Micro posting in July
Additional resistance towards plugins seems to be some kind of purist animosity against straying away from some core set of Vim functionality. But if you’re using Vim, you’re already in a subset of people who demand that editing text be fast and efficient, so it’s like a group of savants arguing about which is the most eccentric. The set of people that use a movement plugin like EasyMotion or vim-sneak will argue that they’re more efficient than vanilla Vim users, and vanilla Vim users will argue that they’re more efficient than non-Vim users, and so on. The argument will be moot when we can control computers with our brains anyway. — Vim after 15 years
2020-07-01: How Did Vim Become So Popular. #vim
2020-07-01: More than just words. #lisp
2020-07-03:
Here’s a common piece of advice from people who create things: to make better things, make more things. Not only does it give you constant practice at making things, but it gives you more chances at lucking into making a good thing. — 2500
It’s kind of a people mapping/profiling system that attempts to connect the dots. Not all the data in the database is accurate, but it’s efficient. — How to Defend Yourself Against Scammers, Corporations, and Government: Hacker’s Perspective
Now we have established what I believe email is, let’s look at some of the problems with email. To me, the main problems are threefold: (1) Spam, (2) Privacy, (3) Workflow management. — Email Is Not Broken
2020-07-03: I’m trying coc with Neovim. So far it looks great. Now, I learned that there’s a “native” plugin for LSP in neovim. #vim
2020-07-03: Ok, so I just tried out yabai. While this looks like a great WM, unfortunately it does not really support i3 stacking and tabbing features — at least for the moment (see also this more recent update), which (I believe) would be the most interesting options for small Retina displays. Update: I reinstalled the HEAD version and tried the “stack” layout, which looks like a simple fullscreen display, not really stacking à la i3wm.
2020-07-03: This is so f$*ing crazy that I would just love testing it for 5’ on my Macbook: yabai macOS Tiling Window Manager Demonstration (Youtube). Still, I strongly believe that tiling WM are great for larger displays than a 12" one. Well, it’s still tempting, if only to solve the problems inherent in Spaces and floating windows.
2020-07-03: Tails is a portable operating system that protects your privacy and helps you avoid censorship. (via Irreal)
2020-07-03: Three built-in neovim features. #vim
2020-07-03: What I learned from 6 months with VS Code. #emacs
2020-07-03: entr: Run arbitrary commands when files change.
2020-07-05:
But there is one language that seems to inspire a peculiar universal reverence: Lisp. Keyboard crusaders that would otherwise pounce on anyone daring to suggest that some language is better than any other will concede that Lisp is on another level. Lisp transcends the utilitarian criteria used to judge other languages, because the median programmer has never used Lisp to build anything practical and probably never will, yet the reverence for Lisp runs so deep that Lisp is often ascribed mystical properties. — How Lisp Became God’s Own Programming Language
Hack: Trial and error is the only way we learn anything. — Unix rules for life. (via Irreal)
2020-07-05: It looks like new fonts released by Apple are mostly reserved for 10.14+ users; sadly, the SF Symbols 2 are Catalina only.
Unfortunately, the tweet with ID 1277515850027798528 has been deleted.
2020-07-05: Snapshots of modern mathematics from Oberwolfach.
2020-07-06:
Hosting your own email server is not easy and requires your full dedication. And with many upcoming trusted and privacy friendly email services, it may not always be the right tool for the job. — Selfhost email… But should you?
I believe in the privacy and control of data that comes from community supported services, self-hosting, and a less corporate internet. — dctrud @ sdf.org
2020-07-06: TIL about the Universal Numerical Fingerprint. R package on CRAN.
2020-07-06: A gopher/gemini client for GNU Emacs. #emacs
2020-07-06: lsp-mode 7.0 released. #emacs
2020-07-07: History of UNIX Manpages.
2020-07-09:
In 1994, there were 3,000 websites. In 2019, there were estimated to be 1.7 billion, almost one website for every three people on the planet. Not only has the number of websites exploded, the weight of each page has also skyrocketed. Between 2003 and 2019, the average webpage weight grew from about 100 KB to about 4 MB. — Webwaste
Notebooks shine when performing quick, interactive, ex- ploratory analysis, but these features also encourage sloppy coding practices that make it difficult to transition notebooks to production. — What’s Wrong with Computational Notebooks? (PDF)
2020-07-09: DBeaver: Free multi-platform database tool for developers, database administrators, analysts and all people who need to work with databases.
2020-07-09: Emacs Speaks Statistics Config Share Space. #emacs
2020-07-09: How to find what you want in the Django documentation. #python
2020-07-09: Multi-level Modeling in RStan and brms (and the Mysteries of Log-Odds). #rstats
2020-07-09: RethinkDB: The open-source database for the realtime web.
