That's been both a good and a bad in that on the one hand, I didn't have to relearn every key, but on the other, especially because I swap between middlemak on the external keyboard and qwerty on the built-ins I'm sometimes mistyping because the qwerty key is one key over from where the middlemak version is. But at least for how my brain works, having that familiarity made sticking with the learning curve a lot easier.

I also can't speak for how it feels on a "normal" staggered keyboard since I only use it on the ergodox but I don't have a reason to think it would feel worse. If it helps, this is the keymap I use on the ergodox[2].

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Middlemak/ [2]: https://configure.zsa.io/ergodox-ez-st/layouts/wzKWq/latest/...

For one, requiring an input parameter when it isn't mandatory would mean that you're spending cycles setting a register with a value that you don't need and is just going to be overwritten anyway. A good number of the CPUID calls never read from ECX, and if you're going to call any of them, then the value in ECX is irrelevant. And sure, it's only an extra instruction or two, but presumably if you're dropping down to inline assembly, you kind of care about every wasted instruction.

Again, this seems to me like it should be a perfectly valid assembly template (based on https://www.felixcloutier.com/x86/cpuid):

    // Returns the maximum input value for basic CPUID information
    cpu_extended_feature_flags :: asm() -> (a, b, c, d: u32) [
        a = %eax,
        b = %ebx,
        c = %ecx,
        d = %edx,
    ] {
        mov %eax 0x0
        cpuid
    }

https://github.com/odin-lang/Odin/blob/4247507dd5e31c9fd8716...

But I'm also not entirely sure why the example should not have compiled. It seems to me that the idea here is to be able to define a typed set of something equivalent to a function that inlines some assembly, but nothing about that inherently requires that the number of input or output parameters to the template match the parameters in the underlying assembly calls. There's no reason (in my mind anyway) why this shouldn't be a perfectly valid template:

    // Returns the extended feature flags obtained by calling CPUID
    // with EAX=7 and ECX=1
    cpu_extended_feature_flags :: asm() -> (a, b, c, d: u32) [
        a = %eax,
        b = %ebx,
        c = %ecx,
        d = %edx,
    ] {
        mov %eax 0x7
        mov %ecx 0x1
        cpuid
    }

    Start with the Declaration. Mr. Atkins’s most concrete 
    evidence is Jefferson’s well-worn copy of “The Wealth 
    of Nations.” But the Monticello source cited in his own 
    footnote reports that Jefferson acquired the book while 
    serving in France between 1784 and 1789, at least eight 
    years after he drafted the Declaration. Jefferson may 
    have encountered Smith’s ideas before 1776, but there 
    is no evidence that “The Wealth of Nations” shaped the 
    Declaration. 

    At the heart of our Founding Fathers’ revolution stood 
    an idea—one that found its fullest expression in two 
    fateful documents, crafted an ocean apart but together 
    in time in 1776: one penned in the summer heat of 
    Philadelphia, the other in the intellectual winds of 
    Edinburgh. 
    ...
    The authors never met, yet their ideas were 
    inseparable, and their contemporaneous works rested on 
    the same conviction: trust the individual, not the 
    institution.

The closest thing said in the speech that could be read as "the Declaration of Independence was inspired by The Wealth of Nations" is the next section of the speech:

    Thomas Jefferson was no stranger to Adam Smith’s 
    philosophy—he was, in fact, a student of it, evidenced 
    by the well-worn copy of The Wealth of Nations 
    contained in his library, from which he gleaned wisdom 
    that he shared freely with friends and correspondents.
    
    It is little wonder, then, that our founding documents, 
    in many respects, reflect Smith’s central themes that 
    were debated at the time: that government must not grow 
    infinitely.

It is really frustrating to me that aggressively hostile readings of things has become such a normal way of writing rebuttals in modern discourse. There is so much to criticize in how the government is run that we don't need to be wasting our time and energy rebutting things that haven't even been said.

