[deleted]
You Are in a Box
121–130 of 138 posts
Re: You Are in a Box
#122This really reminds me of what Plan 9 was aiming for — breaking out of the 'box' by making everything a file, using per-process namespaces, and cleanly exposing system and network resources with proper permissions. It had that same idea: your environment shouldn't be a prison, it should be a flexible, composable space. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs ) ( https://fqa.9front.org/fqa0.html )
plan9 sucks and people who think it's cool just admit their own bad taste. Unix haters handbook made the case against Plan9 even before anyone thought of the stupid idea.
Re: You Are in a Box
#123Yes, interoperability, extensibility, composability and the tyranny of program author is a problem. JVM with runtime-loading of classes and it's once popular beans standard is one of closest approximations, known to me, of the most general "local" solution.
Yes, it's cumbersome and hacky and still limited. The beans idea lost popularity and mindshare.
Re: You Are in a Box
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Looks like it checks for the referrer in main.js and adds the uppercase text-transform if you come from HN: let host; if (document.referrer) { host = (new URL(document.referrer)).host; } if (host === "news.ycombinator.com" || host === "lobste.rs") { let style = document.createElement('style'); // let transform = host === "lobste.rs" ? style.textContent = ` body { text-transform: uppercase; } pre, code { text-transfor…
Sounds like the author got called out for not capitalizing the start of her sentences[1] and decided that, if HN readers want capital letters, they will get them. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39027187
But where's the testicle in an egg cup?
Re: You Are in a Box
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
it was acceptable in 2024? what year did it become unacceptable?
Since October 1995 and the publication of RFC 1855. https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1855 Communication has not been merely a matter of personal habit — it follows commonly accepted standards for exchanging information within a group. Ignoring these conventions risks your message being unread, unheard, or misunderstood. That said, it seems possible the author is intentionally addressing a specific subgroup that has…
Some other handy passive-aggressive electronic mail techniques, courtesy of Bernard Greenberg from Symbolics (BSG 4/11/84):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Greenberg
https://www.donhopkins.com/home/archive/humor/flame-manual.t...
Proposed Symbolics guidelines for mail messages
BSG 4/11/84
>It is customary to attack the someone by including his or her message, indented (unless you are using MM), and replying point by point, as someone debating someone they are watching on TV, or hearing on the radio.
>It is considered artful to append many messages on a subject, leaving only the most inflammatory lines from each, and reply to all in one swift blow. The choice of lines to support your argument can make or break your case.
>Mail should be at least a mixture of upper and lower case. Devising your own font (Devanagari, pinhead graphics, etc.) and using it in the mail is a good entertainment tactic, as is finding some way to use existing obscure fonts.
>Sending the mail from Unix is frowned upon (although this has gotten much better).
>Replying to one's own message is a rarely-exposed technique for switching positions once you have thought about something only after sending mail.
>You get 3 opportunities to advertise your Rock band, no more.
>Idiosyncratic indentations, double-spacing, capitalization, etc., while stamps of individuality, leave one an easy target for parody.
>The entire life, times, collected works, expressions, and modalities of Zippy the Pinhead are a common ground for much of the metaphor, rhetoric, and invective which pass daily through the mail. An occasional parenthetical "yow" CORRECTLY USED will endear one to the senior systems staff. So will puns and other remarks addressed directly to the point.
>Including a destination in the CC list that will cause the recipients' mailer to blow out is a good way to stifle dissent.
>When replying, it is often possible to cleverly edit the original message in such a way as to subtly alter its meaning or tone to your advantage while appearing that you are taking pains to preserve the author's intent. As a bonus, it will seem that your superior intellect is cutting through all the excess verbiage to the very heart of the matter.
>Keeping a secret "Hall Of Flame" file of people's mail indiscretions, or copying messages to private mailing lists for subsequent derision, is good fun and also a worthwhile investment in case you need to blackmail the senders later.
Re: You Are in a Box
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
Emacs has it right though, more right than wrong, they just, as a community, hate humans. Data and data collections should have app-tributes, apps shouldn't have data. The problem with most operating systems is that they need to model space time and minds as first class but they don't. I've been using my own personal OS for years now that I call imtropy, once your abstraction maps to reality everything becomes easier…
Do you have some more details about those things?
Yes, including about Emacs users "hating humans". I use Emacs, and I'm very fond of humans. Plus my reading of the Emacs community is that there's loads of interesting and respectful people. Where's the hating humans bit?
Re: You Are in a Box
#127This really reminds me of what Plan 9 was aiming for — breaking out of the 'box' by making everything a file, using per-process namespaces, and cleanly exposing system and network resources with proper permissions. It had that same idea: your environment shouldn't be a prison, it should be a flexible, composable space. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs ) ( https://fqa.9front.org/fqa0.html )
plan9 sucks and people who think it's cool just admit their own bad taste. Unix haters handbook made the case against Plan9 even before anyone thought of the stupid idea.
Nice take. You sound like the kind of person who only ever reads other peoples opinions and then parrots them creating the illusion that you have knowledge. Meanwhile you never bothered to boot the OS or see why people like it. It's actually pretty fucking amazing but that's okay, you are obviously too smart to use it since you read Unix Haters. Have fun with creaky old Unix.
Re: You Are in a Box
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
What I find pretentious is the legion of commenters who can't find anything better to comment on and instead pretend they're smart by nitpicking some stylistic choice in the most low-effort way possible.
Classic case of "you're pretentious", "no, you're pretentious". It's exhausting how often we reach for the word "pretentious" when we have bitter feelings about one person's opinion of another person or their work.
I just used it because he did. My real feeling was exhaustion. More of those comments than comments about the subject matter of the post. Like going to a swimming meet as a pro and finding it full of kids instead.
Re: You Are in a Box
#129Once again, todsacerdoti proves one of my personal axioms: that he is the submitter of the worst blog crap on HN.
Re: You Are in a Box
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
it's pretentiousness thinly disguised as modesty. trust me.
What I find pretentious is the legion of commenters who can't find anything better to comment on and instead pretend they're smart by nitpicking some stylistic choice in the most low-effort way possible.
I was trying to be ironical.