Gavin Zhao @[email protected]

a very special caturday post today

i have this theory that truly great used bookstores all run out of space on the shelves, and end up piling books along the floors of every aisle.

i have this second theory that a bookstore cannot be truly great until it has a store cat.

today, i stopped in the Double Read Book Nook in Edson, alberta - on the trans-canada highway - and now have a third theory: that all great bookstore owners know how to write 6502 assembly language.

this bookstore has been around for about 70 years, hidden away in the basement of an old building on the highway through town.

when i last visited three years ago, the store cat - Max - was only 4 months old and a rambunctious nutsy kitty who chased me around the store for half an hour while the bookstore owner kept apologetically whispering "Max! Stop harassing our customers!" 😆

now, Max is a Big Boy™️ and has his own kittyharness. he follows his catdad around the store, begging for treats which he catches with both front paws, and sticks them straight into his mouth before they can hit the floor.

i got to spend an hour talking with max's dad - Bruce - the new owner of the store. it turns out that he learned 6502 assembly on an Apple ][ in high school, and went on to university-level programming on IBM mainframes before switching careers.

if you happen to find yourself driving to Jasper this summer, stop at the Book Nook. at the very least, you'll find a weird old book - and Max adores any attention he can get.

#books #bookstodon #canada #caturday #alberta #yeg

家人同事還離不開 LINE，有些朋友只能靠 IG 私訊才能聯絡，甚至還有人在台灣彼此用 WeChat 聊天？把這篇快速懶人包傳給他們，說明為何 開源通訊 App 才是真正長久安心的選擇。

https://www.tomfichtner.com/article/zh/liu-ge-lianluo-fangshi-ba/

#privacy #opensource #e2ee #signal #fediverse #whatsapp #telegram #instagram #facebook #meta #boycottmeta #line #wechat #隱私 #開源 #加密

@adrian oh but they don’t need the tech talent pipeline anymore, remember? they have AI and armies of vibe coders now

If you've ever struggled with trait/typeclass compiler errors, or if you're interested in better user interfaces for compiler diagnostics, check out our upcoming PLDI paper: "An Interactive Debugger for Rust Trait Errors"

Rust famously has good error messages. But we found that with the right interface, people become ~3x faster at identifying the root cause of a trait error. See our blog post, including a live demo in your browser:

https://cel.cs.brown.edu/blog/an-interactive-debugger-for-rust-trait-errors

The EU is introducing an energy label for phones, together with mandatory requirements for phones sold in the EU;

- 5 years of software updates (AFTER they stop selling the device in the EU)

- providing important hardware parts (during sale and for 7 years after), including free software (if needed), to every repair shop, within 5-10 business days

- batteries have to make 800 charging cycles and still be above 80% original capacity

And on top of that, phones and tablets need this energy label (which also includes a fall damage durability and repairability score), and abide by the above requirements, from 20 June 2025.

(https://energy-efficient-products.ec.europa.eu/product-list/smartphones-and-tablets_en)

Lovely chart of doggie body language by Lili Chin https://www.doggiedrawings.net/

just some seedy #breadposting

Har har yes

(by Instagram user @art_storefronts)
https://www.instagram.com/p/DG3LqmtM64E/

They're baaaaack!

Explained: Biodegradable vs Compostable vs Non-Biodegradable plastics ♻️
Part of our larger plastics #infographic
https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/plastic-crisis-pollution-recycling-microplastics-bioplastics/

Measurement unit differences between the U.S.A. and most of the world.

(creator: unknown)

G̶o̶o̶g̶l̶e̶r̶… ex-Googler.

https://nerdy.dev/ex-googler

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Guess what % of plastics have been #recycled? No prizes :(