pinusc (u/pinusc) - Readit News

pinusc commented on We can’t send mail farther than 500 miles (2002) web.mit.edu/jemorris/humo... · Posted by u/giancarlostoro

raegis · 14 days ago

I immediately did a "apt install units". Very cool!

pinusc · 12 days ago

Units is a cool piece of software, but I have since switched to qalculate. Mostly units has some silly defaults like needing to type tempC(30) instead of 30C; and it's nice to have a full calculator.

I know it's a way to specify that the conversion is absolute rather than relative, but qalculate just asks you about it the first time you convert, and since converting oven and outside temperatures is most of what I do, I don't havr to bother with remembering a different syntax.

Also qalculate is an awesome piece of software in general, so if you're excited by units you should check it out!

pinusc commented on Eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece (2023) nightingaledvs.com/dark-s... · Posted by u/skadamat

shaky-carrousel · a month ago

A really good Android open source alternative is Breezy Weather: https://github.com/breezy-weather/breezy-weather

pinusc · a month ago

I have been using breezy weather and I like it overall. But after reading this article I can't help but be bugged off that the information density in the main page is significantly worse here than in Dark Sky. Dark Sky showed hourly forecast with a 2h resolution. This is a negligible difference in precision IMHO (weather predictions are inherently imprecise anyway - and a more precise graph could be - is - one tap away), but it allows to show a time range that is twice as wide! On my screen, breezy weather is able to show me the forecast for the next 5h until I scroll - this is OK, but it's annoying. The hours are very spaced apart, and there is a 1h resolution. With tighter spacing and 2h resolution, 12 or 16 hours could be displayed at once - which is far more likely to cover the time I am going to spend outside, which as the article states, is the main reason why I might want to check an hourly forecast anyway.

All the other android apps mentioned here have the same issue.

I might try to open an issue in their GH, or even a PR... A toggle for "denser graphs" and a setting for hourly resolution could do wonders.

pinusc commented on Fizz Buzz without conditionals or booleans evanhahn.com/fizz-buzz-wi... · Posted by u/ingve

buzer · 3 months ago

Other would be to use goto (though Python doesn't have it) & introduce something that will panic/throw exception, like creating variable with value 1/(max-i).

pinusc · 3 months ago

Recursion would work for that, you don't need goto.

The division by zero trick is pretty good too!

pinusc commented on F-Droid and Google’s developer registration decree f-droid.org/2025/09/29/go... · Posted by u/gumby271

jhasse · 4 months ago

So it wouldn't require a lot of work because LineageOS has already done the work and is open-source.

pinusc · 4 months ago

Although it wouldn't require a lot of work to allow side-loading apps on LineageOS and similar, LOS users would still be profoundly impacted by the death of the FOSS ecosystem.

LOS/AOSP/whatever users are a VANISHINGLY small minority of users, so "an app that only works on them" is an app that only works for a tiny minority of people. This would disincentivize developing FOSS apps altogether. A lot of projects will likely eventually die, and a lot that could have started will not.

pinusc commented on Why aren't we losing our minds over the plastic in our brains? scientificamerican.com/ar... · Posted by u/mikhael

_huayra_ · a year ago

Another bonus: at least for bamboo, it has antimicrobial properties compared to plastic, which tends to have all sorts of difficult-to-clean grooves for bacteria to hide in.

pinusc · a year ago

Important to note that bamboo boards will dull your knives significantly faster than other woods. Other kinds of wood are still better than plastics at being bacteria-resistant (but still need disinfecting after cutting meat etc.—and so does bamboo)

pinusc commented on The DIY Multideck diymultideck.mauri.app/ma... · Posted by u/vlugorilla

flymasterv · a year ago

This is a fantastic essay and project, but the chances of getting anyone to play an actual game with it are basically zero.

pinusc · a year ago

It baffles me that this isn't mentioned in the page, but a deck like this is extremely useful for testing while designing a new boardgame. They are very versatile and can likely emulate whatever wacky system you come up with for your game, which means you can iterate without having to print a new deck new each time.

pinusc commented on Python grapples with Apple App Store rejections lwn.net/SubscriberLink/97... · Posted by u/leephillips

mirsadm · 2 years ago

How is Android any different?

pinusc · 2 years ago

In some cases one can install a de-googlified version of android, and install whatever app (.apk) they wish through alternative app stores or directly.