2020-07-10: Apparently, anonymity is a thing.
2020-07-10: I finally agreed with myself on the color theme that I will use in the coming months.
2020-07-10: Magit lets you reword a previous commit message so easily (compared to interactive rebasing solutions that are suggested all over StackOverflow). In a magit status buffer, just
r w, select the commit, fix it, then C-c C-c. This is even better than the earlier solution offered by the author. Interactive rebasing is also a joy. #emacs
2020-07-10: Nyxt browser: Be productive on the Internet.
2020-07-12: Private networks made easy using Tailscale (see how it works). I already subscribed to NordVPN, which does the job well when it comes to broadcast anonymous connections. Unfortuantely, it looks like the only way to get it is through Google or M$.
2020-07-12: TIL there’s something like Keybase that’s not totally Keybase (now part of the Zoom security sphere if I remember correctly): Keyoxide. The author has a very nice website, btw.
2020-07-12: Mighty: Is this the future of Chrome?
2020-07-12: Webmentiond. An interesting series of links regarding webmentions and the indie web.
Webmentions allow blogs to send message to each other when there is a link in the pinging one pointing to the linked one, the linked one may display that mention at the end of the page, thus creating some form of conversation.
2020-07-13:
2020-07-13: The Math of Social Distancing Is a Lesson in Geometry. A nice discussion with several illustrations of circular and hexagonal packing.
2020-07-14: Announcing Pylance: Fast, feature-rich language support for Python in Visual Studio Code.
2020-07-14: My first foray into Rust. #rust
2020-07-16: The Evolution of a Haskell Programmer. See also The evolution of a Scheme programmer (or Factorials in Racket).
2020-07-19: Optimizing 128-bit Division.
2020-07-19: Turning the IDE Inside Out with Datalog.
2020-07-20:
Answering the age-old debate: HTML or plaintext emails? Both! — Markdown to multipart MIME
In this essay, I explore the virtues of graphs, algebra, types, and show how these concepts can help us reason about programs. I propose a computational primitive based on graph signal processing, linking software engineering, graphs, and linear algebra. — Computation graphs and graph computation
There is commonality shared among all, or at least most, of these programming languages, and the Lisp hackers recognize and appreciate that commonality – the characteristics that make a programming language a Lisp. Homoiconic syntax, powerful metaprogramming facilities, and editor support that, in my opinion, is unparalleled. — The Many Faces of an Undying Programming Language
2020-07-22: > These days I mostly use Emacs on my laptop. Sure, there’s all that stuff in the background. But in terms of applications I actually launch, I’d say I mostly use just Emacs. — Emacs everythingSame here.
2020-07-22: A visual comparison of macOS Catalina and Big Sur. Despite some criticisms I read here and there, I must admit that the look’n feel of the latest release of macOS is quite pleasant. But why did Apple designers decided to update the core UI elements (like window layout for the Finder, Notes or Preview, etc.) leaving the left “gray” navigation panel untouched on most apps (iTunes and the like)? #apple
2020-07-22: C Needs Better Syntax and Macros. #clang
2020-07-22: Rash: The Reckless Racket Shell. #racket
2020-07-23: Logistic regression is not fundamentally a classification algorithm.
The problem arises from logistic regression often being taught as a “classification” algorithm in the machine learning world. I was personally not taught this way– I learned from econometricians that you can use either probit or “logit” as general linear models in the event you want to estimate on a binary target variable, and that these models calculate probabilities. Thinking about logistic regression as a probability model easily translates to the classification case, but the reverse simply does not seem to be true. — Why Do So Many Practicing Data Scientists Not Understand Logistic Regression?
2020-07-23: Slowly going back to my unread feeds in Reeder.app. Today is After WWDC 2020: bittersweet Mac. #apple
2020-07-23: On Moving from Statistics to Machine Learning, the Final Stage of Grief.
2020-07-23: Why linear mixed-effects models are probably not the solution to your missing data problems. #rstats
2020-07-24: Nick Cave & The bad Seeds, The Abattoir Blues Tour.
2020-07-24: Draw Lindenmayer Systems with Common LISP. #lisp
2020-07-24: On Git.- Git: Best Practices- Git Best Practices and Tips by Toptal Developers- Git commit practices your future self will thank you for- Commit Often, Perfect Later, Publish Once: Git Best Practices
2020-07-24: The Y Combinator Explained in Python.
2020-07-26:
R packages can be just a way to organise code, nothing more. By following a certain structure and a few rules we get to benefit from a whole bunch of tools designed just for packages. — Data Science Workflows.
2020-07-26: TIL about FiraGO. Fira is certainly my second preferred Sans (and Code) font after Iosevka.