Hold up, nix added containerization? How did I miss that? I will have another look now!

Nix is containerization. Here is firing up a temporary little container with a new python version and then throwing it away once I’m done with it (although you can also do this with more complicated setups, this is just showing doing it with one thing only):

[hap@glimmer:/proc/69235/fd]$ python --version
Python 3.12.8

[hap@glimmer:/proc/69235/fd]$ nix-shell -p python39
this path will be fetched (27.46 MiB download, 80.28 MiB unpacked):
  /nix/store/jrq27pp6plnpx0iyvr04f4apghwc57sz-python3-3.9.21
copying path '/nix/store/jrq27pp6plnpx0iyvr04f4apghwc57sz-python3-3.9.21' from 'https://cache.nixos.org/'...

[nix-shell:~]$ python --version
Python 3.9.21

[nix-shell:~]$ exit
exit

[hap@glimmer:/proc/69235/fd]$ python --version
Python 3.12.8

The whole “system” you get when moving from Nix to NixOS is basically just a composition of a whole bunch of individual packages like python39 was, in one big container that is “the system.” But you can also fire up temporary containers trivially for particular things. I have a couple of tools with source in ~/src which, whenever I change the source, nix-os rebuild will automatically fire up a little container to rebuild them in (with their build dependencies which don’t have to be around cluttering up my main system). If it works, it’ll deploy the completed product into my main system image for me, but if it doesn’t then nothing will have changed (and either way it throws away the container it used to attempt the build in).

Each config change spawns a new container for the main system OS image (“generation”), but you can roll back to one of the earlier generations (which are, from a functional perspective, still around) if you want or if you broke something.

And so on. It’s very nice.

I mean if it makes you happy, I won’t tell you to do anything different. I think a certain amount of it is just prejudice against Docker on my part. Just in my experience NixOS is the best of both worlds: You can have a single coherent system if everything in that system can play nice with each other, and if not, then things can be containerized completely that way still works too. And then on top it has a couple of other nice features like rolling back configs easily, or source builds that get slotted in in-place as if they were standard packages (which is generally where I abandon Docker installs of things, because making changes to the source seems like it’s going to be a big hassle).

I’m not trying to evangelize though, you should in all seriousness just do what you find to be effective.

Yeah, I can agree with that, I’m just saying at the moment of shutdown isn’t the time to do that and often the programs that are holding up my shutdown are doing it for reasons of their own, not because they’re trying to help me by saving my work. Just do autosave and let me shut my stuff down.

Huh.

IDK man, my experience is that Nix solves the problem you originally talked about and a bunch of others, pretty effectively. Among other things if things “just… don’t work” you can trivially roll back to an earlier working config, and see what changed between working and not-working, and so what would be a pretty grueling debugging process in some other environment becomes pretty easy to sort out.

But whatever. If for some reason Docker makes you more happy and not less, you’re welcome to it and best of luck.

What didn’t you like about it? I am just curious; I finally stepped out of using Debian for everything which I have been doing for approximately 200 years, and tried NixOS, and to me it is incredibly nice the way it solves a lot of these issues.

venv or nix

These are 2014 problems

My laptop will send a signal to all programs telling them to shut down, which includes cleaning up their stuff, and then it unmounts the drives, and then it shuts down. It just doesn’t wait forever and make me fix the problem if some program is having trouble shutting down. That is the correct behavior.

I do get that it’s nice to be protected against having your work blown away. As a first step, the idea of checking with every program to make sure it’s okay to turn off was a good progress, back in the past when it was first invented. The solution in the present day to that is autosave. The solution is definitely not to leave all the user’s work unsaved for a potentially unlimited amount of time, and then refuse to shut down if there is any terminal that still has an ssh session open, any settings window still open, or any GIMP session with files exported but not saved as .xcf.

