bits 0x55 - CW 9 - 26, 2025

It has been a long time. But I finally got my sanity back (spelt: thesis handed in). Anyways…

§§§ AI create more X-Y problems

So I see people talk on social media :

“I want to remove all blank lines form a text document, AI tools {A,B} don’t work, C works, wow amazing, here is how.”

Honestly if you spare one minute searching the internet:

Search for how to remove blank lines with [editor X], and you will immediately get a straight-forward solution. (mind you, these are literally the first entry from google search.

“delete empty lines vim”

:g/^$/d

“delete empty lines vscode”

Ctrl-H -> use regular expressions -> ^$\n -> replace all

“delete empty lines emacs”

M-x flush-lines RET ^$ RET

“delete empty lines notepad++”

edit -> line operations -> remove empty lines

…

See? Instead of these you decide to paste your whole document to a chatbot and let it do it for you. How do you know it only removes the black lines?

So I say it again: AI creates more X-Y problems.

• You have a solid problem
• instead of solving the problem
• you go after “how to prompt the AI to do it for me”.

§§§ shitphone experience

I’m traveling. However my phone has a failing battery and I have no intention to pick a new one as my main phone—the old one can be revived with a new battery. I need some safety for my travel … so I bought a cheap cheap backup phone for 65 euros brand new. To be specific it is a Redmi A3.

I have literally zero expectation from that thing. As long as it connects to the internet I’m happy. But setting it up is absofuckinglutely painful.

It asks you a bunch of questions, as for a google login, as you to agree to tons of stuffs. Fine, I won’t give you sensitive information anyways.

Then it proceeds to “set up your phone”, which is, installing more than 20 of APPs, including shit games, shit social media, shit streaming service. None I’ve ever asked for, or given the option to opt-in/out. And this process takes like an HOUR. Not including me removing those spyware.

I guess installing those sponsored APPs is how they make this phone cheap.

§§§ Good Reads

An Attempt to Catch Up with JIT Compilers—The False Lead of Optimizing Inline Caches. (Poirier et. al.)
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2502.20547

Contemp Culture - aurynn shaw

Systemd as tragedy

Does X cause Y? An in-depth evidence review

Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines?
hmmm. perhaps a good one(s) for the non-techies to de-mystify the AI superstition. However it reads way too subjective and I definitely hate the format: it’s like an apple product page. Can’t you just give me a text wall?

§§§ num num num

I have accumulated quite a few to-reads at @bookmarks. I see interesting stuffs floating around that I don’t have the time to read. Now that I have some time I’ll spend some time chewing some of them.

• I have some bookmarks on “system tracing”, especially in the linux eco-system. I’m making a standalone folder for this

§§§ git practice

I’m thinking about adapting a new git workflow. Namely bare-repo + worktree

for a non-ad-hoc work (e.g. nya)

1. have a local clone into a bare repo (under ~/repos/nya)
2. for a master/feature/bugfix, check out the branch into its own worktree (eng. under ~/projs/nya/{dev,feat1,fix_xyz})
3. delete the worktree once the branch is commited

~/repos/                ~/proj/
    |_ repo1 ------+--> |_ repo1_bugfix
    |              +--> |_ repo1_feature2
    |                   |
    |_ repo2 (stale)    |
    |                   |
    |_ repo3 ---------> |_ repo3_dev

How to trasform an existing repo into bare one (tested, won’t break existing worktrees)

SO answer:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/2200662

In short:

1. commit your work if any, otherwise you will lose them
2. replace your repo content with content under .git

   mv repo/.git repo.git
   rm -rf repo
   mv repo.git repo
   

3. config git into bare repo

   cd repo
   `git config --bool core.bare true`
   

4. optionally, git worktree repair/prune to repair/remove broken worktrees

§§§ Okay. Let’s take this seriously.

since I’ll officially start working for the university from July..