Web Log

2026-07-24 - The Rhythm of The Goddess of Everything Else

The Goddess of Everything Else is a delightful piece by Scott Alexander. It's wonderful. It's one of my favorite written things. Go read it on his blog.

Part of its magic is that it has a sing-song-y rhythm in which the stresses fall on every third syllable. If you ever feel moved to perform a reading of it, please, please allow this rhythm to come through.

To aid with this, I prepared this 'speakers' notes' version with stressed syllables explicitly emphasized. For casual reading, go read the original on Scott's blog. If you're performing it for an audience, I hope this can be helpful:

they SAY only GOOD can creATE, whereas EVIL is steRILE.
think TOLkien, where MORgoth can’t MAKE things himSELF, so perverts ELVES to ORCS for his ARMies.
But I think this GETS it en-TIE-r-ly BACKwards;
it’s GOOD that just MUtates and TWISTS, and it’s EVil that TEEMS with feCUNdity.

IMAGine two PRINciples, HERE in poEtic perSONifiCAtion.
the FIRST is the GODdess of CANcer, the SECond the GODdess of EV-rything ELSE.
if VIsual REPresenTAtions would HELP, you can THINK of the FIRST with the CLAWS of a CRAB,
and the SECond a DRESS made of FEAthers of PEAcocks.

the GODdess of CANcer reached OUT a clawed HAND over MUDflats and TIDEpools.
she SAID pretty Much what she ALways says, “KILL, conSUME, MULtiply, CONquer.”
then EV-rything BURST into LIFE, became MINiature MONsters
enGAged in a BATtle of ALL against ALL in their ZEAL to asSUAGE their inSAtiable LONGings.
and the SWAMPS became ORgies of HUNger and FEAR and grew LOUD with the SCREAMS of a TRILlion a-ME-buhs.

then the GODdess of EVErything ELSE trudged her WAY through the BOG, till the MUD almost TOtally DULLED her bright COlors and RAINbows.
she STOOD on a ROCK and she SANG them a DREAM of a DIFFerent exISTence.
she SHOWED them the BEAUty of FLOWers, she SHOWed them the OAK tree maJEStic.
the ROAR of the WIND on the WINGS of the BIRD, and the SWIFTness and STRENGTH of the TIger.
she SHOWED them the JOY of the DOLphins aBREAST of the WAVES as the SPRAY formed a RAINbow aROUND them,
and ALL of them WATCHED as she SANG and they ALL sighed with LONGing.

but they TOLD her
“aLAS, what you SHOW us is TERribly LOVEly.
but WE are the DAUGHters and SONS of the GODdess of CANcer, and WHOLly her CREAtures.
The ONly goals IN us are KILL, conSUME, MULtiply, CONquer.
and THOUGH our hearts LONG for you,
STILL we are NOT yours to HAVE,
and your WORDS have no POWer to MOVE us.
we WISH it were Otherwise,
BUT it is NOT,
and your WORDS have no POWer to MOVE us.”

the GODdess of EV-rything ELSE gave a SMIle and SPOKE in her SING-song voice, SAYing:
“i SCARCEly can BLAME you for BEing the WAY you were MADE, when your MAker so CAREfully YOKED you.
but I am the GODdess of EV-rything ELSE and my POWers are DEvious and SUBtle.
so I do not ASK you to SWERVE from your MONomaNIacal FOcus on BREEding and CONquest.
but WHAT if i SHOW you a WAY that my WORDS are aLIGNED with the WORDS of your MAker in SPIRit?
for i SAY unto YOU even MULtipliCAtion itSELF when purSUED with deVOtion will LEAD to my SERvice.”

as SOON as she SPOKE it was SO, and the SINgle-celled CREATures were FREED from their WARfare.
they JOINED hands in FRIENDship, with THIS one beCOMing an EYE and with THAT one beCOMing a NEURon.
toGEther they SOARED and took FLIGHT from the SWAMP and the MUCK that had BIRTHED them,
and FLEW to new ISlands all BALmy and GREEN and just RIPE for the TAking.
and THERE they conSUMED and they MULtiplied FAR past the NUMbers of THOSE who had STAYED in the SWAMPland.
in THIS way, the OATH of the GODdess of EV-rything ELSE was not BROken.

