The Beacon API is used to send an asynchronous and non-blocking request to a web server. The request does not expect a response. Unlike requests made using XMLHttpRequest or the Fetch API, the browser guarantees to initiate beacon requests before the page is unloaded and to run them to completion.

I started writing this post because, for whatever reason, I keep forgetting what the difference is between a ring and a group, which is funny to me because I never forget the difference between a semiring and a semigroup – although other people do, because it’s quite easy to forget! So, I wanted a fast reference to the kinds of algebraic structures that I am most often dealing with in one way or another, usually because I’m writing Haskell (which has some reliance on terminology and structure from abstract algebra and category theory) or I’m trying to read a book about category theory and they keep talking about “groups.” Wikipedia, of course, defines all these structures, and that’s fine, but what I need in those times is more of a refresher than an in-depth explanation.

I just learned that
you can use it to review a git commit like this and I thought that was really
cool.

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.

Games can be made in many different ways. Many games are made using big, general purpose game engines such as Unity and Godot. I enjoy using the Odin Programming Language combined with Raylib.
Odin is a C-like programming language and Raylib is library for drawing graphics, checking input and playing sounds. So it’s just a program that uses a simple library, no engine!
There are no objectively best ways to create games.

When people say Rust is a “safe language”, they often mean memory safety.
And while memory safety is a great start, it’s far from all it takes to build robust applications.
Memory safety is important but not sufficient for overall r…

A well-equipped ASCII diagram builders freely available on the internet.
It stresses portability, simplicity, and immediateness.

In modern Java, the visitor pattern is no longer needed. Using sealed types and switches with pattern matching achieves the same goals with less code and less complexity.

build2 is an open source (MIT), cross-platform build toolchain that aims to approximate Rust Cargo's convenience for developing and packaging C/C++ projects while providing more depth and flexibility, especially in the build system.

Using systemd to avoid having to write some risky code

A single-user “wiki” engine powering the ThoughtStorms wiki.

Comparison between types of API tokens.

I've been running NetBSD on a RockPro64 since NetBSD 10-BETA, and I'm still happy with it now with NetBSD 10-RELEASE. I'm always looking for hardware to hack NetBSD though, and I recently watched a FOSDEM 2024 video: NetBSD 10: Thirty years, still going strong!. The Pinebook Pro laptop was mentioned at one point, which has the same RockChip SoC as the RockPro64. That reminded me I'd been wanting to give this inexpensive ARM 64 laptop a try.