blog.izs.me

Today the Node.js and JS Foundations announced an intent to merge.

tl;dr – This is a good thing. I’m psyched.

The JavaScript community is a big and diverse group of people, doing lots of stuff. Most companies in the world use JavaScript, and at npm, we have a unique view into the shape and scope of this ecosystem.

The overwhelming majority of JavaScript users are people making websites, using modern frameworks, and tooling built in Node.js. They are trying to get a job done, and they want streamlined tools that make them more able to do their jobs. Many of them are not what we might have thought of as “Node Devs” a few years ago (though many are). Their websites run on every back-end platform, including but not limited to Node.js, and they all have to ship a website to browsers, which means JavaScript. Node.js is the dominant platform for building the tools for doing this, and npm is the place where platforms, modules, and tooling are distributed and shared.

A split between “back-end” and “front-end” JavaScript makes less and less sense in light of the way that this community has grown over the last 9 years since Node.js was released. (Wow, has it really been that long? Time flies.) A fast-growing community means that most of the people writing websites, using Node.js-powered tooling and pulling libraries and frameworks from npm, have only been doing it for less than 2 years. The split may have felt normal to those of us involved in 2009, but it seems unnatural and awkward to most working in the field today. It’s just JavaScript. It runs on servers, and on the command line, and in browsers, and you use npm and a bunch of other tools it provides. Is “babel” a front-end tool or a back-end tool? Why are there two groups, when it’s mostly the same people?

Node.js getting more integrated with the broader JS community means that the project can more effectively advocate for server-side use cases, and can get better feedback from those who are depending on Node.js to power the tools they use to ship websites.

As one of the companies at the center of JavaScript development, we at npm are thrilled to see the two major JavaScript foundations joining forces to provide a forum for the entire Open Source JavaScript community. Consistency of governance, processes, and policies can make it easier for devs in disparate JavaScript projects to collaborate and coordinate, removing an unnecessary barrier to innovation. Both foundations now have an established history of iterating on their processes. I hope that this new shift provides a chance to retrospect on what worked, what didn’t work, and what can be improved by working together.

On a personal note, I got involved with Node.js in the first place because I wanted to live in a world where front-end, back-end, tooling, and infrastructure coding did not require constantly shifting my brain around to a whole new language. I couldn’t have predicted how npm would become so relevant to the world of web development, and it’s more than I would have thought to hope for. There’s a lot of open questions about what exactly a merged foundation will look like, but I’m very happy to see things move in this direction.

Bookends

2018-06-08T21:04:56Z

Content warning: suicide. I wrote this in January of 2014.

We don’t often notice the difference between one day and the next in our memory. A year blends together. As you get more distance, a block of similar years become a single unit, characterized by a specific flavor of scenery, people, and feelings.

The cracks in the sidewalk that I’d avoid stepping on as I crossed the bridge over Fitch street on my way to class. The girl I smiled at walking over that bridge, and the months of passionate sex and breakups that smile unleashed. The cheap limitless terrible food at Conn Hall. The drudgery of debugging printers for professors so I could pay my rent. Winters where stepping the wrong way on a sheet of ice plunged me ankle deep into brown slush. The insufferable New Haven towing racket and incredible pizza.

And then, in a flash, the channel changes.

Suddenly it’s palm trees and vacuum cleaners, then Yahoo! and JavaScript. A terrible marriage and a happy divorce. Then it flips again, to Joyent and Node and bart and biking. Speaking at conferences. Open source, buzzwords and business cards. My arrival as an internet personality. Marisa.

It’s blatant in hindsight, but I usually don’t see it coming. Some changes are complete and total, marking a brand new lifetime with each transition. I’m not sure I’m the same person as a few versions ago. Every line has been edited, every vision altered.

This most recent shift, though… I saw this one coming. Or at least, I saw one side of the book mark.

I prepared the transition to be as smooth as possible. I recruited allies, and trained a successor. Now was the time. I didn’t know what exactly would be showing on the new channel, but I knew that a change was coming, and I wanted to make sure it’d be good. This idea of book marks was going to be my Pastry Box contribution. I had thought it all out.

I had no idea.

On Christmas eve, I sat in a thai restaurant with my friend. Luke, who makes jokes, and travels the world, and works on npm. By the end of 2013 we hung out about weekly or more, to eat and chat and laugh. We had met at Taco Conf a few years prior, where he told me that he wanted to move to Oakland to hang out with the Node people. He did that. We clicked well. He watched my cats once. I recommended him to Yahoo.

The day before that dinner, Luke had written a note. We complained about the holidays a bit, and shared Kao Nam Tod. It didn’t seem weird to me that he was in town. After all, I was also. I knew he was from upstate New York, but he didn’t ever talk about his family there. I don’t know if I ever talked about my family much either. Just never came up. We reminisced about New England winters and how much nicer California is. We talked about how horrible the holidays are, and about business and dating and the future.

A few days later, I went out of town to visit family. The trip was too long by a day. At the end we were all eager to get back to our lives. I came back on New Year’s Eve. I sent Luke a message the next morning, telling him that relatives had given me some cat toys, because they don’t know how fat and lazy my cats are. Maybe his kitten could attack them, instead of attacking his face, like it usually did.

It was still early. I figured he’d get it when he got up. I could bring them by. I was working on npm that day. The new startup. The Book Mark. Everything was going great. I was looking forward to telling him about the latest developments.

I got a message from Luke at 4:15 in the afternoon. Before seeing what it said, it reminded me that I hadn’t had lunch yet, and hadn’t seen him in a week, which was a perfect coincidence. I was going to suggest Xolos. His message asked, “Could you share this publicly or privately in a few hours or so?” A link to the note that he wrote on Christmas Eve Eve.

Oh no. Wait. Where are you, I’m going there now. I’m coming to your house. 911. Call Mikeal. Call Dustin. Tell Marisa to bring the car back home, we have to go, now.

We met the police at his apartment. The key was where he said it’d be, and there was food and water for his kitten. Calling, again and again, it rings 4 times, and then voicemail. iMessages delivered, but no response.

5:09, another buzz in my pocket. “I’ve finally built up the courage to do it. Thanks again.”

Calling. Straight to voicemail.

He said he’d been hiding for years, that he was tired of pretending, tired of masking his pain. It wasn’t a statement, it was a choice, an expedient escape from his medical problem.

We didn’t know where he went. Searched everything, everywhere. Yahoo hired an investigator. The police were beyond useless. Clues pointed to a bridge, most likely the Golden Gate. Coast Guard didn’t have any John Does.

He slipped through my fingers like smoke. He’d reached out to me. I didn’t save him.

That week, I learned a lot about Luke’s history, things he never told any of us. I learned about his family, his past, his friends. I talked to his mother and sisters. Eyeballs deep in other people’s shit, the unexpected executor of my friend’s farewell. I frantically invaded his privacy, tried to find anything that could give me some hope, some clue, some rock I could turn over that he’d pop out from under.

For a while some hoped that he was faking. He’d fled to Asia or Africa on some manic adventure, played a joke on all of us. At 5:09 on New Year’s Day, I lost my hope. He wasn’t joking. Luke’s jokes are funny, and clever, and often offensive. His note was calm, resigned, touching. If he had been crying for help, we would’ve been able to help him. He was smart. He knew what he was doing. He was doing it for himself, not for anyone else.

I waited for permission to grieve. I told everyone else that we can’t give up hope until they find a body. But that was a lie, and I wasn’t fooled. I passed along the flyers, in a gesture of mourning.

In December, I’d hoped that this phase shift would be marked by the change of job roles, and in the fullness of time, maybe it will be. But overlaid on that is the turbulent border between the part of my life where my friend Luke existed, and the part where he was abruptly and permanently gone.

npm Pride 2018 Shirts

2018-06-01T18:06:27Z

npm loves everyone!

Just like last year, npm team’s Pride shirts available to all, with help from our friends at &yet and Teespring. Select your favorite design from the pictures below and click through for types and sizes — or collect them all! — and 100% of proceeds will benefit The Trevor Project.

Heads up! The timer on each Teespring page resets every three days when an order goes out — these shirts will be available indefinitely.

Are we missing a design? Reach out and let us know!

npm Acquires ^Lift Security and Node Security Platform

2018-04-10T16:55:49Z

Today, we’re excited to announce that npm, Inc. has acquired the team and assets of ^Lift Security, including their work on the Node Security Platform. Adam Baldwin and his team have joined npm to work full time on keeping the npm Registry and npm applications safe, and to develop new products to help developers and their companies securely develop JavaScript.

We go way back

^Lift Security has been working with npm longer than npm, Inc. has been a company. They review npm’s own code to ensure it’s safe before we take it live, and conduct periodic security audits, including penetration tests of our services. Most prominently, their Node Security Platform has become a definitive catalogue of JavaScript vulnerabilities for developers and security vendors.

npm is where the Node Security Platform belongs. All NSP users are npm users, and the security of open source code is core to npm’s mission. By combining our resources, we can deliver a continuous approach to security at scale, empowering millions of developers to build more secure code.

As one team, we’ll continue keeping the Registry safe, and develop new ways to help individuals and companies understand and trust the JavaScript code that they write and share.

Watch this space

Today’s announcement is the first in a series of strategic security initiatives we’ll be announcing in coming weeks. In conjunction with the next version of npm, shipping with Node.js version 10, we’ll introduce a series of new security features available to every npm user, directly integrated into the npmjs.com registry and the npm command line tool. Soon, we’ll also introduce a series of security products specifically tailored to the unique requirements of corporate developers and enterprises.

Security is everyone’s responsibility (including yours).

Security is the responsibility of every part of an organization. It needs to be intermixed with engineering, operations, and application development. npm is at the center of these workflows, so we are uniquely positioned to help you secure your code.

We know that the safety of the code you use is important to you, whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned expert. Together, we’ll ensure that the world’s largest community of software developers is also its safest.

2018-03-28T19:17:16Z

stimmystuffs:

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bgiyx_ohoX7/?taken-by=tastemade_japan

Bundt Lasagna. Yes. This is brilliant. I need to do this.

2017-10-31T21:29:13Z

webcomicname:

reblog if you are the offspring of older humans

Protect your npm account with two-factor authentication and read-only tokens

2017-10-05T18:40:27Z

UPDATE: To try out TFA, you’ll need the beta of the npm client. To get it, run `npm install npm@next -g`.

Today, we are announcing two new ways to protect your npm account. Please read on to learn how you can use these security features to keep your code safe and increase everyone’s trust in the more than 550,000 packages of code in the npm Registry.

Two-factor authentication (2FA)

Now, you can sync your npm account with an authentication application like Google Authenticator or Authy. When you log in, you’ll be prompted for a single-use numeric code generated by the app.

2FA is another layer of defense for your account, preventing third parties from altering your code even if they steal or guess your credentials. This is one of the easiest and most important ways to ensure that only you can access to your npm account.

Read-only tokens

If your continuous integration / continuous deployment (CI/CD) workflow includes linking your npm account to tools like Travis CI with authentication tokens, you can now create read-only tokens for tools that don’t need to publish. You can also restrict tokens to work from only specified ranges of IP addresses.

Even if your token is compromised — for example, if you accidentally commit it to GitHub — no one else can alter your code, and only authorized CI servers will be able to download your code.

Set these up now (please)

The npm community is now larger than the population of New York City, so it’s never been more important to reinforce trust and encourage collaboration. Every developer who secures their npm account with these new methods helps ensure the safety and integrity of the code we all discover, share, and reuse to build amazing things.

Learn how to activate 2FA in this doc:

Using Two-Factor Authentication

Watch this space

There has never been a major security incident caused by leaked npm credentials, but our security work is never finished. We work continuously to protect the npm Registry and detect and remove malicious code, and we try to keep you informed of our efforts.

If you ever believe you’ve encountered any malicious code on the Registry or in npm itself, contact us right away [using the npm website](lgt security contact form) or by emailing security@npmjs.com. If you have any feedback or questions about what we’ve rolled out today, just contact support@npmjs.com.

Thanks for helping keep the npm community safe.

2017-06-21T20:54:31Z

that scrape tho. 🎧 recommended👂🏼〰〰

Documentation Driven Development

2017-06-09T21:31:28Z

I’ve used the term “Documentation Driven Development” in conversation a few times over the years, and people usually seem to just get what I’m talking about. It’s like “test driven development”, and every bit as disciplined, but for docs instead of tests. I certainly did not invent this concept, and it’s very simple.

I also don’t think that many folks realize just how serious I am about this. And the repeated truism that bad documentation is the worst thing in open source seems to indicate that it’s not being evangelized enough.

Here’s the process in a nutshell. This is how I usually write JavaScript modules, but it’s also how I approach designing product changes at npm, from small tweaks to entire new product lines.

Before anything else, write down what the thing is in README.md. I use markdown, but any portable plain-text format will do. This takes three parts:
1. The name of the thing.
2. The 1-sentence description of what the thing is.
3. If necessary, a few paragraphs describing the thing.
4. Example code demonstrating how to use the thing.
Note: the thing doesn’t exist yet. You do this before it exists.
Copy the example code into a test file. (Basically just do const t = require('tap') and throw some asserts around it.) For things bigger than a single JavaScript module, you can also copy the various points of the description into user story issues for QA or whatever process you use to verify that the thing you built is actually what the docs say it is.
Now you are ready to write the code that does that thing. Whenever it seems like the usage example was wrong, update it. As it becomes more clear what it is and how it works, keep the docs in sync with the code and the tests. The goal is to maintain 100% test coverage and 100% documentation coverage.
When you want to make a change to the thing, first update the docs and then write the code and the test. It doesn’t matter if the test comes along with the code or if you write the code and then the test, but the docs should absolutely be written before any implementation or test code.

If you ever find yourself thinking “It’s done, I just need to update the docs”, then you’ve violated this process by even having that thought. Not only is it not done, but you might’ve done the wrong thing.

It’s fine to write some code to try to figure out what the thing should be. But that is experimental scaffolding, and should not be thought of as anything other than useful garbage, like a sketch on a napkin. Maybe it can be turned into something enduring, but that starts with docs.

Writing clear prose about software is an unreasonably effective way to increase productivity by reducing both the frequency and cost of mistakes. Just as with good tests, it helps ensure that your program does what you think it does, and that you’ve thought it all the way through.

This unreasonable effectiveness of writing things down comes from the fact that a human brain’s working memory size is absurdly small. While it seems that we can hold a lot of things in our mind at once, it’s only by constantly swapping to long-term storage and ignoring increasing numbers of trees in order to see the forest. A written document does not have that problem. We can fully off-load significant chunks of thought with hardly any data-loss, allowing us to think slower and more carefully while still covering a huge semantic surface.

I don’t like using inline comments to generate interface documentation, for the simple reason that my sole focus must be on the user mental model when writing docs, and that should lead the creation of the thing. If I’m writing documentation and implementation at the same time (or even in the same format), I’m naturally inclined to create a “nice implementation”, which may or may not be an interface that meshes well with the user’s mental model.

The design of how a thing is used limits the implementations available, and vice versa, so whichever is done first will tend to limit the scope of the other. It can be a bit of extra work wrestling the code to fit into the constraints of a user’s mental model. But it’s work you only have to do once, as opposed to the ongoing slog of handling bugs and issues that result from trying to shape user expectations to fit an implementation.

2017-06-08T00:12:47Z

Be useful

2017-06-05T18:28:53Z

I get asked for career advice semi-regularly by people just starting out in tech. I don’t know to what degree I’m qualified to advise anybody, but the advice is always very different and specific to somebody’s circumstances. However, there is one recommendation common to everyone: be useful.

By that I mean: if you pick a company and get hired for a job, do that job. If the job changes or the company changes, then do your new job, or quit. But don’t try to do some other job. Be useful. Be the person your company needs you to be right now.

You’d think that would be obvious, but the opposite happens all the time. People get hired thinking they’re going to be doing task A, discover there’s more task B to be done, and declare “that’s not my job”. Okay, sure, it’s disappointing you don’t get to do A. But the company is not going to create a job for you doing A. Either you do B or you quit, or they will fire you.

Another way it happens is when, through the best of intentions, somebody attempts to grow in their career within a company. They’re doing A, they want to be doing B, they start picking up any B that happens to be lying around. That’s great! You should do that. But not if it means A doesn’t get done. When the company is big enough that you need two full-time people doing A and B, you can pick which one you do. But not before then.

Being useful is another way of saying “respond to market demand, not what you guess”. I thought I was going to be a Java developer in 2005, but Yahoo hired me to be a PHP developer. I could have said no and worked at a bunch of other Java companies, but that would have been a bad idea. Once at Yahoo I was supposed to be writing desktop software, but the team needed a website, so I built a website. Then there was a reorg and I found myself in another part of the company expecting to still be a web developer, but they needed a DBA, so I became the DBA. Over and over in my career, I have done the job that needed doing, and it’s made me valued at my job and more valuable as an engineer.

Right now I’m a COO. I don’t really enjoy talking to lawyers and accountants all day. I’m not jazzed about spreadsheets, generally, though they have a certain quiet satisfaction. But it’s the job that needs doing, and doing it is making the company better. It’s making me more valuable – if I ever decide to do a startup again, I know a lot more about finance than I did before – and it’s entirely an accident.

All that said, you don’t have to stay in one job forever just because it needs doing. If your career isn’t growing, by all means quit and find a job at another company. But don’t try to create that need at a company that doesn’t have it.

Do the job that needs doing. Be useful. And it will pay off.

announcing free Orgs

2017-03-22T22:35:09Z

its-arrested-development:

Today, we’re excited to announce that npm Orgs, our collaboration tool for helping teams manage permissions and share their code, is free for all developers of open source packages. You may invite an unlimited number of collaborators to manage an unlimited number of public packages for $0.

We launched Orgs in 2015 for companies that needed to mix public and private code. They wanted an easy way to set permissions for multiple team members and multiple packages. Now, teams who don’t need private packages can use this functionality too.

Why would we give away our most popular product? Making it easier to collaborate on open source projects is good for the whole community, and anything that reduces friction makes it easier for everyone to build amazing things.

Take a look at our Orgs docs to learn how these work, and create a free Org now to supercharge how you collaborate on development projects.

If you run into any questions, just drop a line to our support team at support@npmjs.com or tweet us @npmjs. We can’t wait to see what you build.

2017-03-03T18:01:58Z

2jam4u:

micdotcom:

Sportscaster Dale Hansen defends student wrestler Mack Beggs and takes a stand against transphobia

WHOS GRANDPA IS THIS!?!

My First npm Publish

2017-02-16T01:17:27Z

My first npm publish was unusual. npm didn’t exist at the time, so that presented a bit of a challenge.

This is the story of helping to inventing a universe so that I could make an apple pie from scratch.

SSJS

Back in 2009, I was working at Yahoo! as a Front-End Engineer. That meant that I wrote a lot of PHP and JavaScript. I had just finished a project where we had front-end components generated on the back-end and shipped to the client based on some data being parsed into a template, and then later on, on the front-end, do the same work in JavaScript with the same templates and data services.

These days, that’d be called “fast boot” or “isometric templates” or something clever, but back in those dark days, it required tediously maintaining two implementations of a view layer, one in PHP and the other in JavaScript. Maintaining the same thing in two languages was downright awful.

“Well”, I figured, “JavaScript is a language, and we can control what’s on the server, why not just run JavaScript on the server?”

The state of the art in server-side JavaScript (SSJS) was Rhino on the JVM. The problem was, unless you compiled your JavaScript into JVM bytecode using arcane special magicks, it was godawful slow. I started messing around with V8 and SpiderMonkey, thinking “I want something like PHP, but JavaScript”.

The SSJS community at that time was a very different place than the Node.js of today. There were dozens of projects, any one of which could’ve seemed like it would be the breakout hit. SpiderApe and v8-juice were trying to make it easier to embed spidermonkey and v8, and add a standard library to each. v8cgi (renamed to TeaJS) provided a CGI binding to use v8 in Apache2. I started messing around with K7, which provided a bunch of macros for using V8 in various contexts, and Narwhal, which was the only one of these that seemed to be delivering a fully thought-out platform for making programs. There was also Helma and RingoJS, and probably a bunch of others I’m forgetting.

A few years ago, we used to joke that every Node.js dev had their own test framework and argument parser. Well, in 2009, every server-side JavaScript developer had their own SSJS platform.

The contributors to all of these platforms got together in a mailing list and tried to form some kind of standard for server-side JavaScript programming. Front-end JavaScript has the DOM, so we thought, and right now, writing server-side JavaScript suffers from a dearth of portability. What we need is a standards body, clearly! This was initially called “ServerJS”, but then expanded its scope to CommonJS.

The first proper “module” I wrote in JavaScript was a port of a url parser I wrote for YUI. I landed it in Narwhal. There was no userland, really. Just lots of little cores.

Some time later, in August of 2009, I gave a tech talk about SSJS and demonstrated using Narwhal and Jack, a Rack-like thing built on top of Narwhal, using the JSGI protocol.

After the talk, one of the people in the audience asked if I’d ever tried out Node.js. As it turned out, I had, but like so many SSJS platforms:

It had a single developer working on it, and no other contributors or community.
The documentation was extremely sparse
It failed to build on my mac laptop.

Ergo: Not a thing.

“I dunno,” he said. “Maybe try it again. It’s pretty nifty.”

He insisted that it was fast, and I was like, “Meh. JVM is fine.”

Node.js

I checked the website again, and they’d added a “Community” section. Also, the docs still sucked, but it was version 0.0.6 now, which was like, 4 more than it was the first time I’d checked, so whoever this Ryan guy was, he was at least working hard on the thing.

It compiled successfully, and I was hooked! It started up so fast compared to Rhino! And it had tests that ran when I did make test, and they passed!

3 important lessons for OSS success:

Docs and tests matter.
At least have a link to a mailing list or something. (Remember: this was before GitHub connected us all with Issues.)
It has to build and be fast.

I gradually stopped paying much attention to CommonJS, and instead just threw my efforts at Node. I hung out on the mailing list and in IRC during all my free time.

The problem with Node back then was that even though a growing number of people were all writing really interesting programs, it was hard to share them. So, I wrote this thing, which was a port of a bash script I was using to play with people’s code.

The Registry

Technically that wasn’t “publishing” though. In order to actually publish to npm there had to be an npm registry. Today, that registry is a webservice at https://registry.npmjs.org/, run by npm, Inc.. The first registry was a git repo called “npm-data”. I collected up the handful of modules that’d been shared from on the mailing list and in the Node.js wiki page, and made a JSON file with links to them.

One principle of package management that I felt was really important was that no one person should be the bottleneck in community growth. Especially if that person is me. Because I really hate that crap.

I don’t mind working really hard on lots of challenging stuff, but if I have to do some simple task over and over again, especially if other people are depending on me to do it, it’s like torture to me. The prospect of being in someone’s critical path for deploying their module was just… ugh. Gross.

I needed a web service type thing that would let people publish packages and then could download those packages and install them.

I got to talking to Mikeal Rogers, who worked at Couch.IO. He built the first npm registry CouchApp, and got it functional.

Fun fact! For a little while, anyone could publish any package, and we relied on the honor system to keep anyone from clobbering anyone else’s name. It was an ok system for a short while, since there were only about 4 or 5 people in the world who knew this thing existed, but we got an authentication and authorization system set up before anyone could take advantage of it.

By that time, I’d quit my job at Yahoo! and was taking a sabatical. If you can afford it, I highly recommend saving up a little nest egg and taking a few months off to see what comes out of you. Muses can be fickle, and tend to call when least expected.

I know what you’re thinking…

You’re thinking that the culmination of this story is that I published npm to npm and that was my first npm publish, and it’ll be super meta and awesome like that. It’d be a beautiful punchline.

Real life is sloppy sometimes.

I knew that I wanted npm to be able to accept abbreviated versions of commands, so that npm inst would do the same thing as npm install. (To this day, the friendly CLI shorthands are some of npm’s most beloved features.)

The first thing I published to npm was abbrev. I’d written it already, mostly as a sort of coding crossword puzzle some… Saturday? Wednesday? All the days were pretty identical during those two lazy/exhausting months of funemployment.

Since abbrev was only one module, no build command, it was really easy to publish and install repeatedly. Ever since then, it’s always been one of my go-to testing modules to make sure things are working properly. Not only was it my first npm publish, it was the first npm publish, and it was published probably dozens or hundreds of times to http://localhost:5984/ while I was working on npm. So, of course, when I had a registry running on my little DreamHost instance, abbrev was the first thing I published to it.

The really wacky part: despite it being the first thing I’d published with npm, I didn’t actually use abbrev in npm until 5 months later. That whole time I kept trying to figure out how to have proper dependencies in the thing that installed dependencies. Eventually, I gave up and threw it in a utils folder.

Looking back over abbrev now, it’s amazing to me how little it’s changed. Most of the code is still that initial implementation from May 2010.

The moral of the story is that you don’t know how it’s going to end.

2017-02-02T17:40:29Z

You know, our family’s really messed up.
I know. We’re like the only normal ones.

Reclaim Red

2016-11-13T00:25:21Z

Hillary Clinton was judged to be too much of an insider. She didn’t have a story for the disaffected working class voter who sees a mechanized future where they have no place. A voter who wants something, anything, as long as it’s different. They’ll find out soon enough that this isn’t what they got.

The obvious solution: radicalism. An obstinate hard left anti-capitalist socialist workers’ movement, focused on: systematically destroying and tearing down the institutions of corruption, including the electoral college and the military industrial complex; nationalizing banking, health care, and higher education; criminalizing the bribery of representatives by corporate interests; providing civilian oversight for police; restoring protection for voting rights and establishing universal suffrage as a constitutionally protected right; ending slavery by abolishing private prisons and mandatory minimum sentencing; ending wage slavery by establishing universal basic income for all Americans; streamlining the process of naturalization and providing amnesty for so-called “illegals” who wish to become naturalized.

Such a movement would have the right amount of social justice, scapegoating, catchy slogans, and could unite oppressed minorities and disaffected heartland whites. We can reclaim what it means to be a" red state".

It is time, comrades! ☭

On Building Bridges

2016-11-11T22:57:38Z

To the hot-take authors, politicians, and liberals asking us to build bridges.

Here’s an incomplete list of people more deserving of our empathy right now than white heartland voters, in no particular order:

Muslim Americans who watched in horror as the GOP candidate successfully campaigned on a platform of targeting them with state violence.
The people of Puerto Rico, who live under US federal rule without representation or voice in the electoral process.
Everyone who is unable to vote for the rest of their lives due to a conviction for a nonviolent offense.
Native peoples facing further destruction of their homes in the name of oil.
The peaceful protestors in North Dakota holding their ground against rubber bullets, riot gear, and attack dogs.
The millions of people whose drinking water will be in jeopardy of contamination due to the oil pipeline those protestors are protesting.
Black people. Just, all of them, everywhere. But especially black women, who showed up for Hillary more than any other group.
All non-white people, who now face hate that has been emboldened by Trump’s win.
Everyone whose vote was restricted by voter ID laws and other policies that violate the Voting Rights Act.
The 20 million people depending on the ACA for access to medical care.
The millions of disabled people whose legal and medical lifelines Trump has promised to remove.
Same-sex couples, whose families and marriages will face concerted attack from the federal government in the near future.
Transgender people, who only just recently started seeing progress towards equitable treatment and protection by the federal government, and can expect that to roll back.
Basically the entire LGBTQ community, no longer safe from discrimination in their jobs, homes, hospitals, or anywhere else.
The millions of women relying on Planned Parenthood for reliable and safe access to reproductive healthcare.
The civilians living in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, and everywhere else where the US maintains a state of constant dangerous wartime readiness.
International allies and trade partners of the US.
Teachers doing their best to curb bullying of children, with inadequate resources.
Everyone who has immigrated to this country, who will be 1 misplaced document away from sudden deportation or worse.
Victims of rape and sexual assault, watching as a predator ascends to the highest office in the land.
The next few generations of earthlings, who may be the last, as we quickly make the planet too hot to inhabit.

When you’ve summoned empathy and built bridges with all of the people on this list, let’s start talking about the Trump voters who attacked all these groups this week.

Economic Uncertainty

2016-11-09T18:24:03Z

This was never about “economic uncertainty”. Lots of rich white people voted for this monster. This was never about “the elites” vs “the downtrodden”. Donald is a parody of an evil crooked billionaire, and already starting to name cronies from the financial elite to put in positions of power.

This is about kicking the newcomers out of the franchise. It’s about returning to a supposed golden age when men were men, and whites were on top, and spoke english, and had jobs, and never had to confront their homophobia or transphobia. It’s about blaming The Other for our problems.

Watch as the media spins a tale about the poor disenfranchised Trump voters, about how the media just didn’t listen enough, about how black folks didn’t show up in great enough numbers to the polls. But the facts don’t line up with that story. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote despite losing the white majority. People of color did show up. There just weren’t enough of them. A democracy is always vulnerable to a tyrannical majority.

And here’s why I’m so terrified: the checks and balances that prevent the President from becoming a tyrant only work if the congress, the state governors, and the supreme court are willing to stand up to executive abuses. The GOP now has a majority in both houses of congress, a majority of governorships, and the presidency. There’s an open seat on the SCOTUS, and 2 more likely to open in the next 4 years.

Throughout this election, the GOP leadership has shown unthinkable cowardice and weakness in calling him out for his excesses. Do you really think they’ll change now? His plans are going to harm women, minorities, trans and queer people, foreign civilians, our positions in treaty and trade agreements with other countries, and our economy. Among his first campaign pledges have been promises to jail his political opponents, repeal healthcare for millions of americans, and do away with what little federal protections that LGBTQ people had. People will die, and you can be damn sure it won’t be “the elites” who suffer.

And there is no longer anyone to stop him.

WE did this, White People. It was OUR families, OUR culture, OUR people. I am ashamed, and guilty, and enraged.

Donald Trump is our chicken come home to roost.

2016-10-11T08:02:16Z

When will you be posting the notes from your OSFeels talk? -- Anonymous

2016-10-11T07:59:51Z

Hello, will you be at SXSW, Austin TX, at any tech booths? It would cool to meet the maintainer of NPM. -- Anonymous

I don’t plan to be at SXSW any time in the next several years. Traveling is tough now, because I have a baby at home, and also because I don’t really like traveling.

2016-10-11T07:58:29Z

I'm really curious about the TJ node js story is he real? Or just screen name? According to one of the cuddletech blog posts he is real? -- Anonymous

TJ Holowaychuk is a real person. So it TJ Fontaine. They’re both real people that I’ve met in real life. They have arms and legs and feelings and heads. Well, just one head each, as far as I know. I’m not sure which TJ you meant to ask about, but they’re both nice and definitely real.

anti-authoritarianism

2016-10-04T17:00:00Z

After all the noise I've been making about Trump, one could reasonably assume I'm a die-hard Democrat.

Those who've known me a bit longer may be surprised, since I have also pulled hard in the past for the Libertarian angle.

Truth be told, the only unifying principle of my political belief is anti-authoritarianism.

I believe that the role of government in a free society should be to free individuals from tyranny, and I am deeply skeptical of power granted to any authority. That power must thus be tightly limited, balanced, checked, and directed by the people for the people. We must only grant power when it is necessary to counter some other form of tyranny.

Make no mistake: ALL power is tyranny, and NONE of us are innocent of wielding it. We have a moral duty to ensure that it is balanced, checked, and restricted.

One of the most deadly forms of power in the world today is American military power. We have the most powerful military in the world, by far, by any reasonable measure. We are over-armed to the point of absurdity.

Killing doesn't always mean bringing death. Tyranny can also be withholding life. Another form of power that can be deadly is the power to restrict and control access to nutrition, water, medical care, shelter, and other resources.

My opposition to tyrannical authority is both moral and pragmatic.

Morally, it offends my emotional sensibility for people to interact as master and slave or as combatants. It doesn't feel good to be operating in a mode of violence, fear, and desperation. At best, it leads to a cycle of adrenaline and cortisol that shuts down the best parts of our brains. At worst, it leads to horrors.

Pragmatically, it is also suboptimal from a systems theory point of view. No matter how well-informed, wise, and benevolent, an authority will almost never have enough insight to make the right decisions. When the boss tells everyone what to do, the company fails. Better to push authority to where the information is, whenever possible.

This idea of pushing authority to the edges, has informed how I've tried to build my company, run open source projects, and design products. It's very challenging, and requires a lot of trust and communication, but people work really well when they have the right balance of alignment, competence, and autonomy. I've tried being in charge all the time. It's exhausting and leads to bad outcomes.

In the American political spectrum, this makes me most closely aligned with Social Democrats and Libertarians, the two groups perhaps most at odds with one another. That's amusing to me.

I have often found other people to be enigmas, but I like studying puzzles, especially the interaction of complex systems. That's why I've loved open source communities and projects so much, and why business and software are also really fun. It's not just debugging the computer, it's debugging the humans. People provide the best puzzles!

I've read a lot of history and philosophy over the years. Never enough to be a real scholar, per se, but some of the best stories are true stories.

The rise of Hitler always fascinated and disturbed me. Of course, everything gets distorted in hindsight. Everyone rushes to say he was monster NOW. But the German people elected him. They voted, and chose him, and supported him. And it's not that he "was a great speaker". Accounts at the time painted him as something of a blustering idiot. He lied constantly, made promises and claims that made no sense, talked about a return to a glorious unified Germanic state that never existed.

It's not as if people at the time didn't call him out on it. They did. Again and again. I once chalked it up to "people were dumb in oldentimes", but the horror of the Third Reich is that they weren't dumb, not really. They were just like us. Less connected, less informed, but not by much. They were smart and dedicated and trying to do what they thought was best.

And then they elected a monster of historic proportions. "The Nazis" are STILL the go-to villain for lazy screenwriters.

So when someone like Trump comes along, and he lies so casually and constantly, it's really unique and fascinating to me, but also very disturbing. No other American politician does that. I mean, yeah, they all LIE, but in a completely different way. Bush and Cheney and the gang lied about the WMDs in Iraq. Bill Clinton lied about getting a blowjob. Every politician has probably lied in countless ways that never come to light.

But that's just it; all those lies are the sort of thing that CAN "come to light". Because in those lies, the person is making up a distinct and consistent factual reality, and trying to convince us all of that reality.

Trump isn't. He's just trying to win. In every social interaction, he's trying to be The Boss. We're over here playing a language game where the truth matters, but Trump isn't playing that game.

Trump's game is to get himself into a position of power in this interaction, and then to use that power to get into a position of more power in the next interaction. That's the point of his game. When he says "I didn't say that", it's only because the other person accused him of something, and he knows that a flat denial is the strongest response. He doesn't care that you have a recording of him saying it. No one can be the boss of recordings, so there's no point interacting with them.

There has likely never been, in the history of American politics, a presidential candidate more directly opposed to everything I believe in. I find myself watching, with abject terror, as we tread dreadfully close to putting someone functionally identical to Hitler in charge of more than half of the modern world's combined military power.

If he's elected, at some point, he's going to say "Bomb the hell outta them!" because that's a badass thing to say in a meeting, and then actual bombs will kill actual people as a result, and there is no way in hell that he'll be measured or restrained in how he does this, because he is never measured or restrained in anything whatsoever.

He's exactly the kind of leader who'd use the FISA Courts to accuse his opponents and protestors of "terrorism", which is exactly the mechanism and function of the Special Courts in 1930s Germany.

He's already suggested "rounding up" muslim-americans.

so what do I believe in?

I support scaling back the American military complex dramatically. There are no functional checks on this power anymore, and it has become a runaway empire. It is immoral to rule through force without granting political agency to the nations we are dominating.

I support a universal basic income guarantee and universal healthcare and education. People are not free when they live under the constant threat of losing their food, shelter, or health, or when they don't have the mental toolkit to reason about the world around them.

I support Black Lives Matter, same-sex marriage, respect for native peoples' land, equal opportunity housing and employment, and slavery reparations. People are not free when they are second-class citizens. We can't eradicate centuries of racism, sexism, or homophobia in one fell swoop, but we can chip away at it diligently.

I oppose citizenship and immigration control except as necessary for controlling the spread of diseases (including plant- and animal-borne pathogens). The restriction of human movement prevents efficient distribution of labor, reduces overall happiness, and quickly becomes a vector for abuse. Participation within a community should be determined, as it most commonly was throughout history, by residence within that community.

Taxation is a form of tyranny, but it's far less offensive than slow starvation or fast bullets. My heart breaks for the souls we force unnecessarily through hell on earth, and for the future that has lost the art and invention and inspiration that they could have offered.

Newcomb Programming Languages

2016-09-08T18:06:57Z

Newcomb’s Problem is a very divisive thought experiment in decision theory. The tl;dr version is:

A supreme intelligence Omega comes down from the sky, and offers you two boxes, labeled A and B. In box A, Omega has placed $1000.

Omega makes a prediction about whether you will open only one box, or both boxes. If Omega predicts that you will open both boxes, then box B is empty. If Omega predicts that you will open only one box, then Omega places $1000000 in box B.

In over a million trials, Omega has never incorrectly predicted someone’s decision. (Supreme intelligence is supreme!)

Omega places both boxes before you, and flies away to torment some other decision theorist.

Do you open both boxes, or just box B?

Well, you figure, Omega is gone now, its prediction already in the past. At this point, if I open both boxes, then I’ll get either $1000 or $1001000. If I open only box B, then I’ll get either $0 or $1000000. Regardless of Omega’s prediction, I’m always better off opening both boxes.

So you open box B, and find it empty.

You lament that Omega seemingly rewards “improper” decision theorists, and treat yourself to $1000 worth of whatever. Since you’re a dedicated rationalist, you probably make a bunch of sound investments with it and end up doing ok anyway.

Good for you.

Another approach is to commit to opening only box B, and stick to that commitment. Decision theory be damned, I want a million bucks. Before doing anything else, you set box A on fire, just to be sure. You open box B, and get a million dollars.

What use is a decision theory if it doesn’t optimize outcomes? That’s not to say that it’s worthless to study the science of priors and statistics and possible outcomes. Certainly, in most situations, we are not dealing with supreme intelligences handing out money capriciously. But in the real world, there are occasionally situations where the ends matter more than being theoretically correct.

On the other hand, perhaps a purity of theoretical correctness is an important part of one’s self-image. Maybe it imparts emotional satisfaction that a million dollars just can’t buy.

It’s perfectly fine to be a two-boxer. In a way, I respect it, like a monk or an artist. There’s a beauty in that purity.

But still. Fuck that, I want the money. I can be a monk later.

Most programming languages are to some extent art projects. There’s a lot of subjectivity to them. They exist to seek a beautiful ideal.

Most programming languages are also to some extent practical. You can do real stuff with them. They exist to make stuff.

The difference is, when tradeoffs must be made between “beautiful ideal” and “make stuff”, what wins?

If our ideal is in fact beautiful, and if we are skilled in our pursuit of it, then one might expect that these trade-offs will be infrequent. The most beautiful programming language is the one that is the most pragmatic.

But like boxes of money, programming languages do not exist in a vacuum. We have imperfect vision, and may find ourselves heading down a blind alley to explore what we hope will be beautiful. In the making of things, we may find that it was a mistake, and that the only way out is to choose to either make the language more beautiful (and lose pragmatic value for its current users) or preserve pragmatic value (and give up on some potential beauty).

Both choices are fraught with hazard. The first can alienate the community. The second can lead to a mongrel language with warts and bad parts.

Making software is the purpose of a programming language. That is the winning condition. Valuing something other than that seems to me akin to opening both boxes, because decision theory said so.

In box A, Omega has placed beauty. In box B, Omega has placed pragmatism and community, but only if Omega predicts that you will only choose box B. Omega has never been wrong.

Make your choice.

Except, in this version, you can open B, and get pragmatism and community. But once opened, if you choose A, then the community will eventually be lost.

I can see the value in a beautiful thing. But for myself, willy-nilly, I like useful software and happy communities more than programming languages for their own sake.

This is why I love JavaScript so much. Fuck beautiful code, I wanna make a web page. We’d rather lack a feature than add something that’ll break anything. We drag the albatross of ancient websites along with us, and while this is often a curse, it is also a sort of blessing.

JavaScript is a one-boxer language.

Someone emailed me asking for tips or sites for learning JavaScript, and this is my final answer.

2016-08-23T23:44:27Z

Warning, this is going to seem like “I believe I did, Bob”-style advice (ref: http://howfuckedismydatabase.com/nosql/)

But it’s really not. I really mean this, really and truly, from the bottom of my heart, as actual advice that I firmly believe will help people more efficiently and thoroughly than any other approach to learning JavaScript. My advice is this:

Read the ECMAScript specification.

Don’t feel like you have to understand every word. Give yourself permission to just force the words into your brain, and move on to the next section. If you’re diligent about it, it only takes a few hours. Repeat this process every few years.

I guarantee it will be an unpleasant experience if you’re not already experienced with reading language specifications. (As they go, this is a pretty good one, I’ve since learned.) It’s not fun reading. And it’s not like you’ll be able to sit down and suddenly grok the whole language like seeing the matrix or anything.

But I can also pretty much guarantee that you’ll be surprised what sticks. Weeks or months or years later, you’ll encounter some weird bug, or read a blog post, and go “OH! So THAT’S what that was talking about! Where was that? The part on function contexts or something?” and then you’ll be prepared to go look it up and get the exact details.

If you already know a bit of JavaScript, then reading the spec will be a bit less unpleasant, but parts will seem like you can skip them. Don’t skip those parts.

Programming requires a certain kind of precision, and a specification is a very precise thing. It’s tempting to think that learning must also follow a kind of precision, where you fully grok each concept before learning the next one, and follow a proper ordering of things.

But here’s the thing: humans aren’t precise. Learning is not like putting data into a computer because we aren’t computers and understanding isn’t information to be tokenized and stored. Understanding is more like a muscle than a memory, and learning is more like digestion than data entry. Let’s none of us be confused that digestion is anything but a process of turning nutrients into some combination of more you, mostly-wasted energy, and shit, and it’s not even remotely precise or ordered. And a language spec is like boiled kale with no salt, but it’s packed with nutritive understanding that will mostly be shat out of your brain or wasted in pointless hacker news threads, but some small part of it will make you strong and healthy.

So if you want to grow in the JavaScripts, you’ll never get there with candy-coated tutorials. Eat your fucking vegetables, and read the spec.

http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-262.htm

You’ll be glad you did.

Plop the Frog

2016-08-07T06:24:47Z

Once upon a time, there was a frog, who had no name, but we’ll call Plop. Plop hopped along as best he could. However, Plop had a few extra legs, which didn’t work so well. Environmental activists, tall bald chimps of the sort that builds factories and complains about factories, thought it was because of pollution from the factories. But actually, it was a parasite that entered Plop’s egg and lived in Plop while he was a tadpole, eventually altering his development during metamorphosis.

Eventually, since Plop couldn’t hop like his fellow frogs, he was eaten by a snake, and Plop’s parasite infected the snake’s intestine, where it would reproduce, and create offspring to make other frogs hop like Plop. (A snail was also involved, but this story is already more than complicated enough.)

The moral of the story is that nature is fascinating in its utter and complete lack of empathy. Evolution doesn’t give any fucks about anyone. Genes do whatever they have to do to get ahead, even if it means ruining the lives of frogs like Plop, and sending them through an agonizing existence into an early grave in the belly of a snake.

Factories are bad for lots of reasons. But the opposite of bad isn’t good, and “natural” is not a synonym for “healthy”.

on cargo shorts

2016-08-05T18:21:30Z

shanenickerson:

Here’s the thing. We’ve given up on style. We can’t keep up. We have too many kids and not enough time, and when we go out on a weekend day to do a bunch of stuff, we need pockets. We need them for wallets and dolls and water bottles and an extra pull-up, maybe a sippy cup or a phone or two. We aren’t concerned about whether you like them. We are trying to get through this phase of our lives, which, quite frankly, requires more pocket space than we ever expected. Let us live. CRGO 4 LYF.

A final response to the "Tell me why Trump is a fascist". • /r/EnoughTrumpSpam

2016-07-27T21:46:30Z

To my good and kind hearted conservative friends and relatives:

It’s always challenging to learn about the history leading up to the Third Reich and Hitler’s rise to power. How didn’t they see it coming? Why didn’t anyone stop him?

It’s such a horrible series of events that any comparison to it seems not just inaccurate, but an outrageously cruel and inappropriate joke.

However, it is no exaggeration to say that we are in such a situation now, where historians of the future may ask why we didn’t stop the rise of a brutal fascist dictator who overturned the rule of law and performed unspeakable evil. Like the Germans who elected Hitler to power, you are good people, but many of you may not see the stakes of your choice or the power to do Good that rests in your hands.

Donald Trump is not just a buffoon. He knows what he’s doing, and he’s following a script which has been horrifyingly successful numerous times in the past.

I know you probably don’t love Hillary. I don’t either. But she is not a fascist. Trump will possibly be even worse than Hitler was. Imagine Hitler with the power of nuclear weapons and the modern American military.

Call on your fellow conservatives to answer for Trump’s fascism before voting for him. Ask them if they are willing to take their share of the blame for the unspeakable horrors he is explicitly and openly planning.

This is 2016. Everything is recorded, and Trump makes no apologies or excuses for his plans. History will remember that you should have known what you were doing.

(Posted originally to Facebook, because that’s where a lot of y'all hang out)

2016-07-23T07:31:12Z

They Might Be Giants played a hell of a show at the Berkeley UC Theater. They did two sets (opening for themselves). On the way out I heard some guy say he got the set list and I felt sharp pangs of envy, but I got a picture of it. Which, really, is for the best because all I’d do if I’d been the one to grab the list is take a picture and then guiltily keep the faded paper for too long and then guiltily throw it away eventually.

A tmbg show is a thing of beauty. Their catalog is so huge, and they’re still so prolific, it’s a good bet that they’ll play a few songs you’d forgotten, a few you don’t know, a few you just started listening to, and your favorite from a long time ago. And a surprising cover or two. (In this case, it was “pay my bills” by Destiny’s Child.) Plus they’re hilarious, and rock stars. (at The UC Theatre)

2016-07-21T23:59:24Z

destinyrush:

Unarmed Black Man With Hands Up Shot By Police.

Charles Kinsey, 47, a behavior therapist from South Florida was shot in the leg three times by the police in North Miami while laying on the ground with his arms up and trying to help his patient with autism who had run away from a group home.

It all started when someone called 911 and said there was a man walking around with a gun. However it was Kinsey’s patient who was sitting on the ground cross-legged, playing with a toy truck.

Charles got shot by police despite telling them he was only trying to help his patient.

The police shot him, handcuffed him and left him on ground bleeding.

North Miami police have not released much information at all. They haven’t released the officer’s name, they haven’t given us an update on the investigation. However, they did say that the state attorney is now a part of this investigation.

#CharlesKinsey #BlackLivesMatter

#StopPoliceBrutality #NorthMiamiPoliceDepartment

Among the Many Hardest Problems in Computer Science Are Such Things As...

2016-07-15T16:20:57Z

There’s a saying that the two hardest problems in computer science are caching, naming things, and off-by-one errors.

I think there’s just one hard problem: asynchronously shared state. The others are all instances of it.

Race conditions can only happen when processing happens in multiple places, and they become even more complicated when information is updated by multiple actors and stored in multiple places.

You read a thing from disk, do some stuff to it, write back the result. Except, while you’re doing stuff to the information, some other process reads the same file, does some different stuff to it, and writes its result back. Whoever takes the longest wins, the other’s write is gone.

Where this is more complicated is when the processing is done in human brains, which are notoriously hard to observe, operate in massively parallel fashion, and have extremely distributed and unreliable data storage capabilities.

What do we call this thing? Is it a cache, or a copy? A read-through cache? How often should it be purged? If it’s a copy, is it authoritative? When does it get synced back? The problem is not just that words have meaning, but that they have so many meanings.

A word like “specification” can mean “hard and fast set of rules which explicitly limit the scope of work” to one person, and “the beginning of a conversation which points at the intent of a feature” to someone else. They’re probably going to have some unproductive arguments about whether a thing “satisfies the spec” or not.

And that’s just when we’re talking about simple things like programming. Start getting into conflict or culture or strategy, and holy moly, it’s so much harder.

It’s tempting to say that the solution is “more communication”, but more bad communication can make the situation worse, and even good communication has a cost. “So write it down!” I say to myself in my internal argument, wherein I attempt to reconcile the state I share among the many processes across my brain. Ok, but write what down? Where? How often do you read it back again? Does anyone know where it’s written? Is it authoritative or suggestive? How does one edit it when the situation changes?

Turns out hard things are hard. My past self often assumed that something would not be so hard, and my current self now has to reconcile the new experience of hardness with the cached value of expected ease.

Shared state. It’s one hell of a fucker. The only easy thing is solipsism, but then it’s hard to get much done on your own, isn’t it?

An Aspirational Meditation in 12 Stanzas

2016-07-08T17:26:31Z

Open Mind
Clear Vision
True Speech
Warm Heart
Calm Center

Open Mind
Open Vision
Open Speech
Open Heart
Open Center

Clear Mind
Clear Vision
Clear Speech
Clear Heart
Clear Center

True Mind
True Vision
True Speech
True Heart
True Center

Warm Mind
Warm Vision
Warm Speech
Warm Heart
Warm Center

Calm Mind
Calm Vision
Calm Speech
Calm Heart
Calm Center

Open Mind
Clear Mind
True Mind
Warm Mind
Calm Mind

Open Vision
Clear Vision
True Vision
Warm Vision
Calm Vision

Open Speech
Clear Speech
True Speech
Warm Speech
Calm Speech

Open Heart
Clear Heart
True Heart
Warm Heart
Calm Heart

Open Center
Clear Center
True Center
Warm Center
Calm Center

Open Mind
Clear Vision
True Speech
Warm Heart
Calm Center

On each in-breath, I hold the first word. On the out breath, I hold the second word, and bring the feeling of that concept to the part of my body referenced (head, eyes, mouth/throat, heart, gut).

I try to consider that each term is both an adjective, and thus a thing to aspire to (a True Heart, an Open Vision, etc.) as well as a verb instructing me how to attain that state.

When I notice my mind has wanderd, I try to pick up where I left off, or back at the beginning.

This is how I’ve been going to sleep lately, unless I’m too tired to do anything but breath counting. When I have time, I try to go through it in the shower as well.

I don’t know if it’s making me a better person, but it feels good to remind myself that I aspire to be curious, capable, and compassionate.

2016-06-23T18:49:20Z

earlpostsaboutwhatever:

scatterdarknessscattersilence:

killerville:

korrasforevergirl:

thefingerfuckingfemalefury:

airl0ck:

thefingerfuckingfemalefury:

scottbaiowulf:

broke-and-eating-well-in-okc:

hojolove:

Proof you can market anything as a “Superfood” if it says Organic, Raw and Gluten-free.

THERE’S A FREAK’N WARNING ON THE BACK THAT IF EATEN IN EXCESS THEY CAUSE SYMPTOMS OF CYANIDE POISONING!

Their suggestion to eating these is to methodically poison yourself by eating 2-4 every other day. Since when has eating Apricot kernels been a thing in anyone’s diet!?

these can be found at Wholefoods

WHAT.

Jesus Christ, how is this legal

What in the HELLS O.O

Mmm, delicious poison.

Please do not eat the Healthy Poison O.O

Someone could fucking kill someone with these if they poured them in a ziploc bag and called them peanuts

QUESTION: if i eat enough of these, can i build up a tolerance to cyanide poisoning

This is apparently a real thing. More info from Wikipedia.

Alright, folks, time to get Science Side of Tumblr on this. There is SO MUCH BULLSHIT packed into this that I ended up writing an obnoxiously long post, for which I apologize.

Let’s start with the product description page that Nora helpfully linked to. There’s just a ton of bullshit pseudoscience and feel-good woo in here and I’m gonna break it down.

“Apricot Kernels are one of the highest natural sources of a rare phytonutrient called amygdalin, also known as vitamin B17, an important nutrient which has largely disappeared from Western diets.”

Wow. Lots of fail in one sentence. Amygdalin is not, in fact, particularly rare; as the wiki page states, it’s found in “many plants” “particularly the Prunus genus, Poaceae (grasses), Fabaceae (legumes), and in other food plants, including linseed and manioc.” The only people who refer to amygdalin as a vitamin are those trying to make money from it. It is absolutely NOT a vitamin in any way, shape, or form. The definition of the word “vitamin” is “a compound which is required by the body in small amounts, which it cannot make on its own and thus must be obtained from the diet.” Your body does not *require* amygdalin in the least. In fact, if you consume too much of it, you will LITERALLY DIE OF CYANIDE POISONING. It is NOT an “important nutrient.” It has not “disappeared from Western diets” because it was never a part of any culture’s diet. Any group of people who ate too much of it probably died.

Moving on:

“Our raw, certified organic apricot kernels originate from wild apricot trees that have never come into contact with any sort of pesticide, herbicide or synthetic fertilizer. The apricots are harvested gently by hand, then the kernels are removed and slowly sun-dried. Our farmers pride themselves on cultivating the highest quality kernels possible while maintaining eco-friendly and sustainable agricultural practices.”

Wait, there’s a contradiction in there.

“…originate from wild apricot trees…”
“…farmers pride themselves on cultivating…”

Listen, I don’t wanna be a pedantic asshole and debate semantics here, but if farmers are cultivating something, then it’s not wild. Okay? You can certainly have a bunch of people going out into a forest and harvesting things from the wild; for herbs this is called wildcrafting and for fruits/vegetables it is generally called foraging. No part of this involves cultivation or farms, which are about as far removed from wild plants as… well, most varieties of fruits and vegetables that we eat today.

Now we get to the hilarious part:

“WARNING: Sweet apricot kernels contain amygdalin (Vitamin B17) which can cause symptoms of cyanide poisoning when eaten in excess. DO NOT EAT MORE THAN 8 SEEDS PER DAY. See a doctor immediately if you experience symptoms like nausea, fever, headache, or low blood pressure. Do not eat if you are pregnant or nursing. Not intended for children”

THEY LITERALLY FUCKING TELL YOU THAT THESE CAUSE CYANIDE POISONING. Oh wait, no, my mistake, they tell you that they cause “symptoms of cyanide poisoning.” Well, you know what else causes “symptoms” of cyanide poisoning? CYANIDE. If you read the wiki article on amygdalin, you may have noticed this part:

“Amygdalin is hydrolyzed by intestinal β-glucosidase, emulsin, and amygdalase to gentiobiose and L-mandelonitrile. Gentiobiose is further hydrolyzed to glucose, whereas mandelonitrile is hydrolyzed to benzaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide. Hydrogen cyanide in sufficient quantities (allowable daily intake: ~0.6 mg) causes cyanide poisoning (fatal oral dose: 0.6-1.5 mg/kg).”

Also, from the article on apricot kernels that Nora also linked (thank you Nora), there’s this little nugget of info:

“On average, bitter apricot kernels contain about 5% amygdalin and sweet kernels about 0.9% amygdalin. These values correspond to 0.3% and 0.05% of cyanide. Since a typical apricot kernel weighs 600 mg, bitter and sweet varieties contain respectively 1.8 and 0.3 mg of cyanide.”

The kernels that these assholes are selling are the sweet variety, so they do have less cyanide than bitter apricot kernels do. However, let’s run the numbers, shall we? One sweet apricot kernel contains approximately 0.3 mg of cyanide, which means that to get to the fatal oral dose of cyanide (0.6-1.6 mg/kg), one would have to eat between 2 and 5 kernels per kilogram of body weight. Now, admittedly, this would take some effort; I weigh about 84 kg, so a fatal dose of these would be between 168 and 420 kernels. These are 8 oz bags, or approximately 226 g, and one kernel weighs about 600 mg, which means there are around 376 kernels in an average bag. This is WELL within the lethal range for me, and I’m a pretty big guy; someone who weighs a lot less than me would have to eat a lot fewer kernels to get a lethal dose.

Let’s not mince words, folks; cyanide poisoning is fucking awful. Cyanide blocks an enzyme that your cells need in order to properly process oxygen. It basically causes you to suffocate on a cellular level. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

And these things are legally for sale? In fucking HEALTH FOOD STORES?!? Can you imagine if a small child got into one of these bags? I can only hope these alternative health wingnuts buying these things are keeping them away from their kids.

Oh, what’s that? You’ll be okay as long as you don’t eat the whole bag? Well, I have unfortunate news for you. Cyanide is not like iocaine powder; you don’t build up an immunity to it by ingesting small amounts daily for years. It can still kill you, although in much more horrible ways than acute cyanide poisoning. From wiki: “Exposure to lower levels of cyanide over a long period results in increased blood cyanide levels, which can result in weakness and a variety of symptoms, including permanent paralysis, nervous lesions, hypothyroidism, and miscarriages. Other effects include mild liver and kidney damage.” Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

Oh, and if you want a real treat, read the reviews on the product page above. Hoooooooly shit, people can fool themselves into thinking ANYTHING is good for them if it has the words “organic” and “natural” on the package, and if the seller hypes it up to be this AMAZING LONG-LOST SUPERFOOD OMG. Here’s some of the highlights, in case you don’t want to read them all for fear of losing too many brain cells (note that all of these quotes are from separate reviews):

“I eat these apricot kernels because of the B17 cancer fighting factor.” No such thing as B17, and amygdalin has been shown to be useless against cancer.

“I noticed that my energy is constant all day and I believe they are actually helping me to lose weight.” Chances are it’s whatever else you’re putting in your smoothie. Keep eating these long enough and I doubt you’ll have energy all day.

“I love them even more after researching all of the health properties!” Clearly you didn’t do any research outside of browsing a couple articles on fucking David Wolfe’s website or some shit.

This next one has three separate hilarious bits so I’ll quote all three parts together:
“I still am not sure what they do for me yet; however they are loaded with B17 which is said to be really good for certain health benefits.” 1/Well, that sounds promising. 2/Loaded with cyanide, yum! 3/“certain health benefits.” Not sure which ones, but a website said it, so it must be true!

“Too bad I can’t eat too many without lowering blood pressure too much.” I can only assume that this person is referring to the fact that your blood pressure drops to 0/0 when you’re dead.

“I like them…not too bitter, but enough so that I know I am getting what I need.” Because something being bitter is a great indication that it’s good for you, amirite? I mean, kale is great for you, and it’s bitter, so that must mean the bitterness is what makes it good for you!

“I have cancer and eat 5 kernels, 3 times a day.. I eat them with some food so I don’t end up with a stomach ache.” I would make a comment about how you should know better than to eat things that give you a stomach ache, but then again, this person could conceivably be on chemo, which also causes awful symptoms, so maybe they’re just conditioned to believe that things that make them feel horrible are actually helping cure them.

“I eat a few a day and I will hopefully see my blood pressure down next dr appt” …folks, please don’t eat poison instead of taking blood pressure medication. I know doctors tend to overprescribe pills, but COME THE FUCK ON.

“I’m trying to get off medication (over 30 years) and want to use natural food to help heal my body!” Which is an admirable goal, and certainly possible. But this is not the way to do it. You need to do your research into the foods you eat to try and heal yourself, and if you did the SLIGHTEST BIT OF RESEARCH you would have found that these things contain CYANIDE. Which absolutely WILL NOT heal your body.

“they are crunchy, aromatic, and slightly bitter, and numb the tip of my tongue when I chew on more than a few at a time.” HOW IS THIS NOT A GIANT RED FLAG HOLY FUCKING SHIT

“It is important to read the information about how many to consume per day as it is a medicinal food with great potential.” Great potential to kill you, yes. Medicinal food, not so much.

tl;dr Apricots are the devil’s nutsack, please don’t eat his testicles.

2016-06-13T22:23:00Z

justlearningasigo:

quietasides:

Mark: Whether I’m gay or not has no reflection –

Owen: No, it does. Just listen –

Julia: I don’t think that you have ownership of horror of this crime.

