codesections @codesections@fosstodon.org

The joke in this image is both obvious and old, but I still laughed audibly when I unexpectedly came across a presentation slide that described a compiler with the following:

Um, #slack, if you're going to have your servers fall over, and you're going to use your error page to refer users to your status dashboard, you _might_ want that dashboard to show something other than green across the board.

*grumble* proprietary crap *grumble* wish this were IRC *grumble*

> Does anyone else think that standard advice about finger positioning is designed for people with far longer pinkies than humans actually have?

For example, the image below (from the "touch typing" Wikipedia article) clearly seems to depict some sort of humanoid alien with fingers of exactly equal length.

I may not know what a natural typing position is, but I know it's not *that*

Does anyone else think that standard advice about finger positioning is designed for people with far longer pinkies than humans actually have?

For example, I'm starting to think that a QWERTY layout (with the normal asdf home row) would be more comfortable if the outer keys were shifted down like in the picture.

Do you feel the same? Or do I just have freakishly short pinkies? Or am I just somehow holding it wrong?

This is genuienly one of the best error messages I've ever seen. What makes it so great?

1. Starts with a clear, non-technical description of the problem.

2. Follows that with a clear _technical_ description of the problem.

3. Suggests a solution to the problem and offers to automatically implement it

4. When that fails, provides another clear technical explanation (no non-technical one this time; that's fine because we're now into issues only triggered in advanced use cases)

Fantastic!

I just noticed that #firefox dev tools now have a FIS button that apparently relates to “DevTools Fission”. Can anyone tell me/link me to what that is?

A bit of web searching didn't turn much up. And I'm pretty sure it's new, but the recent Firefox release notes don't have much to say (they just mention that they've added “Fission support” for a few commands, but don't elaborate on what that means)

My tastes in computing run towards the simple; I spend day in a terminal text editor (#vim or #emacs) and run #void linux on my laptop.

That said, I still keep #popOS (er… *sigh* ok… Pop!_OS) installed on my desktop, and really appreciate the work they put into making a polished Linux UI – not my taste, but really important.

Today I discovered that this more “modern” distro seems a bit suspicious of traditional ways of doing things. Running `emacs --daemon` results in the following warring:

Happy Stanislav Petrov day, everyone – as bad as the world can be, I'm still glad it didn't end in 1983!

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

This is, hands down, the best email sign up form I have ever filled out (I didn't omit any fields).

The check box at the bottom is about enough to make me want to buy something from the author, just to say thank you.

#todayILearned that the Redis database CLI will display a version-specific piece of generative art in response to the command `LOLWUT`

I wish we added scientific notation prefixes to the way we talk about wealth.

So, instead of "millionaires and billionaires", we could talk about decamillionaires, or centimillionaires.

Or, of course, we could go the #smbc route, and adopt the word "student-loan-paid-offionaire"

I knew reality had gotten pretty cyberpunk, but this image really illustrates it powerfully. (source: https://thedorkweb.substack.com/p/tales-from-the-dork-web-4 )

Did you know that #firefox usage has almost passed Chrome usage on one contenent?

… that contenent is Antarctica.

(Source: https://www.lambdatest.com/blog/which-browsers-are-important-for-your-cross-browser-testing/
h/t: @abhayit2000)

Today's #xkcd hits a little too close to home—especially for anyone who has browsed the Internet with Tor. https://m.xkcd.com/2228/

Non Euclidean criminality:

@hackerman your name reminds me of this comic:

One of the all-time-best rejection letters is this one sent to an applicant to Princeton Law School:

In preparation for #rustBeltRust tomorrow, I've been giving the #ion shell (built in #rust) another look.

And, I've got to say… *WOW*

Last time I checked it out, I liked it in general, but was put off by its startup time. On my machine, it was ~100ms (about like Python or Ruby—not terrible, but definitely noticeable)

But its startup time is now *under a millisecond*—notably faster than #bash and getting pretty close to #dash.

I think I have a new scripting language for utility scripts!

A good thing to remember, perhaps especially these days:

#smbc https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2013-04-07

This article (http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190919-the-maze-puzzle-hidden-within-an-early-video-game?utm_source=pocket-newtab) on a previously unknown (and still not understood) maze-generating algorithm burred in an 1982 Atari game is a perfect example of the Academia vs Business #xkcd in action: