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xbryanx commented on Start all of your commands with a comma (2009)   rhodesmill.org/brandon/20... · Posted by u/theblazehen
bayindirh · 19 hours ago
Looked so backwards to me, too. However, I decided to give it a go, anyway. Now, I have some scripts and small commands which start with a comma, and it looks neat and time saving.

Yes, I can do path ordering to override usual commands. However, having a set of odd-job scripts which start with a comma gives a nice namespacing capability alongside a well narrowed-down tab-completion experience.

While it's not the neatest thing around, it works surprisingly well.

Another idea which looks useless until you start using is text expanders (i.e.: Espanso and TextExpander).

xbryanx · 19 hours ago
Love Alfred Snippets for this same text expander need.
xbryanx commented on Gemini CLI tips and tricks for agentic coding   github.com/addyosmani/gem... · Posted by u/ayoisaiah
xbryanx · 2 months ago
It would/will be interesting to see this modified to include Antigravity alongside Gemini CLI.
xbryanx commented on At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says   nytimes.com/2025/07/10/wo... · Posted by u/xbryanx
lanfeust6 · 7 months ago
"damaging", in no quantifiable way whatsoever. It's just the euphemism treadmill at work, nothing more.
xbryanx · 7 months ago
> in no quantifiable way whatsoever

You may disagree with my assertion, but there has been considerable research into the role of media and reporting in suicide, indicating that contagion is real and that words matter when reporting on these issues.

Source: https://reportingonsuicide.org/research/

xbryanx commented on At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says   nytimes.com/2025/07/10/wo... · Posted by u/xbryanx
mike_hearn · 7 months ago
To the NY Times: please don't say they died by suicide. The passive voice makes it sound like some act of God, something regrettable but unavoidable that just somehow happened. It's important not to sugarcoat what happened: the postmasters killed themselves because the British state was imprisoning them for crimes they didn't commit, based on evidence from a buggy financial accounting system. Don't blur the details of what happened by making it sound like a natural disaster.

Horizon is the case that should replace Therac-25 as a study in what can go wrong if software developers screw up. Therac-25 injured/killed six people, Horizon has ruined hundreds of lives and ended dozens. And the horrifying thing is, Horizon wasn't something anyone would have previously identified as safety-critical software. It was just an ordinary point-of-sale and accounting system. The suicides weren't directly caused by the software, but from an out of control justice and social system in which people blindly believed in public institutions that were actually engaged in a massive deep state cover-up.

It is reasonable to blame the suicides on the legal and political system that allowed the Post Office to act in that way, and which put such low quality people in charge. Perhaps also on the software engineer who testified repeatedly under oath that the system worked fine, even as the bug tracker filled up with cases where it didn't. But this is HN, so from a software engineering perspective what can be learned?

Some glitches were of their time and wouldn't occur these days, e.g. malfunctions in resistive touch screens that caused random clicks on POS screens to occur overnight. But most were bugs due to loss of transactionality or lack of proper auditing controls. Think message replays lacking proper idempotency, things like that. Transactions were logged that never really occurred, and when the cash was counted some appeared to be missing, so the Post Office accused the postmasters of stealing from the business. They hadn't done so, but this took place over decades, and decades ago people had more faith in institutions than they do now. And these post offices were often in small villages where the post office was the center of the community, so the false allegations against postmasters were devastating to their social and business lives.

Put simply - check your transactions! And make sure developers can't rewrite databases in prod.

xbryanx · 7 months ago
> please don't say they died by suicide

I encourage you to read the current thinking on this evolving language, which offers some explanation as to why we're moving away from damaging language like "committing" suicide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_terminology#%22Committ...https://www.iasp.info/languageguidelines/

xbryanx commented on Japan Post launches 'digital address' system   japantimes.co.jp/business... · Posted by u/jmsflknr
762236 · 8 months ago
Everyone's got an address in the world-wide plus-code system, and they're used for deliveries in many countries: maps.google.com/pluscodes/
xbryanx · 8 months ago
How do plus codes handle elevations(floors) or rooms within a building? It seems that the Japan Post system allows for this.

u/xbryanx

KarmaCake day3724January 26, 2010
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I work with science and technology in a museum.

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/bkennedy; my proof: https://keybase.io/bkennedy/sigs/hB1QbBEeJ234UW-FvdLpTrZh3AR7bo6zpSHc4YZUQ4w ]

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