dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 08/10/2026okay, thanks for keeping me informed!. 100
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 06/10/2026TIL: Python's sort/sorted with reverse=True isn't always the same as simply reversing the sorted list! If some of the elements are equal according to the sort key, then reverse=True preserves the relative order of those elements, where reversing the sorted list would reverse the equal elements too. 100
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 06/10/2026A "fun" Secure Boot problem today: Had a laptop with an older Ubuntu install and booted it off a current Debian live USB. After I did that, it refused to load the installed GRUB, which worked fine before! I assume the Debian live system updated some list so the old GRUB is now considered unsafe? 100
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 27/09/2026Dropbox will disallow users under 18, starting in 2027. Huh. Not clear if this also applies to users without an accout who just want to download a public file, but I think it does? This seems... unusual. www.dropbox.com/en/terms2026dropbox.com2026 Terms of Service - Dropbox2026 Terms of Service - Dropbox 100
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 19/09/2026This went around as a joke a while ago, but apparently there's a real command called "clit" in many Linux distros. It stands for "convert .LIT" and absolutely nothing else, mhm. manpages.debian.org/trixie/convlit/… 100
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/09/2026thanks, random Wikipedia editor. I might have been confused about the existence of Luxembourg otherwise en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ig_No… 000
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/09/2026Protip: When you print a string variable for debugging, use a printing mode that escapes special characters, like Python's repr. If the language doesn't have that, at least put brackets or quotes around the string value! Saves a lot of confusion when you see something like: ]RROR: [hello] != [hello 100
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/09/2026So apparently if you're in the Mastodon web interface and press the L key, it focuses... something at the absolute bottom of the page, making it load more and more of the infinite scrollback, *repeatedly forever*. Which can be useful! I'm just a little surprised that they have a built-in DoS key. 100
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 07/09/2026Committing generated code to version control is pretty cool actually, because it makes it easy to see how your changes to the code generator are affecting the output 101
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 06/09/2026It's so unsatisfying that even though C has conditional compilation, you basically can't do feature detection with it. You don't get reflection, because the preprocessor isn't really part of the language, and roughly none of the standards-guaranteed macros tell you the things you want to test for. 000
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 31/08/2026The French word for "peanuts" is "arachides", which means that every time I look at the list of ingredients for French chocolate I will go "hey look there's spiders in it" 000
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 31/08/2026[The Message from Deep Space, act 3] Couldn't the aliens be more consistent with their math syntax? They start off with postfix notation for arithmetic, but switch to infix for... everything else, including relational/logical operators! And that equality operator! Aliens, you can't just use […]mastodon.socialOriginal post on mastodon.social 100
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 28/08/2026* Applications 36 GB * Desktop 1 GB * Documents 9 GB * Downloads 860 GB * Music 23 GB * Pictures 17 GB someone please help me budget this, my home folder is dying 000
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 23/08/2026soooo is it safe/a good idea to monkey-patch Python standard library classes/instances? I know the more robust solution is to write a wrapper class. But it's so inconvenient to write a delegating wrapper just to override one method, when you can just monkey-patch it in a couple of lines 000
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 20/08/2026TIL that the zlib module in the Python stdlib is technically still an optional module, meaning that you're allowed to build CPython without linking against zlib and it will mostly work. I would've expected zlib to be a required dependency by now! 100
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 19/08/2026I'm implementing a simple file type auto-detector for a tool. Doesn't need to be super reliable - it's just a convenience feature to auto-pre-fill a file type dropdown, so even if it only works 80 % of the time, it's a usability improvement. Still, I thought I'd check how proper systems do this. 100
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 19/08/2026I love how Git just lets you use random things as remotes. Sure, a USB drive can be a Git host for your computer and your phone, why not. Just like Linus intended! 100
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 13/08/2026For some reason, macOS Quick Look doesn't want to keep a PDF open at midnight? Exactly at 00:00:00, the Quick Look window will reload and jump back to the first page of the PDF. This has caught me off-guard several times now, because apparently I like previewing PDFs at midnight? 100
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 13/08/2026USB-C has been out for more than 10 years now and I still haven't gotten comfortable with being able to plug a laptop charger into a phone or vice versa. It feels SO WEIRD that you can plug a phone into an absolute chonker of a charger and it just... charges fast instead of frying and catching fire 100
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 13/08/2026me: *enters username on website* website: "Do you want me to remember that?" me: "nah I'm fine thanks" *enters password* website: "Want me to remember the password?" me: "that would be pointless now, no?" website: "Perhaps you want to set up a passkey on this device?" me: "take a hint will ya?" 100
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 02/08/2026It is deeply unpleasant to see the words "happy eyeballs glue" next to each other. Couldn't you have called it *anythiing else*? searchfox.org/firefox-main/source/n…searchfox.orgnetwerk/protocol/http/happy_eyeballs_glue - mozsearch 000
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 02/08/2026While trying to build Firefox from source (in a slightly weird way), the build ran for hours and then failed in a component called "LUL". Feels like I'm being trolled (apparenly it stands for "Lightweight Unwind Library") searchfox.org/firefox-main/source/t…searchfox.orgLulMain.h - mozsearch 000
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 02/08/2026this sounds like an entirely believable modded Minecraft tool tier progression en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_(unit)… 031
