers are slow. So are microkernels in which all drivers are user-mode.

2026-08-03 21:11:44 UTC

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I don't know for sure, but that's what Google AI says, and I saw a bunch of articles warning people that it would hard-brick their phones.
Super not amused that the phone I paid good money for is literally designed to destroy itself if an update goes sufficiently sideways.
@npub19cp…6and @npub1h54…c9uf

2026-08-03 18:24:44 UTC

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I've also learned that #Google #GooglePixel phones have an “anti-rollback” feature that will permanently hard-brick the device if tripped. Which it can be, if the bootloader gets corrupted. Nothing anyone can do.
In other words, I was sold a self-destructing #phone.
Fantastic.
https://share.google/aimode/O8eWGurPxT7kNG8s4
@npub1ze4…0y3x

2026-08-03 18:24:03 UTC

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Google official tool doesn't work. Usbdl asks for my specific model, and Pixel 6 isn't one of them. Looks like it needs some kind of ROM images or something.
Apparently Google keeps the necessary files behind lock and key, and thousands of phones have been bricked by updates like mine was. <https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/507968853?pli=1> <https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/402455330#comment119>
@npub1ze4…0y3x

2026-08-03 01:36:44 UTC

Welp, I took my #Pixel 6 #phone to a repair shop, where it was pronounced dead.
Cause of death: fatal complications of a botched software update.
It will be missed. 🪦
I don't have the budget for a new phone right now, so this forces me to use my old Pixel 3a, which still works. But the stock OS insecure af now, so…what OS should I install on it? Preferably something that Just Works™ once installed.
[@collective_truth](https://mastodon.social/@collective_truth ) @npub1ze4…0y3x @npub15gl…flgs @npub12l0…85j6 @npub1pmk…k8up @npub15r3…r92k @npub1m95…ehng

2026-07-22 18:31:35 UTC

Does #SNES music count as a #chiptune?
That machine arrived in the late chiptune era, when FM synthesis was the norm, and it seems to have some PSG-like functions (fire and explosion sounds in SNES games often sound like the NES), but for the most part it is a sample-based synthesizer.
Wikipedia says Fast Tracker makes chiptunes <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiptune#Contemporary_chiptune_music>, but unless I'm mistaken, FT uses the CPU for software synthesis, not a PSG or similar, so… 🤷‍♂️
#retrocomputing #retrogaming

2026-06-16 17:00:15 UTC

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Did you have an alternative in mind?
My org may or may not need something like this soon, so I'd very much like to know what we should be using instead.
@npub1evj…970v

2026-06-13 19:02:23 UTC

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I don't know what that site is, but it is super weird that it doesn't even say what it is before demanding I agree to a giant wall of legalese. (I declined.)

2026-05-07 21:08:30 UTC

Oh good, another high-severity #Linux #security vulnerability that somebody botched the disclosure of, turning it into a high-severity zero-day.
Because #CopyFail wasn't bad enough. Now we've got #DirtyFrag too.
Can #cybersecurity people please stop botching vulnerability disclosure? Thanks.
https://github.com/V4bel/dirtyfrag/blob/master/README.md
#security

2026-05-05 15:28:31 UTC

Imagine being such a control freak that you prohibit your children from talking to anyone.
And moreover demand that the government demolish any place where people could potentially talk to each other, just to be sure that your children can't talk to anyone.
Because I sure can't. That's insane. Absolutely bat-guano insane.
And yet that is the reality in which I find myself.
They have yet to invent words to adequately describe how disappointed and frightened I am by my fellow adults' behavior.

2026-04-30 04:52:50 UTC

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Server people don't care what CPU architecture is popular. They'll compile their code for whatever hardware is best.
So if the performance of such a machine were only slightly worse, then I really can't imagine why people wouldn't be using it by now. They've already accepted performance penalties for Meltdown mitigation, and those penalties were not slight.

2026-04-30 04:45:39 UTC

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Yes, because most people aren't using hypervisors for what we currently use processes for. If the hypervisor becomes the new process, that will surely change.

2026-04-30 04:43:31 UTC

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That's a very extraordinary claim. It requires very extraordinary proof.
If there were a way to achieve performance on par with what we have now, yet do so without the security risk and extra circuitry required for speculative execution (and the security/stability risk of ambient-authority monolithic kernels), wouldn't we be using it already?

