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Posts
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Comments
327
Joined
1 yr. ago

  • TIL pig Latin got its name because "pig" or "hog" used to mean fake or jokey.

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  • I thought of the same thing, but it turns out that sense of the word is unrelated.

    The traditional shape of the molds used for pig iron ingots is a branching structure formed in sand, with many individual ingots at right angles to a central channel or "runner", resembling a litter of piglets being nursed by a sow. When the metal had cooled and hardened, the smaller ingots (the "pigs") were simply broken from the runner (the "sow"), hence the name "pig iron".

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_iron

  • The idea of /usr/sbin has failed in practice

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  • I always find it disappointing when I encounter an article criticizing something when it's obvious that the author didn't bother to research how and why it came to be. It suggests to me that they aren't interested in informing readers so much as promoting themselves or their favorite project.

    Sigh... modern "journalism".

  • How to automatically read DVDs that have I/O errors?

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  • I suggest starting with a good optical drive. If the one you have is not, have a look here.

    Once you have decent hardware, look for ripping software that uses libparanoia.

    It has been years since I did this stuff, but I don't think much has changed since then.

  • Might need to switch distros, which one should i use?

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  • I did for quite a while, since it was basically Debian with some extras that I found useful. (The PPA build farm and server, for example.) Then they started forcibly replacing native packages that I used with snaps, which caused me more trouble than I was willing to tolerate, so I switched to Debian Stable.

    I still have family members using Ubuntu. I'll probably migrate them to Debian eventually, but there's no hurry, since their needs are pretty basic.

  • Stack programming

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  • What about Googling stuff offline?

  • Hotfix

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  • The fearful side of Chesterton's Fence.

  • Woman in cat mask runs amok with knives, answers 'meow' to police officers

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  • TIL Korean cats say "meow".

  • Which is more important to you in a language, feature richness or documentation quality?

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  • A feature without quality documentation is a feature I cannot rely upon. (Or if I wrote it, one that I cannot expect other people to use.)

    When faced with such things, I avoid them, and implement richer features myself using basic ones that are well documented.

    Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undocumented_feature

  • What's your experience with Nim?

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  • I picked it up because I liked the syntax and systems programming capabilities. At least on the surface, it's fast and expressive.

    My main criticisms of the language: the meta-programming features can quickly draw the programmer into unpleasant complexity, and the official docs don't make it easy to discover small bits of important info when you don't already know where to look. (And the latter problem makes the former worse). It's a work in progress, of course, and I believe these problems could be fixed.

    I got productive with Nim in a month or two. I dropped it when I found that the BDFL is both routinely insulting to people, and hasty in closing legitimate bug reports. These are both big red flags in my book. I don't want to have to interact with him again, and I don't want any of my work to depend on him.

  • TIL that soda crackers were shipped in barrels, and that's where the name of the store came from

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  • Where is this brand common?

  • Firefighters tackling wildfire in US arrested by immigration agents

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  • Linus Torvalds Marks Bcachefs As Now "Externally Maintained" - Phoronix

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  • When someone is persistently disruptive, you can choose to spend your days babysitting and correcting them, or you can accept that they are unwilling or unable to change, show them to the door, and reclaim your time.

    Linus has been doing the former for quite a while. Looks like he has now moved on to the latter. Seems like the proper response to me.

    10 years

    I think that just shows that Linus has been admirably patient with Kent.

  • Help! Looking for a new distro

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  • easily installs steam (after you enable the 32bit repos)

    Alternatively, you can install the Steam flatpak.

  • Deleted

    Google will verify Android developers distributing apps outside the Play store

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  • Seems like another good reason to get familiar with open-source Android distributions like LineageOS.

  • Help! Looking for a new distro

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  • This is an unusual combination of requirements:

    • Does not make you install a desktop environment
    • Must have steam

    I guess maybe you're planning to use the same distro for a server and a gaming system? Debian can do that. I recommend enabling Debian Backports on the gaming system, for access to recent kernel/firmware/mesa packages (you pick which ones you need).

    By the way, markdown ate your list formatting because you didn't put a space between the - and the text.

  • Help! Looking for a new distro

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  • Debian. Set it to stable instead of trixie and it’s kind of a rolling release.

    Testing or Unstable would be kind of like a rolling release.

    Stable currently is Trixie, and has a release cycle of roughly 1-2 years. It's not a rolling release. (However, OP's comments make it seem like they're just trying to avoid major breakage during release upgrades, in which case Debian Stable might still be a good pick so long as they read the release notes before upgrading.)

  • Do not Interrupt Developers, Study Says

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  • Can you link these studies, please?

  • Do not Interrupt Developers, Study Says

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  • Everyone knows what an email address is, right? (Quiz)

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  • I don’t validate emails, I test them.

    Hooray! You get a gold star.

    OK, maybe I do some light validation first,

    I hope your "validation" does nothing more than show a warning that the user is allowed to ignore.

    I have seen too many systems built by people who think they know what's valid or not before and after the @ sign*, and they are almost always dead wrong. In the worst cases, such systems accept an unusual-looking address and claim to send the expected verification message, but never actually send it. Of course, these systems won't work for some people, and since none of their online docs or support staff know why, those people will be locked out of using the system and funneled into bottomless pit of misery if they try. Please don't build broken garbage like this.

    *Fun fact: Not so terribly long ago, even the @ sign didn't have to be present. Some email addresses were bang paths. I'm not sure if any of these are still in use, but it wouldn't shock me to learn that they are.