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• Post #3573006

  Turned on the radio to listen to the news. Twenty minutes later, the news have been over for ten minutes and I have no idea what they said. How's your morning?

• Post #2224127

  More and more apps from #FDroid are now broken on my aging #Android tablet. By changing APIs all the time, Google forces even open source developers into planned obsolescence.

• Post #2224126

  Dear #software developers: once again, don't require people to have a GitHub account to report #bugs. Generally, you shouldn't have just one channel, but it goes double for GitHub.

• Post #2224125

  The trouble with open source is being a gift economy in a world that has largely forgotten such a thing can and did exist for thousands of years. You don't have to pay for it as if it was a product, because it isn't. But you really ought to consider giving something back. Add to the stone soup.

• Post #1754620

  Turns out Pakistan has been installing #solar capacity at a blistering pace since 2022, except... they're completely dependent on imports from China for panels and batteries. A scenario I described in my novel exactly 10 years ago: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2026/4/7/how-pakistans-solar-boom-is-shielding-it-from-worst-of-iran-war-crisis

• Post #1141465

  I just visited three different sites in a row that all displayed the exact same anti-adblock banner. Did a double-take at first. Then a triple-take. What?!

• Post #1072870

  Ever noticed how rigid, harsh, even cruel sci-fi civilizations often look like better places to live than modern society? Been doing it in my own stories, without even meaning to. How?! What happens here is that our supposedly enlightened ways are profoundly inhumane, even when we nominally protect human rights. On the whole, we only pay lip service to humanity. People can feel that, you know, even if it's hard to articulate.

• Post #979417

  If you can't find the time to document your software project, how will you find the time to maintain all the crap you keep adding?

• Post #945020

  We've literally given typewriters to a million monkeys, and now we're trying to make it the only way anyone ever writes anything.

• Post #945019

  You can't polish a turd. People keep saying, "you must be willing to let your writing suck! You can fix it later!" No, you can't. Not the core of your prose. Little bits of wording or phrasing, sure. But you have to start on a strong note. Your first draft should already be most of the way there. It's the same with code. If it doesn't have a solid foundation, every little frill you add is just more weight that drags it down.

• Post #945013

  You know, I have at least a couple of sci-fi stories where one thing the main characters take care of when leaving a planet is to hop online and do whatever they need while their ship is still in range of communication satellites.

• Post #776437

  Pondering run control and data definition languages. What you can describe determines what your program can do.

• Post #776436

  Wish folks stopped using the term "Butlerian jihad", for several reasons: - Frank Herbert loved the word "jihad" a little too much. It doesn't mean what he thought it meant. - Look what he proposed to replace computers with: mentats. He clearly didn't know what computers were and what they did. - They didn't just despise computers in Dune, but also things like *elevators*. Do I need to explain how ableist that is? We can do better in...

• Post #776435

  By now invisible clothes are the hottest fashion throughout the kingdom. You can hardly find a taylor shop that does anything else. They'll even do it without telling you first. When you complain that they're charging extra and delivering half a suit, they'll either mock you or get uppity. A huge storm is coming and nobody's dressed for it. Everyone forgot what they're supposed to do in weather like that. The emperor has embarked on yet another war. Wear...

• Post #776431

  Posted some updates about what I've been making and learning lately, health, cool finds and seasonal notes: https://felix.plesoianu.ro/journal.html#2026-03-25

• Post #776429

  Newsflash: journalists on TV suddenly explaining how much faster and cheaper it is to take public transport than commute in one's own car. Next you know, they'll be asking for bike lanes. And trees, so they can bike in the shade. So progressive.

• Post #640748

  Can't remember if I announced my new project already, so: Babble-M is a toy programming language inspired by Lisp and Awk. It's designed to be small and simple, yet somewhat robust, with good error reporting and whatnot. The native port is barely working right now, but there's a link to the web-based prototype from Codeberg: https://codeberg.org/nosycat/babble-m

• Post #640747

  Good to know I'm not the only one who deals with these #website gripes: https://forkingmad.blog/website-gripes/

• Post #503635

  After three years and a failed experiment, I have a new toy #programming language. Will write more later; I'm tired. https://felix.plesoianu.ro/languages/babble-m/

• Post #12634

  Oh look, there's a cool new app that runs in the terminal! Let's check out the feature list: "Written in Rust!" That's not a feature. No-one cares. "Uses Vi-like bindings!" Sure, keep thinking that makes you more productive. "Opinionated!" Listen here, you little shit.