2026-04-30 04:33:25 UTC

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Sure, until people start demanding that hypervisors expose these sorts of APIs for whatever reason. Linux didn't always have this, you know.

2026-04-30 04:24:31 UTC

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You mean like Microsoft Research's Singularity operating system?
I vaguely recall that that sort of security model is insecure because of the Spectre vulnerability. Not sure about the details, but the hardware would also need to lack speculative execution, and nobody's going to accept such a severe performance hit.

2026-04-30 04:21:16 UTC

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Well, per the writeup, Copy Fail is the result of a silly optimization case. Linux certainly could adopt a policy of being more paranoid about isolating user-space data from memory belonging to other processes or the kernel, speed be damned. Don't need to hypervisor everything just to accomplish that.

2026-04-30 04:11:28 UTC

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In short: Qubes is only right until people start actually using it en masse.

2026-04-30 04:09:38 UTC

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That's the whole point of processes and memory protection: to virtualize the CPU, memory, and other shared hardware resources.
Running everything in a hypervisor is just processes with extra steps. And when everybody starts demanding all the fancy features and performance tricks you'll currently find in the Linux kernel, which you know they will, we'll end up right back here, having expended titanic effort and accomplished nothing.

2026-04-27 05:19:09 UTC

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As far as I'm concerned, the Year of the #Linux Desktop was a long time ago, and now I'm just waiting for everybody to get the memo.
Not, like, Debian 1.2 kind of long time ago. It was very rough back then. Could explode your screen if you weren't careful, and that's only a slight exaggeration.
But this is 2026. It's been solid for ages (and so have screens).

2026-04-27 05:18:38 UTC

Somebody on YouTube posted “DEBIAN 13: I could actually use it as my desktop, now!”
Heh. I've been using #Debian on desktop since version 1.2. Or maybe 1.1. I forget.

2026-04-25 01:33:39 UTC

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Let's not. Kids are people, not property to be muted at a whim. If they have something to say, the government has no business stopping them from saying it in the place where the general public will hear them, and in 2026 that place is social media.
Frankly I'm shocked at how quickly freedom of speech flies out the window. When I was in school, I was taught that freedom of speech is sacred and our ancestors died for it! Am I the only one who took it to heart?
@npub1vh5…r3th

2026-04-21 03:02:54 UTC

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34 paragraphs on one page? What is this, a font size for ants?

2026-04-18 03:04:41 UTC

#IBM: “Our big sophisticated computers are sometimes making mistakes! We can't figure out why! How will we ever fix this?”
This One Guy: “With capacitors. One on every chip, across power and ground.”
IBM: “…Capacitors?”
TOG: “Capacitors.”
[one capacitor-soldering spree later, the computer works fine]
IBM: “Well, that was anticlimatic.”
https://youtu.be/4X3wLqP11kQ

2026-04-17 00:41:21 UTC

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Actor behavior can be scaled to whatever the game-logic tic rate is, by way of delta time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_time This is how some games are able to have an adjustable tic rate.
So everything still works if the tic rate equals the frame rate, which for example it does in Descent if I'm not mistaken.
But yes, a high tic rate is hard on CPU and bandwidth, and game characters' behavior doesn't need to react that fast anyway, hence tic rates usually being lower than 60Hz.

2026-04-16 22:47:05 UTC

All computer games are turn-based. Some of them just take turns 60 times per second.
Seriously, read the source code of a “real-time” #videoGame some time. You'll pretty quickly observe that the game engine works by giving each actor a turn to decide what it's going to do next (move, shoot, cast spell, etc) and then do it.
Obviously most actions take more than one frame, and therefore in most cases the turn action will be “continue what I was doing last turn”, but still.
#gaming #gamedev

2026-04-11 20:27:24 UTC

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Why the hell does a financial analytics and monitoring program need to store authentication tokens to a storage system for company documents?!
#Cybersecurity people are talking about hyper-paranoid zero-trust remote-attestation stuff, meanwhile companies are doing ridiculous crap like this.
Dear #infosec community: you know how the A-10 engineers were focused on armoring the parts of the plane that were actually getting hit and actually killing the plane? Maybe do the equivalent of that here.

2026-04-10 18:37:32 UTC

My cat is a cat who cats because she is a cat.

2026-04-06 03:19:12 UTC

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I mean, there isn't really any natural law that says there can't be a #Wayland compositor that runs on #EGA hardware.
It would have the same chunky-to-planar-conversion overhead that complicated attempts to port #Doom to the #Amiga, but it's not impossible.
#retrocomputing

2026-04-03 23:43:56 UTC

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I already did. I know what's wrong with that eye. Treatment options are not great.
The condition is, at least, not expected to get any worse than it already is. So, as long as nothing else happens to my good eye, I can live with it.
Here's hoping nothing else happens to my good eye…

2026-04-03 23:23:11 UTC

Just noticed something about my #eyesight.
One of my #eyes is messed up. It sees a blurry image, no matter the distance.
So I mostly use the other #eye to actually see things. That one still sees a good image.
But, if I close the bad eye, it becomes hard to properly focus on certain objects, like a digital clock across the room.
Apparently, even though the bad eye can't see very well, I still need it because it still gives usable depth information, which help me focus properly.
Fascinating.

2026-04-03 22:34:35 UTC

Can #browsers please stop sending such ridiculous user-agent strings?
Chrome is not a 25-year-old version of Netscape, for goodness' sake.
Are there seriously still sites that break if you don't pretend to be Netscape? And even if there are, can't we just put together a database of them and only spoof the user-agent for them?
And now I see that Chrome pretends to be Safari. Even when it's running on Linux. You gotta be kidding me.
#webdev

2026-04-01 15:16:26 UTC

Source: https://nisus.com/blogs/copybara-pasteybara/
#capybara #shitpost
https://mastodon.sdf.org/system/media_attachments/files/116/330/105/672/611/826/original/1fb03298d9f2213f.png

2026-04-01 07:03:59 UTC

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The existence of addresses implies the existence of subtractresses.

2026-03-28 05:14:42 UTC

I miss #rageComics so much.
Source: https://imgur.com/genie-rage-be-careful-what-you-wish-naBiU
#rageComic
https://mastodon.sdf.org/system/media_attachments/files/116/305/086/869/940/233/original/b8697c8c33292fc2.png

2026-03-26 05:57:31 UTC

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Wait no, the Borg are already cooked.
I forgot about this, but a few years after the humans' first encounter with the Borg, they developed an infovirus that would wipe the Borg out…and decided not to use it because they *took pity on the Borg.*
Then a rogue human admiral decided “screw that” and wiped them out anyway.
Then, a few decades later, the Borg's last, barely-functional cube got cored by a human starship…from a museum.
Did I mention #StarTrek humans are scary? Because yeah.

2026-03-26 05:38:56 UTC

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Oh, and the one time some humans decided to violate the treaty and make a cloak anyway, they made the phasing cloak, which makes a ship not merely invisible but able to *hide inside planets*.
They could leave behind a Genesis device on every homeworld, buried under kilometers of rock, and detonate it whenever they please.
#StarTrek humans are f**king scary, man. Good thing they're such goody-two-shoes all the time, or everybody else (except Q and the Borg) would be COOKED.

2026-03-26 05:35:47 UTC

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Bear in mind, by the way, that Starfleet has at least one weapon that destroys planets in one shot: the Genesis device.
The Federation treaty that prohibits it from developing cloaking devices exists for a reason: a ship with a Genesis torpedo and a cloak could destroy any other power's homeworld at will with no warning.
That is terrifying.
If not for the treaty, every power in the galaxy would start a desperate all-out war against the Federation to stop it from doing that.
#StarTrek

2026-03-26 05:24:06 UTC

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#StarTrek humans are basically The Incredible Hulk: you won't like them when they're angry.

2026-03-26 05:18:23 UTC

They say humans' love of replicators and root beer makes them weak and soft.
Nah. As Quark once observed, replicators and root beer is what keeps humans docile and agreeable. Take away their creature comforts and back them into a corner, and they get mad and start blowing up planets, and nobody wants that.
So whatever you do, don't break the replicators!
#StarTrek #StarTrekDS9

2026-03-04 20:41:59 UTC

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That's not a major browser? I would be negligent in my webdev duties if I ignored a browser with over 2% market share.
Anyway, I don't recall encountering any websites that break in Firefox but work in both Chrome and Safari. I'm not sure how one could even achieve that, given that Firefox's browser score on caniuse is ahead of Safari's.
That said, I do wish Mozilla management were flushed and replaced with someone who understands their own product. This decline must stop.

