Monthly Archives: October 2022

Red Meat Friday: Copilot and Copyrights

Three weeks ago I wrote in Red Meat Friday: VS Code As A Venus Flytrap about Geoffrey Huntley’s post on how VS Code is all part of Microsoft’s plan to destroy open source and pull everyone into software as a … Continue reading

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The Lisp Community

Here’s a charming post on the Lisp community. I like it for a couple of reasons. The first is that Owmagow wasn’t afraid to dig in and figure things out even though he realized there were already libraries available to … Continue reading

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Is “Software Engineer” A Legal Job Title?

If you do software development work, your job title almost certainly is some variation of “software engineer”. It’s a ubiquitous way of describing a developer role. So much so that it hard to see how it could be controversial but … Continue reading

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The Jargon File

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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