why can we both have a format that you can write by hand and better clients?

5th Beta of iOS 18.1, MacOS Sequoia 15.1, iPadOS 18.1 with Apple Intelligence, Available for Testing
Apple has released the 5th beta versions of iOS 18.1, macOS Sequoia 15.1, and iPadOS 18.1, with Apple Intelligence support. The Apple Intelligence features that are included with these releases are mostly Writing Tools, summaries, and new Siri features, which allow you to do things like summarize emails, offer Smart Replies in Mail and Mes … ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net Thanks for writing that up!

I hope it can remain a living document (or sequence of draft revisions) for a good long time while we figure out how this stuff works in practice.

I am not sure how I feel about all this being done at once, vs. letting conventions arise.

For example, even today I could reply to twt abc1234 with “(#abc1234) Edit: …” and I think all you humans would understand it as an edit to (#abc1234). Maybe eventually it would become a common enough convention that clients would start to support it explicitly.

Similarly we could just start using 11-digit hashes. We should iron out whether it’s sha256 or whatever but there’s no need get all the other stuff right at the same time.

I have similar thoughts about how some users could try out location-based replies in a backward-compatible way (append the replyto: stuff after the legacy (#hash) style).

However I recognize that I’m not the one implementing this stuff, and it’s less work to just have everything determined up front.

Misc comments (I haven’t read the whole thing):

• Did you mean to make hashes hexadecimal? You lose 11 bits that way compared to base32. I’d suggest gaining 11 bits with base64 instead.

• “Clients MUST preserve the original hash” — do you mean they MUST preserve the original twt?

• Thanks for phrasing the bit about deletions so neutrally.

• I don’t like the MUST in “Clients MUST follow the chain of reply-to references…”. If someone writes a client as a 40-line shell script that requires the user to piece together the threading themselves, IMO we shouldn’t declare the client non-conforming just because they didn’t get to all the bells and whistles.

• Similarly I don’t like the MUST for user agents. For one thing, you might want to fetch a feed without revealing your identty. Also, it raises the bar for a minimal implementation (I’m again thinking again of the 40-line shell script).

• For “who follows” lists: why must the long, random tokens be only valid for a limited time? Do you have a scenario in mind where they could leak?

• Why can’t feeds be served over HTTP/1.0? Again, thinking about simple software. I recently tried implementing HTTP/1.1 and it wasn’t too bad, but 1.0 would have been slightly simpler.

• Why get into the nitty-gritty about caching headers? This seems like generic advice for HTTP servers and clients.

• I’m a little sad about other protocols being not recommended.

• I don’t know how I feel about including markdown. I don’t mind too much that yarn users emit twts full of markdown, but I’m more of a plain text kind of person. Also it adds to the length. I wonder if putting a separate document would make more sense; that would also help with the length.

I wrote some code to try out non-hash reply subjects formatted as (replyto ), while keeping the ability to use the existing hash style.

I don’t think we need to decide all at once. If clients add support for a new method then people can use it if they like. The downside of course is that this costs developer time, so I decided to invest a few hours of my own time into a proof of concept.

With apologies to @movq@www.uninformativ.de for corrupting jenny’s beautiful code. I don’t write this expecting you to incorporate the patch, because it does complicate things and might not be a direction you want to go in. But if you like any part of this approach feel free to use bits of it; I release the patch under jenny’s current LICENCE.

Supporting both kinds of reply in jenny was complicated because each email can only have one Message-Id, and because it’s possible the target twt will not be seen until after the twt referencing it. The following patch uses an sqlite database to keep track of known (url, timestamp) pairs, as well as a separate table of (url, timestamp) pairs that haven’t been seen yet but are wanted. When one of those “wanted” twts is finally seen, the mail file gets rewritten to include the appropriate In-Reply-To header.

Patch based on jenny commit 73a5ea81.

https://www.falsifian.org/a/oDtr/patch0.txt

Not implemented:

• Composing twts using the (replyto …) format.
  
• Probably other important things I’m forgetting.

@prologic@twtxt.net Wikipedia claims sha1 is vulnerable to a “chosen-prefix attack”, which I gather means I can write any two twts I like, and then cause them to have the exact same sha1 hash by appending something. I guess a twt ending in random junk might look suspcious, but perhaps the junk could be worked into an image URL like

Image

git only uses sha1 because they’re stuck with it: migrating is very hard. There was an effort to move git to sha256 but I don’t know its status. I think there is progress being made with Game Of Trees, a git clone that uses the same on-disk format.

I can’t imagine any benefit to using sha1, except that maybe some very old software might support sha1 but not sha256.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de

Maybe I’m being a bit too purist/minimalistic here. As I said before (in one of the 1372739 posts on this topic – or maybe I didn’t even send that twt, I don’t remember 😅), I never really liked hashes to begin with. They aren’t super hard to implement but they are kind of against the beauty of the original twtxt – because you need special client support for them. It’s not something that you could write manually in your twtxt.txt file. With @sorenpeter@darch.dk’s proposal, though, that would be possible.