2026-03-04 20:20:55 UTC

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I educated myself on Vivaldi's support for WebExtensions manifest versions before I made my previous post. I'm not stupid.
https://vivaldi.com/blog/manifest-v3-update-vivaldi-is-future-proofed-with-its-built-in-functionality/
Unless Google reverses course, the days of you running those extensions on Vivaldi are numbered. I'm surprised they aren't already over, but they are nonetheless numbered.
As for “works everywhere”, I fail to see why I should entertain websites whose developers weren't competent enough to test against all three major browsers.

2026-03-04 20:09:16 UTC

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Also consider LibreWolf, a privacy-focused Firefox variant that strips out the ad and AI features.
Unlike Vivaldi, it can still run uBlock Origin, uMatrix, and other Manifest V2 extensions.
Also unlike Vivaldi, it's free and open source software.

2026-03-04 19:47:35 UTC

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Any compiler or interpreter could do this. After every store, do a clflush, load, compare, and panic if there's a mismatch.
Problem is this would explode executable size (that's a lot of extra instructions) and ruin performance (that's a lot of extra instructions, and also you're effectively disabling the entire CPU cache).
@npub1vh5…r3th

2026-03-04 04:16:29 UTC

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Wouldn't a bot be able to generate those sentences?
@npub1as0…mnuu @npub1ud4…r8df

2026-02-28 19:50:25 UTC

If #webDesign people could please stop overriding the #hyperlink style to remove the underline, that'd be great. Great for #accessibility, to be precise.
Removing the underline makes hyperlinks hard to see, even if you have fully acute vision! I just saw a site where links are a deep reddish color, barely distinguishable from the black text. No underline. No other markings. Utter madness.
#a11y #webdev

2026-02-24 17:19:47 UTC

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Ok, I'll give it a try. Should I use the Mac App Store version or the Homebrew version?

2026-02-24 16:53:46 UTC

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Why are you regenerating keys after device migration?

2026-02-24 16:43:52 UTC

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Monal constantly forgets and regenerates the OMEMO key. I assume this is some kind of bug, but at any rate, this makes Monal unusable.

2026-02-24 00:23:37 UTC

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I am not the person who's using Beagle, so I can't replace it right away, but like I said, ASAP.
I've heard that Gajim is now available for macOS, so I will attempt to install that. It works great on Linux but I have no idea how well it works on macOS. I certainly hope it works well, though, because I'm running out of XMPP clients for my Mac-using friend to choose from!

2026-02-24 00:22:06 UTC

Just found out that #BeagleIM automatically fetches web links in messages and plays the page's video if there is one.
This is not acceptable behavior!!!
* It's annoying. There isn't any obvious way to stop the video.
* It's insecure. The linked page might attack vulnerabilities in Beagle's video player.
* It exposes the user's IP address to anyone who sends them a message, potentially physically endangering them.
Will uninstall and replace ASAP.
#XMPP #security #cybersecurity #infosec #UX

2026-02-22 01:00:52 UTC

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If you're looking for an alternative to KeePassXC, GNOME Secrets is pretty much a drop-in replacement.

2026-02-21 08:25:51 UTC

I wonder how many emojis involve fluids leaving the body.
I found these ones: 🤤😪🤮🤧🥵😰😥😢😭😓😅🤣😂😹😿
These ones too, if we include gases: 😮‍💨😤
This one involves the entire body becoming fluid, if that counts: 🫠

2026-02-15 18:26:26 UTC

Saw yet another account of an encounter with what appear to be #alien aircraft.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Fauxmoi/comments/1r55r0e/comment/o5gp9h7/
You know why this excites me? If #aliens are here, then their presence implies that #warp drive is possible and humanity is not confined to this solar system.
Also, they clearly aren't here to enslave or destroy us, or else we'd be enslaved or destroyed already, so that means there are friendlies out there.
That gives me #hope for a #StarTrek future. 🙏🖖

