My "production stuff" is listed at https://github.com/alexpdp7/alexpdp7/blob/master/README.md#other-usable-projects-of-mine
@elebertus @mhoye @coder @MaddieM4 I wrote about the topic here:
https://alex.corcoles.net/notes/tech/containers-might-not-be-the-right-answer
It really depends. In any case, I agree that software should be designed to be easy to run. In some cases, containers can be the right answer.
@coder @MaddieM4 @mhoye @elebertus for internal projects, my preferred way is to hope that I only have to support a limited number of environments, and make sure there's up-to-date instructions for all of them. I'm likely lucky, but in the projects I've worked on, this has not been so difficult!
My big issue is with having to support macOS or Windows, because frequently, work will not provide me environments.
@MaddieM4 @elebertus @mhoye I don't know, the problem is that containers bring their own problems to the table.
Yes, in a way it simplifies things because suddenly everyone is on a "single environment". But I find Docker very problematic. Podman is nice, but then some people want to use Docker anyway.
Unfortunately, any answer has its problems. At work we currently use nixpkgs for dependencies, but that also brings its own problems.
I just guessed that you can put any commit you like in an interactive Git rebase "input file", and it works.
That was fun. Used it to replace some outdated commits that I had updated in different, newer branches.
I have made two adjustments to long-standing computer habits that I am - at least for now - happy with.
The first is moving from Firefox to Vivaldi. I've been using Firefox since it was named Firebird, and I'd used Firebird since it was named Mozilla Phoenix. But I've gotten so tired of playing whack-a-mole with Mozilla's AI horseshit, and more to the point: It seems the people behind Vivaldi are a lot more aligned with my values than Mozilla.
The second is moving to Uruky as my default search engine. Like Kagi it's a subscription service, but unlike Kagi it's based in Europe, entirely focused on search, and doesn't want to be a generative AI company. At this point I'd say result quality is worse than Google was in 2012, but better than Google is in 2026.
@datarama I was hooked on Mini Metro. Bit.Trip Runner 2 was challenging.
I also like Lode Runners (emulators, remakes)... I played the original Prince of Persia recently...
Also huge Jeff Minter fan, both emulated and some of his modern stuff is good. (I met him in person last year!!)
Nearly half of the apps in the LG TV app store and close to a quarter for Samsung include residential proxy software:
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2026/07/fbi-seizes-netnut-proxy-platform-popa-botnet/
LG is taking action, at least:
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2026/07/lg-to-ban-residential-proxies-from-smart-tv-apps/
@slava you mean:
https://w3m.sourceforge.net/MANUAL#LocalCGI
I think Dillo has a similar feature, but I haven't researched much.
(Yeah, I know it's not exactly the same, but I think you could build quite interesting things with that.)
@coder the conclusion is the same- as soon as you hit something like this, switch to a different language.
sh, bash, etc. are my favorite programming languages, but it's exhausting to understand and explain all their surprises.
@coder (I didn't discover this; someone pointed that out to me.)
I think it's not difficult to guess what the following bash snippet outputs:
md5sum /proc/$$/environ ; export FOO=bar ; md5sum /proc/$$/environ ; FOO=qux; md5sum /proc/$$/environ
What's interesting is what happens if you put that inside bash -c '...'.
@notsoloud @simontatham huh, that's more insightful than what the original post made me think of:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induction_puzzles#Josephine's_Problem
@ptrchas3 @david_chisnall the bit in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_terms_with_diacritical_marks#Native_English_words which mentions coöperative is interesting to me- I have a colleague who is vocal about writing noöne to improve "regularity of pronunciation". I think he's right, but when did English ever care about making pronunciation clear?
LMDB 1.0 is out, with some great improvements!
However, you should not upgrade blindly. The on-disk format is not compatible (opening 0.9 databases with 1.0 yields "File is not an LMDB file", which has already scared one PowerDNS user), and some programs (Postfix, Knot) have noticed that they needed to adjust API usage here and there.
Upgrade info/guide: http://www.lmdb.tech/doc/upgrading.html
A warning about blindly upgrading: https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=296530
So, enjoy LMDB 1.0 - responsibly!
personally i'm ok with AI techniques being less well known but there's a deeper thing going on here which is far more important IMO, because it's also partially why LLMs have taken over
== this thread is in response to this tweet: ==
Reminder: the sudden nostalgia for VB (and Flash) is not because VB was good, it’s because VB was:
Better than most other things available at the time for rapid application development.
Impressive compared to the abilities of the hardware it ran on.
Better than most things that came after it for low-effort software development.
We don’t need resurrected VB or Flash, we need something that takes advantage of the power of modern computers to deliver something that has the same ease of use of these tools.
I just published a first version of my new editor project: Wordgard!
RE: https://mastodon.social/@ancoghlan/116835738942808096
Excellent point! I've added this point to the blog post.
https://nedbatchelder.com/blog/201608/lists_vs_tuples
@universe_of_discourse (I don't have a great ear and it's not very attuned to many variations of Spanish, so frequently I struggle to understand many variations. But I expect that is circular feedback- I'm mostly exposed to "standard" Spain Spanish, so I'm not as familiar as I could be with other variants...)
@universe_of_discourse I frequently make a similar observation; sometimes the Spanish spoken in Spain is considered "standard". Esp. by Spaniards (like I am).
But Mexico alone has likely twice the native speakers of Spanish than Spain!
(Within Spain, it's still common [although less so nowadays, fortunately] for newscasters etc. to tune down their regional accents...)
@datarama only "stifle" is an anagram of itself.
Seriously, difficult question!
@datarama @coder right. I'm a bit surprised because the last times I've evaluated them, I tend to resort to them when I'm stumped with something.
The generated answers are rarely correct, but frequently they are helpful (maybe just of the rubber duck effect). Which is somewhat impressive because if I was stumped, I assume I'm not asking easy questions.
(I don't think they're useful enough in the stuff I like to work on, though.)
@datarama joke: that's a mighty high expectation, most humans don't understand me either!
I guess you're going along the lines of the contrast with "source code can't be misunderstood by the computer, only by the humans"? I hadn't thought of that!
(In my brief interactions I don't feel particularly "misunderstood" or "understood". It just feels so random. Although the output always surprises me as more related to what I wrote than what I would expect.)
The French government has an initiative to create a NixOS-based desktop.
This could bring a lot of the much-needed resources to mature the NixOS ecosystem- and by extension, also to Linux in general. (E.g. think accessibility.)