Mastodawn

R.L. Dane

🍵

Mar 11

@joel

Tempting price, but no built-in illuminator and maybe a proprietary ebook format? Not sure.

Proprietary format? It uses EPUB. And only DRM-free ebooks.

And it's opened up somewhat officially for alternate firmware like CrossPoint: https://github.com/crosspoint-reader/crosspoint-reader

GitHub - crosspoint-reader/crosspoint-reader: Firmware for the Xteink X4 e-paper display reader

Firmware for the Xteink X4 e-paper display reader. Contribute to crosspoint-reader/crosspoint-reader development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub

imo physical page turn buttons are a bigger deal than built-in light. And the price point is really compelling.

(I will probably be buying this when back in the US.)

When might that be? ;)

I mean, with all that's going on, I sure wouldn't be in a hurry to come back. XD

My family has been planning to be back this summer. They only really have an opportunity every other year, so they take it. I'm kinda toying with the idea of staying behind and writing, but I haven't seen my cousins in a couple years and this would be a chance to see them again…

Just curious, where do your cousins live that you haven't seen them while you were still living here?

(You can fuzz the details, obvs.)

The ones in California are the ones in question. Saw them once while my family was in the US.

My "nephews" (my twin youngest cousins, whose mom keeps accidentally calling me their "Uncle Benjamin") are turning five this summer!!! 🥴

My oldest cousin is about to start college!

I'm sure you can give them lots of pointers! ;)

Done! I've been chatting with them on Signal, giving tips on dual booting Linux, and got them into Fosstodon.

…is there another way to do college?

lol, literally following your footsteps.

I know you're joking, because in reality, you'd get them to join polymaths. ;)

@rl_dane @amin he doesn't want them here cuz he's evil

@joel @rl_dane

a succinct synopsis

Actually, they asked to join Polymaths and I said no.

I… kinda made a rule that I don't want family members in a community I run. Big conflict of interest from a moderation standpoint, and a big mental burden for me.

Plus, family is the one thing I don't break anonymity about online, and having a family member in the same small online community would kinda ruin that. So we interact some here but I won't be shouting out their account as belonging to my cousin. ;)

Ah, that makes sense.

Interesting that fosstodon was your recommendation. I guess they've cleared their name (from your perspective) from previous moderation oopsies. ;)

mirabilos Mar 12

@amin @joel @rl_dane they did not, but we unblocked them nevertheless.

@mirabilos @amin @rl_dane we did tho :3

@joel @mirabilos @amin

The question wasn't whether fosstodon tried to make up for previous mistakes, but whether or not they had done so to amin's satisfaction.

As for me, I have no particular beef with them, was very happy for my time there, and would recommend them freely.

@rl_dane @mirabilos the truth is @amin wants to sabotage me!

@joel @mirabilos @amin

In what sense?

@rl_dane @mirabilos @amin just a joke haha

Like, I wouldn't want my family to be anywhere near the fediverse, or anyone I know IRL tbh, it's just weird to think about for some reason

@spaceraser @joel @mirabilos @amin

Sam D Mar 12

@joel @rl_dane @mirabilos @amin If it gets back to the locals that I'm a radical leftist pacifist raccoon, I'd be completely unemployable

I relate. XD

...'cept for the raccoon part. ;)

@spaceraser @joel @amin @mirabilos

Sam D Mar 12

@joel @rl_dane @amin @mirabilos at least in Kansas they wouldn’t just shoot me like in the Greatest Nation on Earth, where you are.

Why are your mentions out of order? XD

@joel @mirabilos @amin

Samesies, at least for family.

Close friends already know I'm weird. XD

mirabilos Mar 12

@rl_dane @amin @joel I was a bit confused at this, but if you replace "family" with "those related to me by blood", and "friends" with "friends and family", I’m in.

@rl_dane @joel @mirabilos

How on earth have you managed to conceal it?

