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j13n

164 karma · joined October 20, 2020

Scientist, engineer, conjunction avoider.
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j13n··on 'It's just vape, nail, charity shops': Can anything save UK high street?
It’s not uncommon to see the car debate come up in threads like these. As someone who lived in central London for over a decade without a car and recently moved out where not having a car is incredibly inconvenient, I’ve experienced both realities.

Only yesterday, I drove into London and walked nearly 20k steps to visit the various locations on my itinerary. Not every inch of a space need be a road, but banning cars and insisting everyone walk or use public transport also isn’t the answer. We need roads adjacent to large, pedestrianised areas.

The specific problem with the UK is how London-centric and unreliable our transport infrastructure has become. Not to mention driving can be incredibly fun! Much more so than cycling when it’s pouring with rain, you’re going to a fancy event, or have a large amount to move.

j13n··on Workers Drilling in Romania Broke into a Cave Sealed for 5.5M Years
Humans didn’t evolve from chimps.
j13n··on New cars are getting 1.2cm longer and 0.5cm taller each year
And credits or rebates for vehicles with improved safety features?

I assume the 18-tonne lorries that move most of the world’s goods would be exempt, too, or would you pass that cost on to consumers? Just make everything a bit more expensive for everyone.

j13n··on A better way to tie gym shorts (or any drawstring) [video]
First thing I thought when I saw it being tied.

"Hey, that's the Ian Knot!"

j13n··on Resizing windows on macOS Tahoe – the saga continues
Try dragging a playlist around in the left-hand sidebar such that scrolling is required. Or scrolling with horizontally where holding down shift is usually required.
j13n··on Resizing windows on macOS Tahoe – the saga continues
You think this is bad? Try using Apple Music with a traditional mouse. You can’t even right click on half of the interface, dragging elements near to scrollable edges doesn’t trigger any scroll, and UI elements like the star on favourited songs just don’t show up. It’s marginally better on a trackpad.
j13n··on Datastar: Web Framework for the Future?
You can disable all use of eval with htmx. The tradeoff is one has to write a bit more JavaScript.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43650921

j13n··on Datastar: Web Framework for the Future?
This is the second post I’ve seen praising Datastar in the last 24 hours, and once again no mention of the requirement to punch a gaping hole in one’s Content-Security-Policy.

If this is the framework of the future, cyber criminals are going to have a bright future!

j13n··on Clojure: Realtime collaborative web apps without ClojureScript
The linked post relies on the Datastar project, which requires use of `unsafe-eval` in one’s Content-Security-Policy [1]:

> When using a Content Security Policy (CSP), unsafe-eval must be allowed for scripts, since Datastar evaluates expressions using an IIFE (Immediately Invoked Function Expression).

The project itself links to Mozilla’s docs on CSP, which state:

> The unsafe-eval keyword can be used to override this behavior, and as with unsafe-inline, and for the same reasons: developers should avoid unsafe-eval.

Out of the box, htmx uses a similar approach, but one can disable this use of eval [2]:

  htmx.config.allowEval - can be set to false to disable all features of htmx that rely on eval:
  
  - event filters
  - hx-on: attributes
  - hx-vals with the js: prefix
  - hx-headers with the js: prefix
[1]: https://github.com/starfederation/datastar/blob/develop/site...

[2]: https://htmx.org/docs/#configuration-options

j13n··on Parinfer: Simpler Lisp Editing
I love innovation in this space, and remember when Parinfer came out having some enlightening discussions with colleagues about how they efficiently edited code.

I've since settled on Lispy and Lispyville in Emacs, and have run into very few issues over the past few years.

There's something about Lispy’s style of editing that appeals to me — the use of hugging parentheses to enable its bindings, combined with Lispyville making all of my Vim bindings safe, makes me very happy.

j13n··on Collapsing Sheets of Spacetime Could Explain Dark Matter and Why Universe 'Hums'
A scalar field is a field with one value at any point.