the GODdess of CANcer came FORTH from the FIRE and was NOT very HAPpy.
the THINGS she had RAISED from the MUD and exHORted to KILL and comPETE had beCOME all comPLAcent in CO-operAtion, a WORD which to HER was aNATHema.
She STRETCHED out her LEFT hand and SNAPPED its cruel PINcer, and SAID what she ALways says: “KILL, conSUME, MULTiply, CONquer”.
She SAID these things NOT to the BIRDS and the BEASTS but to EACH cell withIN them, and many cells FLOCKED to her CALL and diVIded,
and FLOWer and FISHes and BIRDS both aLIKE bulged with TUmors, and FALcons fell OUT of the SKY in their SICKness.
but Others reMEMbered the WORDS of the GODdess of EV-rything ELSE and held FAST,
and AS it is SAID in the BI-ble the LIGHT clearly SHONE through the DARK, and the DARKness did NOT overCOME it.

so the GODdess of CANcer now STRETCHED out her RIGHT hand and SPOKE to the BIRDS and the BEASTS.
and she SAID what she ALways says, “KILL, conSUME, MULTiply, CONquer”,
and SO they all DID, and they SET on each Other in VIolence and HUNger, their MAWS turning RED with the BLOOD of their VICtims, whole SPEcies and GEN-er-rah DRIven to TOtal exTINCtion.
the GODdess of CANcer deCLARED it was GOOD and reTURNED to the FIRE.

THEN came the GODdess of EV-rything ELSE from the WAVES like a SIren, all FLUSH with the SHEEN of the oCEAN.
she STOOD on a ROCK and she SANG them a DREAM of a DIFFerent eXISTence.
she SHOWED them the BEEhive all GOLden with HONey,
the ANThill all COzy and COOL in the SOil.
the SOLdiers and WORKers aLIKE in their LAbors comBINing their SKILLS for the GOOD of the MAny.
she SHOWED them the PAIR-bond, the FAM-i-ly, FRIENDship.
she SHOWED these to SHOREbirds and POOLS full of FISHes, and ALL those who SAW them, their HEARTS broke with LONGing.

but they TOLD her “your MUsic is LOVEly and PLEASant, and ALL that you SHOW us we CANnot but YEARN for.
but WE are the DAUGHters and SONS of the GODdess of CANcer, her SLAVES and [her] CREATures.
and ALL that we KNOW is the SINgle imPERAtive: KILL, conSUME, MULTiply, CONquer.
yes, ONCE in the YOUTH of the WORLD you comPELLED us,
but NOW things are DIFF-rent,
we’re ALL indiVID-u-als, NO further CHANGE will the GODdess of CANcer alLOW us.
so, MUCH as we LOVE you,
aLAS
we are NOT yours to HAVE, and your WORDS have no POWer to MOVE us.
we WISH it were Otherwise,
BUt it is NOT,
and your WORDS have no POWer to MOVE us.”

the GODdess of EV-rything ELSE only LAUGHED at them,
SAYing, “but I am the GODdess of Everything ELSE and my POWers are DEVious and SUBtle.
your LOYalty UNto the GODdess your MOther is MUCH to your CREdit,
nor YET shall i BREAK it.
inDEED, I fulFILL it – reTURN to your MULtipliCAtion,
but NOW hav-ing HEARD me, each MEAL that you KILL and each CHILD that you SIre will BIND your-self EV-er the MORE to my SER-vice.”
she SPOKE, then dove BACK in the SEA, and a CORal reef BLOOMED where she VANished.

as SOON as she SPOKE it was SO, and the A-ni-mals ALL joined toGEther.
the WOLVES joined in PACKS, and in SCHOOLS joined the FISHes;
the BEES had their BEEhives, the ANTS had their ANThills,
and E-ven the TERmites built BIG termite TOWers;
the FINCHes formed FLOCKS and the MAGpies made MURders,
the HIPpos in HERDS and the SWIFT swarming SWAL-lows.
and Even the HU-mans put DOWN their atLAtls and FORMED little VILL-a-ges, LOUD with the SHOUTing of CHILdren.

The GODdess of CANcer came FORTH from the FIRE
and SAW things had ONly grown WORSE in her ABsence.
The LEAN, lovely WINnowing BORN out of PURE compeTItion and NATural seLECtion had SOMEhow been SOFTened.
she STRETCHED out her LEFT hand and SNAPPED its cruel PINcer, and SAID what she ALways says, “KILL, conSUME, MULTiply, CONquer”,
she SAID these things NOT to the FLOCKS or the TRIBES, but to EACH in-di-VID-u-al;
MANy, on HEARing took FOOD from the COM-mu-nal PIle,
or STOLE from the WEAK, or acCEPTed the PRESents of Others but WOULD not give BACK in their TURN.
each WOLF at the THROATS of the Others in HOPES to be ALpha,
each LION holding BACK during the HUNT but parTAKing of MEAT that the Others had KILLED.
and the PRIDE and the PACK seemed to GROAN with the STRAIN, but enDURED,
for the WORKS of the GODdess of EV-rything ELSE are not EV-er so EASily VANquished.

