Ok, the standard library implementation is wonky at best, at least in regards to XDG, because it really doesn’t implement it properly. https://github.com/golang/go/issues/62382 I stick to my own code then. It doesn’t properly support anything else than Linux or Unixes that use XDG, but personally, I don’t care about them anyway. And the cross-platform situation is a giant mess. Unsurprisingly.

Hmm, mine also resolves a leading tilde in these variables. And if $HOME is not specified it tries to resolve the user’s home directory by user.Current().HomeDir. Maybe that’s overkill, I have to check the XDG spec.

But I’m definitely missing os.UserDataDir(). That’s a bummer.

@shinyoukai@neko.laidback.moe Cool, I didn’t know about os.UserConfigDir() up until a few seconds ago! I always implemented that myself.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Thanks! I’ll have a look at SnipMate. Currently, I’m (mis)using the abbreviation mechanism to expand a code snippet inplace, e.g.

autocmd FileType go inoreab <buffer> testfunc func Test(t *testing.T) {<CR>}<ESC>k0wwi

or this monstrosity:

autocmd FileType go inoreab <buffer> tabletest for _, tt := range []struct {<CR>    name string<CR><CR><BS>}{<CR>   {<CR>   name: "",<CR><BS>},<CR><BS>} {<CR>  t.Run(tt.name, func(t *testing.T) {<CR><CR>})<CR><BS>}<ESC>9ki<TAB>

But this of course has the disadvantage that I still have to remove the last space or tab to trigger the expansion by hand again. It’s a bit annoying, but better than typing it out by hand.

Oh, suddenly Mother Hulda dumped a centimeter of snow tonight! https://lyse.isobeef.org/schnee-2025-12-30/01.jpg

Magpie from the day before yesterday: https://lyse.isobeef.org/elster-2025-12-28/

PhDs Can’t Find Work as Boston’s Biotech Engine Sputters
The Wall Street Journal reports that Boston’s once-booming biotech sector has hit a sharp downturn, leaving newly minted Ph.D.s struggling to find work as venture funding dries up, lab space sits empty, and companies downsize or relocate amid rising costs and policy uncertainty. The Wall Street Journal reports: Boston’s biotech sector, long a vital economic eng … ⌘ Read more

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Well, I used SnipMate years ago (until 2012). IIRC, it’s more than just “insert a bit of text here”, it can also jump to the correct next location(s) and stuff like that. Don’t remember why I stopped using it.

Then I used nothing for a long time. Just before Christmas, I made my own plugin (… of course …), which does everything I need at the moment (and nothing more).

It can insert simple templates and then jump to the next location:

https://movq.de/v/67cdf7c827/sisni%2Dpython.mp4

And replace a string after insertion:

https://movq.de/v/67cdf7c827/sisni%2Dheader.mp4

(It’s not public (yet?) and it also uses vim9script, so I guess it wouldn’t work on your system.)

Researchers Make ‘Neuromorphic’ Artificial Skin For Robots
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The nervous system does an astonishing job of tracking sensory information, and does so using signals that would drive many computer scientists insane: a noisy stream of activity spikes that may be transmitted to hundreds of additional neurons, where they are integrated with similar spike trains coming … ⌘ Read more

Russian Enthusiasts Planning DIY DDR5 Memory Amidst Worldwide Shortage
Amid a global DDR5 shortage and soaring prices, Russian hardware enthusiasts are experimenting with do-it-yourself DDR5 RAM by sourcing empty PCBs and soldering memory chips by hand. Tom’s Hardware reports: The idea comes from Russian YouTuber PRO Hi-Tech’s Telegram channel, where a local enthusiast known as “Vik-on” already perfo … ⌘ Read more

It Took 6+ Years For Linux’s “New” Mount API To Be Properly Documented In Man Pages
In demonstrating one of the gaps of man pages in modern times and likely having hindered the adoption of the Linux kernel’s new mount API, it took more than six years for those system calls to be properly documented within man pages. The Linux “new” mount API was introduced back in mid-2019 with Linux 5.2 and since supported by key file-systems after several years but not until weeks ago was this file descriptor based mount API sco … ⌘ Read more

Fedora Continued At The Forefront Of Upstream Linux Innovations In 2025
Phoronix’s Michael Larabel is “reliving some of the best moments for Fedora Linux in 2025” by highlighting the year’s most popular news around the distro. Throughout 2025, Fedora continued to lead upstream Linux innovation with bold changes like Wayland-only GNOME, newer kernels, architecture cleanups, and experimental features – … ⌘ Read more

‘Pull Over and Show Me Your Apple Wallet’
Longtime Slashdot reader theodp writes: MacRumors reports that Apple plans to expand iPhone and Apple Watch driver’s licenses to 7 U.S. states (CT, KY, MS, OK, UT, AR, VA). A recent convert is the State of Illinois, whose website videos demo how you can use your Apple Wallet license to display proof of identity or age the next time you get carded by a cop, bartender, or TSA agent. The new st … ⌘ Read more