Owen: Can I just say, I find this, I find this astonishing.

Julia: I’m not Jewish and I’m not gay, I’m not French, but I still am equally horrified by these crimes.

Owen: This was a – I’m being yelled at, which is incredible.

Julia: Stop talking so [we hadn’t do].

Mark: That’s the headline: ‘Isil wages war on gays in west’. Now you share that view, that basically this was deliberately targeted on one part of the community rather than the freedom to enjoy yourself no matter what your sexual orientation is.

Owen: What are you talking about?!?

Mark: I’m talking about the coverage in the newspapers.

Owen: It’s not some abstract, kind of, he just picked a random club out of nowhere. He picked a club because it was full of people he regarded as deviants. That’s why he attacked the club.

Julia: It’s a hate crime, this is an act of terrorism, it was an attack on gay people, absolutely, it was horrific. However, my mind guesses this man probably would be as horrified by me as a gobby woman as he would – genuinely, genuinely – this is the thing. We don’t know right now. We can speculate, but we don’t know how much of this is motivated by just his homophobia.

Owen: We heard from his own father about his revulsion – why are we trying to deflect? Why are you both pick-

Mark: We are not trying to deflect. We are trying to reflect what is being said by the authorities here and –

Owen: Can I ask, what argument are you trying to pick here?

Mark: I’m now going to quote from what The Telegraph is saying…’his father said…[he] may have targeted the gay community after becoming angry when he saw two men–’

Owen: ‘May have’? He did! Why are you saying this?

Julia: ‘After seeing two men kissing in Miami some months ago’ – he may have been angered by many other things since then!

Owen: I’m sorry. I just find this the most astonishing thing I’ve ever been involved with on television. If he’d walked into a synagogue, and massacred dozens of Jewish people, you wouldn’t be saying what you’re saying now.

Owen: This bizarre attempt to deflect from this –

Mark: We are trying to draw parallels in terrorist attacks on people who are being attacked whether they are enjoying rock music in Paris, whether they are gay people in Florida enjoying a night out.

Julia: I completely accept it, as [Mark] does, that it was a homophobic attack, but for me the issue is there are going to be homophobic people, there’ll be people who hate black people, or who hate gay people, or hate Jewish people. There are going to be people, who are lunatics, who are fanatics –

Owen: Who are “lunatics”! Stop using these words, Julia!

Julia: Is it possible for me to finish one sentence?

Owen: If you stop using words like “lunatic” to talk about homophobic terrorist attacks!

Julia: Well thank you. Whoever these people are, and whatever their motivations are, the key thing is we’re always going to have mad and bad people in the world.

Owen: Mad and bad people. Okay.

Julia: And the key issue is, that they can’t do too much or any harm. When you have free access to assault weapons in a country like America, then they’re able to put their hatred of other people –

Owen: Yes! Obviously!

Julia: – into effect, and do damage. That’s the issue for me.

(discussion between Mark and Julia on gun control and the U.S. …Julia: It is absolutely absurd, if America were not going to do something about gun control after Sandy Hook in 2012, if you’re going to watch six- and seven-year-olds being massacred and you don’t think you need to act, they are never going to act.)

Mark: There’s something else here in The Telegraph coverage, which I think we need to bring up, Owen, in relation to your point. And that is, I think that we’ve got at least a call from a spokesman for Stonewall saying that people would be feeling vulnerable, and basically indicating –

Owen: Oh, you’re going to have an LGBT voice talking about it. Interesting.

Mark: Sorry?

Owen: Nothing, carry on. Go on.

Julia: Owen, seriously.

Owen: I’ve had enough of this. I’m going home. Sorry. No way.

Julia: Owen, genuinely, we’re trying to have a civilized conversation.

Owen: I know you’re having it, I don’t want it!

Julia: I know you’re upset, you’re very upset –

Owen: Yeah, I am, I’m very upset. I’m very upset.

Julia: Everyone’s upset and angry about this, but storming off a TV set –

Owen Jones, Mark Longhurst, and Julia Hartley-Brewer discuss the Pulse nightclub shootings, 12 June 2016

Bless you Owen

2016-05-18T06:39:52Z

jonboniver:

listen, strange naked women emerging from fires is no basis for a system of government

Come see the violence inherent in the system!

2016-05-09T07:23:07Z

He distinctly said “to blave”.

how many npm users are there?

2016-04-27T18:45:14Z

A story in 6 graphs

How many npm users are there? It’s a surprisingly tricky question.

There are a little over 211,000 registered npm users, of whom about 73,000 have published packages. But far more people than that use npm: most things npm does do not require you to login or register. So how many are there, and what are they up to? Our first and most obvious clue is the number of packages they are downloading:

How many packages are downloaded?

That’s over a billion downloads per week, and that only counts package installs that weren’t already in cache – about 66% of npm package installs don’t require downloading any packages, because they fetch from the cache. Still, the growth is truly, without exaggeration, exponential.

So what’s driving all the downloads? Are the same people building ever-more-complicated applications, downloading more packages to do it? Are the same people running build servers over and over? Or are there actually more people? Our next clue comes from the number of unique IPs hitting the registry:

How many IPs hit the registry?

Here’s a ton of growth again, close to 100% growth year-on-year, but much more linear than the downloads: 3.1 million IPs hit the registry in March. Of course, IP addresses are not people. Some of these IPs are build servers and other robots. Other IP addresses are companies or educational institions that serve thousands or even tens of thousands of people. So while it doesn’t correlate perfectly, generally speaking, more IPs means more people are using npm.

How many times does npm get run?

Every time npm runs it generates a unique ID that it sends as a header for every request it makes during that run. This ID is random and not tied to you in any way, and once npm finishes running it is deleted. We use this ID for debugging the registry: it lets us see that these 5, 10 or 50 requests were all part of the same operation, which makes it easier to see what’s going on when somebody has a problem. It also makes it possible to say roughly how many times npm is run – or at least, run in a way that makes a request to the registry. There were 84 million npm sessions in March: this number is growing faster than IPs, but less quickly than downloads.

We can take these last two and combine them:

How many packages per npm run?

This number is interesting because it’s not going anywhere. The ratio of packages downloaded to npm sessions is essentially constant (this is not the same as the number of packages downloaded per install, because many npm sessions don’t result in downloads). But this is a clear signal: the number of packages per install isn’t rising. Applications aren’t getting notably more complicated; people are installing packages more often because they are writing more applications.

Here’s a final clue:

How many packages per IP?

The number of packages downloaded by an IP is also rising linearly. So, not only are more people using npm, but the people who are already using npm are using it more and more frequently. And then of course there’s this number:

Web users

Another way of counting npm users is counting people who visit npm’s website. This also grew enormously; 400% since we started the company. In the last 90 days, npm saw just over 4 million unique users visit our site. Ordinarily, you take web user numbers with a grain of salt – there’s lots of ways they can be wrong. But combined with the IPs, the sessions, and the download numbers, we think that number is probably accurate, maybe even a little conservative.

Invisible users

There are so many sources of error! There are robots who crawl the registry. There are lots of companies who host their own internal registry caches, or run npm Enterprise, and so have their own npm website and registry and never hit ours. There’s the entire nation of China, which finds it difficult to access npm through the great firewall, and is served by our hard-working friends at cnpmjs. There’s errors that inflate our numbers, and errors that deflate them. If you think we’re way off, let us know. But we think we have enough for a good guess.

4 million npm users

We think there are four million npm users, and we think that number is doubling every year. Over at the node.js foundation, they see similar growth numbers. Not only are there more of them, but they’re more engaged than ever before. This is awesome! The 25 very hard working people of npm Inc. thank you for your participation and your contributions to the community, and we hope to see even more of you.

2016-03-16T05:38:17Z

I love this couple.

2016-02-21T03:52:46Z

dolphandhisactionnips:

champagnemanagement:

i may reblog this every day for the rest of my life. or maybe i’ll just start a new tumblr called Dolph and His Action Nips.

it’s done

2016-02-20T22:27:06Z

probertson:

inside out

2016-02-03T10:24:32Z

The corollary of constant change is ignorance. This is not often talked about: we computer experts barely know what we’re doing. We’re good at fussing and figuring out. We function well in a sea of unknowns. Our experience has only prepared us to deal with confusion. A programmer who denies this is probably lying, or else is densely unaware of himself

-Ellen Ullman, Close to the Machine

This is the paragraph of the book that made me finally realize it was okay and actually good to be in a constant state of terror as a software developer.

(via jennschiffer)

It gets worse when you switch to the management track, and worse still if you start a company.

Promises vs Eventual Values

2016-02-02T21:26:01Z

A few times on Twitter, I’ve complained that Promises are a poor conceptual stand-in for Eventual Values.

A colleague of mine pointed out that I tweet this or something like it every few months. He’s correct, I do.

The responses usually flow in saying something to the effect of “Well, if you’re not sure if a thing is a Promise or not, just use Promise.resolve(thing) and now you’re guaranteed to get either the Promise, or a Promise that resolves to the thing.”

And it’s true, that is “a” solution of sorts. It solves the “I don’t know if this is a Promise or not” problem by ensuring that you definitely do have a Promise, and not a normal value.

My problem, though, is that I’d really like to write code that interacts with values, and not Promises, and leave the machinery to the computer to work out.

Eventual Values

An Eventual Value is a value that is not yet resolved. However, by design, it is mostly indistinguishable from a “normal” value. Here’s an example:

// promise code
function add5 (x) {
  return x + 5
}

function add5Promise (x) {
  return Promise.resolve(x).then(function (x) {
    return add5(x)
  })
}

function someNumberLater () {
  return new Promise(function (resolve) {
    databaseConnector.get('numeric value').then(function (x) {
      resolve(x)
    })
  })
}

add5Promise(someNumberLater()).then(function (xplus5) {
  console.log('the number plus 5 is %d', xplus5)
})

With Eventual Values, this would look like the following:

// eventual value code
function add5 (x) {
  return x + 5
}

function someNumberLater () {
  databaseConnector.get('numeric value'))
}

console.log('the number plus 5 is %d', add5(someNumberLater()))

If you imagine getting a few numbers, any of which might be as yet unresolved, it’s even more annoying:

// promise code
function addThreeNumbers (x, y, z) {
  return Promise.all([x, y, z]).then(function (numbers) {
    return Promise.resolve(numbers[0] + numbers[1] + numbers[3])
  })
}

// eventual code
function addThreeNumbers (x, y, z) {
  return x + y + z
}

Criteria

Eventual Values can be interacted with like normal values.
If an Eventual Value is part of a simple value operation, then that expression resolves to a new Eventual Value which resolves when all its Eventual Values are resolved.

That’s it. You interact with Eventual Values as if they’re normal synchronous values, and the machine takes care of waiting where it’s necessary and appropriate.

But Zalgo!

Indeed, this is Zalgo’s purest form. But let’s clarify exactly what’s wrong with the maybe-sync anti-pattern.

The problem with Zalgo APIs is that they’re hard to reason about. Given code like this:

someApi(function () {
  console.log('foo')
})
console.log('bar')

In a sync callback API, you know that this will always print out foo\nbar. In an async callback API, you know that this will always print out bar\nfoo. This predictability is important for human brains.

This is why the built-in dezalgo of Promises A+ is so important.

new Promise(function (resolve) {
  console.log('foo')
  resolve()
})
console.log('bar')

This code must either (a) always print foo\nbar, or (b) always print bar\nfoo. Since Promise resolution can be async, it must be async all the time, or else this predictability constraint is violated.

With Eventual Values, Zalgo is not a problem, because whether things happen synchronously or asynchronously, they always happen in the same predictable order.

function getFoo () {
  return new Eventual(function (resolve) {
    setTimeout(function () {
      resolve('foo')
    })
  })
}

function getBar () {
  return new Eventual(function (resolve) { resolve('foo') })
}

console.log(getFoo())
console.log(getBar())

In this case, it will always print foo\nbar, even though foo is resolved later, and bar is resolved immediately. Eventual Values behave like synchronous values.

Introspection, Operators, Etc.

It’d be nice to have some magic isEventual operator that could tell you if a thing was already resolved or not.

Or even a wasEventual operator to tell you whether this thing you have was ever waited upon.

But mostly, while it’s great to be able to introspect programs, it’s even better not to have to need to introspect programs. We don’t have memory address introspection in JavaScript, and no one seems to mind. Inspecting Eventual Values should be akin to peering into the dark machinery of the VM; something that’s useful once in a while, and certainly interesting from an academic point of view, but not in the normal day to day activities of the typical JavaScript programmer.

Language design is hard. It may be that there’s some really good reason for at least having a special operator or something to say “Yes, I would like any Eventual Values to be resolved before calling this function.” Maybe use functionE instead of function, I don’t know. I don’t care. I just want to stop having to stick my nose in the machinery. Ideally, we’d almost never have to care, because it only matters at the very edges of a program, when data is sent to the DOM, or written to a file or socket or terminal.

Implementation

This cannot be implemented in userland, nor should they be. Eventual Values are a language feature. Promises are an API, and easy to implement in userland.

Promises will never grow into Eventuals, because they are fundamentally different things, even though they implement a similar pattern.

Looking Async

I’ve argued in the past, quite forcefully, that synchronous code should look synchronous, and async code should look async. But again, like Zalgo, let’s not conflate “a good rule of thumb for API design” with “a language feature that would make our lives better”.

If you dig one layer deeper, you find that the only reason asynchronous code needs to look asynchronous is that we continually rely upon our human brains to deal with the timing and synchronicity of our programs.

In cases where we are relying on a meat brain to analyze a program, it is extremely important for it to look like what it is. There will likely always be some API surfaces that are asynchronous, and even in a world with Eventual Values, there is a place for APIs that are creatively asynchronous, and they should look and behave like what they are.

Anti-Promises

Promises are neat. They’re a terse and expressive way to chain together a series of potentially asynchronous actions in a way that’s relatively easy for a meat brain to make sense of.

Also, it’s quite nice how they invert control differently than callbacks. With a callback, the caller creates and passes a token to the API, with the contract that the API provider will use that token to indicate done-ness. With Promises, the API provider creates and passes a token to the caller, with the contract that the API provider will use that token to indicate done-ness.

It’s a subtle difference, but one that many people find easier to reason about. That’s fine.

However, if you have a function that takes a list of arguments, any of which may potentially be promises, and then needs to only act once all of those promises are resolved, it gets tedious quite fast. Promises tend to expose quite a lot of boilerplate to the user in these types of situations. And, since the only straightforward solution is to either turn all things into Promises, or manually check each for Promise-ness, one potentially ends up introducing a lot of nextTick() delays unnecessarily.

I don’t dislike Promises. But I do long for Eventual Values, and Promises are not those.

Mountains

2016-01-24T02:29:04Z

I am sorry  

  that you will never know
    how much I love you.

You think you get it.

You see the shadow of mountains,
  and think, “Mountains are flat.”

But it is a huge thing
  and not flat.

on cargo shorts

2016-01-20T07:59:07Z

shanenickerson:

Here’s the thing. We’ve given up on style. We can’t keep up. We have too many kids and not enough time, and when we go out on a weekend day to do a bunch of stuff, we need pockets. We need them for wallets and dolls and water bottles and an extra pull-up, maybe a sippy cup or a phone or two. We aren’t concerned about whether you like them. We are trying to get through this phase of our lives, which, quite frankly, requires more pocket space than we ever expected. Let us live. CRGO 4 LYF.

ru a gay or what

2016-01-17T18:58:19Z

I’m going to turn off anon access to my Ask page. If you need to reach me, my email address and twitter handle are all over the place.

For the anon(s) repeatedly demanding to know if I’m “a gay”, the answer is no, I’m bi, it’s a different thing, thanks for asking.

NVC and OSS

2016-01-17T18:46:01Z

This is a talk I gave at Open Source and Feelings last fall.

Please enjoy it.

2016-01-17T18:41:25Z

Hello there. Sadly the picture links in this blogpost are broken: /post/23048895912/tacoconf-anarchism It would be great, if you could find the time to update them. All the best, Per -- Anonymous

Ack, looks like they got lost in the switch to a new hosting provided. Fixed now, thanks.

2016-01-17T18:32:01Z

re: the bathtub analogy in your 'captioning at jsconf' post-- Joel Spolsky used it in a post from 2000 at joelonsoftware, so that might be the source. (I can't link here, but searching 'joelonsoftware bathtub grab bars' should work.) I just stumbled across it today and remembered your post! :) -Zara -- Anonymous

Thank you so much! Found a link here: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0000000062.html

2015-12-28T00:55:50Z

togrutan:

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

2015-12-19T20:28:46Z

kyraneko:

thewinterotter:

kyraneko:

doujinshi:

I hate that I laughed at this

“Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there,” and another one appears. And dodges the downward sweep of claws, darting to the side, bouncing off the pentagram’s barriers, and tripping over the demon’s tail. “In the Vatican!” she cries out as she moves, using the State Farm Agent summoning charm to modify the situation as she was taught, and mentally thanking her trainer for expecting her to be fast enough to do it on the first incantation.

Most State Farm agents, when they run into trouble, have to get the customer to do the jingle a second time. That guy with the buffalo was lucky.

The magic takes hold, and she materializes in the aisle of St. Peter’s Basilica, still holding the demon by the tail, in the middle of Sunday morning Mass. The music clatters unprofessionally to a halt as laypeople, deacons, priests, monks, nuns, and the Pope all turn their attention to the surprised demon whose fifth course of dinner has turned, unaccountably, into a visit to one of his least favorite places on Earth.

There is chanting in Latin, and vaguely cross-shaped gestures, and clouds of incense, and the demon vanishes in a puff of smoke, whether from the efforts of the clergy or of his own volition no one can say. The Agent doesn’t wait, fleeing towards the doors and escaping in the confusion.

She gains the exit and walks, purposefully, toward Rome proper; there, she ducks into the nearest alley. A burner cell phone comes out of one of the less-used pockets of her purse, and she dials a number from memory.

“Allstate,” says a smooth masculine voice after three rings.

“State Farm,” she answers. “I’m calling in a favor.”

“Yeah?” Interest. “What sort?”

As she talks she’s pulling out her smartphone, keying an app that was activated by the summoning, and pulling up the policyholder data that enabled the incantation to work.

“Insurance fraud,” she said, and can almost hear teeth sharpening on the other end of the line. She gives him the name, the address, the policy number. “Someone needs some mayhem.”

“That’s my name,” the man says.

She smiles. “Someone needs all the mayhem.”

He chuckles. Slow. Evil. Even with the echoes of demonic laughter ringing in her ears, she’s impressed. “Don’t worry,” he says, almost purring.

“You’re in good hands.”

OH MY FUCKING GOD I just read insurance commercial fan fiction and it was so good, bless you, I’m going to remember this day forever.

IT COMES BACK TO ME! *preens*

Part 2:

It’s not too long later—State Farm will occasionally loan out their teleportation trick, though Heaven help anyone who tries to use it to compete with them—and the man they call Mayhem is squatting next to a demonic circle with tacky half-dried blood under the leather soles of his shoes. Whoever dispelled the circle didn’t do a good job of it; the ring is still faintly smoldering and Mayhem has already singed his fingers on the air above it. He’s in the basement of a house with a State Farm homeowner’s policy, waiting for his partner in, erm, crime, to show up.

“Oh, good heavens.” He smiles at the sound of someone hopping delicately back, then carefully tiptoeing through the mess. Demons are messy eaters, and Flo’s wearing all white.

She steps gingerly over what might be most of a femur, looks from circle to Mayhem to—is that half a skull on the floor? “Freaky. Whaddaya need?”

“Tech,” he says. “State Farm knows the homeowner summoned them, but the Agent reported at least five people present. Maybe six. She isn’t sure, what with being busy evading a demon inside a very small space with zappy walls.”

Flo’s already got a—where does she get those from anyway? a cardboard box in her hands. Mayhem watches as she unfolds it, refolds it, and ends up with something significantly bigger, shaped like a satellite dish. He tries to watch how she does it; they may be working together, but they’re still rivals and his own higher-ups will be very interested in the latest whatever-it-does that Progressive has come up with.

A blue glow lights up the concave side. Mayhem is pretty sure cardboard doesn’t work that way. Flo makes a pleased sound, and starts rattling off names, addresses, policy numbers.

Impressed, Mayhem asks, “How the fuck?” If Progressive is developing some sort of superspy technology, well, that’s kind of ominous.

Flo grins and looks embarrassed. “I, ah, have occasional dealings with a couple guys from That Other Insurance Company. One of them knows someone who knows someone who works in quality control for the Infernal Realms, and it turns out Hell monitors all their summoned manifestations for safety purposes. His contact got me the list of who was there.”

Mayhem nods. He’s had occasional encounters That Other Insurance Company himself. Bland, grey-suited, timid men who are even worse spies than they are insurance agents. “Wait, Hell has a quality control department?”

“And all other forms of administration,” Flo says. “I understand it’s to generate maximum paperwork. It is a place of punishment, after all.”

Mayhem actually winces. “That’s definitely hellish. All right. The Agent who called me in is flying back from Italy and should meet us in a few hours. Should give us plenty of time to plan an attack. Are they all State Farm customers?”

“Just the one,” Flo replies, folding her toy up, and Mayhem watches with vague envy as it becomes a giant sword. “One Allstate, one Progressive, one Geico, two Farmers. We gonna invite anyone else to the party?” She hopes so. Mayhem’s precision strikes on any sort of insurance fraud perpetrators are the stuff of legend, and the Farmers guys would bring in enough absurdity to make it a work of art.

Mayhem’s grin is something that ought to haunt her nightmares. Instead, she finds herself matching it. “Yes,” he says. “Let’s.”

2015-11-22T02:38:01Z

“People get built different. We don’t need to figure it out, we just need to respect it”

Bonnibel Bubblegum is my favorite.

Private Packages for Organizations

2015-11-19T19:00:58Z

jamietheignorantamerican:

Today, npm released a set of features that I’m really excited about: Private Packages for Organizations.

This release allows teams to use private npm packages more effectively. It’s intended for businesses that manage developer teams, with varying permissions and multiple projects.

You can read the official announcement, and learn more about the product on our website.

A big part of the motivation to start a company around this project was that people using npm at work wanted to be able to manage teams and control access to private code. We got a lot of feedback from the early adopters of private packages for individuals, and even more from our beta testers who’ve been banging on this stuff for the last few months as it’s come together.

The team at npm has worked hard on this release, and we look forward to feedback and suggestions from the community. Now that it’s live, we’ll be continuing to improve and polish it as we see how more people use it. Contact us and tell us how we’re doing :)

2015-11-10T21:56:28Z

salon:

Watch SNL‘s Sasheer Zamata mock clueless white-dude privilege in painfully hilarious video

Twitter Hearts Killed the Favoriting Star

2015-11-04T23:12:14Z

I met you on Live Journal way back in ‘02
Lyin’ awake intent on following you
Animated graphics didn’t stop you coming through
Oh-a-oh

They took the credit for all your bad poetry
Rewritten in 140 characters for free
And now I understand the Web 2 point 0 scene

Oh-a-oh
I faved your selfies
Oh-a-oh
What can you tell me?

Twitter hearts killed the favoriting star
Twitter hearts killed the favoriting star

On my phone, held in my palm
We can’t unplug, we’ve grown too calm
Whoa!
Oh-aoh-oh-oh-oh
Oh-aoh-oh-oh-oh

And now we meet-up in an invite-only Slack
Push-notified, but seems so long since you’ve been back
And when you’re lonely you can blame it all on @jack

Oh-a-oh
You were the first one
Oh-a-oh
You were the last one

Twitter hearts killed the favoriting star
Twitter hearts killed the favoriting star

On my phone, held in my palm
We can’t unplug, we’ve grown too calm
Too calm!

Oh-aoh-oh-oh-oh
Oh-aoh-oh-oh-oh

Alright

Twitter hearts killed the favoriting star
Twitter hearts killed the favoriting star
On my phone, held in my palm
We can’t unplug, we’ve grown too calm

Semantics changed and broke your heart
So put all the blame on pixel art

You are… the favoriting star
Twitter hearts killed the favoriting star
Twitter hearts killed that favoriting star, yes, it did

2015-10-28T00:36:45Z

Go Forth and Educate Yourselves!

http://thesocietypages.org/

http://www.ensemble-rd.com/en

http://www.everyday-democracy.org/en/index.aspx

http://www.stophate.us/racism/

http://www.victimsofcrime.org/home

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism

http://www.communitychangeinc.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_privilege

http://ted.coe.wayne.edu/ele3600/mcintosh.html

http://www.whiteprivilegeconference.com/white_privilege.html

I’d also highly recommend watching the Jane Elliot Brown-eye/Blue-eye experiments, which can be found here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeK759FF84s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pv8mCHbOrs (Part 1)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neEVoFODQOE (Part 2 - Has very important points on Reverse Racism and how it doesn’t exist, and it also dismantles the “We All Bleed Red” mentality.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MYHBrJIIFU

2015-10-15T21:21:24Z

micdotcom:

Watch: Bernie Sanders, what a mensch.

Phases of Database Love

2015-10-15T17:36:20Z

Infatuation

This database is just what I’ve been looking for! It has all the features I need! It’s open source, actively maintained, and the documentation is so extensive!

This is the most fun I've had since putting together that gokart as a kid!

I can’t wait to put it into production! <3 <3 <3

Self Doubt

Hm. Well, the first approach to building my app with this thing didn’t quite go as I’d expected, but that’s just because I didn’t fully understand its advanced model. There sure is a lot of documentation, but I don’t understand most of it. Some people in the IRC channel scolded me for thinking in terms of queries, and they’re probably right.

I’ve checked out some books, and I’m reading a lot about the finer points on the internet. Everyone using this thing is really smart, so I’m sure they’ve thought this through.

Now that I am starting to get it, though, I see that I was going about my app all wrong. Once I rewrite it in the complete opposite shape I had before, it’ll be great.

Codependency

It’s in production. My app is holding up, but it takes a few more servers than I would’ve hoped. At this point, I’ve worked around so many of this thing’s issues that I can’t easily migrate off of it, but each new version that comes out seems to make things a little better.

A few of the APIs are kinda confusing, but I know how they work, and I’ve mostly forgotten SQL in favor of its fancy DSL thing. I can kind of work out what the crash dumps mean now, so that’s good.

This is fine. I am ok with how things are proceeding.

Rage

Fuck this thing. I’m spending all my money on servers and all my time on debugging bullshit. I never had this problem with my last database. Someone remind me what the fuck was so bad about SQL again? This “community” here is just a bunch of neckbeards beating up on hapless n00bs, and I can’t figure out which group is more annoying. The docs are garbage, they’re a year out of date, and no one has time to edit them, because the first team (which has fucked off doing YET ANOTHER DATABASE now! in HASKELL because apparently erlang isn’t exotic enough these days!) was so overly enthusiastic about their fucking math project that they wrote more about this ugly baby than the combined works of shakespeare and the gutenberg bible put together, so the docs are highly available, not even remotely consistent, and completely fucking partitioned. Issues in GitHub say to post them into the project Jira, and bugs in Jira are closed for being assigned to the wrong Story, so I spend half my time tracking down a core maintainer to send a patch to. I’m running a cobbled-together patch-floating garbage barge that sinks every time there’s an update.

Fuck this thing. Never again. I’d stop maintaining it and rebuild it all from scratch if I could afford the downtime.

Familial Acceptance

Ok. I’ve rewritten half the app as an SOA, and I’m just storing data in the database now. It’s still the main source of truth, but the records all get piped over to a SQL relational database that I can actually run queries against. It has one or two really nice features, and I’m using those. As long as you ignore most of the API, and never read the docs, it’s not so bad.

Kinda like that one weird uncle who gets too drunk and rants about the second amendment, but is ok as long as you just meet in public and keep it short. We all have our faults. Uncle Bob’s a pretty nice guy, overall. Helped me build a gokart once.

2015-10-14T04:57:37Z

So, my original goal was to portray a society that genuinely did not care about gender. Using a single pronoun for everyone was just one part of that, but the more I played with it, the more interesting the effect was. Ultimately, of course, using “she” for everyone doesn’t actually convey gender neutrality, and I realized that pretty quickly. But I think if I’d chosen to use a gender neutral pronoun—e, or sie, or zie, or any of the others—it would have produced an interesting effect, but it would have lost the way that “she” automatically goes straight to the reader’s perceptions. No, that’s not the best way to say it. I mean, the very long familiarity long-time English speakers have with the pronouns “he” and “she” means that we react to them without actually thinking much about it. We don’t stop to ask ourselves what they mean, they just go right in and trigger a particular set of associations, almost automatically, unconsciously. By using “she” for everyone, I get (for many, but of course not all readers) the effect, once those associations are triggered, of undermining or questioning them, in a very basic way, a sort of… experiential way. It’s one thing to tell someone about the masculine default, and have them understand the idea. It’s another thing to actually demonstrate how it works on your reader. But it only works (for the readers it worked for, because of course it didn’t work for everyone) because we parse those pronouns so thoughtlessly.

The various gender neutral pronouns don’t have that long familiarity for most of us. The effect I mention above, which quite a few readers have explicitly commented on and appreciated, would have been lost if I’d used one of them. It was a trade-off, I think. I can’t blame folks who wish I’d used a gender neutral pronoun instead, of course, and I’m hoping to see those pronouns used more so that they become more generally familiar. I’m seeing singular “they” for known people (instead of the nebulous “don’t know who this might actually be” use of singular they) used well in short fiction lately, and I’ve been really happy to see it. But myself, for this particular project, I think the effect that I got, at least with a sizable number of readers, was worth the trade-off.

So, in some ways I succeeded. In other ways I didn’t. But the result was interesting and gave a lot of people something to think about and discuss, and I’m glad of that.

Ann Leckie on the use of “she” in Ancillary Justice and Ancillary Sword (via existentialcrisisfactory)

Ann Leckie is so rad.

National Coming Out Day

2015-10-11T15:18:51Z

amaditalks:

Some points to consider:
being out is never an obligation

being out is not an indicator of pride, courage, strength, or anything other than a person’s decision to be out

being out is often a major risk, and coming out and staying out is often a mark of privilege to which not everyone has access

being out isn’t always universal, a person can be out to some people and not others, or in some places not others

consequently, never assume that because someone is out to you, they’re out to anyone else

and, it should go without saying, never ever out anyone

lastly, the language of “coming out” belongs to gender and sexual minorities, and there is never a time for people to “come out” as anything else, including as an “ally” to LGBTQ people – no appropriating

how to apologize

2015-09-16T20:09:48Z

I wrote this in the context of company policies at npm, Inc., but since writing, I’ve seen a bunch of examples of profoundly bad apologies, so I’m publishing it here in the hopes that someone out in the world can get a little better at this important life skill.

Sometimes, we’ll do the wrong thing, or make a bad choice, and a Bad Thing will happen that harms someone in some way, making it so that their needs are not met.

In this case, whether they’re a customer, user, employee, teammate, or anything else, the right thing to do is to apologize.

Do not squander this opportunity to express an understanding of another’s needs in crystal clear writing!

Apologies need to have exactly 3 parts:

A Bad Thing happened, and it sucked for you. Here’s a clear explanation of exactly why it sucked for you (what needs you had, and why they were not met.)
The Bad Thing happened as a result of something we did. Here’s a clear explanation of what we did that let it happen.
Here is what we are doing to make sure the Bad Thing never happens again, and if possible, to correct the damage done by the Bad Thing.

The bit about how we feel bad, the “I’m sorry” which usually takes center stage of an apology, is often not strictly necessary, and if present, should always come after the three items above.

I tend to steer away from any attempts to make apologies “sincere”, since sincerity is easily faked, and thus abundant and of low value. Strong feelings of regret do not help me know my data is more secure today than it was yesterday. A fig for your “feelings”. Wallowing in sorrow makes it about the apologizer more than the apology.

The first part shows that we understand what the Bad Thing was, and we understand the needs that went unmet as a result of the Bad Thing. This acknowledgement is a fundamental thing that people need when they are wronged. Just getting this right can sometimes repair the relationship, and is already more than most companies and people can manage. But it’s only 1/3 of the apology.

The second part shows that we are not trying to avoid responsibility for the Bad Thing. IANAL, and there may be cases where responsibility comes with some liability. However, in purely emotional interpersonal points, accepting responsibility is generally regarded as a sign of confidence and power. It doesn’t feel that way, but it’s perceived that way.

The third part puts actions to words, and makes us accountable. Never ask for someone to trust you again; an apology is not the place for that. Simply explain what specific actions are being taken (verb, owner, timeline, budget, criteria), and let them make up their own mind. If it actually would prevent the Bad Thing, and if the effect is externally visible, then you’ll either earn their trust or you won’t. But in the moment, you’ll display confidence and strength by being transparent.

Some things that should never occur in an apology:

Before sending/publishing, scan for any of the following, and delete them.

It was kinda your fault that the Bad Thing happened. If you hadn’t been doing some other thing, it wouldn’t have happened.
There was no way anyone could have avoided causing the Bad Thing, so really, it’s not our fault.
We hope the Bad Thing never happens again (but “hoping” is the extent of what we’re doing about it.)
A Bad Thing MIGHT have happened, maybe, I mean, if it did, we apologize, but if not, then we don’t. (For example, “we apologize if this caused you any inconvenience” vs “we apologize for the inconvenience”.)
HOW AWFUL ARE WE! WOE, WOE UNTO US UNWORTHY SOULS WHO HAVE BESMIRCHED THE GOOD GRACES AND LEGACY OF YOUR TRUST AND GOODWILL! I HEAP DIRT UPON MYSELF, YOUR GRACE! SHAME! SHAME! I KISS THE HEMS OF YOUR GARMENTS, KNOWING THAT I AM UNWORTHY OF ANY – well, you get the idea.
Any expectation, hope, or request for forgiveness. Best to just not mention it. They’ll forgive you or they won’t, but asking makes it no more or less likely, and dilutes the potency of the core apology itself.
Any judgement of any kind. Especially, scan the word “should”, anything implying goodness/badness, degrees of wrongness, etc. It’s not about who’s “at fault”.

When in doubt, anything that isn’t part of the 3 core items should usually be removed. Short focused apologies are better than long verbose ones.

Intent Out, Reality In

2015-08-14T00:59:56Z

Many organizations have an org chart that looks something like this:

At the top is the CEO and the board. Below that are the other C-level executives, then the VPs and Directors, and at the bottom, the individual contributors.

People draw charts like this because it feels satisfying to put the people with more power higher up. It gives us all a warm feeling of safety to know that the people at the “top” have a clear view of the terrain, and are steering the ship in the best direction possible.

It’s clear, when looking at a chart like this, that being higher “up” the chart is better. The best engineer becomes the king of their team, and then the best team-king becomes the King of Engineering (aka CTO).

I think a better metaphor is something like this:

Leadership sits in the middle. They don’t have a “high level view”. In fact, their view of reality is the worst of anyone. They do have the best view of the interactions between the teams, and the highest degree of access to confidential information internal to the organization. They maintain the culture and facilitate the inter-team activities.

(Note that the board is locked in the center with the CEO, but without even a connection to anything else.)

Individual contributors in any given team have extremely detailed, timely, and accurate information about their section of reality. Engineers know the reality of what the software can do. Sales and support know what customers are asking for. However, they tend to have little insight into what things look like on the other side of the org. When they turn around and look back in at the org, they see their manager, and maybe a few interactions in neighboring teams. They necessarily rely on the management infrastructure to inform them about the broader organization.

A healthy organization moves from its center, and responds to input from its edges. This requires two extremely important communication flows:

Intent flows out.
Reality flows in.

When in a leadership position, people will follow you. They can’t help it. It’s how we’re wired. This is very dangerous.

When a leader starts telling their organization what to do, this destroys intent-based leadership. If the leader is wrong about the facts on the ground (which of course they often will be, since they can’t see it!), then this will lead to two types of disasters:

My leader is foolish, and I am enlightened (losing faith in the organization)
My leader is enlightened, and I am foolish (losing faith in oneself)

Both of these are disasters because they break the “intent out, reality in” model. People at the edges will stop sharing their experience if they stop trusting it, because they don’t want to let on that they don’t know what they’re doing. If they stop trusting the organization as a whole, then it’s only a matter of time before they’re out, and in the meantime, they’re not going to be working at full potential.

Intent-based leadership is like muscle memory. If your neocortex had to direct every single body part individually, you’d never be able to talk or walk, let alone ride a bike or drive a car. Instead, your neocortex says “I want a snack. Go to the kitchen.” and a bunch of sub-systems handle the various sub-tasks more or less on their own.

This requires a high degree of trust and practice. Practice leads to competence, and competence over time builds trust. When trust is lost, the information flows get blocked. This leads to an increasing failure rate, blame games start, and it gets harder and harder to regain footing.

(Of course, in reality, organizations don’t exist in 2-dimensional space, and lateral communication is extremely important. But avoiding balkanization is a subject for another day. The goal of this post is to make a point about leadership and hierarchy.)

The best book I’ve found about intent-based leadership is Turn The Ship Around by David Marquet. I highly recommend it.

2015-08-08T01:36:38Z

huffingtonpost:

Watch This Comedian Skewer Anti-Abortion Logic
Cameron Esposito for president.

The Phonetic Troll Alphabet

2015-07-17T17:43:53Z

A - Affect
B - Bog
C - Chew
D - Daby
E - Effect
F - Fam
G - Gebra
H - Happle
I - IoT (pronounced “yot”)
J - Japple
K - Kapple
L - Elephant
M - Mancy
N - Nary
O - Oliphant
P - Pog
Q - Queue
R - Armor
S - Shrank
T - Tog
U - Underwear
V - Vebra
W - Eww
X - Xi
Y - Yacht
Z - Zat

npm v3′s approach to node_modules

2015-07-15T20:53:15Z

by @codedependant

Inclusiveness vs. safety in online spaces

2015-07-13T05:54:48Z

A combination of events at Reddit and LGBTQ in Tech Slack spurred me into a tweet storm about online spaces:
The tragedy of all online community spaces is that the goals of “inclusive” and “safe” are, at the extreme, mutually exclusive goals.
— Laurie Voss (@seldo) July 13, 2015

If you keep including people you will eventually end up with people in the same space who cannot stand each other and will not get along.
— Laurie Voss (@seldo) July 13, 2015

At some point you have to exclude someone. You get to pick if it’s the people feeling unsafe, or the people making them feel unsafe.
— Laurie Voss (@seldo) July 13, 2015

And *that’s not always an obvious choice*. Somebody’s “reasonable topic of discussion” is *always*, eventually, somebody’s threat trigger.
— Laurie Voss (@seldo) July 13, 2015

I’ve run online communities for 20 years and I have learned that there is not even an approximation of a consensus of “reasonable”.
— Laurie Voss (@seldo) July 13, 2015

This is why online communities fragment. Let them do it. It’s the only viable solution to the existence of mutually incompatible people.
— Laurie Voss (@seldo) July 13, 2015

Define your space clearly. Let in anyone who shares your reality. Be honest that people who don’t share it will be excluded. Say why.
— Laurie Voss (@seldo) July 13, 2015

Don’t wring your hands about free speech. You are under no obligation to let people say things you hate. They can go elsewhere, and will.
— Laurie Voss (@seldo) July 13, 2015

from Seldo.Com Feed http://ift.tt/1RsODha

I Am The Very Model Of A Modern Package Manager

2015-07-07T18:02:00Z

graceful-restart-requested:

One of the most amazing parts of working at npm is the passion of our userbase. People make fan art. A fan invented our mascot. This stuff just happens.

Yesterday at lunch, we got into a run of punny song titles based on musicals, leading to a series of tweets about npm the musical. By late that evening, what landed in our inbox? Full lyrics to one of the songs, courtesy of the astonishingly creative Revin Guillen. Not only is it a catchy song, it’s a surprisingly thorough overview of npm’s features and functionality. We are blown away.

I Am The Very Model Of A Modern Package Manager

(To the tune of I Am The Very Model Of A Modern Major General.)

I am the very model of a modern package manager
I’ve information current, deprecated in my cache-ager
I know the code you write has other modules (“mod-you-uhls”) it depends on
And I collect it all for you from first the moment you log on

My registry with calculations teeming mathematical
Dependencies relationshipped by edges linked quite graph-ical
The versions, stars, and issues, bugs all published for the world to see
With many cheerful links to source control for the reposit'ry

With many cheerful links to source control for the reposit'ry
With many cheerful links to source control for the reposit'ry
With many cheerful links to source control for the reposiposit'ry

I’m very good at testing, tagging, publishing your libraries
I find the dupes and de- the dupes and you can rebuild all of these
In short, in matters JavaScript, dependency, and modular
I am the very model of a modern package manager

In short, in matters JavaScript, dependency, and modular
It is the very model of a modern package manager

I know your repo’s history, can shrinkwrap all the deps you need
I answer all the queries, many millions served today indeed
I quote the docs to you when asked, or open them in Chrome at least
I’m active all the time, in time zones all the way from west to east

I can uninstall, unlink, unpublish, unstar, or just un
I know your login name and I can whoami for everyone
My interface is quick and you can write instructions easily
Abbreviate commands so they’re as terse as ‘r’, ’s’, ‘i’, and 'c’

Abbreviate commands so they’re as terse as 'r’, ’s’, 'i’, and 'c’
Abbreviate commands so they’re as terse as 'r’, ’s’, 'i’, and 'c’
Abbreviate commands so they’re as terse as 'r’, ’s’, 'i’, and 'i’ and 'c’

Then I can run-script all the things, lifecycle hooks I can perform
And tell you all about a package: view 'f you want me to inform
In short, in matters JavaScript, dependency, and modular
I am the very model of a modern package manager

In short, in matters JavaScript, dependency, and modular
It is the very model of a modern package manager

In fact when I know what is meant by “version” or (heh) “verison”
When I can give you scripts to help your shell do tab comp-uh-letion
When certain variables are all there in the environment
I enter “plumbing mode”; my output’s based upon the arguments

When I have learnt what progress has been made by npm upgrade
Or npm update, when identical operations made
In short, when registry’s upgraded underneath transparentlyj
You’ll say a better package manager had never ran à ceej

You’ll say a better package manager had never ran à ceej
You’ll say a better package manager had never ran à ceej
You’ll say a better package manager had never ran à ran â ceej

For my packager'il knowledge, though I’m plucky and adventury
Has really really taken off since funding came in ventury
But still in matters JavaScript, dependency, and modular
I am the very model of a modern package manager

But still in matters JavaScript, dependency, and modular
It is the very model of a modern package manager

2015-07-06T22:45:02Z

💖💛💚💙💜💖

2015-07-03T19:58:04Z

kimchicuddles:

How many partners is enough?
Support Kimchi + get original artwork!
https://www.patreon.com/kimchicuddles

2015-06-25T16:04:06Z

greenatlas:

You Don’t Say: Media Double Standards
About Black Protesters
“Wild animals burning buildings down”
“Who acts that way towards a police officer?”
About White Looters
“Young people danced on a flipped over car”
“It’s so tough to lose and unfortunately the ugly side that we sometimes see in sports”

2015-06-20T16:52:55Z

and-we-all-grew:

socialjusticeprincesses:

get fucking vaccinated

This is the best infographic yet

2015-06-17T05:52:52Z

Louie.

Trust the ouch.

Sponsoring Captioning at JSConf 2015

2015-05-29T15:56:43Z

Last year, shortly after returning from JSConf 2014, where npm had sponsored the coffee, I pinged Chris Williams on IRC:
19:07 -!- voodootikigod is away: Auto-away
19:07 isaacs: First of all, jsconf was amazing and awesome, as always
19:07 isaacs: I hope that you're taking some time to decompress :)
19:07 isaacs: Check this out:
              http://composition.al/blog/2014/05/31/your-next-conference-should-have-real-time-captioning/
19:08 isaacs: If you look into this for next JSConf, npm will sponsor it.
19:10 isaacs: we'll probably sponsor anyway, of course :)  but i mean, having CARTs
              in the talks is something that I'd personally want to try to help make
              happen, so if there's anything I can do to help with that specifically,
              i'd love to chat about it
19:10 isaacs: no rush, no reply necessary.  just keep in mind for next year :)
              thanks again for helping us be a part of it.
Auditory accessibility is an important issue for me personally. My partner has a severe hearing loss, and at the risk of sounding like someone who discovered feminism when they had daughters, things do change when an issue affects someone close to you.

In the last 6 and a half years, I’ve become very aware of a lot of little things that had been invisible to me before. Restaurants that are dark, or seating arrangements that make one person back-lit, or where a flickering candle makes it impossible to see a speaker’s lips. I’ve even learned a bit of ASL, enough to have a halfway decent conversation when talking is impossible.

Hotels put handles in their bathtubs because people with various physical disabilities need them[1]. In many places, these accessibility accommodations are required by law.

Needed or not, almost everyone who takes a bath in a hotel will use these handles to get out of the tub. Accessibility accommodations may only be required by a small number of people, but in most cases, they improve the experience for the majority as well.

When I watch tv or movies, and captions aren’t present (for example, in most movie theaters and many online services), I really feel like something is missing. My hearing is a bit better than average, but I occasionally tune out for a second or get distracted, and the text makes up the difference. The words at the bottom of the screen are like the cognitive equivalent of the bathtub handles. Some people absolutely need them, but everyone uses them when they’re there.

At AlterConf in Oakland, Mirabai Knight provided captioning services in real time over a web connection, and it was truly awesome. If you get the chance to go to an AlterConf, I highly recommend it. There was also ASL interpretation and basically every sort of accessibility accommodation possible.

That was the first time I’d ever experienced the ease of subtitles along with a live talk. It was so much easier to pay attention and follow the speakers’ ideas. I can only imagine the difference between struggling to catch every other word and speech-read across the room and behind a microphone, vs being able to just read the words that the person actually said.

When Chris Williams reached out to me again in March 2015, I pointed him towards Ashe Dryden, who made the referral to Mirabai Knight. npm, Inc. footed the bill. Chris told me that they probably wouldn’t be able to have a separate screen for captions, but they’d be able to make a nifty little webpage that would live-stream captions to peoples’ laptops and phones.

Since the presentation rooms are pretty large at JSConf, this made the captions a lot more visible for more people, and also meant that the captions could be streamed outside the presentation room. You can check it out in your browser, if you manage to read this before the conference is over:

http://2015.jsconf.us/t/track_a.html

http://2015.jsconf.us/t/track_b.html

There were quite a few unexpected benefits as well:

Unexpected feature of transcription service is FOMO-free restroom breaks #jsconf
— Joel Dart (@joeldart) May 27, 2015

And of course this happened right away:

stream text transcriptions from @jsconf via the command line!
npm i -g jsconf-2015-stream

jsconf-2015-stream a or jsconf-2015-stream b
— Sam Saccone (@samccone) May 27, 2015

I hope that this becomes a regular fixture at tech conferences around the world, along with other ways to make our community spaces open to more people. Accessibility broadens our communities, and it makes things better and more inviting for everyone.

it was amazing to see the different ways live transcription added to the #jsconf experience for *everyone*
— adam j. sontag (@ajpiano) May 27, 2015

1: I didn’t make up the analogy about bathtub handles being good for everyone, including those that don’t strictly need them. But, I can’t find the original source. Everything I can think of googling leads me to a thousand sites selling bathtub hardware. If you know the source, please help! return

2015-04-27T06:19:52Z

queennymeria:

Needle was Robb and Bran and Rickon, her mother and her father, even Sansa. Needle was Winterfell’s grey walls, and the laughter of its people. Needle was the summer snows, Old Nan’s stories, the heart tree with its red leaves and scary face, the warm earthy smell of the glass gardens, the sound of the north wind rattling the shutters of her room. Needle was Jon Snow’s smile.

2015-04-22T03:45:54Z

2015-04-20T22:26:33Z

This is a picture of my friend Becky. She used to be a happy, popular girl until one night she snorted marijuana at a party. She died instantly. Please, don’t do marijuana. It’s the most dangerous drug out there. Please don’t wind up like Becky.

pretty sure that’s Taylor Swift

no its becky

2015-04-13T23:53:39Z

Letter to Marshall Rosenberg

2015-03-05T22:16:37Z

I am sad to learn that Marshall Rosenberg, creator of Non-Violent Communication, had passed away last month. He had a big impact on my life, and I had hoped to one day meet him if possible.

Now that definitely won’t happen. It makes me sadder than I would have expected. I don’t usually get upset about celebrities or other strangers dying.

I wrote him a letter a few years ago, and thought I’d share it. He didn’t write back (I didn’t expect him to), and I wonder if he ever saw it and appreciated the impact he had on me or on Node and JavaScript.

Dear Marshall Rosenberg,

I am writing to thank you for Nonviolent Communication, and to tell you about the effect it has had on my community recently. I hope that you will find this interesting and rewarding. I am sure that you are very busy, so no reply is necessary or expected, but if you would like to share any reactions you have, I would be very happy to hear from you.

I am a software developer, working as a project lead on an open source software product. “Open source” is software where the source code is given away freely, and where users often submit bug-fixes and enhancements back to the project. Some of us are paid to work on it full time, but the project depends on the continual input from the broader community.

As you might expect, this involves a lot of people communicating with one another, frequently when they do not already have a pre-existing relationship. As a project lead, I often find myself in situations where some people want a certain feature to be done one way, and others want it done another way. Or, in many other cases, a user may request a feature, but lack the full understanding of why implementing such a feature might be a bad idea. The challenge is to educate them, and perhaps say “no” to their request, in such a way that you don’t lose a potential helper.

Modern software development, it turns out, is a very social activity. However, software development typically does not attract people with any innate knack for social interaction. Many of us (myself included) are introverted, nerdy, and a not gifted at empathy. We all know that “being nice” is important, but most of us lack the skills to know how to do that. As a result, software development communities tend to be rather unfriendly, despite everyone “trying” to do the right thing.

As I progressed in my career, I increasingly found that the skills that got me here are not the ones I need to excel. I became a leader of a popular project because of my skills with computers, but suddenly I found myself in a position where I needed to manage conflict and listen to people!

My partner is a therapist, and turned me on to your book. I can’t overstate how helpful it’s been. You have broken down a surprisingly challenging subject into a system that is simple enough to actually remember when it’s needed. It seems like it should be something we all just know how to do. When everything is comfortable and everyone feels safe, it usually is. But the minute we disagree, or feel threatened, our good sense goes out the window.

I have found that NVC has been incredibly useful in my line of work. Technical skills are easy enough to come by, but being able to really listen to a frustrated user is a bit like having magic powers. I still wouldn’t say that my communication skills are the greatest, but the change has been profound.

Recently, at a conference in Ireland, I gave a talk about creating compassionate communities in tech, and NVC factored heavily into it. I literally told people that if there’s only one thing they take away from my talk, they should buy your book and practice it. I’ve given several technical talks, and some management/community related stuff, but this really hit a chord. If you are interested, you can check it out here: ./index.html

I keep seeing new people on the web mentioning this talk, and how they’ve gotten started with NVC recently. The ripples continue outward.

I am personally grateful for all that you’ve done, because it has helped me improve as a technologist and a leader. Thank you for bringing NVC into the world.

– Isaac Z. Schlueter

Will (@wbinnssmith) at Atlassian explains why they use npm for front-end packaging

2015-02-17T08:23:46Z

More and more people are using npm to do frontend stuff, and npm is very excited about this.

2015-02-17T08:12:39Z

hunstantonlies:

This has fucked with my mind

2015-02-13T16:10:54Z

I am 16. I’m dancing to my favorite pop song at my friends birthday party when a boy whose name I do not even know comes over and slaps my ass. My face flushes with redness and I sit down for the rest of the night avoiding the eyes of everyone in the room.

Later, I ask him why he thought it was okay to invade my body without my consent. He says it was a joke.

I don’t laugh.

I am 12. Every girl in my grade is dragged to the school’s auditorium, where we are told that ‘dressing like sluts’ in ninety degree will not be tolerated, and that we will get two detentions if anyone finds our clothing distracting.

Later, I find out that, while we were being lectured on our own bodies, all of the boys stayed in their homerooms and watched a movie, because ‘It’s natural for boys to get aroused, the girls are the ones that have to cover up, they’re causing a problem and taking away from the education of others.’

I don’t understand any of it.

I am 7. I stand up at bat in gym class and blatantly miss the hollow plastic ball that is thrown in my direction. The whole class bursts out laughing. ‘You hit like a girl,’ one of the boys hollers to me.

Later, I ask my female gym teacher why hitting ‘like a girl’ is a bad thing. She smiles at me sympathetically as she says ‘Honey, it just is.’

I don’t smile back.

I am a girl, and since the day I was born, my gender has become synonymous to weakness, incapability, and inadequacy.

And that isn’t fucking okay.
(via laamode)

2015-01-23T16:48:02Z

Hey Buzzfeed. I like a lot of the stuff you guys do, but I've noticed something lately that makes me (and I assume a lot of other people) question whether or not to read your website. It seems like a disproportionate number of your articles and videos cater to women and so-called "feminists". This very blog recently posted a picture that mocked the new and popular #Meninist activist movement. Do you REALLY want your readers to think you support so-called "feminist" ideology? -- Anonymous

buzzfeed:

Yes. Unequivocally yes.

Oh, Anonymous, you crazy ol’ shitbird. Up to your old tricks again.

So much lol @ “so-called "feminist” ideology". Scare quotes ftw.

2015-01-23T07:56:37Z

unamusedsloth:

So many things to ponder in bear life.

2015-01-21T08:34:10Z

A quick and dirty annotation of "Why Women Shouldn't Code"

2015-01-17T01:39:36Z

jennschiffer:

The following are my quick and rough responses to this post as I shoveled wonton soup into my mouth and talked to other women developers about how we are tired of people writing about whether we are doing the right thing or not as women in tech.
Why Women Shouldn’t Code
This title should…

2015-01-14T06:38:10Z

emmafrosticle:

i hate this asshole but i love this asshole

Maple Old Fashioned Pecan Pie

2015-01-01T22:51:00Z

Slightly altered from Simply Recipes - Pecan Pie. This uses maple syrup instead of corn syrup, and I made sure to fill it with just so many pecans. Also, orange zest and whiskey. Because why not?

1 9-inch pie shell, frozen (freeze for half an hour if fresh). I also like to butter the pie dish before putting the crust in. Because butter makes things good.
3 cups pecans, coarsely chopped (save a few whole pecan halves to create a decoration on the surface of the pie if you want)
Another cup of pecans. Just… so many pecans. Don’t skimp.
3 eggs, slightly beaten
1 cup maple syrup
½ cup brown sugar
1 Tbsp molasses
4 Tbsp butter, melted
Another Tbsp of butter
½ teaspoon salt (Unless the butter is salted, then skip, or use less)
2 teaspoon vanilla
1 Tbsp Bourbon or Rye whiskey
½ tsp or so orange zest (I just zested most of one orange. Didn’t actually measure it. Life is short.)

Preheat oven to 350°F. In a small bowl mix together the eggs, brown sugar, corn syrup, molasses, melted butter, vanilla, salt, orange zest, and whiskey until smooth and consistent texture and color. (The butter will tend to separate out a bit.)

Fill the frozen pie shell with pecans. Put the more chopped pecans at the bottom, and make sure to have plenty of pecan halves on the top. Pat them down flat as you put them in, so that you don’t have big gaps.

Stir the filling a little if it’s separated.

Pour the filling over the pecans. Don’t worry about burying the pecans, they will rise to the surface.

If you wanna get fancy, spread some unchopped pecans over the top in a decorative way. Just dip them below the wet filling and let them rise again so they get coated with the filling.

Make sure that any exposed pecans have a good coating of filling.

Melt the other Tbsp of butter, and brush over the inside edge of the exposed crust. Then pour any remaining over the top. Waste no butter.

Bake at 350°F for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes tent the pie loosely with aluminum foil to prevent the crust and pecans from getting too browned. Bake for another 40 to 50 minutes until the filling has set. The pie should be just barely wiggly in the center.

Remove from oven and let cool completely, about 1 hour.

Note that the pie will be puffed up a bit when you first take it out of the oven, it will settle as it cools.

2014-12-30T01:29:00Z

New Years’ is the holiday where we celebrate things that we resolve to do (and probably won’t), as well as learnings from the previous year.

I’d like to thank Merlin Mann, who’s been a source of a lot of wisdom for me. Here are three important points that I’ve learned from him which have served me well in 2014 and I hope to apply more in 2015.

2. Growing up is about becoming the sort of hypocrite you can live with

Hypocrisy is simply unavoidable. The only truly consistent people are calculators and psychopaths, and you don’t want to be either of those. Living means growing, and growing means that you’re constantly discovering ways in which you used to be wrong and holes in the rules and principles that guided you.

Maturity is about recognizing that context matters, and imperfection is not criminal. Failure is allowed. That’s how we can…

3. Find more interesting things to be afraid of

It was cute in high school to be afraid that the popular kid wouldn’t like you, but maybe 30 years is enough time to be done playing that game.

I had a really hard time giving up on being afraid of the same old things. It wasn’t until I started actively seeking out new things to be afraid of that I was able to move past them.

Funny how that works.

But the most important thing, the #1 thing, “step zero” in the parlance of our times, which is so much deeper than it sounds:

1. Keep Moving and Get Out of The Way

Sound advice for proper civics behavior, whether you are talking about supermarket aisles or career paths. Credit where credit’s due, I believe this was coined by John Roderick, not Merlin. But John said it on a podcast with Merlin, so, whatever, partial credit.

Keep moving. Do new things. Poke your head up from your own little rut, and learn to recognize the tools and resources you have. Chances are, you’re not powerless, and everyone else is just as confused as you are.

Get out of the way. For most of the folks out there, it’s not about you. They’re doing their own things, and if you’re in the way, you’re the asshole. So don’t do that. Especially as privileged visible people, it’s important for us to support, while letting other people tell their own stories with their own voices.

Everything good I’ve done so far in life has been this. The more you can keep moving and get out of the way, the more you can enable and encourage those around you, making their lives better and fuller and more efficient. You can do your part, and avoid stopping anyone else from doing theirs, which is usually the biggest help you can give them.

Or at least you can get out of their fucking way. They have their own vegetables to pick out.

2014-12-28T18:55:54Z

Io.js

2014-12-08T18:00:00Z

A lot of people have asked me lately about io.js and its place among Node Forward, the Advisory Board, and npm.

This is my own personal point of view. However, I have shared early drafts of this post with the io.js technical committee to ensure that it’s at least a reasonable approximation of how the team sees things.

What is io.js?

Io.js is a collaborative fork of joyent/node. Io.js is created by Fedor Indutny, a long-time active node core team member responsible for some of the most important parts of the Node.js runtime.

Io.js continues the work that was previously being done by Node Forward in the node-forward/node repository. We hope to merge with the original Node.js project at some point in the future.

What is Node Forward?

Node Forward is an effort by Node.js core contributors, community members, and corporate interests, united in the desire to improve the Node.js project.

On July 11, Mikeal Rogers created a private node-forward repository under his personal GitHub account to discuss the future direction of Node.js. Many of us felt that it was time to pursue a consensus-seeking contributor-governed process for the project, in a neutral foundation.

What is “node-forward/node”?

After a month in Mikeal’s private node-forward repository, the discussion was moved to the Node Forward organization in August, where it could be continued in public. The Node Forward organization included a (GitHub fork-button-style) “fork” of Node.js at node-forward/node, created with the express intent of merging changes with the joyent/node repository.

At that time, Mikeal wrote:

The first goal of the foundation is to house core development at a neutral organization that can support Node. Nobody prefers that work to be released as a fork and we will continue to work with Joyent to make them a member and even a leader of this foundation. Joyent may decide that the best thing for Node is to continue their own work in parallel to the work other contributors are taking under the foundation in a symbiotic manner that has propelled projects like Linux and BSD. In that case the contributors in the TC are committed to releasing as a “fork” although they do not find it preferable.