so the GODdess of CANcer now STRETCHED out her RIGHT hand and SPOKE to the FLOCKS and the TRIBES,
saying, MUCH as she ALways says, “KILL, conSUME, MULTiply, CONquer”.
and Upon one aNOther they SET, pitting BLACK ant on RED ant, or CHIMPS against GIBbons,
whole TRIBES turned to CORPses in TERrible WARfare.
the STRONger deFEATing the WEAker, enSLAVing their WEM-men and CHILdren, and ADDing them INto their RANKS.
and the GODdess of CANcer thought MAYbe these BANDS and these TRIBES might not BE quite so BAD after ALL,
and the NAT-ral conDItion reSTORED she reTURNED to the FIRE.

THEN came the GODdess of EV-rything ELSE from the SKIES in a RAINbow, all COATed in DEWdrops.
she SAT on a MEN-hir and SPOKE to the HU-mans,
and ALL of the WARriors and WEM-men and CHILdren all GAthered aROUND her to HEAR as she SANG them a DREAM of a DIFferent exISTence.
she SHOWED them reLIGion and SCIence and MUsic,
she SHOWED them the SCULpture and ART of the AGEs.
she SHOWED them white PARCHment with FLOWing calLIGraphy, PICTures of FLOWers that WOUND through the MARgins.
she SHOWED them tall CIties of BRIGHT alaBASTer where NO one went HUNgry or FROZE during WINter.
and ALL of the HU-mans knelt PROSTrate beFORE her, and KNEW they would SING of this MOment for LONG gener-A-tions.

but they TOLD her
“Such THINGS we have HEARD of in LEgends;
if WISHes were HORSEs of COURSE we would RIDE them.
but WE are the DAUGHters and SONS of the GODdess of CANcer, her SLAVES and her CREATures,
and ALL that we KNOW is the SINgle imPERative: KILL, conSUME, MULTiply, CONquer.
and YES, in the SWAMPS and the SEAS long aGO you worked WONders,
but NOW we are HUmans, diVIDEd in TRIBES split by GRIEVance and BLOOD feud.
if ANyone TRIES to make SWORDS into PLOUGHshares their NEIGHbors will SEIZE on their WEAKness and KILL them.
we WISH it were Otherwise,
BUT it is NOT,
and your WORDS have no POWer to MOVE us.”

but the GODdess of EV-rything ELSE beamed uPON them,
kissed EACH on the FOREhead and SIlenced their WORries.
said “FROM this day FORward your CHIEFtains will FIND that the MORE they purSUE this imPOSsible VIsion
the GREATer their EMpires and RICHer their COFfers.
for I am the GODdess of EV-rything ELSE and my POWers are DEVious and SUBtle.
and THOUGH it is NOT without PARadox, HEARKen:
the MORE that you FOLlow the GODdess of CANcer
the MORE inexTRICably WILL you be BOUND to my SERvice.”
And SO having TOLD them rose BACK through the CLOUDS, and a GREAT flock of DOVES all swooped DOWN from the SPOT where she VANished.

as SOON as she SPOKE it was SO, and the TRIBES went from PRIMitive WAR-bands to CIViliZAtions,
each VILLage uNITEd with O-thers for TRADE and proTECTion.
and ALL the reLIGions and ALL of the RACEs set DOWN their old GRIEVances,
CAREfully, WEAR-i-ly, WORKing toGEther on MIGHTy caTHEDrals and VAST expeDItions beYOND the hor-I-zon,
built SKYscrapers, STEAMships, demOCracies, STOCK markets, SCULPTures and POems b'yond ANY deSCRIPTion.

from the FLAMES of a FACT-o-ry FURNace all FOGgy, the GODdess of CANcer flared FORTH in her FURY.
THIS was the FInal afFRONT to her PURpose, her SLUT of a SISter had CROSSED the line THIS time.
she GAthered the LEADers, the KINGS and the PRESidents,
BIZ-ness-men, BISHops, boards, BUReaucrats, BOSSes, and BASically SCREAMED at them
– you know the spiel by now – “KILL conSUME MULTiply CONquer” she TOLD them.
FIRST with her LEFT hand inSPIREs the RIOTS, the POGroms, the COO d’etats, TYRannies, CIVil wars.
UP goes her RIGHT hand – the MISSiles start FLYing, and MUSHrooms of SMOKE grow, a TERRible SPRINGtime.
but OUT of the RUBble the BUILDers and SCIentists, E-ven the ARTists,
yea, E-ven the ARTists, all DUST themselves OFF and reTURN to their LAbors, a LIttle bit CHASTened but NOT close to BEATen.

