Firehose

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Sorry for being MIA these past few days. Russia and Turkey both banned Discord, so I’ve been tied up with Revolt. We’ve had some 250K users join in the past 4 days, bringing us to over 450K users total!

If you aren’t aware, Revolt is a FOSS chat platform and decent alternative to Discord that I work on.

You can check it out at https://revolt.chat if you’re interested.

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Bluesky now has over 10 million users, and I was #3,150,897! I would have jumped in earlier was it not for the invite system. I got access just before they opened it up.

Card stating

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Oooh w̶̨̩̣̭͙̯͎̭̻̮̪̥̟͇̳̬͒̎̋̉̒ą̷̢̛̠̮̥͔̩̙̺̘͙̘̹̣̪͔͙̊͐̒̍̓͝ḧ̷̗́͊̓̓̽̄̎̉̈ą̷̡̹̰͖͍̥̭̫̤͈̠̀̇̔̓̓͑̅̂̊͘̚͝͝ḩ̶̤͐̍̽̀̆̂̚͝a̴͕̗̭͎̹̲̝̭͗͂͐̿͊̉̈̏̿͂̐̑̆̊̕͠͠h̶̹̑̒̐̒̈̑͋͊͠a̸̲̟̞̼̰̘͂́͌̑̔̊̔̉͗̋̈́̑̐͠͠

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Genuine exchange I just had:

Person: It’s broken on mobile.

Me: Do you have a Samsung by chance?

Person: Yes, I have

Me: Do you use Samsung Internet?

Person: I’m not sure what that is. I use the default browser.

Me: I shall refrain from using the selection of words I’d like to.

Seriously, how is Samsung Internet still this much of a clusterfuck?

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One great use of LLMs I’ve found is as dynamic WordPress documentation generators.

WordPress is really poorly documented. Especially block themes, which are a mess in more ways than just documentation.

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People who have a minimap in their editor, why?

I had one briefly back in the Atom days, but it was never all that useful. I’ve found having breadcrumbs at the top of my editor fills every minimap use case I can imagine.

Interested to hear how people use them and if I’m perhaps missing something.

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This is a quote from Gian-Carlo Rota’s Indiscrete Thoughts that I think applies particularly well in the context of development:

Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say: “How did he do it? He must be a genius!

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Server upgraded and everything running again.

Bumped up to 8GB of RAM from 4GB, cleaned out the case, installed a new 4TB HDD, and migrated from Debian to NixOS.

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Goodbye Xbox 360 Marketplace.

I’ve made so many formative memories on the 360. It’s sad to see its infrastructure slowly shut down, bit by bit.

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Spent a bit of time putting together a little tool that lets you search across search engines. You can pick a default and use bangs to search a specific site, like on DuckDuckGo.

Made it mainly for myself, but I’m sure it’s of interest to other people.

https://search.vale.rocks

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New post published:
I Got A Flipper Zero

A fantasmagorical planet flipping oracle.

My review of the Flipper Zero and the things I've done with it. Encompassing everything from the initial purchase to setup and usage, as well as the community and some cool projects.

https://vale.rocks/posts/i-got-a-flipper-zero

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I’ve got a review of the Flipper Zero coming out on my blog tomorrow. It includes my thoughts on the Flipper itself, the Momentum firmware, and some mischievous uses. Stay tuned!

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Finally gave Zed a quick go on NixOS. It’s slick. The collaboration features are unrivalled.

If someone asks for a code editor in future, Zed is gonna be my suggestion. As much as I love NeoVim, I understand it isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. I can only see Zed getting better and filling the shoes of VS Code.

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Does this Neuralink stuff remind anyone else of “Flowers for Algernon”? The patient experiences temporary enhancement and then has it slowly taken away. I fear the potential psychological impact.

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So, uh, is the punchline of The Big Bang Theory just misogyny?

I don’t watch the show, but every time I’m exposed to it, that’s the impression I get.

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Been keeping an eye on the GitHub milestone as the issues were slowly crossed off the list. Very glad to see the release of Neovim v0.10.

So many great improvements with this release! Congrats to the team!

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Well, I just watched Red vs Blue: Restoration. I suppose that’s it. Red vs Blue is over. I was late to the series, having only discovered it in recent years, but that doesn’t make seeing it end any easier.

Restoration felt rushed and unpolished. I think an extra half hour on it’s runtime would have it many favours. It certainly wasn’t the best ending, but it was an ending, and that’s something.

It’s sad to see things end but I think it’s important to simply value the memories they created. After all, memory is the key

Thanks Rooster Teeth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ0lXRq4Q3o

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New post published:
JPEG XL and Google's War Against It

The best format you can't use.

Starting with an overview of existing image formats, including JPEG, PNG, and GIF, a look into the very promising JPEG XL and why it hasn't seen the adoption it deserves as an innovative new file format in the web landscape.

https://vale.rocks/posts/jpeg-xl-and-googles-war-against-it