In the Node Forward repository, the core contributors involved in this effort formed a Technical Committee (TC), and came to consensus on governance process and broad technical direction. The TC consists of 6 of the top 8 Node.js core contributors. (Ryan Dahl has no current involvement with Node.js. TJ Fontaine was invited but declined to participate.)

Does Node Forward compete with Joyent or Node.js?

No.

Joyent is a corporation that provides container infrastructure as a service solutions, including the Joyent Container Service, the Manta data storage and analytics platform, and the SmartDataCenter orchestration system. In 2010, Joyent purchased the Node.js copyright and trademark from Node’s original author, Ryan Dahl.

Node Forward is a group of community members and core committers who want to continue to work on improving Node.js as effectively as possible, using open self-governance in a neutral community foundation.

The goal of Node Forward is to work with Joyent and the rest of the Node.js community in order to improve Node.js. We respect Joyent’s significant investment in Node.js over the years, and we believe that a combined effort is beneficial to Joyent and to Node.

What is the Joyent Node Advisory Board?

On August 13, Joyent’s CEO Scott Hammond called to speak with me about the direction of Node.js. He indicated that he was also speaking to many other Node business, technical, and community leaders.

On September 26, he held a meeting to discuss the creation of an advisory board. He said he wanted to address the issues surrounding the Node project, and the board would be a way to get that process started.

The first official meeting of the Advisory Board occurred on October 23.

More information about the Joyent Node Advisory Board can be found on Joyent’s website.

Why was node-forward/node made private?

On October 9th (that is, after the initial bootstrapping meeting and before the first official Advisory Board meeting), Scott Hammond called Mikeal Rogers and told him that the node-forward/node repository was a violation of Joyent’s trademark on Node.js.

Hammond expressed that he saw this as a sign of bad faith, undermining his efforts in the creation of an advisory board. We agreed to make the repository private in order to show our commitment to working with Joyent on improving Node.js.

I brought up the issue in the third Joyent Node Advisory Board meeting on November 20. Scott Hammond reiterated that it is a violation of Joyent’s trademark to release code “based on Joyent Node.js which is also called node”, and that he intended to ensure that their trademark was protected “by any and all legal means”. He requested that we choose a name other than “node” if we make this project public.

By that time, there was also clear indication of forward progress at the JNAB meetings. We had taken steps towards a consensus-based open governance model not dictated by any one corporation. There had been several discussions of relaxing use of the “Node.js” trademark by businesses providing products related to Node. There was a clearer understanding of the role that the community might play in future Advisory Board meetings.

I am optimistic that the JNAB meetings will continue to be productive.

Why was io.js created?

On November 26, Fedor Indutny, an extremely prolific Node.js core contributor, and an active participant in Node Forward, decided that he would create a fork of Node.js with a different name, so that the technical work started in Node Forward could continue in public without violating Joyent’s trademark.

The Technical Committee that had previously been working on node-forward/node decided to move to the io.js repository. The other non-technical discussion repositories remain on the Node Forward organization at this time.

Does io.js compete with Joyent or Node.js?

No.

The intent of io.js is to provide a space for the Node core team to continue to do the work of improving Node.

Io.js continues the efforts of Node Forward. We are committed to making forward progress and serving the Node.js community, both in technical and non-technical issues.

The work being done in the Joyent Node Advisory Board appears to be heading towards shared goals for the good of the Node community. I expect that this will continue.

The Node community as whole is endeavoring to make a change. The transformation is in progress and we expect to come out better for it. io.js is an ingredient in the process of change, a spark. The future is large, and we continue exploring it.

What are the goals of io.js?

In no particular order:

Continuous integration
100% passing tests as a normal state of affairs
Strict SemVer-compliant versioning
Contributor ownership, outside of corporate control
Transparent consensus-seeking governance
Weekly releases
Supported versions of V8
Active development
Predictable roadmap
Community engagement

Assuming the Joyent Node Advisory Board continues to make progress towards these goals, we expect to merge the projects in the future.

What is npm’s position on Node forks?

npm is the package manager for JavaScript. We support all nodes that are widely used in the JavaScript community, and do not recommend or prefer any of them over any other.

Node’s community has always been its best feature. With over 100,000 modules today, covering a breathtaking array of use cases, used every day by millions of developers around the world, it is clear that the primary value Node provides is a small core enabling userland innovation.

npm remains committed to its mission of reducing friction for all JavaScript developers.

Will npm be renaming to “ipm” since it’s the io.js package manager?

No.

“npm” does not stand for Node Package Manager. It is officially an abbreviation for “npm is not an acronym”. We do enjoy novel pun-making though.

Edit 2014-12-11 – At the decision of the last TC meeting, it’s “io.js” or “Io.js” when capitalized, but not “IO.js”.

2014-11-30T20:59:10Z

I just have something in my eye. Shut up.

peek-a-dillo:

Reddit user HeMeYou was left “overwhelmed” by advice from online strangers after accidentally discovering his son might be gay.

The 38-year-old father posed the question to Reddit after finding Google searches on his son’s iPad suggesting he wanted to come out.

He said: “I found out my 13 y/o son is gay… He hasn’t told me, but I want to support him. What can I do?”

I’m 38, and a single dad to my 13 year old son, 14 in four months. The other day I asked my son if I could borrow his iPad and he gave it to me.

After my first attempt at Google searching something I noticed that he forgot to delete his history as a lot of the search terms were along the lines of “I’m gay what now?” etc…

I love him regardless of which gender he loves, in fact when I was slightly older than him I had a few flings with guys, which he doesn’t know about, so I am 100% supportive.

He has seemed slightly down recently, as in, he isn’t as cheerful as he once was, and I desperately want to tell him that I love him regardless of which sexuality he is.

What are my options? Should I wait for him to tell me? Or should I make a few hints at it?

I’m worried that if I don’t hint at it, that he will be worried about something that he really doesn’t have to be worried about… if that makes sense.
Thanks.

Shortly after, he received a flood of supportive messages, with many users offering advice based on their own experiences.

One user posted: “Google ‘how to tell my son I will love and support him no matter what’ and leave it in his search history.”

Another said: “Let him come out on his own terms, just make sure he knows that you’ll support him and you don’t have a problem with it.”

The father, who wished to remain anonymous, told Buzzfeed the response to his post was “overwhelmingly helpful and kind.”

A few days later, HeMeYou posted an update on what he ended up doing:

I started off with talking about general media with him, for instance I mentioned how awesome it was that Tim Cook (CEO of Apple) came out as being gay and I asked him what he thought about it and I was completely expecting him to give a typical teenager response like “yeah.. its good” or something like that but he actually gave me a detailed response which I absolutely loved because for the first time in a good while I’ve actually held a conversation with my son that felt really… rewarding.

I also wanted to talk to him about how I’ve noticed that he’s not been acting as cheerful as he usually has and I sort of gave the cliche spiel of “I love you no matter what and I just want to see you be happy” but I didn’t get much of a response that time apart from “yeah I know..”

The next day as I picked him up from school I thought I’d ask him about any crushes he has, and I wanted to make sure I didn’t say a gender when I asked him, so instead of ‘he’ or ‘she’ I used ‘they’ etc.. Here is that conversation as I remember it…

Me: So, do you have a crush on anyone?
Son: Uhm… no..m..maybe..
Me: Ohhh so who is the lucky person?
At this point he sort of looked at me slightly confused, I’m not 100% sure why, but I’m assuming it is because I said “lucky person” rather than “lucky girl”.
Son: Just someone from my french class…
Me: Oh yeah… so what do you like about them?
Son: Just.. stuff..
Me: Okay.. but.. like what?
Son: I donno they’re just kinda funny I guess…

At this point I dropped the conversation but just before I did I told him “Well, whoever it is, they should be so lucky to have you as a boyfriend..” and while I didn’t see it, I certainly felt as though he was rolling his eyes at my cheesy comments.

At the dinner table the same day, while we were eating we had a couple minutes of silence, not much was heard apart from the cutlery and my son finally said “I actually wanted to tell you something in the car, but I was afraid you’d get in an accident..”

I looked up from my plate and looked at him straight in the eyes… I could see he was thinking about something and all I could think of was “OMG this is it…”

He said “Dad..” with a couple seconds of silence “..I’m gay”.

I looked at him and couldn’t help myself from smiling, and I told him “____, you know I love you so much… right?” and I got up and gave him a huge hug.

He even started to cry on my shoulder and because of that I couldn’t help myself but shed a couple tears.

Concluding his post, he said: “After dinner and after he finished his homework we both lay in our pyjamas on the sofa, while I was watching the Cooking Channel and he was playing on his iPad.

“I had my arm around him and he was leaning his head on my chest, and all I could think of was that I’m the happiest father on earth right now.”

Complicity with Abuse: 101-level Information Social Justice Hobbyists are Dangerously Ignorant Of

2014-11-29T16:54:39Z

maymay:

Before you claim to be effective in any kind of systemic anti-abuse work, you need to understand the concept of complicity. Thankfully, it’s not a very hard concept to understand. Even better, there’s a very simple test for whether or not you actually understand it as deeply as I think you need…

"Code of conduct thoughts" with Anon Mous

2014-11-18T01:48:00Z

On Sun, Nov 16, 2014 at 11:52 AM, Anon Mous wrote:

Hi Isaac

I was going to put this on the GH thread but it has been locked, so I wanted to send it to you.

Before I begin this comment I want to make clear a few things. I do think harassment happens in tech every day, it falls on socially marginalised groups overwhelmingly, and it needs to stop. I think that CoC’s are a good thing for a community and agree with everything in here. I’m commenting anonymously because I don’t feel safe to say this attached to my real identity.

The CoC defines the rights and responsibilities of all members of the community. One of the rights of members is to not feel threatened, and if they do then to have a safe way to report that. The section on Addressing Grievances covers what someone can do if they feel they’ve been unfairly accused of violating the CoC. This strikes a good balance in the case where the violation of the CoC has been brought to the organisers, evaluated, and then that person has been talked to about their behaviour.

However this doesn’t cover the case where someone has also or only talked about the event in social media and the person has been harassed by a crowd on social media. By the time that the organisers have had a chance to look at the facts and make a decision, punishment may have already been meted out.

I don’t know what the answer is, but I think it’s worth talking about the rights of the accused and the responsibilities of the reporter. In particular, should the reporter refrain from using social media to talk about the person or their actions, instead waiting until the organisers have had a chance to look into the claims?

I’m not sure that social media is always the right place for talking about these incidents, particularly when they have just happened. Additionally I think that often the intent of posting these incidents on social media is at least in part to damage the person they are accusing.

I don’t want to create a gag order, and I don’t know what the right answer is here. I’m aware that marginalised groups are at an extreme power imbalance when making reports, and I wouldn’t want to put anything in place that would make a marginalised person feel unsafe in attending an event, or reporting an incident. Perhaps we decide to be silent on this, leaving it up to the judgement of the person reporting it. If that is the case, then it still deserves to be discussed.

On 18 November 2014 11:22, Isaac Schlueter wrote:

Well, Mx. Mous, I think that you bring up a relevant point, but not one that is new or should direct any different course of action.

Essentially, you are saying that the blowback against an accused harasser on social media channels may be disproportionate to their actions, and in particular, may make the jobs of project administrators more difficult as a result.

This is a relevant concern. However, let’s dig in one step deeper, and look at the root.

Abused people lash out on social media when they have no other outlet, or when other outlets are unlikely to be productive. The best way we can address this is to make sure that victims of abuse are confident that their grievances will be addressed by the community admins.

It is a myth that victims love or seek it out publicity. Look at the actual effects that so-called “professional victims” have to look forward to. No one would go through that if they had any other reasonable choice. It is only a sense of justice that tends to compel them to make their abuse public for the good of others who might benefit from the warning.

If we say “THOU SHALT NOT SPEAK OF THIS ON SOCIAL MEDIA”, as one of the rules of the CoC, then what we are actually saying is, “As project administrators, we believe that you will be so dissatisfied by relying on us that you will have no other choice than to take the fight into the public; furthermore, we are unwilling to be held accountable for our actions in public, so we have added this caveat to absolve ourselves of responsibility if you escalate this issue.”

In fact, rather than ensuring that victims of abuse pursue the “proper” channels for their grievances, this sort of rule will tend to increase the likelihood of a public flamewar, which in practice tends to harm victims more than abusers.

The best course of action is thus to clearly communicate that we will support victims of abuse and harassment, so much so that we are willing and eager to receive any feedback in public or private about how can do this better.

If we do that, and leave it up to the best judgement of abuse victims how they go public, we will tend to find that almost no one opts to heap additional abuse and scrutiny on themselves.

With your permission, I would like to post your question and this response publicly, because this is a common question. I will not include the email headers.

On Mon, Nov 17, 2014 at 5:15 PM, Anon Mous wrote:

Hi Isaac

Thanks for this. You’re totally right and I agree with you. I had some of these ideas floating around but you linked them together for me. I’m happy for you to post this question and response publicly.

Thanks, Mx Mous

2014-11-04T16:17:32Z

andywarnercomics:

In honor of Day of the Dead, here’s a repost of my comic about the San Francisco Columbarium and the man who spent 26 years restoring it.

This comic originally appeared on Medium at The Nib. Go check out my other work there.

2014-10-28T15:15:19Z

thevoiceinthevoid:

swedebeast:

gothbone666:

Our entire world history nailed.

Things which remain consistant - Sex, death and war.

Exactly

this is the greatest thing I have seen on tumblr.

I had to have this

A modern classic.

The human disgrace.

2014-10-26T17:22:18Z

name	message
Child	Mom, can you tell me a bedtime story?
Me	Of course. clears throat Boy toy named Troy used to live in Detroit. Big dope dealer money, he was getting some coins. Was in shootouts with the law, but he live in a palace. Bought me Alexander McQueen, he was keeping me stylish.

2014-10-17T14:04:21Z

I have been hit three of these ways. This is why we take the lane. Because our lives literally depend on it.

When you complain that cyclists shouldn’t be riding in the middle of the lane, you are suggesting that they should be killed.

2014-10-15T22:35:21Z

indefensible:

I don’t know how anybody with a remotely high profile on the internet stops themselves from climbing to the top of a tall building to pick people off with a marksman’s rifle….

[…]

It’s been a small dirty window to internet fame.

Thing is: the internet’s made of IP addresses, opinions, and assholes. It’s what’s there. That’s the basic equipment.

A short course on surviving the web:

Read More

2014-10-08T22:19:00Z

PB and Marceline is one of the most poignant love stories in modern fiction. Beautifully told, through hints and so much left unsaid.

Poor Finn. He thinks she’s talking about him. He has no idea.

That last gif. Wow, that gets me. Maybe Princess Bubblegum’s first sentient action was to save Marceline’s life in the aftermath of the Mushroom War.

2014-10-08T05:14:13Z

espruen:

An alternate universe where Bruce Wayne died instead of his parents. Causing his father Thomas Wayne to become Batman and his mother Martha to go insane and become the Joker.

2014-10-07T18:52:00Z

motivatedslacker:

“iwill climb on top of you in the night and settle like a tiny rain cloud”

Sauce: http://www.okcupid.com/profile/sunday93?cf=profile

2014-10-01T18:55:49Z

Roses are pretty.

2014-10-01T18:52:13Z

nyxweaver:

grandtrilobyte-eleshnorn:

nyxweaver:

sarkhan-volkswagen:

nyxweaver:

abzan-houses:

nyxweaver:

y’all remember that game in elementary school where each person would say one word and the next person would say a word etc so it’d create a cohesive story? let’s do that:

Two

Thousand

men

ate

their

dicks.

well playtime is over you’re all grounded

When @izs is summoned to a GitHub issue bikeshedding npm features

2014-09-26T19:16:32Z

by anonymous

2014-09-25T03:48:59Z

sanity-schmanity:

Picking up accents: it’s not weird.

Have you ever been talking with someone from another state or country and caught yourself accidentally picking up bits of their accent? Turns out it’s normal:

“An experiment with lip-reading has found that the brain subconsciously tries to copy the speech patterns of total strangers.

Researchers who made the discovery believe accent mimicry is part of the brain’s in-built urge to ‘empathise and affiliate’ with other people. And we don’t even need to hear them saying the words out loud.”

So researchers at the University of California did an experiment where they had volunteers watch a silent video of a face saying a bunch of simple words. They gave the volunteers a choice of two words and asked them to say which one they thought the face in the video had said. And look:

"They were not asked to either imitate or impersonate the talker, just say what the word was. But amazingly, the tests showed they were more likely to repeat the word in exactly the same accent used by the speaker rather than their own accent.”

Read more here.

2014-09-25T02:39:51Z

meadows-mommy:

apersnicketylemon:

revolutioninabox:

A pro-life group in Lansing, Michigan says fetal models have helped save a baby from a late-term abortion. Officials with 40 Days for Life in Lansing posted a picture of a set of fetal models that it says helped changed a woman’s mind about having an abortion.“ I showed the 30-week model to a late-term mom who left the clinic and DID NOT have an abortion. Praise God!” the group wrote.

Literally none of these except the final one is anatomically correct. You literally have a minuturized born infant model as your 12 weeks ant 8 weeks fetus, this is BLATANT misinformation and lies.

Additionally abortions at 30 weeks? Aren’t legal ANYWHERE in the world unless the fetus is already fucking dead or cannot survive outside the uterus on it’s own. You didn’t save ANYTHING, or else you are lying about gestational age OR they weren’t actually going for an abortion or you made the whole story up.

This is propaganda, misinformation and lies, it’s disgusting and it doesn’t actually help your movement. This is (among the reasons) why pro choicers think pro liars are full of shit, and refuse to respect you or your movement.

FUCK YOU FOR SPREADING MISINFORMATION ABOUT ABORTIONS> NOT YOUR UTERUS NOT YOUR GODDAMN CHOICE

^

2014-09-19T15:17:55Z

fini-mun:

Dude check out this shark

2014-09-16T00:38:00Z

Capital Cities - Safe And Sound (Official Video)

Last year, Marisa and I went to Italy.

I’m not usually exposed to whatever is playing on the radio. Basically everywhere we went in Italy had MTV (or whatever channel it is that plays music videos) on a television.

And every one of them was playing “Safe and Sound”. Every cab, every car that drove by, every bar, every cafe. For those three weeks, this song was on repeat for me. I’ve never experienced anything like that in the US. Having travelled a bit, few things feel as profoundly “foreign” to me as “being assaulted by a constant repetition of the current US pop hit”.

I heard it in the background in a restaurant today, and I was back there.

It is raining, just a little, not a lot like the other day, when we were on our way here on the train. I am sitting in a cafe in Manarola. Marisa is at the counter ordering a cafe for herself, a doppio for me, and a pastry to share. I watch a group of germans franks and brits suddenly gather in the street holding signs awkwardly asking each other where to go, and just as abruptly depart after their guide. Marisa sits down next to me and we chat about where to hike today.

This song will always taste like Italy to me.

2014-09-14T20:00:42Z

oatmeal:

“Hey bro, you got the time?"

"Yeah, it’s … hang on. Just a sec. God fucking damnit. "

2014-09-14T19:59:16Z

birdandmoon:

Dating isn’t easy, no matter who you are. This is a great Attenborough clip about wasps and orchids.

2014-09-14T19:58:04Z

raygorartshit:

Bisexual Frustration: Everyone is Hot and I’m Really Bad at Handling It - my autobiography

2014-09-14T18:10:05Z

Saga just keeps on breaking my heart.

2014-09-14T17:35:08Z

rnayablanca:

Little Miss Sunshine Script + Gifs: Dwayne’s Colorblindness

Postmodern geekdom as simulated ethnicity

2014-09-14T06:30:00Z

Wow. Fascinating breakdown of the origin, development, and nature of the “geek” in popular culture, from R. Crumb to Frank Miller to The Dude. Go read it.

The tl;dr is that the “geek” is a “simulated ethnicity”, assumed to tell a melodramatic story of triumph over adversity that lends credibility and moral authority to an otherwise unremarkable and unsympathetic member of the privileged class, who still vies for success within a traditional misogynistic, patriarchal, homophobic paradigm.

Absolutely love this bit at the end:

What of the female geek? For the geek conceit to play out in its most misogynistic form, she must be missing. … [The female non-geek character] is elevated for her lack of geekiness because she is required to act as the reward the geek or “nice guy” feels entitled to in traditional patriarchal narratives. There is a missing character: the true geek female counterpart … who is loved for her brains and not for looks … This missing character lays bare the misogyny of geek melodrama.

Yep. “Laid bare” is right.

Go read it.

2014-09-14T03:05:02Z

some-newtype-bullshit:

EVERY PART OF THIS IS WRONG

You can pretty much milk anything with nipples

2014-09-14T02:57:19Z

To increase their capacity for consumption, consumers must never be allowed to rest. They need to be kept forever awake and on the alert, constantly exposed to new temptations and so remain in a state of never wilting excitation – and also, indeed, a state of perpetual suspicion and steady disaffection

Zygmunt Bauman, Globalization: The Human Consequences

Why I'm not a "gamer"

2014-09-01T22:13:55Z

pattheflip:

I decided to sit out for most of the last month or so of games internet misogyny shit, opting instead of signal boost the good people willing to jump into the fray themselves. There is one thing I wanted to write a short note about, though — the identity of “gamer” and why I haven’t used it myself…

2014-08-30T20:03:38Z

politicallyincorrectwalrus:

nateswinehart:

Being good to each other is so important, guys.

An important PSA.

2014-08-22T02:36:53Z

deansdamnation:

thespyandthesoldier:

weight-a-second:

me too, Arya, me tooooo

This whole scene is golden.

you could hear arya going through puberty

2014-08-22T00:11:17Z

kateceratops:

People are giving Wilson money to thank him for killing an unarmed black teenager. Please report this to GoFundMe, as it violates their Terms of Service and they get 5% of the tens of thousands of dollars being donated. Click to report.

The “Support Officer Wilson” page url: http://www.gofundme.com/supportofficerwilson

This is my message, in case you want to copy and paste:

Your Terms of Service prohibit “items that promote… hate, racial intolerance, or the financial exploitation of a crime.” Take a look at the comments that come with the donations on this page and tell me that doesn’t violate your terms. “Support Officer Wilson” is a thin veil for people rewarding Wilson for killing a black kid.

I don't see race

2014-08-11T17:20:00Z

A few times recently, when discussing privilege and systemic oppression with well-meaning intellectuals, I’ve heard this phrase or some variant of it:

“Race doesn’t exist. It’s not a real thing.”

There’s an argument to be made that, from a biological point of view, there’s really no substantial difference between what we might call a “white person” and a “black person”. Stepping outside of relatively recent Euro-American culture, these specific terms might not even be meaningful, to the extent that they ever were.

However, this is a very reductionist way of looking at the situation in absence of some extremely relevant context.

First of all, skin tone, body type, and other physical characteristics are frequently used as markers of inclusion in a particular cultural group, even if the person themselves does not identify with that cultural group. A dark skinned man from Pointe Noire may have basically no cultural overlap with a dark skinned man from Oakland, whereas I might have a lot of cultural overlap with him, since we live in the same city and speak the same language. However, many members of our society would put those two in one group, and me in another. This is relevant; ignoring its relevance isn’t rational.

If your “race is fake” idea is a thought technology that helps you place a bright red “irrational” flag on any ideas that pop up that might have some racist influence, then fine.

But if “race is fake” is used as a “get out of this conversation free” card to avoid even discussing the systemic oppression of American people with the physical characteristics typical of people from west Africa who were sold into slavery (to pick one example of many), then you’re just using your liberalism as a pass to be intellectually lazy about context.

Human cognition is practically built on laziness. So, if I had to bet, I’d guess that any time you say “race isn’t a real thing”, it’s just a way to be lazy. (Of course, I’m not going to bother collecting evidence, or even actually betting, because laziness.)

“I don’t see race” always reminds me of the “pilot” conversation in Pulp Fiction:

I think her biggest deal was she starred in a pilot.
“Pilot”, what’s a “pilot”?
Well, you know the shows on TV?
I don’t watch TV.
Yeah, but, you are aware that there’s an invention called television, and on this invention they show shows, right?

Here’s how I’d like to start responding to inappropriate use of “race isn’t real”:

discussing a code of conduct which lists “race” and “ethnicity” as attributes explicitly protected from harassment
As for diversity, I don’t recognize the notion of race (which doesn’t exist)

Yeah, but, you are aware that there is a social invention called “race”, and that this invention is frequently a basis for harassment and discrimination, right?

And yes, of course, it would be a much better society if everyone also didn’t recognize the notion of race (which doesn’t exist). But by not recognizing the effect that “race” has in systemic oppression, you are not recognizing the notion of broken social systems (which certainly do exist).

Be the change you want to see in the world. But also be aware that that’s almost certainly not enough, and ignoring systemic oppression is a privilege not granted to those who are being oppressed.

Note: s/race/gender/g in this post, and it’s basically the same. Except I’d argue that gender exists, but not in the rigid binary that our culture insists. Ie, “gender” is a real thing; our cultural paradigm of “woman” or “man” probably isn’t.

And yes, if you grew up on this planet, you do see race. What you don’t see is yourself seeing it.

2014-08-07T16:32:51Z

Unikitty

2014-08-07T02:30:53Z

Every new startup CEO can relate, I’m sure.

2014-08-05T01:54:43Z

redunderwear:

turbomun:

THERE WAS A GLITCH ON MY PHONE WHEN I SCROLLED DOWN THIS POST AND IM SHITTING

rob liefeld’s final form

2014-08-04T06:20:16Z

i love the term “partners”
are we dating?
are we robbing a bank?
do we run a legal firm?
are we the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies and are members of an elite squad known as the special victims unit?
who knows.

2014-08-04T06:14:46Z

kaibii:

toronjas:

I JUST SAW THIS ON FACEBOOK
O M G

jesus wants in on a threesome

2014-08-02T18:37:56Z

huffposttv:

By M7781 via DeviantArt

2014-07-31T15:46:44Z

a-little-bi-furious:

bisexual-community:

ihaventfinishedyet:

Note: The REAL Piper of Orange is the New Black has clearly stated, “Well, you know, I’m bisexual so, I’m a part of the gay community.” Additionally she has pointed out that she came out at "either 18 or 19”, and “had relationships with many, many women before I met Nora and after I met Nora.”

So viewers should be aware that it was a “creative decision” of the shows writers, producers + NetFlix to minimize and erase the character’s actual + stated bisexuality by never using the “B-Word”, turning her instead into a tired bisexual trope. This should not be viewed as at all realistic.

IRL Piper Kerman is a strong, interesting, out bisexual women in a different gender marriage, who participates in her LGBT Community and works hard for Prison Reform.

Holy crap I was reading reviews of her book and everybody was saying she described herself as an “ex-lesbian” too and I didn’t know until now that she actually said “well, you know, I’m bisexual so, I’m a part of the gay community”, oh my fucking god!

2014-07-31T15:41:39Z

ripelypine:

my favourite part of shakespeare plays is the person at the end that is like “see how these people fucked everything up. don’t do this. look at this fuckery. look at it. fuck this. fuck everything.”

#

2014-07-30T00:34:16Z

ministryofgifs:

Source

2014-07-24T22:00:29Z

magnoliapearl:

konistehdump:

70sscifiart:

Almost there

I wish

kind of true though

Supreme Being

2014-07-18T00:46:55Z

name	message
seldo	"Enterprise Replicator" should be the name of a service so we can make 'tea, earl grey, hot' jokes.
isaacs	Oh, also, we should use promises for it.
ceej	Really? I'm surprised to hear you say that.
isaacs	Yeah… and I know you all like bluebird, but we should use Q for this. More powerful.
bencoe	I see what you did there.

Delusional Pets

2014-07-17T21:24:00Z

name	message
rockbot	I know you said no dogs, but can we pleeeeeeeease have a platypus-friendly office!?
isaacs	I don't know. Our office is pretty dry. They need water.
rockbot	That's why we'd get a tank!
isaacs	Isn't it also like, super cold here for them?
rockbot	They're nocturnal! So it'd just come out at night.
isaacs	Why not just imagine a platypus being here when you're home at night? This isn't a pet-friendly office, but it's definitely a delusion-friendly office.
rockbot	Really?
isaacs	Yeah, have you seen the spreadsheets and graphs we show investors? This is a startup, it's practically nothing but delusions!

On privilege and power

2014-06-24T17:13:26Z

There is a thing about privilege and power that I don’t think we say often enough, whether the conversation is about gay marriage, or women in tech, or any of the dozens of other places the battle for equality is being fought.

The objection of the privileged when people demand equality is basically “but this will make me less powerful!” It’s often expressed as “this is trampling my rights!” or “reverse discrimination!” or other phrases that sound like they might be reasonable but aren’t. Campaigners for equality often respond along the lines of “giving us equal rights doesn’t take yours away. Giving us power doesn’t diminish yours.”

But honestly, that’s not true. Power is a relative measure. If I get more, you have less. If your rights include excluding me from places, then including me takes that right away. We gain nothing by denying this.

So here’s the thing we should say more clearly: yes, this will make you less powerful. Yes, we are taking some of your rights away. That’s okay. You are too powerful, and you have more rights than you deserve.

And then at least we can stop having this circular argument.

For #RoeAt40, all of my favorite pro-choice resources

2014-06-20T03:12:24Z

stfuconservatives:

As my long-time readers know, abortion is an issue I’m very passionate about. So passionate that I have a bookmarks folder simply labeled “Abortion” that has about 75 links in it. For your edification, some of my favorite response to pro-life ignorance:

“Banning…

2014-06-20T03:05:54Z

chryswatchesgot:

Chrys Watches GoT [x]

2014-06-20T02:42:44Z

LG_T

2014-06-11T17:28:00Z

Erasure is a complicated subject.

I was born onto a bed of privilege. I’m of white European descent, and my immigrant ancestors came over the ocean long enough ago that my parents could speak the exact same dialect as the teachers at my well-funded suburban public school. They both had graduate degrees, and our home was full of books. I was encouraged towards intellectual pursuits.

My dad ran his own company when I was growing up. We weren’t super rich, but we never went hungry. By virtue of that business, I played with computers from an early age, and learned the basics of strategy and sales as far back as I can remember.

I wasn’t abused or disabled. In fact, for an extremely nerdy kid, I didn’t even get picked on all that much.

On top of that, I’m cismale and straight.

I knew that I was a straight boy, because I liked girls. A lot. Boy, oh, boy, girls were great.

My TV education on human sexuality was clear. There are 5 sharply defined categories. Lesbians, straight girls, girls who liked to fool around with other girls sometimes but are actually straight (aka “bi” or “AWESOME”), gay men, and straight men. Straight men go with women, and gay men don’t. So obviously, I was straight.

And just as obvious as my straightness, I knew that some of our culture’s beliefs about straight people were off base. Straight men are also attracted to men. As a straight guy, any argument to the contrary was obviously wrong, because I knew from my own experience. I’d had full-on crushes on male friends of mine, which was clearly a normal thing for normal straight people to do, as evidenced by me, a normal straight person doing it.

They said in vicious teasing that boys who liked boys were gay, but I knew that I wasn’t gay, because gay boys don’t like girls. Therefore straight boys also like boys sometimes, and the people doing the teasing are just misguided or something. But I feared the teasing, so I didn’t point out their error.

I always felt like it would be an easy thing to “switch teams”, and be gay if I wanted to. The fascination with the “born this way” meme in queer activism never made sense to me. Of course we have a choice in the gender we pursue, doesn’t everyone? Isn’t choice great?

I never did switch, because I didn’t want to be gay. That would mean I’d have to give up dating women, which I enjoyed.

Heterosexuality carries the privilege of not having to explain why I’m inviting someone out on a date. You’re a woman, I’m a man, we just follow the script that society has handed us.

It’s easy to remain only partly visible.

It took an embarrassingly long time to stop erasing, and become ok with calling myself “bisexual”, even in my own mind.

The realization didn’t come in High School when my crush on another boy had me following him around like a weird giddy puppy. Or in college, when I first kissed a boy. Or the second or third time that boy and I made out.

The scales started to lift from my eyes when I had a conversation with a good friend about the movie “Troy”, well into my 20’s.

He said, “That movie was kind of boring.”

I was shocked, and then I realized he was talking about the plot.

“Well… I didn’t really pay attention to the plot, tbh. That movie’s just lots of Brad Pitt being gorgeous and half-naked.”

“You’re not as straight as you think you are.”

“Yeah, like you’re not attracted to guys sometimes.”

“Nope.”

“Not ever?”

“Not ever.”

“Not even Brad Pitt?”

“Not even a little. You’re bi, dude.”

“Huh.”

I figured he was fucking with me. But a lot of things did start to make sense.

My life since then has been significantly more interesting.

I tried on the label like a new pair of shoes, awkward, and uncertain.

Like a good nerd, I dove into the research, but found it surprisingly lacking. Bi Men Coming Out Every Which Way was a great read. I learned about how pervasive the erasure of male bisexuality is, even among academic studies of LGBT culture. It’s as if the B isn’t there. A man who has sex with men is gay. If he then has sex with a woman, he’s “closeted”.

But how can it be a closet if you go into it and out of it repeatedly, with lovers and families on both sides? That’s not a closet, it’s a room with a revolving door.

The idea that bisexuality might exist is news worthy of the New York Times, even.

Privilege is hard to give up. I can’t overstate how easy it is being straight in public, just letting people think whatever they want. But in the years since I’ve come out to myself, this bugs me more and more.

When meeting a new person, I try to say “partner” rather than “girlfriend”, and sometimes even “they” rather than “she”. The shape of my lover’s body is no business of theirs, after all.

But when I slip, and drop her name, or use female pronouns (which, to be fair, she does use, female as she is), I can’t help but wonder if they’re relieved to find out that I’m not gay, or perhaps just relieved to know which mold I fit into.

I find myself resenting being cast in a mold at all. Even if I say “partner”, and they assume I’m gay, part of me feels so put upon by that idea. And then here I am making assumptions about what assumptions someone else might be making. It’s a vicious cycle, and there is no escape from the hypocrisy.

I’ve tried since then not to make assumptions about others’ sexual preferences. Yet despite my best intentions, I consistently find myself mentally putting people in the “straight” or “gay” buckets once I find out the gender of their significant other.

The habit of bi erasure is silent and pervasive.

The first time I kissed a boy was almost a dare. In a dorm room, sitting around drinking, as you do. The two girls, roommates, said to the 5 of us boys that they’d both wondered what it would be like to kiss a girl. But, they said, they’re not lesbians, so they wanted to do it in front of people, so that it wouldn’t get too serious, or go too far.

You can imagine the reaction.

YES, LADIES, YOU HAVE OUR ATTENTION, PLEASE PROCEED

Afterwards, one of them remarked, “See, that’s why women are better. Guys would never be secure enough to do something like that.”

He and I both replied, “Bullshit,” and before I knew it, sparks were flying. The other 3 boys in the room were shocked, making the socially required homophobic anguish sounds. I barely remember them being there. I’d been looking all day for an excuse to touch him. It ended too fast, but endures in my mind to this day.

What a shock it was when I learned, 14 years later, that he has a boyfriend now! I don’t know why it should’ve been a surprise. Back then, making out just seemed like a thing straight friends did with each other once in a while.

Again and again, I catch myself being surprised like that. I try to remember that, in fact, a significant portion of men are bisexual, perhaps even a majority, depending on how we decide to define things. I try to yank my thinking out of the mold, but it frequently slips back.

You don’t notice erasure until you stop doing it.
And then you don’t notice when you start again.

I’ve been told by people in the LGBT community that “bisexual isn’t a real thing”, that I’m “actually straight” because I’m with a woman, or even, “men aren’t bisexual, just closeted.” Bi-curious is code for “about to leave the closet”. “Bi now, gay later.”

I have taken to referring to gay and straight people as “monosexuals”. I respond by explaining that they’re just going through a phase. Once they meet the right person not of their stated preferred gender, they’ll grow out of it and realize that they’re actually bi.

But I know, that old “everyone’s bi” story is just another way to push us into the background. If we’re not nonexistent, we’re unremarkable. Either way, nothing to see here. Move along.

Or worse, if we are visible, we’re sex objects. Dating gay men confirmed every awful thing I’ve heard (and, let’s be honest, perpetuated) about how straight men treat bi women. Qv the “bi for male pleasure” meme implicit in my first gay kiss experience. They’re happy to fuck the SAG, but anything more than sex is off the table. We can’t be trusted, after all. We’re tourists. Unicorns. We don’t exist.

LG_T

Maybe the strangest part about growing up a closeted bisexual is that I’ve been practicing dating girls since puberty. I’m very good at it. Confident. Respectful. Sensitive. Witty. Hungry and giving. It’s not talent or PUA bullshit, and there isn’t any one weird trick. It’s the result of many years of conscientious practice, with loving patient teachers who were learning from me as well; the occasional broken heart that didn’t kill me, even when I felt like it was trying to.

But my experience with men is still so elementary. Men and women are different! Turns. Out. I am 13 all over again, confused and stumbling, sending the wrong signals, and reading every situation backwards. And they are grown men with adult expectations who very reasonably want a peer, not an apprentice. So that’s been tricky.

I don’t have it nearly so rough as the newly-out “baby gays”, celibate well into adulthood. At least I’ve had some relationships, enough to learn that the emotional bruises heal. My heart goes out to them.

At first, I was very careful about who I told. I didn’t want to draw scandal or trolling to my online communities. I didn’t want the drama. I still fear the schoolyard teasing.

Mostly, I didn’t want anyone else telling me how to feel about something I was only beginning to accept myself.

Eventually, I’ve come to see my queerness less as a “thing” to be disclosed, and more as just another part of my private life. Something that friends probably know, and strangers probably don’t, no more scandalous or secret than my address or my allergy to shellfish.

I envy kids growing up today, as the sharp lines between straight and gay finally begin to blur in the cultural consciousness. Straight boys in love today might explore that feeling, without suffering an identity crisis. I wish those lines would blur faster. I wish it was a big deal because love is awesome, instead of being a big deal because of the genders and stated identities of the actors.

My home is technology. This is My Culture, rotten though it can be at times. As a privileged and visible person in it, I feel obligated to try to make it a little better in the ways I can. That’s why I’ve decided to publicly tell this story, so that my presence can add weight to the claim that bisexual men exist.

Maybe this can also be a reminder of the multitude of other things we casually erase from the people around us. There are so many ways we make our friends invisible, unwittingly nudging them into a corner that denies important parts of their identities, by perpetuating memes we don’t even notice.

Erasure isn’t healthy. And we are all unaware that we do it.

2014-06-11T06:52:21Z

teamfreesnuggles:

sansa has been waiting for this day for four god damn seasons

Grunt, Gulp, Broccoli

2014-06-08T16:41:05Z

“Make: it work.” <rimshot>

(I kid, I kid. Those libs are cool and useful for a lot of things.)

2014-06-07T04:53:59Z

markruffalo:

effervescent-cloudwalker:

hashtagpropaganja:

thekhoolhaus:

Perspective

Love this

So weird

awesome!

Re: Maven is like my girlfriend

2014-06-05T16:16:00Z

First of all: wow, misogyny. As Rick Scott put it, this slide amounts to “Bitches. Amirite?”

A few people have rushed to Doklovic’s defense, claiming, “Nono, you misunderstand; he wasn’t talking about girlfriends as such. Of course that would be inappropriate! No, he was complaining about his specific girlfriend.”

I spent too many years with a partner who used public humiliation, guilt, and intimidation to get their way. They complained in public, in my presence, to our mutual friends that I didn’t make enough money, while spending it all buying those friends drinks. This partner told people that dating a nerd is worth all the downsides because they don’t have to have a job, and you never know, I might one day create the next Facebook and become a millionaire. Then in private, when I told them those things really hurt, they’d tell me that it was just a joke, and I shouldn’t take things so seriously. That my sensitivity is the reason why they have anxiety problems and can’t regulate their emotions without drugs and alcohol.

My self-esteem hit rock bottom. I was empty for years. My family didn’t recognize me. I lost most of my friends, and a valuable chunk of my twenties.

Thankfully, I bounced back.

All totaled, the divorce ended up costing over $80,000, and I consider it the best money I’ve ever spent. Thank the universe there weren’t any kids or mortgages involved.

I’m not sharing this for sympathy. I’ve lived very well since my divorce, and I’m lucky in more ways that anyone has a right to. I had the real power the whole time, and just had to recognize it.

I’m sharing this so that you understand why, when someone shares a slide like this, proudly making a joke at the expense of their significant other, I am struck by blinding rage. If this was about me, I would have dumped him via a public tweet. If I’d been in the audience, there’s a good chance I would have ended up being kicked out of the event.

Saying “Nono, this was about his specific girlfriend, what’s the big deal?” is really no defense. If his girlfriend is a real person, she has real feelings, and I sincerely hope that she has the strength to recognize the problems with this behavior and get out as soon as possible.

How to install node.js and npm on ubuntu 14.04

2014-06-01T20:32:48Z

fuckyeahsoulcaliburcreations:

The top result for “how to install node on ubuntu 14.04” is currently this DigitalOcean article. Unfortunately, their first suggestion, installing via apt-get, will install an old version of node and a very old version of npm that cannot properly update itself (because of path differences). Their second suggestion is much better. Simply:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chris-lea/node.js
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nodejs
This is all you need to do. npm is bundled with node.js and will be installed automatically if you install this way. If you want to make sure you’ve got the very most recent release of npm, you can do:
sudo npm install npm -g
This step is optional. At the moment Chris Lea’s PPA will give you npm 1.4.9, which is recent enough to have no showstopper problems (the version that comes with apt, 1.3.10, is not terrible but has some known bugs).

2014-05-28T07:39:15Z

ablogforants:

bird

Best loading gif ever.

2014-05-18T01:49:59Z

Björk’s mystery misandry. ❤️

2014-05-18T01:42:49Z

boomerstarkiller67:

Star Trek concept art, Enterprise interior sets - Mike Minor (1977)

2014-05-15T22:02:55Z

Mega Man

2014-05-14T14:17:31Z

mynameisnatalee:

tastefullyoffensive:

The New Batman Logo [@zacksnyder/drbrevin]

OH MY GOD. THANK YOU.

I seriously thought I was the only one seeing that.

2014-05-11T18:30:40Z

I made a thing to help you understand when you should call technology “sexy” in tech blogs.

2014-05-05T01:33:50Z

carry-on-my-wayward-butt:

ch0rdate:

chacha-again:

sizvideos:

Who needs traffic lights? Not the drivers in Ethiopia - Video

This made me so uncomfortable.

this honestly gives me anxiety just looking at it

im never driving again

Void

2014-04-27T18:15:48Z

probertson:

by me and Jacky

2014-04-27T17:19:38Z

fakebjorkfacts:

2014-04-27T17:14:21Z

fakebjorkfacts:

Bjork invented the internet.

2014-04-27T17:12:20Z

adaytoromana:

this kinda makes me uncomfortable

2014-04-22T22:49:45Z

skeletorislove:

Skeletor Affirmations (by ghoulnextdoor)

“THE SKELETOR IN ME RECOGNIZES THE SKELETOR IN YOU.”

Thanks to the folks at Pantheacon for this one :)

2014-04-12T17:49:16Z

daveshumka:

The slowed down vocals from “Band on the Run” over the sped up instruments from “Imagine.”

No words. This is magical.

On Eich.

2014-04-04T00:57:32Z

vowelboy:

Reducing the Eich sitaution to an argument about “seeing things from a point of view” is rather facile.

The man actively contributed to an action that removed a (previously granted) set of rights / privileges from a certain group of people.

He was appointed to a leadership position of an organisation that has an enormous presence in a community with a well-established standard for expectations of equality.

That community rallied and made their voice clear: “This behavior is unacceptable from a leader in our community.”

Rather than engaging with the community to build a bridge and address their concerns, Eich chose to step down.

Eich was not “bullied out of a job.”

This is not a case of being an innocent victim of an uncommonly held opinion. This is a case of a community not tolerating the actions of one of its appointed leaders.

2014-04-03T22:18:55Z

laughingsquid:

Adventure Time, An Art Show Inspired by Cartoon Network’s Animated TV Series at Gallery1988 West in Los Angeles

2014-04-03T22:11:15Z

vintagegal:

_{Metropolis Film Poster by Werner Graul (1927) (via)}

Sleep deprivation destroys us, especially at startups

2014-04-03T19:04:16Z

I am extremely proud of npm’s focus on regular, modest working hours for everyone.

2014-03-22T16:32:58Z

theghostofyourliess:

Men’s Rights Activists

2014-03-22T04:32:18Z

Being an expert isn’t telling other people what you know. It’s understanding what questions to ask, and flexibly applying your knowledge to the specific situation at hand. Being an expert means providing sensible, highly contextual direction.

Are You An Expert? (via merlin)

2014-03-22T04:09:01Z

shevathegun:

callmekitto:

seraphatonin:

“um starfire’s powers are fueled by the sun that’s why she has to wear skimpy clothes” hey u know who else’s powers are fueled by the sun? superman. come on clark time for that toothfloss speedo chop chop

his nipples are covered by tiny capes

truth, justice, and the american way

2014-03-15T18:11:49Z

moosestielsaya:

This gif makes more sense now

2014-03-14T01:03:48Z

joshuamaysart:

Illuminated Path

A fixture in the npm, Inc. office. As soon as we have some more furniture and stuff, we’ll figure out where best to hang it. <3

2014-03-10T01:18:00Z

valkyriesvagina:

Oh god what have I done!?

JavaScript Capital

2014-03-07T20:35:00Z

This is a transcript of a conversation I had via IM with Mikeal Rogers in April of 2010:

Mikeal:: you should all move to Oakland
me:: hahah
Mikeal:: we’ll turn this in to the javascript capital of CA
me:: if you only knew the kind of draw that actually is…
me:: like, actual nice neighborhoods and SUN, and close to sf? hells yes.
Mikeal:: i really love Oakland
Mikeal:: the food is amazing

Today, indeed, it is.

2014-03-02T21:17:05Z

2014-03-01T22:17:06Z

siperslue:

LOL, the dude’s face as he realizes he is no match against Lesbian Satan! All Hail Lesbian Satan!

Raquel Vélez Joins npm, Inc.

2014-01-28T00:16:00Z

I am super excited to welcome Raquel “@rockbot“ Vélez to the team at npm, Inc.

Raquel was one of our first picks as an early hire. We were thrilled when she agreed to join, and it’s great to be able to publicly say so today :)

We do still need more help, so if you were concerned that this means we’re all filled up, not to worry! The fact that you might get to work with Raquel is just yet another reason to get in touch.

The Next Phase of Node.js

2014-01-15T17:13:09Z

Node’s growth has continued and accelerated immensely over the last few years. More people are developing and sharing more code with Node and npm than I would have ever imagined. Countless companies are using Node, and npm along with it.

Over the last year, TJ Fontaine has become absolutely essential to the Node.js project. He’s been building releases, managing the test bots, fixing nasty bugs and making decisions for the project with constant focus on the needs of our users. He was responsible for an update to MDB to support running ::findjsobjects on Linux core dumps, and is working on a shim layer that will provide a stable C interface for Node binary addons. In partnership with Joyent and The Node Firm, he’s helped to create a path forward for scalable issue triaging. He’s become the primary point of contact keeping us all driving the project forward together.

Anyone who’s been close to the core project knows that he’s been effectively leading the project for a while now, so we’re making it official. Effective immediately, TJ Fontaine is the Node.js project lead. I will remain a Node core committer, and expect to continue to contribute to the project in that role. My primary focus, however, will be npm.

At this point, npm needs work, and I am eager to deliver what the Node community needs from its package manager. I am starting a company, npm, Inc., to deliver new products and services related to npm. I’ll be sharing many more details soon about exactly how this is going to work, and what we’ll be offering. For now, suffice it to say that everything currently free will remain free, and everything currently flaky will get less flaky. Pursuing new revenue is how we can keep providing the npm registry service in a long-term sustainable way, and it has to be done very carefully so that we don’t damage what we’ve all built together.

npm is what I’m most passionate about, and I am now in a position to give it my full attention. I’ve done more than I could have hoped to accomplish in running Node core, and it’s well past time to hand the control of the project off to its next gatekeeper.

TJ is exactly the leader who can help us take Node.js to 1.0 and beyond. He brings professionalism, rigor, and a continued focus on inclusive community values and culture. In the coming days, TJ will spell out his plans in greater detail. I look forward to the places that Node will go with his guidance.

Please join me in welcoming him to this new role :)

A member of our community is missing, help find him

2014-01-11T17:47:26Z

Luke Arduini has been missing since Jan 1. Co-maintainer of npm and a long-term, valued member of the Node.js community, his absence is deeply felt by many of us.

If you have any information, please contact Oakland PD: 510 238 3641 or P.I. Jim Vierra 415 999 5911.

Luke, if you’re out there, please come back, we miss you!

More details and updates as they come in: http://findluk.com

npm Blog!

2013-12-27T02:09:41Z

I wrote a thing on Medium.

This is the npm blog. It is a tumblr. Please enjoy it.

—i

The Hazards of Consensus

2013-12-05T18:53:00Z

The most long-term success tends to come from reducing, to the greatest extent possible, the need for agreement and consensus.

A simple micro-example of this is the lunch-time behaviors of two different companies I’ve worked at: Joyent and The Startup. (“The Startup” shall remain nameless, because I hated it there, but I really liked a lot of the people involved, and don’t want to accidentally blame them for any of the badness. It’s sad that it went the way it did, but I am thankful for the experience I got out of it.)

At Joyent, lunch happens at a reasonable hour. (Since I am in the office most often on Tuesday, it’s signaled with a warning klaxon.) It is a leisurely 60 to 90 minute affair, where we socialize easily. Subjects of conversation do touch on work quite a bit, of course, but equally common are baseball, the politics of Crazy Town, what’s wrong (and right) with Computer Science education (or tech in general), and the latest Hacker News troll fountain.

If we all happen to be in the mood for the same type of food, we’ll sometimes go together. However, more often than not, everyone gets takeaway from a nearby spot, and we gather around a big round table. If we start walking in the same direction, but then I want a sandwich and you want a taco, we part ways, and meet back at the office.

People come and go, extremely low-pressure. We disagree more than we agree, but we easily move on from disagreements and find a new subject to toss around. There is no governance or agreement, no hard feelings. Just a loose group of sovereigns who enjoy one another’s company.

Not only do we not have to all agree on the same thing for lunch, the disagreement can often yield benefits for everyone. If you get tired of the same old offerings, and head out in a different direction, you might find a new menu that becomes a crowd favorite.

At The Startup, lunch was catered. (We provide you lunch! Hooray! Come work here!) The food wasn’t terrible, and I believe that it was well-intentioned by the founders, but I’ve since come to view catered lunch as a huge red flag at a company. My coworkers ate fast, and only discussed work, if they didn’t continue working at their desks while they ate. This was viewed as normal.

One time I decided to leave the office and bring something back (mostly because I just wanted a walk, having not seen the midday sun for a week). I asked a few of my teammates if they wanted to come with me, and the answer was “Um, no, I probably shouldn’t…” When I returned, no fewer than 5 people asked me nervously if I was ok, if anything was wrong, where I went, what was going on. It was SO weird.

Something as simple as a sandwich wrapped in paper showed that I wasn’t part of their unified tribe. To make matters even worse, most engineers there were in the office around 7:30 in the morning, stayed for the catered dinner (!!), worked another few hours, and then stuck around drinking beers in the office together until 23:00 or midnight. Having bags under one’s eyes was a mark of pride.

Maybe I’m just lazy, but I really only have about 5 solid hours of focus in me on a given day, and those hours suffer considerably if I don’t get the proper physical, mental, and emotional rest. So, it was not a great fit. I quit after a few months. A year (and 2 pivots) later, they were sold for a fraction of what their investors had put in, never having reached the general release of their product.

But back to the lunches. There’s an important point there.

Human societies function best when they are structured in such a way as to tolerate–even celebrate–disagreement. If the society can be improved by disagreement, then that’s even better. It allows for freedom, self-determination, experimentation, and a pervasive sense of safety. If you and I can disagree comfortably, then I don’t have to worry that we might disagree, which means two things: I can be candid with my honest opinions, and I can be open to yours. I don’t have to resist your opinions if I disagree, and I don’t have to guess your reaction before I share mine.

Of course, clearly some disagreements are not tolerable. If you and I disagree about whether to put a knife in my chest, there’s no way we can both get our way. Designing groups that can benefit from disagreement is non-trivial, and usually happens by accident. In the political space, this usually means some form of constitutional democracy, but neither “constitutional” nor “democracy” will ensure a healthy and inclusive culture or guarantee that experimentation will be promoted. Sometimes a limited dictator is safer than a powerful voting bloc.

With npm, I actively sought to design a software system in which we could easily use one another’s Node.js modules, without having to agree on which Node.js modules to use, or the best way to organize them in our projects.

I wish that I could claim credit for the “small modules” design philosophy or the many best practices and popular resources that have been created, but in truth, I can’t. All of those things were designed or discovered by other people.

When everyone else is applying force, it’s best to reduce friction. People were writing a lot of cool stuff, but having to agree on conventions and techniques was putting sand in the gears. The downsides of ceremony and dependency hell are very difficult to appreciate ahead of time, and the choices that lead to that place solve real problems early on. With npm, I opted to not solve some problems so that I could solve others. By sticking to the rule of “minimize the need for consensus”, we’ve found much more interesting problems (like how to handle massive growth).

The next time someone says that they like CoffeeScript, or that they don’t like Promises, or whatever other arbitrary preference you believe is “wrong”, instead of picking a fight with them, just be thankful that they’re not the boss of you, and that you can like different things, and still be friends.

Cinco Facetime Party Snoozer

2013-12-02T18:13:00Z

name	message
Isaac Schlueter	Ok
Isaac Schlueter	Sure why not
Isaac Schlueter	Sounds good.
Isaac Schlueter	Ok
Isaac Schlueter	Ok
Luke Arduini	im laughing at my desk and havent even watched the video yet
Luke Arduini	I love the cinco line of products
Luke Arduini	I keep laughing and then all the people around me go silent
Isaac Schlueter	Ok
Luke Arduini	Sure why not.
Isaac Schlueter	I understand.
Luke Arduini	Thanks for coming.
Isaac Schlueter	I understand.
Luke Arduini	Ok.
Isaac Schlueter	You know that all our conversations are ruined by that skit.
Isaac Schlueter	I can never talk to you again.
Luke Arduini	I understand.
Isaac Schlueter	Ok
Isaac Schlueter	Thanks for coming.
Luke Arduini	Sure why not.

2013-11-06T23:59:50Z

yuireactions:

the rare striped @izs, spotted in the wild at #yuiconf

2013-11-06T15:45:12Z

taranamgabata:

did u know, there’s this small rural town in japan called obama.
so there’s this girl in a 2007 drama who moved from the city to obama.
and she hates it at first and blames the town for her misery.
i kid u not. didn’t make this shit up.

Restart Node.js servers on domain errors: Sensible FUD

2013-11-01T19:22:00Z

The Node.js documentation about the “domain” error handling module has a strongly worded warning imploring you to shut down the process when a domain catches an error.

I was recently asked for a more detailed explanation of why this is, and answered with the following gist.

This principle is not unique to JavaScript, of course. Any language with state, side effects, and exceptions that abandon local context without a way to resume at the throw site, will basically guarantee that unexpected exceptions cannot ever be handled in a way that lets the program proceed normally. (This also applies, for example, to Ruby, Python, PHP, C++, and many other languages, though of course they’re going to have their own set of caveats and workarounds.)

This is not so bad if it’s a program that isn’t long-lived. PHP scripts typically run to completion and then get cleaned up, so a missed exception is pretty meh. Same with command line scripts.

But in a server or some other sort of long-lived daemon, it’s completely unacceptable, and will nearly always lead to undesirable system behavior.

Finish up what you’re doing, close the active connections or whatever, and GTFO. Let the system start a new process.

It’s the only responsible option.

Nudity and Nerdery, On “Not all guys are like that”

2013-10-21T22:01:00Z

nudityandnerdery:

See, what you need to understand is that “Not all guys [are] like that” is never going to work. Because you’re answering an entirely different conversation than what women are actually saying.
You think women are saying “Every man is a predator and a danger to me.” And you’re replying, “But I’m not like that.”
But women aren’t saying that. They’re saying “There are too many situations where women have to worry about their safety,” and you’re saying “That’s not important.” They’re saying “Women are constantly told it’s their fault if something bad happens,” and you’re saying “Don’t worry about it.” They’re saying “Too often, women find their trust violated by men,” and you’re saying “But you should trust me!”
They’re saying “So many men have decided that what they want is more important than anything about a woman.” And you’re replying “I’m exactly like that.”

Duty Calling

2013-10-17T17:18:59Z

name	message
Isaac Schlueter	PEOPLE ARE WRONG ON THE INTERNET, MARCO. WHAT SHOULD I DO??
Marco Rogers	Just breathe. Remember your training. You'll be fine.

On Patriarchy and Homophobia

2013-10-16T18:20:09Z

2013-10-15T05:46:23Z

If you’re a boy writer, it’s a simple rule: you’ve gotta get used to the fact that you suck at writing women and that the worst women writer can write a better man than the best male writer can write a good woman. And it’s just the minimum. Because the thing about the sort of heteronormative masculine privilege, whether it’s in Santo Domingo, or the United States, is you grow up your entire life being told that women aren’t human beings, and that women have no independent subjectivity. And because you grow up with this, it’s this huge surprise when you go to college and realize that, “Oh, women aren’t people who does my shit and fucks me.”

And I think that this a huge challenge for boys, because they want to pretend they can write girls. Every time I’m teaching boys to write, I read their women to them, and I’m like, “Yo, you think this is good writing?” These motherfuckers attack each other over cliche lines but they won’t attack each other over these toxic representations of women that they have inherited… their sexist shorthand, they think that is observation. They think that their sexist distortions are insight. And if you’re in a writing program and you say to a guy that their characters are sexist, this guy, it’s like you said they fucking love Hitler. They will fight tooth and nail because they want to preserve this really vicious sexism in the art because that is what they have been taught.

And I think the first step is to admit that you, because of your privilege, have a very distorted sense of women’s subjectivity. And without an enormous amount of assistance, you’re not even going to get a D. I think with male writers the most that you can hope for is a D with an occasional C thrown in. Where the average women writer, when she writes men, she gets a B right off the bat, because they spent their whole life being taught that men have a subjectivity. In fact, part of the whole feminism revolution was saying, “Me too, motherfuckers.” So women come with it built in because of the society.

It’s the same way when people write about race. If you didn’t grow up being a subaltern person in the United States, you might need help writing about race. Motherfuckers are like ‘I got a black boy friend,’ and their shit sounds like Klan Fiction 101.

The most toxic formulas in our cultures are not pass down in political practice, they’re pass down in mundane narratives. It’s our fiction where the toxic virus of sexism, racism, homophobia, where it passes from one generation to the next, and the average artist will kill you before they remove those poisons. And if you want to be a good artist, it means writing, really, about the world. And when you write cliches, whether they are sexist, racist, homophobic, classist, that is a fucking cliche. And motherfuckers will kill you for their cliches about x, but they want their cliches about their race, class, queerness. They want it in there because they feel lost without it. So for me, this has always been the great challenge.

As a writer, if you’re really trying to write something new, you must figure out, with the help of a community, how can you shed these fucking received formulas. They are received. You didn’t come up with them. And why we need fellow artists is because they help us stay on track. They tell you, “You know what? You’re a bit of a fucking homophobe.” You can’t write about the world with these simplistic distortions. They are cliches. People know art, always, because they are uncomfortable. Art discomforts. The trangressiveness of art has to deal with confronting people with the real. And sexism is a way to avoid the real, avoiding the reality of women. Homophobia is to avoid the real, the reality of queerness. All these things are the way we hide from encountering the real. But art, art is just about that.

