pixelmonkey
Joined 19 years ago
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830
Member since
Oct 5
Recent submissions
Comment · 8 days ago
I was in the audience when you gave the 5-minute docker lightning talk at PyCon US Santa Clara in 2013. I remember chatting with a friend/colleague about it (https://nvie.com/about/) and we both agreed it was the most interesting lightning talk that day.
What’s funny, though, is that since it was “just” a lightning talk, it didn’t even make it into the roundup of notes I sent to my team after PyCon. But a mere year later, Docker was how my team (and seemingly everyone else) ran projects locally.
Any interesting memories from that day in 2013? From your perspective, what happened in the year that followed that caused docker to be adopted so widely? Were there other key moments or turning points?
Comment · 1 month ago
Related, one of my favorite quotes by the computer scientist Leslie Lamport is this one:
"If you’re thinking without writing, you only think you’re thinking."
Comment · 6 months ago
This seems cool. For going from Markdown to slides I’ve often used Marp: https://marp.app/ — It doesn’t require much specialized syntax, it mostly does the right thing to turn plain Markdown sections into slides. Simple self-hostable HTML output and PDF export options. Already has a VSCode preview plugin, too. I noticed that Claude Code is able to generate Marp slides for you if you ask it, as well.
Best for slides that are just bullet points, full-slide images, and code. Especially code. Less good if you have a lot of images or need to do your own styles or layout.
Comment · 6 months ago
Huh. I don’t doubt you, but I guess this is a sign pervasive AI/LLM generative artwork is messing with my brain’s pattern matching at a deep level.
Comment · 6 months ago
The BlueSky post has another interesting clue. The pencil sketch on the right. Seems possible a human artist drew the sketch, then had an AI model "colorize" it. And in so doing, maybe the AI model added the 3 genAI tells/artifacts I identified above.
Comment · 6 months ago
It'll be interesting to learn whether it was AI-generated. It certainly SEEMS like it is. It has a few "tells":
- two belts and two Clojure logo belt buckles
- same code repeated on the steps (odd artistic choice if made by the artist)
- the seemingly out-of-place scarf, stylistically its color/pattern doesn't seem to fit
Either way, it seems like an homage to this Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom poster:
https://www.slantmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/tem...
Comment · 7 months ago
Nice find. Check out shykes commenting here on that thread!
Comment · 7 months ago
Makes sense! Thanks for working on it -- truly a wonderful paper!
Comment · 7 months ago
The math of “a decade” seemed wrong to me, since I remembered Docker debuting in 2013 at PyCon US Santa Clara.
Then I found an HN comment I wrote a few years ago that confirmed this:
“[...] I remember that day pretty clearly because in the same lightning talk session, Solomon Hykes introduced the Python community to docker, while still working on dotCloud. This is what I think might have been the earliest public and recorded tech talk on the subject:”
YouTube link: https://youtu.be/1vui-LupKJI?t=1579
Note: starts at t=1579, which is 26:19.
Just being pedantic though. That’s about 13 years ago. The lightning talk is fun as a bit of computing history.
(Edit: as I was digging through the paper, they do cite this YouTube presentation, or a copy of it anyway, in the footnotes. And they refer to a 2013 release. Perhaps there was a multi-year delay between the paper being submitted to ACM with this title and it being published. Again, just being pedantic!)
Comment · 7 months ago
Hey, I am just reaching out to say: "thank you."
When I was in high school, I played a lot of UO. It was actually the last computer/video game I ever played regularly, because I convinced myself as a teenager that I was addicted to it and needed to drop it "cold turkey" to focus on academics and extracurriculars.
(A sign of the times for the late-1990s nostalgics: I sold my UO account on eBay for a few thousand dollars and an MTG Mox Pearl. I owned a bunch of virtual real estate, e.g. a UO tower on an island only accessible via moongate. The high bidder "threw in" a Mox Pearl as a kind of informal escrow, to make sure I completed the account transfer after getting paid.)
