the UNIX v4 tape reminded me of this story by Ali Akurgal about Turkish bureaucracy:

Do you know what the unit of software is? A meter! Do you know why? In 1992, we did our first software export at Netaş. We wrote the software, pressed a button, and via the satellite dish on the roof, at the incredible speed of 128 kb/s, we sent it to England. We sent the invoice by postal mail. $2M arrived at the bank. 3-4 months passed, and tax inspectors came. They said, “You sent an invoice for $2M?” “Yes,” we said. “This money has been paid?” they asked. “Yes,” we said. “But there is no goods export; this is fictitious export,” they said! So we took the tax inspectors to R&D and sat them in front of a computer. “Would you press this ‘Enter’ key?” we asked. One of them pressed it, then asked, “What happened?” “You just made a $300k export, and we’ll send its invoice too, and that will be paid as well,” we said. The man felt terrible because he had become an accomplice! Then we explained how software is written, what a satellite connection is, and how much this is worth. They said, “We understand, but there has to be a physical goods export; that’s what the regulations require.” So we said: “Let’s record this software onto tape (there were no CDs back then—nor cassettes; we used ½-inch tapes) and send that.” Happy to have found a solution, they said, “Okay, record it and send it.” The software filled two reels, which were handed to a customs broker, who took them to customs and started the export procedure. The customs officer processed things and at one point asked, “Where are the trucks?” The broker said, “There are no trucks—this is all there is,” and pointed to the tape reels on the desk. The customs officer said, “These two envelopes can’t be worth $2M; I can’t process this.” We went to court, an expert committee examined whether the two reels were worth $2M. Fortunately, they ruled that they were, and we were saved from the charge of fictitious export. The same broker took the same two reels to the same customs officer, with the court ruling, and restarted the procedure. However, during the process, the unit price, quantity, and total price of the exported goods had to be entered—as per the regulations. To avoid dragging things out further, they looked at the envelope, saw that it contained tape, estimated how many meters of tape there are on one reel, and concluded that we had exported 1k to 2k meters of software. So the unit of software became the meter.

I wanna live in a world where every creator gets to just make cool stuff and put it out into the world and then they don’t have to worry about fundraising or running a business or anything that isn’t just making cool stuff

sometimes people brag about their mint condition hardware, but consider the following

what if your computer had character?

settle something for me

"disables various anti-features"
look inside
"disables Autofill/Autocomplete in the URL Bar"

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score: 98
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who the fuck came up with “if fi” in unix

what the fuck were you doing man

During discourse, do not insist on civility, but good faith.

It should be acceptable for a person who has suffered a grave injustice to shout in rage, and it should not be acceptable for a charlatan to mislead with eloquence.

imo the real solution to the bot flag situation is to implement a new entityType property (which could also replace isCat).

not only does that provide a clear path for people to express themselves, but it could also cover heaps of other entity types beyond bots and cats. dogs! birds! mice! buses!!!

and software could (if it desired) provide way more fun and expression through this. tails, wings, whatever!!! then the bot field can be used for its intended purpose of "this is an automated account and might be spammy, treat accordingly" and everyone's happy. (well a few people might go "grrr no fun/expression allowed" but they can find somewhere else to be miserable.)

I realise this would require at least some work but it just seems way better as a solution to me

My thoughts on social media bans everywhere is that if you're taking digital connections away from teens, you better make sure they have third spaces for physical connection, and give them options for transport that is not "parents drive us around" otherwise all you're creating is isolation.
And you may not need a social media ban if you start by preserving and creating those third spaces. #SocialMedia

• Dune, page 106;

Building a website in 2005: "here are a list of tips to help crawlers index your website"

2025: 'here are a list of tips to help avoid crawlers indexing your website"

problem: there's a leaking tap

FE dev solution: remove the tap and break the sink, nobody will notice

Alt...

🧹 Discord is finally "fixing" memory leaks! /s The client is testing a feature that monitors its own RAM usage and performs an intentional restart to clear resources if it reaches 4 GB while you're AFK. No restarts occur if you're currently in a call.

I partly got into coding because computers were determinate and did exactly what they were instructed to reliably and without variance. If there was a problem, it was because your code was wrong.

But, congrats everyone, because by shoving AI everywhere we’ve made computers indeterminate.