This is effectively how all federal sentencing and reporting about that sentencing works, all the time. A lawyer blogger Popehat has talked about this for years[1]. Headlines pull add up all charges and the maximum statutory sentences for those and report it as if that's even remotely close to a likely outcome and it's not. In fact, Popehat actually wrote about that as it applied to Swartz in the aftermath of his suicide[2].

    If you read about the Swartz prosecution, you saw people decrying the fact 
    that he was facing 35 years in prison. That's more than rapists and murders
    serve, they say. But they are talking about the maximum possible sentences, 
    not any sentence he was remotely likely to get. Recently in the context of 
    another case I explained how federal sentencing works, and how it's driven by 
    an arcane set of rules producing a recommendation that federal judges often 
    follow — rules that on most occasions produce a result well below the 
    maximum possible sentence.

[1]: https://www.popehat.com/p/beware-the-flood-of-trump-sentenci...

[2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20150604204913/http://www.popeha...

But what is the actual actionable result we want? That's what I'm asking. There's a lot of anger around all of this, and this isn't the first time we've seen this comparison to Aaron Swartz in all the discourse around that. But these sorts of angry "look at the hypocrisy" rants all seem very muddled in what they're asking for. Because on the one hand they're saying that this prosecution was an injustice and should never have happened, but on the other hand they seem to be asking for similar prosecutions and consequences in different cases where the defendant isn't as popular or likable. When we say we want Zuckerberg to "bear some personal responsibility for the consequences" in respect to meta potentially violating copyright, are we asking for him to be prosecuted like Swartz was? Are we asking for him to be personally sued by publishers instead of them suing Meta? And what is the outcome from this "personal responsibility" that we want? If we're asking for him to be prosecuted, are we asking for that because we actually think he should be convicted, and thus also saying we think Swartz' prosecution was justified? Or are we wanting prosecution for something we don't actually think is a crime, because we want to inflict some form of indirect and symbolic revenge on Zuckerberg for the multitude of other reasons we don't like him?

We should absolutely invoke the injustice that was the Swartz prosecution. What I don't think we should be doing is invoking it as some sort of vague demand for more prosecutions of that type against "the right people".

Or do we think that the prosecution was correct, apologize ourselves for any protests we might have voiced against the prosecution and demand similar prosecution of Meta and everyone who continues to torrent “Linux ISOs”?

Personally I agree that the prosecution was unjust, and so I find it to be a good thing that the stranglehold of excessive copyright is being weakened by the new AI moment. But that also why I find the sudden turn to copyright maximalism that seems to have taken over large parts of the tech industry so baffling. Why are we wasting our time pretending we want Meta prosecuted rather than spending our efforts ensuring that all these products that come out of this massive blending of human creative outputs are owned collectively by us all with no such recourse to the same copyright laws that they so valiantly shattered?

I wonder how much dislike around working in offices is less because working in an office is such a terrible experience vs working in a specific office for a company that doesn't care about their employee work environment is a terrible experience. I worked at a place for a brief window that made Initech look like a 5 star hotel, and if I had to work there every day, I might hate RTO too even though I found during the pandemic I didn't like WFH nearly as much as I thought I would.

So maybe "Anyone who's in leadership and wanting their employees to RTO should be ashamed of the fact that anyone could produce a list of grievances that long about working in their office"

This is a bigger thing I think than most people realize. Before the pandemic I worked for a company that had a flexible policy of allowing people to work from home for the sake of work life balance (e.g. contractors, kid's recitals etc), but not an official "hybrid" policy for a fixed number of days remote. When the pandemic first hit, made it very clear when they sent everyone home that they wanted to get us back to the office as soon as it was safe to do so. When things started to open up again, they asked people to start voluntarily coming in to the office 2-3 days a week. And yet, the entire time they had that ask in place, every time I was in the office, I could probably have counted on one hand the number of people in the office on my floor and from everyone else I talked to who came in, it was the same every day. And I fully admit to being a part of that problem. But since people didn't do what was asked of them for a hybrid system, it seems obvious then that the company would insist then that everyone come back to the office full time. I really do believe that we would have ended with a hybrid system had people actually showed up on a fairly regular basis, but without people showing up, it became a negative feedback loop where people would show up less and less because every time they did, it was just remote work, but from the office.