2026-02-05 18:55:58 UTC

Me: built a cool #gaming #PC that can run anything
Also me: playing a game from literally 1994
#retrogaming

2026-02-03 02:26:27 UTC

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They would blinkenlight at a steady 60Hz though. 🫤
@npub15cw…3agq @npub1e8t…n3ds

2026-02-02 23:38:42 UTC

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I have a string of LED Christmas lights that flicker pretty hard. I assume they're just wired in series directly to mains, with no rectifier. So, it could use that!
@npub1e8t…n3ds

2026-02-02 23:25:42 UTC

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That won't work with LED lighting though.
But I guess nobody thought people would be crazy enough to stuff a rectifier into every lightbulb.

2026-01-31 21:35:11 UTC

Going through some old code that was kept in CVS back in 2002.
Big oof. Including revision and log info inside source files must've seemed like a good idea at the time, but it's a total disaster if you're doing folder diffs. Every single file is different!
And I am indeed doing folder diffs, because I don't have a copy of the CVS repository this code was checked out of. Just two folders: one with the original project and one with some changes I need to extract.
Wish me luck!
#programming

2026-01-31 20:20:10 UTC

Client-side decorations are SO ANNOYING. 🤬
Title bars exist for a reason: that's how you move windows around. Stop removing them!
#GUI

2026-01-08 03:00:52 UTC

A few years ago, #Rust people were all asking “are we #GUI yet?” https://areweguiyet.com/
In a peculiar twist of fate, Rust people have gone hog-wild on #TUI instead!
They've got full-blown TUI window systems now! Last time I saw that was the old TUI #Borland #IDE s in the early 1990s, and with the rise of graphical window systems, I thought I'd never see such a thing again.
👏

2026-01-05 17:51:35 UTC

Just watched @npub1dml…x796 explain how to install #Linux on an #AppleSilicon #Mac.
Apparently it boots into a stripped-down #macOS and then boots Linux from there.
Seeing as the stripped-down macOS isn't getting security updates (especially once the early ARM Macs go EOL), that sounds like a huge security/privacy risk. 😬
Will it be possible in the future to run Linux on a machine like this with macOS completely gone? Or is this gonna be like the bad old days of Linux on an m68k Mac?

2026-01-05 03:39:22 UTC

We all know about #CED, an attempt to record an analog #video signal on a #vinyl #record.
I wonder. What about compressed digital video? How much of that could be reasonably encoded on a vinyl record without all of CED's reliability and usability issues?

2026-01-03 04:59:19 UTC

The fine is kinda moot though.
#shitpost #sign
https://mastodon.sdf.org/system/media_attachments/files/115/829/392/596/497/225/original/e98950a1d30b2053.jpeg

2025-12-23 08:46:26 UTC

Buttholes are like opinions: everybody's got one and most of them stink.
#shitpost

2025-12-21 06:29:59 UTC

The existence of #WholeFoods Market implies the existence of Fractional Foods Market.
#math #shitpost

2025-12-17 07:12:54 UTC

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Sorry, I should have said *new* printers. Old printers still require drivers, as always.

2025-12-17 02:47:21 UTC

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You can thank Apple for that. They're the ones who strong-armed all the printer manufacturers into implementing IPP and PWG Raster on the printer side. Now printers don't need drivers; just plug it in and it should work.

2025-12-15 22:24:34 UTC

Quality products from Acme. Accept no substitutes.
#LooneyTunes #joke #TrolleyProblem
https://mastodon.sdf.org/system/media_attachments/files/115/725/913/028/076/652/original/89cdb3bf5c213a10.jpeg

2025-12-15 22:00:14 UTC

Well, you can't say you weren't warned.
#cat
https://mastodon.sdf.org/system/media_attachments/files/115/725/826/183/313/788/original/80d1ceeae03ed1d2.jpg

2025-12-15 21:57:48 UTC

Good to have the clarification.
#joke #shitpost
https://mastodon.sdf.org/system/media_attachments/files/115/725/816/506/064/239/original/256ce2f12c173075.webp

2025-12-09 06:52:07 UTC

If the TRS-80 was so great, why didn't they make a TRS-81?
#retrocomputing #shitpost

2025-12-08 07:27:03 UTC

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Technically it was possible to copy across disks with only a single floppy drive by reading the original disk's contents into RAM, having the human swap disks, and then writing.
But this would involve a lot of disk swapping unless you have a ton of RAM, so it generally wasn't a thing. I think the original Macintosh could pull this off, though. Slowly.