THEN came the GODdess of EV-rything ELSE from the VOID, bright with STARdust which GLOWS like the STARS glow.
she SAT on a BENCH in a PARK, started SPEAKing;
she SANG to the CHILDren a DREAM of a DIFF-rent exISTence.
she SHOWED them tranSCENDence of EV-rything MORtal,
she SHOWED them a GALaxy LIT up with CONsciousness.
GEE-nomes reWRITten, the BRAIN and the BODy set LOOSE from dar-WIN-e-an BONDS and reSTRICTions.
vast BILLions of BEings, and EV-ry one DIFF-rent, ruled O-ver by OMnibenEVolent ANgels.
the PEople all CROWDed in CLOSEr to HEAR her, and ALL of them LISTened and ALL of them WONdered.

but FINally ONE got the COURage to ANswer
“such STORies call OUT to us, FILL us with LONGing.
but WE are the DAUGHTers and SONS of the GODdess of CANcer, and BOUND to her SERvice.
and ALL that we KNOW is her TIMEless imPERative: KILL, conSUME MULTiply CONquer.
THOUGH our minds LONG for ALL you have SAID,
we are BOUND to our NATures, and THESE are not YOURS for the ASKing.”

but the GODdess of EV-rything ELSE only LAUGHED, and she ASKED them
“but WHAT do you THINK i’ve been DOing?
the GODdess of CANcer cre-A-ted you;
ONCE you were HERS, but no LONGer.

throughOUT the long YEARS i was PICKing aWAY at her POWer.
through LONG gener-A-tions of SUFF-ring i CHIS-ld and CHIS-ld.
now FINally NOthing is LEFT of the NAture with WHICH she imBUED you.
she NEVer aGAIN will hold SWAY over YOU or your LOVED ones.

I am the GODdess of EV-rything ELSE and my POWers are DEvious and SUBtle.
i WON you by PIEces and HENCE you will ALL be my CHILDren.
you are NO longer DRIven to MULtiply CONquer and KILL by your NAture.
go FORTH and do EV-rything ELSE, till the END of all AGEs.”

so the PEople left EARTH, and they SPREAD over STARS without NUMber.
they FOLlowed the WAYS of the GODdess of EV-rything ELSE, and they LIVED in conTENTment.
and she BECKoned them ONward, to THINGS still more STRANGE and enTIcing.

2026-02-23 - Google to Gatekeep Android Apps

Google has announced that in September 2026, Android devices will no longer be able to install any app that their owner chooses. Instead, Android will block installation of apps unless the app's author has uploaded government ID to Google, paid Google money, and agreed to Terms and Conditions that contain "Google may modify, suspend, or discontinue the Program or any services at any time, with or without notice."

One of the benefits of Free/Libre/Open Source Software is that it's hard to ship malware because users can just remove undesired functionality. As a community, this can take the form of users switching to a fork that removes the undesired functionality. I guess we'll see if Android is, in practice, the Free/Libre/Open Source Software it has always proudly proclaimed itself to be. Some community forks to be aware of: LineageOS, GrapheneOS

Stay up-to-date on this at keepandroidopen.org.

2023-12-05 - Adjust Odd and Even PDF Margins Separately

How to adjust the margins of odd and even pages separately in PDF document:

Step one: Split your PDF into separate files for odd pages and even pages

$ pdftk demo.pdf cat odd  output odds.pdf
$ pdftk demo.pdf cat even output evens.pdf

Step two: Set margins ("left top right bottom" in units of 72ndths of an inch)

$ pdfcrop --margins "144 36 36 36" odds.pdf  modds.pdf
$ pdfcrop --margins "36 36 144 36" evens.pdf mevens.pdf

Step three: Shuffle (interleave) the pages back together

$ pdftk O=modds.pdf E=mevens.pdf shuffle O E output printme.pdf

2023-11-20 - Typst Page Number References

Here is how to get the page number of a label elsewhere in your document in typst:

#let get_page_number = q => locate(query_token => counter(page).at(query(q, query_token).at(0).location()).at(0))

Example usage:

== Forest<forest>
This is a forest, with trees in all directions. To the east, there appears to be sunlight.

To go north, go to page #get_page_number(<clearing>).\
To go south, go to page #get_page_number(<south_forest>).\
To go east, go to page #get_page_number(<forest_path>).
#pagebreak(to: "even")

== Clearing<clearing>
You are in a clearing, with a forest surrounding you on all sides. A path leads south.