It also probably didn't help that we had so many people all over every social media network (including HN here) bragging about how much they were doing during their work hours that was anything other than the work they were being paid to do. If you start broadcasting to the world how you're only giving your employer 4 hours a day out of the 8 hours they're paying you for when you're working from home, it should be unsurprising that they decide they can't trust people to work from home and insist they come back to the office.

All that to say, like everything in life, remote work is a trade off.

I guess if your office is really awful or your commute is ridiculously long it might be better. But all the talk you see about why working at an office is so bad for people's productivity cite the noise, distractions, unrelated chatter etc. Co-working spaces filled with people who aren't even on your team, coffee shops filled with angry customers and stay at home parents toting their toddlers and parks full of barking dogs and biting insects seem like they would all be their own cacophony of distractions and noises to rival even some of the worst open office plans.

Also at least around where I am, co-working spaces cost between $100-500 / month, and the coffee at the coffee shops while better than what is at the office is also $3-5 a cup. The parks are admittedly free, but the ergonomics of the tree trunk and root system leave a little to be desired. I'm sure it works for some people, but if I'm not spending my day working on my front porch in the sun with my dog, I think I'd rather be in the office instead of in the corner of a local coffee shop.

I'm a big fan of flexibility, and certainly think companies should do their best to treat their employees as adults and let them do what works best for them and their teams. But it is really weird to me to watch an industry that has spent years trying to convince companies that hiring off-shore remote workers had all sorts of negative externalities on team cohesion and the development process suddenly fall head over heals in love with the idea of all companies going all in on "off-shore remote workers".

We all know networking is an important part of your career. As an introvert, networking is a lot easier when I'm in a space where people already are and I can be seen, even if I'm not always being heard. And when I am heard in the office, it's usually among small groups of people, maybe 10 or less. Having to network by being actively visible and speaking in big open channels with 2-3 different teams and a few layers of management all watching, that's terrifying as an introvert but that's also how most companies run their chat systems because otherwise everyone has hundreds of channels that they have to keep track of and remember whose in what places and copy discussions around. Since it's easier just to have massive groups of people in one channel and have everyone use the larger channels most of the time, being remote and on slack is actually far more draining to me as an introvert. I also do best keeping tabs with what's going on when I can keep one ear on the other things going on around me instead of having to stop what I'm doing and intentionally scroll through pages and pages of slack messages.

And yes, because I'm introverted, being in person with a team of people that includes extroverts means I get human social connections that I need and would otherwise not seek out because, again I'm an introvert.

And I found that going for a walk or something like that to replace the commute didn't have the same effect, for a number of reasons. There was the mental hurdle of forcing myself to try taking the walk instead of going straight from A to B since I was already there. There was the fact that while I could try to flush home concerns from my mind on the walk, coming back to my home where all those home concerns are right there for me to notice when I walk through the door meant that all that mental flushing was for naught.

Now I admit that I am fortunate enough to have a commute where I'm rarely in bumper to bumper traffic, and it's less than a 30 minute drive. But at least for me, a commute is a vital part of my work routine.

But everything else would be so much simpler and better for most of the things I do if it could just be a normal box with normal software.

In theory I could build that experience with nothing but bare EC2 instances. But once you’re in AWS, they make using their managed things so tempting that convincing everyone else to not use them is an even bigger battle.

Look, I won't deny that like the dot-com bubble and the "cloud" hype of years before that there isn't overhyping and forcing going on. But this feels to me a lot like someone in the mid 90's looking at this "internet" thing and thinking it's all a fad being pushed on us by computer nerds. I'm not saying every company and every attempt to stuff "AI" into everything is going to be some revolution that will stick with us forever, but neither were a lot of early online providers. But like I said, AI is infrastructure, and people are going to figure out how to build things on top of it that will become integrated and standard parts of our lives, just like computers, the internet and the cloud are all today.