Before I dropped UO from my life, I discovered UOX. I was learning C++ and UOX was a great way for me to practice my emerging C++ skills.
My clearest memory of feeling the power of programming was when I created a mod for my UOX server that allowed me to drop an unlimited number of interconnected and color-coded moongates all over my server, creating something akin to the feeling of the game "Portal," but long before Valve released "Portal."
It was after having a blast with UOX that I decided to dig into programming much more. Somehow, the UOX server mod made programming feel "real" for me in the way my prior forays into coding simply didn't.
That led to me learning Python -- as a way of toying around with the Slackware Linux server I had in my basement. I left C++ behind, but it was an important stepping stone for me. Now, decades later, learning Python was probably the single most important decision of my life in childhood. (See e.g. https://amontalenti.com/about)
UOX is such a cool project. UO was a really ahead-of-its time internet game, as well. Great memories. Thank you.
Comment · 8 months ago
If you were utterly confused, like I was, how the iPad Air M4 compares to the iPad Pro M5 and the iPad Pro M4, this 3-column comparison table from Apple's website might help:
https://www.apple.com/ipad/compare/?modelList=ipad-air-11-m4...
The quick summary:
- iPad Air has 2 stereo speakers, rather than 4 speakers as Pro models
- Touch ID in top button rather than FaceID as Pro models
- iPad Air is slightly heavier (???) than either Pro model
- screen of iPad Air is a bit less bright
- no nano-texture display option on iPad Air
- no true Thunderbolt connectivity through USB-C port on iPad Air
- all devices can use same Apple Pencil Pro...
- ... but the iPad Air takes a special Magic Keyboard (supposedly due to form factor)
- camera array is slightly different on iPad Air (no ProRes video)
Comment · 8 months ago
Someone named Ashley Blewer did such a deep dive on this show that she produced a full online course and syllabus centered around it.
https://bits.ashleyblewer.com/halt-and-catch-fire-syllabus/
It allows people to form a "watch club" around the show, similar to a book club, and have plenty of extra reading materials to understand the different tech eras covered in the show.
I think this show -- combined with the documentary "General Magic" and the book "Fire in the Valley" -- is a great way to be immersed in the techno-optimism of the early tech industry around the time of the desktop PC revolution and early internet.
For me, that sort of techno-optimism has stuck with me even if modern tech has more dystopian elements with which one has to grapple. It is still an amazing industry, all things considered.
p.s. total aside that Apple TV sells a digital "box set" of this show for a pretty low price these days. I am usually not a fan of "buying" a show from a streaming service but might be worth it in this case since it's around $16 USD for every episode across its 4 seasons, Apple has a good track record honoring digital purchases, and watching the show is a commitment.
Comment · 8 months ago
Glad I could be helpful! They are great plugins.
Comment · 8 months ago
I've used vim as a prose editor in addition to a code editor for a long time.
For me, Goyo was the plugin that always matched what I wanted vim to become when I was in "prose writing mode."
https://github.com/junegunn/goyo.vim
I combine with limelight.vim:
https://github.com/junegunn/limelight.vim
This partially simulates the experience/UX of the product iA Writer on macOS or iPad, which is my favorite prose editor, but is proprietary software and doesn't work on Linux.
As others mentioned, when in prose writing mode you can also flip on a handful of vim options, I save these as hotkeys in my vimrc. For example, spell checking and line wrapping.
In case you're curious:
Formerly the founding CTO of Parse.ly. Coding in: Python, JavaScript, Zig. Pleased to be a Pythonista and UNIX lover.
Parse.ly was acquired by Automattic (creators of WordPress.com) in February 2021; more here: https://www.techmeme.com/210208/p12#a210208p12
My essays & technical blog: https://amontalenti.com
My AngelList profile: https://angel.co/p/amontalenti
My occasional tweets: https://twitter.com/amontalenti