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jbstack

1,239 karma · joined February 22, 2023

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jbstack··on The truth that haunts the Ramones: 'They sold more T-shirts than records'
Wikipedia says 3 of them are still alive (Marky, Richie, C.J.).
jbstack··on Show HN: Pano, a bookmarking tool built around shareable shelves
Suggestion: drop the loading animation. I don't think many people are going to want to use something where they are forced to wait 10+ seconds before they can begin using it. If you absolutely must have it, have an obvious "skip" button and a "don't show again" checkbox.
jbstack··on Treasure hunter freed from jail after refusing to turn over shipwreck gold
Maybe, maybe not. At age 60 my kids will be grown up and living their own independent lives. They might even live a long distance from me. There are a lot of variables which might mean I don't see them very frequently anyway. Of course there will still be something lost if they can only visit me in jail for 10 years. But at age 60, I'll statistically only be around for another 20 years anyway and if I'm unlucky, maybe far less than that.

On the other hand, $400m can ensure that for the rest of their lives they and their children and their grandchildren don't have to worry about being able to afford a home, good schools, good healthcare, etc. With future issues such as the rise of AI, global warming, and the erosion of international law, there are many dangers ahead including potential mass disruption to job markets and ability to earn a living. I'd rest easier knowing that I've given my descendants a solid chance of surviving all that, even if it means affecting my relationship with them for 10 years. It's a balance between pros and cons.

jbstack··on Treasure hunter freed from jail after refusing to turn over shipwreck gold
I think many people who have children would gladly do 10 year in prison at age 60 if it meant they could leave $400m in their estate. If we pretend for the sake of the argument (unrealistically) that there's no major ethical concern, and that the money can actually be kept afterwards, then I would definitely make that sacrifice for my children. They are more important to me than my own personal comfort.
jbstack··on Treasure hunter freed from jail after refusing to turn over shipwreck gold
According to the article, the lawsuit said the coins were worth up to $400m. That's more than a "few" millions, it's $40m per year spent in jail. I think the bigger issue for him is that it will be very hard to launder all of that without getting caught.
jbstack··on Run NanoClaw in Docker Sandboxes
What do you mean by "manage things"? If you mean adding/updating/completing tasks, why not just do that directly in the app? Or do you mean that it will take your tasks and perform them for you?
jbstack··on Run NanoClaw in Docker Sandboxes
As an aside, app descriptions that just say "a lightweight alternative to X" are very unhelpful. That tells me nothing if I don't know what X does, and I don't want to have to go down a rabbit hole just to understand your product. It's particularly bad in this case, because even OpenClaw's Github page doesn't clearly tell me what it actually does; just that it's some kind of assistant that I can communicate with via WhatsApp etc. I appreciate that many people are already familiar with OpenClaw, but you shouldn't assume.

It's better if your app's description just tells me what it does in a direct way using plain language. It's fine to tell me it's an alternative to something, but that should be in addition to rather than instead of your own description.

jbstack··on Show HN: fftool – A Terminal UI for FFmpeg – Shows Command Before It Runs
I don't understand what this comment is trying to say.

> ... people consider building the tool from the instructions in the article ... so people can more easily build it

So what's the "less easy" way that people can build it from the instructions, if there's no source code?

jbstack··on TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool
I'm not sure that's a fair criticism. Many things require or benefit from something even more complex to make them (car -> factory, code -> IDE, text -> editor, food -> kitchen). I think the real debate here is that which is found in the other comments: do we want TUIs to look like GUIs?
jbstack··on TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool
Interesting idea, but:

> Design once, generate production-ready code for your framework of choice. Switch targets without touching your design. Alpha notice: Code export is not functional yet. We're actively working on it — check back soon.

In other words, it isn't at all usable right now. You can't produce a TUI with it, not even a limited one.

jbstack··on The purpose of Continuous Integration is to fail
I don't understand this at all. Why not just skip CI altogether if you're not interested in the results?
jbstack··on Julia Snail – An Emacs Development Environment for Julia Like Clojure's Cider
It's popular in the sense that there's still a large community which actively uses it, develops packages for it, writes about it, etc. I didn't mean to imply that it's popular in the sense that it has widespread or mass adoption.

I think the point you're missing is that Emacs just isn't meant to appeal to people who want a mouse/visual based UI. More traditional editors are "better" for those types of people, but that doesn't make them "better" in any kind of absolute sense like you are implying. There are plenty of people for whom a traditional editor is far worse than Emacs. "Better" is subjective.

jbstack··on Julia Snail – An Emacs Development Environment for Julia Like Clojure's Cider
Firstly, the original comment was about UI rather than aesthetics. Secondly, as with everything else in Emacs, you can customise the appearance however you want. Those screenshots are from vanilla Emacs which is admittedly rather ugly. Most people heavily customise, or use an Emacs distro like Spacemacs (https://www.spacemacs.org/) or Doom (https://github.com/doomemacs/doomemacs?tab=readme-ov-file) which have more sensible default appearance configs.
jbstack··on Julia Snail – An Emacs Development Environment for Julia Like Clojure's Cider
I agree with you on multithreading. But for most Emacs users, the rich and highly customisable keyboard-driven UI (including packages like embark, which-key, transient, hydra, ivy/helm/vertico, etc.) is one of its strengths over traditional GUI IDEs. It doesn't need to be "state of the art" to be good, and there's a reason that Emacs has remained popular despite its age. Sure, it's not going to appeal to most VS Code users, but that isn't the point of Emacs.
jbstack··on Rebasing in Magit
It's Mac-only. That's a pretty serious limitation for a modern Git tool.
jbstack··on TikTok will not introduce end-to-end encryption, saying it makes users less safe
> Where are these mythical people who aren’t concerned with both?