Junot Diaz speaking at Word Up Bookshop, 2012 (via clambistro)

The Obscure Phonetic Alphabet

2013-10-10T19:00:31Z

obscurephoneticalphabet:

A - Affect

B - Becker

C - Cistern

D - Dot Tumblr Dot Com

E - Effect

F - Funicular

G - Guzzler

H - Herbs

I - Insufferabilityism

J - Jorts

K - Klout

L - Lupus

M - Movember

N - Nary

O - Orkut

P - Phonetic

Q - Queue

R - Are we still talking about this?

S - Sendhil Ramamurthy

T - Two Guys, A Girl, And A Pizza Place

U - ¨

V - Vandola

W - Wrechjer

X - Xi

Y - Yggdrasil, from which Odin hung

Z - Zaftig

Designing APIs for Asynchrony

2013-08-23T23:06:00Z

New 2014-06-30: You can contain Zalgo with the dezalgo module

Some people asked me to explain what I meant by “releasing Zalgo” in async APIs, so I thought I’d share the following guidelines.

Please follow all of these rules in your programs. If you deviate from them, you do so at the peril of your very sanity.

Get Over Your Provincial Boilerplate Preferences

Personally, I don’t actually care all that much about the whole promises/callbacks/coroutines/generators debate. It’s provably trivial to turn any callback-taking API into a promise-returning API or generator-yielding API or vice-versa.

I’m of the opinion that breaking functionality into small enough chunks that your boilerplate doesn’t matter is much more important than which boilerplate you decide tastes the yummiest. In JavaScript, we have first-class language support for passing functions around, so I tend to use callbacks, simply because it requires no extra “stuff”.

What’s important to me is that an API be useful, performant, and easy to reason about. When I’m writing JavaScript, I care a lot about how V8 is going to optimize it, and so try to choose patterns that it can optimize nicely. As of today, generators just aren’t first-class enough, and Promises require an extra abstraction. That may change someday, but these principles probably will not.

So, I’m going to say “callbacks” below, but you can mentally substitute whatever thing you like. The fundamental points are equally relevant if you’re using threads, or gotos, or any other abstraction or language for doing things asynchronously and controlling what the computer does next.

Note that all of this also applies if your asynchronous API “looks synchronous”. Even if you design a thing so that I do:

x = foo();

and it’s completely agnostic at authoring time whether foo() spins on CPU or yields while it awaits a network response, being able to reason about the program means that I need to be able to know whether other parts of the program will be running while I’m waiting for foo() to return a value to be put into x.

So, even if the syntax is the same (which has its benefits as well as its drawbacks, of course), the semantics must be crisply defined.

Or else Zalgo is released.

Do Not Release Zalgo

Warning: Before proceeding any further, go read this excellent essay by Havoc.

If you haven’t read Havoc’s post on callbacks, then you will perhaps be tempted to make silly arguments that make no sense, and demand justification for things that have been established beyond any reasonable doubt long ago, or tell me that I’m overstating the issue.

Have you read Havoc’s post on callbacks? Yes? Ok.

If you didn’t, shame on you. Go read it. If you still haven’t, I’ll sum up:

If you have an API which takes a callback,
and sometimes that callback is called immediately,
and other times that callback is called at some point in the future,
then you will render any code using this API impossible to reason about, and cause the release of Zalgo.

Needless to say, releasing Zalgo onto unsuspecting users is extremely inappropriate.

It’s not the case that function-taking APIs must always call the function asynchronously. For example, Array.prototype.forEach calls the callback immediately, before returning. But then it never calls it again.

Nor is it the case that function-taking APIs must always call the function synchronously. For example, setTimeout and friends call the callback after the current run-to-completion. But they always return before calling the callback.

In other words, to avoid the release of Zalgo, exactly one of the following must be true:

var after = false;
callbackTaker(function() {
  assert(after === true);
});
after = true;

OR:

var after = false;
callbackTaker(function() {
  assert(after === false);
});
after = true;

and in no case can you ever have a function where exactly one of these assertions is not guaranteed.

What about internal functions in my library that are not exposed?

Well, ok, but you’re releasing Zalgo in your internal library. I don’t recommend it. Zalgo usually finds a way to sneak His Dark͝ Tend̴r̡i҉ls out into the world.

What if I suspect that a function might try to release Zalgo?

This is a great question. For example, perhaps you let users supply your library with a callback-taking function, and you worry that they might be incompetent or careless, but want to ensure that your library does its best to keep Th͏e Da҉rk Pońy Lo͘r͠d HE ́C͡OM̴E̸S contained appropriately.

Assuming that your platform has an event loop or some other kind of abstraction that you can hang stuff on, you can do something like this:

function zalgoContainer(cbTaker, cb) {
  var sync = true;
  cbTaker(cbWrap);
  sync = false;

  function cbWrap(er, data) {
    if (sync)
      process.nextTick(function() {
        cb(er, data);
      });
    else
      cb(er, data);
  }
}

This uses Node’s synthetic deferral function: process.nextTick, which runs the supplied callback at the end of the current run-to-completion. You can also use setImmediate, but that’s slightly slower. (Yes, yes, it’s named badly; setImmediate is slightly less “immediate” and more “next” than nextTick, but this is an accident of history we cannot correct without a time machine.)

But isn’t it faster to just call the callback right away?

Go read Havoc’s blog post.

Moving on.

Avoid Synthetic Deferrals

I know what you’re thinking: “But you just told me to use nextTick!”

And yes, it’s true, you should use synthetic deferrals when the only alternative is releasing Zalgo. However, these synthetic deferrals should be treated as a code smell. They are a sign that your API might not be optimally designed.

Ideally, you should know whether something is going to be immediately available, or not. Realistically, you should be able to take a pretty decent guess about whether the result is going to be immediately available most of the time, or not, and then follow this handy guide:

If the result is usually available right now, and performance matters a lot:
1. Check if the result is available.
2. If it is, return it.
3. If it is not, return an error code, set a flag, etc.
4. Provide some Zalgo-safe mechanism for handling the error case and awaiting future availability.
Here’s an silly example to illustrate the pattern:
```
var isAvailable = true;
var i = 0;
function usuallyAvailable() {
  i++;
  if (i === 10) {
    i = 0;
    isAvailable = false;
    setTimeout(function() {
      isAvailable = true;
      if (waiting.length) {
        for (var cb = waiting.shift();
             cb;
             cb = waiting.shift()) {
          cb();
        }
      }
    });
  }
return isAvailable ? i : new Error('not available');
}
function waitForAvailability(cb) {
// Could also defer this and just call it,
// but it is avoidable, which is the point.
if (isAvailable)
throw new Error("hey, dummy, check first!");
waiting.push(cb);
}
```
In this case, when the user calls usuallyAvailable() they’ll get a number between 0 and 9, 90% of the time. It’s on the caller to check the return value, see if it means that they have to wait, etc.

This makes the API a bit trickier to use, because the caller has to know to detect the error state. If it’s very rare, then there’s a chance that they might get surprised in production the first time it fails. This is a communication problem, like most API design concerns, but if performance is critical, it may be worth the hit to avoid artificial deferrals in the common cases.

Note that this is functionally equivalent to O_NONBLOCK/EWOULDBLOCK/poll pattern. You try to do a thing, and if it is not available right now, it raises an error, and you wait until it IS available, and then try again.
If the result is usually available right now, but performance doesn’t matter all that much

For example, the function might only be called a few times at startup, etc.

In this case, just follow the “result is usually not available right now” approach.

Note that performance actually does matter much more often than you probably realize.

If the result is usually not available right now

Take a callback.
Artificially defer the callback if the data is available right now.

Here’s an example:

var cachedValue;
function usuallyAsync(cb) {
  if (cachedValue !== undefined)
    process.nextTick(function() {
      cb(cachedValue);
    });
  else
    doSomeSlowThing(function(result) {
      cb(cachedValue = result);
    });
}

The basic point here is that “async” is not some magic mustard you smear all over your API to make it fast. Asynchronous APIs do not go faster. They go slower. However, they prevent other parts of the program from having to wait for them, so overall program performance can be improved.

Note that this applies to not just callbacks, but also to Promises and any other control-flow abstractions. If your API is frequently returning a Promise for a value that you know right now, then either you are leaving performance on the table, or your Promise implementation releases H̵͘͡e ̡wh́o͠ ̶Prom̀͟͝i̴s̀es̀ o҉̶nl̨͟y̧ ̛̛m̴͠͝a̡̛͢d̡n̴̡e͝s̸s͠, T̢҉̸h̴̷̸̢ȩ͡ ͘͠N͢͢e͏͏͢͠z̛͏͜p̸̀̕͠ȩ́͝͝r҉̛́͠d̴̀i̴̕҉͞a̴̡͝͠n̢͜͟͢͟ ̶̴̢͝h̷̕͠í̸̧̛͜v̶̢͢͡e̕͡-̸̀͝m̷͜i̛͘͞ņ̛͘͟҉d̶̶̡̧͜ ̷̛͞o̵̢͘͟͞f̶̢̀͢͢ ̶̧͟͡c̕͝h̶̀͘͘à͏o҉̴́͢s̸͘͘͝͞.̨͢͞.

So, don’t do that.

Pick a Pattern and Stick With It

This really cannot be overstated. Like the question of callbacks vs Promises vs whatever, the specific pattern that you choose doesn’t matter very much. What does matter very much is that you stick to that pattern with ruthless consistency. The pattern should cover how a user interacts with your API, and how errors are communicated.

In Node.js, the callback pattern is:

Async functions take a single callback function as their final argument.
That callback is called in the future with the first argument set to an Error object in the case of failure, and any additional results as the subsequent arguments.

Why have the callback as the last argument? Why make Error the first arg? It doesn’t really matter very much. Ostensibly, making the callback the last arg is because

doSomething(a, b, c, d, function(er) {
  ...
})

scans a bit better than:

doSomething(function(er) {
  ...
}, a, b, c)

and putting the error first is so that it’s always in the same place.

There were other choices that could have been made. But the important thing was just to pick one, and move forward with it. This consistency makes it much less difficult to convert Node APIs into other sorts of aync patterns, and greatly reduces the communication required to tell a user how to use a Node.js callback-taking API.

2013-08-15T14:55:11Z

neil-gaiman:

wordsthatfit:

sandandglass:

Jessica Williams proposes applying New York’s Stop and Frisk policy to Wall Street bankers.

This all day.

Oh yes.

Money and Open Source

2013-08-07T21:08:41Z

I wrote a thing on Medium. Go read it.

TVTropes.com

2013-08-01T21:29:17Z

name	message
Jason Smith	actually I understand that society is like brimming over with misunderstandings of the past, if a time traveler came like he could not help but see them nonstop
Jason Smith	actually half of tvtropes covers these
Isaac Schlueter	fuck you don't mention that site i'm not allowed to visit that site fuck you and your fucking temptations
Isaac Schlueter	sorry
Isaac Schlueter	i just have to summon a revulsion reaction whenever fucking tvtropes is mentioned
Isaac Schlueter	otherwise, it's "good bye afternoon"
Isaac Schlueter	it'slike wikipedia but 10 times worse
Jason Smith	yeah, The Dung Ages
Jason Smith	basically the entire setting of Holy Grail
Jason Smith	although some people call that filth "England"
Isaac Schlueter	hahaha
Jason Smith	like for all I know they just went outside and shot scenes and England is always overcast and muddy and everybody is covered in filth
Jason Smith	oh man I loaded the page
Jason Smith	tvtropes is ten times worse than wikipedia
	Jason Smith disconnected

WTF is EMFILE and why does it happen to me

2013-07-30T00:15:00Z

By request

The error code EMFILE means that a process is trying to open too many files. Unix systems have a max number of file descriptors that may be assigned, also known as the MAX_OPEN value. On OS X, the default is 256, which is pretty low for many modern programs that do a lot of file system writing and reading.

This max value can be read or modified using the ulimit -n command. Since I’ve bumped up the MAX_OPEN ulimit value to 2560 on my system, here’s what my laptop reports:

$ ulimit -a
core file size          (blocks, -c) 0
data seg size           (kbytes, -d) unlimited
file size               (blocks, -f) unlimited
max locked memory       (kbytes, -l) unlimited
max memory size         (kbytes, -m) unlimited
open files                      (-n) 2560
pipe size            (512 bytes, -p) 1
stack size              (kbytes, -s) 8192
cpu time               (seconds, -t) unlimited
max user processes              (-u) 709
virtual memory          (kbytes, -v) unlimited

These ulimit values are important! You don’t want runaway programs to accidentally open way too many files, and take up unnecessary resources on your program by accident.

npm, being a package manager, opens a lot of files, often more than 256 at a single time. In order to get around this limitation, there are two options:

Always be very careful to not open too many files.
Handle EMFILE errors by queuing the open operation, and then attempting it again once a file closes.

The only way to reliably do #2, however, is by monkey-patching Node’s fs module, which is exactly what the graceful-fs module does. A really interesting collision of bugs in npm, graceful-fs, and lockfile, led it to ignore certain open operations, and so you could easily get into cases where the script could not reasonably handle these problems. Basically, it would open a lockfile to reserve a specific tar operation, and then not have any file descriptors left to actually do the tar unpack operation! Also, graceful-fs was not actually monkey-patching with a queue, but instead trying to do some fancy clever back-off stuff, which just wasn’t as solid.

Graceful-fs 2.0 and lockfile 0.4 contain the fixes for their relevant parts of this flub up. The latest version of npm 1.3 has all the fixes.

At this point, no matter HOW small your ulimit -n value is, graceful-fs will prevent it from ever raising an EMFILE error. Of course, it does this at the expense of making open operations potentially take longer. I’m planning on exploring using a slightly smarter monkey-patch, so that it only will enqueue open operations that have some kind of special flag or other opt-in switch.

node_modules

2013-07-29T23:49:09Z

Submitted by @shamakry

001 Pickles

2013-07-09T04:34:40Z

mr-pi:

An inaugural chat.

https://us-east.manta.joyent.com/isaacs/public/mr-pi/001-pickles.m4a

Raccoons

2013-07-08T20:44:28Z

Jared W:
Jared W:: see
Jared W:: how can you hate them
Isaac Schlueter:: i grew up with them
Isaac Schlueter:: you’re like the naive boy who thinks the pretty girl must be nice, because she is pretty.
Isaac Schlueter:: i know she kills kittens and plays in garbage.
Isaac Schlueter:
Isaac Schlueter:: i assume that they then proceeded to drown the hellspawn, before it could grow into a full-sized monster.
Isaac Schlueter:: it’s the only moral choice.
Jared W:: the moral choice would be give him a cupcake
Jared W:: and perhaps some pizza
Isaac Schlueter:: you are blinded by the cute.
Jared W:: and the awesome
Isaac Schlueter:: i’d think that an aussie would understand animals being evil, since you are from the island where Nature Wants To Kill You
Jared W:: they steal floormats
Isaac Schlueter:: did i ever tell you about the time that raccoons broke into my car, and shat on the seats?
Isaac Schlueter:: i’m not joking.
Isaac Schlueter:: they actually did this.
Jared W:: what did you do to annoy them
Isaac Schlueter:: oh, i don’t know, i lived in connecticut and parked my car in my driveway
Isaac Schlueter:: they took some stinky raw chicken from the garbage, used their claws to push down my car windows (permanently breaking the window roll-down mechanism), tore up my seats, and shat right on the dashboard. then left the chicken bones in the car.
Isaac Schlueter:: they’re not cute when they’re shitting in your car and getting rotten chicken juice all over the damn place.
Isaac Schlueter:: they were still there the next morning, just chillin
Isaac Schlueter:: and SUPER PISSED that i wanted them to leave.
Jared W:: Seems reasonable

NodeConf 2013

2013-07-06T18:19:55Z

For the last 4 years, NodeConf has been a groundbreaking and innovative community conference unlike any other. I’ve been impressed and honored to be a part of it every time.

One of Mikeal’s goals with running conferences, and his approach to open source in general, is to make the entire community more egalitarian and welcoming. That’s why there’s always been an “opening party” rather than a “speakers dinner”; all the attendees hang out together, there is no “speakers lounge”. Yes, there are celebrities in any community, the visible people who are highly engaged with the core technology and help keep the wheels turning. But the entire community feels unwelcoming and strange when those people are treated as a separate class of untouchables. We’re all just humans.

Nowhere is this more apparent than at Walker Creek Ranch. This was my third time at the place in as many years. The last two years, Mikeal’s arranged a NodeConf Summer Camp there, which was like a scaled down unconference-style meeting of people who came and discussed where the core of Node would go next. Without much of an agenda, it was very free-form, and the comfortable setting allowed for some intense debates about stuff ranging from putting zlib in core, to domains, to the needs of our Stream interface, and so on.

Walker Creek Range is magical. In the woods, we’re all animals. We’re all of the same tribe, all on the same team. When you jump in a lake with someone, or sit under a tree, or make smores by a campfire, you are bonded in a way that email and IRC can never achieve. There are no podiums or stages. You don’t need to save your seat or worry about someone running off with your bag (where would they go?)

When Mikeal said he was going to just do a single conference this year, instead of a traditional NodeConf and then a separate NodeConf Summer Camp, and that it’d be at Walker Creek Ranch, I told him it was a great idea. When he told me that I’d have to teach the same class 8 times, I winced. I told him, “Sure. I’ll do that. I don’t think you’ll find 7 other people who will, though.” That is because I can be cynical.

Time and again, this community surprises me, and Mikeal surprises me. Not only did he find plenty of people to staff all the 8 sessions, he somehow managed to trick everyone into actually attending every session, even though I’m sure many of them came in thinking that most of these sessions would be way over their heads.

So, enough gushing. Here’s what was in the How To Node Core session that I led with Bert Belder, who was a tremendous help.

How To Node Core

As people walked in, it’s important to remember that they usually had no idea what session “6” was going to be. Also, because the schedules were randomized, they weren’t seeing the same people that they’d met in their previous sessions. Strangers! Surprises! Oh no!

When they saw me and Bert in there, and the first slide up on the projector, a few people took a noticeable gulp, like they accidentally signed up for Calc 3, but should have been in Algebra 1. This is exactly the reaction that we were hoping for. The point of NodeConf this year, the goal, was to expose people, in an accessible hands-on way, to something that they never would have thought that they could do.

(Of course, a few people saw which session it was, and were not fazed, since a bunch of people at the conference had already landed pull requests before.)

Here are the slides:

How to-node-core from IsaacSchlueter

The first thing we did was make sure that everyone had the Node.js source code checked out, and could build it. Typically there were 3 or 4 people who needed help getting to this step, and Bert would run around for the first few minutes with USB sticks getting people up and running.

A few people noticed the “nodeconf2013” branch in the github repo already, so they had all the examples and source code already written.

When I got to the “example” portions in the slides, I’d stop and do the Substack-style vim *.* and then use :next and :prev to move between files.

The first example was this.

The second was this. For many people at the conference, this was their first ever experience editing a C++ file, and compiling the program with their changes.

And here are the diffs for the exercise. Not everyone finished it, and many probably implemented it somewhat differently, but the exploration was the point of the work, not the destination.

Takeaways

The results were very encouraging. A lot of people mentioned that they’d always felt like Node Core is this really intimidating thing, and never even bothered to look under the hood to see how it was all wired together. They were genuinely surprised to find out that Node’s internal modules are very much like a plain old Node program, with require() and everything.

Also, ironically, I found that when I went faster, there were fewer people who fell behind. I don’t know if the energy of the speaker makes them feel more motivated, or if the fear of being left behind makes them pay more attention, or what. But when I slowed down to let people catch up, they fell behind worse, which surprised me.

If you ever want to run an event like this, the value of having another set of hands there really cannot be overstated. Without Bert running around to keep people following along, it never would have went as smoothly as it did. I did most of the talking, but he was absolutely essential.

All in all, I think we had a big effect on many peoples’ level of intimidation about contributing to Node core. The first step is to realize that you can do it, so it’s worth trying.

Generosity

2013-07-01T04:31:11Z

John Roderick:

I do believe that being generous— tipping bellmen, and the guy that opens the door for your taxi— handing him some money, even though it’s clear to all parties involved that he’s not performed very much of a service— opening the door for you is not a thing that costs a dollar. Except it does cost a dollar, because that is what we have agreed. He opened the door for you, you hand him a dollar. That is part of the social contract, and to preserve that dollar for yourself is to live in a world where you are not fully embracing the social contract and are therefore not going to prosper by definition.
Learning that lesson, that money is fake, money is absolutely fake, and to treat it like it’s real, and to preserve it like it matters is to miss the point of it entirely. That is not to say that you should be wanton with it. You should count it, and you should know what it represents, but it is just a symbolic thing.

2013-06-25T15:35:20Z

fuckyeahdementia:

obama getting lucky

Trying to pin down Isaac's coding style

2013-05-29T00:11:00Z

This is my new favorite tumblr.

Curiosity and The Practice

2013-05-06T20:44:00Z

All too often, people do good things for the wrong reasons, and find it’s not sustainable. Compare the differences between these statements:

I want to develop software.
I want to be a software developer.

I want to write a novel.
I want to be a novelist.

I want to do yoga.
I want to be a yogi.

The first statement is “I want to do a thing”, and the second is “I want to be a person who has done a thing”.

Once you’ve written your first story, or software program, or done to your first yoga session, that box is checked, and you’re done. Where is the motivation to continue The Practice?

There is no way to maintain velocity without lightness, and there is no way to maintain lightness without curiosity.

Curiosity is not a state of “wanting to be curious”, but rather a state of “wanting to find out”. There is a tremendous difference! “Wanting to be” is attainment of status, whereas “wanting to do” is desire and motion.

These days, I try to catch myself saying “I want to be XYZ”, and instead translate that into what it really means. Sometimes, I find that it quickly disabuses me of a mistaken desire.

If you want to be a writer, write. That’s all that it takes, but it takes that forever, so if you don’t want to write, perhaps reevaluate your desire to be a writer.

If you want to be a programmer, program. That’s all that it takes, but it takes that forever, so if you don’t want to program, perhaps reevaluate your desire to be a programmer.

If you want to be a yogi, do yoga. That’s all that it takes, but it takes that forever, so if you don’t want to do yoga, perhaps reevaluate your desire to be a yogi.

Often, when we say, “I want to be XYZ”, what we actually mean is not “I want to do the thing that XYZ does”, but rather, “I want the respect and self-esteem that comes with the skills that come from doing what XYZ does.” I want people to read something, and admire it, and then admire me because of it. I want people to use software, and recognize that I create it, and think I’m smart. I want people to think I’m spiritual and wise, and admire my healthy body and calmness.

I want other people to wish they could be me.

They all find the frightening reality that there is no end to be attained. You will never finish writing all the software, or all the words, or find that you’ve learned all that yoga practice can teach you. If your goal is at the end, you will find only discouragement and disappointment, and no amount of duty or discipline will keep you on the path.

So the writer buys a beret, and a moleskine, and sits in cafes sipping espresso. The programmer wears an appropriately nerdy T-shirt, and plays video games, and says snarky things on Hacker News. The yogi puts on stretchy pants and carries a rubber mat around. If any of them do attain some shred of the respect they crave, they know in their heart that it is empty, and it never satisfies the longing.

On the other hand, if your goal is the continual curious fire of “Oh, neat! What’s next!?”, then each challenge along the path only makes you hungrier for more, and every step is light. The challenge becomes not “How do I stay motivated?” but rather, “How do I keep my motivation in check, so that it does not consume me entirely?”

Even, upon reading this, if you find yourself thinking “I want to be curious”, stop and unpack that! Don’t just be a person who was curious once, and got the merit badge! Be actively curious right now, in the present, and let that fire keep you going!

So, what is it you’d like to learn?

Unix Philosophy and Node.js

2013-04-18T15:45:00Z

At TxJS the other day, I gave a talk where I mentioned that the Unix Philosophy is a crucial part of the patterns, opinions, and culture of Node.js. As usual, I made my slides available online well in advance of the talk video being available.

For some reason, this brief mention of “Unix Philosophy” set off a few peoples’ ire. Since I had only 25 minutes, and every slide could probably be its own talk entirely, I was rather light on elaboration. Chances are, the video won’t add all that much context. But the goal was to pique conversation, so maybe that’s a success if it invites criticism. After all, uninformed trolling is just an invitation for education, so I thought I’d explain.

Eric S. Raymond collected a few of the best explanations of the Unix Philosophy in his book, The Art Of Unix Programming. He elaborates on 17 specific principles, but my favorite formulation of the Unix Philosophy is the terse explanation from Doug McIlroy as quoted by Salus in A Quarter Century of Unix:

This is the Unix philosophy:

Write programs that do one thing and do it well.

Write programs to work together.

Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface.

McIlroy’s slightly longer original 4-point formulation is this:

(i) Make each program do one thing well. To do a new job, build afresh rather than complicate old programs by adding new features.

(ii) Expect the output of every program to become the input to another, as yet unknown, program. Don’t clutter output with extraneous information. Avoid stringently columnar or binary input formats. Don’t insist on interactive input.

(iii) Design and build software, even operating systems, to be tried early, ideally within weeks. Don’t hesitate to throw away the clumsy parts and rebuild them.

(iv) Use tools in preference to unskilled help to lighten a programming task, even if you have to detour to build the tools and expect to throw some of them out after you’ve finished using them.

Mike Gancarz, who worked on the X Window System, summed up the Unix Philosophy in 9 points:

Small is beautiful.

Make each program do one thing well.

Build a prototype as soon as possible.

Choose portability over efficiency.

Store data in flat text files.

Use software leverage to your advantage.

Use shell scripts to increase leverage and portability.

Avoid captive user interfaces.

Make every program a filter.

That last point really resonates with something that Ryan Dahl has often said, “Every program is a proxy.” The first 3 are basically James Halliday’s rules for living.

All too often, people get hung up on the wrong aspects of the Unix Philosophy, and miss the forest for the trees. The Unix Philosophy is not about a specific implementation, or anything that is necessarily unique to any Unix operating system or program. It’s not about file descriptors, pipes, sockets, or signals. Those sorts of complaints are like saying that someone is not a buddhist unless they speak Pali.

Unix Philosophy is an outlook for software development, not any specific technical development in software. It is an ideal to reach for, and perhaps ironically, it is an ideal that instructs us to occasionally eschew idealism in favor of practicality.

In Node, the basic building block that people share and interact with is not a binary on the command line, but rather a module loaded in by require(). The universal interface is a text stream, but it’s a JavaScript Stream object, rather than a stdio pipe. (The stdio pipes are of course represented by JavaScript streams, because that is our universal interface, so what else would we use?)

So, in terms of Node.js, here’s how I’d express the Unix Philosophy. Alas, I am no McIlroy, and I lack the time or skill to write this any shorter.

Write modules that do one thing well. Write a new module rather than complicate an old one.

Write modules that encourage composition rather than extension.

Write modules that handle data Streams, because that is the universal interface.

Write modules that are agnostic about the source of their input or the destination of their output.

Write modules that solve a problem you know, so you can learn about the ones you don’t.

Write modules that are small. Iterate quickly. Refactor ruthlessly. Rewrite bravely.

Write modules quickly, to meet your needs, with just a few tests for compliance. Avoid extensive specifications. Add a test for each bug you fix.

Write modules for publication, even if you only use them privately. You will appreciate documentation in the future.

Working is better than perfect.

Focus is better than features.

Compatibility is better than purity.

Simplicity is better than anything.

The Unix Philosophy is an ideology of pragmatism. It is about balancing the twin needs of writing good software, and writing any software at all. It’s a practical set of advice for trading a moderate increase in development cost for a much larger reduction in maintenance costs.

In the real world, we are faced with the completely unfair constraint of being human while writing programs and while debugging them, and none of these costs can ever be reduced to zero. This ideology is contextual, and can be applied at all levels of the stack. It is an open acknowledgement that we are actually not smart enough to know how to write the software we need the first time around, because we usually can only fully understand our problems once we have finished solving them.

None of these rules are sacrosanct! In fact, in many cases, they can be at odds, or even completely contradictory. However, if we keep our units of programming small, with simple universal interfaces, we can find leverage the piecemeal structure as a quality ratchet, swapping out clumsy parts as we go along.

Nothing about the Unix Philosophy explicitly relates to a culture of software sharing. However, it should be no mystery that it comes from the software community where we argue at length about the best way to make our programs properly Free. Software that is developed according to these principles is easier to share, reuse, repurpose, and maintain.

Free as in Hugs Licence

2013-04-18T15:25:40Z

The “Free as in Hugs” License

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
Users of this software are permitted to offer to hug the Author or Contributors, free of charge or obligation.

THIS SOFTWARE AND ANY HUGS ARE PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR AND CONTRIBUTORS “AS IS” AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL ANYONE BE HELD LIABLE FOR ACTUAL HUGS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; LONELINESS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. DON’T BE CREEPY.

The Internet is Eating Me: To A Fishstick Dying Young

2013-04-11T19:55:46Z

Omg. This is just so so good. Thank you so much, Jimmy Marks.

jimmymarks:

As we near the inevitable conclusion of You Look Nice Today, my feelings become too much to bear. And when that happens, you get poetry. What follows is my lament for one of the greatest podcasts of all time.

On Chasing the Right "Zero"

2013-04-10T18:09:21Z

Ok. So don’t have so many files in the root of your package folder.

Not to be all “Merlin Mann” or anything, but, maybe somebody will find this useful.

I was recently asked to talk about how I think about the infamous Inbox Zero these days, and here’s what I said:

Read More

My Foolish π Call of Duty

2013-04-04T17:05:00Z

A few days ago, I broke my Twitter.

Let me explain.

I saw this tweet which links to this image.

Knowing that normal numbers are not necessarily the same as irrational numbers, I thought, “Oh! How interesting, there must be some proof that π is normal! I wonder if they have a link, because I’d love to read it!”

The image, of course, presumes that an infinite pseudorandom sequence of digits will contain every digit. (That is, that any irrational number will be normal in base-10, so long as it contains every digit.)

Foolishly, perhaps, I replied, and in the last few days, I’ve been getting about 10 responses per day saying, roughly, DURRR!!! DONT YOU KNOW INFINITE MEANS HAS EVERY NUMBER LIKE THE MONKEYS WRITE SHAKE SPEAR?

As a simple proof, consider a number, very close to π, but different in the respect that any time a 41 appears, it is replaced by 14. Let’s call it P. It would start 3.1145926535897932384626433832795028814971 and continue on forever.

If π is indeed normal in base 10, then clearly P would not be. Because any digit sequence that goes 41 would instead go 14, so you could never find the first 4 digits of π within the digits of P.

But P is also infinite, irrational, and pseudorandom. It would contain exactly the same ratio of digits as π does, but not have every combination.

For the first few days, I explained this over and over again. Since then, I’ve simply accepted that my “replies” tab on Twitter is temporarily useless.

As it turns out, π has NOT been proven to be normal, though it passes all known tests for normality, meaning that it has not been proven to not be normal either. The same is true of log(2), e, the square root of 2, and many other natural constants. What makes matters worse, there is not (yet?) any proof that these things can or cannot be proven, so it may be a wild goose chase as infinitely irrational as π itself!

As one might expect, Vi Hart covered this math question in the most entertaining fashion possible.

If there was a proof that π is normal, then this would be a groundbreaking mathematical insight of historic proportions.

It saddens me deeply that the internet is so full of fools who think that such a revolution has not only already occurred, but is obvious and foolish to even wonder about.

Sigh. Duty calls.

Wis and Int

2013-04-01T18:19:00Z

When I was younger, in my teens and early 20s, I’m sure I had a higher IQ than I do now. I could remember phone numbers months after hearing them once. I could compute an 18% tip split 5 ways, in my head in a matter of seconds. I could read highly involved and technical code or philosophy or science, and recall it perfectly. I could remember every line from movies I’d seen once, or all the lyrics of songs I’d heard only a few times on the radio.

Back then, I thought that I could think my way out of any problem. I figured that the existing solutions were clearly not sufficient, because problems continued to exist. I was definitely smart enough to do this, because I’d never met anyone smarter than me (only people with more experience). My imagination was limitless, or so I thought, and I could not imagine a problem I couldn’t solve, so QED it was only a matter of time and persistence.

Luckily for me, I had enough persistence to eventually build up a small bit of wisdom, because in the last 10 or 15 years, a lot of that raw computational brain power has slipped away. I don’t miss it, really. I have to look things up more often, and I use a calculator. I have to write down phone numbers, and my calendar is not in my head until I look at it each day.

The feeling of omniscience was pretty awesome, but I’m wise enough now to know that it was a mirage in the first place, and that I was a fool to think it was anything but an obstacle. It was like cocaine, keeping me moving faster, and thinking more highly of myself than was appropriate. I wasn’t really happy; I was just distracted. As the high of youth wears off a bit more each year, I realize how much I wasted that velocity. If I’d started then on the work I’m doing now, I’d be so much further ahead!

Wisdom is not intelligence. In the long run, it’s much more important. For a software developer, or just any rational human being, intelligence gets you in the door, but its purpose is to become the raw material of wisdom.

Take note, clever youngsters: You will slow down. You are going to be noticeably less smart in 10 years. Set yourself up with good habits now. Be persistent, be calm, be careful. Develop instincts and compassion. Flinch towards the dark spots. The hard part is recognizing that there’s anything you need to learn.

We do our societies and our children a disservice by glorifying intellect and achievement, when in fact it is persistence and compassion that make all the difference in life.

Promises

2013-04-01T17:47:17Z

name	message
isaacs	if we had first-class promises in the language, and they had deterministic flow-control properties, and were optimized by the VM, I'd be all about them.
mikeal	what if your mother and father had never met?

2013-03-27T16:14:58Z

Alex and William have only known each other for a few months and shouldn’t rush into a serious commitment.

Greg is probably in it for Brian’s money.

Wendy claims she loves Margaret, but she hasn’t put her feelings for Julia behind her.

Lisa is too career driven for an emotionally needy person like Amy.

Tim is a whore.

Arguments Against Gay Marriage. (via seldo)

Complex System Knowledge is Not Transferrable

2013-03-12T18:57:00Z

Imagine if someone were to say something like:

> Node uses async I/O so that it can read files faster.

While many of the words in this sentence are sensible, and perhaps even somewhat close to the truth, there are several glaring errors with it:

First of all, Node doesn’t use AIO. It uses nonblocking I/O for sockets and pipes, but for files, it uses a thread pool.

More subtly, doing fs operations in a worker thread does not make them faster. Since we’re usually limited by the system’s fs response anyway, adding the overhead of threads and callbacks makes those operations strictly slower than doing them synchronously.

The point of using an event loop and doing fs operations in a thread pool is so that your server’s latency is not affected (as much). The speed of the fs operation itself is presumably less important than making sure that the server can continue to service requests in the meantime.

If someone said this, and a knowledgeable Node user was around to hear it, the speaker would be promptly corrected.

Now imagine that the person saying this was a very highly educated lawyer, with many years of experience in IP law, international copyright litigation, trademarks, and patents.

Do you have any more belief in their clearly false statement? Do you now think, “Well, this guy’s a lawyer after all, and he’s dealt with some pretty hairy IP and technology issues, so he probably does know a thing or two about technology.” Or do you start to think less of him, and his craft?

My fellow programmers, this is what you sound like when you make authoritative-sounding claims about trademark, copyright, and patent law.

Not only is it more complicated than you probably realize, the complications differ from place to place and from situation to situation. The law is a giant software program with legacy code going back literally thousands of years, and the hardware it runs on is human brains, which are notoriously buggy.

I am so glad IANAL. Software that runs on computers is so much easier to reason about.

Everyone has a Price

2013-03-12T17:06:00Z

Got this email this morning:

From: Andrew
To: i@izs.me
Subject: Have a minute to talk about npmjs.org?

Hello,

We have a client interested in npmjs.org. Would you
consider selling the site?

Please let me know a day, time and phone number
you could speak about this possibility and we'll try
to make it work on our end.

I look forward to speaking with you.

Regards,

My reply:

From: Isaac Schlueter
To: Andrew

I will sell npmjs.org for USD $1,000,000,000.00.

Just so you know. If npmjs.org ever suddenly turns into some random e-commerce site or something, and I’m nowhere to be found, it’s because I’m crazy rich now and give zero fucks.

User Feedback

2013-03-11T04:56:55Z

Sometimes a request is much less interesting than the motivation behind the request, which the requestor might not even fully understand.

Sometimes people demand a giraffe, when really, they just need a ladder, or better yet, they need things to not be up so high.

“There are ZERO giraffes in here and that makes me ANGRY! Fix it!!”

Yes, this is unreasonable. But if you don’t try to hear past it, then you’ll only see an unreasonable demand. Marking it with your judgement, it is easy to dismiss. Bozo bit is flipped, end of story.

Worse yet, if you don’t dismiss the request, you may find yourself negotiating their giraffe down to a horse, or a dog, which isn’t helpful at all! You’ll resent their need for a pet, and they’ll resent your unwillingness to provide a minion to fetch things off of high shelves.

You might perhaps never realize that you could have trivially made the ladders more easy to find, while planning renovations to lower the shelves, so that ladders would not be necessary.

You might be so distracted by the request for a large African mammal, that you never see that they didn’t want a pet in the first place.

Why No directories.lib in Node (the less snarky, too-long-for-twitter version)

2013-02-27T17:41:00Z

This question comes up in Node occasionally:

Node peoples… is there any way to specify a root directory for my npm package so that I don’t need require(“mypackage/lib/foo”)?

— wycats

In other words, you have a package directory structure like this:

./package.json
./README.md
./test/some-tests.js
./lib/main.js  <-- this is the package.json "main"
./lib/some-other-module.js
./lib/util/a-utility-module.js
./lib/etc....

Now, let’s say that this package’s name is foo. You want to be able to use foo’s some-other-module.js file, outside of foo.

The way to do this in node is do write:

var blah = require('foo/lib/some-other-module.js');

What Yehuda would like to see is:

var blah = require('foo/some-other-module.js');

The “how” here is simple: If you want a module in the root of your package namespace, put the file in the root of your package folder. It’s a 1:1 mapping, so it’s not hard to figure out how to get that result.

But I don’t want to have so many files in the root of my package folder

If you must export multiple modules from a single package, then you have a choice:

Use an extra 4 characters in your require() statements, or
Just don’t have so many exports.

Many of us would suggest that in general you may want to consider if those things actually are a part of the “foo” package, or if they belong in a dependency, with their own tests, name, version, etc.

I am not personally so die-hard about “one package = one file”. Occasionally there are internal things, and it’s not so bad. But, in general, I tend to be of the opinion that if a module requires its own individual unit tests, it probably should be its own package, if only so that I can think of it as a separate thing and give it the attention it clearly deserves. If I’m intending it to be used outside of the main package, then it most likely needs its own tests, and I’ll package it up and make it a dep.

Note all the weasel words in the above paragraph! There are lots of exceptions to this rule. But they don’t fit on twitter, and in fact, even the weasel words put my response way over 140 characters, and so with the qualifications stripped out, it looks like a capricious religion, unbound to factual realities of the imperfect world in which real software development happens.

The world being imperfect as it is, you may well find yourself in a state where you have multiple exports, and you don’t have the time or inclination to split them up into separate packages. Sometimes the Inappropriate Intimacy smell is less bad than the alternatives, it’s true. Sometimes it’s just a simple business decision; sometimes it’s less important to make it work right, than to make it work right now.

In that case, put "lib/" in your require() statement. It’s not that hard, really.

But WHY, cats?

The argument to require() maps directly to a file path. If it doesn’t start with ./ or ../ and isn’t absolute (ie, starts with a / on unix, or any of a half dozen weird things on windows), then node finds the closest node_modules folder with a thing by that name, and that’s the prefix. But everything after the prefix is just a direct filename.

(Aside: For historical reasons we do make the filename extension optional, which is a deeply regrettable accident of history that I would not repeat, given the chance.)

Let’s look at the benefits, and the costs.

Aesthetics

The first benefit is removing 4 extra chars in some of the lines at the top of some files. This is rather small. Even if you have 100 requires at the top of a module (which is very very many), and every single one of them is diving into some other package’s guts, you’re still talking about pushing the average line length out by 4 chars. It’s not adding extra lines; it’s not pushing the line length out that much.

If you cannot accept that, then put the files in the root of your package. If that is too ugly, well, then weigh the ugliness of file clutter against the ugliness of lines that are 4 whole characters longer.

The fact that this seems ugly is actually great, in my opinion. You usually shouldn’t be writing programs like this. Packages should be exporting an interface that is designed for a purpose, and you should be using them for that purpose. This is basic software design.

Doing an ugly thing should look ugly. There may be reasons to do the ugly thing, of course, and no one is saying that you’re a bad person for doing it, but the ugliness of the code should be a thing that you notice, so that you can avoid ignoring the ugliness of the design. There is a reason we evolved to find plump brightly colored fruit more appealing than wrinkled moldy fruit. There is a reason we evolved to be more able to ignore pleasure than pain.

In other words, your aesthetics are trying to help you. Saying “it’s ugly” is an argument against adding this feature, not for it.

(Alleged) Portability

Let’s say that you want to have something like this:

./lib/node/module.js
./lib/browser/module.js
./lib/ringo/module.js
./lib/narwhal/module.js

Then, I want to say “Node should use lib/node, Ringo should use lib/ringo, and the browser should use lib/browser, so when I do require('foo/module.js'), I get the right one for my environment.

First of all, that’s very trivial to do without making the mapping of require arguments to filenames any more complicated. Create a file like this:

// module.js
switch(getPlatform()) {
  case 'node':
    module.exports = require('./node/module.js');
    break;
  case 'ringo':
    module.exports = require('./ringo/module.js');
    break;
  case 'narwhal':
    module.exports = require('./narwhal/module.js');
    break;
  default:
    module.exports = require('./browser/module.js');
    break;
}

// This can of course be simplified.
// Usually something like this is sufficient:
// if (typeof window === 'object')
//   return module.exports = require('./browser.js');

If you find yourself doing this a lot, maybe ask yourself if you’re using the best abstractions, or maybe trying to make something portable that is fundamentally platform-specific. Maybe try supporting fewer platforms.

Or, maybe, just do the ugly thing, and let it be ugly, and accept that it’s a net benefit in your case. But if your request is "Make platform-specific module behavior forking less ugly”, then we’re back to aesthetics, and my answer is, “Ew. No. That’s gross, and it should look gross.”

Priorities

The cost of adding this feature is that the mapping from your require() statements to the actual file with the code in it, is more complicated.

Yes, it’s “only one extra file to look in”. But “looking in files” isn’t the hard part. The hard part is remembering which packages mapped in which ways, and thus knowing where to follow the train of logic, when you’re juggling a bunch of other peoples’ code in your head for the first time, while trying to debug a problem as fast as possible because it’s preventing actual human beings from doing what they are trying to do, and they give exactly zero fucks about the ugliness of your require() statements.

Adding “one extra file to look in” doubles the number of files to look in, and much more than doubles the cognitive overhead of debugging problems in code you didn’t write.

Debugging problems in code you did write is pretty easy. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the case where I’m debugging your code, because I’m using your module in my website, and my website is misbehaving.

If this seems like a trivial complaint, then you have either never been in this situation, or you are smarter than I am. Either way, consider yourself blessed, because it’s a shitty situation, and I’ve been in it, and I’m not smart enough for it to be trivially solved, and I wrote most of the code that did all this shit.

Few remember, because the node community was about 1/100th the size at the time, but npm used to support this feature (and also the “modules” hash, which allowed arbitrary mapping of module names to files, and was significantly worse.) Even fewer people were actually running production sites at the time in Node, and of those that were, most just wrote everything from scratch, because there was much less of an ecosystem to draw on.

Ryan and I were among the people building things in Node at Joyent, and trying to actually Do The Right Thing, and use npm and the community module ecosystem in the way it was intended. The first time we had to debug something like this, where a few modules actually used directories.lib, we both were convinced that it was a terrible idea, and had to go.

Around that time, we started conceiving the module system for Node v0.4, which is what we have now. We moved the node_modules lookup stuff into node core, and stripped out the module hash and directories.lib features from npm. Moving node_modules lookup into core meant that npm could stop using symlinks and shims all over the place to implement isolated deps.

Again, if you think that this cost is not relevant, then I have nothing but respect and blessings for you. Either you’re much better at this stuff than I am, or you’ve suffered less of the hell of other peoples’ bugs. Either way, mad props.

Making the node module system any more complicated than it is will make my life noticeably worse, and I don’t think I am alone in this. As I am in a position to prevent that reduction in Node quality of life, and as that is my job, I will prevent it.

The Node module system is frozen for a reason. It will not change to add new features, ever. It’s done, and not open for discussion.

Addendum:

@izs Would like to hear more about why omitting the filename extension in require statements was a mistake.

— jimmycuadra

Answer:

It quadruples the number of stat(2) calls, makes the 1:1 mapping more vague, and complicates implementation. Slower, greater complexity, etc.

However, the cost of removing this feature is nowhere near the benefit of not having it, so it stays for backwards compatibility. C'est la vie.

38"

2013-02-11T01:06:32Z

name	message
David Fried	38"
Isaac Schlueter	the circumference of a whale's penis
David Fried	the amount of snow milford, ct got
Isaac Schlueter	Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_whale_penis
	`> 12 * Math.PI`
	`37.69911184307752`

2013-01-23T00:51:58Z

2013-01-16T02:33:44Z

git-rebase

2012-12-10T19:05:00Z

Edit: You should probably also read Understanding the Git Workflow. Much more succinct explanation of the point that I dance around a lot below. Almost as if we’d had roughly the same ideas, but he squashed the messages more eloquently ;)

A recent article on git-merge vs git-rebase kicked off a very interesting conversation on twitter the other day among a bunch of us nerds.

It started with Marco saying

Good article on merge vs. rebase. It’s pretty balanced, but I’m still firmly against rebase after reading. blog.sourcetreeapp.com/2012/08/21/mer…
— Marco Rogers (@polotek) December 8, 2012

A few of us objected.

@polotek I wouldn’t recommend being “firmly” against rebase. That’s like being “firmly” against a particular coding style. Forest for trees.
— Jason Smith (@_jhs) December 9, 2012

Then there were like a bazillion more replies back and forth, and it got too much for Twitter.

@techwraith @polotek @rwaldron @nexxylove @oscargodson I’ll reply in blog format. ENOSPC.
— isaacs (@izs) December 9, 2012

So here I am writing a blog post now.

Git is an Editor

I’m pretty sure I stole this line from someone, but I couldn’t find any reference earlier than mine, so maybe I made this up. It’s a way of thinking about git that I really like:

cvs and svn are remote backups that you use to save your changes.
git is an editor that you use to write your code’s biography.
— isaacs (@izs) May 14, 2010

So my reply to Marco was:

@polotek Git is an editor. “Firmly against rebase” is like being firmly against backspace.
— isaacs (@izs) December 9, 2012

I hope that some of the implication of that becomes clearer by the time I get to the end of this post.

“tidy”

A lot of the discussion of git-rebase fixates on keeping the commit history “tidy”.

@techwraith @izs @polotek rebasing into a release branch is clean and tidy. You still have the data in your feature branch.
— Emily Rose (@nexxylove) December 9, 2012

@nexxylove @techwraith @izs what does clean and tidy buy besides a sense of satisfaction?
— Marco Rogers (@polotek) December 9, 2012

The workflow that everyone is discussing seems to be:

Working on a feature branch
Make some commits
The upstream branch changes (because someone else pushed to it) and now it’s time to merge it in.
Do you git pull --rebase (so that you pretend to have always been working on the changes) or git pull the upstream (so that you get a merge commit)?

The article that started the conversation really only discussed this single use of rebase.

However, rebase is much more versatile that this. Rebase is a tool that can be used to arbitrarily edit the commit history. If that sounds universally scary or bad, I’d argue that your understanding of “edit” and “history” are perhaps a bit limited.

Tidying Up History

Consider the following two stories:

Story 1

I ran out of milk.

I walked down Adams Street to Whole Foods so I could buy milk.

I mean, no, Whole Foods isn’t on Adams, it’s on Bay Place, so I walked down Bay Place to get to Whole Foods to buy milk.

Oh, but first, I had to walk down Grand Ave, then take a right on Bay Place, then parked my car–shit.

I got in my car, drove down Grand Ave, took a right on Bay Place, parked my car at Whole Foods, and needed my wallet, so… right, ok, so before I drove in my car, I got my wallet, drove to Whole Foods on Bay Place by going down Grand, and then bought some milk.

No, wait, I didn’t to whole foods, that’s right, because they’re crazy expensive. I went to the Grand Lake Safeway.

Story 2

I ran out of milk.

I drove to the Grand Lake Safeway and bought some milk.

This seems silly, but the benefit of a tool that can tidy up history is that you get to write whatever crazy awful untidy history you want, while you’re experimenting and editing code, and then organize it later. When I’m actually writing code, my commit history looks a lot like Story 1.

Typically I work on a blahblah-feature-name-wip branch, and then rebase it down to a blahblah-feature-name branch when I’ve got it into a working state and understand how it’s supposed to go. The -wip branches are a godawful mess of kinda working, except breaks all the fs tests commits, and Revert "kinda working, except..." commits. The benefit of tidiness then, is that I can track my work in a more or less play-by-play fashion, and still end up with something readable.

Is it better, then, to push all those play-by-play commits?

What is the purpose of a git history? Is it a forensic record of every edit to a file? Or is it a way for others to determine the reason for those edits?

My answer is: It’s both, depending on context.

I keep the -wip branch around for as long as the forensics are interesting. There’s a lot of times that I notice something is broken in the “real” feature branch, and think, “Oh, I could’ve sworn that was working yesterday.. what was I doing..?” At moments like those, the forensic record of my thoughts is invaluable.

But if someone, years later, is looking at a bit of code that seems strange, and they run git blame on the file, and track the edit back to Revert "Revert "hmm this seems broken but it sorta works i dunno"" then they’ll be rightly upset with me for letting such useless garbage into the repository.

One possible answer is: “Don’t write code like that.” Write a test for the feature, then write the code to make the test pass, and never make mistakes.

The problem is that I’m not smart enough to not make mistakes and know exactly what code to write before I start writing it. Also, I enjoy the liberty of messing around, tracking every bit, and still sharing an elegant useful story with my future collaborators (including future-isaacs.)

Forensics - Platform vs Service

It’s very interesting to me, but not at all surprising, that the people in this conversation that were most in favor of “merge only, never rebase” are generally working on a production web service (Yammer, most of them), and the people who favored rebase seemed to be working primarily on platforms (Node and npm in my case; JQuery Johnny5 and others in the case of Rick Waldron.) A few folks (mikeal, Jason Smith) work on both sorts of systems, and of course this breakdown is imprecise.

I’ve seen a similar reaction to rebase-vs-merge in coworkers at Yahoo, Kakai, and Joyent. (Basically ever since I’ve been using git, and exposed to this sort of conversation.) People who spend most of their day debugging production issues want the history to be as detailed and “forensically accurate” as possible. People who spend most of their day debugging platforms or libraries tend to want the history to be the most “elegant story” possible.

For the purpose of this discussion, “Yammer” is a service, and “node” is a platform. You install a platform and then build your program on it, and you install updates yourself. You use a service in production on someone else’s computers, and it is updated by other people. (From this point of view, “PaaS” is actually a Service, not a Platform. Pedants please direct all complaints to /dev/null.)

There is of course some overlap in the concerns. I definitely do not want any changes whatsoever to the history of release branches in the joyent/node, even if it means the occasional messy revert. If something has gone out as a part of a release, then it is definitely off-limits, and anyone who rebases that into some other shape will be ruthlessly punished (perhaps with the removal of commit access, if the infraction is repeated.)

I think that this split comes down to a simple question: When encountering a new problem, are you likely to use git-bisect to track it down, or are you going to revert to some known-good state and go from there?

Git’s Killer Feature: Bisect

If you have never used git bisect, then you don’t fully understand why git is useful. Git bisect is one of those tools that, once you use it, you realize that there is simply no way you could have ever debugged without it. And, the first time you try to bisect over a commit history littered with merge commits and reverts and broken states, you’ll see why “tidiness” is so powerful.

For the uninitiated, here’s a run-down of what bisect does, in broad strokes:

You run your tests, and realize “Oh, shit, it’s busted.”
You know that it was working yesterday (or whenever).
You run git bisect bad. (Answer “yes” to the prompt.)
You do git checkout <known-good-state>. (Run the test again just to make sure that you’re not mis-remembering.)
Run git bisect good.
Git will proceed to hop you to various commits, at which point you run your test and do git bisect good if it’s good, or git bisect bad if it’s bad. (If necessary, you can also check out commits manually, and mark them as good/bad.)
Shockingly quickly, git tells you which commit was the first bad one.

Because the “test” can be literally anything, I often use this to track down which commit in libuv broke something in node, if the node bisect shows that it was a update libuv to deadbeef type of commit that is the culprit. I run the git bisect in the libuv repo, and the “test” is putting the libuv code in node’s deps/uv folder, and running the node test.

To make bisect even more interesting, you can add something like this to your ~/.gitconfig file:

[alias]
  lg = log --graph --pretty=format:'%Cred%h%Creset %C(yellow)%an%d%Creset %s %Cgreen(%cr)%Creset' --date=relative

Then running git lg will show you a very terse listing of the history, which shows all the bisect tags.

As you can imagine, this works most efficiently when you have a relatively straightforward history. If you have messy back and forth play-by-play commits, where tests are breaking and un-breaking repeatedly, or the build is failing occasionally, then bisect is essentially worthless. Bisect can go over merge commits, but it becomes a lot less trivial to track what it’s doing, and I’ve found a lot of times the “first bad commit” is the merge commit, which is pretty much useless.

Tidiness makes bisect even more powerful. I’d use git without bisect, because it’s the de facto standard of the open source world. But without bisect, I would love git half as much. If I could make bisect even more powerful by rubbing grease on my elbows, I’d do it.

This is not about a sense of satisfaction. Tidiness is about taking 20 minutes to track down a bug, instead of taking all day.

Upstream Motion and Large Feature Branches

Occasionally you have a “Feature” branch that is really a major refactor of some sort, which cannot be accomplished in a single burst of coding. My most recent example is streams2, which I’ve been working on for a few weeks. (There’s been a lot of input and feedback from many others, and the code has been used as a userland module, so this isn’t a code-dump in progress.)

In order to not end up in a state where we have a zillion conflicts to resolve, and to be able to bisect out problems, I’ve been continually rebasing streams2 on top of the upstream master branch.

This is especially important when a change comes into the upstream master that breaks my feature branch, but doesn’t break master. I’m not sure how I’d even go about testing that if I was merging master into streams2 (unless I were to merge each commit individually, which is kind of absurd).

Here’s how I found the source of the problem:

Check out master into a new “clean” workspace. (NB: I didn’t have to download anything again. I could just do cd ..; git clone ./node ./node-clean, and then git pull origin master, since “origin” is the “streams2” workspace.)
Run git bisect bad.
Check out master from 4 weeks ago, which I’m pretty sure worked. (Could have probably been a bit more conservative, but who cares? Bisect uses the magic of a binary search, so it’s probably just one extra test!)
Just to make sure, in the first workspace, rebase streams2 onto that 4-week-old commit. (Because streams2 was already based on master, I did this via git rebase -i <old-commit> and then deleted all the the lines that were above the first streams2 commit.) Sure enough, test passes fine.
Back in the “clean” workspace, run git bisect good.
Repeat step 4 in the “streams2” workspace, running git bisect good or git bisect bad in the “clean” workspace.

I’m sure that there was probably a simpler way to do this. Maybe even some argument to bisect to tell it to rebase onto the commit, or a shell script that’d do it all for me. But this worked, was fast, and totally got the job done. I don’t even know how I would have figured that out otherwise.

(In this case, the culprit was a libuv update. Bisecting through libuv using the technique I described above tracked it down to a remove libev mega-commit, so the moral of the story is that, even with great tools, dependencies suck sometimes.)

Seriously. If you’re doing a big refactor that takes some time, and the upstream root is changing, how do you manage to find these kinds of issues? If I was merging in, all I’d know is that the merge commit made the test fail, but the test doesn’t fail on master. In this case it’s only the combination that is problematic.

I don’t know how to find or solve that sort of problem without rebase. I’m sure that there’s some way, because I vaguely remember handling these kinds of issues when I used CVS and SVN, but it’s all hazy now that I’m spoiled by bisect’s awesome mightiness and the power of a mutable history.

Taking Patches and “Ideal Workflows”

As the maintainer of several open source projects, a few of which get a lot of outside contributions, I am faced with a choice:

Make every potential contributor follow the ideal workflow (for some value of “ideal”), and reject a lot of patches because they are “incorrect” in some trivial way.
Be ok with using git am and git rebase occasionally.

That to me is a nobrainer. My approach to contributions is closer to the “email a patch” model than the “click the green merge button” approach. Having that many merge commits would fuck up my precious bisect, and I always want to test the commit locally before pushing it live.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t use github’s pull request features. On the contrary, I love them! They’re a great lightweight way to do discussion and code reviews, they integrate well with email, and when it’s ready to accept, I can do:

curl https://github.com/joyent/node/pulls/12345.patch | git am

Or to pull just one commit:

curl https://github.com/john-q-contributor/node/deadbeef00.patch | git am

Did the user have a long commit message that is in broken english and will be confusing later? No problem. git rebase -i HEAD^, and reword it. Did they make some minor lint mistake? No matter. make jslintfix && gci -am 'lint fixup' and then squash the commits together. Did they put 3 features in one commit? Easy, just do a git rebase -i, mark the commit for editing, then split it up into 3. They get credit for the work that they did, and I get a history that’s easy to read with a minimum of clutter. In the most extreme case, I can even use git format-patch to output a patch file, edit it manually, and then git am that puppy.

Rebase, am, and apply allow a project lead to be liberal in what they accept, and strict in what they send.

Yes, this can all be abused. So, don’t abuse it. Great power great responsibility blah blah blah. In fact it’s pretty easy to not fuck up, far easier than actually writing perfect code or getting contributors to make perfect commits. If you do mess it up, oh well, there are plenty of forks; just reset and start over.

It’s About History

It would be unreasonable to say that you should always use rebase instead of merge. For example, we routinely merge node’s stable branch into master. Rebasing master onto the latest stable branch would destroy the history of all our previous unstable releases, and would be much harder to manage.

In the case of that “big feature branch” for streams2, even if it ends up being a fast-forward due to being rebased onto the latest master, I’m going to merge it in with --no-ff to force a merge commit, so that it’s easy to pluck off if it turns out that the feature is actually crap.

Git is a tool for managing content. There are a lot of ways to manage content. If something has been pushed live (or even “pushed upstream”) then you probably want to maintain forensic-level control over it.

I think of “history” in terms of levels of granularity.

Take for example, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, an extremely relevant historical event in the history of the United States.

At the lowest level of granularity, there’s a lot of first-hand data: the eye-witness accounts that were given to police at the scene, the notes from the doctors in the ambulance and at the hospital where Lincoln was rushed after being shot, the descriptions and reports of other forensic evidence at the scene, the writings of John Wilkes Booth and the testimony of his conspirators (who all failed in their missions, for various reasons). There’s also the context of the Civil War being in the process of ending (but that being in some dispute at the time). There’s the account of the Union soldiers who tracked Booth down to a barn, set it on fire, then shot him as he fled, and the account of John St. Helen, who claimed to actually be John Wilkes Booth, having escaped and lived under a pseudonym in Texas for years, before committing suicide.

You don’t learn any of that in history class, because reading police reports makes it significantly more difficult to understand the story. Some context is great, but reading 25 conflicting eye-witness reports is not actually that useful over a hundred years later. Sure, we keep them around, just in case, but what you really want to know is just what actually happened. So, on top of those low-level accounts, we have various different accounts that go into different levels of detail, resolving and synthesizing the inconsistencies into a coherent story. At the highest level of history, you have the kids’ book version: “Abraham Lincoln was the president during the Civil War. He abolished slavery, and then got shot in a theater.”