Tangentially related, I was a bit disappointed to learn that the twt subject extension is now never used except with hashes. Manually-written subjects sounded so beautifully ad-hoc and organic as a way to disambiguate replies. Maybe I’ll try it some time just for fun.

@prologic@twtxt.net Brute force. I just hashed a bunch of versions of both tweets until I found a collision.

I mostly just wanted an excuse to write the program. I don’t know how I feel about actually using super-long hashes; could make the twts annoying to read if you prefer to view them untransformed.

💻 Issue 433 - Writing an Android app with Scala.js ⌘ Read more

** Constants, variable assignment, and pointers **
After reading my last post, a friend asked an interesting question that I thought would also be fun to write about!

They noted that in the reshape function I declared the variable result as a constant. They asked if this was a mistake? Because I was resigning the value iteratively, shouldn’t it be declared using let?

What is happening there is that the constant is being declared as an array, so the reference … ⌘ Read more

iOS 18 is Compatible with These iPhone Models
iOS 18 for iPhone includes a variety of new features that many users are excited about, from all new Dark Mode icons and widgets, to color hued icons/widgets, customizable Control Center, Apple Intelligence AI features that will write emails and texts for you and summarize data or generate images, a confusing Photos redesign, Game Mode … Read More ⌘ Read more

How to Get Apple Intelligence on Your iPhone, iPad, or Mac
Apple Intelligence is a set of AI features that Apple is rolling out in beta, and will debut to a larger set of Apple device owners in the fall. Apple Intelligence offers many features from writing and creating text and emails, to taking actions and operating across different apps, to image generation, document and text … [Read More](https://osxdaily.com/2024/07/31/how-to-get-apple-intelligence-on-your-iphone-ipad-or-m … ⌘ Read more

Exam Numbers
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Exam Numbers
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@movq@www.uninformativ.de Somewhere or another, I think in a William Byrd talk, I heard it suggested that the best ideas in computer science should fit on an index card (ah yes it’s this one: https://paperswelove.org/2017/video/will-byrd-most-beautiful-program/ ). He was referring to the basic principles of LISP/the lambda calculus, which have sometimes been called the Maxwell’s equations of computer programming (by Alan Kay). Simple, short, elegant, but very densely packed with meaning–generations of people have spent their whole careers unpacking what those simple rules can do.

Much of modern software feels like the polar opposite of that. Not only can you not write it on an index card, you never will be able to because people who write software don’t seem to aspire to try. I wish more people thought this way though!

Tarmac v0.8.0 Released - Write as Functions, Deploy as a Monolith or Microservice with WebAssembly
1 points posted by madflojo ⌘ Read more

It seems like I finally fixed a memory leak in GoBlog yesterday, that sometimes made my blog crashing. How? I used Anthropic’s new Claude 3.5 Sonnet to write me a new HTTP compression middleware that compresses HTTP responses using zstd or gzip when possible. I needed to instruct a few changes and modify some code lines as the initial implementation was wrong, but thereafter, it finally seems to work better than my original implementation that probably leaked some objects anywhere. Claude also helped me to write uni … ⌘ Read more

Last week at The Lunduke Journal (June 23 - June 29, 2024)
Microsoft Write! Computers in 1961! Ridiculous Amounts of RAM! Socialism! ⌘ Read more

There is JavaScript, but not everything is implemented (properly). They’re writing everything including the JavaScript engine from scratch.

A huge effort 😲

Experiment in Digital minimalism
I recently read Cal Newport’s book Digital Minimalism. It really
resonated with me, despite (or because of?) being glued to my computer
many hours of the day.

Cal suggests a month of digital decluttering, at first cutting off
everything that your job and other obligations don’t depend on. At the
end of the month you evaluate what, if anything, is to be let back
inside.

I did a decluttering plan for April. It ended up being an ongoing
project when I’m writing this in June.

Fire-proof safes are generally designed so the internal temperature stays at or below ~350°F. Is there a computer medium I can write that’s likely to survive an extended stay around that temperature? Storage size doesn’t matter too much; a CD would be plenty (although an actual CD would presumably turn to soup).

https://stephanearnier.com/2024/05/31/creation-de-personnages-trois-tamis/ #writing personnages

Best way to write programs: turn off the computer.

Started writing something from scratch yesterday using thread(3) and wow do I miss writing in Limbo instead. :-/ #plan9

Just over here writing my Senator’s office to see if we can get a new Federally Funded R&D Center created. 😳🤞

Generating Kubernetes ValidatingAdmissionPolicies from Kyverno policies
Project post originally published on Kyverno’s blog by Mariam Fahmy In the previous blog post, we discussed writing Common Expression Language (CEL) expressions in Kyverno policies for resource validation. CEL was first introduced to Kubernetes for the Validation rules for CustomResourceDefinitions,… ⌘ Read more

Whenever I write O_RDWR it makes me think of Martin Crane

Did another write up on #webfinger and DIDs for twtxt/yarn that you can read and edit/comment in: User lookup for twtxt/yarn - Webfinger or Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) - HedgeDoc

