Sun, Aug 10, 2025

• Skip biomejs for now. It uses tabs (not spaces) and does not respect .gitignore by default. Handling these is too much work.

• Single-executable bundling. node --experimental-sea-config sea-config.json builds standalone binaries.
• ES Modules. Use node: prefix for built-in imports. import { createServer } from 'node:http';
• Watch mode. Use node --watch file.js auto-reloads when file.js or dependencies change.
• Env file. Use node --env-file=.env loads .env as environment variables.
• node:test is a full-featured test framework with --watch and coverage.

• Privacy incubates creativity. People self-censor when watched. Privacy shields fragile ideas.
• Power assymetry. Big players can leverage openness more, e.g. Cambridge Analytics + Facebook data.
• Context matters. What's harmless in one setting can be toxic in another.
• One-way door. Data can't be unshared. Don't scrap brakes dreaming of perfect roads. Anticipate tyrannical regimes / cultures.
• Not your call. You don't share your neighbour's medical records.

• I want to not have external stimulation. You can kind of see, on the walls are this light green. I'm told that at mental institutions they use that on the walls. It's like a calming color. ... the main thing I worry about in my computer is -- it really has to be completely silent. If the cat comes up, it sits in my lap. And I want to hear the cat purring.
• I did not start Linux as a collaborative project. I started it as one in a series of many projects I had done at the time for myself, partly because I needed the end result, but even more because I just enjoyed programming.
• I'm actually not a people person. But I do love other people who comment and get involved in my project.
• The big point for me was not being alone and having 10, maybe 100 people being involved. Going from 100 people to a million people is not a big deal -- to me. Well, I mean, maybe it is if you want to sell your result then it's a huge deal. But if you're interested in the technology and you're interested in the project, the big part was getting the community.
• So Git is my second big project, which was only created for me to maintain my first big project. And this is literally how I work.
• Well, I do code for fun -- but I want to code for something meaningful so every single project I've ever done has been something I needed.
• Apparently, my sister said that my biggest exceptional quality was that I would not let go.
• I can't do UI to save my life.
• Good taste is about really seeing the big patterns and kind of instinctively knowing what's the right way to do things.
• Companies like Google and many others have made, arguably, like, billions of dollars out of your software. Does that piss you off? No. No, it doesn't piss me off for several reasons. And one of them is, I'm doing fine. But the other reason is -- I mean, without doing the whole open source and really letting go thing, Linux would never have been what it is.
• I think one reason open source works so well in code (is that ...) Code either works or it doesn't.

/*
  Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: true
  Access-Control-Allow-Origin: https://your-site.example.com
  Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET, HEAD
  Access-Control-Allow-Methods: *

• Drift increases faster than linear with hops.
• Bigger models do better, but constrained prompts (“Copy the text exactly; change nothing.”) have a bigger impact.
• Low temperature improves copying fidelity.
• But even after "forgetting", LLMs reproduce rare content if they're trained on it.

• Speech-to-text. Cannot stress this enough but talking to the machine means you’re more likely to share more about what you want it to do.
• I maintain some basic prompts and context for copy-pasting at the end or the beginning of what I entered.
• I ended up preloading executables on the PATH that override the default ones, steering Claude toward the right tools, e.g. running python asks it to use uv.
• I use the task tool frequently for basic parallelization and context isolation.
• Simply taking time to talk to the machine and give clear instructions outperforms elaborate pre-written prompts.
• Forcing myself to evaluate the automation has another benefit: I’m less likely to just blindly assume it helps me.