The -wip branches are my version of the conflicting police reports. The feature branch is a tidied up version which is actually useful, but probably still too detailed for most people to want to parse through. The ChangeLog is the effective “what happened when” sort of history, and at the highest level, you’ll have a tweet from @nodejs that says “Version 0.9.5 Released - streams2 support!” with a link go to download it.

Git is an Editor

One objection to the “git is an editor” mindset is that it’s actually a database.

@izs @polotek Git isn’t an editor, it’s a database. It should keep a record of everything that happens with tracked files. Rebase loses data
— Daniel Erickson (@TechWraith) December 9, 2012

Of course, the problem with that is that a text file can be a database also, and you still use an editor to edit it; and a database is just a fancy editor for manipulating and retrieving blocks of data off a disk, and provides some ways to manipulate that data that take advantage of its regularity.

Many “databases” have mechanisms to delete data. (In fact, all that I know of have something like this.) Losing data is only a problem if you lose data that you care about; losing data that you don’t care about increases the overall understanding and makes the data that you do care about easier to get to.

Use the tools wisely. Use the editor to tell a good story, the right kind of story that your application needs told. If you need forensic details of every change to your production service, well good news, git can do that! If you need a clear explanation of the reasoning behind features in your library, git is great for that, also. Like a good editor, it can be used to tell a variety of different kinds of stories. Like a good database, it gives you the tools to organize your data into the shape that is most useful to you.

The backspace key is very dangerous. You can delete an entire file with it! But the trade-offs are worth the benefit. For the same reason that you delete code rather than comment it out (because it’s in the git history, so why keep the clutter?) it’s also great to rebase work-in-progress branches into a good state for their final merge. Some aspects of history are ok to lose. In many situations, not losing that bit of history makes the story harder to follow.

Lokaah Samastaah Sukhino Bhavantu

2012-11-09T23:44:00Z

There’s a thing that my yoga teacher says after each class.

We offer the benefit of our practice to all beings. May they all be happy, free, and at peace. Lokaah Samastaah Sukhino Bhavantu.

At the start of class, she asks us to “set the intention” of our practice, a thing or person or idea that we want to focus our positive energy on throughout the exercises.

When I first started doing yoga, I felt a lot of resistance to the “woo woo” aspects of it. I thought, “I’m coming here to exercise, and it’s a good work out, so putting up with a bit of hippie crap is not such a big deal, but really? Not for me.”

We are not beings of light. I can’t fix your car by sending good vibrations. In fact, I can’t even send “vibrations” in any meaningful sense just by having thoughts. Prayer doesn’t heal the sick, and can even make them worse, if they know about it. People make really bad decisions sometimes because they buy into what is, at its root, a fairy tale. Why not just interact with reality as it is?

However, there’s a flaw in that approach. We are not beings of light, sure, but neither are we innately rational. The Practice is about stretching your entire being into a more powerful shape. Minds work better when the body is fit, and bodies are highly responsive to the intention of their minds.

Your brain is an organ. Your mind is what this organ does. Saying, “I’ll just do the exercise, but I’m not going to believe it” is like saying that you’re going to do a cardio workout, but you want to keep your pulse rate down. If you make that a restriction, it will limit how far you can push yourself, and ultimately limit the benefit.

The “woowoo” beings-of-pure-light mentality, and the “no woowoo” I’ll-just-do-the-physical-parts, are two sides of the same coin, a paradigm that the body and the mind are separate things that only interact over a modest communication channel, whereby the body gives information and the mind gives direction. But these two different views of the human soul are much more intimately connected. The body and the mind are not separate things that communicate, they are the same thing, seen from different points of view.

This year has been incredible for me. Rewarding in so many ways, professionally, socially, intellectually, romantically, the list goes on. But with these rewards have come profound challenges as well. I am definitely not shy, but I have always been quite introverted. I tend to keep a small number of friends, and am much more comfortable in 1-on-1 interactions than in groups. I can barely manage to write a line of code in an office, always preferring to work alone in isolation. Once upon a time, I’d dreamed of being nerd-famous, but I always thought it would be less… “personal”, in some way. Like I’d have a high-trafficked blog, and live in relative obscurity otherwise.

Then Ryan left the helm of Node.js, and I find myself arbitering disputes and traveling to faraway countries where people want to tell me things and ask me things and watch me talk about things on a stage. There’s all these… people with their thoughts and feelings and much of the time, they completely confuse me. There is a constant low-level anxiety that I’m about to say the wrong thing, or forget the name of someone (who of course I know well online, and interact with easily via text!) or do some other thing that will insult everyone and let everyone see what a fraud I am, and how silly they all are to have put any stock in anything I have to say.

This is why we Practice. Breathe. Stretch. If it feels easy, push a little harder. Breathe. If it feels like too much, back off a little bit. Breathe. It’s not supposed to be fun all the time. Breathe.

As the LessWrongers say, the times when you most need your skills are the times when you’re most likely to lose them. Part of the Practice is learning to recognize distress, and come back to a place of balance.

I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but I noticed today that I had changed my stance on the little prayer at the end of yoga class. I actually say it along in my head now. I do take a few moments to set my intention at the start of the class, and come back to it repeatedly. Sometimes the intention is my partner, or a family member, or someone else that I am thinking about. Sometimes it’s an exciting event coming up. Sometimes it’s just a bug in Node that I know I’ll have to fix.

I don’t care that Marisa will never be able to tell that I was “setting my intention” on her and our relationship while I was sweating in side-angle pose. It won’t make my flight to Australia any smoother that I was sending positive energy into the future. And most of the beings everywhere will not be any happier, freer, peaceful, or at ease, by virtue of me doing yoga.

But it’s not about them. Setting intention is like aligning the spine of your mind. By focusing on my sense of compassion, I make myself more able to respond gracefully to challenges in life, no matter what they are. It is an exercise that strengthens the mental ability to listen to someone spit venom, and instead of spitting it back, think about how you might be able to understand why they feel so threatened, and how you can help that wound heal.

And the actual workout is better. We are social creatures, and our instincts are mostly involuntary. By telling myself that I’m pushing my body for the benefit of all living beings, some primal sense of obligation wakes up muscles I didn’t know I had, and gives me the fortitude to breathe through the intensity of the situation. Grit is something you can build, but you have to have a reason. Once built up, it’s applicable all over. It’s easier to trudge through godawful legacy code in node to fix bugs, and other things where others actually do benefit from my desire to carry on.

And this, ultimately, is what “extending the benefit of our practice to all living beings” really means, whether it’s yoga or meditation or rationalist practice or just working to get better at your job. It means that the work isn’t just for ourselves. It’s for the effect that we have in the world.

I don’t know all the things the future will bring. I hope it stays great for as long as possible. I hope that someone somewhere can cure aging and we can all live forever and do away with war and disease and car accidents. But hopes and reality are not the same thing. My best guess is that the future will bring age and sickness and sadness interspersed with the good stuff. Eventually it will probably bring death. When you’re in a knife fight, it’s too late to learn how to defend yourself. Now is the time to practice diligently.

The People's Bailout

2012-11-09T04:49:17Z

howtosharpenpencils:

This is a long post but it’s about something pretty interesting so I hope you’ll indulge …

Like many folks, Occupy Wall Street has been some doing good work in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, helping people on the ground.

Now OWS is launching the ROLLING JUBILEE, a program that has been in…

Escaping Captivity: Social Apes making Software in the Wild

2012-10-18T10:15:55Z

Here are the slides from the talk I just gave at Node Dublin.

Click each slide to advance to the next, or just scroll normally.

Hi.

So, first off, this is probably not the kind of talk you’d usually see at a tech conference. Maybe it should be. I mean, we’re all here because we have the technology in common, but I think the lesson of JSConf and NodeConf and the way that tech conferences have gone in the last few years in general is that these events are really about the community and node is not the typical tech community

and node is not the typical tech community. I’ve had the honor of being able to spend my days and nights working with this technology and the people who are passionate about it, and watch the community grow from basically just a handful of people up to the incredibly relevant thing it is today, and I believe that’s going to continue.

I think it’s going to continue because I think that one day, the node community will be typical of the technology communities we have

the node community will be typical of the technology communities we have. This pattern will continue.

In the next 30 minutes or so, I’d like to talk about some things that make the Node community so interesting, and why the patterns we’re developing here are going to inevitably be copied, extended, and built upon.

It all comes down to human nature.

Because you see, software communities are made of people

software communities are made of people, of human beings. And what are humans?

We’re the most socially active of the great apes.

If you look at all the mammals, primates are some of the most social, and humans are the primates with the most interesting and complicated social interactions of any primates. In fact, some anthropologists have made the case that human intelligence is really just there to support our incredible level of socializing. In an evolutionary sense, our need for facebook made us smart enough to invent facebook.

I have always liked reading and learning about anthropology, because it’s the study of what we are and where we came from, and really, everything we do, we do because humans do it, right? Being a social primate means that we’re obsessed with humans, which is why you’re all listening to me yammer on like this.

So, our story starts a little while ago,

So, our story starts a little while ago

About 5 million years ago, give or take, lived the last common ancestor that’s shared by the homo and pan genuses. “Homo” as in “homo sapiens”, “homo neanderthalus”, etc. – humans, basically; and “pan” as in chimps and bonobos. That’s when we split off from one another

5 Million years is not a very long time, from an evolution point of view. In fact, it’s so recent, that some people have argued that pan and homo should really not be separate genuses, and we should rename chimps to “homo trogolodytus” and bonobos should be “homo paniscus”.

That is, we’re so closely related that we’re basically the third species of chimps along with those two, and have almost as much in common with them as they do with each other. Their last common ancestor was only 1M years ago. So, genetically speaking, they live in the same building, we live next door, and the other great apes are across town somewhere.

About a quarter million years ago, we find the first anatomically modern humans. That is, if you went back in time a quarter of a million years, and plucked some homo sapiens that was walking around, and teleported them through your time machine to today, they’d be just like you and me, minus a whole lot of technology, like JavaScript and iPhones and time machines.

Also, you’d almost certainly see that they made their living, as it were, by looking for edible things in a forest; fruits, nuts, catching fish and insects, and hunting. Until about 10,000 years ago, all humans had hunter-gatherer lifestyles, and a few societies today still do, but they’re much more rare, and there’s been a lot of interaction with them, so they’re not entirely indicative of our early origins, but we can still get some insights by observing them and how they live.

The key component of hunter-gatherer or “immediate return” societies is that they have to keep moving, and are fiercely egalitarian. What that means is, everything is shared. Hunting is a group activity, and you don’t always catch something. If I don’t share with you, then you don’t share with me, and we all die. Also, everything they have has to be continually packed up and carried to a new place, so there’s really no “ownership” of anything.

But, this isn’t just a big hippie love fest where we all share because we like each other; people who don’t share are shunned, and in some cases killed. In that kind of society, there’s no room for selfishness, and so the group doesn’t tolerate it.

So, if you looked at the whole time that humans have been on this planet, you’d see that about 250 thousand years were spent wandering around, fishing, hunting, collecting bugs and nuts and fruits, and then, in the last 10,000 years, we suddenly stopped moving around, and started growing starchy plants. We’d already domesticated certain animals, so really the shift is from hunter-gatherers, to nomadic herders, to farmers. But in evolutionary terms, the change was dramatic and swift, and mostly one-way.

And so, there was more food, and it was all in one place. Clearly great, right?

So there was a lot of food, and it was all in one place. So this was clearly great, right?

I mean, with a surplus of food, and the lack of any need to move around, you get societies growing very quickly, and other things show up as well:

So, with the advent of agriculture, you get all this great stuff. Because we weren’t moving around so much, you could keep more “stuff”. Also, fewer babies died, so that’s great of course.

And, since you had a surplus of food, you could trade it with other groups. Trade meant that we needed a way to write stuff down, which led to writing down our stories that were previously only oral traditions, and this in general led to an explosion in the amount of technology, since each generation could more effectively build on what the previous generation had done. However

However, not all was wonderful in early farming societies, and in fact, there were a lot of problems.

The first farming societies that we have records of, from Catal Huyuk and some other places, around 12,000 to 10,000 years ago, show people living basically right on top of one another. They still had virtually no personal possessions. However, these little “mound cities” grew really fast, and studies of the bones of the people who lived there showed that they starved less often than hunter-gatherers, but suffered from terrible malnutrition. The average male height falls from about 200cm to about 160cm in the span of 10 generations or so, because being taller is a liability if you’re not getting adequate nutrition.

Also, all those people living right on top of one another leads to an explosion in infectious diseases that were never much of a problem in the hunter-gatherer days. Because we were living with our animals, you have zoological pathogens springing up, and so on.

I want to pause for a second here, and point out that being a hunter gatherer is not without it’s faults, either. While most of the places people lived had plenty of fruits and nuts and bugs and animals, if there was a bad season, you just went hungry, and sometimes that meant that everybody died. Especially, kids died a lot, which is why you hear stuff like the average life expectancy being only 30 years old; people lived a long time, but the infant mortality brought the average way down.

Worst of all, there were sorcerers always casting hexes, and you gotta kill those fuckers, or else they might hex everybody.

Even worse, if anyone claims you’re a sorcerer, you’re pretty much fucked, because there’s no legal system, and you’re just a couple dozen folks out in the woods, so… yeah. A legal system and science and that stuff, turns out those are pretty nice perks.

But most interestingly, I think, is that two things show up shortly after the advent of farming, which weren’t present in Catal Huyuk and other very very early neolithic settlements: We started making shields and walls

In the remains of hunter-gatherers, there’s a lot of weaponry. Really creative, gnarly looking things. I mean, they had a lot of time to sit around, and no tv or anything, and their job was to try to kill shit, so they came up with these creative ways to do it. You see these elaborate awesome spears, and bows and arrows, with flint arrow heads, and badass knives, and all sorts of other stuff.

But you don’t see any defensive artifacts until the Neolithic period, and there aren’t any fortifications. Why is this important?

Well, you don’t need a shield for hunting, because animals don’t shoot back. And there’s no need for a wall if you don’t need to protect something. So, the advent of defenses shows us that humans started being offensive and violent with one another in a systematic way, just a short while after we started farming.

When I first learned this, it seemed really strange to me. After all, now there’s a surplus, why would that possibly make us want to fight? You’d think that people would be more likely to fight when there isn’t enough to go around.

I wanna back up the evolutionary chain just a bit, and check out that other fork in the road. The story starts in Africa.

Gombe, to be exact.

In 1960, Jane Goodall went into the jungle to study chimps in the wild. We all pretty much take this for granted now, but at the time, very little was actually known about chimps. Goodall spent some time traveling around in the jungle getting to know them. She found them at that time to be “rather more peaceable” than human beings. There were some scuffles and whatnot, especially between adolescent males, but for the most part, they all got along. When one chimp found some food, they’d even call out for others to come and share it.

So, for five years, Goodall traipsed around the jungle, and learned a lot. Then, they wanted to get some more data, so they went back.

And there were two more expeditions. This time, though, in order to get more time interacting with the chimps, rather than follow them around through the woods, they handed out bananas at specific times, so that the chimps would come to the researchers.

They found a very different sort of animal in these subsequent expeditions. Whereas the chimps had previously been immediate-return foragers, now they could smell ripe fruit, but were unable to get to it or eat it. They’d tear the boxes to shreds, and the researchers had to keep getting stronger and stronger locks to hide the bait food.

What’s more, the chimps started setting up patrols. Groups of young males would circle the camp, and viciously attack any outsiders that tried to come near. Previously, they’d worked together with other groups, but with the advent of bait food, they became fiercely territorial and antagonistic. And there was cannibalism, rape, every kind of atrocity, which had never been seen before.

The takeaway from this, I think, is really interesting:

When our food is all in one place, we don’t feel like we have to work together. In fact, we feel like we have to keep other people away from it, and hoard it. Rather than making everyone get along better, a surplus actually seems to make us behave worse towards one another. We break up into teams, we get political and antagonistic, and generally anti-social.

The data from these expeditions came under fire for influencing the chimp behavior with the research methods. So, they sent out some more expeditions to observe the same tribes of chimps, but in the original “naturalistic” method. What do you think they found?

No change. Their level of aggression and anxiety wasn’t as high, because they didn’t have the stressor of the bananas in boxes teasing them all the time, but the chimps in the area were much more antagonistic towards outsiders than Jane Goodall had seen in her first visits.

So, after the introduction of the bait food, they didn’t go back to being nice. The changes were cultural. This is similar to how a domesticated animal will stay domesticated, even once you release it back into the wild.

In other words, for the last 10,000 years, ever since the neolithic revolution, we humans have been domesticated, and living in captivity.

Fast forwarding to the present day, let’s look at the major revolutions that we’ve gone through, as a species:

we went through immediate-return hunter-gatherers, to an agricultural society. Next we had the industrial revolution, and I’d argue that we’re still in the midst of the information revolution. And really, you can probably make the case that the industrial revolution and the information revolution are part of the same thing:

We went from finding our stuff, to growing our stuff, and the next step is using machines to do the work for us. Our machines have gotten more and more interesting, and now we’re at a point where we even use machines to communicate with one another and to think.

In order for something to be a revolution, it has to be disruptive.

Truly disruptive technology doesn’t just do something in a new way, it does something in such a way that the old ways of doing it no longer make sense, because the sort of scarcity that those techniques were designed around no longer exists.

After farming, the hunter-gatherer lifestyle was forever gone. Now that we’ve started down the road of the industrial revolution, we can’t turn back, ever.

But in order for a disruption to happen, it has to tap into something fundamental in our nature, and come at the right time in history, when we’re ready to accept it.

And disruption isn’t always great at first. In fact, the bigger the disruption, the more things it probably ruins.

We like to think of information technology as being disruptive, but I think we tend to overestimate how much of a revolution it’s been, and underestimate how much revolutionizing is still to come.

The shift from being a peasant farmer working for a nobleman, to a cog in a corporate machine, is really not that big of a difference. And today, a lot of IT still works this way. You work for a company, and that company basically calls all the shots.

Until just the last few generations, the assumption for most people was that you’d work for the same company for most of your life, and that the company would build walls around the value you create, and use the controlled scarcity to exert some power and influence and make a profit. But what happens when someone comes along and notices that the scarcity is imaginary, or invents something that makes it no longer scarce?

I’m certainly not the first to remark that knowledge work has the potential to be a bit different, and in fact, really HAS to be approached differently than the traditional industrial model. (Anarchism for Fun and Profit, Anarchy, Dictators, and Diplomacy: Leveraging Chaos in Open Source Communities)

Search the internets for “programmer anarchy” or “anarchy nodejs” and you’ll see a few other people talking about it, as well. Definitely watch Fred George’s talk about Leaner Programmer Anarchy, it’s one of the best I’ve seen on the subject, with some fascinating before-and-after data showing how un-agile typical “agile” really is.

The basic thesis of this point is that, the more freedom you give to your knowledge workers, the more they end up accomplishing. Strict hierarchies do provide some useful features, but they’re a net loss in terms of overall productivity. Practically by definition, programmers – and all knowledge workers, really – are heading into the unknown, and know more about it than their bosses, so why not just get rid of the whole concept of “boss” and “employee”, and let them do whatever they want?

But this still assumes that we have a “company” owning and driving things.

And certainly, a lot of open source projects have, to some degree, a company behind them. Node is backed by Joyent, for example, and they own the name and the logo, etc.

However, a lot of open source projects are managed in a somewhat weird way. Bryan Cantrill did a talk at FISL called “Corporate Open Source Anti-Patterns”, that I highly recommend you check out. It’s as if a lot of companies have heard that open source is great, and that communities can do a lot for your technology, but then proceed to do everything in their power to cripple and destroy the community around it.

It’s very difficult for most corporate cultures to come to grips with the idea that we actually get much more out of a technology community when we break down the walls, and give away as much as possible.

Also, what I don’t think that many people really realize about Node is that, it’s not just a Joyent project. In fact, most of the people working on it, don’t work at Joyent. And, most of the value of Node is not in the node core project itself, but in the thousands of other modules people are creating and publishing in the npm registry.

Of course, nothing about Node is really new. Async IO is as old as the hills, and there’ve been plenty of other module systems and so on. Node is an example of a lot of good ideas all falling together around the same time. And now that it’s been done, I think we can’t help but continue it, and push it further.

I want to go over what I think some of those ideas are, and how they relate back to all the stuff about farming and chimps.

Node.js has a relatively small core set of functionality. The general guideline is that node core contains everything that is strictly necessary to do network programming, and write userland modules.

The structure and process for adding things to userland is much lower than is typical of programming language communities. There’s plenty of room in npm for a variety of different competing implementations of things. In fact, we’re probably the most prolific community of wheel-reinventors ever.

And in the modules that people write, there’s a very open mentality. There’s nothing stopping anyone from writing competing implementations of any module out there. There’s no cabal that has to give permission to write new userland modules, and you don’t have to get anything into the core binary in order for it to be popular and useful.

What’s really interesting to me is just how much stress this seems to relieve. In fact, since modules tend to be pretty small, there’s often a few different implementations of similar functionality. Not only is this not a problem, it means that anyone can explore in any direction they want, so there’s this expansive feeling of elbow-room.

Fierce egalitarianism has shown itself in the modern-day “Code or GTFO” attitude. Virtually no tolerance in the community for “planning to open source”. Either share the code, or there’s nothing. No one wastes any attention on non-existent programs, which is unfortunately typical in many software communities, especially world of traditional proprietary software.

But here, anyone can work with anyone else, or in isolation. When the pieces are cut up properly, I can reuse just part of your program, without having to take the whole thing.

Github has done a lot to make this better. As Mikeal Rogers pointed out recently in his blog, there’s a whole generation gap between open source programmers, because github just makes it a different game now.

By keeping userland vibrant, and core small, makes it feel like we’re all wandering this wilderness together, rather than wasting time fighting over who’s patch gets “blessed” and gets to go live in the castle.

And, rather than having a pre-ordained structure, where you then go through and fill in the bits, this approach lends itself more easily to a pattern where you solve problems in reusable nuggets, unix-philosophy style, and then observe the structure that emerges.

Because, really, structure not NOT the primary piece of making a functional community, or a functional program. (I mean functional as opposed to dysfunctional here, not like FP functional.)

This was actually originally going to be the whole point of my talk, about how modular software can be built in a way that’s more exploratory, where the structure comes from the pieces you end up building, and how this is the main problem of thinking about programs as “object-oriented” or “functional” first and foremost, but it turned out to not be as interesting as chimps and cavemen.

Because I realized that this “emergent structure” idea, which is one of the core principles of poststructuralism (inasmuch as there is such a thing, anyway), is also a really great way to look at our communities and how they get along with one another. When we set out to build a structure, and then fill it in, it’s not just that we will build the wrong thing, it’s that we won’t notice we’ve built the wrong thing until too late, and won’t be able to easily fix it.

How many people recognize this title? Raise your hand if you’ve read this book.

All of you who aren’t raising your hands right now, shame on you. If you are a professional internet person, download it right now, and start reading it today. By the end of the forward, you’ll see why this dude’s my hero.

A lot of the things that make Node what it is are the same basic principles that make the internet what it is. Node, and the open source collaboration we’re pushing, is the natural expression of the internet in a software platform, and it’s enabling us to do more interesting things on and with the internet. It’s a cycle, a feedback loop. And that’s why this pattern can only continue.

That’s why this pattern can only continue.

It might sound far-fetched, but I think that this way of organizing ourselves, where we try to agree on as little as we absolutely need to, and then explore from there with the greatest degree of freedom possible, and then sort of see what structure happens naturally; it works so well because in some way, it speaks to our innermost longings for the things we gave up when we left the hunter-gatherer lifestyle; to the millions of years of evolution that made us who we are, before started trying to change it just a few millennia ago.

Other software communities are starting to pick it up, with admin-free module deployment systems springing up for client-side javascript, for cordova plugins, for php, and so on.

What we see with node is not the end of this journey. It’s just the beginning.

what you see with node is not the end of this journey. It’s just the beginning.

My hope is that, in 5 or 10 years, we look back on this and laugh about how stifling and restrictive the Nodejs model of collaboration was. The core of node is still way too large if you ask me, and it’s a constant source of contention.

How can we make it much smaller? How can this open modular approach be applied to “serious” projects like an operating system or a VM? I’m not sure. But I think it can, and ultimately, it has to, if we want to keep seeing the kind of improvements and returns we’ve gotten used to.

If the future is going to require us having new ideas, then we’ve got to figure out how to shape our communities such that we can actually have the space to do that innovation, and trust one another enough to cheer each other’s successes rather than feel threatened by one another.

Thanks, enjoy the rest of the conference!

On Sexism in Tech

2012-10-15T01:22:00Z

I’m not ever going to try to pretend that I’ve got any “disenfranchised” cred. In all the ways that show, I’m a paradigm example of the ruling class. But even I can see that Antirez’s recent post on sexism in tech is just amateurish and sad. Shanley’s response almost seems a bit mean in how easily she tears into his non-arguments; it’s like watching a kitten tossed to a hungry pit bull. I didn’t want to keep reading, but I couldn’t look away. Bravo.

Here are a few uncontroversial facts that men in tech ought to keep in mind:

Most men in tech claim that they are not sexist, and they believe that they are telling the truth. They honestly think that they treat women equally, that they don’t see gender in the workplace, that they judge everyone based on their abilities, etc.
Research has shown that humans are capable of being sexist without noticing.
There are many many more men in the tech industry than women.
Women do better in school than men, even in STEM majors, and graduate in higher percentages than men.

When faced with a mountain of evidence that I’m not capable of seeing something, saying “I don’t see it” is really not so compelling. In fact, faced with that evidence, a reasonable person would probably stop and think, “Maybe I shouldn’t base my decisions on what I can and cannot notice. Maybe I ought to be a bit more careful, or even take active steps to correct the demonstrable bias.”

I don’t know. I’m just a white american man who had the benefit of lots of free education, and basically fell into a dream job. Yeah, I had to sell some drugs to make ends meet in college, and some vacuum cleaners during the dot-com slump. I’ve answered phones in tech support.

But pretty much, it’s been an easy ride. I’ve never had someone think I’m not good at computers because of my gender. I gotta think that just HAS to suck. I realize that most sexism is not on purpose. But that’s the problem. The explicit chauvinism is easily corrected. It’s the subtle subconscious mistakes that do the real lasting damage.

That’s why we talk about women in tech. That’s why we try to get more women to speak at conferences about the work they’re doing. That’s why we blog about it, and have events about it. Because there clearly is a bias. It’s one that isn’t readily apparent otherwise. And the way you correct biases isn’t by pretending they don’t exist.

A very valid question is, “Why should we care?” Maybe that’s what Antirez was trying, in a rather clumsy way, to get at. What’s wrong with tech being composed almost entirely of men? After all, we should be a meritocracy; what’s in your underwear shouldn’t matter, right?

The reason we should care is that rational grownups don’t just shrug their shoulders when their biases cause hardships for other people. Rational grownups try to see the world as it is (including themselves), and don’t make up excuses for facts. We should care because a diversity of opinions benefits all of us, and our industry, and we’re subconsciously filtering people based on criteria that we claim does not matter.

But mostly, we should care because there are humans being treated like shit, and we are part of the problem.

2012-10-10T08:49:53Z

via w3cmemes

Thoughts on TypeScript

2012-10-01T23:18:00Z

I’ve been through the paces quite a few times trying to optimize the hell out of very hot code. In the last few years, this has been mostly in V8, of course, but the basic principles are not too far off in different JS environments.

It’s important to not put too much weight in rules of thumb, and we programmers are particularly bad at that, given our tendencies towards abstraction. But that disclaimer out of the way, I’ve found very few exceptions to these two rules:

If you have more than one of something, use a class; not a “plain old object”. I recently changed the “url” module in node-master, and made it twice as fast by replacing the plain {}-style objects with Url class instances.
Always put the same kinds of things in the same places. An array of numbers should only ever have numbers; an array of objects should always only have objects. If a FooBar object has a “foo” member, then set this.foo to something in the constructor.

It’s really nice writing code in a loosely typed language. Most of the time, these optimizations are not all that relevant, and when they are, the odd exception is probably fine, if it’s truly exceptional. But when you really care about maximizing speed, that flexibility can make it surprisingly tricky to track down all the deviations.

I’m probably not going to stop using Vim to write code any time soon. I’m probably never going to use Windows as my development environment. Code completion sort of annoys me, and I’ve usually turned it off when I had editors that did it. But I’m actually very excited about TypeScript.

It’d be a great idea to write up a TypeScript header file for the API surface in Node. Then, we could automatically test for API deviations, validate and flesh out our documentation, etc. Static typing does confer some very relevant value. Typically it does so at the cost of flexibility, but this brings a lot of the benefits to JavaScript in an optional way, which is very powerful.

Also, it’s not reinventing the language. It is JavaScript, mostly. Or JavaScript entirely, if you just write JS and have a separate declaration file, but with the benefits of linting that does more than whine about comma placement and indentation, and actually finds subtle errors in your programs.

There have been a lot of attempts to come up with ways to add type hints and API-auto-documentation to JavaScript. (JSDoc, YUIDoc, AS3/ES4, etc.) Most of those are not very compelling. The fact that Microsoft is doing this, and building products on top of it (which they will inevitably hope to make money on), is very encouraging. It says to me that this is going to be a real thing with real developers working on it, with budgets and timelines, and the whole bit. It’s somebody’s job.

I had some suggestions that I passed along to the folks at Microsoft:

It’d be amazing if there was a way to automatically try to guess at the best types, given a set of JavaScript code. Writing a declaration file is insanely tedious. I don’t want to do it, and that’s a blocker to adoption. I know that this is a hard problem, and totally not what you’d expect in a first release, but hey, V8 is guessing types pretty good, so it must be possible. That would make me happy.
It’d be nice to let it put run-time type-checking into exposed functions at the API surface. If this needed to be a dev flag or something, then that’s fine. I’d go ahead and let it in exported functions, though. We have a lot of that code in Node, and it’s tedious to write and maintain.

ERRATA: V8 doesn’t guess types, it observes them and keeps a cache. But hey, Microsoft has a few bucks, and some access to smart folks. They should do this. Also, I want a pony that poops rainbows and can always pick the optimum path between multiple destinations with ideally packed bags. So there.

Prioritize

2012-09-26T20:59:36Z

The word “prioritize” is the productivity guru equivalent of a war crime.

Priorities are observed, not manufactured, not dictated. You observe your priorities by observing what you are, in fact, here and now, in reality, actually doing, thinking, saying, and looking at. It is a rolling average of your attention and actions.

When tempted to say that you “need to prioritize” this or that, try replacing it with the word “do” or “think about” or “work on”. Because that’s what you’re trying to avoid talking about. “I need to do this or that” is so much more powerful, and makes the trade-offs so much more obvious. Doing something means not doing something else. Making lists, sorting lists, etc. are occasionally very slightly helpful in the act of doing something. But if you’re spending a lot of time, attention, and effort “prioritizing”, then your priority is to fiddle around with lists, no matter what the lists say.

And maybe that’s fine. Maybe you’re a professional list fiddler, or maybe it’s a hobby you enjoy. It’s certainly not any more stupid that sudoku or farmville. But don’t tell yourself you’re designing software, or creating a novel, or cleaning the house, or going on vacation. If that’s not actually helping you get anything done, and you’re not setting out to fiddle with lists, then that’s a bad investment of time and attention, and probably won’t make you happy.

If someone claims that they’re going to help me prioritize something, and they don’t mean that they’re going to actually help do whatever it is we’re talking about, then I have literally no idea what they’re talking about. So you’re going to vote up issues? Put red markers on some things that you care about, in the hopes that it’ll make me care about them? How red is red enough? Maybe you could add some bold type. That’ll really help. Ooh, you’ve marked some as P1. Great. Not prioritized enough? Try P0. Ok, thanks. I can feel the bugs closing already.

“Prioritizing” in practice means trying to pretend that we can get more things done by moving our attention around in circles, without actually making the trade-offs in time and attention that lead to X getting done at the expense of Y, and without actually adding resources (ie, getting more actual people to help out doing the thing that we’re talking about “prioritizing”.) If the action of sorting a list isn’t actually helping get the bug closed, then in what sense can it possibly be making it more of a priority?

I’ve worked with a lot of terrible product managers and project managers in my career, and precious few that were really great. The best one I ever had the pleasure of working with would come in on Monday with a sorted list of the bugs and features that he thought were the most important. He’d say, “Let’s see how far down the list we can get. If you think it’s sorted wrong, let me know.” He communicated the tradeoffs that he expected, and let the people who do the work actually do the work. Any time I had a question about why one thing was above another, he had an answer backed up by data and business objectives. When we told him about the technical difficulty or ease of getting certain things done, he’d update his list based on the costs. While we were working, he’d be reviewing our competitors features, getting feedback from users and advertisers, and analyzing log data. He was a professional list-fiddler, and a damn fine one. I don’t think I ever heard him say the word “prioritize”.

I’ve also sat in 3-hour meetings where a bunch of people argue about T-shirt sizes and assign cards to tasks to epics with story points and oh for the love of god what are we doing with our lives?

The word “prioritize” gives me flashbacks of every terrible sort of procrastination and make-work and pretend-work.

If you agree with my view of priorities, and you don’t immediately recognize all this as a blatant parrotting of the ideas of Merlin Mann, then you ought to listen to the show that he and Dan Benjamin do, called Back to Work. This subject has bugged me in a deep way ever since I first got into software development, and I’ve heard similar horror stories from many different fields. But before getting into the stuff that Merlin Mann has done, and especially Back to Work, I didn’t have nearly as much of a mental vocabulary for it.

Thank you, Merlin and Dan, for giving voice to this fundamental problem with human nature. Now that I’ve seen it, I can’t un-see it, and it’s everywhere.

To all Futurama fans.

2012-09-15T16:15:25Z

theload:

Seymour waited for Fry for twelve years. Fry was frozen in 2000. That means this year, 2012, is the year Seymour dies.

2012-09-12T15:42:05Z

When I’m introspective about the last few years I think the biggest mistake that we made, as a company, is betting too much on HTML5 as opposed to native… because it just wasn’t there. And it’s not that HTML5 is bad. I’m actually, on long-term, really excited about it. One of the things that’s interesting is we actually have more people on a daily basis using mobile Web Facebook than we have using our iOS or Android apps combined. So mobile Web is a big thing for us.

Mark Zuckerberg @ Disrupt SF 2012. (via tobie)

2012-09-07T18:21:43Z

maxeatinginplaces:

Max eating s’mores at Node Summer Camp.

2012-09-06T16:01:07Z

yourmonkeycalled:

I have been to the mall a lot lately.

Policy on Trolling

2012-08-23T15:25:00Z

The policy in the #node.js irc channel is this:

tl;dr If you’re a dick, you get kicked out. This is not negotiable.

Sexist, heteronormative, racist, and other offensive remarks are not allowed. (Cursing is allowed, but never targeting another user, and never in a hateful or sexually explicit manner.)
Remarks that make any of the ops go “Hm, that’s inappropriate”, whether on the above list or not: also not allowed.
You get a warning.
If the warning is not taken seriously, you might get a second sterner warning in PM, if you’re lucky, and the op is feeling generous, and this is the first time. But don’t count on that.
If the warning is unheeded, you get kicked.
If you come back and continue to make trouble, you get banned.
If you contact the offended party, and are truly apologetic, and it was the first offense, and the op who banned you feels it’s appropriate, then you may get un-banned.
If an op bans you, I’m definitely not going to unban you unless they agree it’s a good idea.
If an op bans someone, and you think it was unjustified, take it up with that op, or with a different op, in private. Griping about bans in-channel is not tolerated, and will result in more bans.
Ops are expected to be paragons of virtue. If an op creates an inappropriate situation, they should expect much less leeway than standard users.
Your free speech is not our problem. We recognize that this policy is a restrictive political stance. That is the intent. If you want a room with different rules, go create one.

In the majority of cases, this is fine, and never requires anyone to be banned. Most so-called trolls are immature boys (sometimes actual children, and sometimes just childish) who just need a grownup to tell them “no” from time to time, perhaps with a light wrist-slap. A /kick and a 2-minute ban to cool down is usually enough, if the warning didn’t do it.

However, persistent trolling ruins communities. No good can come of tolerating it. In the node community, we are not afraid of losing a few kids who can’t manage to behave in a grown-up manner. We’re more concerned with losing the people that those kids chase away.

This policy does not depend on anyone’s agreement. Your sexist remarks in our IRC channel is not protected speech. The D in BDFL does not stand for “Democracy”. Complaining about the ban will not get you unbanned.

A similar policy exists in slightly modified form for NodeConf, the node mailing list, and so on. It works. “Don’t be a dick, or you’ll be kicked out, and crying about it will definitely not help.”

I have been in a lot of online communities over the last 20 years. I have never seen a community fall apart due to excessive banning of trolls, but almost all of them have fallen apart due to excessive trolling. I’d strongly encourage any online community to adopt a similar policy.

This policy and the accompanying justification is released under a CC-By license. In other words, you can use any or all of it for your project or community free of charge, with or without changes, for any commercial or non-commercial purpose, provided that you link back to this post.

I have chosen a very liberal license because I want people in the world to be nice to each other, and I believe that part of the way to get there is for more communities to have reasonably low tolerance for bad behavior.

edit A prior version of this used the word “gentlemanly”, contrasting the distinctively boyish nature of most IRC trolling. In my view, behaving in a “gentlemanly” manner means that one is respectful, despite being male and in the company of strangers; a definite challenge for many. For various reasons, virtually every IRC troll in online communities is male.

However, the term has connotations for many people implying a specific sort of politely dismissive and condescendingly sexist attitude; others felt that this colored the entire post in a gendered manner that made the underlying message less clear.

That isn’t my intent, so I changed the term for clarity.

2014-03-17 - Added rules 9 and 10.

2014-10-02 - Changed “heterosexist” to “heteronormative”. Added rule 11.

2012-08-13T17:15:00Z

Srsly, github. Please stop with these.

There is no way to filter these messages except via the title.

No listid header, the return address is “noreply@github.com”, no option on the github website to “Never ever send me a message to tell me about the repo I just created myself because apparently I forgot because I have Alzheimer’s or something so I need a reminder about the repo I just created”.

And yet I do not have Alzheimer’s, yet, as far as I know, and I do get a crazy-making amount of email via github, and it is my job, so I can’t simply throw away all of it.

Hence, the filter.

Beliefs

2012-08-09T05:52:00Z

Don’t believe everything you hear. You will by default. It takes a lot of effort to un-believe it once you hear it.

Don’t believe everything you think. You already do. That’s why you think it. It takes a lot of effort to un-believe it once you think it. Many thoughts are demonstrably false, yet we have them anyway.

Don’t believe you know everything you know. You already do. That’s why you think you know it. You have to not just un-believe it, but un-know it.

Beliefs are sneaky. Beliefs don’t look like beliefs; they just look like the world. When you’re in the kitchen, you don’t say “I believe I am in the kitchen”. You say, “I am in the kitchen.” Un-believing is like un-seeing.

Don’t believe everything you say. This is the hardest of all. Our past selves hold our integrity hostage. Do not negotiate with terrorists. Shoot the hostage.

Every belief must pay rent, constantly, or be evicted.

Hoarders

2012-08-04T01:47:01Z

One day in #libuv…

piscisaureus ...
piscisaureus npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/blitline
piscisaureus npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/blitz
piscisaureus npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/blitzLib
piscisaureus npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/blade
piscisaureus npm ERR!
piscisaureus npm ERR! Additional logging details can be found in:
piscisaureus npm ERR!     D:\te\npm-debug.log
piscisaureus npm ERR! not ok code 0
piscisaureus ???
piscisaureus ^-- isaacs: no error message and no log :-(
tjfontaine is it not in d:\temp\ ?
piscisaureus no
isaacs wtf?
isaacs piscisaureus: what version of npm?
piscisaureus 1.4.46
isaacs 1.1.46?
piscisaureus 1.1.46
piscisaureus ahem
isaacs is there a ./npm-debug.log file you can share?
piscisaureus isaacs: nope
isaacs weird..
isaacs what'd you run?
piscisaureus isaacs: npm install hoarders
isaacs BWAHAHAHahahah
isaacs ok.
isaacs i'll get right on that ;)
mmalecki piscisaureus: can't repro

TJ Holowaychuk: Components

2012-07-25T16:28:19Z

For the most part, I agree with what TJ says, and I think that there are some great ideas in his post. Go read it.

A component can be not just JavaScript, but CSS, images, fonts or other resources, or a component may be any combination of these. This is the main idea that I want to sell, we need to broaden modularity beyond just JavaScript source.

Yes. However, they should have the same level of modularity and order that we’ve been able to get with JavaScript packages using npm and Node.js. It’s a much stickier problem, because the deployment environment is so much more hostile.

The classic battle between DOM manipulation libraries such as jQuery and MooTools serve as an obvious example of fragmentation. Even if one is more popular than the other this doesn’t mean we don’t have a problem. Have you ever seen a great jQuery plugin and thought to yourself “damn! I’m using MooTools!” or perhaps the other way around? That highlights the problem right there, we should have no “jQuery plugins”, no “Dojo modules”, just simply “components” that we can all consume.

To a certain extent, this is inescapable. Even if we say, “Use AMD” or “Use CommonJS require()” or whatever else, there’s always going to be some level of segmentation. Hell, even within node there are modules that only work with Express, and so on.

The point that I think TJ is getting at is that we should squeeze down the size of our components until they are very minimal, so that different systems can consume them and turn them into other sorts of things if they want. YUI can wrap them in a YUI widget, jQuery can have some thing that turns them into a jQuery-UI thing, etc.

The next step is to make the segmentation explicit, and make the different segments able to interoperate to the greatest degree possible. I think we’ve succeeded at this in Node, but as I mentioned above, it’s an easier problem there than in the browser. The component approach that TJ describes is very promising.

Components could have a “component.json” much like the commonjs package.json, or we can simply extend package.json. This would of course act as the package manifest, letting the world know if it has stylesheets, templates, scripts, images and so on. I believe we should avoid the minimal gains of magical auto-globbing of files, we can just simply list these and avoid unnecessary complexity and I/O.

It should be package.json. I think “styles” should be spelled “css” and “templates” should be spelled “html”. Otherwise I think we’d soon see stylus and less files in “styles”, and mustache and jade and markdown in “templates”. Maybe that’s ok. It’s a bikeshed we can paint later.

The unnecessary complexity of globbing is not such a big deal, really, but it should be left out of any “spec” that we try to get people to use. npm does this for a few things, and it’s pretty easy. It can be a step that’s performed at publish-time for convenience relatively easily, so that the data is ready at install-time.

Require fragmentation…

In keeping with the spirit of “minimal components consumed in multiple ways”, I think that the Node-style require() and module.exports is the way to go. It’s demonstrably easy to convert to other patterns, and is intuitive and easy to use. As TJ points out, the feature-detection required to use AMD and other things is just utter bullshit.

If you are going to be “installing” components and expecting them to Just Work in some fashion, then you’ve already taken on some tooling. Best to just bite the bullet and have the tool do this part as well.

Delivering components…

I disagree with TJ here, and think that using the npm registry is actually the best way to go.

Any other system will have to run into and solve the same exact problems that the npm registry already has to solve.
User management, package ownership, and namespace collisions are already taken care of.
It’s pretty fast, since you’re just fetching content, not the full history.
There’s a lot of reusable code for interacting with it programmatically, and as npm matures and pieces are factored out of it, this will only get better. Node is the obvious choice for a tool to fetch and build client-side components.

One complaint about using the npm registry is that it’s “confusing” that some packages are only going to be useful for client-side, etc. However, this isn’t really that big of a concern.

If a component system uses the main field for its JS entry point, and consumes the Node-style require() syntax, then there’s not a huge difference between a Node module and a client-side component. Why not just let people use them this way? If I only want to use the JS bits, why can’t I just do that in Node as well as in the browser? Of course, the vast majority of modules cannot be shared, but so what? People just won’t share those.

Users already ignore many thousands of modules without any trouble. However, if it really is a problematic issue (and I am not convinced that it really is), then the package.json format is infinitely extensible. TJ brings up the example of debug and debug-component. But if the module works on both sides, why not just let it be the same thing? If some sort of tagging is needed, then write a tool that uses something, and start using it.

Browserify and ender already exist, and have proven that this approach is effective.

Another advantage of using the main npm registry is that the namespace is shallow. So, there is no chance of having a component named “foo” that is very different from the node module named “foo”, causing confusion for users. It can make it a bit trickier to come up with names, but it also encourages each package/module/component to have a name that doesn’t refer to something else.

If the central registry is problematic, then using the same code as the npm registry, at a different URL and with a different database, is also an option worth considering.

Data is a singular noun

2012-07-23T16:18:12Z

When you read in the middle of a sentence ‘…the data are analysed by…’, you stumble: your subconscious grammatical consistency checks raise an alarm! – you have misparsed them (yes, like that). You automatically go back to the beginning for another go, more carefully this time, but realise, too late, that you are simply reading the work of an author in his weddings-and-funerals suit, writing as he would never speak.

This article is a great example of how we ought to think about grammatical issues.

People often say that such-and-such is the “correct” way to use a word, because of some historical baggage or technical analysis of the structure of language, without realizing that that’s not how people talk.

Others recognize that this is silly, and declare that grammatical discussions are pointless. There’s probably more gained than lost by making such a declaration, but nevertheless, it is not optimal, as it throws the baby out with bathwater that is easily drained.

There is much to be gained by making our writing clear. Whether it’s an essay or a tweet or an invitation to a party, the goal is usually to communicate some idea. Claiming the linguistic high-ground of “correctness”, while referring to a set of rules that do not describe the current language, is akin to wearing a funny costume. This has a place in satire, but in most contexts, it is distracting and condescending to write in this way.

Linguistic descriptivism is not “anything goes”. We humans have a set of grammatical parsing rules already in our brains, and we use them constantly. “Anything goes” isn’t descriptive!

The goal of any grammatical rule should be to help us write with a minimum of distracting complexity, so that our message is more easily understood by our actual readers. Rules that are implied only by the history or structure of words, but which are not actually used in practice, have no place in our language.

People do not take you more seriously if you wear a top hat, monocle, and tuxedo. If you’re not “proper english gentry guy”, don’t do it; and if you are, don’t be surprised that your persona gets in the way of your message.

2012-07-13T16:40:49Z

Seriously you guys, Jurassic Bark is the one episode of Futurama I can’t re-watch. It’s the saddest thing ever committed to video.

atsween:

A TV show finishes and my wife turns to me and says, “Oh, that was sad. I’m even tearing up a little!”

I say, “As sad as Fry’s dog?”

And now she’s sobbing.

7 Surprising Ways to Speed Up Your Site!!!

2012-07-11T18:10:00Z

These are my optimization tips for JavaScript.

Do less IO. (Fewer, smaller HTTP reqs. But mostly just fewer.)
Do slow operations in ways that don’t block user interaction. (Aka “async” or “cheating”.)
Write smaller programs. Cut unnecessary features. Most software latency and bugs come from code, so use less of that.
Profile before you optimize, or go blind from pointless bit twiddling masturbation.
Profile your actual app with actual data. Microbenchmarks are often inapplicable.
Write code that you can read and understand.
Don’t believe anything you read on the internet about speeding up your site until you have verified it for yourself, in the context of your app.

On ES 6 Modules

2012-06-26T04:25:00Z

Note: This was written quite some time ago. The current ES6 Module specification has changed a lot since then, and many of my complaints have been addressed. Treat this essay as a piece of history. click here to acknowledge this caveat and read the essay.

A few things have rubbed me the wrong way about the current Modules and Module Loader specification. I regret that I have not been very clear about what exactly my objections are, and worse still, I have not been very clear about what I think a better direction would be.

Yes, this will be sent to ES-Discuss as a proper discussion proposal. This blog post is phase three of getting my ideas in order. (The first being “get annoyed that current proposals don’t fix the problem”, and the second being “rant about it with friends and colleagues on twitter and over tacos.”)

First of all, I want to put to rest any ideas that I’m a die-hard JavaScript language conservative ideologue who will oppose any change whatsoever. I am well aware that what we have is lacking. I would love to see changes that make it easier to write JavaScript module systems, and debug programs that use them.

I believe that there is a place for new syntax, especially in cases where it allows for optimizations in the implementation, ease of reading, or run-time behavior that must occur before the program is executed (that is, static analysis stuff.) Parsing a plain-old JavaScript AST is certainly possible, but it’s a bit unfortunate.

We’ve spent a few years now doing modules in JavaScript. The claim that “JavaScript needs modules” is thus somewhat misguided: JavaScript needs better modules. Leaving aside Node.js for the moment, modular systems in JavaScript generally:

Impose boilerplate restrictions on the programmer. This is ugly and error-prone, and there is no easy way to catch many of these errors early.
Are not inter-operable with code that uses a different module system (or none at all).
Either require that all modules be present in the page at the start, or delay the execution of the program unacceptably. (No one does sync XHR. I’m talking about r.js/AMD and the YUI3 seed file here.)
Leaks internal implementation details in unfortunate ways, so that users are sometimes surprised when behavior violates intuitions.
Do not isolate global leakage, making a missing var a felony, when it shouldn’t even be a misdemeanor. (At best, they wrap in a function.)
To varying degrees, line and column numbers are obscured. (Sometimes just the first line’s column; sometimes the stack traces are completely meaningless.)

All of these problems are issues with Node.js as well! We paper over #3 by using a package manager and requiring that the modules in your program are available on the disk at the start, but it’s still in my opinion unacceptable. We have the advantage of “startup time” and “run time” separation, but really, <script> tags are a web browser’s “startup time”, and the rest of the time is its “run time”. Build processes allow one to trade run-time delay (and complexity) for up-front download size (and a simpler synchronous require()), but generally only by making the other problems worse.

TC-39 has one chance to specify a Module system that can address each of these issues, or allow host platforms to address them effectively. Problems introduced here will be with us forever. A half-way fix will be prohibitively expensive to fix once it’s in use, so we’ll be stuck with mistakes for some time (as we in Node.js are stuck with the mistakes in our system.)

The Good in the Current Spec

Though I think it has deep problems, there are very good parts in the current spec:

It clearly is attempting to reach a module system that addresses the needs of Node.js (and whatever on-device JavaScript platforms succeed it), as well as those of browser-JavaScript authors and platforms like RequireJS and Browserify.
The issues around globals and scope are pretty solid. I don’t have much to complain about there. Any changes to global behavior come along with a pile of edge cases, but they’re pretty thorougly evaluated and addressed.
The goals of both the Module and Loader proposals had me pretty much cheering. It seems like TC-39 is actually interested in solving a problem, and that gives me hope.

More than anything, reading the spec makes it clear that the problem is fairly well understood. However, the presented solution seems to be headed in the wrong direction.

Problems with the Current Spec

I’m not going to go through the issues that I have with the current spec one by one. It’s tedious and not the conversation we should be having. I’ll detail my alternative proposal below.

However, there are a few points I’d like to highlight, because they are issues that probably ought to be informed by the experience that I and other module system authors and users can provide.

It seems to be based on the assumption that nesting module systems is a thing that people want. Historically, in Node, we’ve made several API decisions based on the explicitly stated requests to make the module system more extensible and flexible. In practice, none of the supposed innovation panned out, and every one of those decisions was a huge mistake that increased flexibility with no tangible benefit.

People don’t want to write module systems. People want to stop writing module systems. Once there’s a module system in place, it should be The module system, period.

It bears repeating: no one wants to write a module system. A few of us take it on out of regrettable necessity. Anyone who actually enjoys writing module systems is too insane to be trusted. The only rational position is to do the simplest necessary thing, and as quickly as possible get to the business of building real programs with it. Optimize for that.
It puts too many things in JavaScript (as either API or syntax) which belong in the host (browser/node.js). As I said, people don’t actually want to write module systems in their JavaScript programs. They want to stop having to think about it. Node’s module system has been successful (as has require.js and browserify) precisely because it requires a minimum amount of thought on the part of the user about the module system. (It’s still way too much.)

Adding features that add complexity with the goal of making it easier to have lots of module systems in JavaScript is a mistake. Typically we can enable extension more effectively by reducing the scope of the specification, rather than by increasing it.
It borrows syntax from Python that many Python users do not even recommend using. The import * from mod syntax is dated and highly contentious in the Python community (as is import com.foo.* in Java), because it is a recipe for name collisions. Learning from real implementations is winful; but we should be avoiding their mistakes, not copying them.

Furthermore, let already gives us destructuring assignment. If a module exports a bunch of items, and we want several of them, then do var {x,y,z} = import 'foo' or some such. This import <x> from <module> as <blerg> is 100% unnecessary, adds nothing, and solves no problems. It does not pay its utility bill.
It favors the “object bag of exported members” approach, rather than the “single user-defined export” approach. Node.js uses an exports object because the CommonJS approach seemed like a good idea at the time, and it works around the fact that we have no good way to handle transitive dependencies except via unfinished objects.

However, it is widely acknowledged in the node community that using the module.exports = xyz style generally results in better programs. Changes at the language level can likely address the transitive loading issue more powerfully, and so should encourage the known best practices.

A Simpler Proposal

Clearly, the problems with the current state of JavaScript modules cannot be solved with zero changes to the language. Some cannot be changed without adding syntax. However, every change carries with it a cost. Therefore, it seems like the ideal approach is to try to find the minimum possible change that will address the issues – and, we ought to be ruthless on which bits of functionality don’t make the cut to be worth the risk. If we can get away with a much smaller fix by refusing to address part of the problem which is inessential, then that is the right course of action.

I don’t know if this is minimal enough, but I’d like to propose the following, which I think picks some of the most essential aspects of the Loader and Module proposals. It’s very rough, and there are a lot of unanswered questions. But in general, this is what I would like to see from a Loader specification.

This is very rough, and needs a lot of polish and edge-case exploration. I’m not pitching it to get it accepted, I’m sharing it to hopefully help pull the conversation in another direction, and help make it clear what a better proposal might look like.

(I’ve numbered them simply so that I can refer to bits later, not so much because they’re a list of like things in order. I’m a spec n00b.)

A Loader built-in object, with a few methods that must be specified before modules can be used. (And will typically be specified by the host object.)
Within a module, the import <pathString> syntax that can be easily detected statically in program text before evaluation, and returns a module’s exported object. var foo = import 'path/to/foo.js'. Import returns a single value, always. The path must be a string literal. The import keyword is an operator, not a function, and thus cannot be assigned etc.
Loader.define(<path>, <program text>) defines a module at the specified <path>, with the <program text> contents. That <program text> is statically analyzed for any import statements.
Whenever an import <path> is encountered in <program text> then the Loader.resolve(requestPath, callerPath, callback) is called. This method should return a fully qualified path. If this method returns boolean true, then it will not be considered resolved until the callback is called. (The argument to the callback is the string path.) If it does not return true, and does not return a string path, then this is an error, and throws.
Once a module is resolved to a full path string, then Loader.load(fullPath, callback) is called. callback should not be called until Loader.define(fullPath, contents) is called. This should be called at most once for any given fullPath. (Is the callback even necessary? Why not just wait for Loader.define and throw any errors encountered?)
The Loader.main(fullPath) method executes the module referenced by fullPath (which must have already been defined), as well as evaluating each of the modules that it imports.
Within a module, the export <expression> statement marks the result of <expression> as the exported value from the module. There can be at most one export statement in a module, and the exported expression is the module’s export. To export more than one thing, export an object with more than one thing on it.

Modules export a single value. Exporting a second time throws.

Maybe this is not a valid cause for syntax addition. I’m not sure. There are hairy problems around cyclic dependencies, so it’s worth at least having the option to address with static magic that has not yet been fully imagined.
The global object within a module context is equivalent to Object.create(<global>) from the main global context. (The important thing is that leaks aren’t leaky outside the module, but for example, x typeof Error still works, because it uses the same Error function.)
If a module does not contain an export statement, then its global object is its export. This is to provide support for legacy modules that create a global object (such as jQuery) rather than using an export statement. (Too magical? Probably. Also, what about having exports inheriting from global is weird. Is there a simpler way to make existing libs place nicely with this approach?)

The default values of Loader.load, Loader.define, and Loader.resolve would typically be set by the host environment. However, for reasons of simplicity, they must be set in normal program text (ie, not in a module), and modules should not have the ability to alter them.

In web browsers, modules could be defined straight away by using a new attribute on the script tag: <script module src='http://src.com/foo.js'></script> would be equivalent to doing Loader.define('http://src.com/foo.js', '<contents of foo.js>).

Bundler programs could trivially translate files into modules using Loader.define (rather than wrapping in a IIFE), or JavaScript files could be loaded as-is, without requiring that existing libraries begin using any module { ... } syntax.

In Web Browsers

Web Browsers could implement the Loader object thusly:

Loader.resolve(request, from) Uses standard URL-resolution rules.
Loader.define could be sweetened by a <script module> tag.
Loader.main could be set via a <script module main> tag.
Loader.load could fetch the URL, and evaluate the contents, as if it had been added to the document with a <script module src=...> tag.

For additional extensibility, these methods could be overridden by, for example, browserify or RequireJS.

For security, the Loader object could be frozen with Object.freeze to prevent additional changes.

I’m in no way attached to the specifics of the tag spelling. My point is that we in the JS community should specify the loader semantics, and then let host objects take advantage of them in application-specific ways.

In Require.JS

RequireJS and other AMD platforms would be pretty much made mostly obsolete by this specification, since the principle of AMD would just be “how it works” in web browsers by default. But, without the unfortunate boilerplate, and the resource loading mechanism could kick off much sooner, since import statements can be detected long before the script is actually run.

In Browserify

Most browserify modules would Just Work if they replaced require(..) with import ... However, it would probably be necessary to extend the Loader methods to provide shims for Node.js built-ins (ie, path, fs, url, assert, net, http, etc.) as well as pre-define node_modules dependencies into the browserify bundle.

However, Browserify’s static analysis build step could be made much more effective by using a designated import operator rather than relying on knowledge of a require function.

In Node.js

Loader.resolve(request, from) would do the current node_modules and NODE_PATH dance.
Loader.define would replace the existing module wrapper stuff.
Loader.main would be called on the module specified as a command line argument.
Loader.load would be very straightforward FS operations.

This would also set the stage for making node-core itself more modular, and we could even explore new approaches like detecting module dependencies from code, rather than requiring the use of a package.json file, which is very exciting.

What’s Missing from this Proposal

There is no module syntax in this “module” proposal. That is because it is unnecessary, and its omission is intentional.

A lot of work has also been done on the Harmony Module Loader proposal to flesh out some details of the Loader object. Most of this is good stuff. However, by removing the Module syntax portion of the proposal, a lot of those things can be streamlined.

It’s also worth mentioning that this approach make sourcemaps unnecessary for useful stack traces, even in bundled or concatenated code, as the Loader.define() syntax would function as a sourcemap.

While the experience in the wild has shown us that the “export one thing” approach is definition sound, I’m not sure exactly how to handle the transitive dependency issue in a way that doesn’t involve unfinished objects, or cause breakage in cases like this:

// x.js
var y = import './y.js'
// y.js
setTimeout(function() {
export { fooled: 'you' }
}, 100)

Even more insidious is something like this:

// x.js
var y = import './y.js'
export { real: 'x' }

// y.js
var x = import './x.js'
assert.deepEqual(x, {real: 'x'}) // nope!!

Because x sets its export after being loaded by y, the assignment

does nothing. Currently, in Node.js (and most other systems as well) this is not handled, or not handled very well at least.

Is there some way that it could somehow pass an object to the x module that would get swapped out behind the scenes when y.js changes its export? Is that too magical? I’m not sure.