They're called politicians.

jbstack··on Motorola GrapheneOS devices will be bootloader unlockable/relockable
What we need is a way for the OS to trick banking apps into thinking they are running on the platform they expect.
jbstack··on Daily Driving GrapheneOS
Is the UI really that important though? I assume most people use internet/app banking mainly to do two things: make payments, and look at transactions. I also assume most people don't do these things very often. Sure, a good UI is nice to have, but it isn't going to affect my life much if it's missing.
jbstack··on Daily Driving GrapheneOS
That's fine when you're lucky enough to be able to avoid a banking app, but for many banks its essentially compulsory. I can't login to internet banking without entering a 2FA code from the app. I'm even forced to have my Android settings a certain way, otherwise the app detects that my phone is "insecure" and refuses to run.
jbstack··on The Musidex: A physical music library for the streaming era
The real solution is to combine this with a self-hosted music collection and streaming software.
jbstack··on A beginner's guide to split keyboards
Well, I don't see these sites as a complete solution. They're a way to get you from zero to "I can actually manage to write something, even if it's a bit awkward and slow". Once you cross that threshold, you make the switch and you learn by doing until you improve to an acceptable level.
jbstack··on US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere
I'm not sure I see any practical difference between a government saying "we will block website X because we don't like it" and "we will block website X because we say that website X is illegal". For example if Iran blocks a website which is critical of the regime, do you consider it important whether such criticisms are against the law or not in Iran? I think most people would consider it censorship either way.

If you want to make gambling illegal, then make gambling illegal and then enforce that law. You don't need to resort to indirect measures that go beyond the law (e.g. by preventing me from merely viewing the odds on a gambling website).

jbstack··on US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere
See my sibling comment to yours. I have no reason to lie.
jbstack··on A beginner's guide to split keyboards
I'm not sure I can answer the first question, because I can reach the T just fine with my other finger on A and without contorting my wrist. Also, not that it changes my point, but I don't conform to a rigid version of the home-row rule or the standard touch-typing method, and I think that's how I achieve faster typing speeds than most. My hands dance around the keyboard and each movement is relative to where my fingers were on the last movement, while keeping the home row as a base. For example, in the standard method you'd use the right index finger for both Y and U. For me, if I've just typed a Y, I'll use the second finger to type U because that's more natural than re-using the index finger in different positions.

Also, just to be clear, I wasn't arguing that regular and split are the same. I have both types of keyboards and I'm planning to switch to split once I've mastered a new keyboard layout. My point was only in support of the original comment; namely, that that drawing is misleading.

jbstack··on US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere
See my reply on the other sub-comment. There's no need to accuse me of deliberately contorting the truth. We can keep the discussion civilised. And yes, I would call at least the second point (GDPR) indirect censorship, because it's a consequence of the fact that the EU has imposed the requirements extra-territorially ("your website must comply with our rules even though you aren't within our jurisdiction, and your website is fully legal within your jurisdiction").
jbstack··on US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere
Italy. Examples of sites I can't access without VPN: torrent sites (including legal uses), betfair.com (which I use as a more accurate political predictor than polls), and various non-EU sites which block access because they've decided it's easier than complying with extra-territorial requirements imposed by the EU (this one isn't direct EU censorship, but it amounts to the same thing indirectly.

Sometimes I set my VPN destination to the UK (my country of origin) to get around these. Then I find that I have other problems. For example, certain Reddit posts are unavailable to me because someone has posted a comment that some algorithm has decided is NSFW (and therefore triggers age verification under the UK Online Safety Act 2023).

The result is that I have to turn my VPN on and off depending on what I'm trying to do.

jbstack··on A beginner's guide to split keyboards
If you don't already know about it, I recommend https://www.keybr.com/ for learning new keyboard layouts. It introduces letters one at a time and waits until you hit a threshold speed before introducing the next one. If you commit to doing 15-30 minutes a day consistently, you can get to an acceptable speed more quickly than if you try to learn in an ad hoc way.
jbstack··on A beginner's guide to split keyboards
I'm not at your stage yet, but my gut feeling is that I'll reach the same conclusion. I've bought a Glove 80 and figured that since I'm learning something new I may as well go all in and also switch to a a more modern keyboard layout (I chose Canary for it's emphasis on keyboard rolls). I love the abundance of thumb keys, and I'm planning to make good use of them in my WM and Emacs, as soon as my typing speed recovers to the point where I can function normally again.
jbstack··on A beginner's guide to split keyboards
> All typing guides I’ve seen recommend keeping fingers on home row. If you do that you end up pretty close to what that drawing shows.

I type at 130 - 135 wpm with my fingers on the home row. I don't have a posture anything like that drawing. In fact I have to make a conscious and uncomfortable effort to contort my hands into that position. It's far more natural (for me) to curve my fingers to hit the right keys rather than curving my wrists so that my hands are perpendicular to the keyboard. Like this:

https://p2.piqsels.com/preview/893/842/416/laptop-business-m...

jbstack··on US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere
As someone living in an EU state who has to regularly turn my VPN on and off to have full internet access, I can't agree with you that it's a "hoax". It's inconvenient enough for me that I'm looking into having a custom router that will switch between VPN destinations depending on what site I'm accessing.

Also "EU countries have higher press freedom than the US" is a strawman argument. We're not talking about press freedom. It's also an example of the fallacy of relative privation ("X isn't bad, because Y is worse than X"). It's like saying "It's a hoax that the US executes some prisoners, because Iran executes even more".

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