2025-12-08 07:21:10 UTC

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Eventually, the 5¼ floppy disk fell out of fashion and computers started to come with only a 3½ floppy drive…and then no floppy drive at all. 💾

2025-12-08 07:21:00 UTC

It was fairly common in the 1980s to have two #floppy drives because, if you had no hard drive (they were expensive), then the only way to copy from one floppy disk to another was by having two floppy drives.
Having two floppy drives remained common-ish in the early 1990s, for a different reason: there were two different sizes of floppy disk (5¼ and 3½), and in order to read disks of either size, you needed two drives.
#retrocomputing

2025-12-05 05:11:21 UTC

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📱🪫🪦

2025-12-04 20:23:06 UTC

Discovered a combination of abilities in #StarTrekOnline that allows me to drop almost a dozen tractor mines.
Oof. That many tractor beams all at once is enough to crush a Borg Sphere like a tin can.

2025-11-14 23:03:41 UTC

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The webp-pixbuf-loader package also drops a file in `/usr/share/thumbnailers`. It tells file managers like Nautilus to use the `gdk-pixbuf-thumbnailer` program to generate thumbnails for WebP images.
Which of course works because there is now a gdk-pixbuf image loader for WebP.

2025-11-14 22:57:16 UTC

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The gdk-pixbuf library comes with a number of image loaders. These are kept in the folder `/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gdk-pixbuf-2.0/2.10.0/loaders`.
Gdk-pixbuf will apparently load anything it finds there, because the webp-pixbuf-loader package doesn't do any sort of registration. It just drops a .so in that folder and expects gdk-pixbuf to find it.
There are loaders for quite a few formats there, like GIF and ICO. There are no loaders for PNG and JPEG, though; I assume those are built in.

2025-11-14 22:51:33 UTC

Got #WebP to load in #Inkscape!
I thought for a long time that Inkscape simply doesn't support WebP, but that isn't true. The problem, rather, was that the gdk-pixbuf loader for WebP was not installed on my system.
People using #Debian or another distro based on it need to install the package named “webp-pixbuf-loader”. That's all you need to do; merely installing the package will enable WebP support in Inkscape.
This should also enable WebP thumbnails in #Nautilus, if you use #Gnome.
#Linux

2025-10-15 20:04:39 UTC

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I meant sqlx with no ORM. Never tried using sea_orm so I can't comment on that.

2025-10-15 19:59:44 UTC

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I like sqlx better, personally. I can use all the database's flashy features and still get compile-time checking. 👍

2025-10-10 04:12:57 UTC

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

2025-10-09 20:52:01 UTC

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Other than the mere passage of time, is there any other indicator that paste is old and needs replacing? Idle temperature, perhaps?

2025-10-07 05:30:24 UTC

There's gotta be someone somewhere that Rick Astley has let down.
#shitpost

2025-10-05 00:29:42 UTC

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Windows NT and 2000's installers were like that. Same as Linux: they used the same NT kernel, but did not use a GUI and left the display in character mode.
@npub1g8x…7wul

2025-10-04 23:21:14 UTC

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Windows XP Setup, by contrast, ran on the same Windows NT kernel and graphics system as Windows XP itself did. 🎉 But by this point, the operating system's core was already quite mature, and the distribution medium (CD-ROM) had plenty of space for a second copy of it.
Similar story with Linux installers: they started to go graphical after moving away from floppy to CD/DVD/USB.

