Free-Wrench by Joseph R. Lallo: nice & easy read
In the afternoon I finished the steampunk / science fantasy Free-Wrench by Joseph R. Lallo. It was a nice, funny, and easy read. I plan to read the next book in the series soon.
The Never Game
From the bestselling and award-winning master of suspense, the first novel in a thrilling new series, introducing Colter Shaw.
Soon after I had finished Free-Wrench I started in The Never Game by Jeffery Deaver. I was sucked in immediately, so that's very promising.
What Does an Unprocessed RAW File Look Like?
What does it mean to look at a “straight from camera” RAW photo file? How do RAW processors like Lightroom change the files after they’re loaded, and are RAW files actually images? Those are some questions we’ll be exploring in this article.
Source: What Does an Unprocessed RAW File Look Like? an article by Matthew Miller.
History and effective use of Vim
This article is based on historical research and on simply reading the Vim user manual cover to cover. Hopefully these notes will help you (re?)discover core functionality of the editor, so you can abandon pre-packaged vimrc files and use plugins more thoughtfully.
Source: History and effective use of Vim an article by Joe "begriffs" Nelson.
In the evening I read most of this article. While I mostly use Emacs I
now and then use vi or vim for small edits or to look at a
file. I want to improve my vi/vim skills, and this article showed to
me several interesting features.
What's coming in Python 3.8
The Python 3.8 beta cycle is already underway, with Python 3.8.0b1 released on June 4, followed by the second beta on July 4. That means that Python 3.8 is feature complete at this point, which makes it a good time to see what will be part of it when the final release is made. That is currently scheduled for October, so users don't have that long to wait to start using those new features.
Source: What's coming in Python 3.8 by Jake Edge.
I look forward to the "walrus operator" := and the debugging
support for f-strings. See also What’s New In Python 3.8.
The PGP Problem
Cryptography engineers have been tearing their hair out over PGP’s deficiencies for (literally) decades. When other kinds of engineers get wind of this, they’re shocked. PGP is bad? Why do people keep telling me to use PGP? The answer is that they shouldn’t be telling you that, because PGP is bad and needs to go away.
In the evening I read The PGP Problem on the Latacora blog.
Two quick notes: first, we wrote this for engineers, not lawyers and activists. Second: “PGP” can mean a bunch of things, from the OpenPGP standard to its reference implementation in GnuPG. We use the term “PGP” to cover all of these things.
A highly recommended read, thanks!
Turn your fzf into a live REPL
I just came up with this idea of abusing
fzf --previewflag to turn simple commands into live REPL with instant feedback loop
I installed the fuzzy finder (FZF) earlier this month and have been using it a few times, but this use is new to me. After reading the examples I had to try one of my own, a Perl REPL:
echo '' | fzf --print-query \
--preview 'perl -e {q}'
This works great for small stuff like making a few calculations!
Free-Wrench by Joseph R. Lallo
In the evening I started in the steampunk / science fantasy Free-Wrench by Joseph R. Lallo. It's the first book in a series which looks promising. That, and it's a short read.
Small horned dinosaur from China walked on two feet
With fossils from more than 80 individual dinosaurs, Auroraceratops rugosus, an early horned dinosaur described by a team led by Penn paleontologists, is one of the best represented dinosaur species ever found.
Source: Small horned dinosaur from China, a Triceratops relative, walked on two feet.
The Cutting Edge: a great read
In the evening I finished The Cutting Edge by Jeffery Deaver. The book met my expectations; it was a great read.
How many kinds of USB-C™ to USB-C™ cables are there?
tl;dr: There are 6, it's unfortunately very confusing to the end user.
While I don't own any USB-C device yet, it's good to know that there are 6 kinds of USB-C to USB-C cables:
Here they are, current as of the USB Type-C™ Specification 1.4 on June 2019:
- USB 2.0 rated at 3A
- USB 2.0 rated at 5A
- USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5gbps) rated at 3A
- USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5gbps) rated at 5A
- USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10gbps) rated at 3A
- USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10gpbs) rated at 5A
Read more in How many kinds of USB-C™ to USB-C™ cables are there?, an article by Benson Leung.