Next…

My hope is that this post will help spark a more interesting conversation than the current tendency towards “YAY/BOO” that is so common in the internet. This isn’t politics. We’re not voting for parties. The goal is to figure out the best API, which is a complex thing. The solution space is wide, and it is naive to reduce it to a boolean prematurely.

I would like to try out some implementations of this in Node.js as soon as possible. Also, I’d love to hear feedback about which parts of this you think are unnecessary or impossible.

Let’s not forget that we all want these problems solved. No reasonable person thinks that JavaScript programs are optimally modular today. Most people who enjoy Node’s module system only like it because they’ve never taken a close look at it. As one of its maintainers and chief architects, I feel qualified to say that it’s pretty terrible. (Though, in my opinion, it is the best I’ve used, and the only that is optimized for maximum utility and an absolute intolerance for boilerplate. It’s just that the language is lacking, but that’s what this is all about.)

Not every change is an improvement, but every improvement is a change. My friends in the “no new syntax” crowd would do well to remember that.

That being said, since JavaScript cannot be easily changed, and can only be changed in one direction, we must be very careful to make sure that every change is an improvement. It’s more important to proceed carefully than to proceed quickly.

Future generations will thank us for our care, and curse us for our haste.

Seldo's Tumblr: To save you time, here are Friday's tech headlines in roughly chronological order

2012-05-19T03:47:00Z

OMG Facebook IPO OMG OMG OMG
Facebook Rises 50% in First Hour of Trading
Holy Shit Mark Zuckerberg Is So Rich Now
Look at All These Other Motherfuckers Who Are Also Rich Now
Some People Who You’d Expect to Get Rich Didn’t Get Quite As Rich As You’d Think
Oh Man Facebook Employees Are So Rich Now
Some Random Dude Who Painted a Wall for Facebook in 2005 Is Like a Millionaire Now
Facebook up 100% on Opening by Lunch Time
When Will Twitter Go Public?
Is Pinterest the Next Facebook? (Update: No)
Holy Shit Those Instagram Guys Are Even Richer Now
Facebook up 200% on Opening, Bigger Market Cap Than Jesus
Eduardo Saverin Is Some Kind of Douche, Huh?
Robert Scoble - “I’m Just Happy You’re Still Paying Attention to Me”
Sean Parker Is Also Hella Rich
Is Zuckerberg the Next Steve Jobs?
Some Dude Who Bought a Domain 20 Minutes Ago Raises $200M to Make “Pinterest for Video”
Are We Perhaps in Some Kind of Bubble?
Will Facebook’s IPO Hurt Obama?
“There Is No Bubble” Says VC Who Would Lose Billions if Bubble Burst
Is Vidterest the Next Facebook?
Facebook Plunges After Initial Pop, Closes at 10% over Opening
Is Facebook Doomed?
Why Facebook Is Here to Stay
10 Reasons Facebook Is Doomed
15 Reasons Facebook Will Be Bigger Than Google
Yahoo Is Still Screwed, Does Anyone Care? (by Kara Swisher)
Vidterest Acquired by Chinese Internet Portal for $2 Billion
Are We Sure It’s Not a Bubble?
“Stop Calling It a Bubble, Dammit” - Entrepreneur Raising Series A

2012-05-14T18:51:00Z

Here are the slides from my TacoConf talk on “Anarchism for Fun and Profit”.

Click on each image to go to the next one, or just scroll down leisurely. If you prefer, you can get this as a pdf or keynote.

As is so often the case, a lot of great ideas and concepts were left out to make the story seem more straightforward, and to keep it in the time allotted. I attribute a lot of things to Drucker that were actually developed by a lot of people at the time, and cut out this whole section about Walt Disney, and several other anarchist thinkers. Max Stirner was just one of several relevant continental philosophers on the topic, etc.

Think of this work as a tease, and let it motivate you to go out and learn more.

I’m here today to talk to you all about Anarchism for fun and profit. Usually, the way we use these words, what we really mean is:

play and work. and as I’ll hopefully convince you by the end of this, what we typically think of as play or relaxation is just a brief recovery from what we call “work” which is actually bullshit.

This is what we ought to be doing.

So, I’m gonna give you a little bit of history, mostly to put these ideas into context. Then, I want to talk about how this applies to work, and some things I’ve observed in the world of software development.

Let’s start at the beginning.

“Anarchy” what does that actually mean? It’s not just a slogan for punk bands, but it’s also a pretty broad topic. The definition is right in the word:

“An” meaning “no” or “without”

“Archy” meaning ruler.

So, anarchy is the lack of rulers, hierarchies, and so on.

So, who runs things?

Basically, we all do

Of course, there are degrees of things. But typically, anarchy implies that associations are voluntary rather than forced, and that each person has control over themselves rather than being controlled by someone else.

A lot of this goes back to a guy named Max Stirner. Well, actually named Johan Schmidt. He wrote a book called “The Ego and Its Own”.

One thing that strikes me about Stirner was how similar his lifestyle is to some of ours. They had this philosophy discussion group back in the mid-19th century in a wine bar in Berlin.

Karl Marx sat in on a few of their sessions, Bruno Bauer, Friedrich Engels, and a bunch of other names you’ve heard of if you got a liberal arts education.

I don’t think they biked around eating tacos, and they probably didn’t write JavaScript in coffee shops, but the similarities to the Oakland tech scene are nonetheless pretty striking.

In this book, he said that the individual is consumed and overwhelmed by ghosts and illusions. In order to attain Right Action, these ghosts must be left behind.

Here’s a quote that I think sums up what is so interesting about knowledge workers when they’re really working at their best.

So, in other words, he wasn’t writing because it was his job, he was writing because it’s what he does. He is a writer, and he can’t find out the end of the story unless there’s someone to tell it to.

In this passage, he’s almost half-apologizing for inflicting the truth on society, because he fully expects it will incite revolutions; at the same time saying, “Well, I need to find out the end, so… deal with it.”

Beginner Ease

2012-04-30T07:27:27Z

Pretty much on a daily basis, in some conversation either in real life, or over the internet, someone justifies a software design decision based on something being easier or more difficult to explain to beginners. Most often, this is regarding programming language design, or language patterns.

I think the “easier to explain to beginners” argument is a fine one if you’re tasked with making a bunch of beginners productive as fast as possible.

As it happens, with respect to the JavaScript language at least, I am not a beginner, nor do I share in code creation/maintenance with very many beginners, so that argument is not so compelling to me.

In my experience, most people spend a short time being a beginner, and then a long time being experts. By the nature of the time spent in each state, there will tend to be more experts than beginners, just as there are typically more adults than children. You certainly wouldn’t suggest that cars should be illegal simply because it takes so many years for a child to learn to drive responsibly!

Therefore, for me at least, it seems better to optimize to minimize the mistakes that experts continue to make, and use patterns that will be the most convenient for experts to maintain.

And becoming an expert is not so hard, really. It just takes a thousand hours or so of JavaScript use (assuming that the person already is a decent programmer in some other language). It’s a lot easier than becoming a competent dentist or hairdresser or lawyer, and there are plenty of dentists and hairdressers and lawyers.

As experts, we should not push for less powerful abstractions on the basis that newcomers have a hard time with them. Instead, we should push newcomers to become experts by supplying them with mentorship, support, and the truth.

That’s not to say that the language should be so difficult or abstract as to be completely impenetrable. We do need a nice smooth incline to the learning curve, so that newcomers will not be turned away abruptly. But in general, if you expect people to be somewhat smart and capable, they will be.

Re: @brixen’s "Is Node Better"

2012-04-09T17:27:00Z

Update: The talk is online at http://blip.tv/jsconf/jsconf2012-brian-ford-6091521. If you weren’t there, you should go watch it before reading this.

As usual, this year’s JSConf did not fail to deliver. The parties, the location, the talks, the food, it was incredible. Chris Williams (and the rest of the JSConf family) really put together an incredible event.

By far, the most controversial talk was Brian Ford’s “Is Node.js Better”. I must admit, I walked in skeptical. Brian Ford seems like a bright and reasonable guy, but is clearly not a noder.

I’m not going to transcribe what he said. If you want that, read his slides and watch the video when it comes out. This is my reaction and response, and says more about me than it does about Brian.

This is based mostly on my meat-brain memory, and some notes that I scribbled. It’s quite possible that I may get some of the particulars wrong. However, rather than wait for the video to come out, I’d like to write this now, since the errors in perception are themselves useful information. If you notice any such error, please let me know.

Of course, there are limits to how deep a speaker can go into a topic in a 30 minute talk, and those limits are much shallower than how deep I can go in this blog post. So, I’d like to frame this response not so much as me-vs-Brian, but rather as just another public part of a longer multi-format conversation. My goal is not to produce more controversy than is useful, but to perhaps produce enough to keep things interesting.

Fair warning, this is a much longer post than most things I write. If you’re reading it, you’re probably interested mostly in the specific node stuff at the end. I’ve opted not to shorten it too drastically, because the topics are in my opinion best served by a thorough exploration.

[citation needed]

A lot of what I’m talking about is discussed in much more rigor elsewhere. This blog post is a synthesis, not a research paper. In addition to Thinking Fast and Slow which Brian mentioned, these are about the most approachable and informative discussions of the subjects that I’ve found:

The Right

Brian started his talk with a very insightful exploration of the nature of controversy. He talked about our fast brain and slow brain, and guaranteed that reading Thinking Fast and Slow would change your life for the better, or he’d refund the cost of the book.

In discussing the title of the talk, he made the point that every value judgement implies a comparison, and invites controversy. If presented with a choice of apples and oranges, and you remark that “oranges are healthy”, then the implication is that apples are not (or at least less) healthy. So, the question “Is Node.js Better” raises the question, “Better than what?”

Storming Brains

He went on to stress the importance of the scientific method, especially in cases where groupthink can grab ahold of a popular intuition. A powerful example of this is the idea of brainstorming, which has come under criticism in recent studies.

Of course, another fascinating point worth mentioning (which was not covered in Brian’s talk) is that the primary source of the criticism is a survey of the results of 22 different studies with different methodologies, done in different environments, on different subjects.

I’m wondering what the differences are between the 4 where brainstorming worked, and the 18 where it didn’t. It’s especially worth noting that 18 instances of brainstorming’s failure vs 4 instances where it was successful, does not imply that brainstorming is “usually” less effective: only that it’s usually less effective in the studies surveyed. If you check the weather in Wisconsin 18 times in the summer, and 4 times in the winter, you might conclude it’s usually tropical.

This survey was reported several times in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. More recently, these journal articles were summarized in the New Yorker and other popular magazines. To me, this smacks of “turns out”-ism. It might be that the popular intuition about brainstorming is wrong. It might also be that it’s just incomplete.

Organization

Brian discussed the concept that organizations tend to perpetuate the problems that they were designed to solve. To my mind, this implies that we ought not to try to solve our problems with organizations, but rather, to solve them with chaos and disruption instead, wherever possible. Since it is often not possible, and because “disruption” becomes just another buzzword meaning a specific sort of organization, we should make it our goal not to “solve problems”, but rather to find the problems that are hidden by our current assumptions.

“Solving” a problem, then, becomes more an exploration than a “fix this thing” exercise. An exploratory expedition stops exploring when it returns with an answer. Similarly, organizations that are designed to solve a specific problem (as opposed to organizations that are designed to, say, throw parties or make buttons) should have their own destruction built into their core constitution.

This principle of minimum institution has guided the choices we’ve made in npm and in Node.js, technologically as well as socially. It has shaped the community in subtle ways that are difficult to recognize from the outside. It’s a principle that is close to my heart, and it’s why Node and I have gotten along so well.

Behavioral Science

“Programming is a behavioral science.” Couldn’t agree more. However, the transition from “behavioral science” to concurrency as a way to deal with scarcity of compute resources felt a bit forced to me. From that point of view, everything is behavioral science, because everything we do is done out of some human need (or else we wouldn’t do it.)

I think it’s more precise to say that software development is behavioral science, because every interface is a human interface, and humans are even more unreasonable in their behavior than hard disk platters.

The Wrong

There were a few points where I believe that Brian simply was either incorrect, misinformed, or perpetuating and reacting to the very groupthink that he is ostensibly setting out to move past.

Justifications for Using Node.js

There were a few justifications for using Node that Brian listed:

same language on the client and server
there are many JavaScript programmers
Node.js is more fun

These are all interesting justifications, though really, the first two are rationalizations for the third. For a talk that started out by diving into the science of hedonics and decision theory (albeit a somewhat Gladwell-esque popularization of it), I was a bit disappointed to see that he didn’t go into more depth on this point.

He said that users call themselves polyglots, so he rejects the claim that a single language is actually relevant. This is a highly specious rebuttal. I can stand, but I still often find it pleasant to sit. It doesn’t have to be necessary in order to be valid in this case, it only needs to be comfortable. If you’ve never worked in a single-language stack, I highly recommend it. Even though you can’t share a lot of code in most situations, it does reduce the cognitive load switching between different parts of the application. This is the same reason that I’ve suggested using semicolons in JavaScript programs that include other non-ASI languages: reducing switching cost is reducing cost.

Brian claimed that the “many JavaScript programmers” argument is invalid, or at least, not very compelling. We ought to figure out the ideal platform, he said, and then provide advocacy, education, and resources to help people adopt it. This also strikes me as a bit weird. I’m not claiming that one should make all their technical decisions based solely on popularity, of course, but it certainly is not irrelevant. There’s something to be said for pragmatism.

People don’t use Node.js because it’s the same language on the client and server. They use Node.js because that language is JavaScript, and JavaScript is fun.

There aren’t more JavaScript programmers because of a lack of education or advocacy in other languages. JavaScript is fun (and unavoidable), and so all programmers use it.

“Node.js is more fun.” This reminds Brian of Ruby a few years ago. It’s important to remember, in the context of hedonics especially, that “fun” is a highly subtle term worthy of study on its own.

The problem with “Justifications for doing X” is that we do things primarily because of our emotions. Even the action of “being rational” is a thing that we choose to do because of a positive feeling attached to our self-image as a “rational person who does smart things”, and the assumption that we’ll get some pleasantly winful reward that feels good. When we really want to do something irrational, we usually have no problem reconciling the conflict with our preferred self-image as a rational individual.

Emotions are not just part of motivation, they are motivation. If you want to know why a person does something, don’t ask them to explain why they do it; try instead to figure out how they feel. It’s a much more challenging question, but it leads to much more interesting information.

About the word “hype”

When we have a good feeling about something (or even, when we just make any choice at all, and don’t quite understand why), our brain begins inventing rationalizations right away. The first one to pattern-match against “X because Y” is likely accepted as the “reason” we’re doing something, regardless of how much the truth of “Y” actually affects the likelihood of “X”.

Try asking a compulsive gambler why he goes to the casino. He might tell you about his “strategy” for roulette. Of course, this is bullshit. Roulette is a deterministically losing game; the more you play, the more you lose. Same with craps, slots, and (unless you’re the best at the table) poker. It’s the feeling of winning that he’s chasing, and the feeling of the chase. If he was truly motivated by the desire for money, there are obviously much better ways of getting it.

When a person shares their justifications for doing something, one of two things typically happens, in the “fast-brain”:

You feel the same way about the thing. The justification pattern-matches against “I should X-that-I-do because Y”, and so you accept the justification as rational, wise, and well-informed. After all, you already do it, so you must agree.
You feel differently about the thing. Or, at least, it’s not a thing you do, and so you have invented some justifications for not doing it. Your brain pattern-matches against “I should X-that-is-stupid because of Y”, and so you reject the justification as irrational, foolish, and ignorant. After all, it’s stupid, so any justification must be misguided.

If you have some vegan friends, and some friends on the paleo diet, and feel like watching some fireworks, ask them in each others company why they eat the way that they do. No matter how polite they try to be, each will subconsciously perceive the statements of the other as an attack, and feel the need to defend their position. If they are wise enough to retreat from needing to convince the other, they’ll most likely at least make a big show about “agreeing to disagree”. (Of course, if they’ve been on this diet for a while, they may have enough practice at these sorts of situations to handle them quite gracefully.)

If X is not just “do this action”, but rather “feel this way”, and you do not already feel that way, and the justification is not enough to incite this feeling (as justifications almost never are), then we label it “hype”, and it raises the bar that we now require to take the thing seriously next time.

Like so many cognitive shortcuts, this is a really good move much of the time. After all, people’s justifications are usually self-delusions as often as well-informed and rational reasons for doing or thinking anything. It makes perfect sense to be extra skeptical when we are at the risk of being influenced by it. If we have to be extra skeptical over and over again, we start to pattern match “X is good” into the hype category. Suddenly, it’s not just that veganism or paleo is not for me, it’s that the diet is a mark of a foolish person.

The net result is that anyone saying anything positive is likely to be labelled a “fanboi”, and their statement called “hype”, no matter what they say. This is a dangerous feedback loop that leads technology communities to stagnation, bitterness, and chest-beating.

Yo Dawg! I heard you like cognitive distortions, so I distorted your cognition so you can distort while you cognit!

The mind is such a wonderful thing! Mistakes in the mistake detection lead to potentially valid statements being discounted because they are presented along with invalid justifications, or presented by a low-status speaker, or are in conflict with already-held beliefs, especially when those already-held beliefs are a part of our Tribal Story.

Even worse, you have situations where we see a few “X is good because Y” justifications, deem them false, and then subconsciously internalize the fact that we gain status in our tribe by applying the “hype” label and discounting it, resulting in spiraling down into the toilet. Politicians and marketers have made a science of getting us to elevate arbitrary ideas into this Tribal Story, blinding us to any disagreement.

Birds fly. Fish swim. Humans make mistakes. It is our Super Power. We all do this.

We almost never change our minds. We are influenced in ways we are incapable of detecting (and will deny!) We are motivated by the behavior of people who look like us superficially, and believe (at least temporarily) literally everything we hear.

There is virtually no limit to the ability of the human mind to find new and creative ways to get out of touch with reality. I don’t want to give the impression that I (or anyone) could delineate all the many subtleties of human cognitive error. Every one is so rich and complicated. Even this discussion of pattern-matching “X-because-Y” is a serious oversimplification.

In the ancestral environment of adaptation, disagreement was often fatal. We’ve gotten a bit better at intelligent disagreement, but we still try unconsciously to come to an all-or-nothing agreement within our own heads, annihilating any “bad” idea entirely, and shrowding any “good” idea in a halo.

Whenever tempted to call something “hype” (or, even, “anti-hype”), I try to remember to ask the following questions:

Is the provided justification evidence, data, or an expression of a feeling? What is the speaker’s experience of the thing being discussed? If it’s evidence, is it reproducible? If it’s data, is it relevant?
How do I feel about the subject? How did I feel about it yesterday? What are my justifications?
Am I tempted to dismiss this? Is it because of bad evidence, a speaker who holds low status in my tribe, or because I disagree with the feeling? If it’s a lack of evidence, what evidence would make me feel the same way? If it’s a feeling I don’t share, what other things do I feel that way about? If it’s a low-status speaker, how would I feel if <person I respect> was saying it?
Am I tempted to accept this? Is it because it agrees with something I already think? What new information does it actually contain?

This is part of the reason why I try to criticise Node.js and npm as harshly and often and publicly as I can. I do think that they’re tremendously useful tools… but how can you believe me if I tell you that they’re perfect, when I clearly know better? And if you can’t believe me when I talk about Node.js, then what good am I?

Better justifications to use Node.js

The IO paradigm is a good fit for your problem, and V8 is fast enough. This is the case for a lot of web software, but definitely not every program. Node.js really does make it pretty easy to write things like IRC bots and crawlers and websites, and is probably not ideal for many compute-intensive applications.
It’s fun to write programs in this fashion. There are time-honored traditions of thinking of data as streams of bytes, and JavaScript is a relatively simple and expressive language for doing this in creative ways.
It’s fun to be a part of making a popular platform better. The community is active and still pretty friendly, and that feels good to be a part of. Newcomers turn into regulars and then celebrities very swiftly. All it takes is a bit of persistence and enthusiasm.
You prefer the simpler approach to asynchronous programming, using a callback/observer model (or actor model for child processes), rather than something like green threads or coroutines that “look” synchronous.

If you’re not writing systems that are well served by nonblocking IO, or an event loop/observer pattern approach, or if you don’t think it’s fun to make programs this way, then you probably shouldn’t use it.

But, even that aversion is worth looking carefully at that, no matter what you decide. V8 is an extremely fast virtual machine, and these days, a lot of programs are IO-bound.

And even if it’s not, we tend to focus on “the right tool for the job”, at the exclusion of “an awesome tool for the job”. The opposite of “right” is “wrong”, but the opposite of “awesome” is “boring”, which is sometimes worse, especially if you’re trying to maximize creativity.

I’m not sure how much research Brian did when he went out looking for justifications for using Node.js, but I don’t think he really got at what actually is driving so many people interested in this thing.

Controversy

So far, I felt like the setup was nice, but the criticism itself was kind of lackluster. We’ve heard it before. Node is hyped. The single-language stack isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Etc. I was eager for the meat.

No sooner had I thought this, than the next slide said:

Node.js rejects reality

Aha! There it is. That primal “under attack” feeling, the visceral tension in my lower abdomen, the warmth on my face.

When I was younger (and still today when I’m not at my best, I must admit) the temptation was to hit back, or dismiss the message. Fight or flight. I think Brian probably lost a bunch of the audience with this slide. It sure did get my attention.

These days, when I feel that reaction, I try to leverage the added awareness that comes with the adrenaline, to be on the lookout for whatever comes next, because it is full of valuable information, especially if it is highly disagreeable. Beware of the moments when rationality tries to slip away: those are the times you most need it.

As I am somewhat dogmatic about endeavoring to reject reality less, I was very excited to hear what we might be missing.

Sadly, the justification for the “ignores reality” claim was not as pointed as I would have liked. It amounted to:

JavaScript is a garbage collected language. Garbage collection pretends that you have infinite memory, and you don’t.
IO always “actually” blocks somewhere, so the comparison between events and blocking is not valid, since it has to block somewhere.

For sure, garbage collection is tricky, and the interaction between Node.js and the V8 garbage collector could probably be improved. But to call it a lie is a bit silly. Garbage collection doesn’t pretend that you have infinite memory; that’s virtual memory. Garbage collection pretends that you don’t have to free memory in order for it to be re-used.

One of the biggest pain points of non-managed languages is having to explicitly free memory. The biggest pain point in managed languages is having to deal with a garbage collector. There may be some sort of approach to memory management that isn’t collected or manual, but better than either. If so, I don’t know of it, and it doesn’t matter anyway, because that is a language design problem, and Node.js is not about designing a language. If you have a beef with garbage collection, take it up with V8 and TC-39.

As for node being single-threaded, and IO always blocking, that’s kind of confusing to me. Of course, you don’t actually have application-level processing of IO in parallel, since there’s only a single JavaScript thread, but IO definitely is performed in parallel to the degree that the machine can provide, and “nonblocking” is the technical term for the type of IO that node does on sockets. (Nonblocking IO on files is simulated using threads.)

I’d really like more details about what exactly Brian was referring to on this point about IO “always blocking somewhere” and in what way Node.js rejects that reality.

entire ecosystem of tools and libraries must be built

This was a valid concern in 2010. I said at the time that it would not be an issue in a few years. It’s not an issue today.

To an extent, this was by design. A large part of Ryan’s reason for choosing JavaScript was that it is the only popular interpreted language with a suitably powerful VM and no existing IO paradigm. Additionally, to the extent that JavaScript does have a tradition of IO, it’s XHR and the DOM, which are event-based and asynchronous.

Since the birth of Node.js, a lot of libraries have been built. There are 8500 modules on npm. There are bindings to every popular database, sophisticated test frameworks, template libraries, HTTP routers, and so on. It’s easy and fun to write modules, and so people have written modules. This approach is remarkably valuable.

That being said, module discovery and visibility leaves a lot to be desired. npm has grown much faster than Rubyforge or PyPI, much earlier in the life of Node, and so we have hit these problems earlier.

Regarding tools, things are coming along quite nicely.

Post-mortem debugging with MDB just landed in the master branch, and will be in node 0.7.8. (Node v0.6 has had this for a while already.) Mad props to Dave Pacheco for that. Seriously, if you’ve never seen it in action, it’s amazing. In all my years using PHP, I can’t even count the number of times I’d desparately wanted this sort of thing. The zend IDE had some pretty good debugging capabilities, but Dap’s jsstack stuff is truly magical. Call me a fanboi, I don’t care: believe the hype. It’s fantastic. The only sad point is that it’s only available in SmartOS, but it’s not exactly surprising that the OS made by Joyent has some special love for Node.js ;)

The DTrace support in Node is also impressive. Again, not surprising, given the fact that so many DTrace heavyweights work at Joyent, but the go-to DTrace library for node is not written by a Joyent employee. It’s Chris Andrews’ node-dtrace-provider module. Anarchy > curation, yet again.

The depth and breadth of information that can be provided by DTrace, and the great work by Brendan Gregg and others at Joyent to actually massage that data into a format that humans can easily consume, is absolutely phenomenal.

Similar work on run-time analytics and post-mortem debugging is underway at Microsoft, I’m told. Windows users: stay tuned.

As a long-time text-editor-and-shell guy (moved from TextMate to vim a while ago), I don’t really follow the IDE stuff too closely. But, Microsoft, Cloud9, and many others are iterating furiously in this space. Many of them are leveraging their existing work on other JavaScript tooling, so it’s moving quite fast.

The built-in node debugger client is more my style, but node-inspector hooks into the Chrome debug tools, which imo blow away most visual debuggers available. (They even have heap analysis tools!) There are also plugins for Eclipse to provide stepwise debugging and analysis, and a lot of existing Eclipse users are more at home there.

So, it’s not so much that the ecosystem of tools “must be built”, as much as that it is being built, and leverages the existing JavaScript, V8, and system tools that already existed before Node showed up. In many ways, Node.js provides one of the first server-side systems that can fully take advantage of these things in a mostly cross-platform fashion.

Node.js will reproduce the last 15 years of ruby mistakes

Bold claim. One that I was excited to see ample justification for. What are the last 15 years of Ruby mistakes? How can we avoid making those same mistakes? How did ruby fix them? What can we learn from ruby’s experience?

Brian’s main justification of this point was that the cluster module is a repeat of Phusion Passenger.

It’s not entirely clear whether he was referring to TJ’s “cluster” package, or the built-in “cluster” module in v0.6, or the much improved “cluster” module in node v0.7. None of them are a particularly close reproduction of passenger, though I suppose that TJ’s is probably the closest. But it’s not as if any of these are an Apache plugin, or tied to a specific web framework. The analogy is a stretch, to say the least.

What’s even less clear is how Phusion Passenger, a program written in 2009, and widely recognized as the most effective and popular way to deploy the most effective and popular Ruby application framework, can possibly represent a “mistake”, let alone 15 years of mistakes.

I can only conclude that I do not understand what he was trying to say, because otherwise, I cannot make sense of it. Maybe there was something else called “passenger” in the Ruby world once upon a time, which did kernel load balancing, IPC, and not much else. Perhaps this “passenger” was deemed a mistake, and is now gone.

Show me a ruby mistake we’re reproducing, and I’ll make sure it gets fixed.

process concurrency is doomed

Brian declared that process concurrency will never be able to scale adequately. I cannot accept this without data. Instead of data, he gave some hand-wavey assertions about garbage collection getting out of control.

I’ll assume that he was running low on time, and perhaps had to cut out the histograms and demonstrations. So let’s leave that question open.

Of course, spawning one process per request, or one process per IO or timer, is completely unreasonable. That’s why CGI was not adequate, and no one runs a real web platform on bash. However, running a single process per core, and having multiple HTTP servers share the open socket, and then using an event loop for IO and timers, is remarkably effective.

If there is doom on the horizon, don’t hint about it. Show me the evidence.

symmetric errors, chain of evidence

Finally! Something that genuinely sucks a lot in Node.js!

Domains is on the list for v0.8. I don’t know that the first pass at domains will be the final and ultimate fix for this, but it’ll be something to iterate on. This will make errors much more symmetric, and provide a much clearer chain of evidence.

The chain of evidence is also much improved by having post-mortem debugging of production systems. If you haven’t yet, check out Bryan Cantrill’s talk And It All Went Horribly Wrong.

So, this is important to me, it’s important to Node.js users, it’s important to the various companies paying the salaries of the node core team. It’s reasonable to trust it’s high priority.

Problems I Wish He’d Mentioned

If you want to know what’s wrong with node, ask a node-core developer.

These are some of the things that are really problematic, some of them in a pretty deep way. Of course, these are the things I know about, so they’re things that we’re working on for future releases of Node.js. If there are things that you think belong on this list, let us know.

Some of them are very hard, and will require iteration. Some of them are pretty straightforward, and will be addressed soon. Some of them are not super difficult, but just lower priority, and won’t get addressed for a while.

Debugging. See above. It’s our top issue, and it’s coming along. It was mentioned, but less strongly than I would have liked to see.
It is very hard to get visibility into which pending actions are keeping the event loop running. This is a source of subtle errors. The libuv refcount behavior is in the process of being cleaned up, and v0.8 will include a mechanism for seeing exactly which handles are in an open state.
The Stream API, which is by all accounts the core use-case for node, is remarkably inconsistent and hard to extend. It’s a lot nicer in v0.4 and v0.6 than it was in v0.2 and before, but it’s got a ways to go yet. We paper over a lot of the inconsistency in the Stream.pipe() method, but it’s a source of many subtle issues. Node v0.9 will focus primarily on this issue.
It’s hard to find good node modules. Reducing the barrier to entry for node package creation has made it a lot easier for more people to take advantage of. However, when you solve a problem, you open the door for new ones that were hiding behind it. We’ve grown faster than most platforms, which means that we’re encountering the discovery issues sooner. This will be addressed in the coming months with a new npmjs.org website.
The Node.js project lacks a consistent and visible continuous integration system, so performance degradations can occur silently.
Using binary modules is overly difficult, and requires a build toolchain on the install target. Work is underway to improve this, but it’s tricky.

And of course, just the fact that Node.js is very young, and has some bugs. It’ll no doubt get more, as we continue to work on it, but the goal is to change things in ways that make these bugs easier to spot and easier to fix.

It is not sufficient for Node.js to be better than any other platform. It must be so good that it permanently raises expectations in this space. It must continue to impress and delight users. There is so much work yet to do, it’s mind boggling.

Laurels are not very comfortable to rest on.

And finally…

If you’ve gotten this far, congratulations. I try to keep blog posts much shorter than this, but there was a lot to respond to here, and touched on several issues that are very close to my interests.

Brian’s talk was fascinating. Even the mistakes were interesting. When the video comes out, I highly recommend watching it. Go get Thinking, Fast and Slow. I haven’t read it, but I’m familiar with some of Kahneman’s other work in behavioral economics, and I suspect it’s every bit as fantastic as Brian claims.

I got a chance to talk to Brian after the talk, and so hopefully a lot of these points (at least, the specific technical details of what sucks in Node.js and what we’re doing about it) doesn’t come as a surprise to him. He seems like a genuinely nice and thoughtful person.

For a talk that started off with a request that we use science and make conflict useful, I was disappointed that his criticisms of Node were lacking in scientific rigor or constructive calls to action. But as I mentioned earlier, it’s hard to fit it all into a 30 minute talk. I hope this conversation will not end here.

We’re all humans. We all think wrong. We all love, and worry, and try to do interesting things. We all fail, and feel shitty, and try to explain why we’re not a bad person for it. We all succeed, and want to brag about it. We tell ourselves stories, and sometimes those stories are true, but usually they’re only just true enough to get by.

Try to remember this, the next time you’re telling someone how awesome (or over-hyped) Node.js is, or any other thing you have feelings about, and they suggest that you may be a brainwashed idiot. They are just trying to protect something, as are you, and in the course of this protection, our instincts will cause us to fail.

Show that monkey brain who’s boss! Slow down, breathe, and try to remember that this person who disagrees with you is not some big dumb idiot, but most likely a very thoughtful person who’s trying to do their best to create truth and beauty in the world. If you don’t learn what motivates them, how can you ever join forces?

Many thanks to Mikeal Rogers, Bryan Cantrill, Marco Rogers for reading early drafts of this post and providing feedback.

Stack

2012-04-08T07:04:00Z

A stack of things, is right now on my floor,
And the stack’s depth currently measures four.
At the bottom, a table I bought at a local thrift store,
On it a pack for computer, and more
On that, a t-shirt, my girlfriend today wore
And on that, a cat, who is a plasticovore,
Next to him, are some flowers, but they don’t rhyme.

2012-04-08T07:02:52Z

Inspecting the World’s Most Derp-Derp Subway Map

Sexism, Words, and Marketing

2012-03-23T16:40:00Z

Go read this: Oh Hai Sexism. (Aside: I’m finding that more and more of the news stories I really like are on Storify, which I first heard about as one of the earliest Node.js adopters. Nice to see them doing well.)

Some of the confusion on the part of bystanders to this flame war was, “So, there’s a model being objectified in an underwear commercial. What’s the big deal?”

However, a very important point here, I think, is that this video was not being used solely to sell underwear, and that’s where it started going wrong.

Design Like Whoa is a clothing company. Clothing companies use models to sell clothing. Models are chosen for their looks, and they are literally objectified, as part of their job. They’re also consenting, and reasonably well paid. This method of selling clothes is used by just about every single clothing company, because it works. I don’t think there’s a single thing wrong with the video as such, qua underwear commercial, or at least, nothing that isn’t also wrong with the whole clothing industry and our irrational ape-brained methods of choosing clothing, but I don’t think DLW can be expected to change that. It’s actually relatively un-sexy, compared to other underwear commercials. Quid veritas

Add to this that Design Like Whoa markets their clothing by putting startup logos on them. Not a terrible plan, I mean, if it moves clothes, why not, right? People are passionate about the websites they use. Lots of companies put various logos on things to sell them by associating with the brand. Allegedly, Geeklist gave DLW permission to use their logo, and then DLW made the video without Geeklist’s involvement, and just happened to choose their branded apparel in the commercial. I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt there.

Edit: Geeklist was “involved” with the making of the video, somewhere between “It was all their idea” and “They asked for photos, and got a video.” It’s not very relevant to the points I’m trying to make here, so I’m not going to go into it any further. Gemma says this. Christian disputes (via private email) some of what she wrote, but not all. There’s definitely some room for interpretation. I’m not really interested in the finer points of how this started, as much as where it ended up. Bottom line: no one intended to offend anyone at the start, but that doesn’t actually matter in the end.

The problem, however, came about when Geeklist decided to use a women’s underwear commercial as a marketing technique for their own product, which is a social networking website for people in technology.

This was the first line crossed. I hadn’t seen that marketing, since I never use geeklist and don’t really care about their product except for the fact that it’s written in node. (That’s not intended as a slight against Geeklist. It seems like a fine enough product. I am just set in my ways. I use twitter and github and IRC, and that’s about the extent of my social networking. I don’t really use Facebook much, either.) Using a model in underwear to sell underwear is fine. Using a model in underwear to sell an inclusive social network for technologists? Sends the wrong message.

So far, in my book, no major harm done. Doing interesting things means taking risks, and taking risks means sometimes being wrong. It’s important to give people permission to make mistakes, or else nothing interesting happens. The trade-off of that permission is the trust that they’ll act appropriately when their mistakes are made known to them.

According to Heather Arthur, at least one private complaint about the video was ignored.

Heather’s email should have been taken as a red flag. Heather is exactly the sort of person that geeklist should be trying to target: She’s young, prolific, and very actively involved with several happening developer communities. She is a paradigm example of Geeklist’s money demographic. Any principles aside, if she felt put off by their marketing, then the marketing is broken, period.

Shanley Kane complained about it publicly on Twitter. Again, I can’t really think of anyone more fitting the ideal Geeklist target demographic. A product manager and marketeer at Basho (maker of Riak, one of the most relevant nosql databases), and also a Ruby coder and technical hobbyist. Someone who goes to conferences and networks with technologists as her job. Geeklist should be happy to get any feedback from her, and should take it extremely seriously if she’s put off by their marketing. Anything short of a brick through the window should have been accepted gratefully.

This was an opportunity. There is rarely a case where the right answer is so obvious. Christian could have replied, “Good point. I’m on it. We don’t own the video, I’ll talk to the person who does. No offense was intended. Thanks.” and actually walked away from this event perhaps not a hero, but certainly not a villain.

Instead, he got defensive, and took offense at Shanley’s “insult” to his “brand”. News flash: you don’t get to have a brand, or a project, or a company, or any public anything, without people insulting it. People say “fuck” sometimes. That’s just how it works.

From there, it spiraled WAY out of control. However much Shanley’s “cursing” may have offended geeklist’s brand, Reuben’s and Christian’s response to it was much worse. The veiled threats about talking to Shanley’s employer were just so far beyond what is sensible or appropriate, I am at a loss for words.

There was an apology, and the video is now gone, which I guess is good. But my two worst nopology pet peeves are in there: “We apologize if…”, and justifications for the behavior that they’re ostensibly apologizing about. Don’t tell me why I shouldn’t be offended, and then apologize if it was offensive. Tell me why I should be offended, and then apologize because it was offensive.

As Mikeal put it, “apologies that don’t contain the words "we fucked up” aren’t usually genuine.“

Put aside your immediate feelings and keep your eye on your choices and their likely results. This isn’t just part of being a grown up, it’s basically the definition of being a grown up. People won’t remember that you valiantly defended your brand from the vicious assault of an outraged feminist. They’ll remember that you insulted and intimidated the exact sort of person you’re claiming to cater to, and you’ll lose their trust.

Can we please go just a few weeks without some insecure startup founder pissing off a huge chunk of the technology community with macho antics? And, really? I don’t care if you actually are a beer-chugging juggy-hooting misogynistic bro douchebag in the privacy of your own home. Just please keep it out of twitter, the work place, conferences, and other public forums. Just temporarily, in public, pretend to be grown ups. Think about your words, and choose the ones most likely the have the effects you desire.

There are smart talented women going into applied science and fucking academia because of you asshats. Clean up your act. We need more good programmers, and you’re scaring off half of them.

Addendum

Just to clarify, I’ve met Christian Sanz numerous times. He seems like a really nice guy. It’s easy to get swept up in a flamewar and say stupid things, and a lot of us have done so. They clearly realized much too late that the train was headed for crazy town, and fumbled awkwardly to try to change course. I’m more disappointed than angry about all this. It’s kind of sad, really.

A person is not just one conversation, and a product is not just one person. My hope is that Geeklist (particularly Christian and Reuben) will learn from this event and let it inform their actions the next time someone criticizes their marketing decisions, rather than be so scared off from the event that they stop taking risks at all.

2012-03-18T17:40:00Z

Watch this video. I really like a lot of what he has to say. Two main comments:

165 Exceptions in the standard library, is enough!? Are you fucking kidding me? JavaScript has 7, and if you ask me, that’s way too many. URIError is completely unnecessary, and EvalError is always better off being expressed as something else. The only Error types you ever need to use in your code are Error or TypeError. That being said, “Don’t create a new exception type” is 100% spot-on. Even having typed catches in the language encourages this kind of awful profusion.
The reliance on “the standard library” is, imo, a bad thing. The idea that we should not reinvent wheels is great. s/standard library/npm registry/g and you’ve got me.

Many aspects of the Node.js module system, and the npm package registry, are built with exactly these principles in mind.

module.exports allows you to export a single thing from a module. If I had the opportunity to do it again, I’d only support that, rather than an exports object. If you really want to export multiple things, you’d still be able to, but it should be an extra mental leap to do so.
The single-level namespace in the npm registry makes it a bit less likely to end up with garbage like com.initech.utils.UtilityFactory.UtilityFactoryExceptions.UtilityFactoryNotFoundException. “Namespaces are for preventing collisions, not for creating taxonomies.” I cheered when he said this.
Once upon a time, I foolishly implemented the proposed “modules” feature in package.json. Ryan gave me a lot of shit about that and refused to support it in node, no matter how easy it was to do. I realized (a bit too late) that he was absolutely right, and pissed off some folks by removing it. Today, you get one main module defined in package.json. That’s it. A package is a module. Yes, a package is also a folder, and modules are files, so you can dive into it and get at its guts. But it’ll feel off, because it’s weird, and non-standard. You’ll get funny looks. This is on purpose, because it nudges you towards a flatter namespace by default.

The social engineering in node and npm is always more carrot than stick, and we always try to nudge people in a good direction by saying “no” to a feature rather than saying “yes” to one. This hasn’t been done perfectly in the past, but I am fairly proud of the results.

It’s a shock to someone who’s used to writing giant monolithic programs, and has to re-think how they draw their boundaries. That’s good. In fairly short order, things like local installs and limited exports start to “click” in a programmers mind most of the time. I’ve seen a lot of people start out frustrated and angry, and then a month later tell me how odd it is to use other platforms that don’t have the a similar approach.

When you solve a problem that others accept as the status quo, you often end up finding new problems. You don’t have to worry about coming up with unique descriptive names for your programs when you can nest them 7 layers deep underneath a company name. You don’t need to come up with approaches for managing a deep dependency graph if conflicts are insoluble.

Addendum

It’s not that I’m against using classes. I’ve written several programs that use classes extensively. It’s the proper abstraction for a long-lived object that needs to keep state and be interacted with. The hoop-jumping required to do this sort of thing in pure functional languages, with accumulator sets and so on, is kind of silly sometimes.

That being said, the point of using classes is to make things easier. If your class is a fire-and-forget thing with a single method, then it’s really just a function, and would be easier expressed in that manner.

There’s no hard and fast rule here. You have to actually think about what would make your program easier to use, easier to debug, and easier to understand.

How I Would Do It

2012-03-13T23:15:00Z

One of the most common shorthands for evaluating the choices of others is to internally ask ourselves if we would make those same choices in the same situation. If the choice is “Not how I would do it”, then it is deemed “Bad”, and reflects poorly on the chooser.

Like most sources of error, this shorthand is insidious precisely because it is a valuable time-saver in so many situations. A person doing foolish things is likely a fool, and by establishing this aversion early, we can save ourselves the trouble of evaluating their future actions and words in depth. If there’s something that I know how to do – whether that’s writing a JavaScript program or making meatloaf or listening to music or dating – then approaches that look off probably are. Difference smells funny, and why look deeper?

Not every change is an improvement, but every improvement is a change. We must be ever vigilant to not turn our noses up at progress simply because it is new, or at help simply because it comes in a shape somewhat different from what our own hands would make, or at a friend simply because they like different things.

2012-02-23T00:40:51Z

Coffee, sun, and hacking. <3 (Taken with instagram)

2012-02-17T01:40:14Z

Giantass ship, as seen from my desk. (Taken with instagram)

2012-02-12T20:56:43Z

Bikes on Bart (Taken with instagram)

Software Personality

2012-02-06T22:02:22Z

fetchnotes:

Last semester, Chase and I took a business communication class in which we dissected the PR crisis that resulted from someone trashing an Airbnb user’s home. At the time, it seemed very abstract and unlikely — crises never happen to those who prepare! Well, one just happened to us.

There’s an important lesson here. Don’t be too afraid to show a little personality in your products. Let your team’s humanity show. Keep the character in mind, and be true to it.

Think, “If this product were a person, what kind of person it be like? How would it dress? What would it feel? What would it say to you when you’re having a bad day, or when you come to it with good news that you’re excited to tell?”

In developing npm, this has always been chief in my thoughts. Very early on, I started imagining npm as a friendly helper and developer cheering-section. It just wants you to succeed so much. It loves your program like a parent, and is proud of the day when it can get all its dependencies taken care of, and leave your warm embrace to go out into the harsh world of deployment. It wants to know you’re prepared, that you’ve run all your tests. It will help you find friends and allies, try to warn you which ones to steer clear of. This can be a little smothering at times, but when your program is out there in the wild, maybe you’ll require() a little something, and there it’ll be, because of how much npm cared for it, and it’ll think warmly of the place it grew up, back in the $HOME directory on your laptop.

This mental image is what inspired the “npm loves you” meme. (It’s right in the faq.)

On the other hand, Node.js has a slightly different personality. It doesn’t shield you from harsh realities. It’ll go with you out into the wild, and handle all the incoming requests with you. It’ll be by your side through thick and thin, and follow your commands to the bitter end. It won’t go out of its way to be a jerk, but if there’s ever a choice between being fast and being nice, you know what it’s going to pick. If something needs to break between versions, well, then that’s what has to happen. It knows you’re going to be able to deal with it.

This, in my opinion, is the chief conceptual difference between a “platform” and a “tool”. Of course, to some extent, every platform is a tool for interacting with the system, but you really want a different personality from your platform than you do from a tool. A tool gets you there, and then is left behind; a platform is a part of the show from start to finish.

Bryan Cantrill has mentioned to me that every software project carries the esthetic of its creator. I think there’s a lot of truth to this. But, just as children don’t necessarily grow up into copies of their parents, software’s personality doesn’t necessarily match the personality of its creator. In many ways, Ryan is much nicer than I am, but npm is certainly more friendly than Node.

This phenomenon is uniquely challenging for companies that want to appear “grown up” and be taken seriously. The line between “grown up” and “robotic” is so subtle. Certainly, cursing at your users in a test message is a very risky way to breathe life into a product, but nevertheless, I find myself unsurprised by the reaction to the fetchnotes flub.

2012-02-05T07:33:55Z

I really like the view from where I live.

2012-01-03T00:46:08Z

aredridel:

Or, you know, we could go own our own infrastructure. Start your own blog, folks. Find a local company who hosts sites or get your own virtual server. Get help setting it up or learn how yourself. And then there are no limits save the actual resources you’re using.

You’ll learn a lot. You’ll own your space, not just lease it for the price of your privacy to another company.

samueloser:

Remember back when Tumblr didn’t have all these restrictions? It was great! Well since then, they’ve added new limits to the things we can do.

Reblog this if you want the Ask Limit, the Post Limit, and all the other limits that Tumblr has been adding to be repealed. If this gets enough notes, hopefully we’ll be able to persuade them to repeal the limits, or at least lessen the restrictions!

Reblog and Reblog and Reblog, and get your friends to Reblog as much as possible!

Xmas Traditions

2011-12-30T02:45:00Z

As an american, especially one descended from european catholics, there is no annual event as steeped in tradition and ritual as Christmas. It seems at times that failing to maintain our traditions would be an affront to our ancestry, and a crime to our descendents.

Tradition is a funny thing. It’s a social fiction. It’s something that we as humans decide we’re going to do. On the one hand, traditions can give comfort and stability in the midst of a shifting world. On the other hand, “because we’ve always done it this way” is hardly an optimal heuristic for social behavior (or even good evidence for having in fact always done it that way).

Back when our software was being written, when our world changed less quickly, and tribal unity was a life or death issue, it probably made a lot of sense to value stability over most other aspects of life. However, in the modern world, the absurdity of this pattern seems so painfully clear sometimes.

Christmas just a few generations ago would have been unrecognizable to us today. The “Santa Claus” character as we know him today, with the reindeer and flying and chimneys and north pole, was invented less than 200 years ago, and only became an overweight bearded red-clad man in the 1920s. Our “classic” christmas songs were almost all written in the 1940s and 1950s.

A lot of our “time-honored” christmas traditions were invented while my parents were kids.

The christmas traditions that I remember were waking up early, opening presents, and then spending the day in pyjamas playing with new toys. No travelling, no extended family, no huge dinner. We didn’t have any xmas eve celebration (probably because my parents did a lot of their shopping and preparation the night before.) The “christmas dinner” was usually delivery chinese. Normal Rockwell would’ve been scandalized.

The extravagance of our christmas presents varied quite a lot. My dad ran his own business, and along with that came a lot of ups and downs. When we didn’t have a lot of money, my parents put a lot of creativity into it.

One year, our gifts consisted mainly of coupons to be redeemed for outings or favors at some later date. We were young enough to be excited about that. Those coupons were made at home, printed to look official and then decorated with magic marker (our printer at the time was a black and white dot-matrix.)

The most awesome part of our xmas tradition came out of a creative solution to a last-minute problem. It was a good year, and my parents had bought me and my sister new bicycles. But, they didn’t see any way to bring them into the living room and wrap them in such a way that we wouldn’t know right away what they were.

They had the innovative idea to put the bikes outside in the shed, but rather than just tell us to go out and get them, my mom designed a treasure hunt that my sister and I would have to work together to solve. The first clue was on a card buried in the middle of the tree. That led to another clue, which led to another, and so on. Each one was a little puzzle that had to be solved, and it was all allegedly from “Santa”. So, when we asked my mom for help, she just threw up her hands, and said, “Hey, I didn’t help him make this thing. Call up the north pole if you can’t figure it out.” (We were old enough at the time to know she was putting us on, but she can be very stubborn. Her sense of humor is so dry, you never really know if she’s joking, or has had some break with reality and believes what she’s saying.)

Every year, whatever big present we got, it was at the end of a similar treasure hunt. It kept us out of our parents hair, that’s for sure. A chemistry set in the trunk of the car. A Nintendo and a few games (that year, my parents were eager for us to finish so that they could “help” play with it.) A “treasure box” filled with about $25 in quarters and dollar bills and some plastic pirate toys (not one of the fat years, but still fun.) One year in highschool we had to drive across town to pick up one of the clues. Once one of them was hidden in a file on a computer. (And, just to throw us off, another clue that year was in a piece of paper literally inside a different computer, so we had the thing mostly taken apart to individual pieces before reading the clue more carefully.)

Looking back, I attribute a lot of my relationship with my sister to the fact that my mother put so much time and thought into getting us to work together and experience joy and frustration together.

It wasn’t until recently that I learned that all this was a huge departure from the traditions in the Schlueter family, which previously had involved trekking back to my dad’s home town (in South Dakota of all bloody places!) Christmas eve gift exchange, followed by midnight mass, sleep, followed by another church service Christmas morning, and then a huge elaborate dinner. More Jesus than Santa.

We did that one year. I remember it sucking, and wishing that we could just do a “normal” christmas instead of all this work and church stuff, and driving across the country. The food was ok, but I didn’t see why I had to put on dress pants and uncomfortable shoes to eat with my cousins.

When I heard about other kids doing other things, visiting family and such, I thought, “Oh, that’s kind of weird, I’m glad I don’t have to do that.” I didn’t feel uncomfortably different for our “easy” traditions; they were great. Low-stress, low-expectation, high-fun.

I remember sensing at the time that my mom didn’t have as much fun with it as I did, and figured it was because she had to do a bunch of work. I didn’t realize at the time, it wasn’t just the work, it was the sense of obligation she felt that made the work seem so awful sometimes. She’d grown up disliking christmas, and felt a tremendous pressure to make it magical for her kids. She succeeded–impressively–but probably went well beyond the realm of diminishing returns. She could have done a bit less, been just as successful in making a great experience for her kids, and enjoyed the process more.

I’m not a father today, but I am an adult. And I find myself with a family that’s quite a lot bigger and more spread out than just the 4 of us. It’s easier to appreciate what my parents were giving up by staying home, and how hard that decision probably was. I feel that pressure, to do this and that, to be here and go there, and get this for these, and that for those, to drive around from town to town visiting everyone and being at every party.

It’s fun, sometimes. There are people that I love, and don’t see often enough, and this is a great excuse to make that happen. There’s also a lot of stress and headaches involved, and that can make everyone grumpy and annoyed. We feel an obligation to this thing called “Tradition” that feels so real and solid, and sometimes end up spending our time doing things no one likes for reasons no one understands, often for the alleged benefit of “passing on” traditions to children who will accept it for whatever it is, no matter what we end up doing.

The moral of the story is this: you don’t owe the past shit. If you want your kids to enjoy christmas, and have happy memories, then do what makes you happy, and focus on having fun with them today, in the here and now. The universe will forgive you if you give people presents in January or November, or if your bonding event is movies and chinese takeout in pj’s rather than church and ham in slacks.

Tradition is a story you can rewrite at any time, so write one you can enjoy.

Browser : Operating System

2011-11-29T17:46:00Z

Fairly early in my career as a programmer, I switched from the C and C++ path over to front-end web development. It was fun, in-demand, and provided a way to scratch my artistic and programming itches at the same time.

I spent a lot of that time wrestling with web browsers.

These days, I write most of my JavaScript for node, and run my programs on servers. I’ve found that wrestling with operating system differences is very similar to web browsers.

(Disclaimer: this is a joke. Please don’t email me.)

IE : Windows

Full of Microsoftisms. Most things mostly work, except that sometimes they don’t, and when they do, it’s usually in a completely foreign and strange way. So different that many people either don’t support it, or don’t support anything else.

Firefox : Linux

Mostly works, but always awkward. A perpetually broken mish-mash of components that often weren’t really intended to be used together. No two are alike, and nothing ever looks exactly right.

Shrouded in a religious belief that it is fixing the worlds problems. Any criticism is viewed as heresy (unless it comes with a patch).

WebKit/Safari/Chrome : Darwin/BSD

Very nice, very polished. Would probably die if not for the fact that a huge corporation decided to back it (since we already have a public option with Linux/Firefox). Mostly open source, but if you have to actually do things, you’ll inevitably be forced into the “blessed” APIs, which are not standard.

Opera : SunOS

All 12 of its users loudly agree it is superior in every way, and they have graphs to prove it.

2011-11-18T07:29:38Z

badlipreading:

“HERMAN CAIN” — A BLR Soundbite

Only slightly more crazy than the actual Herman Cain.

Experts, Idiots, and Taste

2011-11-10T18:15:00Z

My nerd rage on the topic of Fibers, co-routines, and compiled-to-js languages in node.js comes from seeing a non-problem solved in a way that makes it worse.

There are two really dangerous rationalizations in software design:

“We need to make it easier for newcomers.”
“Only experts will use this, anyway.”

Tower of Babel of Cards

They’re dangerous because each seems to imply that the other can be disregarded. The worst approach is to vacillate between them: “We need to make (async IO, object cleanup, database queries, whatever) easier for new users, so we’ll add this magic that experts will use to make intuitive APIs.”

It’s a vicious spiral. You can justify adding complexity, because “this is for experts only”, and also exposing the functionality in an obscured way in the name of making it “intuitive” for newcomers. The result is inevitably a towering house of cards. On a somewhat visceral level, I get this gut reaction to a “handing down from the mountain” mentality that is only harmful in the long run for everyone.

A better goal is to make an API such that when an expert uses it expertly, a newcomer can still understand it thoroughly. It requires an API (and more importantly, a culture) that limits experts, and educates newcomers. I don’t know the best way to approach problems to get there, but I’ve found pretty good results from thinking, “I’m probably going to mess this up the next time I touch it, so I’d better make it really obvious.” I usually fail at it, and end up cursing myself later when I rewrite the damn thing yet again.

Passing around a function that gets called later is not that hard. We’ve been doing that in JavaScript forever. Yes, newcomers to the language, especially if they come from a language without closures and first-class functions, have a little bit of a learning curve to get used to this phenomenon. In my opinion, you do them a disservice by trying to shield them from that.

(Passing around function pointers in C is actually a little bit better in some ways, because you can’t define your functions inline, and all the captured data must be passed around explicitly. This is a bit like using named functions instead of nested closures, which is a common low-complexity approach to the alleged callback problem.)

I’ve been writing JavaScript for a while now, and other languages for a few years before I got into JavaScript. I’m not the most expert at it, but I certainly don’t consider myself a newcomer. In that time, I’ve learned something:

We’re All Idiots

All of us, whether experts or newcomers. Well-meaning idiots, perhaps, but idiots. We all write bugs, all the time. That is the normal state of software. There is no abstraction so perfect that a human won’t fuck it up at the first opportunity. But we can try to be better, simpler, to make it easier for our future idiotic selves to figure out what we were thinking in our cleverly idiotic brains, and chop the problems into smaller pieces so that our future selves can have some clues to find the maddeningly idiotic bugs we stuffed in there.

If your code uses step or async or slide or Q, I can read it, and I see a function getting called and passed some arguments. I can look at how you got that function from a require() statement, pull up that module, and look at its definition. These are lightweight abstractions that are highly penetrable. I’ve suggested in the past that everyone should write their own flow control lib, because it’s the best way to really understand how they work, and it’s not that hard. Once you grasp the basic concepts, reading someone else’s flow control utility is pretty easy.

If your code uses a compiled fibers library, or something that transforms the code, then it’s much harder for me to figure out what the heck is going on. The introspection is gone. The languages change. Stuff happens that isn’t present in the code I’m looking at. This is fundamentally different from a library that just passes functions around.

That means: I won’t use your library if there’s any alternative (including writing the exact same functionality myself). It’s nothing personal. I just would rather spend my time solving necessary problems rather than manufactured ones. I simply don’t believe that you’ve put the same level of thinking into your coro util that TC-39 and the v8 team has put into JavaScript, or that Bert and Ryan and Ben and Igor have put into libuv.

Not everyone is the same, and that’s great!! If you find that Fibers solve a problem for you, and they make the code that you write easier for you to manage and design, then that’s awesome. Use them. Understand them. Drop the illusory dichotomy of “experts” and “newcomers”, and realize that they are both idiots, and both you.

Every choice that isn’t completely boring will alienate someone. Pleasing everyone is a recipe for blandness. That’s why we keep the node-core standard lib super small, and encourage variation and repetition and iteration in userland modules.

Absolutes

If your goal is to please me (and other stodgy “javascript is fine, callbacks aren’t hard” types) with a compiled coroutine library that adds magic to the language, you should realize how horribly unlikely that is. I do actually think that this approach is fundamentally flawed. I’ve played with Marcel’s fibers lib a bit, and it’s about the nicest I’ve seen, but it still adds an unacceptable (for me!) amount of magic to programs.

Programmers tend to think in absolutes, perhaps because computers are such absolute things, or maybe just because absolutes are easier and we’re all idiots. I’ve done it in this post, because I’m as lazy as anyone. Maybe you’re the exception, and you actually are smart enough to use Fibers or Streamline wisely and still know what’s going on when you read the code a year later. If the benefit is greater than the cost, then go for it. It’s your house, you decide whether to wear pants or not.

When we are discussing things like this, it’s important to realize that we’re artists discussing matters of taste. If everyone agreed, then it would mean it wasn’t interesting. Maybe we should be less interested in convincing people of stuff, and more interested in just writing programs that do interesting things.

Mud Rooms, Red Letters, and Real Priorities

2011-11-03T16:46:28Z

You can’t “prioritize” a list of 20 tasks any more than you can “uniqueify” 20 objects by “uniqueness,” or “pregnantitze” 20 women by “pregnantness.” Each of those words means something.

Merlin Mann is my hero. Read this post every time you say the word “prioritize”.

2011-10-26T17:37:00Z

JavaScript is Not Web Assembly

2011-09-14T21:21:00Z

It’s fairly common these days to think of JavaScript as a sort of “assembly language for the web”. After all, it’s the language that is natively supported by web browsers, making it the most widely deployed runtime in history. With Node, we have a very relevant general purpose non-browser stack for doing system programming using this language, so it’s even more important as a language.

Programmers like to improve things and solve problems. This is a healthy instinct, but like so many healthy instincts, it can be subject to runaway feedback loops and lead to pathological behavior.

If you are designing a language, compiling it to JavaScript is a pretty attractive option, for much the same reason that compiling C to machine code is an attractive option: running it in more places.

However, so far, most of the times that I’ve seen someone trot out the “JS = new assembly” horse, it’s not an apt comparison. The reason we write C instead of assembly is that:

Assembly varies wildly between architectures. C is not as variable. So, the compiler can abstract away a lot of that peculiarity, and you only need to worry about it if you’re distributing precompiled binaries.
C offers an order of magnitude more expressiveness.

I’m going to pick on CoffeeScript, because it’s clearly the most popular to-JS language. Jeremy Ashkenas is a great guy, and has shown himself on repeated occasions to be remarkably sane with respect to this issue. Either he hasn’t caught the language-wank crazy, or he hides it really well.

