<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: swalladge</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=swalladge</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Sun, 24 May 2026 20:06:36 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=swalladge" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by swalladge in "How to write a Git commit message (2014)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> I prefer Github's method of "git commit messages don't matter, pull requests do".<p>This is a bad idea unless it works well for your specific company workflows and you don't care about the future possibility of changing platforms.<p>Git repos are designed to be self contained, decentralised, and offline-first.  If you only care about how things look on github, then the repo will have poor usability outside of github - ie. on your workstation, in your local git tools, on a repo mirror, etc.<p>Git commits can be a powerful tool for understanding code if the messages are useful.  They are immediately accessible through local tools and can quickly add context to a block of code without breaking immersion.  But that immersion is broken as soon as you hit a commit messages like "Merge pull request #123" or "fix bugs".</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 26 Apr 2022 23:55:26 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31174650</link><dc:creator>swalladge</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31174650</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31174650</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by swalladge in "Remind – a sophisticated calendar and alarm program"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Remind was released in 1996.  GPL3 was released in 2007. ;)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 31 Aug 2021 06:17:50 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28364526</link><dc:creator>swalladge</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28364526</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28364526</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by swalladge in "Going mouseless"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I would still argue in these cases that the site shouldn't override the built-in keybinds.  Maybe a custom search field/button, and maybe a custom keybind.  But when I press  Ctrl+F, I always want the same type of search to be initiated.  Otherwise, there is no consistency, and efficiency suffers.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 09 Aug 2021 22:58:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28123355</link><dc:creator>swalladge</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28123355</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28123355</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by swalladge in "Going mouseless"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> Unfortunately this is broken on the "modern" web as many web pages "helpfully" override the "/" key<p>Argh this kind of thing makes me really cross.  So many sites seem to feel the need to reimplement things that are already part of most browsers or even in the spec.  It's not just overridng default shortcuts, but custom context/rightclick menus, custom 'links' (where clicking them runs javascript code to window.open, instead of being a real link), custom form fields that advertise 'excellent accessibility', where the fields would have been accessible anyway if they didn't decide to reimplement them, disabling text selection, overriding focus styles because the accessible styles 'look ugly' ... the 'modern' web is pain.<p>Anyway, this wasn't going to be a rant.  My point was going to be that consistency is key.  Your comment on '"Ctrl+F" instead as I'm too scared to try "/" now' really resonated with me, because I've thought about this before.  I've found that a feature or shortcut is only useful if it's consistent.  I can't build muscle memory or be confident using a feature if it only works 90% of the time. Or even 99%.<p>I've tried tridacyl and other vim-style plugins for browsers several times in the past, but always end up uninstalling them in disappointment, because it's not possible to have a consistent experience.  99% of the time it works perfectly, but then there are the handful of sites or browser specific pages (eg. about: or view-source:) where it doesn't work at all, or doesn't work consistently so one must disable it.  Then muscle memory totally breaks; you need to learn two sets of keybindings for the same context, and that introduces a hesitation for every keypress, which kills speed and enjoyment.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 04 Aug 2021 12:15:40 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28060080</link><dc:creator>swalladge</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28060080</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28060080</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by swalladge in "If someone’s having to read your docs, it’s not “simple”"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I've had a draft for a similar post lying around for a long time too - this would be about the word "just".  It's used too often to undervalue work (just a hobby project, just a webapp...) or be misleading about the complexity of things (just set the dns entry, just solve the halting problem).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 09 Jun 2021 23:58:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27455010</link><dc:creator>swalladge</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27455010</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27455010</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by swalladge in "Ppl: The command line address book"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I've been using abook [1], which is very old software but is fast, simple, stores data in plain text, and can export to vcard when needed.<p>[1]: <a href="https://abook.sourceforge.io/" rel="nofollow">https://abook.sourceforge.io/</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 08 Jun 2021 22:56:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27442158</link><dc:creator>swalladge</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27442158</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27442158</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by swalladge in "Behind the design of the fresh new Firefox coming June 1"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I agree.  I'm still waiting for completion of the wayland support tracking ticket [1] that was opened a decade ago.<p>[1]: <a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=635134" rel="nofollow">https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=635134</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 25 May 2021 05:57:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27273235</link><dc:creator>swalladge</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27273235</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27273235</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by swalladge in "A Way to Manage Dotfiles"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Any love for rcm [1]?  I settled on this after trying many dotfiles systems - works for me with just the right feature set.  I don't often see it mentioned on dotfiles discussions online though.<p>[1]: <a href="https://github.com/thoughtbot/rcm" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/thoughtbot/rcm</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 12 May 2021 23:20:41 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27136411</link><dc:creator>swalladge</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27136411</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27136411</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by swalladge in "‘Counter Strike’ Bug Allows Hackers to Take over a PC with a Steam Invite"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Thank you for firejail!  I use it to sandbox Zoom, which is one of the few proprietary tools I need to use for work, and it works perfectly.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 14 Apr 2021 00:56:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26801700</link><dc:creator>swalladge</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26801700</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26801700</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by swalladge in "‘Counter Strike’ Bug Allows Hackers to Take over a PC with a Steam Invite"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>They actually do have sandboxing which would help. I'm not sure of the full extent though. See:<p>- <a href="https://snapcraft.io/docs/security-sandboxing" rel="nofollow">https://snapcraft.io/docs/security-sandboxing</a><p>- <a href="https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/sandbox-permissions.html" rel="nofollow">https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/sandbox-permissions.html</a><p>However, in my (limited) experience, apps that actually do a lot of things have most of the sandbox features disabled anyway (network, disk access, etc.).