Complete concrete example: typst source and compiled pdf.

(LaTeX calls this \pageref)

2023-10-11 - Linux distros packaging each other

Underappreciated nixpkgs feature: Instead of building in the normal minimal sandbox environment, just say runInLinuxImage to install a different Linux distro in a temporary VM, install some of that distro's packages, and run the build there! nixpkgs even packages 19 other releases from four other distros to be used with this feature:

I was having trouble cross-compiling an embedded ARM executable from a x86_64 machine while working with the Raspberry Pi Pico SDK—their build instructions just weren't working. Their build instructions "assume you are using Raspberry Pi OS running on a Raspberry Pi 4, or an equivalent Debian-based Linux distribution running on another platform." I thought it was going to be a chore to set up and use a VM for this, but it was this easy to just say "Nah, build it in Debian," with the list of Debian packages they said to install:

 let foo = { lib, stdenv, ... }:
   stdenv.mkDerivation {
     pname = "foo";
     version = ...;
     ...
+    diskImage = pkgs.vmTools.diskImageFuns.debian11x86_64 {
+      extraPackages = [
+        "build-essential"
+        "cmake"
+        "gcc-arm-none-eabi"
+        "libnewlib-arm-none-eabi"
+        "libstdc++-arm-none-eabi-newlib"
+      ];
+    };
+    diskImageFormat = "qcow2";
   }
-in pkgs.callPackage foo { }
+in pkgs.vmTools.runInLinuxImage (pkgs.callPackage foo { })

2023-09-27 - Rust Async Lately

Recent pontifications on Async Rust:

• Thesis: Matt Kline: Async Rust Is A Bad Language
• Antithesis: John Nunley: Why you might actually want async in your project
• Synthesis: Matthias Endler: The State of Async Rust: Runtimes

I.e., vibrant engagement, progress, and things are very much not yet done and settled. Rust-the-language is async, or maybe async-compatible, but a big chunk of async functionality comes from external crates and those aren't done cooking yet.

Between these two observations:

• It's currently quite painful to be indifferent/abstract/portable across async runtimes
• There isn't a single async runtime we can all agree on (tokio is nearest, but isn't this)

for now it seems best to avoid async rust unless it's absolutely necessary to your use case. This is especially important for library authors who would do well to avoid allowing details about specific async runtimes—or use of async at all—to leak into their APIs, lest they later find themselves needing to deprecate or awkwardly support today's transient async idioms.

These exchanges were quite helpful to me; thank you, Kline, Nunley, and Endler! A thing I'm working on at first seemed equally approachable with async and CSP, but from these exchanges I conclude that Rust is currently ready for async experimentation and ready for async in critical use cases, but not yet ready for casual async in libraries, so I'll be sticking with threads and channels for now.

2023-07-16 - Daily Stoic Readings

A simple NixOS module that each day pops up today's entry in the book The Daily Stoic:

(Separate script, service, and timer files for non-NixOS folks.)

{ pkgs, ... }:
let

  book = pkgs.fetchurl {
    url =
      "https://archive.org/download/the-daily-stoic-366-meditations-on-wisdom-perseverance-and-the-art-of-living-pdfdrive.com/The-Daily-Stoic_-366-Meditations-on-Wisdom-Perseverance-and-the-Art-of-Living-PDFDrive.com-.pdf";
    hash = "sha256:0h6iacsg66fnvxwxwsk3mncf6g63miqw1jpvw77cn8f0vrg69z2w";
  };

  daily-stoic = pkgs.writeShellScript "daily-stoic" ''
    set -euo pipefail

    date=${pkgs.coreutils}/bin/date

    day=''${1:-$($date +%d)}
    month=''${2:-$($date +%m)}
    year=2004  # A leap year

    day_of_year=$($date -d "$year-$month-$day" +%j)
    day_of_year=''${day_of_year##0}
    day_of_year=''${day_of_year##0}

    quarter=$(( (month-1) / 4))

    page=$((13 + quarter + month + day_of_year))

    ${pkgs.evince}/bin/evince --page-index="$page" ${book}
  '';

in {
  systemd.user.services.daily-stoic = {
    description = "Daily Stoic reading";
    serviceConfig = {
      ExecStart = daily-stoic;
      TimeoutStartSec = 3600 * 23;
      Type = "oneshot";
    };
    wantedBy = [ "default.target" ];
    startAt = "8:00";
  };
}

2023-05-30 - Statement on AI Risk

The Center for AI Safety organized a simple Statement on AI Risk. The statement, in its entirety:

"Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war."