Tough Job Market Has People Using Dating Apps To Get Interviews
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Most people use dating apps to find love. Tiffany Chau used one to hunt for a summer internship. This fall, the 20-year-old junior at California College of the Arts tailored her Hinge profile to connect with people who could offer job referrals or interviews. One match brought her to a Hallo … ⌘ Read more

Sam Altman Offers $555K Salary To Fill Most Daunting Role In AI
OpenAI is offering a $555,000 salary (plus equity) to recruit a new “head of preparedness,” a high-pressure role tasked with anticipating and mitigating extreme AI risks. “This will be a stressful job, and you’ll jump into the deep end pretty much immediately,” said Sam Altman as he launched the hunt to fill “a critical role” to “help the world.” Th … ⌘ Read more

Nvidia Takes $5 Billion Stake In Intel Under September Agreement
Nvidia has completed its previously announced $5 billion investment in Intel, buying over 214 million shares at a fixed price after the deal received clearance from Federal Trade Commission. “The leading AI chip designer said in September it would pay $23.28 per share for Intel common stock, in a deal that is seen as a major financial lifeline for the … ⌘ Read more

China Drafts World’s Strictest Rules To End AI-Encouraged Suicide, Violence
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: China drafted landmark rules to stop AI chatbots from emotionally manipulating users, including what could become the strictest policy worldwide intended to prevent AI-supported suicides, self-harm, and violence. China’s Cyberspace Administration proposed the rules on Saturday. … ⌘ Read more

Stingless Bees From the Amazon Granted Legal Rights in World First
Stingless bees from the Amazon have become the first insects to be granted legal rights anywhere in the world, in a breakthrough supporters hope will be a catalyst for similar moves to protect bees elsewhere. From a report: It means that across a broad swathe of the Peruvian Amazon, the rainforest’s long-overlooked native bees – which, un … ⌘ Read more

After a Decade of Dead Ends, $70 Million Rides on Locating Flight MH370
More than a decade after Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 vanished over the Indian Ocean en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, the marine robotics company that located Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance is preparing to resume its hunt for the missing Boeing 777. Ocean Infinity, a UK and US-based seabed survey firm, began searching a 15, … ⌘ Read more

How Windows 10 Earned Its Good Reputation While Planting the Seeds of Windows 11’s Problems
Windows 10’s formal end-of-support arrived in October, and while the operating system is generally remembered as one of the “good” versions of Windows – the most widely used since XP – many of the annoyances people complain about in Windows 11 actually started during the Windows 10 era, ArsTe … ⌘ Read more

Question to my fellow Vimers: Which snippet insertion mechanism are you using or can you (not) recommend?

Hyprland 0.53 Released With New Launcher For Crash Recovery & Safe Mode, New Welcome App
Hyprland 0.53 was released today as the last feature update to this Wayland compositor for 2025… ⌘ Read more

Americans Are Watching Fewer New TV Shows and More Free TV
Americans are settling into streaming habits that should worry Hollywood executives, as new Nielsen data analyzed by Bloomberg reveals that not a single new original series cracked the top 10 most-watched streaming shows in 2025 – the first time this has happened since Nielsen began publishing streaming data in 2020.

The shift extends beyond origi … ⌘ Read more

GOG and CD Projekt Founder Acquires 100% Ownership of GOG
Michal Kicinski, who co-founded both CD Projekt and the DRM-free digital games store GOG back in 2008, has acquired 100% ownership of GOG from CD Projekt, bringing the platform full circle to one of its original creators.

GOG was already operating as part of CD Projekt through its Sp.z.o.o. subsidiary, but Kicinski now takes complete control of the company. T … ⌘ Read more

VC Sees AI-generated Video Gutting the Creator Economy
AI-generated video tools like OpenAI’s Sora will make individual content creators “far, far, far less valuable” as social media platforms shift toward algorithmically generated content tailored to each viewer, according to Michael Mignano, a partner at venture capital firm Lightspeed and who cofounded the podcasting platform Anchor before Spotify acquired it.

Speaki … ⌘ Read more

Pro tip: Don’t keep the christmas biscuits close to the bird fat balls. I nearly mixed up the bags. :-D

@prologic@twtxt.net Debugging this stuff on bare metal hardware (without an underlying OS) is a nightmare. 🤣

‘Why Academics Should Do More Consulting’
A group of researchers is calling on universities to treat consulting work as a strategic priority, arguing that bureaucratic obstacles and inconsistent policies have left a massive revenue stream largely untapped even as higher education institutions face mounting financial pressures. (Consulting work refers to academics offering their advice and expertise to outside organizations – industry, … ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Yeah. I had that in my Python implementation and was really missing that.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de I see. Yeah, all the Unicode stuff certainly doesn’t help here, that’s for sure.

Maybe “speedcurses” could be a name. Or just select any Palatinate curse. ;-)

@prologic@twtxt.net Oh yeah, I bet it is horrible to troubleshoot.

