ewintr's recent activity

  1. Comment on Why is everything binary? in ~science

    ewintr
    Link Parent
    Keep watching a bit longer. It is not an educational video, more of a humorous social commentary.

    Keep watching a bit longer. It is not an educational video, more of a humorous social commentary.

    3 votes

  2. Comment on Why is everything binary? in ~science

    ewintr
    Link Parent
    I actually had no idea where to put it. I decided ~tech because it talks about bits and Elon Musk, but it is, of course, not really about tech. ~science is not a good match either, I think.

    I actually had no idea where to put it. I decided ~tech because it talks about bits and Elon Musk, but it is, of course, not really about tech. ~science is not a good match either, I think.

  4. Comment on Beware tech career advice from old heads in ~comp

    ewintr
    Link Parent
    Is a video of the gameplay perhaps enough of a teaser to get people to download it?

    It's kinda an awkward position for me. I'd love to show my games but making something in web is a dead end for most Financials. And isn't necessarily the optimal portfolio to show for industry game programmer positions either.

    Is a video of the gameplay perhaps enough of a teaser to get people to download it?

    1 vote

  5. Comment on Dutch parliament calls for end to dependence on US software companies in ~tech

    ewintr
    Link Parent
    I am not intimately familiar with the exact projects they fund, but NLnet does some good here. A quick search brought me to this page, for instance: https://nlnet.nl/project/mobile-nixos/...

    I am not intimately familiar with the exact projects they fund, but NLnet does some good here. A quick search brought me to this page, for instance: https://nlnet.nl/project/mobile-nixos/

    Replicant also has some projects funded by them.

    3 votes

  6. Comment on Please stop externalizing your costs directly into my face in ~tech

    ewintr
    Link
    That sounds like a botnet of hacked computers and iot devices. No company owns such a set of IP addresses. I suspect there are a couple of layers to 'whitewash' this data. Tech giants or other...

    ...and come from tens of thousands of IP addresses – mostly residential, in unrelated subnets, each one making no more than one HTTP request over any time period we tried to measure...

    That sounds like a botnet of hacked computers and iot devices. No company owns such a set of IP addresses. I suspect there are a couple of layers to 'whitewash' this data. Tech giants or other companies don't do the scraping themselves, they get it from a specialized company. And maybe that specialized company gets it from another. All the way down to criminal gangs of hackers that sell access to hacked consumer devices.

    7 votes

  7. Comment on The future is Niri in ~comp

    ewintr
    Link Parent
    The main benefit for me was to be able to quickly arrange the right windows side by side in various configurations, without space in between them. My mind works better and faster if I can see two...

    The main benefit for me was to be able to quickly arrange the right windows side by side in various configurations, without space in between them. My mind works better and faster if I can see two documents/pages/whatever at the same time, and not have to jump back and forth.

    You can do 80%, maybe more, in a regular window manager with a combination of the Super key and the various arrow keys. On most systems, that puts a window in the left/right half of the screen or a quadrant. Tiling offers a little bit extra in that you can have more and diverse layouts. But it comes with some mental overhead to get everything on one screen, as described in the article. Some tiling window managers also don't play well with applications that don't expect to be run in such an environment. Then your browser gets one half of the screen and some dialog gets the other half.

    Currently, I have a mixed version. Basic tiling for terminals within Kitty, the rest is "normal".

    2 votes

  8. Comment on What are your personal reading "rules?" in ~books

    ewintr
    Link
    I have only one rule when it comes to books. In my bookcase I have a shelf for unread books. Whenever a new book comes it, it will be appended to the right. If I am ready for a new book (I only...

    I have only one rule when it comes to books. In my bookcase I have a shelf for unread books. Whenever a new book comes it, it will be appended to the right. If I am ready for a new book (I only read one at the time), I pick the one at the front on the left. I decide there and then whether I am actually going to read that one or not.

    If I decide yes, all is fine and I start. If not, I must get rid of it, by giving it away, donating, whatever. It is not allowed to put it back and the end of the row again, nor is it allowed to skip the first and pick the second, (third, etc.) one from the row.

    This is all to control my Tsundoku and it works really well. It forces me to make a decision about a book. Also, having a physical row helps me be aware of how many unread books I already own. If it gets very long it subcounsiously pressures me to acquire less. If it becomes shorter, I feel more freedom to splurge without remorse.

    2 votes

  9. Comment on Anyone interested in trying out Kagi? (trial giveaway: round #2) in ~tech

  10. Comment on Anyone interested in trying out Kagi? (trial giveaway: round #2) in ~tech

  11. Comment on Anyone interested in trying out Kagi? (trial giveaway: round #2) in ~tech

  12. Comment on Canadian VPS providers? in ~comp

    ewintr
    Link Parent
    I had no prior experience with Hetzner. I tried to sign up a couple of weeks ago, and was asked to provide ID. A quick search on the internet shows that the experiences are mixed. So are asked,...