Temperature can be represented using a scalar field. There is only one temperature at any point in our universe.

Theories like Quantum Field Theory describe our universe as a series of interacting fields that are everywhere. The Higgs field gives us mass, a single number at any point in space.

In this sense, the space around us is permeated by many fields.

Space itself is not a single scalar field because space contains many properties at every point that cannot be represented using a single number — for that one might use a matrix of values.

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

j13n··on Clojure's machine learning ecosystem
It’s great to see reports of the excellent work Daniel Slutsky and others are doing to make data science more straightforward for everyone.

I'm grateful that I get to benefit from these community efforts.

j13n··on Biologists discover four new octopus species
Nueva Pescanova is already sizing up cages.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-59667645

j13n··on Vision 1993
I've had a to-do item to build a collaborative AR experience for people to graffiti the world and find the creations of others.

I picked up the domain OutHere and spent some time drafting the initial experience because I think it's a compelling idea, but life has gotten in the way of late.

j13n··on Vision 1993
The current trend of projecting information onto our eyes through devices is a primitive form of sensory enhancement.

It is time to make a leap towards a more transformative innovation, which could be achieved by transmitting knowledge directly into our brains. This way, we could simply know the name of a plant by looking at it.

Reading is primarily about acquiring knowledge. I am personally excited about the idea of augmented intelligence, which would not require strapping a couple of TVs to our faces.

j13n··on GitHub Actions and vanity metrics
As long as you’ve got some big numbers, absolutely.

Failing builds and outdated dependencies disappear when sitting beside 20K stars and 100K downloads.

j13n··on GitHub Actions and vanity metrics
Mission accomplished! Happy to hear it.
j13n··on GitHub Actions and vanity metrics
Is this better or worse than laughing at your jokes?
j13n··on GitHub Actions and vanity metrics
That’s great news re: the glasses — headaches are horrendous!
j13n··on GitHub Actions and vanity metrics
Apologies for the confusion. I hope the ambiguity didn’t detract too much from your enjoyment.

Maybe I could sneak an <abbr> in there for SLOC like I did for CSP.

j13n··on GitHub Actions and vanity metrics
You’re thoroughly welcome, bloopernova!

Thank you for reading and letting me know I’ve had a positive impact — it means a lot.

j13n··on GitHub Actions and vanity metrics
An astute observation!

More badges being more vain than less, should that push up or down one’s Q-quotient?

j13n··on GitHub Actions and vanity metrics
fzf, zsh, rg, and fd all on macOS‽ Delectable! Stars++

And more importantly, helping other people out of the goodness of your heart.

Thank you for being so generous, fellow earthling!

j13n··on Vegan diets cause far less climate pollution, study shows
It's a step in the right direction, but the dairy industry takes a huge toll on the environment all on its own.
j13n··on Bram Moolenaar has died
Bram defined the interface I've used to express myself in so many ways since my early teens. His contributions to software development reach far beyond the $EDITOR and pervasive interaction patterns we're all so familiar with.

Thoughts are with his friends and family right now. Rest in peace, Mr. Moolenaar.

ZZ

j13n··on GitHub Actions and vanity metrics
You'd be a superposition of infinitely capable and the sum type of all divide-by-zero errors. Either way, I'd want to work with you.
j13n··on GitHub Actions and vanity metrics
My favourite review so far! Thank you for the kind words.
j13n··on GitHub Actions and vanity metrics
The Q-quotient will be my legacy… what have I done.
j13n··on GitHub Actions and vanity metrics
Something I wrote recently to put a smile on my face after a couple of tough weeks doing cold outreach.

If it makes another person smile, it was time we’ll spent.

j13n··on Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99
European cities found that shared space between pedestrians and vehicles reduced speeds and increased safety.

Carving up public spaces into those that are safe and those that can trivially injure or kill ruins the outdoors for so many.

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