‘I Switched To eSIM in 2025, and I am Full of Regret’
Google’s Pixel 10 series arrived this year as the company’s first eSIM-only lineup in the United States, forcing users who wanted to review or buy the new phones to abandon their physical SIM cards entirely. Ryan Whitwam, a senior technology reporter at Ars Technica, made the switch and now regrets it, he says. “In the three months since Google forced me to give up my phys … ⌘ Read more

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org That sounds useful. 🤔

This was the scariest movie I’ve seen in a long time, jesus. 🤣 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_(2022_film)

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org I’m toying with the idea of making a widget/window system on top of Python’s ncurses. I’ve never really been happy with the existing ones (like urwid, textual, pytermgui, …). I mean, they’re not horrible, it’s mostly the performance that’s bugging me – I don’t want to wait an entire second for a terminal program to start up.

Not sure if I’ll actually see it through, though. Unicode makes this kind of thing extremely hard. 🫤

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Bwahaha. 🤣

Job Apocalypse? Not Yet. AI is Creating Brand New Occupations
The AI industry, for all the anxiety about mass unemployment, is quietly minting entirely new job categories that require distinctly human skills – empathy, judgment, and the ability to calm down a passenger trapped inside a broken-down robotaxi. Data annotators are no longer just low-paid gig workers tagging images. Experts in finance, law, and medicine now … ⌘ Read more

Global Hotel Groups Bet on Customer Loyalty To Beat Online and AI Agents
The world’s largest hotel chains are aggressively pushing customers toward direct bookings as they brace for a future where AI “agents” could reshape how travelers find and reserve rooms. Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt and Wyndham have all expanded their loyalty programs and perks in recent months, aiming to reduce their reliance on onli … ⌘ Read more

The Performance Of Arch Linux Powered CachyOS On AMD EPYC Servers
One of the more interesting announcements over the holiday period thus far is that moving into 2026, CachyOS is looking to develop a server edition for their Arch Linux based operating system. CachyOS has garnered quite a following among Linux enthusiasts and gamers for its competitive out-of-the-box performance, employing some of the optimizations by Intel’s now defunct Clear Linux distribution, and pulling in all of the goodness from upstrea … ⌘ Read more

LG Launches UltraGear Evo Gaming Monitors With What It Claims is the World’s First 5K AI Upscaling
LG has announced a new premium gaming monitor brand called UltraGear, and the lineup’s headline feature is what the company claims is the world’s first 5K AI upscaling technology – an on-device solution that analyzes and enhances content in real time before it reaches the panel, … ⌘ Read more

NTFSPLUS Linux Driver Renamed To Just “NTFS” With Latest Code Restructuring
One of the unexpected Linux kernel surprises of 2025 was NTFSPLUS being announced as a new driver for Microsoft’s NTFS file-system with better performance and more features compared to the classic read-only NTFS driver or the “NTFS3” kernel driver that Paragon Software submitted upstream. That NTFSPLUS driver has continued expanding its feature set and robustness and sent out today was the third iteration of the patches. Now this driver is s … ⌘ Read more

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org I can tell you this right now, writing assembly / machine code is fucking hard work™ 😓 I’m sure @movq@www.uninformativ.de can affirm 🤣 And when it all goes to shit™ (which it does often), man is debugging fucking hard as hell! Without debug symbols I can’t use the regular tools like lldb or gdb 😂

UK Accounting Body To Halt Remote Exams Amid AI Cheating
The world’s largest accounting body is to stop students being allowed to take exams remotely to crack down on a rise in cheating on tests that underpin professional qualifications. From a report: The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), which has almost 260,000 members, has said that from March it will stop allowing students to take online exams i … ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net Yeah, the parser part is what I typically enjoy. Haven’t really looked into code generation itself.

I’m currently looking at your µ commits from the last few days. Holy cow! :-)

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Yeah I remember you said some days back that your interest in compilers was rekindled by my work on mu (µ) 😅

Dang it, there’s a Swede by the username of Quongsi: https://www.flashback.org/u1404408 :-D

@prologic@twtxt.net Tada, congratulations! I find that rather interesting, thanks for telling us. :-)

@movq@www.uninformativ.de How about “Quongsi”? I generated the first five letters with pwgen --no-capitalize --no-numerals 5 and since that already showed up in DDG search results, I simply appended the last two, which yielded nothing on DDG and Google).

What kind of project is it? Maybe we can help you find a name or nudge you in the right direction.

Ask Slashdot: What’s the Stupidest Use of AI You Saw In 2025?
Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: What’s the stupidest use of AI you encountered in 2025? Have you been called by AI telemarketers? Forced to do job interviews with a glitching AI?
With all this talk of “disruption” and “inevitability,” this is our chance to have some fun. Personally, I think 2025’s worst AI “innovation” was the AI-powered web … ⌘ Read more

The tt URLs View now automatically selects the first URL that I probably are going to open. In decreasing order, the URL types are:

1. markdown media URLs (images, videos, etc.)
   
2. markdown or plaintext URLs
   
3. subjects
   
4. mentions
   

I might differentiate between mentions of subscribed and unsubscribed feeds in the future. The odds of opening a new feed over an already existing one are higher.