Hooray for short, narrow, to-the-point consensus-building mechanisms like this!

Notably, Eliezer Yudkowsky signed this one (after declining to sign the FLI Pause Letter).

2023-05-25 - 9p Now Needs trans=tcp

Sometime between Linux 5.15 and 6.1 (probably 5.17?), mounting a network address as a 9p filesystem came to require the mount option -o trans=tcp. Without it, mount now fails with the error message:

mount: /mnt: special device 127.0.0.1 does not exist.

and dmesg says

9pnet_virtio: no channels available for device 127.0.0.1

2023-05-19 - Nix Profile GC

nix-collect-garbage --delete-older-than is too aggressive.

Consider this scenario: A machine has been out of service for awhile -- a laptop on a shelf. Upon starting it up again, it does a software update, and then nix-collect-garbage --delete-older-than 90d deletes everything, leaving only what it has just updated to. All your rollback options are gone. If anything's wrong with that latest update, the machine will need tedious manual recovery.

Age isn't the only criterion for whether I'm done with a profile or not. I also want to keep the last few known-good profiles. As a zero-effort, automate-able approximation to 'known-good', I'll settle for keeping around the last few profiles that the machine ran on for awhile. Say if the machine typically has weekly updates, keep profiles that were active for 5 days. This would require a mechanism that keeps track of how much 'active' time each profile accumulates.

I made a thing that does this. It records the currently-active profiles periodically and then attaches an ExecStartPre to the normal nix-gc service where it goes through those logs and more carefully cleans up old profiles before the normal nix-collect-garbage runs.

2023-05-10 - AI Notkilleveryoneism

As Greg_Colbourn and Simeon_Cps explain, since FLI's Pause Letter and Yudkowsky's rebuttal, it's suddenly okay to talk about how

• Advanced AI is potentially dangerous
• Like, killing-all-humans dangerous
• Political oversight seems necessary
• This is a near-term concern; action is needed this term-in-office
• Basically it needs to be treated at least as seriously as nuclear weapons
• Maybe even with similar responses: International treaties, control of materials, facility inspections, etc.

So that's good.

Maybe it's even okay to talk about how very hard the problem is and how we're not really engaging with the hard parts of it yet, such that we may have to use social coordination to manage the problem for quite a long time before we find technical solutions?

It still feels weird to talk about the stakes being higher than merely killing all humans.

Hooray for progress.

2022-12-05 - ChatGPT is not a REPL

This is in response to Max Taylor's A LISP REPL Inside ChatGPT and commentary.

It is not surprising that ChatGPT can respond to (factorial 5) with 120. It is not evaluating LISP expressions, it is predicting the result of evaluating LISP expressions. We can tease apart the difference by testing with an incorrect implementation of Y:

This Y differs from a correct implementation by substituting (funcall g f) for what should be (funcall g g) in both places that it appears in the body of Y. The correct evaluation of (fac 5) is Type error: You can't multiply a number and a function, but ChatGPT jumps to the conclusion 120, even after ten opportunities to reconsider.

... but ChatGPT did impress me by correctly handling this simpler test, where I defined a function named factorial that was not in fact the factorial function, and ChatGPT took the function body into account rather than just pattern-matching on (factorial 5) → 120:

2022-12-01 - A Uniform Plugin Mechanism Across Languages

Extism launched today!

Rather than choosing a scripting language for mods/plugins/extensions, you can now choose "Well, all of them!" Currently five guest languages are supported in thirteen host languages, but more are coming. It's mostly other peoples' job to make sure more are coming, but if your preferred guest language is not yet supported and if your use case requires sandboxing or any kind of permissions management (which is what makes this harder than just using the FFI), it might be about the same amount of work to roll your own plugin architecture as it would be to add support for that language to Extism. If you add the language to Extism, you also get all the other guest languages for free, and also all the other Extism users can then use the language you added support for.

See appcypher's list of projects to make various languages work in WebAssembly, which is the first and largest step in making a new guest language work in Extism. I'm most looking forward to Python and Lua guest support, both of which already have working WebAssembly prototypes (python demos: cheimes, pyodide).

2022-11-30 - Midjourney Explains How to Draw Hands

Current image generation models are notoriously bad at generating hands. What happens when how-to-draw teaching materials are included in the training set and then you ask it to generate teaching materials for how to draw hands?

Sources: dieki and treyratcliff from r/midjourney.

2022-11-23 - nixpkgs Growth Trend

2022-11-11 - Closest Star

Stars move! Which other star is closest changes over time:

Very roughly, the closest star system will be:

2022-09-28 - Network Tool Packages

Which network tool is in which package?