How to Mount & Copy HFS Classic Mac Drives on MacOS
Modern versions of MacOS no longer support HFS, meaning that new Macs can no longer read, mount, or write to classic HFS drives. But a fair amount of longtime Mac users continue to have older Macs and old Mac hard drives that are in HFS format, way back from the days of Mac OS 8, … Read More ⌘ Read more

Elle Macpherson reveals she writes a ‘gratitude list’ every morning
Elle Macpherson has revealed that she creates a “gratitude list” at the start of every day. ⌘ Read more

Kim Petras believes she’s faced a ‘double standard’ in the music business
Kim Petras claims that her music requires “just as much effort as writing a slow ballad”. ⌘ Read more

Keyboard layouts
I’ve updated my article about keyboard layouts with XKB after 13
years!

https://hack.org/mc/writings/xkb.html

I’ve edited it so the focus is on the layouts if you just want to grab
them and don’t need any handholding. Also added Thinkpad layouts along
with the original HHKB layouts.

It now also includes instructions for use with the River and Sway
Wayland compositors as well as X11.

I will probably update it soon with some images of different Thinkpad
keyboards. ⌘ Read more

Status 2024-01-29
Friday is my day off from work, as usual. So when I’m typing this I’m
in front of the hackstation (not a battlestation, obviously) with my
third cup of coffee, writing an update again.

I’ve been doing these status updates on my Gemini log, but I’m
increasingly aware of the dropping amounts of traffic, so I’m thinking
about doing them on the blog instead, but see below for some thoughts
on Gemini.

In which I speak about an intense week, feeling good(?), spending … ⌘ Read more

💻 Issue 401 - How to Write a Full-Stack Scala Application with the Typelevel Stack ⌘ Read more

** Arkady Martine and Virginia Woolf **
As an undergrad and a grad student I was obsessed with Virginia Woolf. Woolf’s writings appeared in my citations pretty much regardless of the class or subject area I was writing on.

I have recently finished reading an engaging and lovely novel by Arkady Martine,“A Memory Called Empire.” Of course, I was excited to pick up the sequel, but, also, I had this feeling, this Woolf’s scent — I’ve always felt that Woolf’s nonfiction was more lucid and p … ⌘ Read more

How to Disable Journaling Suggestions on iPhone
The iPhone now has a Journal app, where you can jot down your day, highlights, including notes, pictures, videos, workouts from Apple Watch, and more, plus the Journal app even has journaling suggestions that are available as well. If you don’t find the suggestions of what to write about or journal about to be particularly … Read More ⌘ Read more

Comment on Ubuntu 19.10 Release, Features & Download by Obraz Duży do Salonu
I appreciate the depth you bring to your writing. This article was not only informative but also incredibly inspiring. ⌘ Read more

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org
That is what I saw when I went onto twtxt.net to see. But it does not matter much as posts that I write from jenny work.

I have been doing interview prep for next year. The problems have been great to get practice and make it fun when compared to the dry solve this you get on hacker rank or code scene.

That and so many great write-ups to explain the problems.

I found these write-ups for advent of code. They are quite well done and a great learning resouce for algorithms!

https://advent-of-code.xavd.id/writeups/2023/

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org
I use Jenny and I thought the multi line did work. Will keep that in mind when I am writing out posts. Also do you know how I can see if someone mentions me that I am not follwing? I know the user agents exist but I can’t view the server lgos since I host this on codeberg but if I do switch to my own server it would work.

https://joshblais.com/posts/A-new-way-to-write One sentence per line. So good idea!! #writing

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. -Robert A. Heinlein

💻 Issue 391 - Writing a simple pubsub server with the Typelevel toolkit and http4s ember server ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de time to write your own browser? Or at least a fork maintained outside the EU?

5G chaos in my head
One of the reasons I like blogging is that it sometimes helps me organize my thoughts. There’s a lot of chaos in my head before I write them down, and after, my head is sometimes calm. ⌘ Read more

Writing tests for a Kubernetes Operator
1 points posted by Elton Minetto ⌘ Read more

Writing Long Form Content With Obsidian
An evaluation of the viability of using Obsidian for long form content as opposed to tools like MS Word, Google Docs, & Scrivener. ⌘ Read more

PEP 725: Specifying external dependencies in pyproject.toml
This PEP specifies how to write a project’s external, or non-PyPI, build and runtime dependencies in a pyproject.toml file for packaging-related tools to consume. ⌘ Read more

I used to be a big fan of a service called cocalc, which you could also self host. It was kind of an integrated math, data science, research, writing, and teaching platform.

I hadn’t run it in awhile, and when I checked in with it today I found their web site brags that cocalc is now “extensively integrated with ChatGPT”.

Which means I can’t use it anymore, and frankly anyone doing anything serious shouldn’t use it either. Very disappointing.

I’m still on vacation. It’s hot most days, but it’s interesting to get to know a new country and visit some places from my mother’s youth. I will write a more detailed report when I return. 😊 ⌘ Read more