Author Archives: jcs

The EU’s Digital Wallet

Posted on 2021-06-05 by jcs

Everyday I still forlornly check to see if Florida has gotten around to issuing their promised digital driver’s licenses but there’s still no joy. Instead, I just read that the EU is implementing a digital wallet that will hold all … Continue reading →

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Some Workers Are Quitting Rather Than Go Back to the Office

Posted on 2021-06-04 by jcs

There’s been a great deal of speculation during the pandemic about how the work environment will change as a result of the large scale working from home that COVID-19 required. Some pundits said that work would be changed forever; others … Continue reading →

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Emacs in 2021

Posted on 2021-06-03 by jcs

Tory Anderson has an interesting take on modern day Emacs. He starts by reviewing the problems that Emacs was created to solve. He starts with Bernard S. Greenberg’s 1979 paper on Multics Emacs, which I wrote about two and half … Continue reading →

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Google Is Not Your Friend

Posted on 2021-06-02 by jcs

Remember years ago when we used to say, “Google is your friend?” Younger readers may never have heard it or know what it means but in any event, those days are long gone—gone to the same place that “Don’t be … Continue reading →

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Getting a List of Open PRs from Github (Part 2)

Posted on 2021-06-01 by jcs

Three weeks ago, I wrote about Geoffrey Lessel’s video on writing an Emacs package to obtain a list of Pull Requests from a GitHub repository, present a chooser list, and then display the chosen PR in the default browser. That … Continue reading →

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The Apple Ecosystem

Posted on 2021-05-31 by jcs

Anyone who’s been around Irreal for any length of time knows that I’m an Apple user. I like the build quality of their hardware and macOS/iOS are generally good enough. But the thing that really makes it all work for … Continue reading →

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Markup Languages Compared

Posted on 2021-05-30 by jcs

There are several popular light weight markup languages for producing printed or displayed typeset output. I use “light weight” to distinguish them from heavy duty markup languages such as TeX, LaTeX, or Troff. One thing they all have in common … Continue reading →

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Corruption in Academic Computer Science

Posted on 2021-05-29 by jcs

According to a shocking Viewpoint article in the Communications of the ACM, there’s corruption in the computer science community. I know, I know: film at eleven. But this corruption involves cheating by academic computer scientists. Cheating is never okay, of … Continue reading →

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How The Package System Works

Posted on 2021-05-28 by jcs

Jiacai Liu over at Keep Coding has an interesting post on the Emacs package system. The post is nominally about maintaining your Emacs configuration but is actually a quick overview on how the package system works. The problems that he’s … Continue reading →

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Washington State Sues a Patent Troll

Posted on 2021-05-27 by jcs

As you all know, Irreal doesn’t think very highly of patent trolls. Of course, nobody (except patent trolls) thinks very highly of them. Some organisms that might be characterized as parasitical actually enjoy a symbiotic relationship with their hosts. Patent … Continue reading →

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