    I had no prior experience with Hetzner. I tried to sign up a couple of weeks ago, and was asked to provide ID. A quick search on the internet shows that the experiences are mixed. So are asked, others are not. I am in an EU country, though, not sure what would set off the fraud detection alarm bells.

    2 votes

  13. Comment on Canadian VPS providers? in ~comp

    ewintr
    Link Parent
    Hetzner is mentioned often in discussions like this, but a dealbreaker for me was that I had to send a copy of my passport or other ID when registering an account. There are probably good reasons...

    Hetzner is mentioned often in discussions like this, but a dealbreaker for me was that I had to send a copy of my passport or other ID when registering an account. There are probably good reasons to do that, or maybe there are rules that force them to do it, but I still don't like it.

    Eventually, I took this as a trigger to start learning OpenBSD and I got a VM at OpenBSD Amsterdam. It has been... a humbling experience so far. But one that I haven't regretted yet.

    7 votes

  14. Comment on Build it yourself in ~tech

    ewintr
    Link Parent
    Of course, it is not all black and white, as is mentioned in the article. But is it better? How do you know it is better? No-one has a problem with deciding to add a dependency after careful...

    Of course, it is not all black and white, as is mentioned in the article.

    There is no reason for me to bother implementing all the possible API and edge cases around figuring out the size of a terminal, when I can simply call in someone else's code that will do it better.

    But is it better? How do you know it is better?

    No-one has a problem with deciding to add a dependency after careful vetting has shown that in the long term it is a better option than writing it yourself. But we all know that is not how it works. The dependency is added because it is easy, not because it is actually necessary. This is not just about security, or the quality of the code, but also about the amount of functionality the dependency covers. If you need only one function, just copy and paste it and leave the rest out.

    But just adding one line that imports the whole package is oh so easy. In the long term, that causes more harm than most people realize, and I think the author is right in trying to combat that.

    6 votes

  15. Comment on Everything is Chrome in ~tech

    ewintr
    Link Parent
    Ok, thanks for explaining. I think I get your point now. I still would not use a free font CDN in that situation, as it is an extra dependency and I imagine the cost savings would be marginal at...

    Ok, thanks for explaining. I think I get your point now. I still would not use a free font CDN in that situation, as it is an extra dependency and I imagine the cost savings would be marginal at best. But I'll admit that this is an opinion and not a hard truth.

    1 vote

  16. Comment on Everything is Chrome in ~tech

    ewintr
    Link Parent
    Can you give me an example of a high-traffic site that: Has so much traffic that a CDN for fonts is necessary Has so little traffic that it does not need a CDN for other assets like images, CSS,...

    Can you give me an example of a high-traffic site that:

    • Has so much traffic that a CDN for fonts is necessary
    • Has so little traffic that it does not need a CDN for other assets like images, CSS, static pages, etc.

    I am OK with a fictional site, I just don't see how the numbers would work out.

  17. Comment on Everything is Chrome in ~tech

    ewintr
    Link Parent
    As I said in a sibling comment: if this is indeed an issue in your situation, you should change to a new hosting provider, or move everything to a proper CDN. I just checked for my own website....

    As I said in a sibling comment: if this is indeed an issue in your situation, you should change to a new hosting provider, or move everything to a proper CDN.

    I just checked for my own website. Two fonts in various variations. Ten files that together measure a whopping 185 kilobytes. I cannot imagine a scenario where everything is fine and dandy, but that one time download of 185 kilobytes breaks your site so hard that you are forced to add a CDN for fonts, while at the same everything else (images, CSS, etc.) can just stay where it is.

    1 vote

  18. Comment on Everything is Chrome in ~tech

    ewintr
    Link Parent
    I guess my point is that if you are in the situation that a CDN is useful, you might as well use a proper one and put all assets on there. The only use case I can see for free font CDNs is when...

    I guess my point is that if you are in the situation that a CDN is useful, you might as well use a proper one and put all assets on there. The only use case I can see for free font CDNs is when the developer either does not know how to, or does not care enough to take the simple steps to host the font themselves.

    2 votes

  19. Comment on Everything is Chrome in ~tech

    ewintr
    Link Parent
    Fonts are assets that can be cached for a very long time. You really need to download them only once. If the difference in speed between your hosting provider and the CDN is so big that it is...

    Fonts are assets that can be cached for a very long time. You really need to download them only once. If the difference in speed between your hosting provider and the CDN is so big that it is worthwhile to use the CDN anyway, then you should do one of two things. Either move to a better hoster, or embed the fonts in your website and move the whole package to the CDN.

    2 votes

  20. Comment on Everything is Chrome in ~tech

    ewintr
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Better to just not use fonts from a CDN at all. A CDN for fonts offers no benefit whatsoever. It does open the door to tracking etc. though, and makes your website more fragile.

    Better to just not use fonts from a CDN at all. A CDN for fonts offers no benefit whatsoever. It does open the door to tracking etc. though, and makes your website more fragile.