@amin @joel @mirabilos

Mostly just keeping my mouth shut? XD

@amin @joel @mirabilos

You deleted your "If you can keep your mouth shut, I guess," reply, but I wanted to reply,

"Welll, otherwise THIS tends to happen. XD"

@joel @rl_dane @mirabilos

I asked you first. ;)

@joel @rl_dane @mirabilos

I asked you first. ;)

I think they’re doing better, yes.

I think they’re doing better, yes.

thedoctor Mar 12

@amin Wait, there are cousins of yours interacting with you here? So you and @joel are actually related?!

@rl_dane

@thedoctor @rl_dane

Scubrats, you figured it out

kabel42 Mar 12

@rl_dane @amin @joel what pointers do you need? int? char? void? ohh... ;)

heh, I was going to make a joke about pointers to functions, which was the most cursed form of pointers I could think of.

kabel42 Mar 12

@rl_dane @amin @joel to me those feel the least cursed, but maybe thats just because they look the same as in python

Wait... python lets you have pointers to functions.

That's very weird.

I thought pointers to functions was just for people who wanted to do OOP in C. :P

pixx Mar 12

@rl_dane
No, they're also for people calling machine code they don't control 🤪

Or defeating the optimizer 🤦‍♂️

@kabel42 @amin @joel

kabel42 Mar 12

@rl_dane @amin @joel you can pass functions to other function, which is probably the only reason you want pointers to functions?

The one really annoying thing about Python to me is that anonymous functions (lambdas) can only be one line of code. JavaScript has awesome anonymous functions that are so useful…

@amin @rl_dane @joel if you need more than a line, just give it a name

Ah, but I am! In one spot in Ariadne's codebase, I'm wanting to assign functions to the values in a dictionary. So there is a key in the dictionary; I want to be able to refer to it via, say parsers['body']['html']['function'] (that way I can iterate through each metadata field in a standard way and call the function to parse it from a page) but for a multi-line function I have to name it separately and then reference it in the dictionary.

Makes the script's namespace more complicated than it needs to be.

@amin @rl_dane @joel but can't you

def fun():
     a = "FOOOOOO!!!"
     def bar():
         print(a)
     parsers['body']['html']['function'] = bar

Maybe? I wanted the dictionary to be in the global namespace, though…

Oh, I guess that would work, actually. The code would just be very convoluted.

mirabilos Mar 13

@amin @kabel42 @rl_dane @joel

parsers = {}
parsers['body'] = {}
#…

def fun(parsers):
     a = "FOOOOOO!!!"
     def bar():
         print(a)
     parsers['body']['html']['function'] = bar

fun(parsers)

@mirabilos @amin @rl_dane @joel
or

def fun():
    global parsers
     a = "FOOOOOO!!!"
     def bar():
         print(a)
     parsers['body']['html']['function'] = bar

either way, bar doesn't pollute the global namespace

mirabilos Mar 13

@rl_dane @kabel42 @amin @joel yeah

@kabel42 @mirabilos @rl_dane @joel

Sure, but now fun() does. And it's a much less clear way to write the code than just assigning anonymous functions as values in a dictionary definition.

mirabilos Mar 13

@joel @rl_dane @amin @kabel42 "but now fun() does" you need to have a function anyway

Yeah, that sounds pretty Pythonic.

Meanwhile Perl anonymous functions probably make you breakfast and straighten your tie. ;)

@rl_dane @kabel42 @joel

A fun trick in JS:

You can only use the await keyword inside an asynchronous function. You can make the entire script asynchronous by wrapping it in this:

(async () => {
    // code goes here
})()

This creates and then immediately calls an asynchronous anonymous function that's wrapped around the whole script! :D

The one really annoying thing about Python to me is that anonymous functions (lambdas) can only be one line of code. JavaScript has awesome anonymous functions that are so useful…

Sounds like a scary practice. My inner security wonk is shuddering.

@rl_dane @amin @joel you are not supposed to pass user supplied functions :)