Hacker News: mcookly

New comment by mcookly in "The open-plan office is a terrible idea (2018)"

mcookly — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 13:19:12 +0000

Cal Newport lays out a pretty good criticism of these types of offices in Deep Work.

New comment by mcookly in "Topologist's Map of the World"

mcookly — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 12:02:40 +0000

This is super cool. I'd love to see it in a vintage style like that of old T-O maps!

New comment by mcookly in "The creator of Jujutsu has joined ERSC"

mcookly — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 11:57:07 +0000

Would the CLA makes it easier to move away from Google and transfer the ownership to a new organization (if Google is willing)?

New comment by mcookly in "Apple Maps Changes Lake Ontario to Lake America After Trump Order"

mcookly — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 11:38:37 +0000

That was fast.

In these situations, what do OSM and the like do? Add an alternative name? Ignore the change?

New comment by mcookly in "Firefox 155.0"

mcookly — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 18:12:36 +0000

> Very interesting change. I’ve yet to see CSS more than 20 levels deep. Good to put a stop to such insanity.

I wonder what made them attempt to support such deep nesting in the first place.

New comment by mcookly in "Morrow, a social network where you build your own feed"

mcookly — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 17:49:02 +0000

If suggestion algorithms cannot be swayed by payment, sponsorship etc., people will probably try to boost visibility via numbers (i.e. bots). I wonder whether such a website would benefit from the invite-only model of lobste.rs.

New comment by mcookly in "Firefox 155.0"

mcookly — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 15:24:17 +0000

> I’d pick Edge, if I had to pick either, after this experience

Doesn't Edge have the same problem?

New comment by mcookly in "Tim Cook Sold Out Steve Jobs (2025)"

mcookly — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 14:51:56 +0000

For people who use the phone for everything, this is great. But I hope we will start to see at least some smaller options return to the market for those who just want a simple communication device / have small hands.

I recently booted up an old Samsung S10, and the size is just chef's kiss.

New comment by mcookly in "Lion-man"

mcookly — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 13:44:38 +0000

It's probably because, unfortunately, anthropologists don't play much.

New comment by mcookly in "Emacs 31.1 will release on 8/24"

mcookly — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 12:56:41 +0000

30.2 is the currect release, but I expect that it will be updated shortly after Emacs 31.1 is officially released. If you're _really_ impatient, it seems that there are nightly builds here: <https://emacsformacos.com/builds>.

New comment by mcookly in "Emacs 31.1 will release on 8/24"

mcookly — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 11:24:31 +0000

Agreed! I've been building from source for now, and I can't wait to return to the MacPorts version as soon as it is available.

New comment by mcookly in "Emacs 31.1 will release on 8/24"

mcookly — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 10:55:21 +0000

For those who use Emacs on macOS, I highly recommend upgrading to 31.1 ASAP since several memory leaks have been fixed by Przemysław Alexander Kamiński [1] et al.

[1]: Author of "Emacs: The macOS Bug" (<https://xlii.space/eng/emacs-the-macos-bug/>), which surfaced on HN some time ago.

New comment by mcookly in "Defeating Git Rigour Fatigue with Jujutsu"

mcookly — Sun, 24 May 2026 21:48:19 +0000

I'm not an expert in Magit by any means, but I bet there's a way to accomplish this in only a few keystrokes.

New comment by mcookly in "The Emacsification of Software"

mcookly — Thu, 14 May 2026 19:16:59 +0000

I've often wondered when Emacs would become the term used to describe hyper-personalized software. While it is true that LLMs give access to software that fits like a glove, it seems to me that there is still a glaring difference -- at least when one looks at GNU Emacs: a shared software tradition. To my knowledge [1], LLMs don't provide that.

Maybe it's best to call this movement in LLM-generated software "software individualism" rather than "personal software"?

[1] I don't know much as I haven't vibecoded before, and my .emacs is painfully crafted by hand.

New comment by mcookly in "Reimagining the mouse pointer for the AI era"

mcookly — Tue, 12 May 2026 18:44:11 +0000

I wonder what sort of monstrous power would be unleashed if Google used Plan9 as a foundation.

New comment by mcookly in "RaTeX: KaTeX-compatible LaTeX rendering engine in pure Rust"

mcookly — Fri, 08 May 2026 01:58:26 +0000

I agree re. LaTeX. I've tried Typst for some complex projects, and it's just not quite there yet. ConTeXt on the other hand ... chef's kiss.

New comment by mcookly in "The Vatican's Website in Latin"

mcookly — Thu, 07 May 2026 02:31:48 +0000

I've heard the same re. the Irish.

Regarding the Novus Ordo, I believe that the key document from Vatican II (Sacrosanctum Concilium) still preferred Latin as the dominant language in liturgy, while readings etc. stayed in the vernacular, but clearly that is not what happened.

There's been an uptick in numbers for Tridentine Rite, so tides might shift back as Catholics realize the wealth of their liturgical tradition.

New comment by mcookly in "The Vatican's Website in Latin"

mcookly — Thu, 07 May 2026 02:25:04 +0000

Thanks for sharing this! My wife and I have been interested in refreshing our Latin from high school, and we've been looking for good resources.

We've also toyed with the idea of learning it as a living language, which seems to be an increasingly-popular method among autodidacts these days.

New comment by mcookly in "The text mode lie: why modern TUIs are a nightmare for accessibility"

mcookly — Mon, 04 May 2026 12:40:22 +0000

Emacs is a seemingly [0] excellent compromise between modern TUIs and accessibility since it keeps the text-centric paradigm but allows for much cleaner accessibility. [1]

[0]: I do not need any accessibility features myself.

[1]: https://diesenbacher.net/blog/entries/speaking-emacs.html

New comment by mcookly in "The Gregorio project – GPL tools for typesetting Gregorian chant"

mcookly — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 19:14:22 +0000

> Around 15 years ago I would typeset orders of service in tex for our college chapel

Your chapel was very fortunate.