Literally 2/3 of those obstacles happen pretty much every time I shut down my Mac, and I have to wander through the programs resolving programs’ problems that have nothing to do with saving my work. It’s annoying. I do understand that, with the other way, you have to go around checking that you have no work unsaved before shutting down. But, if you are mature enough to do that, then the “init 0” way is objectively better.

2025 no autosave skill issue

I just flip through all the workspaces, make sure there’s nothing going on I care about, and then hit the button.

Computers that teach you not to do that, but instead to just blindly pick “shut down” and then assume that the computer will protect you against having anything unsaved, but also refuse to shut down if there’s some app this is not cooperating, have 0 upside compared to the other way.

2. When I hit the power button, it turns off. It still does its shutdown and all, but it’s not an extended negotiation where I find a bunch of programs that are refusing to “let me” do what I want the computer to do, and have to try to make each of them happy. It just turns off.

Going through brutal things will destroy your empathy. I am fine with this guy standing trial for his crime but I don’t think it was really “his fault” at the end of the day after how he grew up.

Some people have strong character and they can turn out fine no matter how you treat them. Some people, you can give every opportunity in the world to, and they’re still going to turn towards the dark. For most people, it’s down to circumstances.

That’s why it is important to create good circumstances. The schools, the police, the meeting places where people hang out, the shops and the structure of the economy. It all has to serve the good, it has to be alive with life. Because the people who are in it will be molded.

And after that, citizens of the US. This all has nothing to do with deportation, it just happens that starting with the “other” is convenient because it lulls US people into thinking it won’t happen to them. The fact that ICE was already full-on into Gestapo tactics made things a little smoother, too.

1. Because they want to know who you are
2. Because what are you going to do about it? They’re going to make money regardless

One or the other

There’s usually one of the buttons you can hold down to mute the ads, near the bottom right in the little phalanx of buttons all around the screen.

If you find it, label it “MUTE” in marker or something, spread the word.

If the logistics of the trip make it realistic, trains are infinitely better in every respect.

Real human-sized tables. Plugs for charging. No security, no entering a whole other little authoritarian world where people make you take your shoes off and throw away your water. Get up and walk around. Go get a sandwich! The world is your oyster. Watch cool stuff going past (this one can also be true on airplanes but is more intermittent). It’s just better.

No idea about tools although I hope you find something.

Two related suggestions that will change your life:

1. Grunt Fund if you are making decisions about equity
2. Have people estimate the total time for a task, rigidly enforce that every man-hour spent on a project has to be allocated to one of those tasks (including the elusive but vital “oh shit we forgot” task), keep track of the coefficient between the two. It’ll be different for different people sometimes. When estimating a project, have people come up with estimates and then multiply by the coefficient. Be transparent with everyone about this system. It’ll revolutionize your project management life once people get used to it. I tried to find a blog post which explains more detail, but honestly, it’s not complicated, and Google is too shit now to find it.

If you want to make changes without dealing with update hassles:

• Make a child theme to your current theme which inherits from it.
• Add a functions.php to your child theme, which only includes specific overrides for functionality you want to override.
• Presto change-o you are immune to stuff getting ruined with updates. (Aside from API changes and things but those are relatively rare in my experience, for the most part it all just works.)

Hugo is nice if you want extensive customization and you’re okay fighting with Go code and templates, a little bit.

Can you name three incidents since 2020 where the cops have not been charged? I know of one, and even that one has an asterisk next to it. Before 2020 it was multiple every year, there used to be these massive walls with names written on them.

It absolutely has. Before Rodney King it was always fine. From 1992 to about 2014 it was mostly fine. From 2014-2020, it was a debate, and after 2020, they’re pretty much always guilty. There’s a whole interesting conversation to be had about why it was that all kinds of riot and peaceful protest had basically 0 result until 2014-2020, and then in 2020 it all of a sudden starting working significantly.

Anyway, now under Trump, some of the reform is going backwards. There were some outlier departments that were still in the 1992 mode, and the feds were doing some things to try to come down on them, whereas now it’s the opposite, Trump is actively pardoning dirty cops. Great stuff.