WhatsApp rose by trapping previously-free beings in their corral and changing their habits to create dependence on masters. Over time, this made it difficult or impossible to return to their previous lifestyle. That process should sound familiar: it’s eerily similar to the domestication of animals. I call this type of vendor lock-in user domestication: the removal of user autonomy to trap users into serving vendors. — WhatsApp and the domestication of users

An opinionated list of best practices for textual websites. Lot of good advices there.

Major Linux Problems on the Desktop, 2020 edition.

The Piecewise Geometric Model index (PGM-index) is a data structure that enables fast lookup, predecessor, range searches and updates in arrays of billions of items using orders of magnitude less space than traditional indexes while providing the same worst-case query time guarantees.

ffscreencast is a shell wrapper for ffmpeg that allows fool-proof screen recording via the command line.

Quickly open a terminal in Neovim (much like pop-up term in Doom Emacs):

:5sp +te

The thing that comes through in the interview is that Knuth is dedicated to bringing the same joy he finds in the material to others. He structures his prose to keep the reader turning the page. Then, of course, there’s his fanatical commitment to making his printed works look good. — Knuth on Writing

I already have all my emails on my laptop since several years. I am about to transfer more than1500 MP3 files to my Music library. Next step: Get back all my hi-res photos from the cloud.

Unix as IDE. See also the ebook version.

Typesetting automation.