hallettj @ hallettj @beehaw.org

Programmer in NYC

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Joined

2 yr. ago

I've seen NixPak which I think would be just what you want, except that it's for Nix instead of Gentoo. But Nix has the same features that you say you like in Gentoo.

Thanks for the tip about nu_scripts, those look handy!

The expand command is nice. I don't see how to use it to my mv command work. But that's not a huge deal.

So maybe this is too much of a kludge, but I happened to see that you can define custom sub-commands to extend existing commands. You can use that to reproduce your familiar command:

    
def "ls -lrt" [] {
  ls | sort-by modified | reverse
}

  

Of course this does not capture the usual composability of those switches.

Well I might be hooked. It didn't take me long to reproduce the niceties in Nushell I'm used to from my zsh config. Some of the important parts were setting up zoxide with a key binding for interactive mode, switching on vi key bindings, setting up my starship prompt.

Home Manager is preconfigured for the above integrations which made things easier.

One feature that is missing that I like to use is curly brace expansion to produce multiple arguments. For example,

        $ mv *.{jpg,jpeg}


  

Unless there is a way to do something like this in Nushell that I haven't seen yet?

Something I enjoyed was automating a sequence of steps I've been running a lot lately due to a program that often partially crashes,

    
def nkill [name_substring] {
  ps | where name =~ $name_substring | each { |p| kill $p.pid; $p }
}

  

I realized after writing this that I basically recreated killall -r. But it's nice that it was so easy to make a custom command to do a very specific thing. And my version gives me a nice report of exactly what was killed.

Thanks for making this post OP! When I've heard mentions of Nushell I'm the past I think I conflated it with Powershell, and wrote it off as a Windows thing. (Maybe because it's introduced as being "like Powershell".) But now that I see that it's cross-platform I'm enjoying digging into it!

My shot-in-the-dark guess is that you were unlucky, and hit a bug in the game. It might be something triggered by a particular detail in your game state which would explain why you didn't have problems earlier. You could test that by starting a new character, and testing whether you see the same problem.

If I were in your position and feeling motivated I would submit a bug report to Bethesda with as much detail as I could manage.

I think the best way to get an idea is to look at feature lists for fancy shells like zsh or fish. But in short there are a number of things a good shell can do to help to execute commands faster and more easily. Stuff like autocompletions which make you faster, and also make things more discoverable; fuzzy searching/matching; navigating command history; syntax highlighting which helps to spot errors, and helps to understand the syntax of the command you're writing.

I have a hard time getting over the thing where the story introduces some amazing new capability, and it's never explored further. In this one it's, "we found a way to get home instantly, but we'd have to do a thing in sick bay to reverse the side-effects." A similar case is the episode with the planet of friendly hedonists with long range transporters that it turns out they can't use because "the power systems are incompatible".

I'm sure if I weren't so uptight I'd enjoy these episodes more.

This might be fixable by reinstalling the bootloader. On boot the motherboard firmware is supposed to locate and execute the bootloader on the SSD. The error here looks like it's coming from the firmware having failed to do that for some reason.

Since you can get into rescue mode these instructions should work: https://wiki.debian.org/GrubEFIReinstall

That's always the first thing I try in this kind of situation.

Maybe there could be an issue with secure boot. But I'm not sure if that's something people need to worry about these days. https://wiki.debian.org/SecureBoot

There could be some sort of problem on the firmware side. HP has steps for troubleshooting this error here: https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/ish_3053911-2842957-16

Oh yeah, and with Ansible there is an alternative to point to, Nix, which does configuration better IMO using a scripting language. It's still not typed so editor LSP support is limited. At least with NixOS modules and with Home Manager modules runtime validation is pretty good.

I think data configuration is fine until you get to a point where you need functions. This is one of my pet peeves: data configuration formats that get creative to work around the format limitation when they should switch to scripting. My example is Home Assistant.