However, either or both of these points apply to every other to-JS language, including but not limited to GWT, paren-js, sibilant, streamline, kaffiene, narrative, et al. That’s not to say that any of these systems are bad, just that the “blah is to JS as C is to Assembly” analogy is wildly wrongheaded.

CoffeeScript programs don’t vary any less across architectures than the JavaScript programs it creates. That is, you don’t compile it to target a given platform. (This is not true of GWT, which can compile different JS files for different browsers, but that’s not the norm in the to-JS world.)
CoffeeScript does not offer an order of magnitude difference in expressiveness. I’m not using “expressiveness” as some fuzzy term to mean “how happy you are expressing yourself in X language”, but the more mathy technical meaning of “how many relevant program tokens are required to do X task.” CoffeeScript may require fewer tokens, sure, but not 10 to 1 fewer.

JavaScript is not the Assembly of the Web. It’s the C of the web. The to-JS languages are lining up to become the C++ of the web.

They offer language features that make some sorts of programs a little bit easier to write, but don’t make an order of magnitude difference in expressive power.
They’re mostly backwards compatible with JavaScript.
You still need to grok the DOM, or node, or whatever other platform your program is interacting with, and that’s probably documented in JavaScript.
They break almost all of the tooling that exists for JavaScript debugging.

Clarification: CoffeeScript does try very hard to compile to JS that runs on all JS platforms. However, it does not optimize for a given platform, or have a specified target when it compiles. The resulting JS is still a high-level general-purpose program, and the pitch, at least, is that it is a better one than you would have written as easily by hand.

2011-09-05T17:22:32Z

In the universe where everything works the way it common-sensically ought to, everything about the study of Artificial General Intelligence is driven by the one overwhelming fact of the indescribably huge effects: initial conditions and unfolding patterns whose consequences will resound for as long as causal chains continue out of Earth, until all the stars and galaxies in the night sky have burned down to cold iron, and maybe long afterward, or forever into infinity if the true laws of physics should happen to permit that. To deliberately thrust your mortal brain onto that stage, as it plays out on ancient Earth the first root of life, is an act so far beyond “audacity” as to set the word on fire, an act which can only be excused by the terrifying knowledge that the empty skies offer no higher authority.

Eliezer Yudkowsky, Above-Average AI Scientists

New Recruiter Response

2011-08-31T19:23:31Z

I have a new strategy for recruiters. First, a curt one-liner “not interested”. If they press (usually with an “I’ll ping you in 3 months” or something), then they get the longer explanation.

I just search and replace “XYZCorp” with whatever company they’re calling from, and maybe change a line or two based on their response.

Your optimism is delightful. It pains me to step on it, but I wouldn’t feel right doing otherwise.

In 3 months, I’ll have the same answer. The future is never absolutely certain, but this is as certain as any prediction I can make. It’s a Safe Bet.

I am working on Node.js and npm. This is the technology that has already displaced Python and Ruby as the hot new high-level language platform of choice; within 5 or 10 years it’ll join the likes of .NET, Perl, PHP, Java as the go-to platform for enterprise development (ie, “serious business”) and new college grads. But there is so much more work to be done!

XYZCorp has a lot of very interesting technical challenges, I’m sure. But this is the one that I’m most passionate about, and Joyent is the place that has it. npm started out as my personal side project. Node was a dream of mine that is coming true. I’ve invested a lot of time and a lot of love in this technology and in this community.

Going to work there in 3 months, or in 3 years, would be a huge step down in terms of the effectiveness of my effort and the results that I’ll have on the technology world in general. It would be a bit like someone asking you if you’ll be done with your son or daughter in 3 months, and interested in trying out another kid.

When and if I leave Joyent, it will be to do some other work focused on npm and Node.js, probably as part of my own company. The only way that XYZCorp could ever recruit me is if they recruited me to do that.

If I come across any developers that rival or exceed my skills, I’ll almost certainly try to recruit them myself, or get them to work somewhere else on Node so that they can add to this community. As long as I’m not a XYZCorp employee, and “working at XYZCorp” doesn’t imply “working on Node”, it really does not serve my interests to send talent to XYZCorp. There is no referral bonus that XYZCorp could provide me which would change that.

Altruistically, I want what’s best for the Node community, because I feel connected to it. Selfishly, I want to be one of the names that is remembered as part of a major revolution in software development. If you can show that these two goals are better served at XYZCorp than at Joyent, then let’s talk.

2011-08-29T18:34:34Z

The proper response to the current impracticality of decentralized computing is not to sigh and build centralized systems. The proper response is to build the systems to make decentralized computing practical again.

Kragen Sitaker (via hack-the-planet)

2011-08-23T00:10:00Z

youranonnews:

Use this image in and around BART stations to let people know about the protest.

It is quite nice to live in a place where even the slightest infraction against free speech is met with absurd overreaction.

Think Again: War

2011-08-18T20:01:21Z

Very encouraging article.

If the world feels like a more violent place than it actually is, that’s because there’s more information about wars – not more wars themselves. Once-remote battles and war crimes now regularly make it onto our TV and computer screens, and in more or less real time. Cell-phone cameras have turned citizens into reporters in many war zones. Societal norms about what to make of this information have also changed. As Harvard University psychologist Steven Pinker has noted, “The decline of violent behavior has been paralleled by a decline in attitudes that tolerate or glorify violence,” so that we see today’s atrocities – though mild by historical standards – as “signs of how low our behavior can sink, not of how high our standards have risen.”

New English

2011-08-12T05:38:00Z

shown to be far more ergonomic.
the bottom to top writing direction was
Reviled and ridiculed at first,

it became apparent this was not ideal.
on monitor screens,
Displaying text in streams

all written down from the top.
languages of the ancients were
Developed for paints in hand,

Obvious Answers to Simple Questions

2011-07-20T21:18:30Z

People who live or work with nerds sometimes are annoyed and perplexed by what strikes them as willful, snarky, unhelpful responses to questions.

q: Do you know what time it is?
a: Yes.
<beat>
q: Ok... What time is it?   (asshole)

or:

q: How are you going to the party Saturday?
a: I'm driving.
q: Yeah, but are you taking the 101 or the 280?    (asshole)

Programming is a deep and complicated field. There are very many layers of abstraction between the user’s intent and the electrons on silicon.

When working on a problem, it’s common to be so immersed in it that everything seems obvious. In fact, until this level of familiarity is achieved, it’s hard to make any progress at all.

However, other parts of the stack may still be very foreign. This is part of why software development is a social activity. There’s simply too much for any one person to hold the entire stack in their head at once.

So, you ask someone a question. A question that seems obvious to them, but isn’t to you, because you’re not immersed in that part of the world.

And the polite and kind thing for them to do is try to answer your question as precisely and accurately as possible, even though it seems obvious to them and isn’t something they’d ever bother asking, because they realize that you don’t live in the same area that they do.

In the ancestral environment, everyone knew most of what everyone else knew. Even if there were specific details that were shared in bits, it was unlikely that someone didn’t even know the rudimentary basics of any particular subject. So, when asked a question, the polite thing for the answerer to do is skip past any details that the asker probably already knows, and try to infer the bits that they don’t.

Most of human social interaction happens in this sort of framework. You probably know I’m driving, and are really asking which specific route I’m taking, or which car, or when I’m leaving. Answering with “I’m driving” is akin to saying, “You’re an idiot who doesn’t know what a car is, but I’m going to step down off my Smart People pedestal, where we Speak Properly, and help educate you, so that you can learn to not be so dumb. Here’s where the key goes…”

It’s not (just) that nerds are fundamentally more persnickety, or detail-oriented, or hyper-literal. Those things may factor into our oddness, or into our choice of careers, but a large part of this social disconnect is that we actively learn to break this evolved habit.

Our culture and craft depend on responding to simple questions with obvious answers, out of respect for the fact that what is obvious to me may not be obvious to you, even though we’re both competent, intelligent, worldly people with nothing of the best intentions.

That’s no excuse for being a dick, of course. Rudeness—especially unintended rudeness—is not the Winful Way. But it’s hard to shift cultures, especially when our friends are also our colleagues, and social interactions often include technical conversations.

Benchmark: Array-ification of arguments

2011-07-18T02:29:00Z

Having really hot paths in your code can be great, but it can also be a little dangerous.

When v8’s Crankshaft landed in the Node.js dev build, it immediately resulted in a significant drop in Node’s “hello world” performance benchmark.

This was alarming. Crankshaft was supposed to be faster, and here it was causing slowdowns.

The cause was tracked down Vyacheslav Egorov (known to many in the Node community as “mraleph”), and had to do with Node’s use of the arguments object in the EventEmitter.prototype.emit function.

Since this function is the hottest code in Node, even a slight decrease in performance is immediately felt. Vyacheslav discussed the commit in a google plus post.

This got me thinking about the best ways to convert the arguments object, or part of it, to a standard JavaScript Array. I pulled out the node benchmarking thing I wrote, and wrote up two tests

Disclaimers

This advice is only relevant in the latest v8. By the time you read it, it’s already out of date and incorrect. Just stop now, run your own tests, and make your own choices.

If node.js is still using v8 version 3.4.12.1, then it might be just a little valid for your node programs, but otherwise, no. Stop. Don’t even continue reading.

Results

First, if your function takes a variable number of arguments, and you don’t know how many it will be called with do not define any named parameters. It makes things more complicated, and dramatically slows down the process.

Want to just put all the arguments in an array? Do this:

function varArgsList () {
  var args = arguments.length === 1
           ? [arguments[0]] : Array.apply(null, arguments)

It’s an order of magnitude faster than Array.prototype.slice.call or [].slice.call.

Want to get all the arguments in a particular slice? (Like, say, everything after the first, or the second until the second-to-last, etc.) Well, that’s a bit more complicated. There, as with the patch from Mr. Aleph, you’ve gotta walk the list yourself.

For example, to do the equivalent of Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments, 1), pulling off every argument after the first, the fastest method seems to be this:

function manualMap () {
  var l = arguments.length
  var arr = new Array(l - 1)
  for (var i = 1; i < l; i ++) arr[i - 1] = arguments[i]

The fastest, if you know exactly which arguments are which, is to refer to them as arguments[i], and only array-ify if and when it’s absolutely necessary. So, not surprisingly, I was unable to out-perform Mr. Aleph in a v8 benchmark-off. My goal in this was simply to figure out how much of a difference it makes, and write a script to check it later, in case I find myself in a similar situation again.

Of course, [].slice.call(arguments, 1, 2) is far fewer bytes, and easier to know what’s going on. For most programs, the slight difference is not going to affect your overall program. But sometimes hot code is hot enough to slow your benchmarks down by 20% because of what seems like a trivial change.

It’s only over-optimizing if it doesn’t make a significant difference.

Nuno's

2011-07-14T00:25:08Z

name	message
nuno	Email is such a huge part of my life. I need to say "No" to a lot of people.
isaacs	It'd be cool if there was an app to do that for you.
nuno	Yeah, it could be almost like an autoresponder or something.
isaacs	And you could have some kind of Markov thing to come up with innovative and creative ways to say no to everything.
nuno	That'd be great!
isaacs	You should write that. You could call it "Nuno's New No's".
mikeal	You were thinking about that for a while, huh?
isaacs	It was either that or a rhinoplasty joke.

Re: Brown Coffee Co's "Correcting the Record"

2011-06-28T17:59:00Z

Comment posted on their blog post, reposted here as well. I expect that it will not pass moderation.

Not convinced.

The tweet was “No human law can ever legitimize what natural law precludes #SorryFolks #NotEqual”. In the wake of the NY legalization of gay marriage, this would seem to indicate that at least someone at BrownCoffeeCo believes that “natural law” precludes homosexual pairings, and that homosexual couples are not “legitimate”, regardless of what the “human law” declares.

Am I misinterpreting this? If so, it would be wise to go through that tweet word by word and explain exactly what each bit means, with reference to the specific classical philosophy you are referring to.

Where is this written in the “natural law” of the universe? Is it implied by the workings of physics that love between two humans is better or worse depending on the similarity of their genitals?

You might not be feeling hate or fear when you say these things. But it is nonetheless ignorant and offensive, and your customers have come to expect more from you. They are right to be disappointed. You would earn more respect with an apology and an explanation than with this cowardly backpedaling.

Evolution of a Prototypal Language User

2011-04-18T23:28:00Z

Fresh out of Java or C++, learning JavaScript. Look up on the internets how to define a class. It doesn’t quite work. Avoid the “new” keyword, because it is dangerous.
Learn about prototypes. Design constructors that work how you expect. Re-introduce “new” into your code. Note: Many programmers stop here. And that is fine.
Learn about Object.create, Object.getPrototypeOf. Mix and match constructors with just “raw” Object prototype usage. Monkey-patch native prototypes. Use prototypes to do everything.
Come back to sanity. Use constructors+prototypes to define objects, but use Plain Old Functions more often. Prefer composition to “is-a” inheritance, but use is-a when it makes sense. Use new and prototypes to create objects that all extend the same prototype, because, well, why not?
Re-read the Gang of Four book that you once thought was so inspiring. Grok how the “class” pattern is just a special case of disciplined prototype re-use. Realize that prototypal inheritance makes a lot of those patterns trivial, and it’s a bit silly to spend so much time on them.
Begin to notice actual applications that are best moduled with prototype chains. (Branching recursive file-system walks, configuration object overriding, inheritance trees, etc.)

I’m really wondering what’s next on this list.

The great thing about enlightenment is that it doesn’t end. It is continually extending itself in multiple non-overlapping directions.

New Project

2011-04-16T00:33:40Z

name	message
Name Redacted	So, I'm getting increasingly serious about launching [project redacted]
Name Redacted	[url redacted]
isaacs	cool, there's a market for it, I'll bet.
isaacs	i've got some experience in that area. if you wanna get lunch and talk about the various ways that running such a service can suck and what people will expect, i'd be happy to do that.
Name Redacted	No no
Name Redacted	I intend to just throw up a splash screen and collect email addresses
isaacs	HAHAHahaha
isaacs	your evil is delicious.

How this works...

2011-02-20T01:54:00Z

name	message
programmer 1	Hey, it turns out you don't need semicolons in JavaScript, and my previous reasons for putting them there are not actually true. Neat.
programmer 2	Yeah, but it'll break.
p1	But... that's just it, it doesn't break. It's actually ok for me to do this.
p2	No it isn't.
p1	Why not?
p2	Browser bugs.
p1	Which browsers?
p2	All of them.
p1	Well, it works fine on all the engines I've tested---
p2	IE.
p1	Works fine there, too. Even in IE 5.
p2	Compression. Compressors can't handle it. Need the semicolons. All of them.
p1	All the compressors in use today handle it fine. In fact, the code compresses a little better in most of them.
p2	Well, whatever, that's not how it's done.
p1	Ok, well, there are other reasons to do things besides a convention. I mean, you're wearing an unconventional hat, and that's cool.
p2	So, now you have a problem with my coding style AND my hat?? FUCK YOU.
p1	You can code however you want, and I love your hat, I was ju---
p2	No. NO. Fuck you. Seriously. You crossed a line, dude. Too far.
p1	[puzzled] I don't get why this an issue, I mean, if you see the spec, it says---
p2	You just can't let this go, can you? Why don't you lighten up?
p1	Let what go, exactly? And I don't really think that I'm the one who needs to lighten anything.
p2	Oh, so now you come in with the personal attacks. I get it. We're all not smart enough to understand your precious spec, so you have to attack people? HAVE YOU NO DECENCY, SIR? AT LONG LAST, HAVE YOU NO DECENCY?
p1	I think maybe hacker news isn't for me...

On npm and Homebrew

2011-02-14T19:43:01Z

Homebrew is a Mac OS X package manager created by Max Howell.

It’s git-based, somewhat opinionated, and managed by a handful of volunteers that review patches sent in by community members. Its purpose is to install unix programs and shared libraries, but Homebrew is designed with OS X in mind: by limiting the scope of the problem, they manage significant gains in performance and functionality. Homebrew’s featureset and politics reflect that problem set well.

I’ve said before that writing a package manager is easy. It is. Maintaining one, and managing the community using it? Whoa, boy, that gets tricky fast. The Homebrew guys have done an admirable job of steering that ship through a tricky bit of sea that few dare to deal with.

Almost as soon as npm was unleashed on the Node community, some helpful folks helpfully decided to help us all by putting npm into the Homebrew index. I was so thankful to be helped in this way! I love Homebrew, and now my program is in it? Oh, Joy of Joys!

And thus began the great wailing and gnashing of teeth.

The Problem

npm is a package manager. It is not git-based, it is as opinionless as I could manage, and anyone can publish anything. (I do maintain autocratic powers over the registry, but I am a very lazy dictator.)

npm is designed to install NodeJS programs and module libraries. While you could in theory install anything with npm, that’d be a little dumb. It still lacks (and will likely lack forever) some features you’d really want for that purpose, and has a bunch of features that are specifically designed for node programs. It makes no assumptions about pre-existing operating systems, libraries, and so on.

I’m not sure one could say whether or not npm’s approach is better than Homebrew’s. For its use case, certainly. But Homebrew is a perfectly lovely package manager that fills an important niche very nicely.

Better or worse, the Homebrew model is not very amenable to npm’s way of doing things, and the shoehorning caused some of the worst sorts of bugs: The kind where “It works”, and then 2 months later “It doesn’t work.” What’s worse, the error was reported to the user as an npm problem, so I frequently found myself dealing with confusing debugging information, and giving users solutions that didn’t fix the issue.

The standard response quickly became, “It doesn’t work with Homebrew. Remove it, and install it using the instructions in the README.” What’s worse, the changes that caused these issues were in the Homebrew index, and not in npm. Even if I’d wanted to code around the problems, I couldn’t just do that in npm itself.

It was not easily fixable, and very frustrating. I had more than enough work to do on npm itself, so it was always pretty easy to just blame the other guy, and go back to work. But this was not the right course of action.

The Solution

One day, in a fit of frustration over the situation, having just painfully explained to two users in a row that their most beloved package managers have both been lying to them, I managed to raise the ire and disappointment of Jan Lenhardt. Luckily for us all, he had the pre-existing notion that I’m an ok chap, and decided to give me a swift kick in the ass rather than setting the bozo bit. He deserves a lot of credit for stepping in when and how he did.

I opened up an issue on the Homebrew github page, started a pull request, and Mike McQuaid and I duked it out for a while.

We all knew at the start of the discussion that just removing npm from the Homebrew index was a potential course of action that would solve a lot of problems with very little cost to everyone. But none of us wanted to do so capriciously, without at least riding the solution train to its logical end.

Mike and I eventually got to a rewrite of the npm recipe that we could both live with. It wasn’t great, but it was much better. And, really, there wasn’t any way to improve upon it further, without rewriting major chunks of one or both of our programs.

Max made the call to remove it. I agree with him. Better for a feature to be intentionally lacking rather than subtly broken.

Takeaways, and The Future

The debate was fruitful, and helped inform the development of npm and node. I’d like to think it was somewhat profitable for Mike and Max, as well.

There may one day be an npm recipe in Homebrew again. But at least not until npm 1.0, when things settle out a bit.

2011-01-20T07:40:37Z

The ‘Israelification’ of airports: High security, little bother (via isnottv)

NEW EPISODES JAN 27TH SO EXCITED

Wrench

2011-01-12T00:11:06Z

When you have a wrench, all problems look like fucked up nail that didn’t get hammered in quite right.

But if you pull on it, you can straighten it, so really, I don’t see what the problem is, I mean, it couldn’t be more obvious, and clearly, a wrench is the best tool for any jobs it can do.

It’s a really nice wrench, if people would just learn to use it properly, then their nails would be fine.

Wanted: "no-false-attribs" OSS License

2010-12-30T10:31:00Z

Anyone know of a license that says this? If not, are there any lawyers out there who wanna do lawyer stuff to this?

You can use this thing for whatever purpose you want, commercial, non-commercial, whatever, under the following terms:
You can distribute or sublicense this thing as much as you want, provided the copyright and license remains attached to any reasonable portion of the thing.
You cannot sell this thing for a profit without any meaningful changes. You can, however, sell a thing that is built using this thing, or a thing that uses this thing as a component and adds nontrivial functionality to it, or a thing that links to this thing as a separate library, or pretty much anything other than “this exact thing and nothing else”.
If you distribute this thing, whether for profit or not, and you’ve made some meaningful changes, any such changes must be clearly spelled out to the end user, and the bug reporting contact information must be changed or removed.

I’m ok with you using the stuff I build. In fact, that’s actually why I build stuff, so people will use it. And money is great, so using it to make a profit? That’s so totally awesome.

I’m also ok with you sharing the stuff I build. I want people to use it, and if you help that happen, then that’s also great.

I’m super ok with you tinkering with the stuff I build. Seriously. Go nuts on it. Do stuff. Rock on. I’d love to see what you do to it, but if it’s your secret project, I totally get that, too.

I just wish that, if you’re going to change it, and then hand it out to others, you didn’t give me credit for the changes I didn’t make.

An Open Letter to JavaScript Leaders Regarding Semicolons

2010-12-18T00:50:00Z

I got this email last night from Sean Silva:

I was browsing the code for your npm.js project (this file in particular: https://github.com/isaacs/npm/blob/master/lib/npm.js), and noticed you using a style where you line up your commas under the ‘r’ of your var statements, and under your [ and { in array/object literals. I’m very fond of this kind of formatting, but have been reluctant to use it since most js resources expound a fear of js’s automatic semicolon insertion wreaking havoc on your code if you don’t end lines with something which implies a continuation.

Is this safe to place commas like this in browser code, or is it just node where this is possible?

2011-12-20 updated link to file

I wrote a few paragraphs, and then decided to shorten it to just this response:

Yes, it’s quite safe, and perfectly valid JS that every browser understands. Closure compiler, yuicompressor, packer, and jsmin all can properly minify it. There is no performance impact anywhere.

I am sorry that, instead of educating you, the leaders in this language community have given you lies and fear. That was shameful. I recommend learning how statements in JS are actually terminated (and in which cases they are not terminated), so that you can write code that you find beautiful.

Inimino posted this very clear explanation. In his typical style, it is crisp, clear, authoritative, well researched, and he generally kept his opinions to himself.

I am going to be a bit more opinionated.

The Rules

In general, \n ends a statement unless:

The statement has an unclosed paren, array literal, or object literal or ends in some other way that is not a valid way to end a statement. (For instance, ending with . or ,.)
The line is -- or ++ (in which case it will decrement/increment the next token.)
It is a for(), while(), do, if(), or else, and there is no {
The next line starts with [, (, +, *, /, -, ,, ., or some other binary operator that can only be found between two tokens in a single expression.

The first is pretty obvious. Even JSLint is ok with \n chars in JSON and parenthesized constructs, and with var statements that span multiple lines ending in ,.

The second is super weird. I’ve never seen a case (outside of these sorts of conversations) where you’d want to do write i\n++\nj, but, point of fact, that’s parsed as i; ++j, not i++; j.

The third is well understood, if generally despised. if (x)\ny() is equivalent to if (x) { y() }. The construct doesn’t end until it reaches either a block, or a statement.

; is a valid JavaScript statement, so if(x); is equivalent to if(x){} or, “If x, do nothing.” This is more commonly applied to loops where the loop check also is the update function. Unusual, but not unheard of.

The fourth is generally the fud-inducing “oh noes, you need semicolons!” case. But, as it turns out, it’s quite easy to prefix those lines with semicolons if you don’t mean them to be continuations of the previous line. For example, instead of this:

foo();
[1,2,3].forEach(bar);

you could do this:

foo()
;[1,2,3].forEach(bar)

The advantage is that the prefixes are easier to notice, once you are accustomed to never seeing lines starting with ( or [ without semis.

Restricted Productions

The other common argument for semicolons has to do with semicolon insertion and “restricted productions”. That is, if you have a \n immediately after a return, throw, break, or continue token, or a ++ or -- as a postfix operator (that is, x++\n or y--\n), then it will terminate the statement, no exceptions.

//ok
return 7

//probably a mistake
return
       7

However, again, this is in fact easier to spot and avoid once you get out of the habit of terminating every statement with a semicolon. When I see the second, my brain instinctively associates the \n with “ok, this is over now”, because return is always terminated by just a linebreak.

Lining up the most relevant tokens on the left edge of the screen makes them demonstrably easier for humans to quickly scan. Piles of research on the subject of speed reading and eye-tracking suggest that a missing token on the right is far more likely to be overlooked than one on the left. So, I say, make the right-edge irrelevant, and put the important things on the left.

So which style is better?

To the extent that there is an objectively “better” choice, it appears to me that the minimal-semicolon/comma-first style is slightly superior, both because it is fundamentally more scannable and because it encourages programmers to better understand the language they use.

I can pretty well guarantee that, if you care about this even a little, I care less about your JavaScript style than you do about mine. This isn’t an article where I try to convince you to write your code like I write mine. We should all decide the pants policy in our own homes.

Just as a show of good faith…

Good Reasons to Put Semicolons Everywhere

The best reasons for excessive semicolon usage are esthetics and politics.

“I put semicolons in my JavaScript because without semicolons, it’s not valid C/C++/Java/Whatever.” If you have to write a bunch of Java or C code in a project, and want your JavaScript to not look too different, then that is a valid concern. (Cassis takes this approach to its absurd end.)

“We do it this way because we use this linter, and it says to.” Consistency is important, and linters are one way to help a group of people stay consistent. Writing an npm-style linter is on my todo list, but it’s not very high up on it.

The Most Terrible Reason to Put Semicolons Everywhere

“They’re required because ASI is unreliable.” Seriously!?

These rules date back to the early days of JavaScript, in the late 90s. They’re not new, and in my opinion there is no excuse for someone calling themselves a professional JavaScripter and not understanding statement termination. It is blatantly irresponsible of the thought leaders in the JavaScript community to continue to spread uncertainty rather than understanding.

Furthermore, the typical place where “automatic semicolon insertion” bites unexpectedly is with the restricted productions. Adding semicolons to every line will not make return\nfoo return anything other than undefined. The problem is that you do use line breaks, not that you don’t use semicolons.

The only way to prevent restricted productions from ever being an issue is to always use semicolons and never use linebreaks. No one is suggesting that. So stop talking about restricted productions as if they matter, or offering semicolon overuse as an alternative to understanding ASI. You have to understand ASI to be a competent JavaScripter, period.

Which leads me to…

The Part Where I Get All Opinionated and Piss You Off (despite a noble effort to the contrary)

If you don’t understand how statements in JavaScript are terminated, then you just don’t know JavaScript very well, and shouldn’t write JavaScript programs professionally without supervision, and you definitely should not tell anyone else how to write their JavaScript programs.

I’m guessing I just insulted you. That’s unfortunate. I know that you probably know all sorts of things around JavaScript, like the DOM, and CSS, and MSIE’s little quirks, and jQuery. You have maybe also spent some time learning about closures and prototypes and scope and activation objects, and even hacked a few extensions onto V8 or SpiderMonkey. You’re not a dummy, I’m sure. In fact, you’re almost certainly smarter than I am, and probably better looking and nicer, too. I’m sure we have a lot in common, and could maybe even be friends.

But if you don’t understand what a JavaScript statement is, then there is a huge hole in your understanding of perhaps the most fundamental aspect of the language.

And that’s ok. I don’t speak Spanish very well and my C is pretty novice; I also don’t call myself an expert in either one, though I know enough to get by in many situations. If I were to get a job that involved a lot of Spanish speaking or C coding, I’d want someone watching to help me avoid making any serious mistakes.

Like most things in JavaScript, the statement termination rules are not very well designed, but they’re also not particularly hard to understand and use. That understanding just takes a bit of time and effort.

Cozy up with some hot chocolate and the ECMAScript spec some Saturday afternoon. Practice a little. Play around with some test programs. It’s a good time.

Or don’t do that, if you don’t feel like it. It’s your life. You almost certainly have better things to do with it.

Just please stop making authoritative claims like “terminate all lines with semicolons to be safe.” It’s not any safer, or more reliable.

Addenda 1: “leaders”

So, mr ruffler of feathers, who are these “leaders” you speak of? Why didn’t you name names?

Because there are too many to name, and I don’t know all of them.

If you have been writing JavaScript for a while, and you provide guidance or leadership to another person who has been writing JavaScript for less time than you, then I’m talking to you. Being a leader is a responsibility. Take it seriously. Don’t spread lies. Be an expert, or admit you’re not an expert. But don’t drive that car without a license.

Addenda 2: Literary Programmer

but in English, we put punctuation at the end, not the beginning

JavaScript isn’t english. We also don’t denote ownership (or subject-verb connection) using a period in English. We don’t have Object Literals in English, and we only indent the first line of paragraphs, not all the middle sentences.

This is such a silly argument, I have no choice but to fall in love with it. I started out your detractor, but you won my heart, Literary Programmer. From now on, I’m going to only put line-breaks at the end of functions, and never in the middle, and indent the first line of each.

Addenda 3: Pedantry

Why you wanna change my codes? What are you some kinda pedant?

Code however you want. I don’t care, even a little.

Please just don’t lie to people. That’s all I’m asking. It’s such a little bit of politeness. It’s not hard. Just say true things, instead of being a liar, that’s all that this is about.

explaining git

2010-12-16T20:23:12Z

name	message
robg	Awesome explanation of git: http://tartley.com/?p=1267
isaacs	robg: i'm not sure that quite counts as an "explanation"
robg	isaacs: it's an explanation, just not one that clarifies anything
isaacs	haha
rob	PUSH YOUR FUCKING CODE!
robg	No, no, that's part of the operations manual...
rob	that was offtopic

2010-12-01T18:16:51Z

A three-day-old human embryo is a collection of 150 cells called a blastocyst. There are, for the sake of comparison, more than 100,000 cells in the brain of a fly. If our concern is about suffering in this universe, it is rather obvious that we should be more concerned about killing flies than about killing three-day-old human embryos… Many people will argue that the difference between a fly and a three-day-old human embryo is that a three-day-old human embryo is a potential human being. Every cell in your body, given the right manipulations, every cell with a nucleus is now a potential human being. Every time you scratch your nose, you’ve committed a holocaust of potential human beings… Let’s say we grant it that every three-day-old human embryo has a soul worthy of our moral concern. First of all, embryos at this stage can split into identical twins. Is this a case of one soul splitting into two souls? Embryos at this stage can fuse into a chimera. What has happened to the extra human soul in such a case? This is intellectually indefensible, but it’s morally indefensible given that these notions really are prolonging scarcely endurable misery of tens of millions of human beings, and because of the respect we accord religious faith, we can’t have this dialogue in the way that we should. I submit to you that if you think the interests of a three-day-old blastocyst trump the interests of a little girl with spinal cord injuries or a person with full-body burns, your moral intuitions have been obscured by religious metaphysics.

Sam Harris, on stem cell research. (via cocknbull)

10 Cool Things You Probably Didn't Realize npm Could Do

2010-11-25T01:22:00Z

OMG UPDAET! 2011-06-19

Some of this is no longer 100% accurate, which shouldn’t be very surprising, since it was written 7 months ago, and npm had a major version update since then.

Check out the node blog for some of the 1.0 changes.

npm is the node package manager. Once upon a time, I would have said “a” node package manager, and the humbler part of me would like to pretend that that’s still the case, but SCREW THAT HUMBLER SIDE, I’m feeling egotistical and braggy today, so today it’s THE node package manager.

Also, I’m writing a “head -n 10” blog post, so it’s basically a license to be a complete ass.

Yeah, it’s that kinda day. I think tomorrow, Imma eat a turkey. So there.

You probably know that npm can install stuff, publish stuff, remove stuff, and that it makes dependencies magically work. You may even know that it runs without being burdened by unnecessary semicolons.

If you’re a node veteran, you may even already know about some of these lesser-known features. But I’m hoping that at least one of them is a bit surprising, even for old timers and core node devs.

1: Handle multiple versions of the same thing at the same time

One of the reasons I wrote npm is that package managers put you in dependency hell, and I simply can’t abide that.

npm keeps all its installed packages organized in name/version folders, and versions all the public stuff. Then, one of them is “active” at any given time in the global space. (That’s what you’ll see if you install multiple versions of “foo” and then drop into the repl and do require("foo").)

But here’s where it gets cool: Let’s say that you installed foo@1.0.0 and foo@2.0.0. Now, you have bar@1.0.0 that depends on foo@1.0.0, and baz@1.0.0 that depends on foo@2.0.0, and quux@1.0.0 that depends on bar and baz.

Here’s a diagram:

quux@1.0.0
|
+-- bar@1.0.0
|   |
|   `-- foo@1.0.0 \
|                  \
`-- baz@1.0.0       > Conflict?
    |              /
    `-- foo@2.0.0 /

In most package manager systems, quux would simply never be installable. It needs two packages that can’t coexist because they have competing dependencies. Or, you’d have to name things stupidly, and bar and baz would have tobe aware of one another.

npm handles that all for you. Try it. It works.

It’s MAGIC. (Also, it’s the commonjs module system’s built in separation of scope that doesn’t require that the path be a single consistent thing.)

2: Be gone at runtime

npm doesn’t load your modules. It installs them. Then you can even do npm rm npm and it’ll remove itself. All the modules you installed? Yeah, they still work.

It does this by setting up things in the proper places so that node’s very simple module loader can find them when it needs them.

Most package managers are sort of hybrid loader/installer things. npm is first and foremost a dependency manager. It puts things in place, and then ducks out of the way so that it’s not all in your face telling you how to write your programs.

3: Structure your program any way you want

…provided, of course, you describe that structure in a package.json file.

That is, you can put all your node modules in a folder called “src” or “lib” or “path/to/my/awesome/modules”. npm doesn’t care. In fact, it doesn’t even need to be a node program. If you can describe the package in a package.json file, you can install literally anything. I’m waiting for people to figure this out, and see something awful and hideous like npm install vim.

A lot of people have objected to this feature. They called me crazy and said that we need to form a committee and decide on a set of conventions. Some even went so far as to pound fists on tables, and declare that madness will surely result from my freewheeling insanity!

To them, I say, HA! JavaScript is at its heart an anarchic language, forged in the great battles of Browsers, lit by the flicker of a thousand animated gifs depicting construction workers. It bears many scars from those dark days, but it also resulted in a strong and vibrant community, all of whom have strong opinions and found their way here because they could not agree on much of anything.

npm welcomes your strife. Like JavaScript itself, it doesn’t judge you.

Read through npm help json to learn what you can put in your package.json file.

4: Start a package.json file for you

If you run npm init in a folder, it’ll ask you a few questions, and then write out a package.json file.

The init command is pretty new, and doesn’t do much. But sometimes all you need is a little nudge to get started.

5: Verify sha1 hashes of packages

As of version 0.2.9, sha hashes get generated for all packages as they get published, and then are verified after being downloaded.

Checksumming is one of those things where everyone feels a little safer knowing it’s there, but no one usually pays much attention to it. When it works, it’s silent, and that’s great.

The good news is that, now, if there’s some kind of error downloading something, or if something gets corrupted in transit in any other way, then npm will stubbornly refuse to proceed.

(You have to compile node with openssl crypto support for this to work.)

6: Shut The Hell Up

Sometimes you just need to show your packager who’s boss. “Shutting up” is a feature. By setting the loglevel config, you can make npm anywhere from completely silent to ludicrously noisy. The levels are: silent, win, error, warn, info, verbose, and silly.

silent: completely silent. Zero logging output.
win: Just the “npm ok” or “npm not ok” message at the end.
error: When something unexpected and bad happens.
warn: When something odd or potentially dangerous is happening.
info: Helpful information so you can track what’s happening.
verbose: Even more. Perhaps just a wee bit obnoxious, even.
silly: Completely fuckin crazy, man. Dump everything. Whole objects, you name it, whatever.

Like any configuration option, you can set the loglevel in a few ways. To set it for just one command just add --loglevel silent to the command. This is particularly handy if something breaks, and you want to provide a bit more debugging output with --loglevel verbose.

To set it for your user account, you can do npm config set loglevel win.

To set it globally for all users on the machine, you can do npm config set loglevel info --global.

You can also set it in the environment if that floats your boat. Any config option can be set by the npm_config_<blerg> environ, so doing export npm_config_loglevel=verbose will affect all subsequent npm commands.

Oh, and if those npm config set and npm config get commands get tedious, you can just do npm c edit to open up the config in your favorite editor.

See npm help config for more info.

7: Abbreviate commands

If you’re anything like me, then you drink a lot of coffee, hate extra typing, and are awesome. But mostly the typing. Let’s focus on that.

Is “install” just too long for you? Try npm inst connect. Bam. Done.

Anything that is unambiguous will work just as well. I don’t have this logic implemented for arguments and package names, but that’s on the roadmap. It uses the abbrev program, and you can use it in your programs, too. npm i abbrev to get it.

The most common commands even have super short shorthands, because I love you.

i: install
r, rm: uninstall
ln: link
ls: list
bn: bundle
up: update
c: config

If you think it stops there, you’re wrong. So wrong. Go sit in the corner.

In the npm source folder, there’s a file called npm-completion.sh. Source that bad boy in your bashrc or whatever, and you’ve got tab completion.

Tab completion! The penultimate feature of any unix program, second only to tab completion that works and is helpful!

This is where you come in. Check out what it’s doing. Dig into the code. Make it better. Right now it can just tab-complete npm commands, not package names or other useful things. But if you hack away on the lib/completion.js file, you can make it awesomer.

8: Get help on anything

npm has a ton of documentation. In fact, the biggest documentation problem at the moment in npm is that there’s too much of it, and it’s probably impossible for any non-robot to read all if it in a reasonable amount of time.

In case you’re not a robot, here’s how you can get the most out of the docs:

run npm without any arguments. This’ll show you what you can do. It lists out the commands and the help topics.
run npm command -h to quickly view the arguments that command expects. This is handy when you forget how to do something that you knew how to do, and you just need to remember how you did it.
run npm help <topic> to get more detailed manpage-style documentation. For general info about npm itself, you can run npm help npm. This page has a few pointers based on your use cases. Check it out.

9: View specific fields on published packages

The npm view command was pretty lame for a while. Basically it just fetched data from the registry and then dumped it to the terminal. But now, it’s so much more.

Specify a package name (in the form of name@version or name@latest or name or even name@">=1.2.3" for ranges), and optionally one or more fields, and it’ll pull just those fields out and show them to you.

It operates smartly on arrays, and parses out the url and email fields from contributors and author names. So, if you do this:

npm view npm contributors.name

then you’ll get a list of all the contributor names in npm. If you just do:

npm view npm contributors

then you’ll see the list of contributors in the "name (url) <email>" format.

10: Bump your package version FOR YOU OMG HOLY CRAP WHAT!?

Yeah. That’s right.

It’ll even commit the change, and tag it for you, if you do it in a git repo. Just run:

npm version 1.2.3

It’ll open up your package.json file, change the version to 1.2.3, git add it, git commit it, and git tag v1.2.3 it.

If your git repository is unclean, then it’ll recoil in horror at the dirty, and tell you to get your act together. (Of course, if you’re not using git, then it won’t do the git stuff. It’ll just change the json and write it back to package.json.)

11: Bundle all your dependencies into the package itself

When you use the npm bundle command, npm will put all your dependencies into the node_modules folder in your package. But it doesn’t stop there.

If you want to depend on something that’s not on the registry, you can do that. Just do this:

npm bundle install http://github.com/whoever/whatever/tarball/master

This will install the contents of that tarball into the bundle, and then you can list it as a dependency, and it won’t try to install it when your package gets installed.

This also is handy if you have your own fork of something, and would prefer not to change the name.

In fact, you can run almost any npm command at the bundle. To see what’s inside, you can do npm bundle ls. To remove something, do npm bundle rm thing. And, of course, you can install multiple versions and activate the one you want.

12: Change the very laws of mathematics itself!!

There are 13 things in this list of 10 things.

npm IS JUST THAT AWESOME.

13: Always be lowercase

If you see npm referred to as “NPM” anywhere except right there in this sentence, then you know that I didn’t write it. “NPM” is the National Association of Pastoral Musicians. If you need some church music, use NPM. If you want node packages installed, then you need npm.

Other things that didn’t make this list because they were too common or not awesome enough

Cache registry requests using etags.
Run arbitrary scripts to start, stop, restart, and test packages.
Set deprecation messages to keep people from using old versions of your stuff.
compile node addons automatically if it sees a wscript file.
rebuild packages in a single command so that you can easily keep up with node ABI changes. npm rebuild
Manage owners of a project with the npm owner command.
Edit package contents. See npm edit. (When used as npm bundle edit it’s especially handy.)
Be used as a library in node programs. (Check the readme for a quick how-to, or cli.js for an example of using npm programmatically.)

Happy Thanksgiving, Americans. And non-Americans, Happy Random Thursday When All Your American Friends Are Not Online Much!

2010-11-24T08:16:19Z

In the time that I’ve been a LinkedIn user, 100% of the messages that I’ve got from the service have been one of the following types:

[person you met once] did [some random pointless thing] on LinkedIn
Recruiter Spam

I had 265 connections, all of whom were people I’d actually met and interacted with in some professional capacity. But I never once interacted with any of them in any meaningful way on LinkedIn.

Today, I realized that the worst Manager, the worst Ops engineer, and the worst programmer that I’d ever worked with (three separate people) all have several glowing recommendations on their profile.

In order for evil to triumph, all that must happen is for good men to do nothing.

If you’re going to hire me, it’s going to be because you already know my work. If I’m going to hire you, it’s going to be for the same reason.

I’ll see you on the internets.

TSA Success Story

2010-11-16T15:58:00Z

By now, if you haven’t heard the outrage at the TSA’s “enhanced” pat-down procedures, then you don’t use the internet, and you’re not reading this blog.

They grope children. They touch your junk. The procedures are ludicrously ineffective and harmful from a security point of view. And the naked-picture xray machines are most likely unsafe.

Things like this get me feeling all rebellious and Jeffersonian. So, since I’m flying up to Joyent’s Vancouver offices today, I decided to do a little prep work.

First, I took the UCSF letter, added a bit of highlighting and annotation to make it a bit easier to scan, and printed it out. You can get a copy from http://j.mp/cancer-ray.

I was worried that I’d chicken out. No, not “worried”. I was sure I’d chicken out. Of course I would. I talk a good game about incendiary politics and unconventional ideals, but when the chips are down, I generally do the expedient thing like a nice polite citizen. I’m not one of these “talk down the authorities” types, even though I wish I was.

But then my flight was cancelled, and I learned that I’d have to be in the airport until 12 to catch the next one. The extra time to kill strengthened my resolve. “So what if I’m detained?,” I thought. “I don’t have to be anywhere for 5 more hours.” Plus I was alone, so there wasn’t anyone else’s embarrassment to worry about. I repeated the confidence mantras in my head. They’re expendable workers. I own this place. I’m the boss. They work for me. The only reason I don’t fire them is that they’re cheaper than robots. Etc.

I started talking to the family behind me as soon as I got into the security line, a middle-aged couple with 2 adolescent boys and a girl about 4 or 5. They were amused by my shoes, so it wasn’t too hard to strike up a conversation.

I asked where they were from. Santa Clara. Heading to Toronto for some family thing. I asked if they’d heard about the new X-Ray machines. The dad was tired and apathetic. She said, “Oh, yeah, I heard about those on the news, that if you don’t go through, they grope you or something, and if you do, they take a naked picture of you.”

“Yeah, it’s messed up. Did you know that the UCSF oncology department thinks they pose a serious health risk, especially to children or anyone at risk for breast cancer?”

“Whoa, no, I didn’t know that!”

I handed the paper to the mom. Bam.

“Oh, honey, you should read this!! … Oh my god…”

Turns out she’s a breast cancer survivor. And her doctor has told her to avoid x-rays, even at the dentist, unless absolutely medically necessary. And she didn’t realize that “millimeter wave digital backscatter detection” used x-rays, because the TSA doesn’t actually put that on the sign.

She did the rest.

When we got to the scanner, I opted out. Then they opted out. She’d already convinced the family behind them to do the same. Her response to the TSA agent was awesome, I wish I’d thought of it:

“Ma'am, please step over here.”

“No thanks, I’ve already had cancer, just feel me up or whatever.”

After the first 4 “OPT-OUT” calls, they just passed us all through the regular metal detector. No one got groped.

Information, properly delivered, is power.

Addendum The revolt was emotionally satisfying, and I totally recommend doing it, but ultimately it’s only a drop in the ocean. From where I’m sitting, I can see the security line, people holding their hands up in the little booth.

So, do make trouble. On-the-ground rebellion is important. But also tell your legislator. There’s a senate oversight meeting tomorrow, so please call these people and tell them how you feel.

You’ll leave a voicemail. It’s easy and takes 2 seconds. Just call up and say “I think that the TSA has gone too far. Body scanning and inappropriate groping are unconstitutional and wrong. If you want my vote, change the policy.”

Addendum 2 Millimeter wave scanners and Backscatter X-Rays are not the same thing. But it wasn’t clear which one was in use, and the TSA sign used the terms interchangeably in the fine print where it told you about the opt-out option.

Also, yes, it’s true, the cancer risks are not well understood, and I absolutely committed the alarmist fallacy. (“But can you really take that risk!”) Unfortunately, people aren’t as afraid of a police state as they are of cancer. I maintain that I used my powers for Good.

2010-11-15T03:13:31Z

Israelis, unlike Canadians and Americans, don’t take s—- from anybody. When the security agency in Israel (the ISA) started to tighten security and we had to wait in line for — not for hours — but 30 or 40 minutes, all hell broke loose here. We said, ‘We’re not going to do this. You’re going to find a way that will take care of security without touching the efficiency of the airport.

irc.freenode.net#couchdb

2010-10-22T00:57:22Z

name	message
Monty	Thank goodness, sublim21 is back!
sublim21	monty, don't make me take out your memory
Monty	What about your own memory ?
sublim21	that's why i drink monty. that's why i drink

Bart Ticket Machines

2010-09-16T20:49:37Z

I always get the maximum amount of change when using cash to buy a Bart ticket. Put in a $20, push a bunch of buttons, and then get a ticket and a bunch of quarters go satisfyingly “KACHING-KACHING-KACHING-KACHING” into the little box.

It’s like a slot machine, but it gives you a ride home after.

I Am Detained By The Feds For Not Answering Questions

2010-09-11T19:27:57Z

aredridel:

Another civil liberties type toeing the line to keep federal powers in check. We need more people like him.

Code Samples in Web Pages: How to Not be Doing It Wrong.

2010-09-07T23:06:17Z

Observe:

To list files, do this:
$ ls -laF

Compare that to this:

To list files, do this:
ls -laF

You spot the difference? The second one is much more user friendly, because you won’t pick up the $ when you copy and paste, and only takes a teeny bit of CSS.

2010-08-30T16:41:24Z

via peetypassion

2010-08-25T05:16:00Z

(via icanread)

So that’d make the author a small person, yes?

Rider

2010-08-20T19:04:09Z

The rollercoaster moves up and down. I am not the vehicle, but the rider within it.

Feet tap the pavement in hypnotic rhythm, legs pounding the heart demanding more more more. I am not those legs or that heart. I ride in telepathic communication with this animal, feed it, bathe it, lay it down to rest.

The internal computer calculates risk, strategy, weighs pros and cons. It races through analysis working what it knows into speculations of the future. I ask it questions and watch the output.

I am not these feelings. I am not this body. I am not this mind.

This vehicle takes me where I steer it. I am the sum that decides which parts to make whole.

Forgot

2010-07-28T20:00:00Z

I totally forgot about this little blog.

How completely odd. I guess it got its job done. Or maybe I just started writing in my tumblr blog more often.

Discover - Hostile towards exclamation-points

Google Voice vs. Happy Birthday

2010-07-01T23:25:41Z

Google Voice’s transcription does funny things to people singing Happy Birthday.

I’d include the audio, but it’d be a copyright violation.

From my sister and brother-in-law. What’s funny is how close it is to what they actually were saying.

Dean, yup the, and a Yahoo The, and year, I man stable are good, a jacuzzi to. I’m going on man. Happy Birthday. And hey, we’re good and I’ll talk to you later. I love you bye. You were born. Bye.

From my dad and stepmom.

Hi, Happy Birthday interview. Happy Birthday to You. Happy Birthday Dear Ryan, Happy Birthday to you, man, Randall. Alright then. Marry a man. Ohh man. Bye bye.

Their support of gay marriage is nice (if somewhat misguided), but I wish they’d remembered my name. Seems like they struggled with that a bit.

NodeJS and Empowering n00bz

2010-06-23T21:59:00Z

Something interesting occurred to me today about why I like NodeJS so much, and why I got so into it as soon as I started playing with it.

It’s not the fact that it’s fast (it could be a lot slower before it would start to matter), or that I have strong feelings about IO being async (it should be, of course, but I mean, whatever, threads work), or that JavaScript is so great (I like it, but there were other JS platforms out there that were more advanced in a lot of ways).

It’s that it was so easy to just download the source, run a command, and have something that works, right away. The example programs are simple, and short, and clear in what they do. When I first started poking at the source code, the mapping from the “lib” folder to the “require” function was easy to grok.

Empowering newcomers is the key to success. That matters more than anything else. I saw the simplicity in what Ryan was trying to do, and that was a huge indicator of future success. Even the “commonjs be damned, we’re gonna do what’s right and let the standards follow” attitude has kept things lean and simple.

I’ve worked on a lot of different projects. I like new things, and that means I’ve been the new guy for most of my career in software development, professionally and recreationally. Going from empty folder to running program in a few simple steps is a HUGE accomplishment that many professional software teams really struggle with, and that struggle costs a lot of wasted time and energy.

I’ve seen people post to the NodeJS list asking questions as they’re comparing node to other platforms, and a week later, they’re publishing modules and add-ons and contributing code and tests and docs back to the core.

That’s huge.

Steps

2010-05-18T19:53:40Z

The first step is admitting your neuroses.
The second is admitting that the first didn’t make them go away.
The third is understanding that you have no idea how many steps there are.

Scoble

2010-05-12T00:40:00Z

name	message
seld0	Scoble is in my office
seld0	Should I throw something? Trip him up?
isaac_schlueter	hey, something similar just happened here, actually.
isaac_schlueter	right as you sent that IM, i farted, and it smells REALLY bad
seld0	...
seld0	wow
isaac_schlueter	basically the same thing as scoble showing up
seld0	Yeah
seld0	I got it
seld0	Hence: wow
isaac_schlueter	it's ok, though. it's one of those big open-air type deals, so no one will know where it came from.

A Public Service

2010-05-06T04:57:43Z

He pushed the button, which was red.: There was a button.
The button was red.
He pushed it.
Use a comma.
He pushed the button that was red.: There were buttons.
One of those buttons was red.
He pushed the red one.
No comma.

The comma separates the initial phrase from another extra bit of information about the thing. In the first case, “which” stands in for “the button”. It’s like saying, “He pushed the button. The button was red.”

In the second case, there is no comma, because “that” is used as a limiter, not a reference. It’s like saying, “He pushed the button. That button, the one that’s red.”

When you say “that one”, you point. You are limiting the referent.

To make things more confusing, “which” can actually be used as a limiter, and sometimes limiters can be used to add information. But when in doubt, follow these rules.

Email Confidentiality Footers

2010-04-29T04:43:24Z

> This email message is for the sole use of the intended > recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged > information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or > distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended > recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy > all copies of the original message.

Ah, where to begin…

How about the fact that email works by making copy after copy. If you sent me this, then there are a jillion “copies of the original” between your computer and mine. I simply can’t reliably destroy them all. (Well, maybe…)

If it may contain confidential information, then why are you sending it via email? And without so much as PGP encrypting it? I know that PGP’s only been around for like 20 years now, so it’s pretty new, but still. Get on that. It’s integrated in every email mail client, and it’s not too hard to use.

But even more worryingly, this little footer just seems profoundly odd. It’s asking me to do something based on the sender’s intent. How am I supposed to know if I’m the intended recipient? Should I guess that the sender doesn’t know how to use email, and just whacks the Reply-All button like a drunken ape?

Sorry. We’re 10% of the way through the 21st century now. You’re expected to know how to use a technology that’s been around for 40 years. It’s not my responsibility if you send something to the wrong person.

In the end, this is just a bit of unenforceable legalese that makes people feel more official, and it’s complete trash. It’s the digital equivalent of tossing your Starbucks cup out the window on the highway.

Explode

2010-04-11T05:20:12Z

Beloved and pure, turn, face her.
See emotional spilling.
I am rapt.
Explode!
Rapt am I, spilling emotional.
See her face turn pure and beloved.

Steak and BJ Day

2010-03-16T12:26:54Z

Happy holiday, everyone! http://bit.ly/QPkQ8

4 Step Writing Process

2010-02-10T21:07:00Z

Whether it’s an essay or a program, writing is not about what you put out, it’s about what you take in. The purpose of life is to learn, and that is why writing is important.

I don’t follow this process with everything, because it’s a bit slow. But for complicated subjects, it’s sometimes the only way to get something useful.

Step 1: Sketch

Write as quickly as possible, as dirty as necessary, giving no thought whatsoever to the quality of the output. Just get it out of your head and into the real medium. Make the code run. Put sentences on the page. Don’t worry if it’s ugly or slow or badly worded or whatever. That’s the point. Just the act of getting it out of your head is important and necessary.

Step 2: Discard and Rewrite

Don’t revise your rough draft. Throw it away. Maybe it had some good parts, fine. You can look at them, but you’re not allowed to copy and paste anything. Type it out again. You want it to filter through your brain and your hands so that every character is re-evaluated.

Go slow here. The goal is to make it as elegant as possible, to really carefully consider each part’s relationship to the whole, to enforce balance and symmetry and consistency of intent. This is where the vision takes shape.

The goal isn’t to end up with something clever. It’s to end up with something obvious. The solution should simply seem to grow out of the problem and attach to it, like its natural symbiotic twin. Reading your program or your essay should be easy, and should leave a reader with the understanding that you gained in your sketching and meditation.

Occasionally, you’ll learn something, and have to return to step 1. And that’s great.

Step 3: Test with Absurd Aggression

If it’s code, then find or write a test suite that goes over an absurd amount of edge cases. Try really hard to make your program break. And then make it pass every single test case. Write some more test cases to cover areas that the suite doesn’t.

If it’s text, then read it over and over. Scrutinize every word to make sure it means exactly what you want. Go to bed and wake up and read it again. Have other people read it and push them to be really critical. Ask them what they thought, and make notes of where it’s different from your intent.

Return to step 2 as necessary.

Step 4: Optimize

We always want to put this step earlier in the process, but that’s almost always a mistake. Certainly, you don’t want to be structuring your code in ways that are always going to be slow, but if you’re writing for elegance, that’s not likely to happen anyhow.

Profile your program, and find the parts of it that are slow. Make them fast, even if you lose a bit of beauty in the process.

If it’s an essay, try to remove everything that does not enforce the thesis. Any word that can be removed should be.

Keep returning to step 3 after any changes.

It’s never done. You just reach a point where you decide to study something different.

Hours of Sleep

2010-01-26T17:26:05Z

name	message
Seldo	That doesn't really work for me as I naturally wake up every few hours
Seldo	I need a clock to tell me if another 2-hour cycle is safe
Isaac	crazy
Seldo	Because waking up halfway through a cycle breaks me for the whole day
Isaac	how are you not complete manic and anxious and crazy all the time?
Seldo	Have you met me?
Isaac	oh yeah, huh...

Shared Flashback

2010-01-20T09:03:00Z

Some time around That 70’s Show, maybe earlier, but certainly post-Seinfeld, characters in sitcoms gained the ability to have a shared flashback to instantly and graphically communicate with one another.

What’s really odd is that they often know they can do this, and even make meta-jokes about this phenomenon.

Is there a word for this? It seems to me to be something unique to the television storytelling medium, and fairly recent, and we all seem to Just Get It.

I think that’s neat.

2010-01-12T02:44:50Z

job-descriptions

What I hear when you "just want to reach out directly"

2010-01-07T23:52:16Z

name	message
Recruiter	I've got two positions for a Java contractor, a PHP developer position, and a Flash developer position, and I think they really speak to your skills as a developer.
Translation	I HAVE NO RESPECT FOR YOU.
Translation	I HAVENT READ YUR REZUME, BIUT CUD YOU JUS SAY YES I NEED A BONUSES TO PAY FOR MY EXPENSVIE CAR, OK!?????!!!
Translation	BE A PAL AND TAKE THE JOB YUR A PRUGRMAMER, RITE? ITS ALL JUST CODEZ AND DRAWING WEB PAGES RITE SO WHATS THE DIFFRENCE!?
Recruiter	I realize that you're happy at your current position, but I just wanted to reach out to you directly to tell you about these exciting opportunities.
Translation	I ARE A DUMB
Translation	I THINK IF YOU HERE MY VOISE YULL TOTALY CHANGE UR MIND OMGLOLZ0RZ!!
Translation	THAY SED IN THE SEMINAR THAT THIS SCRIPT TOTLALY WORKS LIKE ALL THE TIEMS SO YOU HAFTA CALL ME BACK NOW
Translation	I SAID "REACH OUT" SO YOU KNOW THAT IM YUR FRIEND AND I TOTLALY CARE ABUOT YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!

Transition

2010-01-05T23:59:00Z

My last day at Yahoo will be 2010-01-22.

I’ve gotten an offer from Proofpoint which is too good to ignore. The opportunity to drive the direction of a product at an early stage, including having a lot of input about the choice of technology and team, is very exciting. Also, though this was not the primary factor, the position is significantly more financially rewarding than I believe that the next few years would be if I stayed at Yahoo.

Yahoo has been a mostly great company to work for, and YUI is by far the best team that I’ve worked on here. It’s a shame that I didn’t join YUI sooner; I still feel like I just got here. The quality of this team made the decision very difficult, and that says a lot about the job that Eric Miraglia and Thomas Sha have done building it.

If you ever get a chance to work at Yahoo, take it.

I feel so very fortunate to have met so many of Silicon Valley’s bright minds in the last 4 years, and to have learned so much about the web, about business, about people, and about the science and art of software development. I’ve been a student, a teacher, an expert, an amateur, a mentor, and a mentee.

Thank you all so much for what you’ve given me.

Torrents

2009-12-28T23:17:22Z

Dear friends and relatives. You knew about Napster, and Kazaa, and then they went away. Now, you’ve maybe heard about this “bittorrent” thing. You tried to download it, but then it didn’t do anything, and you got confused and frustrated.

I’m going to explain torrenting to you so that you can do it if you want.

Isn’t torrenting illegal?

Sure. So is jaywalking, speeding, and smoking pot. Yet it’s perfectly legal to treat children in subtly cruel ways until they develop into a neurotic unhappy adult. The law is no substitute for a personal moral compass. Make your own choices.

Terminology

A “torrent” is a collection of people sharing a file with each other. You download the parts of the file that you don’t have yet, and at the same time, you upload the parts of the file that you do have. It’s kind of like trading cards with other users until you’ve got a complete deck.

When you have all the parts of the file (all the cards in the deck), then you’re a “seeder”. That is, you are uploading, but you’re not downloading anything, so you are just helping out the other people on the torrent.

When you are just downloading, but not uploading, you’re a “leecher”. That is, you’re taking, but not giving back. Everyone starts out as a leecher, and as you download more of the file, you get closer and closer to being a seeder.

Your “ratio” is the amount of data that you’ve uploaded compared to the amount that you’ve downloaded. If your ratio is 1, then that means that you’ve uploaded the same amount of bytes that you’ve downloaded. If it’s less than one, then you haven’t uploaded as much as you’ve downloaded. If it’s greater than one, then that means that you’ve given back more than you’ve taken.

The .torrent File

The .torrent file is a small file that tells your computer how to find peers. It provides the address to the stream, so to speak.

When you download a .torrent file, you’re not downloading the actual movie or music or software or whatever. You’re downloading an address card that tells your computer how to find the peers who have the bytes you’re interested in.

