The VSCode Debugger is the only thing that keeps it installed on my work machine. Lately I've been doing all my editing in Helix and switching over to Xcode for debugging though. It's even more consistent than VSCode, which occasionally leaks memory and blows itself up. I haven't had time to really learn lldb at the command line but it may have to be the next step. The only other thing I miss is VSCode's Find-All/Replace-All because it maintains the include/exclude paths and Helix doesn't (that I know of)

Doesn't Helix support debuggers via the Debug Adapter Protocol (DAP)?

It's even worse if your subscription is packaged with Hulu. Then all the Hulu kids stuff gets pulled in automatically, which includes all kinds of garbage that I very much do not want my daughter watching. All the YouTube-based influencer kid shows with little kids who show off new toys and extravagant vacations each episode. My only solution was to unsubscribe from Hulu, which stinks because they do have some good stuff. It really is the epitome of enshitification considering how easy it would be to implement a block button at the very least.

Yeah, I'm a Nix user and fan but I'm still going to be stuck fixing it when it breaks. The biggest thing that I have to remind myself is that reproducible != "just works." Once you get to what you want, you're set but until then and every change after, there's a chance you'll be in the weeds.

At least from my usage, the fact that your configuration is all tied to whether the entirety of nixpkgs-unstable is working can be a real headache. Like recently when CMake was upgraded to 4.0, it took down a healthy handful of packages, which meant you couldn't update anything until things were resolved or you were really fluent in Nix hackery. (I was the former)

I have sworn off nixpkgs-unstable for basically anything but testing. I’m now on the 6 months stable release cadence and never going back. Much much better experience. Unstable really is unstable. And that’s great! But it’s not for me.

It's really easy to pull those handful of packages from an older version of nixpkgs. I had to do that when there was some buggy firmware in the latest (at the time) version of linux-firmware. You just:

1. Add a new input to your flake of nixpkgs pinned to a specific commit or branch. For example:

  nixpkgs-91fab2d.url = "github:NixOS/nixpkgs/91fab2d3e8ee06464f3c9896e84c97982b771fc3";

2. Add an overlay where you replace those packages with versions from the older nixpkgs. For example:

  (final: prev: {
    inherit (pkgs-91fab2d) firefox libreoffice;
  })

Thanks! I will write this down so I can try it out next time. I really want to get better at these little things but it can be tough sometimes without concrete examples like this.

I will always cheer on anyone who shares their curiosity.

It was a great question and now I have a ton of new things on my reading list.

I really hope that Max becomes fully accessible in a text based format one day. It's so cool and I've spent a few months randomly through the years building neat plugins for Ableton but, for me, it would be so much stickier if it was code. Especially now with AI assistance, Claude can still be helpful but it hallucinates a lot harder when trying to describe visual code.

Would love to see this, as someone who has been heavily using Live since 2006 and is finally getting into proper coding in middle-age. Having a way to augment Live in a text-based coding format would be greatly welcome.

While I'm not holding my breath, Ableton the company are transitioning into a steward-ownership model in which the stewards will have decision rights over the company. So I have hope that it will continue to grow in ways that are less affected by market considerations and that are a little more opinionated and specialized. Not to mention that Ableton own Cycling 74 (creators of Max/MSP).

So it's not out of the realm of possibility.

you can use Javascript with Max. It's a bit unwielding in its handling of multi-JS-file projects, but it can be done.

Not everything in Max is exposed to your code, but you really can do a lot from the JS side of things.

I had no idea! And I'm learning Javascript, so that's a nice coincidence.

I was deep into Max/MSP around 2010 and made a personal vow to leave it alone. The potential to reinvent the wheel and build tools instead of completing records was too much.

Now I'm in a more mature place, so I could see myself diving back into it eventually.

you can get the LLM to output max patches in JSON and copy paste directly into max. it was pretty decent at it when I tried and would probably be even better with relevant recent documentation in context.

Max is basically a programming language already: message passing, scheduling, state, abstraction, even metaprogramming

Unpopular because it’s a bad idea. You’re now hiring better liars and scaring away humble talent.

And if you stop doing it, you now have a group who were polygraphed and a group who were not.

PTSD is not usually what happens when taken without supervision either. I think there's a large chasm of experiences between lifelong healing and lifelong damage with regard to psychedelics. I have pretty limited experience with it and came to the conclusion that it's not for me. But of the people I know who do them or have at one time, I don't think I know anyone whose life has been changed by them.

Of all positive integers less than 10, only 4 are even numbers. 8 is one of the only. right?

"8 is one of the only" is a little off because it doesn't have an object, it relies on that being implicit from the prior sentence. "Only" here is an adjective, not a noun. The usage is a little awkward.

It would be more correct to say "there are only 4 positive integers less than 10. 8 is one of them."

Thanks for this. I never knew how much I'd like it if George Saunders started a tech blog.

Omg this is high praise I’ll never be able to write anything again

By the reasoning of "Now TM owns the venue, they are the promotor, they are the manager(to an extent) and have full control of the tickets, and the secondary market." I would think the artist is 100% at the mercy of TM rather than in on the game. With that kind of control, why would they share with the artist?

> With that kind of control, why would they share with the artist?

Its in both parties benefit to find a mutually lucrative deal. More so when the customer is not that bright and motivated by "passion" and "fan culture". That same sort of passion (about music) leads to all parties underpaying a lot of staff (people want to be in the industry for some reason). Tech has its own version of this, see game development for over worked and under paid talent who does the job out of "passion".

"Influencers" selling burgers, backpacks, sports drinks and screw drivers is no different than concert t-shirts, posters, coffins and condoms. An artist is more than just the songs they sing. It's the film / TV that work shows up in. It's the other products artists can sell (a lot of this is other peoples art but...) and the things they can promote. They can exist without TM but the same cant be said in the other direction.

And some times the artist do get screwed. When your management and TM/LN folks have a relationship that dates back to Bill Graham Presents there is likely a back side deal that gives the management an extra kick.

Without the artist there's nothing to sell?

I feel like there's always going to be a surplus in artists. I think it would require something like a union of artists to have any kind of leverage in that regard. Maybe something like ASCAP or BMI?