Home Assistant is a home/smart device automation server. It uses Yaml for automation scripts. But you often need functions. So they use jinja2 templates to emulate functions in Yaml. Then you have to manage copying variable values to make them available in the runtime context who where jinja2 templates are evaluated. There is no static validation for templates. And it takes a lot of detective work to figure out what variables and helpers are available. It's very frustrating. I really wish Home Assistant would use a type-checked scripting language instead. And it's not the only system out there that uses Yaml with string templates!

Oh damn, Thunder has polish!

I've been saying this for years! If properties of a shape cannot be expressed with finite precision then how can that shape exist in a universe with clunky restrictions like the planck length?

My filter for app choice is support for list view. Fortunately there are multiple options: Sync and Connect have list views that work for me. I am curious about other list-view clients that I haven't tried.

My main game continues to be Overwatch.

I've also been playing some Diablo IV. I've been taking my time - there is a lot to enjoy in that game. I just teamed up with my brother to finish the last act of the main story.

I remember finding this Practical Engineering video on Roman concrete to be informative: https://youtu.be/qL0BB2PRY7k?si=5exDGyEK_LTfGNOy

Veritasium also has a chapter on ancient concrete in this video: https://youtu.be/rWVAzS5duAs?si=EJ8rPDTPHlq90kgW

My memory is fuzzy, but I think some of the details are:

• We know how to make Roman concrete, but it's not necessarily the best choice, and it might be more expensive than is appropriate for a given project.
• Ancient structures don't have rebar, so they don't degrade due to rust causing expansion. But rebar is so useful that it's often a worthwhile trade-off.

Definitely see the other comments here about survivorship bias, and higher demands on modern structures.

I think one of the most impactful choices in my last build was choosing a fast SSD. Not all SSDs are the same! Nowadays you can get NVMe drives that operate over PCIe instead of SATA which provide much higher throughput.

You can either get an M.2 form factor that plugs into a special socket on the motherboard and takes up minimal space, or a PCI card that plugs into the same type of slot as a graphics card. (Note that some M.2 drives / sockets are SATA, not NVMe, so watch out for that distinction.)

There is also some difference between NVMe implementations depending on which PCIe version they support. And you'll want a motherboard that implements the same PCIe version. This applies to both M.2 and PCIe SSDs.

This stuff might be old enough that you've already encountered it. But it was new to me when I built my last PC in 2020. Other than that building was pretty much as I remembered from previous decades.

This leads me to another thought: are station residents charged for using the replicators in their quarters? I imagine the replimat charging like other station businesses; so what about private replicators? Or maybe I'm wrong, and the replimat is a free public service?

I'm guessing replicator use would be free under Federation jurisdiction the same way Quark isn't charged rent. But on the other hand, it's a Bajoran station - Starfleet only administers it. Now I'm wondering what kind of negotiating went on to get the struggling provisional government to pass up revenue from DS9 rental spaces.

Another time money comes up is the episode, In the Cards, where Jake wants to buy a Willie Mays baseball card to cheer up his dad. He talks Nog into paying for it because as a Federation citizen Jake doesn't have any money.

I found some of the dialogue on Memory Alpha:

It's my money, Jake! If you want to bid at the auction, use your own money.

I'm Human, I don't have any money.

It's not my fault that your species decided to abandon currency-based economics in favor of some philosophy of self-enhancement.

Hey, watch it. There's nothing wrong with our philosophy. We work to better ourselves and the rest of Humanity.

What does that mean exactly?

It means… it means we don't need money!

Well, if you don't need money, then you certainly don't need mine!

I also imagine Starfleet officers in a non-Federation posting getting stipends. Or maybe Quark and other business owners bill the Federation for whatever Federation citizens buy? And maybe that arrangement doesn't extend to the auction with the baseball card?

There are references to Jake buying from some of the station's businesses. I think I remember him buying jom-jom sticks, and dining at the Klingon restaurant. (Did Jake ever use a holosuite on his own?) I'm thinking either Jake has some sort of allowance or stipend, and is exaggerating when he says he "doesn't have money", or those businesses make special arrangements for Federation citizens.

Yeah, I saw a HN post on that right after I posted this! I'll definitely check it out. Thanks!

Nice, thanks for the heads-up!