The Torrent Client

In Order to Do This Whole Sharing Thing Using .Torrent Files, You Need a “torrent client”. I Like µTorrent. It’s small, powerful, well-maintained, and works on Mac and PC natively. If you use Linux, then you can run µTorrent under wine, or use qBittorrent. (I haven’t used qBittorrent, so I can’t vouch for it, but it looks pretty similar to µTorrent from the screenshots.)

Get one of these, and install it.

A Brief Note About Trust

Torrents are created by random folks. They then share these things, and sometimes, it’s just the name of the file that distinguishes its contents, since you have to download (and in the process upload) the file before you can see what it really contains.

Be smart, and expect to be disappointed some of the time. Here are some tips:

If the file is a .rar or .zip or some other kind of “archive” format, and there’s no reason for it to be archived in that manner, there’s a good chance it doesn’t contain what you think it does. (Sometimes these formats are smaller or better for transport, so this isn’t a hard-and-fast rule, but .rar files are, in my experience, slightly less trustworthy.)
If the file is a TV episode, and it hasn’t aired yet, then you can be 100% sure it’s fake.
If the file is an avi file, and when you open it, it says you need to install a codec, or enter a password, it’s most likely fake. Never buy anything or give anyone your credit card number.
If there are three copies of something, download them all. Chances are, one of them will be bogus, and then at least you haven’t wasted your time. You can always just throw away the extra files when you find one that works.

Getting a Torrent File

Next step is to find a .torrent file for the thing you’re interested in. Let’s say that you wanted to download RadioHead’s “In Rainbows” album. The Pirate Bay is a good search engine, since they show you the number of seeders and leeches on any given torrent, as well as a ranking for the user who uploaded it.

Of course, if that doesn’t work, then there’s always google. Just add “filetype:torrent” to any search, and google will return torrent files with the keywords you specify. Here’s what we’d use to find In Rainbows: radiohead in rainbows filetype:torrent.

You’ll note on the search that there are a few options. Like I said above, your best bet is usually to kick off a few downloads at once, so that you’ll be more likely to get a good file out of it.

If you are looking for video, it’s a good idea to add “720p” or “1080p” to your search query to find high-definition copies. A lot of torrents are labelled “high def” or “HD” when they’re only 480p.

You’ll probably find that, at least for popular items, barring the caveats above, the titles are remarkably accurate.

Speed

Bittorrent is a peer-to-peer protocol. That means that you’re depending on the goodness of other peoples’ hearts to upload quality files, and to stay online while they seed. If something is very popular, then there will naturally be more people sharing it, and it’ll come in faster. If it’s rare or niche, then you might be downloading from 1-2 people at a time, and when they shut down their computers, you are sitting alone on that feed.

Be patient. It’s free, after all. And be a seeder. Try to get your ratio up around 2-3 on average, and at least you’ll know that you’re one of the good guys. If you have a computer that you can keep connected to the internet round the clock, then you’ll be able to just start it going and check back in a few days when it’s done.

Your ISP

Some internet service providers don’t take kindly to users actually using the bandwidth that we pay for. From my point of view, if I buy 50Mbit service, then I ought to be within my rights to expect 50Mbit service any time I want it, for as long as I want it, even round the clock. Apparently, from the point of view of many cable and DSL providers, expecting to get what you buy is considered “abusive”.

You may find that they throttle your bandwidth or do other unsavory tactics. They’ve come under heat for selling services they can’t provide, and you’re well within your rights to complain if you find you’re not getting the speeds you signed up for.

One way to work around this problem (or to just avoid using up what you’ve paid for), is to use the throttling built into µTorrent. If you go into the preferences, you can set up the maximum speeds for uploads, downloads, and the maximum ratio at which you want to stop seeding.

Enjoy!

Go have fun, and remember to support artists who create the things you like. It’ll almost always be more convenient, fast, and reliable to buy something than to get it from a peer-to-peer network. Vote with your dollars. Buy MP3s from Amazon and other DRM-free providers. Cancel your cable TV and watch streaming shows on Hulu and Netflix instead.

Or maybe take the money saved on CDs and spend it going to a concert. (I’m told artists typically get a bigger cut of concert revenues than album sales, but TicketMaster is even more evil than the RIAA, so who knows.)

There is no reason to subsidize institutions that don’t support artists and fans. The days of a corporate monopoly on the stream of content are coming to an end.

2009-12-27T21:47:21Z

node xmas.js

2009-12-24T19:56:25Z

White Xmas in Reno.

YouTube - The Known Universe by AMNH

2009-12-20T22:36:11Z

A stunning brief film from the tops of the tallest mountains out through the most distant realms of space-time as currently understood. This is the stuff that makes me shiver. To be a part of such a…

What English Sounds Like to Foreigners is Today's BIG Thing in Music - NOV 03, 2009

2009-12-16T06:29:23Z

This is so deeply awesome it makes my brain break

2009-12-07T18:21:00Z

MiNzMs in the Photo Booth

I’m not referring to the OS X app here, or some fancy iPhone program that takes old-timey crappy photos, but an actual real-live physical photobooth.

This is a ritual that is on the way out. If you’ve never experienced it, I highly recommend it. Your grandchildren probably won’t even know what you’re talking about.

You sit down on the tiny bench. It’s too small for two, or really even for one, so you have to crowd together.

You pull the curtain shut. There’s an illusion of privacy, but you both know it’s fleeting, and incomplete, like holding hands on a carnival ride somewhere in the middle of puberty.

For a brief moment, there is a discussion. You must coordinate, because taking the same picture 4 times would seem somehow wasteful and inartistic. Nevertheless, you know you’ll screw up whatever plans you make, and that it’ll be ok.

You put the money in the little slot, and look into the seemingly endless black abyss in front of you, immediately forgetting what poses you’d agreed to do.

PHOOMPSH.

…

PHOOMPSH.

…

PHOOMPSH.

…

PHOOMPSH.

And then it’s done.

Upon exiting, there’s a several-minute wait for the pictures to come out of the slot, sticky and stinking of chemicals; delicate and toxic.

And you’re left, not with a high definition jpg or raw file, but a tiny slip of paper, imperfect and unique, a shared memory squeezed into 4 improbably wonderful slices.

An artifact to be treasured, and there’s only one.

kung fu grippe : On ‘Conspicuous Compassion.’

2009-12-03T21:44:01Z

“For anyone who thinks a hashtag campaign or a goddamned ribbon helps “raise awareness” for anything more than our own bloated and self-involved sense of self, get over yourself.”

Pipes Blog » Blog Archive » Craigslist and Yahoo! Pipes

2009-12-03T00:36:28Z

Craigslist, for some reason, blocked Yahoo Pipes. This blog post shows how retardedly trivial it is to circumvent the obstacle. I <3 the internet.

The Problem With Music

2009-12-02T09:42:58Z

Ever wonder why artists don’t care if you steal their music? Because the record company already stole it. Go torrent something.

How Twilight Works

2009-12-01T02:39:04Z

“If you’re male and you like Twilight, you’re gay. I don’t mean that in the derogatory sense, I mean it in the "you want to put your testicles against another man’s testicles while gripping handfuls…

Badass of the Week: Nikola Tesla

2009-12-01T02:39:01Z

“Another sweet thing about Tesla is that he conducted the sort of crazy experiments that generally result in hordes of angry villages breaking down the door to your lab with torches and pitchforks.”

Robo-One Dance Competition Brings The Creepy | BotJunkie

2009-11-30T22:34:47Z

It’s like they went down into the uncanny valley, and then started digging. /via @tlrobinson

2009-11-24T22:29:52Z

Just a carpet, and the sun. That’s all he needs.

If only I could ever be anywhere near this comfortable.

So How's That Enforcement Working For You? - Raise the Hammer

2009-11-23T20:10:32Z

“Successful policies work because they are designed to accommodate what people are going to do anyway. ”

Horrible Turn on Vimeo

2009-11-20T18:48:11Z

Far and away the best Dr. Horrible fan fiction. A Horrible Turn. How it all got started. If you don’t know Dr. Horrible, watch this first: http://drhorrible.com/

Implication v. Causation

2009-11-19T19:01:00Z

name	message
isaaczschlueter	let M = "is married"
isaaczschlueter	let D = "gets a divorce"
isaaczschlueter	all D is M
isaaczschlueter	not all M is D
isaaczschlueter	therefore D → M
isaaczschlueter	divorce is the leading cause of marriage!
replicantkitty	implication ≠ causation
isaaczschlueter	that's the joke.
isaaczschlueter	thanks for explaining it to me, i wasn't getting it already.
replicantkitty	i like destroying humor
isaaczschlueter	NEEERRRRRRRRRRDDDDD!!!!!!!!!!

Texas' gay marriage ban may have banned all marriages | McClatchy

2009-11-19T19:00:36Z

Apparently a bill in Texas that sought to remove marriages as well as civil unions and domestic partnerships for gay couples contains language that actually removes all marriage. While I disagree…

Mighty Mighty

2009-11-18T23:20:00Z

Here’s a freaky thought:

Mitochondria.

Think about that shit.

It’s got its own DNA. It’s like a completely separate bunch of organisms living inside all your cells.

Way back in the pre-cambrian, some single-celled ancestor of ours swallowed some other single-celled thing, and was like, “I’m keeping it as a pet!”

And now we have this little bacteria-type thingie living inside each of our cells.

Say hi to your cells’ pet:

2012: The End Of The World?

2009-11-18T09:38:54Z

Just in case you weren’t already convinced that the 2012 stuff was pure weapons-grade balonium, the folks at Information is Beautiful are on the case.

Microsoft Azure is The New Outlook — jungleG

2009-11-18T07:51:28Z

Seems like Microsoft is doing something not completely retarded. I will be watching closely.

Romantic Rivalries Stir Religious Feelings

2009-11-17T06:05:31Z

A study of college students finds that they are more religious when exposed to attractive rivals. The suggestion is that religion may be a mating strategy. However, OkCupid found that religiosity…

The 40-30-30 Rule: Why Risk Is Worth It :: Tips :: The 99 Percent

2009-11-16T20:15:31Z

“Indeed, to improve at anything, we must at some point push ourselves outside our comfort zone.”

2009-11-13T07:06:41Z

You know when paginated things have links like this?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 > >>

Where > goes to the next page, and >> goes to the last page?

I think that’s wrong.

It should be this:

[[[ NEXT FUCKING PAGE ALL YOU CARE ABOUT OMG ]]] 1 2 3 (last)

2009-11-13T03:10:00Z

My new desktop background. You’re welcome.

Google Closure: How not to write JavaScript

2009-11-13T01:13:45Z

A very strong case for why Java programmers should not be allowed anywhere near JavaScript.

Threats relocate 'Godless' billboard | cincinnati.com | Cincinnati.Com

2009-11-12T23:55:32Z

Kinda proves the point, doesn’t it?

How does health insurance work?

2009-11-11T20:45:46Z

Very friendly tutorial about how health insurance works. With soothing music to help with the frustration. (via @yellowgreeneyes)

cyoa

2009-11-11T07:00:05Z

Choices, choices. These books were a wonderful part of my childhood.

Atheists, It's Time to Stand Up to Jesus | Belief | AlterNet

2009-11-11T03:48:14Z

“Mockery is one way of saying that a view does not deserve to be taken seriously. Religious views are fair game”

Validity of software patents goes on trial today at Supreme Court

2009-11-10T01:30:00Z

In my opinion, patents are a dearth on the entire technology industry. They have no place in modern society, and are afflicted with too many problems to ever be salvageable. I hope the Supreme Court…

Random Thoughts: Why has this got so much harder to do?

2009-11-09T19:56:09Z

Starting my Monday with a flood of deliciously melancholy nostalgia. My experience is roughly 100% the same as the author’s, except it was a Ti-83 rather than a ZXSpectrum.

Man punched his way out of shark attack - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

2009-11-09T19:56:09Z

This dude punched a shark, and it left him alone. That is SO fucking hard core.

Generation specs: Stopping the short-sight epidemic - health - 06 November 2009 - New Scientist

2009-11-09T19:56:09Z

Apparently, if you want your kids to have good vision, make them go play outside. The bright light and long distances are essential to keep their eyes from becoming elongated and myopic.

NSFW Science: Fruit Bat Fellatio

2009-11-06T06:04:12Z

As awesome as it sounds

Great white sharks coming closer to shore than thought, researchers find - washingtonpost.com

2009-11-04T20:08:59Z

Just in case sharks weren’t scary enough, it turns out they actually LOVE hanging out right near the shore.

2009-11-04T18:51:14Z

Monster Venn Diagram

Yahoo! open sources uber web server • The Register

2009-11-04T06:04:16Z

This is relatively gigantic news. Traffic Server is the program that lets Yahoo serve gargantuan amounts of web traffic at crazy fast speeds.

Caviar

2009-11-03T18:37:49Z

name	message
Isaac Schlueter	for the price, slicehost is shitty
Ryan Grove	Like I said, I'm not worried about my data, I'm worried about my time.
Ryan Grove	Bah
Isaac Schlueter	for $40, i expect drink service and extra leg room.
Ryan Grove	Pish posh. I'm happy with it.
Isaac Schlueter	big spender.
Ryan Grove	You know it.
Isaac Schlueter	must be nice.
Ryan Grove	Hang on, I just spilled a gallon of caviar on my new Magic Mouse...
Ryan Grove	Okay, no worries, cat's licking it up.
Ryan Grove	I guess she won't be getting her afternoon caviar as usual today.
Isaac Schlueter	SO tumblring this...

Hive Mind - Hive Mind – The luck of the Sapiens: the weird fortuitousness of global warming - True/Slant

2009-11-03T01:32:00Z

Apparently, all that fossil fuel may have actually helped prevent an ice age. I remain unconvinced that global warming is a problem. Frankly, I prefer my globes warm.

Cell Size and Scale

2009-11-03T00:08:22Z

A fascinating slider showing the differences in sizes of things ranging from a coffee bean to a carbon atom. (via everybody, but especially @seldo)

BBC NEWS | Health | Depression link to processed food

2009-11-03T00:08:22Z

Yet another reason to avoid the middle of the grocery store. (via @seldo)

2009-10-26T20:17:45Z

how to not forget

Was our oldest ancestor a proton-powered rock? - life - 19 October 2009 - New Scientist

2009-10-19T23:40:57Z

Very interesting developments regarding the origin of life on Earth.

Dean Kamen’s Robot Arm Grabs More Publicity | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

2009-10-16T18:22:34Z

Dean Kamen is making cyborg arms and they’re fantastic (via @seldo)

sweet bro and hella jeff

2009-10-15T07:28:34Z

Worst comic EVAR. via @richtaur

Python vs Clojure – Evolving « Best in Class

2009-10-14T21:10:21Z

Analysis of Python vs Clojure. More and more lately, I’ve been thinking of Python as the new Basic. Powerful enough, not too bright, easy to pick up. A good introduction to programming, but not a…

Letters of Note

2009-10-14T21:10:21Z

Letters of Note is a blog of interesting correspondence via cellulose. Particularly fun rant from the Gonzo Journalist: http://j.mp/3NbCSV

becoming

2009-10-05T01:53:46Z

snatch a rainbow with the bottom of your shoe
turn into something beautiful
become yourself becoming you

2009-09-25T21:31:20Z

The surface of the earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. Recently we’ve waded in the waves, and the water seems inviting.

Carl Sagan

via @nokapixel

2009-09-24T18:01:04Z

Quick: What kind of party are they talking about?

FFRF's "Image No Religion" Campaign Reaches San Francisco

2009-09-18T19:18:50Z

Atheist bus FTW!

Run if you are a poop

2009-09-17T18:06:00Z

name	message
Vark Questioner	I read in magazine that you cannot run if you are a poop yes?
Isaac	Depend on what magazine say, if are you poop no then forever run you cannot.
Vark Questioner	no it just says poop and run no, but i dont believe it
Isaac	Is magazine poop run?
Vark Questioner	what? no the magazine tells me that i cannot run and poop
Isaac	Tried you to run a poop and failed?

Thanks To Gene Therapy, Monkeys See In Full Color

2009-09-17T05:28:16Z

See, this is why there’s a medical crisis. We’re wasting the really cool treatments on monkeys.

2009-09-16T20:49:18Z

Keynote. Just the good parts.

It’s pretty incredible.

Better world: Legalise drugs - 11 September 2009 - New Scientist

2009-09-15T03:50:19Z

Make the world a better place by legalizing drugs

2009-09-13T03:40:14Z

In my house right now, sweet, beautiful, and smelling awesome.:

And the pie she made is pretty nice, too.

How I Got Quicksilver to Work in Snow Leopard

2009-09-11T20:29:00Z

When I installed Snow Leopard, Quicksilver stopped responding. This is not acceptable.

Quit Quicksilver

It was probably nice enough to quit for you. If not, you probably don’t need to do this. But still, duh, quit it if it’s running.

Move the Settings Away

mv ~/Library/Application\ Support/Quicksilver{,~}

That’ll move all your Quicksilver settings out of the way, so that it’ll be like a brand new install. This means that you’ll temporarily lose all your customizations and trained shortcuts, but we’ll get them (mostly) back.

Install the Newest Beta

Get the latest beta from blacktree-alchemy’s google code project.

Drag to Applications, start it up, put it on the Dock, you know the drill.

This will create a new ~/Library/Application\ Support/Quicksilver folder. So, now you have two. The old (broken) one that ends in ~, and the new (empty) one that doesn’t have any plugins or preferences.

Start it just to make sure it works. Then close it. We’re gonna tinker in its brains a little.

Copy Mnemonics

cp ~/Library/Application\ Support/Quicksilver{~,}/Mnemonics.plist

This will “retrain” Quicksilver with all your learned behaviors. However, chances are, most of the things that it points do don’t exist yet, because the Catalogs are empty.

Carefully Enable Plugins

Open up Quicksilver, and make sure that ⌘space (or ⌃space or whatever) launches it like it did before.

Go into the settings with ⌘, and set everything the way you had it. This is tedious.

Enable plugins one-by-one. When Quicksilver crashes, you’ll know that you enabled something you shouldn’t have. Remove the folder in ~/Library/Application\ Support/Quicksilver/Plugins associated with the offensive thing. The “File” stuff is mostly broken, so hopefully you weren’t too in love with setting file attributes from Quicksilver.

Same for Catalogs.

Get the New Snow-Compatible BezelHUD Display

If you don’t already use BezelHUD, you should have been. It is the win.

Bonus! Markdown in Textmate!

Not sure why, but Textmate bundles got a bit stupid in Snow Leopard, and can’t find their scripts. If you add "$HOME/Library/Application Support/TextMate/Support/bin" to the $PATH environment variable, and then restart Textmate, it seems to work. (I just added this to my .bashrc goodies.)

The Hierarchy Of Digital Distractions | Information Is Beautiful

2009-09-09T22:16:43Z

Ironically, I should really be doing some work right now, but this interesting thing popped up on my twitter feed (via seldo)

Emoticons

2009-09-06T22:03:30Z

There are many cultural differences around which emoticons people use. While the sideways :) style emoticons are more common in western cultures, the “right-side-up” style emoticons are more popular in eastern countries. Perhaps owing to their greater expressiveness, or the influence of manga on western culture and internet culture in particular, eastern-style emoticons have gained in popularity in the west, especially among nerds.

I started using them because they seemed to capture much more emotion, and lend themselves to a wider range of expressiveness. But for those unfamiliar with their meaning, they can be confusing.

The trick is to look at them as right-side-up faces, eyes on the sides, mouth in the middle. The size and position of the eyes usually indicates the emotion. It might help to put them in parentheses like (^_^) so it looks more like a face. These are the ones I use. There are a bunch more, especially in Kanji and other languages where there are many more shapes to play with.

ToT: Crying a lot. The Ts are eyes squinted shut, with a stream of tears. The “o” is a wide open mouth, because you’re crying so hard. Think WAAAAAAA!!!! like a cartoon baby.
T_T: Lotta tears, but not wailing. Maybe you’re just chopping onions or something.
;_;: Crying a little. The ;s are an eye with one tear coming down, and the mouth is shut. Sniff sniff.
v_v: Quiet frustrated resignation. Eyes are pointed down. “Alright. Fine. Whatever.”
/_\ /o\: Profound dismay. Opposite of smiling. Eyebrows are lifted in the middle, very sad. With the open mouth, it’s a wail of extreme sorrow.
O_O: Whoa!! Exclamation, surprise. Eyes are wide open.
-_-: Sleeping. Eyes are shut.
=_= g_g: Sleepy. Note the bags under the eyes.
>_<: Furious or hurt. Like you just stubbed your toe. Fuck! Face is scrunched up.
>o<: Yelling about it!
~o~: Yawn (eyes are closed, mouth open)
@.@: Dizzy, confused, disoriented. whoooaaa…
$_$: Thinking about money (Like the cartoons where the person’s eyes would go “chaching!”)
x_x X_X *…*: Dead (x’s over the eyes, skeleton face.)
o_O: Raised eyebrow, quizzical, interested. “Hm..?”
o_O?: Scratching head. Like o_O but a bit more confused or intrigued.
^_^: Happy, grinning
^o^: WOW! YAY! Eyes are smiling, mouth wide open exclaiming about something. Sometimes with arms, like \(^o^)/
*^_^*: blushing
;^_^: Embarrassed, smiling. From the manga tradition of putting a giant sweat drop by the face of a character to indicate discomfort. More ; means more embarrassed.
d^_^b: Listening to music, headphones on
^.^: A happy kiss.

Coding Style

2009-09-02T21:00:19Z

name	message
isaac_schlueter	http://github.com/isaacs/narwhal/blob/master/lib/http-client.js
isaac_schlueter	usage: http://github.com/isaacs/narwhal-playground/blob/master/http-client.js
richtaur	omg your code looks so much like mine <3
isaac_schlueter	omg that's the most nerdy bromantic thing you've ever said to me.

2009-09-01T21:25:11Z

Rock Heart

Most Twitter users are atheists, according to poll.

2009-08-31T04:20:00Z

This is interesting. Sadly, as an opt-in poll, it suffers from the most obvious and extreme selection bias, and raises more questions than it answers.

Does it suggest that atheists are most likely to use twitter? Or perhaps that, without religion, we look elsewhere for silly memes, and thus are more susceptible to polls and the like? Perhaps this higher memetic availability explains why more atheists might be using twitter in the first place. Perhaps it’s really just a measurement of religiousity in the Bay Area and a few other places where twitter is popular.

Hard to say.

xx, by The XX

2009-08-30T21:30:17Z

Excellent music. I’m hooked.

Wherein T-Rex pwns some philosophers with descriptivist semantics.

2009-08-28T21:25:14Z

2009-08-28T17:02:53Z

Netflix is Doing It Right.

This is how employees should be treated, and how creative knowledge-based companies should be run.

Given that short-term incentives motivate far less effectively than a sense of control and ownership, isn’t it time that businesses start using what science knows to make their employees more productive?

If I ever go to another BDC after I’m done at Yahoo, I’ll take a good long look at Netflix. Now I understand why engineers who go there and seem so happy.

Ryan Sager - Neuroworld – Whoa, This Is Heavy - True/Slant

2009-08-27T19:05:22Z

Heavy: Yet another case of somatic input affecting our abstract thoughts. (via @seldo)

Can Atheists Be Parents? - TIME

2009-08-27T19:05:22Z

[EDIT] Ha! Social media fail. This was from 1970, despite showing up in “new stories” sections of Buzz and Digg. —- WTF!? Judge Camarata in New Jersey has declared that atheist parents are unfit to…

Canadian scientist aims to turn chickens into dinosaurs

2009-08-27T06:13:32Z

What could possibly go wrong?

Inside Google Books: Download Over a Million Public Domain Books from Google Books in the Open EPUB Format

2009-08-26T23:51:53Z

Google is working to remove the DRM on the printed word. A very “not being evil” move, in my opinion.

2009-08-26T17:03:11Z

Dan Ariely talks about a few of the ways in which we demonstrate that we don’t know why we do the things we do. Key takeaway: when picking up strangers, bring someone who looks just like you, but just a little uglier.

Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why.

2009-08-25T09:28:56Z

Apparently, laughter isn’t the best medicine. Sugar pills are.

hurl

2009-08-24T08:20:13Z

Unfortunately named very useful curl-ish tool from @defunkt and @leahculver (via @tlrobinson)

Into

2009-08-22T17:01:00Z

There’s a big difference between these three states:

I like X
I’m into X
I’m good at X

That difference usually amounts to doing whatever it is. A lot. But, if you like something, it’s hard to admit you’re not really into it in any meaningful way. Maybe you like the beliefs behind open source code, and you admire the people who do it, and think of yourself as one of them. But you don’t actually do it.

The first step to getting good at anything worthwhile is accepting that you’re going to suck at it, most likely for a very long time. If you can master it in a day, it’s probably not all that interesting. The really cool stuff takes years.

So get started, already.

Holidays

2009-08-21T17:01:18Z

There are four holidays in my religion. They match the seasons, and are balanced and symmetrical. As far as I know, there are at least 2 people other than myself that observe all 4 of these holidays as they’re intended.

Consumptive Holidays

Moderation is for monks. Take big bites.

Lazarus Long

Autumn: Thanksgiving - Food. OMG food. Everyone get together, with family or friends or strangers, and eat a lot. Wine, turkey, corn, gravy, potatoes, pastries, berries, pumpkins and squashes, ham, whateveryoucanfitinyourfaceuntilyourbeltpops. It’s not about family, it’s not about pilgrims and indians or turkeys, it’s about feasting until you have to lay down.

Then sleep. Take Friday off for more sleeping.

Spring: 4/20 - April 20th is the Thanksgiving of the spring. It’s not cold, and there’s no need to stuff your face. Instead, stuff your head. Go outside, celebrate the beauty of nature all around you. Explore new areas in your world and your mind. Have fun with it! See: 420.

Reflective Holidays

The Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

Socrates

Winter: Christmas - From December 21st-ish until January 1, we meet with family. Bake sweet foods, and play with evergreens, and do other things that smell lovely. Eventually, there’s a big dinner, and presents. The presents used to be the big draw for me, but now, they’re just kind of a hassle. I spend a bunch of money on things that my family doesn’t need, and get a bunch of stuff that I didn’t really want. But wrapping and unwrapping things is fun, and the surprise of it can be enjoyable.

On Christmas, I reflect on my family, and my place in the tribe. We all come together, and it’s a very social thing. Old animosities are stirred up, as are old loves and childhood memories. It connects us to our shared past, and adds warmth to the winter.

Summer: Birthday - On July 1, we take a day off to reflect on the last year of life, and think about where it’s going next. Instead of buying presents for other people, we focus on what we really want for ourselves, and measure the progress that is so often forgotten in our day-to-day business. It’s a primarily solitary activity, but it’s also an excuse to party.

The fact that I was actually born on Birthday is inconsequential. Birthday is for everyone. For each of us, it’s a celebration of the fact that we are present and alive in this world, and a day when we can take a moment to see how we’re doing and consider if there are any course changes we might want to make. Most of all, it’s a day to reward ourselves for what we’ve accomplished, and thus provide greater motivation for more accomplishment.

Consumptive vs Reflective

None of these holidays are better or more important than any of the others. The interesting thing is that, by coming together and consuming, we bond and find commonalities. By reflecting and meditating on one’s place in the universe and in our tribe, we often find cause for feasting.

There’s a value in focusing on one aspect or another, just for a day, just to make sure we don’t forget.

The incomplete life is the life not worth living.

2009-08-20T19:45:14Z

Not all code needs to be a factory, some of it can just be origami.

_why

The Inbox Of Nardo Pace, The Empire's Worst Engineer

2009-08-20T19:16:20Z

Stuff Geeks Love

2009-08-20T07:36:36Z

How is it I’m just finding out about this site now?

Loyalty

2009-08-19T17:02:44Z

Send up the red flags and alarms whenever you hear this word. 10’ll get you 20, it’s a scam of some sort. Sniff around.

There are only two things to be loyal to in this world: your self, and your integrity. And usually, if you lose one, the other goes along with it.

If any other “loyalty” seems to collide with those two—family, party, country, job, what-have-you—you’re in trouble. Drop it like a bad habit. Run fast. That ship is sinking.

In other words, “I got only two things in this world: my word, and my balls. And I don’t break ’em for nobody.”

Time-Traveling for Dummies

2009-08-18T21:15:50Z

Dave Goldberg examines the implications of single-timeline-style time travel, making the argument that it’s the only style supported by Einstein’s theories.Of course, Einstein might be wrong.

Artistic Integrity

2009-08-18T17:36:23Z

Don’t worry about your artistic integrity. Selling out is harder than it looks.

Just be honest about what you want. Integrity will be there when you need it.

2009-08-18T05:34:00Z

The returning good sense of our country threatens abortion to [the Christian churches’] hopes, & they believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: & enough too in their opinion, & this is the cause of their printing lying pamphlets against me, forging conversations for me [1]

Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor morum over each other. Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned: yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth. [2]

The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. … Reason and free enquiry are the only effectual agents against error. [2]

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. [3]

And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away all this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this the most venerated reformer of human errors. [4]

In fact [the Holy Trinity] is so incomprehensible to the human mind that no candid man can say he has any idea of it, and how can he believe what presents no idea. He who thinks he does only deceives himself. He proves also that man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder is the sport of every wind. With such persons gullability which they call faith takes the helm from the hand of reason and the mind becomes a wreck. [sic] [5]

Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States:
[1] letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, 1800-10-23 Note that he specifically indicates that he will take no action against the church leaders that smeared him; all they have to fear is his hostility and ill will.
[2] Notes on the State of Virginia Jefferson here stated explicitly that he saw atheism as an inalienable right, and outside the province of the State.
[3] letter to Peter Carr, 1787-08-10 In other words, agnosticism is preferable to blind faith.
[4] letter to John Adams, 1823-04-11 Note that he held Jesus’s principles in high regard, but rejected the christian mythology just the same. It was his hope that the free and secular nature of the American society would bring about the demise of these beliefs.
[5] letter to James Smith, 1822-12-08

2009-08-18T03:38:51Z

benw:

The Billion Dollar Gram | Information Is Beautiful

Science and Pseudoscience in Adult Nutrition Research and Practice

2009-08-18T01:07:33Z

“The data clearly show that much current advice about dietary pyramids, food supplements, megavitamins, and weight loss regimens is frequently unproven, erroneous, or even harmful and is often based…

Academic Programmers - A Spotter's Guide

2009-08-18T01:07:33Z

I think I’ve worked with (or been) all of these at some point or another.

2009-08-17T22:49:45Z

Atheism and Groupthink

2009-08-17T17:00:52Z

Get ready, I’m about to offend almost everyone. (Except atheists.) Chasing the TeaL DeeR…

Having a firm belief in a “higher power” smelled funny to me from a pretty early age. I could never find any non-contradictory evidence, and it seemed like a pretty fantastic set of ideas to buy into. I guess you could say that I was a soft atheist (aka agnostic) as early as 10 years old, and my acceptance of God gradually faded as I learned to distinguish reality from fiction.

The thing that struck me as very odd around that time is that I started to realize that other people – adults – they actually believed this shit. When my grandmother told me that Santa lives in the North Pole, and when she told me that Jesus lives in Heaven, I heard two statements that were in roughly the same category. But for her, one was make-believe, and the other history. Between 10 and 12, this very strange cognitive dissonance started to dawn on me, and it troubled me greatly.

Also around that time, I realized that people didn’t just believe in God; they formed teams around what they believed about God, and they based their lives around it. I had friends who were Protestants, and they didn’t have to go to Catechism after school. I had other friends who were Jewish, and they had Chanukah instead of Christmas. (Some of them had Christmas too, and Santa.)

Luckily for me, my parents were kind of hippies, despite (or maybe because of) both being brought up Catholic. My dad is the kind of atheist that we’d all be if there was no such thing as religion. He just doesn’t think about it, doesn’t talk about it, doesn’t care about it. He is spiritual, but God isn’t involved even a little. My mother calls herself a Christian, but doesn’t affiliate herself with any particular denomination. She believes in “some kind of higher power”, but she thought it was important for us to “find our own paths and learn about ourselves” and all that jazz.

Turns out, “find your own path and form your own belief” is a good way to ensure your kid is an atheist. If they’re not in the fold by 21, they’re probably lost for good.

So, in middle school and high school, when kids normally start identifying with various teams and forming their sense of self around labels, I became very curious about religion. I knew that there was something deeply wrong with my grandmother’s fervent Catholicism, but I really didn’t get why someone would believe those things. I figured I must be missing something.

I wasn’t. It’s stupid. That’s really all there is to it. But religion’s unique kind of stupid is important, and it wasn’t until a few years later that I saw it.

We are not solitary animals. A lone human is like a lone ant—not long for this world. Evolutionary biology has a funny way of imbuing us with instincts and ideas and feelings that help ensure survival and crush our rivals in the dangerous time of our near-extinction. However, in modern times, when those feelings no longer make sense, we still have them. Sex feels good, even when you’re not procreating. Fat tastes good, even when you don’t need to hoard calories. And so on.

These ideas about God and Jesus and the Bible and whatnot, I realized, got into peoples’ heads just to keep them in the group. I realized this in high school, and it was a pretty pivotal point in my spiritual growth.

I was at a concert when I had this revelation, for a local band in New Haven that wasn’t very good, called the Venus Vixens. “Wasn’t very good” is quite generous. I went outside because they were so unbearably terrible. I would have left if I’d been old enough to have driven there. I started to wonder why I’d come and paid money for this band I couldn’t stand.

I couldn’t claim ignorance, either. I knew I couldn’t stand them before I’d agreed to go, because I’d heard one of their tapes already! And when a friend of mine asked if I wanted to come with them, and if I liked the band, I lied and said that I thought they were good! I’d heard the words coming out of my mouth, and had thought, “No, I don’t. They’re terrible. What the fuck am I doing?”

(Interestingly enough, The Offspring were the opening band, and they were even worse back then than they are now. A few years later when I saw them on MTV, I couldn’t believe it.)

So there I was, standing on Center Street outside the Tune Inn, walking to the Dunkin’ Donuts on the corner to pass the time until the show was over, wondering about why I was such a damned putz. The humbling fact was apparent: I’d claimed a fact that was untrue about myself solely to belong to a group of people. And we were the freaks and nerds, the outcasts! We were supposed to be ok with being different, for crying out loud!

The second worst social attack that one teenager can use against another is to make them seem like they’re not part of the group. “You don’t like the same zoodads that we like. You’re not one of us.” The pressure to like the same things that the group likes is powerful, subconscious, and instinctual. It is the most primal glue that bonds us, and as children, we aren’t sophisticated to have any other kind.

So, the worst insult that one teenager can lay on another is that of “poser”, someone who pretends to like something even though they don’t really. That’s like calling someone an outsider and a traitor all at once. This is such a damaging insult, such a vicious slur against one’s character, that most kids would do almost anything to send the signals that they are genuine in their appreciation for the band, or the style, or whatever.

When you pretend to believe something, and pretend diligently enough, you’ll start to really believe it. Sitting there in Dunkin’ Donuts with some muttering crackhead in downtown New Haven outside an unlistenable punk show, I realized that the only argument for believing in God is that you’ll have friends who believe the same things you do, just like my alleged appreciation for the Venus Vixens had brought me to a terrible punk show. It kinda grossed me out to see that in myself.

Since then, I’ve learned a lot of philosophy. I’ve learned about the infinity paradoxes. I’ve learned about the problems with the ontological “proof”. I’ve learned about Pascal’s Wager, and shown its failure in a variety of different ways. I’ve learned about the formal and technical applications of Occam’s Razer. I’ve learned about spirituality and meditation. I’ve taken a wide array of psychotropic drugs (and it wasn’t experimentation most of the time, I knew exactly what would happen). I’ve learned about the history of the Bible. I’ve studied the space teacups and the flying spaghetti monsters. I’ve read Dawkins and Harris and Rand and Russel. I’ve learned about evolution and cosmology.

There is no need for God. In fact, it raises a lot more problems that it solves. It is my belief that “friends who believe” remains the solitary compelling reason that people can and do convince themselves to believe in a higher power. There’s more to it, of course. There’s agent fixation, and the tendency of children to believe just about anything their elders tell them, and a bunch of other cognitive mistakes that are usually evolutionarily advantageous. But groupthink seems like the biggest contender.

I can’t accept a belief just because it’s what the crowd believes. That kind of idea—and more importantly, that method of choosing ideas—while perhaps important for our ancestors, is dangerous, wrong, and evil. If anything, I tend to be especially suspicious of the things that “everybody knows,” precisely because they tend to get less criticism, so we need to make the extra effort.

I’m very confident that there is no God, no woowoo energies, no angels and fairies and devils, no afterlife, no unicorns, no super powers. That being said, I have a lot of respect for many different kinds of cognitive distortions. In a previous post, I wrote about the concept of “energy” or “chi” – sometimes the model might be wrong, but the phenomenon may still be worth investigating.

Groupthink is never ok, and it is an insidious error. By comparison, I can definitely respect someone for stopping at agnosticism. I’ve seen two common arguments for agnosticism; one is defensible in my opinion, the other is not.

1. It seems possible to me that …

A lot of things might seem possible that in fact aren’t. “Possibility” is a statement about our mental model, not a statement about the universe. It “seemed possible” to the writers, cast, and many viewers of CSI that the line “I’ll create a GUI interface using VisualBasic, see if I can track an IP address” was a reasonable thing that a computer hacker might say about tracking down a criminal. As a programmer, I laughed my ass off.

Not everyone has time to burn on studying the arguments for and against. And expertise is hard to come by on this topic. Many apparent experts are clearly quacks, and many others disagree with one another, so who should you believe? And really, how much does it matter? Not having an opinion on the subject of God is rational, just as it’s rational to not have an opinion on “GUI interfaces using VisualBasic” that are used to “track an IP address”. There are plenty of important topics that I have no opinion about, or where I’ll freely admit that my opinion is mostly useless.

2. It’s not a black and white issue.

That’s a bit of malarky, if you ask me. Either there is a God or there isn’t. I’ve never gotten a straight answer on how this really could make sense, and I suspect that it’s a softer form of social-think. In other words, it translates to “God doesn’t make sense to me, but I’m not quite sure I want to anger the other apes, so I’m taking a less controversial position.”

I’ve seen this “absolutes are bad” ideology taken to extreme (and self-defeating!) zealotry. I’ve been told that I’m “just as bad as religious fundamentalists” because of my atheism. (Really? Just as bad? How many atheists kill their daughters for the “crime” of having been raped, or blow up abortion clinics, or prevent life-saving medical treatments for their children?)

Gray-worship is deeply problematic. “Undecided” is the place to be when ignorant and without a trustworthy expert. But the avoidance of firm opinions because they are firm is foolish, and equating all firm opinions as equally wrong is a wild perversion of “open mindedness”. I usually try to point out the contradictory nature of this fundamentalist anti-fundamentalism. I don’t buy the premise that “all ideas are fuzzy except this one.”

This might strike some as improper or overly harsh: if you are religious, at least in the traditional western sense, and serious about it, then I could probably never date you, and even our level of friendship would be capped somewhere just above “friendly acquaintance” at best. It’s not that I have any disdain for religious people. I try not to blame the victim, since many of these mistakes are so very easy to slip into. This is a prediction more than a prescription. We just won’t click.

It’s not about having to agree; in fact, some of my best friends are agnostic, and many of them have very different ideas about a lot of things than I do. If anything, it’s about being able to disagree. That’s another problem with gray worship: if there are no absolutes, then we can’t disagree, can we?

Let’s not “agree to disagree”; instead, let’s actually disagree, and chew on it. If you’re not willing and able to think “wrong” thoughts, to collide ideas against one another, then where’s the growth? If some ideas are off-limits, then where’s the innovation? If that’s not your cup of tea, we probably just won’t get along.

We all occasionally hide from our true selves under the warm blanket of the hive mind. But as responsible rational animals, we ought to strive to be vigilant against this distortion, and eagerly cut through that blanket whenever we notice it. When we hide from our true selves, we are living less fully.

Living less fully means being less alive.

The Billion Dollar Gram | Information Is Beautiful

2009-08-16T22:24:47Z

Never has a conversation gone wronger faster

2009-08-16T17:00:30Z

name	message
Sarah	Food is an experience for all 5 senses.
Fried	I don't know about you, but I don't feel up my food.
Isaac	What do you do with it in your mouth?
Sarah	Yeah, you don't just feel it up, you have oral sex with your food.
Isaac	Then later, you have butt sex with your food.
Fried	...
Sarah	... yeah... but.. going out instead of in...
Isaac	Eh. Hits all the same spots.
Fried	This conversation just got a lot less appetizing.

Organic Food Isn’t More Nutritious § SEEDMAGAZINE.COM

2009-08-16T00:50:38Z

“…organically and conventionally produced crops and livestock products are broadly comparable in their nutrient content.”

2009-08-15T17:01:40Z

via Zach Graves

The Calm of Exertion

2009-08-14T17:00:33Z

Exerted and spent, and yet filled up and satisfied.
Like a cat in the sun.
It is work that brings this calm, strengthens the body and mind for another round.
This is the reward of your effort.
Do not squander it!

How often have I burnt myself out, and felt so overwhelmed, like there was never enough time, never enough of me to cover all the corners, spread and stretched as a sheet over too large a bed, butter across too much bread, thin and weary, cracking and torn, pulled to shreds. So many times I’ve forgotten this lesson, forgotten to pick up my reward, and paid the price for it.

I’ve told myself that work is to blame. I point the finger at the likely suspect, but the fact of the matter is that I was to blame, and didn’t want to admit I’d caused my own pain.

There is plenty of time.
Everyone will get by just fine.

Work hard, and rest deeply. That is the Key.

Perl Cannot Be Parsed: A Formal Proof

2009-08-13T18:03:10Z

Proof that Perl is Unparseable, or: How to Solve the Halting Problem

2009-08-13T17:00:36Z

Politicians and diapers should be changed often and for the same reason

Mark Twain

On Leadership

2009-08-12T17:02:46Z

Report down, not up.

Change direction, don’t ask someone else to.

Let's Abolish High School (article) - Youth Rights Network

2009-08-12T00:30:48Z

“pointing out the obvious: High school is a waste of time for the majority of the students—that is, for those who haven’t already dropped out. ”

2009-08-11T20:06:05Z

I want a venus flytrap.

Fear of Failure

2009-08-10T21:30:00Z

Todo:

Once per month, or as often as possible, find an error in judgement that I made in the past—something I really and truly believed and fought for, which was 100% wrong—and publicly announce it. It’s gotta sting.

The goal is to build up a thick skin against the fear of failure. Failure is natural, it is a learning process, and important. Resisting the information that comes with failure is disastrous. And fear of failure is a mind-killer. My ego might not like doing this, but sometimes you just have to tell your ego to grow a pair.

The first one is a gimme: getting married was a horrifically bad idea. There’s no excuse for it. It’s an outdated institution, but beyond that, we were just a terrible couple. I wasn’t happy. I should have broken up with her, and instead I proposed. I have defended the decision countless times, even while going through our separation and divorce, because of a fear of admitting to my family and friends and myself that I was just flat-out wrong on many levels.

It is unlikely that any mistake I make in business or in life will ever be as painful, expensive, or full of public fail. And yet here I am, happy and successful. So there is really no reason to fear anything. I’ve learned a lot from that failure, about myself, and about love, and about what I need to be happy.

Admitting failure can be exhilarating. Try it!

The Notorious CEO: Ten Startup Commandments from Biggie Smalls

2009-08-10T17:02:27Z

Biggie Smalls’ classic “10 Crack Commandments”, applied to software startups.

2009-08-08T20:12:33Z

“fuck |fək| vulgar slang”

I can’t believe the vulgarity in Apple’s OS X Dictionary.

As we speak, millions of OS X users have no idea there’s an “eff word” right on their Mac. Right there. In their home. Where their spouse sleeps. Where their children play with their toys.

When will Apple finally clean up its act? When will they learn?

People don’t buy computers to explore the world or learn what things mean; they buy computers to rent PIXAR movies and order iPhones. They certainly don’t buy them to see trash like this. No, sir.

Shame, Apple. Shame.

Please take all the words off my computer.

Postal Experiments

2009-08-07T23:53:40Z

“The USPS appears to have some collective sense of humor, and might in fact here be displaying the rudiments of organic bureaucratic intelligence.”

Autism as Academic Paradigm

2009-08-07T04:28:00Z

We’re also learning that a lot of the stereotypes about autistics are false or at least misleading. It’s been suggested, for instance, that autistics don’t care much about other people, or that autistics lack genuine emotions or are incapable of empathy. The more likely truth is that autistics and nonautistics do not always understand each other very well. It’s odd that the people who make this charge so often, in the very act of doing so, fail to show much empathy for autistics or to recognize their rich emotional lives. Even when the cognitive capabilities of autistics are recognized —most commonly in the cases of savants —it is too often accompanied by a clichéd and inaccurate picture of a cold, robotic, or less than human personality.

2009-08-07T02:51:00Z

hope-less-ness, by 9 0 0 0. So much good stuff in this stream.

Modern Love: Those Aren’t Fighting Words, Dear

2009-08-07T01:20:34Z

(via girk)

2009-08-06T08:40:00Z

The late MJ had nothing on these guys. (via @pixelarchitect)

If you want to be rich, first stop being so frightened

2009-08-06T07:39:00Z

Good quote: “If you are unwilling to fail, sometimes publicly, and even catastrophically, you stand little chance of ever getting rich.” Reminds me of this quote from Lazarus Long: “People who go broke in a big way never miss any meals. It is the poor jerk who is shy a half slug who must tighten his belt.”

As a bit of a pod who sometimes finds it all too easy to “turn off” my human concerns, and an on-again-off-again workaholic who was literally ridiculed by my friends for my study and work habits, I am very inspired by what he has to say.

2009-08-06T04:17:41Z

A 6-minute video from Rob Gruhl on buying a new car.

Good negotiation tips, and also timely for my life at the moment.

Sierpinski

2009-08-05T22:02:00Z

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Your World of Text

2009-08-05T03:08:50Z

A web page that lets everyone write whatever, in real time. Pretty much what you’d expect. Lotta ascii penises.

Spokenlounge

2009-08-05T03:08:50Z

This is simply wonderful.

Daring Fireball: Ninjawords: iPhone Dictionary, Censored by Apple

2009-08-05T03:08:50Z

“Every time I think I’ve seen the most outrageous App Store rejection, I’m soon proven wrong.”

"What you are seeing in Iraq is a Second Amendment War."

2009-08-04T20:43:11Z

I disagree with the author’s claim that combat robotics are somehow fundamentally any different from any other weapon. However, the analysis of the 2nd Amendment in practice is spot-on.

2009-08-04T18:30:18Z

If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.

Bruce Lee

Sharing

2009-08-02T18:29:58Z

Sharing code is like sharing minds. It is every bit as intimate as a relationship with a lover — moreso, perhaps.

Unlike the things we share in other areas of our lives, there is no option for dishonesty, no artifice in which to hide. By your comments, patterns, and bugs, your deepest and most intimate truths are exposed. The very working of your mind is laid out in the editor’s colored monotype for all to see, tracked in meticulous detail by your source control system, critiqued in cold honesty by the heartless computer.

It is possible to develop a deep love or profound disdain for someone, simply by reading their code. You can get a sense of intellects far above or beneath your own. Our minds laid bare in the pursuit of beauty and magic, yearning for appreciation, correction, growth. I am convinced: there is no other way on earth to achieve this level of naked vulnerability. The connection is frightening and life affirming, powerful and cruel, lovingly cold.

Perhaps it is right that programmers seem to give up a piece of their humanity in the pursuit of their craft. What we get in return is worth the price.

you are a dream

2009-08-01T00:24:00Z

Joy overwhelms
alters and exposes everything

Smell you on my lips
  taste your scent
Brains buzz
  intoxicated by you

Wrap me in your soul
  arms and legs
    pull me in
Float downstream
  warm oceans sunlit beaches
    bask in your glow

You are a dream.

Come true to me
  when I kiss you.

2009-08-01T00:10:24Z

Nature abhors a cathair-free shirt. Or at least, my cats do.

2009-08-01T00:10:24Z

“Man on the Moon” fallacy: Having done one hard thing does not mean that other hard things are necessarily any more doable.

2009-08-01T00:10:24Z

Every time I see an “About Me” textarea, and don’t know what to write there, I have a mini identity crisis.

2009-07-31T18:09:17Z

Everybody everywhere groks the pentatonic scale.

2009-07-31T06:14:29Z

Got a @flickr shirt in the mail today for fixing a bug in the YUI Compressor. Thanks, @rharmes!

2009-07-31T00:10:52Z

Please don’t interrupt what I’m doing to tell me to do what I’m doing.

2009-07-31T00:10:52Z

Just wrote a narwhal script to update Adium status from my tweets. JS on the CLI, FTW!!

2009-07-31T00:10:52Z

I really wish javascript had support for heredoc or something similar.

Once is an accident

2009-07-30T19:13:03Z

name	message
richtaur	i love cats
richtaur	we were talking yesterday about how perfect they are
richtaur	they're self-cleaning!!
richtaur	can you name one other animal that can realistically go months or years without a bath?
richtaur	a dog would be stinking up your shit
richtaur	i mean i guess you wouldn't bathe a hamster but they're lame anyway
isaac_schlueter	they are.
isaac_schlueter	the best thing about hamsters is feeding them to cats.
richtaur	i did that accidentally once!
richtaur	actually twice

2009-07-30T02:25:33Z

AES-128 gives me a warm snuggly feeling. Mmm, cryptographically strong protection!

2009-07-30T00:21:15Z

lazyweb: Where can I find statistics on height and weight, by gender and location? I want the mean, std dev, all that jazz.

2009-07-29T19:31:14Z

Re $yhoo and $msft — It’s like watching old people out on a date. Just thinking “Good for you guys!” and don’t really care what comes of it.

2009-07-29T19:31:12Z

Ha. Just realized that @yui ≠ @yuilibrary

2009-07-29T08:00:17Z

CA has moved from “whether” to “how” in the legal debate over marijuana. http://tr.im/uy7A Big step in the right direction. (via @linklog)

2009-07-29T07:00:04Z

Trying to get the TwitterAdium plugin to work so that I can have my twitter set my IM status again. http://tr.im/uxqG

2009-07-29T03:48:26Z

Facebook is not perfect. It has a lot of problems, technological and philosophical. It’s a walled garden. It’s easy to put content in, but hard to get it out. You can’t delete anything that goes into their system, no matter how hard you try. It provides a way for people to pester you who you’d perhaps rather forget. People use it as a proxy for the entire internet, and in so doing, provide a single corporation with control over their communication, and thus, in a way, their very lives.

But every once in a while, something magical happens. There is a person living across the country. We’re pretty much strangers now, but we knew each other as children, for a few years in passing. She was randomly reminded of me, and of a memory of our shared childhood, and Facebook gave her an easy way to share this memory without having to commit to much.

Facebook has significantly increased my nostalgia net, and the things that get caught in that net are surprising, intense, and emotionally satisfying in a unique way.

2009-07-28T20:23:09Z

It’s like seeing people I know on TV. Seriously, these guys are very good at what they do. It’s impressive. http://tr.im/ush6

2009-07-28T20:23:09Z

Back to work again. It’s too dry here. No sun. Lots of clothes.

2009-07-28T20:23:08Z

Wanna know why newspapers are dying? Because they suck. http://tr.im/ut7A

Television

2009-07-25T17:00:11Z

name	message
izs	hahahah: "What percentage of people who don't own a TV, like to tell you at every single opportunity that they don't own a TV."
seldo	TV is evil.
seldo	TV is the mind-killer.
izs	TV is the little death that brings total obliteration
seldo	Now shut up, I'm watching Hulu.

2009-07-23T23:48:32Z

FYI: YUICompressor is on @github now.
http://tr.im/tL6W
http://tr.im/tL6V

2616

2009-07-23T21:54:23Z

Hey web programmers:
Read the HTTP spec. It’s short, understandable, and it’s something we should all be fluent in. https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt

2009-07-23T19:39:46Z

I see idempotent GETs as a big invitation to molest the shit out of your website. Wearing my grey hat over at @raptr. http://tr.im/tJyd

2009-07-23T17:46:37Z

“Did you mean recursion?” http://tr.im/tIwU

2009-07-23T09:35:00Z

Hey, @raptr users: Got ManicAdo'ed? Keep this link handy: http://tr.im/tEbd @raptr devs: nonidempotent GETs! Doing It Wrong!!

2009-07-23T08:08:15Z

Dustin, Isaac, Mike, Stephanie

2009-07-23T06:26:44Z

“once again, work too late, try to squeeze in too much, end up awake way too late. the circle of derp.” (RT @inflammatoryrit)

Sharing

2009-07-10T20:00:00Z

Sharing code is like sharing minds. It is every bit as intimate as a relationship with a lover — moreso, perhaps.

Unlike the things we share in other areas of our lives, there is no option for dishonesty, no artifice in which to hide. By your comments, patterns, and bugs, your deepest and most intimate truths are exposed. The very working of your mind is laid out in the editor's colored monotype for all to see, tracked in meticulous detail by your source control system, critiqued in cold honesty by the heartless computer.

Perhaps it is right that programmers seem to give up a piece of their humanity in the pursuit of their craft. What we get in return is worth the price.

Topics

2009-07-02T20:00:00Z

I keep coming back to one singular topic.
So I tell myself that I'm not going to write about that.
But then, I don't write anything.

The purpose of this is to unblock, and it has no other purpose. I'm writing for no audience, and only capturing the output because it may be interesting to see what unblocking uncovers.

So write about whatever you want. Obsession is obsessed, but it's honest about it, at least, and that's the point.

Bees

2009-05-25T20:00:00Z

We shared our chapstick.

Foo Hack 4.0

2009-05-05T06:21:15Z

Partly because I haven’t been writing much CSS these days, and partly because it’s been just over a year since the last redesign, I felt like this site needed a face lift.

Fonts

I’ve been getting more and more excited about the impending freedom of the @font-face CSS declaration. The prospect using any true-type or open-type font in a web page without resorting to flash or images is incredible. If you’re viewing this site in Safari 4 or the latest beta releases of Firefox, Opera, and MSIE, you’ll have a much improved experience.

The body text is set in Bodoni SvtyTwo OS, chosen for its beautiful italics (not an oblique, but a true italic), dramatic hinting, and straightforward lines. I chose the OS over the regular Bodoni SvtyTwo because of the more stylish “lower case” numerals: 1234567890.

Update: I decided to go with Hoefler Text instead of Bodoni. Bodoni looks nice, but without the stronger hinting, it was hard to read on some monitors, especially for folks who are crazy enough to browse the web on Windows. Hoefler Text has a lot of what I liked about Bodoni, and was a strong contender, but it’s not free-as-in-speech. However, it is free-as-in-MP3, so I’ll use it until Hoefler & Frere-Jones send me a C&D. I also widened the column a bit to accommodate the wider typeface.

The headings are set in Qlassik Medium, by Dimitri Castrigue. It has just enough fun to make it stand out, but not so much as to be ridiculous.

Code snippets are set in the famous Bitstream Vera Sans Mono. I’d initially planned to set all things monotype in my favorite coding font, Century Schoolbook Mono. Once you get used to coding with serifs, nothing else feels right. Unfortunately, it doesn’t include bold and italic versions. While the OS will “fake” bold and italics with fonts that it has installed, it won’t play ball when asked to manipulate dynamic fonts linked from a CSS file. I put CentSchBook Mono first, so if you have it (which you should!), it’ll work. Otherwise, you’ll get Bitstream.

If you don’t have a browser that understands dynamic fonts, you can grab them from http://foohack.com/tpl/fonts/.

Layout

I really wanted to stretch my CSS abilities a bit, and also apply some of the principles of typographic design that I’d been learning about lately. The single-column is about 66 characters wide in the target font, and feels about “right” for readability.

Despite my best intentions, a lot of feature creep had somehow taken over, prompting the last revamp. In this version, I put back some features that I’d removed, and removed some things I’d left in.

The vertical measure is set at 30px, with a font-size of 20px. While that’s a bit large, I’ve always favored erring on the side of “too big”, and the Bodoni just felt too cramped at 16/24.

I’ve also taken a lesson from the print world, and set all my bullets and other adornments off into the margins, such that the text is kept strictly flush left. The only element that I couldn’t figure out how to do this with is the <q> element when it starts a paragraph. In that case, it should have a text-indent somewhere around -0.5ex, but I couldn’t manage to do that without borking quotes that start somewhere in the middle of the paragraph.

Since all the major browsers support resizing fonts that are set in pixels, and “zooming” is now preferred over simple font resizing, I went ahead and set everything in pixels so that the math would be easier. There’s really no benefit to so-called “fluid” layouts that are set in ex or em measurements. Plus, browsers that support dynamic fonts seem to have a really hard time with ex/em measurements, since the layout is rendered before the font has downloaded. I do hope that gets fixed at some point, but doing layout in pixels was a welcome return to basics.

Supported Browsers

The luxury of a personal site: I didn’t test even once in MSIE, and I don’t plan to.

Also, since a lot of the style is in the typography, anyone with a browser older than 6 months isn’t going to see my beautiful styles. But they’ll see their own default font settings, I suppose, and that’s probably fine.

What do you think?

Fish Sticks

2009-04-17T20:00:00Z

"I don't know why your fried potato story made me think of donuts."

"I know! That's why I'm having fish sticks."

Responsibility

2009-04-09T20:00:00Z

Sometimes I just can't believe how much Yahoo trusts me. I'm basically rewriting the core javascript for a major project, and the justification is that I said we had to.

Kind of Awesome

2009-04-01T20:00:00Z

(adj.) A goodness that is worthy of awe, and yet subtle and/or understated. A deep wonderousness that seems effortless, even obvious.

Robots, Ninjas, and Bears

2009-03-30T20:00:00Z

Ninjas

Ninjas are mammals.
Ninjas fight ALL the time.
The purpose of the ninja is to flip out and kill people.

Source

Robots

Robots say that they love you.
Robots pretend to be your friend.
Robots might kill you in the end.

Source

Bears

Bears are mammals.
Bears eat fish.
The purpose of a bear is to flip out and maul everyone.

Source

The Calm of Exertion

2009-03-29T20:00:00Z

How often have I burnt myself out, and felt so overwhelmed, like there was never enough time, never enough of me to cover all the corners, spread and stretched as a sheet over too large a bed, butter across too much bread, thin and weary, cracking and torn, pulled to shreds. So many times I've forgotten this lesson, forgotten to pick up my reward, and paid the price for it.

I've told myself that work is to blame. I point the finger at the likely suspect, but the fact of the matter is that I was to blame, and didn't want to admit I'd caused my own pain.

There is plenty of time.
Everyone will get by just fine.

Work hard, and rest deeply. That is the Key.

Discipline

2009-03-29T20:00:00Z

Find the minimum valuable creation.
Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity.
Minimalism is power.

Uhoh?

2009-03-28T20:00:00Z

I think I might have just lost the whole archiving thing with git rebase.

Or not. Let's see.

A New Structure

2009-03-28T20:00:00Z

I updated the structure of my snips.

As part of the commit of this change, I'm going to also have this snip.

Then, I'm going to post a commit message about the change, and about the fact that this snip is commenting on the change.

The metaness of this blog pleases me.

On Leadership

2009-03-27T20:00:00Z

Report down, not up. Change direction, don't ask someone else to.

Bruce Lee on Limits

2009-03-23T20:00:00Z

“If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.”

Rainbows

2009-03-04T20:00:00Z

We've seen 4 rainbows in the last few days at work. Now I'm worried that:

Rainbows don't impress me any more.
If I don't see one today, I'll be depressed.

Rainbows have undone my happiness.

Thanks

2009-02-28T20:00:00Z

I'm smitten. It's overwhelming. Definitely more smit than I can whelm.