maybe I'm ignorant but why do a lot of research papers are published in two-column format? it's really inconvenient to read on-screen, I have to scroll up and down and it's distracting

I tried some solutions for rewriting such PDFs to something more acceptable, but they either don't work or rely on outdated dependencies…

Getting a proper "storybook"-ish renderer for Kittybox's templates was a good idea — now I can quickly iterate on the design of my comments section without actually running the app or populating the database with fake content!

I just pipe an MF2-JSON blob down a single executable, and out comes an HTML page I can view in my browser. Basic CSS is inlined so it looks almost the same as the finished product. The only thing broken is the font style, because the fonts are supposed to be fetched from the static folder, and the static folder isn't there in a self-contained HTML file.

I could probably produce an assets folder and rewrite all <link> URLs to point to that folder, but it's too much hassle for a simple hack. And it allows me to view what my pages would look like without custom fonts, which I heard some people forbid in their browsers anyway for bandwidth reasons.

…or I could just install the same font families on my machine. If I could be bothered doing that.

This solution doesn't require me to spin up a web server, doesn't require me to run anything, doesn't require me to run or manage a staging database filled with fake data, doesn't require me to submit web forms to configure template parameters, it does one thing and does it well. And it would probably run in CI, too, if I wanted to make snapshot tests. (Though in-crate tests are probably better for that purpose.)

Noticed some interesting effects on YouTube's buttons today. Turns out they seem to be created by a <yt-light-shape> custom element.

Seems to be mostly CSS, it kind of works when I copy it into a separate file, but not quite (the effect shows, but it doesn't look as good). Something's still missing, and I wonder what exactly. Perhaps the outer elements provide additional styles or settings or variables — the text color looked off, too…

almost got baited into posting a good-faith argument in a bad-faith discussion

don't make this mistake i beg of you

More and more I use my website's media endpoint purely for hosting random images I upload to the internet (most often images that I then post on tangled.org issues).

I guess this, too, is owning your data~

shit i can't nerdsnipe myself into reproducing a research paper now I AM EMPLOYED I HAVE A JOB

I am appalled at how Bluesky-specific the reference ATProto PDS implementation is. Apparently Bluesky implements several app.bsky.actor calls inside the PDS, giving itself sort-of privileged treatment — for example, a preferences store inside the PDS that no other app has; everyone else has to store their apps' settings elsewhere.

I think credible exit is not enough. The protocol and its implementations must also be credibly neutral, and the reference PDS fails the sniff test to me.

A bit disillusioned, but hey, maybe it'll help me finally touch grass instead of looking at my skyline.

Not updating OpenWRT for three years? Bad idea, apparently.

TLS ciphers seem to be a moving target on that timescale, and when I came to my countryhouse, the router couldn't negotiate ciphers with a modern hardened TLS setup.

Decided to build a new image with all the configs pre-baked in, flashed that, and it seems to work fine now…

too smart for my own good and i hate it

Truly coding is magic. So glad to have learned basic scripting when I was just 14 years old or so. How do most people even live without utilizing their computer's full potential? This thing can do anything. You just have to phrase it correctly.

People click around, drag-and-drop files out of one program into another; this feels like a remnant of the DOS era, where the system could barely handle one program running at once (and TSR programs seem to be what might have facilitated early multiprocessing, being able to wrest control flow from the running app away for a moment with an interrupt). Applications interacting with each other's data should be seamless, and information flow can and should be automated. Unix pipelines were a step in the right direction; unfortunately, it seems right at the same time or in the immediate future graphical interfaces got in vogue. And users, who were most likely coming from DOS, worked just as they did. Manually.

As far as I understand, even powerful macros or scripting features some pro-level software included were seldom used by anyone but power-users. And I'm willing to bet even some of these power-users might've not utilized the full potential of these features.

And as the software around us gets increasingly dumbed down, useless "AI" features (clearly made by people who fell for the "AI" moniker and do not understand what are language models, and what they can and can't do; and what do users actually need) get shoved into users' faces with no regard for actual utility, I yearn for a time where people actually learn to utilize the full potential of the computer.

One more hurdle in the way is also the restrictions on the devices most people seem to own. The usual thing to have in your pocket is a phone; however, it's not easy to write software for a phone. No scripting environment, arbitrary code execution from outside the application's files is banned by mobile app store gatekeepers across the phone ecosystem. (Yet somehow there's a carve-out for React Native apps, allowing them to self-update bypassing the store review, sometimes changing the entire app completely — talk about unfairness!) No ability to quickly set up shop and code — the device's SDK won't run on the device itself, precluding self-hosting and necessitating a second device for development. Oh, and also the store registration, which I would even compare to the biblical Antichrist (Revelation 13:16 anyone?), if not for a certain billionaire appropriating the Antichrist talk already. Apple charges for it, Google charges too, and recently Google wants to make it really hard to install apps from third parties unless you're registered with them.

I am way above an average user now. My understanding of the tools I use is far above, and that is exactly the problem. It clouds my vision — I am no longer capable of understanding the average consumer and what makes them tick. Therefore I don't even have the ability to answer my own question — how do we put this magic of computing in hands of the people, and teach people to actually use it? How do we build an environment which encourages people to tinker? And the last question, that I might actually have an answer for — how do we ensure this power to tinker is never taken away?

(The answer to the last one is, of course, radical libre software advocacy. The way Stallman did it. He had a point after all. Also printers are evil.)

I love the power of the browser console. Just managed to download a video from a weird web player that yt-dlp wasn't able to handle.

Now I wonder where the subtitles for it are coming from…

ok clearly my reply context parser is horribly broken

Oh so that's what this almost-disappearing picture is in all of your feed articles. It was a tracking pixel! I never even thought this is a thing you could put in RSS…

i feel like i haven't posted to here since forever

but contrary to how it may seem, I still have coherent thoughts that I may want to post later.

unfortunately i don't think my current Micropub client is a good place for anything but a short note; though I must note it was initially designed specifically for shorter-form content, so is it really the fault of my Micropub client?

maybe big posts deserve a bigger window after all.

why would i want to watch black mirror if looking out my window is free?