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 31/07/2026Maven Central/Sonatype is apparently considering a process for emergency security releases for packages where a regular release isn't possible. A trusted third party would then be allowed to publish an emergency release for a package they don't own. central.sonatype.org/policies/care-…central.sonatype.orgDraft Central Approved Remediation for Emergencies - CARE 000
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 30/07/2026memory-safe languages aren't as much fun when they stop being memory-safe :( This message brought to you by me debugging rare native crashes in a Python/Qt application. At least Python gives me stack traces for native crashes! Except the ones I get here don't make much sense... 100
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 24/07/2026today I did an MTF transform! ... I mean I implemented a move-to-front transform, as used in data compression algorithms like bzip2. No idea what you were thinking of 000
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 22/07/2026RE: fosstodon.org/@pypi/116964090713548… Amazing that PyPI releases were not-quite-immutable until now *and* that nobody ever abused it! Good to see it fixed. (I remember realizing at some point "huh, you *could* do that!" and expected it to be exploited already, but apparently not!)fosstodon.org 000
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 19/07/2026Writing a custom text stream class in Python. Just spent, like, 2 hours thinking about how to implement universal newlines (it's way harder than you think at first). Then I figured I could also just... not. The stdlib's own io.StringIO defaults to no newline translation too. It'll be fine. I hope. 100
Reposted by dgelessusAmber :neodog_box: @puppygirlhornypost2.transfem.social.ap.brid.gy · 15/07/2026it's either this or another .shitass directory in your home folder :harold: #shitpost 186
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/07/2026The great thing about working on an unpublished codebase: you can just go ahead and fix your bad naming choices and code structure, without worrying about breaking downstream users! 000
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/07/2026epicenter, n. The act of pressing the Enter key in a theatrical manner. #UxbridgeEnglishDictionary 000
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 15/07/2026I'm building a small GUI with a couple of text fields and such. Obviously, the user should be able to switch between them using the Tab key. One of the inputs is a code editor. Obviously, the user should be able to press Tab to indent code. Problem: How to let the user "tab away" from the editor? 100
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 09/07/2026you know, I'd be a lot more okay with SMR hard drives if they were honest about it. There are enough cases where I don't care that writing a few GB takes 5 minutes longer! But please just *tell me* that you're not done! Don't artificially stop the activity LED while still very audibly writing stuff! 100
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 07/07/2026The upcoming VLC 4 has a screen titled "🏠️ Home", and they translated it to German as "🏠️ Pos 1"... because that's the name of the Home key on German keyboards 😭 000
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 02/07/2026Amazing technical achievement from Apple: the latest incremental iOS update is somehow twice as large as the full update/restore image! For my particular iPhone, the over-the-air patch from iOS 26.5 to 26.5.2 is 20.44 GB, whereas the full download via the computer is only 10.71 GB. 100
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 30/06/2026codify /ˈkɒdɪfaɪ/, n. (transitive or intransitive) To turn (so or sth.) into a codfish. mastodon.social/@dgelessus/11523977… #UxbridgeEnglishDictionary 000
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 29/06/2026pseudocode /ˈsuːdoʊkoʊd/, n. (US) Code that runs as the superuser after being started by an unprivileged user on a Unix system. #UxbridgeEnglishDictionary 000
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 24/06/2026Writing a small hex editor widget and was excited to use the Unicode "Control Pictures" to represent the ASCII control characters. But sadly, the default Windows monospace font doesn't have these symbols, so they mess up the uniform line heights :( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_Pictu… 121
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 21/06/2026*slaps roof of Rust toolchain cross-build* this bad boi can fit so many rebuilds of the same library 100
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 20/06/2026sometimes I think about the YouTube video "You're watching YouTube" uploaded by YouTube, the official YouTube channel of YouTube. (At one point, I got shown this video in an ad slot, because I guess they were somehow out of advertisers in that particular moment?) youtu.be/neeJyW3f1zY 000
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 17/06/2026Oh, we hit RFC 10000 some time in the last few days! Well, actually RFC 10008, thanks to them not always being published in numerical order. www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc10008 mastodon.social/@dgelessus/11633697… 000
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/06/2026they call it "cross compiling" because you will be very cross when trying to do it 11116
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 11/06/2026Today's computer "fun": A script extracts some executables from a ZIP file, and the executables then fail to run, because they don't have execute permission set. On Windows. Yes, Windows ACLs support "execute" as a separate permission, and an .exe without that permission really cannot be executed! 100
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 06/06/2026TIL that GCC includes a COBOL compiler since last year? Contributed by the company behind OpenLDAP?? gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcobol/gcobo…gcc.gnu.orgGCOBOL(1) (gcc cobol compiler) 100
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 03/06/2026Achievement unlocked: fixed an old broken HDD by whacking it a few times. Literally. 000
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 31/05/2026The x32 ABI just doesn't want to die, does it? Every time someone suggests "let's be real, nobody actually uses x32 anymore" a couple of people respond "no, surprisingly, x32 distros and users are still quite real" lore.kernel.org/lkml/20260523093734…lore.kernel.org[PATCH] x86: Start removing X86_X32_ABI - Sebastian Andrzej Siewior 100
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 28/05/2026Who decided that the file extension for C headers should be .h, which sorts alphabetically after .c, making every C code diff hard to read from top to bottom :( They should have chosen .b instead, for "before file". Surely that wouldn't conflict with any other programming language whatsoever 000
dgelessus @dgelessus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 28/05/2026The Minecraft Wiki article for Crying Obsidian can be improved significantly by removing every occurrence of the word "obsidian" 000