<p>Note that AppImage is similar, but contains no sandboxing.<p>I've taken to running steam and other untrusted software under a separate user account.  It's probably not ideal, and it's annoying to switch accounts to use certain software. But at least it may help limit the damage if the software is hacked as everything is contained within the throwaway account.<p>I'm sure one can do a lot better with selinux/apparmor/firejail, but it would probably take a lot of work to get it set up properly.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 14 Apr 2021 00:04:16 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26801300</link><dc:creator>swalladge</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26801300</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26801300</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by swalladge in "Vim-gh-line: Vim plugin to open the current line on GitHub"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Fugitive + rhurbarb is great!  I also use <a href="https://github.com/shumphrey/fugitive-gitlab.vim" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/shumphrey/fugitive-gitlab.vim</a> which extends :Gbrowse for gitlab repositories.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 24 Mar 2021 01:48:46 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26562614</link><dc:creator>swalladge</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26562614</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26562614</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Tracking Capital Gains with Hledger]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Article URL: <a href="https://www.swalladge.net/archives/2021/01/30/hledger-tracking-capital-gains/">https://www.swalladge.net/archives/2021/01/30/hledger-tracking-capital-gains/</a></p>
<p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25984236">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25984236</a></p>
<p>Points: 2</p>
<p># Comments: 0</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 01 Feb 2021 00:38:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://www.swalladge.net/archives/2021/01/30/hledger-tracking-capital-gains/</link><dc:creator>swalladge</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25984236</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25984236</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by swalladge in "My ISP Is Killing My Idle SSH Sessions"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>+1 to tmux, or even screen if you can't get tmux installed.<p>It also protects against flaky network connections and accidentally closing the local terminal emulator.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 12 Jan 2021 00:52:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25740742</link><dc:creator>swalladge</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25740742</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25740742</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by swalladge in "Humans are more closely related than we commonly think"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Relevant xkcd: <a href="https://xkcd.com/1545/" rel="nofollow">https://xkcd.com/1545/</a> (sorry) ;)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 06 Oct 2020 06:07:34 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24695116</link><dc:creator>swalladge</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24695116</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24695116</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by swalladge in "EU considers phasing out 1 and 2 cent coins"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>As an Australian, it also baffles me.  We withdrew 1 and 2 cent coins from circulation in 1992, and prices are simply rounded to the nearest 5c when paying with cash.  Maximum 3c difference per transaction, which averages out in the long run.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 05 Oct 2020 23:48:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24693360</link><dc:creator>swalladge</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24693360</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24693360</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by swalladge in "Emacs' Org-Mode and Syncthing = Perfect (2017)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>"Evil Mode: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Emacs" by Aaron Bieber is an interesting talk on switching from vim to emacs + org-mode.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWD1Fpdd4Pc" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWD1Fpdd4Pc</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 04 May 2020 16:56:40 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23070429</link><dc:creator>swalladge</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23070429</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23070429</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by swalladge in "Tmux for Mere Mortals"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> What this author has settled on looks very similar to commonly used tiling window manager shortcuts<p>This is what really intrigued me about the article. Most are about remapping the prefix to something easier to type, or using more intuitive mappings, but removing the prefix altogether is different.<p>I think I might try it for a while. I'm kind of in two minds - on one hand it shortens common actions from a chorded prefix + a chord to a single chord. On the other hand, it makes it easier to clash with existing keybindings and modifiers (readline default bindings use alt/meta and ctrl, my i3 config uses super, other cli apps use ctrl...). It also means I need 2 sets of muscle memory, because I use tmux in many servers and such where I don't have the opportunity to add custom config.<p>> I guess the funny thing is, this gives a nice bunch of Tmux shortcuts, unless you're using a tiling WM for your system , in which case this is hopeless<p>Unless you use a different modifier for the tiling wm actions - eg. I use super + <keys> to namespace i3 bindings, which leaves alt/meta free for readline and others.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 28 Apr 2020 07:07:47 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23004320</link><dc:creator>swalladge</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23004320</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23004320</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by swalladge in "I can't keep up with idiomatic Rust"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> If something I need is added to Rust 2018 or a later edition, I'll be forced to update or backport.<p>Should add that new editions with breaking changes are only expected to happen rarely (iirc every 3 years), a large difference to 6 weeks.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 09 Apr 2020 05:59:26 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22820183</link><dc:creator>swalladge</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22820183</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22820183</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by swalladge in "I can't keep up with idiomatic Rust"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> Wouldn't everyone be better off if that language was Rust itself, and people who don't want to write that "modern code" ... don't?<p>Agreed. The author's whole argument of not wanting "having to make these superficial changes again and again" doesn't make sense. There isn't any requirement for all code to follow the latest and greatest idioms. Rust guarantees backwards compatibility, and the author even acknowledges that in the article.<p>It would be pretty sad if the reason for no new features or syntax in Rust was due to programmers not wanting to feel like their code was no longer idiomatic.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 09 Apr 2020 05:57:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22820171</link><dc:creator>swalladge</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22820171</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22820171</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Goodbye PGP]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Article URL: <a href="https://www.swalladge.net/archives/2020/02/19/goodbye-pgp/">https://www.swalladge.net/archives/2020/02/19/goodbye-pgp/</a></p>
<p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22372055">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22372055</a></p>
<p>Points: 1</p>
<p># Comments: 2</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 20 Feb 2020 01:44:23 +0000</pubDate><link>https://www.swalladge.net/archives/2020/02/19/goodbye-pgp/</link><dc:creator>swalladge</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22372055</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22372055</guid></item></channel></rss>