2025-10-04 23:17:39 UTC

#Microsoft 's #RaymondChen posted an interesting explanation of why most of the #Windows 95 installer ran on Windows 3.1 and not on a stripped-down Windows 95 like you'd expect.
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20250926-00/?p=111629
Tl;dr: floppies are too small for a second copy of 95.
#Floppy based #Linux installers, unlike Windows, did use the same Linux kernel for the installer…but unlike Windows they didn't have a GUI with a pretty background picture. If they did, they'd have had the same problem!
#retrocomputing

2025-10-03 15:33:49 UTC

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I seem to recall reading that Robert Beltran demanded to do some steamy love scenes with Jeri Ryan because he desperately wanted her husband to fire him.
Which didn't work.
Although I guess it was a win-win for him. Either he gets fired or he gets to kiss Jeri Ryan. 😂

2025-09-27 03:31:44 UTC

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Agreed, the main problem with tablets is the operating system, not the hardware. The existence of convertible laptops running full-featured desktop operating systems proves it.
Some early Microsoft tablets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Tablet_PC came with a stylus, too, with which you could accurately tap even small UI elements.
4/end
@npub134j…jry0

2025-09-27 03:31:33 UTC

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The Steam Deck screen is phone-sized if I'm not mistaken, so yeah, you don't want to be using menu bars on that.
Possible solution: when running on a small screen, show a menu button instead, which when clicked shows the menu bar items in a full-screen window. File, Edit, and whatnot. Tapping those drills down with the swivel thing you mentioned earlier.
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@npub134j…jry0

2025-09-27 03:31:25 UTC

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Anyway, most of the apps that come with Windows 3.1 are pretty simple, and they still have menu bars. The only apps that don't are Character Map and SmartMon. And IMHO the only truly unnecessary menu bar in Windows 3.1 is the one in Control Panel.
For reference, here's a Windows 3.1 in-browser VM: https://www.pcjs.org/software/pcx86/sys/windows/3.10/
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@npub134j…jry0

2025-09-27 03:31:10 UTC

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Yeah, sorry, my instance is running Mastodon 4.1. 😅 I dunno if newer versions can render quotes, but this one doesn't.
Reusing the existing popup window would be fine too, but note that it may have to change size when going up/down a nesting level.
Can confirm, I am a KDE user and GNOME apps cause me dismay. 😋
I'm not a fan of “do one thing well.” Are we also going to remove the & command from less because you can do more-or-less the same thing with grep? Course not.
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@npub134j…jry0

2025-09-27 02:46:35 UTC

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Sadly that laptop was not convertible, so the only way to actually use that touchscreen was by holding up my arm to the laptop touchscreen sitting on the desk. My arm would get tired after a while.
I haven't used traditional UI on a tablet or convertible laptop. Definitely would give it a try if I had the opportunity.
@npub134j…jry0

2025-09-27 02:37:43 UTC

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By the way, I have used a touchscreen laptop before, and yeah, menu bars work fine with touch.
So do scroll bars! You can hold your thumb on the edge of the screen and move it up/down to rapidly and precisely scroll through the whole document. It's actually pretty neat and useful.
From what I've seen, most complaints to the effect of “it doesn't work with touch” actually mean “it doesn't work with phones.” On big touchscreens, traditional UI works mostly fine.
@npub134j…jry0

2025-09-27 02:31:37 UTC

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If Mastodon is dead, who the heck have I been talking to all this time? 😂 Nah, this place is doing great and I love it to bits. ❤️

2025-09-27 02:29:10 UTC

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The Office Ribbon is basically just a menu bar whose items produce a toolbar instead of a linear menu. Microsoft took the old Office 2003 menus and toolbars, and smooshed them together. The result isn't bad, but it also isn't really all that different from what it replaced.
4/end
@npub134j…jry0

2025-09-27 02:29:03 UTC

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Menu bars are perfectly usable on touchscreens large enough to fit them with fingertip-sized fonts. It's a screen-size problem, not a layout or input-method problem. Obviously this necessitates some other layout on small touchscreens (i.e. phones), but that doesn't mean we need to remove menu bars from screens that *are* big enough to accommodate them.
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@npub134j…jry0

2025-09-27 02:28:55 UTC

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Settings belongs in either a dedicated Settings menu (KDE) or the application menu (macOS). Easy peasy. Besides, apps without menu bars are worse: Settings is usually hidden behind an icon that has no textual label at all.
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2025-09-27 02:28:41 UTC

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There's an easy solution to the multiple-expandable-menu-items problem: expand and dismiss menus only on click/tap, not on hover.
“If your app only does a few things, which most modern apps do” is frankly a silly statement to make in 2025. Apps these days have far more functionality than what you'd find in a typical 1990s Mac or Windows app.
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