Stephan Sokolow @ssokolow@qoto.org

I just ran across an interesting and highly detailed blog post from 2014 about the Intel x87 fsin instruction.

https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2014/10/09/intel-underestimates-error-bounds-by-1-3-quintillion/

No big surprise that it's from Bruce Dawson's blog. I really need to do an archive trawl of it some day.

@yohanandiamond I found a long Unix & Linux Stack Exchange answer which explains what a mess things are with echo and extensions to printf and why it's generally a good idea to stick to the POSIX-specifed subset of printf:

https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/65819/28019

@normandc @brandon @DonMcCollough@fosstodon.org @elfio

Around the same price as a brand-new keyboard with model F switches.

(CA$400 for the giant retro one, US$370 for the new ultra-compact one. Can't remember if the eBay price I'm remembering is before or after shipping.)

Economies of scale aside, the Model M switches *were* specifically designed to be cost-reduced versions of the Model F switches.

(And the Model F switches were designed to approximate the feel of IBM Selectric typewriters.)

@yohanandiamond

AFAICT, %q is specific to the CLI printf, so things like dash and BusyBox probably error out because their printf(1) just hands off to glibc's printf(3).

It wouldn't surprise me if the same implementation decision is also at play in all the non-GNU, non-Zsh stuff on the BSDs, macOS, and Solaris.

(After all, it *is* kind of nonsensical and counter-intuitive to have two separate implementations of printf formatting in the same userland rather than just putting %q into glibc.)

@yohanandiamond

1. %q is GNU- and zsh-specific

It's in GNU /usr/bin/printf and bash/zsh builtins, but busybox printf and dash's builtin error out and it's not in the FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragonFly BSD, macOS, or Solaris printf manpages.

2. printf(1) isn't just "available in most systems", POSIX requires it:

https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/printf.html

3. printf actually is a builtin under busybox, dash, bash, and zsh… but only zsh makes `which` a builtin:

% which printf
printf: shell built-in command

@matt I use Audacious (currently with the GTK+ 2.x interface because the Qt5 interface hasn't re-implemented global hotkeys and I don't feel like binding a dozen different things through xbindkeys and audtool) because it's the right balance of a UI that I can customize to be minimal and an unbeatable set of bundled format-support plugins.

QMMP is the runner-up I'd choose and it's essentially Audacious's Qt-based competitor from before Audacious supported Qt as a frontend option.

@e0ipso @pcrock

My perspective is that, if something needs a CDN to be viable, then it's fundamentally unfit for purpose and must be replaced.

@Krypton @lucasdondo@fosstodon.org

The point is to disincentivize collecting the information.

@nextcloud I can't help but this of this quote:

You [should] not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harm it would cause if improperly administered -- Lyndon Johnson, former President of the U.S.

@Gina I'm more a Melee fan. Once I got used to it, the original and Brawl felt too slow-paced.

Still, N64 FTW. At the moment, I'm trying to regain my old skills to beat Grunty in Banjo-Kazooie and beat the first Wizpig race in Diddy Kong Racing. Then, on to Banjo-Tooie.

(Emulated with the help of USB controller adapters. My N64 has an un-diagnosed reset problem.)

@fsf I'm about to get back to playing https://endless-sky.github.io/

It's a GPLv3'd Escape Velocity clone still actively soliciting and receiving new content and *very* addictive.

@normandc @brandon @DonMcCollough@fosstodon.org @elfio

...though I can only assume I'm a glutton for punishment because, if I could afford to spend $400 on a keyboard, I'd snag one of the IBM 6110347 keyboards that turn up on eBay periodically and hook it up via an adapter and some key remapping.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_JTZo2rKmw

(The closest you can get to a US101 or US104 layout in Model F switches, given that https://www.modelfkeyboards.com/ only does ultra compact layouts.)

@normandc @brandon @DonMcCollough@fosstodon.org @elfio

I stick to standard US 104 (anglophone Canadian here), but I think I know the feeling because Unicomp stopped making a proper US 104 layout for buckling spring boards back in 2013.

https://www.pckeyboard.com/mm5/graphics/ProductNews7-25-13.pdf

(I had to set an eBay watch to get my current keyboard plus the couple of spares I eventually managed to snag at a reasonable price. One of these days, I'm planning to buy a box of replacement parts.)

@obi I'm very big on having a unified interface for things, so, when my choice was between here and fosstodon, the killer feature for here was "Domain Subscriptions".

Full-text searches, a raised character limit, bookmarking, keyword searches, instance ticker banners, in-timeline subscribe/follow buttons, and a light theme with non-fixed-width columns were also part of my decision though.

@freemo I watched The Cinema Snob's riff of it and decided that was enough for me.

(But I did enjoy him comically drawing attention to how many times the boom mic is visible.)

@randynose I didn't think you weren't... but a lot of people (myself included) don't know the details of how UEFI booting works and that post does a great job of covering them.

Since I'm impatient when it comes to partially finished stuff, you get another music roundup today. #game #music covers:

The two I wound up tweeting about are "original arrangement, better instrument" covers of songs I love:

Haunted Woods from Diddy Kong Racing for N64:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y37R33rTPD0

Fillmore from Actraiser for SNES... the "what Castlevania is this from?" song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7b0GxFFourc

I'll probably also do a few faves rundowns covering stuff I didn't tweet about, like filk music.

@thewk @neildarlow@fosstodon.org Nothing more annoying than a bad guy with nothing better to do.

@thewk @neildarlow@fosstodon.org Ahh. Yeah. That's annoying.

Reminds me of a post I saw on /r/rust/ a few days ago with someone amused at the requests coming into their Rust app that were doomed to failure.

@neildarlow@fosstodon.org @thewk Have you considered a system where you hand out a different e-mail alias to each site (like a revokable API key) and auto-trash messages that don't pass through an alias?

I get maybe one or two spam a year that way... usually because a Bugzilla leaked my info or an eBay seller subscribed me to their newsletter.

(Phase 2 will be self-hosting so I can write a milter which replies to unauthorized senders for each alias with a CAPTCHA link and rewrites From in outgoing replies.)