For 99.9% of people, Android and iOS will be virtually identical in terms of freedom, as they will just install apps from the play store and use google-services on the manufacturer-provided (and -bloated) android install that comes with their phone.

That being said, for those who do care, the ability to take control of your phone and run AOSP, an actually FOSS distribution, and only run FOSS apps, or install whatever app you want, is unparalleled on Android vs iOS.

pinusc commented on Show HN: I created an app for you to be a more unpredictable romantic partner lovefuel.app... · Posted by u/Joakim_Habekost

outop · 2 years ago

Waking up on time is an end in itself. The point is not to show that you have made an effort.

For some other things that we might try to do, the point is to make an effort.

pinusc · 2 years ago

I would say using this app to try and surprise/do nice things for your partner is, in fact, making an effort: going out of your way to think of nice things to do with them.

People are all different. The idea of getting flowers for your partner, or leave cheesy notes for them, might come natural to some and not to others. Another comment pointed out how having ADHD makes it hard to remember to do the sort of stuff this app might suggest, so it can be a great help.

Besides, is this different from scrolling through social media and seeing couples activities and deciding to try them? Is this different from seeing a florist ad while walking and deciding to buy flowers? If anything, going out of your way to install an app shows more care and effort than these "spontaneous" activities.

At any rate, spontaneity is overrated, especially in relationships (maybe because of Hollywood relationships?). Constance, effort, care, are more important... you still need to keep things fresh tho

pinusc commented on Yi 1.5 github.com/01-ai/Yi-1.5... · Posted by u/tosh

999900000999 · 2 years ago

The price difference is about 150$ give or take for the laptops I'm looking at.

I'll keep this in mind!

pinusc · 2 years ago

Also keep in mind: 32GB of RAM is more than enough for normal usage, but it's useless for (this kind of state-of-the-art-) ML unless you also have a graphics card of the kind that won't fit in a laptop.

Unless of course you were talking about VRAM, in which case 16GB is still not great for ML (to be fair, the 24GB of an RTX 4090 aren't either, but there's not much more you can do in the space of consumer hardware). I don't think the other commenter was talking about VRAM, because 16GB VRAM are very overkill for everyday computing... and pretty decent for most gaming.

pinusc commented on Superfile – A fancy, pretty terminal file manager github.com/MHNightCat/sup... · Posted by u/oidar

apitman · 2 years ago

I very well might be in the minority of Linux users, but I don't particularly care about the answers to most of these questions. I just want it to work. Give me solid defaults[0]. I'm not saying you shouldn't be able to override those defaults. That's an important feature of Linux.

My first experience running a cool-looking TUI file manager yesterday (I actually ended up trying yazi first) was that I got a lot of blank squares in place of missing icons and emojis due to missing fonts. I had to spend 20 minutes figuring that out before I got a good experience.

Interestingly, I also tried wezterm[1] in the process. It actually ships with the required fonts as fallback, but the version from my distro's package manager didn't work (the AppImage did). I'm guessing my distro removed them, maybe for some of the reasons you cited. I started installing the nerd-fonts group for my distro. 6.5GB... no thanks. After manually poking through them and some googling I finally installed a couple and it's working now.

My overall point is that it's possible for app developers to provide good defaults like wezterm does. It's also possible for distro's to break those defaults. Also, if size is a concern then at least detect that I don't have a working font and offer to download one for me.

[0]: https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-power-of-defaults/

[1]: https://wezfurlong.org/wezterm/

pinusc · 2 years ago

Regardless of wanting sane defaults, this is not something superfile can do on itself: it runs in a terminal, and normally terminal programs do not get to choose what font is used.

So the "best" it could do is bundle the font file, but then you would still have to configure your terminal to use it. At that point, it's easier to just tell you you need a nerd font and link to their repo.

That being said, I kind of agree that, since NerdFonts are pretty good and by now quite widespread, it wouldn't be a bad idea for major distros to patch their default monospace fonts so that you get NerdFonts out of the box in the default terminal.

But, in general, if you go out of your way to install a different terminal emulator, it's unlikely you'd have much trouble changing its font anyway; still, getting everything to look nice and pretty is sometimes harder, so I suppose wezterm is commendable for including fonts and colorschemes.

(The above really mostly applies to fonts as they are an additional dependency and also highly dependent on user preference. For pretty much everything else I agree that good defaults are under-emphasized in CLI/TUI utilities. Probably because options usually get added incrementally and breaking historical defaults is not a good idea.)