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    1. Is it OK to use pop media reference for a personal domain name?

      I'm finally in a position in my life to afford a personal domain. The name I'd like to use is name of an episode from a moderately popular TV series. The series ended its run few years ago, but...

      I'm finally in a position in my life to afford a personal domain. The name I'd like to use is name of an episode from a moderately popular TV series. The series ended its run few years ago, but I'm not sure how copyright/trademarks work.

      So far, I'm planning a strictly noncommercial personal use only. Will the choice of domain name be any trouble down the road?

      9 votes
    2. IBM System/370 Mainframe emulated on a Raspberry Pi Zero

      @brianroemmele: I will let out a bit of a secret. I have been running a full IBM System/370 Mainframe on a $5 Raspberry Pi Zero for ~5 years. About 7 times faster System/370. Millions of lines of COBOL JCLs running flawless on a battery. Tested an entire bank's mainframe COBOL on it.

      13 votes
    3. LaTeX: Using a different font for glyphs used in commands like \sum

      Hello everyone. I consider myself fairly competent when it comes to my work with LaTeX, but as everyone who uses it knows, it is definetely strange sometimes. And right now I have a problem which...

      Hello everyone. I consider myself fairly competent when it comes to my work with LaTeX, but as everyone who uses it knows, it is definetely strange sometimes. And right now I have a problem which just irks me in the wrong ways:

      I use XeTeX and a number of custom fonts for my documents, but when writing mathematical formulas I found out that the font I set for Greek letters (Gentium Plus) is used for letter commands like \alpha, \Alpha, ... but not for commands like \sum, \prod. As you can see in this example here. You can see XeTeX defaults to Computer Modern.

      I've looked all over the net for solutions but I can't find one. I'm using mathspec, amsmath, amsfonts, amssymb as my font related packages and I set my fonts like this:

      \setmainfont{Charis SIL}
      \setsansfont{Helvetica Now Display}
      \setmonofont[Scale=MatchLowercase]{Fira Code Retina}
      \setmathfont(Digits,Latin){Charis SIL}
      \setmathfont(Greek){Gentium Plus}
      

      I feel like I'm going insane not solving this problem. Should you require it, my entire LaTeX template is here on Github. Please help, thank you.

      8 votes
    4. Fortnightly Programming Q&A Thread

      General Programming Q&A thread! Ask any questions about programming, answer the questions of other users, or post suggestions for future threads. Don't forget to format your code using the triple...

      General Programming Q&A thread! Ask any questions about programming, answer the questions of other users, or post suggestions for future threads.

      Don't forget to format your code using the triple backticks or tildes:

      Here is my schema:
      
      ```sql
      CREATE TABLE article_to_warehouse (
        article_id   INTEGER
      , warehouse_id INTEGER
      )
      ;
      ```
      
      How do I add a `UNIQUE` constraint?
      
      9 votes
    5. What programming/technical projects have you been working on?

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's...

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

      16 votes
    6. What programming/technical projects have you been working on?

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's...

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

      19 votes
    7. Help Packaging Elmer FEM for Nix

      I'm trying to package Elmer for use with NixOS, and could use some help from any experienced Nix users. My current attempt is located here. There is some junk left around in that file from my...

      I'm trying to package Elmer for use with NixOS, and could use some help from any experienced Nix users. My current attempt is located here. There is some junk left around in that file from my experimenting, but it's at least a start. There are also a few lines of error included in the comment here.

      Any help is appreciated!

      6 votes
    8. What's the current state-of-the-art in WYSIWIG text editors on the web?

      Getting ready to dip my toe back into building a basic notes web app for myself. There are a lot of options out there: ProseMirror, Slate.js, etc. From what I can tell ProseMirror is the most...

      Getting ready to dip my toe back into building a basic notes web app for myself. There are a lot of options out there: ProseMirror, Slate.js, etc. From what I can tell ProseMirror is the most active. Am I missing something though? Any gotchas?

      5 votes
    9. What's the current state-of-the-art in Python package creation/distribution?

      I've been thinking on and off about packaging up a few simple Python utilities I've written to stick up on Github for people to use if they want, but, every time I go to check out how one goes...

      I've been thinking on and off about packaging up a few simple Python utilities I've written to stick up on Github for people to use if they want, but, every time I go to check out how one goes about managing dependencies and all that for a project, I run into a whole wall of options. Does anyone better versed in all of this have any recommendations for me?

      11 votes
    10. What are your favorite CLI tools/applications?

      While I've been teaching myself my first programming language (Python), I've been getting more into using the terminal as much as possible to build familiarity and get comfortable. This has opened...

      While I've been teaching myself my first programming language (Python), I've been getting more into using the terminal as much as possible to build familiarity and get comfortable. This has opened my eyes to so many useful utilities and makes me curious as to what there is out there that I haven't heard of yet.


      My favorites so far:

      exa - A modern version of "ls"

      youtube-dl - Download videos from youtube.com or other video platforms with various options

      hledger - Plain text double-entry accounting software based on ledger written in Haskell

      thefuck - App that corrects a spelling mistake in the previous command by typing "fuck"

      spicetify-cli - Customizes the Spotify client with themes and extensions

      spotifyd - Lightweight Spotify daemon

      spotify-tui - Control Spotify in the terminal

      neofetch - Launch tool that can display ASCII art or pictures and general system information

      I'm on macOS but I'm almost certain all of these are cross-platform.


      What are your favorite or "must-have" CLI packages?

      40 votes
    11. What programming/technical projects have you been working on?

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's...

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

      9 votes
    12. Programming Languages that are Both Interpretable and Compilable?

      I've been thinking about the feasibility of defining a language spec that can both be compiled and interpreted lately. I first thought about it while writing code in crystal, which, for the...

      I've been thinking about the feasibility of defining a language spec that can both be compiled and interpreted lately. I first thought about it while writing code in crystal, which, for the unfamiliar, is a compiled language based heavily off the syntax of an interpreted language (ruby).

      Here are a couple reasons I find the idea interesting:

      • It effectively neuters the interpreted/compiled language debates. Why just choose one, when both have such big upsides?
      • You could develop a program in the interpreter with the same playfulness as you get in a shell, and then compile it into a speedy 'lil thing!
      • It would be wonderful for metaprogramming! From my experience, languages usually define a little janked together syntax for compile-time execution. If the language had an interpreter for itself within the compiler, you could metaprogram and program in the exact same language.

      I'm curious if any languages like this exist, or if you can think of more benefits.

      Edit:
      I just want to mention that my reference to 'feasibility' earlier is not born of disbelief - you can write a compiler or interpreter for any (to the best of my knowledge!) well defined formal grammar with enough effort. I suppose I left that word there to account for the fact that I might have unknown unknowns here.

      14 votes