Yud is against seed oils, right? Or was that Siskind? I have a vague memory of the topic coming up but was unable to substantiate it in the 22 seconds of archive-searching that I was willing to do.
this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2025
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Its Yud I think. As someone from Canola-land this shit really grinds my gears.
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Just want to share this great term & definition "hyperkludge" coined by Jonathan Korman (@miniver on bsky and masto)
Counterpoint: to what extent are hyperkludges actually a unique thing versus an aspect of how technologies and tools are integrated into human context? Like, one of the original examples is the TCP/IP stack, but as anyone who has had to wrangle multiple vendors can attest a lot of the value in that standardization necessarily comes from the network effects - the fact that it's an accepted standard. The web couldn't function if you had a bespoke protocol stack hand-made to elegantly handle the specific problems of a given application not just because of the difficulty in building that much software (i.e. network effects on the design and construction side) but because of how unwieldy and impractical it would be to get any of those applications in front of people. The fit of those tools for a given application is secondary to how much more cleanly the entire ecosystem can operate because they are more limited in number.
The OP also talks about how embedded the history of a given problem is in the solution which feels like the central explanation for this trend. In that sense a hyperkludge isn't a unique pattern that some things fall into and more a way of indicating a particularly noteworthy whorl in the fractal infinikludge that is all human endeavors.
Examples off the top of my head:
- Almost everything about TCP/IP stack
- NETCONF
- YAML
- Most things related to cars and car infrastructure
- Alcohol
- Chiclet keyboards
- Unicode Han unification
- Layer 2 SDN
- Kubernetes
- JavaScript
- Disk partitioning
- UEFI
- Public transit fares
Edit: checked the link and was surprised our lists didn't have any ones in common (though I considered including MS Excel).
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I'm surprised that alphabetical lists are included. Maybe my brain has completely rotten, but keeping the data sorted is pretty neat for efficient processing
yeah that is an interesting example. I immediately applied the term to commercial products. Like Notion for example - funny because I always say Notion takes wikis which are well established in their usefulness and just slaps them into saas product with other things like docs and spreadsheets (also well established in their usefulness) - but he calls wikis themselves a hyperkludge but what superior thing did wikis kill by network effects?
this rules <3
oh that's pretty great
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Does anyone else get tired of "read documentation and edit this text file to configure your app" Unix shit? I have no problem with the underlying configuration being a text-file (makes for a straightforward API), but do I really need to navigate to https://mpv.io/manual/master/#configuration-files and go through the rigamarole of figuring out which options I need to edit/include^[0]^ because I misplaced (read: sudo rm -rf /) my config file?
[0]: And there is always so much implicit bullshit. "By default, we summon Cthulhu on Tuesdays and Thursdays if the variable summon_octopus_guy is unset." It's a fucking config file, my friends, can we just be explicit?
Oh yeah. I recently wanted to configure something in pipewire... the idea was simple: just creating a boot-persistent audio loopback, i.e. connecting an audio input to an output. I gave up for now after looking at the config examples for that in the documentation. How can such a simple thing need such complex configuration?
As for losing configs, I've started to put all my hand-edited config files in a git repo on my NAS so at least I only have to figure out things once.
Surely it's better to specify those defaults in the config file and have the system just fail if the necessary flags aren't present. Having worked in support I can vouch for the amount of suffering that could be avoided if more systems actually failed if some important configuration isn't in place.
Surely it’s better to specify those defaults in the config file and have the system just fail if the necessary flags aren’t present.
Completely agree. I think this may just be an extension of the "you gotta know what you're doing to code correctly in C" old school bullshit.
This is my biggest gripe with that nonsense. If you make it hard to do something well, you won't end up with an elite series of uber-coders because there aren't enough of those people to do all the programming that people want to be done. Instead you'll see that much more software engineering done really goddamned badly and despite appearances at the time it turns out there is a maximum amount of shitty software the world can endure.
What's great is even the very best "just use valgrind lol, lmao" folks make these errors all the time. It's basically impossible to write correct C code generally
the best we can do is verify subsets of code (c.f. Rust's unsafe keyword). The memory-safety CVEs in EXT3/4 are proof of this, IMO, as if there were anyone able to write correct C code today, it would be Ted Ts'o.
Personally I think it's fine to have implicit defaults if you can make them sensible. Maybe ideally have a system-wide config like /etc/someapp.conf with all the options included and set to defaults out of the box and then allow overrides in ~/.config/someapp/someapp.conf where you only need to specify whatever you want to differ from the system conf file.