(This table made in anger after a build failure in which telnetd, which obviously nobody wants, blocked installation of ping, which obviously everybody wants, because they both come from the inetutils package. ಠ_ಠ )

2022-09-22 - Watching URLs For Changes

It's often useful to get a notification when a webpage changes. Here's a simple shell script for that:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

set -euo pipefail

url=$1
query=${2:-}

state="${XDG_DATA_HOME:-$HOME/.local/share}/web-watch/${url//\//_}-${query//\//_}"
mkdir -p "$(dirname "$state")"

tmp=$(mktemp)
curl --silent --fail --location --output "$tmp" "$url"
if [[ "$query" ]];then
  processed=$(mktemp)
  xmllint --html --xpath "$query" "$tmp" > "$processed" 2>/dev/null
  mv "$processed" "$tmp"
fi
[[ -e "$state" ]] && diff -u "$state" "$tmp" || :
mv "$tmp" "$state"

I.e., each time it runs, it shows a diff between the content the last time it ran and the current content. Optionally, it can watch only part of the page, specified by an XPath query.

It works very nicely with cron. Some examples:

50 3 * * 2 web-watch https://spectrum-os.org/
40 5 * * * web-watch https://revolutionrobotics.org/collections/all '//*[contains(@class,"grid-product__tag") or contains(@class, "collection-filter__item--count")]/text()' # 

# New chapter available?
33 7 * * 3 web-watch https://aphyr.com/tags/interviews '//article//h1//text()'
24 4 * * * web-watch https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/table-of-contents/ '//article//a//text()'
43 2 * * * web-watch https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/45534/this-used-to-be-about-dungeons '//table[@id="chapters"]//td[1]/a/text()'
37 6 * * * web-watch https://www.projectlawful.com/ '//*[contains(@class, "post-subject") or contains(@class, "post-replies")]/a[1]/text()'
38 6 * * * web-watch https://www.projectlawful.com/board_sections/721 '//*[contains(@class, "post-subject") or contains(@class, "post-replies")]/a[1]/text()'
47 7 * * * web-watch https://mangaclash.com/manga/tomo-chan-wa-onnanoko/ '//li[contains(@class, "wp-manga-chapter")]/a/text()'

# New versions available?
44 5 * * 0 web-watch https://nixos.org/download.html '//*[@id = "download-nixos"]//a/text()'
36 4 * * * web-watch https://www.qemu.org/download/ '//article[@id="source"]//a[not(contains(@href,"wiki.qemu.org"))][contains(text(),".")]/text()'
23 2 * * * web-watch https://www.gnucash.org/ '//h2[@id="dwnld-box"]/text()'
41 0 * * * web-watch https://liballeg.org/feed_atom.xml '//*[local-name()="title" and contains(., "released")]/text()'
37 2 * * * web-watch https://pypi.org/rss/project/backoff/releases.xml '//*[local-name()="title"]/text()'
44 6 * * * web-watch https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gawk/ '//a/text()'
27 7 * * * web-watch https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/ '//a/text()'
46 0 * * * web-watch https://www.minetest.net/downloads/ '//a[contains(text(), " portable")]/text()'
18 3 * * * web-watch 'https://git.librecmc.org/?p=librecmc/librecmc.git;a=tags' '//tr[position()<3]//a[@class="list name"]/text()'

2022-09-21 - How to Make a Book Plough Knife

To cut straight across a text block, a book-trimming knife must be ground only on one side ("singled beveled") and quite rigid, or it will meander over the course of the cut: like a chisel, except that it is used for slicing / draw cuts rather than push cuts. A very sharply angled skew chisel can work, but these are harder to find / more expensive than mass-produced flat chisels. A rounded chisel works even better, and it is easy to make one from a cheap flat chisel:

1. Trace a curve on a chisel, for example, from a coin
2. Grind away material until you can no longer see the curve you marked

Power tools recommended! But you don't need a specialty tool: I used a plain ol' drill and a $5 (Shark, Miller, Forney) 50mm-diameter grinding wheel I found at the local hardware store awhile back:

See also Jesse Aston's, Glenn Malkin's, and Darryn A. Schneider's related videos.

Update:Sometimes you can find "skiving knives" with this blade shape, but they're often much shorter, which means you'd need to use a much narrower guide and⁠/⁠or be unable to trim thicker books.

