Author Archives: jcs

The Jargon File

Posted on 2022-10-18 by jcs

Today I got a text from a friend who is not from the Hacker culture. The text described a series of tasks he had just performed that were a canonical example of yak shaving. He didn’t know the term, of … Continue reading →

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Thoughts On A Text Editor

Posted on 2022-10-17 by jcs

Jeremy Friesen has some thoughts on what hopes and expects is his last text editor: Emacs. He’s been using Emacs only since 2020 so he probably can’t yet be described as a journeyman Emacs user but he is an experienced … Continue reading →

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Chrome Incognito Mode

Posted on 2022-10-16 by jcs

Why oh why won’t you listen to me? I keep preaching the gospel but you keep ignoring me. It’s not the end times, exactly, but there is an important point to be made. That point is: STOP USING GOOGLE CHROME … Continue reading →

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Emacs Keystrokes in macOS

Posted on 2022-10-15 by jcs

This is your periodic reminder that you can get most of the Emacs editing keystrokes in any macOS application. I usually publish this reminder when I see a tweet or post from someone who has discovered that the Emacs cursor … Continue reading →

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Red Meat Friday: Europe Brings the Regulation

Posted on 2022-10-14 by jcs

There’s an old joke about some proposed device that would benefit the world. The U.S. said, “We’ll bring the design.” China said, “We’ll bring the manufacturing.” Europe said, “We’ll bring the regulation.” That’s a bit unfair, of course, but like … Continue reading →

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The Ethics of (Self) Job Automation

Posted on 2022-10-13 by jcs

Back in January, I wrote about the story of a developer who automated his job with some scripts and then spent the next few years pursuing his own interests at work while letting his scripts do his job. Many people … Continue reading →

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Org-mode Is Easy

Posted on 2022-10-12 by jcs

Gavin Freeborn posted a video in which he argues that Org-mode is easy. The reason it’s easy, he says, is the same as I’ve often written: You don’t have to learn it all or even large parts of it to … Continue reading →

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A Formula for the nth Prime

Posted on 2022-10-11 by jcs

As some of you know, I was trained as a mathematician. I’ve always been a bit of a math nerd and read about mathematics even as a child. Long ago, probably when I was still in elementary school, I read … Continue reading →

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Extract Captions From a Youtube Video

Posted on 2022-10-10 by jcs

Ag Ibragimov had a problem that many of us have experienced. He learned a term from a video but later couldn’t recall the term. We went back to the video to search for it but couldn’t find it. What to … Continue reading →

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Mandated Editor

Posted on 2022-10-09 by jcs

I recently came across a truly awful post to the Emacs subreddit. It wasn’t the post itself; it’s what it revealed. The post asked how to counter FUD from users of the bling-centric editors that Emacs was old technology that … Continue reading →

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