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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: November 13th, 2023

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  • As someone who just picked through the Zig docs (take this with a mountain of salt), Zig has a few things going for it:

    • spec is simple and closer to C in scope
    • modern language design, toolchain, and overall ergonomics
    • Go-like struct & interface system
    • 1st-class C interoperability

    Go foists co-routines on you and the runtime, and Rust has the borrow checker. Both of these things deeply impact language design, standard libraries, and the overall developer experience. So Zig might actually be a “more modern C” in many ways which makes it a contender. That said, it’s not a 1:1 comparsion since it lacks everything else that C++ does: you’d have to re-envision your software designs as something other than OOP if that’s what you’re used to.


  • I would argue that vim is fantastic for a lot of editing and coding tasks, just not all of them.

    Where it utterly fails is with deep trees of files in codebases, like you see in Java or some Javascript/Typescript apps. Even with a robust suite of add-ons, you wind up backing into full-bore IDE territory to manage that much filesystem complexity. Only difference is that navigating and managing a large file tree w/o a mouse is kind of torture.


  • Beating most any “hard” video game is always a great feeling just due to the sheer hours that go into it. In some cases, you have to develop the memory and skill to do the whole thing in one sitting. I can’t count how many from the NES era fit this criteria. Top of that list are: Contra, Bionic Commando, and most Zelda and Mega Man games.

    The best one happened in the middle of my Dark Souls play-through. I kept having to quit playing after short sessions, as skill and vigor checks kept wrecking me. This lead to anger and rage that just made it impossible to proceed. Once I made the connection that I could concentrate more and flow through combat more easily while calm, I changed tactics to calming my own mind and keeping it that way. The game just “opened up” after that. From there on, it was much more about meditation and breathing than equipment and leveling - skills I now carry with me everywhere. DS literally made me a calmer and more resilient person.



  • **For some reason Lemmy is adding a ‘25’ between the % and s. Those numbers shouldn’t be there, just fyi.

    The URL as shown is actually valid. No worries there.

    The value 25 happens to be hexidecimal for a percent sign. The percent symbol is reserved in URLs for encoding special characters (e.g. %20 is a space), so a bare percent sign must be represented by %25. Lemmy must be parsing your URL and normalizing it for the rest of us.



  • In a professional context (e.g. work/office), O365 and related technologies make a lot of sense. It solves all kinds of real problems, especially for a remote/hybrid workforce. It’s by no means the best answer for any one application, but it’s a very comprehensive platform and gets the job done.

    For the home user? Constantly forcing OneDrive into everyone’s field of view on OS upgrades is intrusive advertising for a thing nobody asked for.













  • I’m inclined to agree. I think the best path through would be to focus on laws that benefit multiple minor players that have a seat at the table.

    Antitrust laws in general are a good example. These function at the direct expense of big monopolies, but are exactly what companies need if they want in on what was monopolized. And in the case of breaking a monopoly down, the resulting “baby” companies given more power, growth opportunity, hiring opportunities (job growth) and money making potential than the parent. This can also spur economic growth for all the fat cats out there by creating many new investment and hiring potentials. Overall, if you can get past the monopoly itself (read: take the ball away from your billionaire of choice), everyone else involved stands to benefit.

    There may be other strategies, but I can’t think of any right now. I think the key is to tip the scale in favor of more favorable outcomes, then repeat that a few more times, achieving incremental progress along the way. Doctorow outlines the ideal end state for all this, but it’s up to everyone else to figure out how to get there.

    While I don’t like the idea of embracing capital to improve things, the whole system is currently run this way. Standing with other monied interests that are aligned with the same goal might be the only way to go.


  • Just yesterday, Mrs. Warp Core was trying to enroll with an online service. The self-service email confirmation link refused to function correctly in Firefox on a desktop operating system (Windows in this case). It worked flawlessly on Firefox+iOS. Said link also shuttled the user straight off to the phone app.

    I’ll add that nearly ever other aspect of their public facing web, including the online chat support, worked flawlessly everywhere I tried it. This all just reeked of hostile design.

    When asked about why this is, I simply said:

    The browser provides good security and choice for the user. Apps provide good security and control for the vendor.