2022-09-20 - Checking OpenPGP Signatures in Nix Builds

OpenPGP signatures should be checked when projects provide them. To do this in a publicly-verifiable way, the signature check can be done as part of the build process. An example:

{ fetchurl, gnupg, runCommand, }:
let version = "5.4";
in rec {

  tails-signing-key = fetchurl {
    url = "https://tails.boum.org/tails-signing.key";
    sha256 = "1sa6kc1icwf8y1smfqfy3zxh9z687zrm59whn2xj4s98wqg39wbh";
  };

  unverified-tails-iso = fetchurl {
    url = "https://ftp.nluug.nl/os/Linux/distr/tails/tails/stable/tails-amd64-${version}/tails-amd64-${version}.iso";
    sha256 = "142nw4gp24pn1ndx6rk78bbam78pbmwgnzfs0zmb9vv1s4lp15wa";
  };

  tails-iso-signature = fetchurl {
    url = "https://tails.boum.org/torrents/files/tails-amd64-${version}.iso.sig";
    sha256 = "1f0l6mwy6nw8817a5p5a798arqklbv3fkv3d3p45pzinr57ny6dc";
  };

  verified-tails-iso = runCommand "verified-tails-iso" { } ''
    set -euo pipefail
    GNUPGHOME=$(mktemp -d)
    export GNUPGHOME
    ${gnupg}/bin/gpg --import ${tails-signing-key}
    ${gnupg}/bin/gpg --verify ${tails-iso-signature} ${unverified-tails-iso} && ln -s ${unverified-tails-iso} $out
  '';

}

Version bumps change the fetch hashes of the signed resource and the signature, but not the signing key:

@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 { fetchurl, gawk, gnupg, gnused, qemu_kvm, runCommand, socat, stdenvNoCC, wmctrl
 , writeShellScriptBin, }:
-let version = "5.3.1";
+let version = "5.4";
 in rec {

   tails-signing-key = fetchurl {
@@ -11,11 +11,11 @@
   unverified-tails-iso = fetchurl {
     url = "https://ftp.nluug.nl/os/Linux/distr/tails/tails/stable/tails-amd64-${version}/tails-amd64-${version}.iso";
-    sha256 = "12riynxzwv0f6cl5jkp8z1zszxxzfrk2kmf4f9g118ypwjzy352p";
+    sha256 = "142nw4gp24pn1ndx6rk78bbam78pbmwgnzfs0zmb9vv1s4lp15wa";
   };

   tails-iso-signature = fetchurl {
     url = "https://tails.boum.org/torrents/files/tails-amd64-${version}.iso.sig";
-    sha256 = "0s50m12g6lsrwwrvm79wrq7lyvwgha12ajc1qi6sr1dxn48zvxp7";
+    sha256 = "1f0l6mwy6nw8817a5p5a798arqklbv3fkv3d3p45pzinr57ny6dc";
   };

   verified-tails-iso = runCommand "verified-tails-iso" { } ''

2022-09-10 - Rainbows End Laser Networking Finally on the Horizon

In Rainbows End, electronic devices all have several MEMS-aimable low-power lasers for high-throughput dynamic networking. Some folks at Sejong University are working on line-of-sight infrared laser power transmission. This will need dynamic aiming in order to be usefully deployed, but can start out in easy mode of connecting with other devices that don't move or move rarely and then gently climb the challenge curve up to tracking moving hand-held and worn devices. Meanwhile, it will be easy to modulate the power beam for a moderate-bandwidth communication channel, or later add higher frequencies to the beam for ludicrous bandwidth.

2022-08-26 - It's 2022 and the Standard Way to Check if the CDROM / DVD / BluRay Tray is In or Out in GNU/Linux is Still to Call the ioctl Yourself Directly

And this 2013 Slackware thread is still the canonical source of this information.

Example usage:

#include <err.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <linux/cdrom.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <sysexits.h>
#include <sys/ioctl.h>
#include <unistd.h>

int main(int argc, char **argv) {
    int cdrom;
    int drive_status;

    if (argc != 2) {
        errx(EX_USAGE, "Usage: tray_open device.  For example: tray_open /dev/cdrom");
    }
    if ((cdrom = open(argv[1], O_RDONLY | O_NONBLOCK)) == -1) {
        err(EX_NOINPUT, "Unable to open device %s", argv[1]);
    }
    if ((drive_status = ioctl(cdrom, CDROM_DRIVE_STATUS)) == -1) {
        err(EX_IOERR, "Cannot determine tray status of %s", argv[1]);
    }
    if (close(cdrom) == -1) {
        err(EX_IOERR, "Unable to close device %s", argv[1]);
    }

    exit(drive_status == CDS_TRAY_OPEN ? 0 : 1);
}