I personally disagree. I think in the era of "a megabyte is big," this made sense, but in my opinion after parsing a config file with missing config data, we should print something indicating they are missing then error out. The existence of a reference config file with all options included would definitely help, but I think it's no coincidence that there is no such config for mpv
why bother creating and maintaining one if the program will use the default value anyway?
tl;dr explicit is better than implicit
I dunno, MPV has like a million config options and I've set like three of them in my config. I would not prefer to maintain an enormous config file where I need to include a bajillion options I don't care about just to play a video. Would I have to update my config every single time MPV adds, removes or renames an option, too?
At the end of the day you shouldn't have to maintain anything in order to use a program, in my opinion (at least ideally). I think a "everything must be present in the file" type of config would require ~~less~~ no extra maintenance (assuming devs don't do anything too silly). Additionally, while noting that my primary programming language is TeX and also that I am a dipshit, this just strikes me as an API-design problem. Alternative solutions could be:
- multiple config files (I think mpv already supports this)
- semver style config (idk if this would be practical)
- a config-editing tool (i.e., what the overwhelming majority of applications do, by hiding the implementation details from the user)
I have thought about doing #3 for Sway (a sort of Sway-config editor). This does give me an idea, though: define a meta-format for specifying the variables, default values, allowed values, etc., for an arbitrary^[0]^ program's config file, and create a program that reads a meta-format file and presents a GUI for editing the config.
tbh i just lost my config file, forgot what i changed, and now i have to read documentation (and figure out which file the mpv flatpak uses for config)
[0]: maybe not too arbitrary
define a meta-format for specifying the variables, default values, allowed values, etc., for an arbitrary[0] program’s config file, and create a program that reads a meta-format file and presents a GUI for editing the config.
I’d kinda love this even if I’m editing config files in a text editor. emacs could use this with a major-mode or LSP to provide suggestions, validity checking, various rendered versions of the config, and guarantee interoperability with graphical tools (so that changes you make in an editor don’t get trampled by the UI, and vice versa)
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25475 O Jan 08 Duke University ( 42K) Help Us Evaluate New Personalized AI Learning Tool
groan
put an article in mdpi and you'll get 70 of these per month
Zuck wants to get back to his roots
It's time to get back to our roots around free expression and giving people voice on our platforms. Here's what we're going to do: [...] 5/ Move our trust and safety and content moderation teams out of California, and our US content review to Texas. This will help remove the concern that biased employees are overly censoring content.
Narrator: this announcement did not, in fact, ease concerns about bias.
Ah i recall somebody got mad when I mentioned traditionally capitalists will team up with fascists.
Maybe I was naive, but I didn't expect all this to go that fast and that blatant...
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Is that a comedy account? The announcement surely reads as if it was…
To add an insult to the injury meta renames pride themed skins in chat https://labyrinth.zone/objects/e129982d-997e-489b-985a-3ef547b66bf3
It's not. Surprise! All of Silicon Valley has gone mask off in preparation for the new administration in Washington!
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Fascist virtue signalling aside, candy floss should not exist. That's like the exact opposite of dental care.
Edit: I have been made aware that Candy Floss is another name for cotton candy, which is delicious. Though my point kind of still stands.
For a fun 20 minutes or so, I recommend going through the recent enron “revival”. (It’s all satire)
the worst Nix project has finally been announced: behold crypto NixOS
I’m starting a paradigm shifting, open and new human / computer interface system that is global, multi device and privacy focused.
[…]
DISCLAIMER: You are not my exit liquidity, I have the best performing long term spot crypto portfolio in the world - I’m a early adopter with 100% hit rate on geniuses. So, I don’t have to work, I’m not building this to become rich. I want to build something paradigm changing - truly mind-blowing, because now we have the tech and I’m annoyed how computer work. It is a lot of work, but it will reward us all.
my “this isn’t a grift and I’m not a grifter” disclaimer is prompting a lot of questions already answered by the disclaimer. but speaking of prompting, what goes with crypto?
ChatGPT-1o thinks, after some reinforced asking, that the MC of such a coin can reach 300-1000M; I think it could easily go higher - it solves so fundamental problems in a much more elegant way. In my opinion, it will be the same step as the command line to the windowed systems was. Or dump phone to smart phone. It will just span devices and span users while keeping the data under control and of companies.
of course. after some reinforced asking, gpt told me you’re all haters if you don’t think I’m as important as Xerox PARC!
there’s lots more in the OP to sneer at, but here’s the worst part of the thread:
Mod note: I’m glad to see doubt and scepticism about crypto-based claims. However, that point has now been made; please avoid any further posts in that vein to avoid a pile-on dunkfest, and leave the thread for any potential on-topic discussion.
thanks for nothing as usual NixOS discourse!
e: via mastodon, archive
i forced chatgpt to say that my idea will make you a billion dollars but i think it can go higher
after some reinforced asking
Shit chatgpt is self aware, it did the 'if I agree with you will you shut the fuck up' thing.
E: while I shouldn't speak on that subject, weird typos.
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