Archive.today (/ .is / .ph - though .is has been failing to load for me the last few weeks, I assumed it was a dead domain until your comment) is great for sharing an offline, or paywalled, article or single page.
But for full websites that are more than a single page, the IA's Wayback Machine is even better (if they've got the site archived), because unlike archive.today they crawl links and archive (some of) them too - so for example you can click on links such as "user guide" or "what we want" and see the archived versions of those pages, whereas if you click on them from the archive.today page it hasn't saved them so it tries and fails to do it now.
If this is a DNS issue (e.g. CloudFlare blocked due to refusing to send DNS location). Just put the IPs in your hosts file, it's easy. https://dns.google/query?name=archive.ph
Not having heard of them is understandable, I hadn't either, but the reason people have been downvoting you is that it took you longer to write out that comment than it would have taken to do a quick google and see there's a wikipedia page that starts with "SonicWall is an American cybersecurity company that sells a range of Internet appliances primarily directed at content control and network security."
But @sambazi's comment talks about ISPs doing the blocking.
Yes of course, internet appliances are capable of DNS-blocking whatever their operators tell them to block. This is not news to me, nor to anybody else reading Hacker News.
Also the vendor of this appliance does not classify things as "Extremism". The owner/operator of the appliance does those things. Claiming that "SonicWall is classifying it as Extremism" is like claiming that "Intel marked your email as spam" because your SMTP server uses an Intel CPU.
the point is that most isp's use 3rd party blocklists (sometimes by government mandate) and chedabob gave a source of one popular vendor doing just that
I was suggesting it had been incorrectly classified previously by a single vendor, presumably in response to a report (or a court order) for a single page. There's no nuance to the filtering, so the whole site gets blocked.
It happens regularly for Imgur: Someone posts CSAM, and the whole site gets added to Cleanfeed (the UK ISP level filter) for a couple of hours until the original image is removed.
I think it was Cloudflare but you might be right that it was Google - either way, I'm just using default DNS from my ISP, and only had issues for the past few weeks (and only with that one domain, .is not the others - while iirc the known problem with one major DNS provider was due to some choice of DNS setting that means all archive.today domains are affected not just one/some.)
No matter which upstream DNS you use, if you have a local resolver, you might be able to configure it to resolve archive domains with google's dns, which has consistently worked for me for years.
If you use dnsmasq (either bundled inside pihole or not), this line in its config will make it use google dns to resolve archive.is and archive.ph:
server=/archive.is/archive.ph/8.8.8.8
I started using blocky instead of pihole recently, and I have this in my blocky config.yaml to do the same thing:
The 9front people have always been a funny bunch. I've always wanted to use plan9 tools seriously partially because of their websites and docs are so amusing but I never could get past just running it in a vm.
Acme is genuinely worth trying, you can run it on Linux/Mac without a VM [1]. I'm pretty sure Russ Cox [2] and Rob Pike use it as their daily driver which is insane because it doesn't even have syntax highlighting. I used it for years when I was in school as an exercise in masochism, but I learned a lot about Unix, and the mouse-driven workflow actually grew on me. I hated that it required a 3-button mouse though, made trackpads basically unusable.
The guy built a programming language in the 2010's by ignoring everything that happened in the computer science community since his heyday, and tried to spin it as an improvement.
The ways people found to circumvent his hubris are pretty entertaining [1].
Go's backstory dates back to Alef/Inferno and Plan9, and tangentally related to Plan9's C compiler suite.
If any, Go was born to replace C/POSIX and all the bloat which grew up over 40, (forty) years. The same with 9front with Unix, which is closer to the Unix philosophy than any close relative, such as OpenBSD. Everything it's a file under 9front, even the windows themselves.
I'm not that far behind him but on the basis that syntax highlighting is sometimes completely wrong. That leads to a lot of head scratching when it turns out the highlighting engine is wrong and the code is not. Of course this is because a lot of the engines use naive regex to do the highlighting rather than a parser.
Calling it childish is a little wrong though for sure.
I still use Acme as my daily driver, with a good smattering of Sam on my vertical monitor for various things. About 90% of my scripts are written in rc or use the tools in $PLAN9/bin (awk, sed, seq, etc.)
It gives me good consistency between Mac and Linux (or WSL), so I highly recommend plan9port as a gateway to plan9 and 9front.
Just installed it. Any tips for what the interesting features are? The one that stood out from the video linked to in another comment was running any selected text as commands.
Agree. But... It might actually hurt? Having rainbow colored guitar strings (to see their difference more clearly) would give me very childish vibes. Before disparaging them though I would first consider whether they actually might be useful but would quickly determine that you don't really need physical colors to differentiate the strings, since the brain over time develops various mental models to identify/differentiate them. But... if most guitars had colored strings and everyone would learn using them to begin with there would be a lot of people defending them when criticized. Criticism would be something like "but it's so much clearer to see which is which" and "bet you have trouble finding the G string", "if it doesn't hurt, why criticize it?".
One clear example for me is that using `less` is always painful for me due to having used syntax highlighting as a crutch for so long. Those not using colored stuff will feel right at home with a wider range of tools. Just like people who don't use colored guitar strings can pick up any guitar.
If you're always using your own gear then there's not that much downside to customizing it. Unless those times where you need to use something else is of utter importance.
tl;dr: It definitely hurts something. Question is to which extent. Answer to that is probably that it depends.
I don't mean to dictate how anyone views it; just saying that you can't generalise about people's needs.
highlight -O ansi file.txt | less -R
The Python syntax in Debian's highlight isn't quite right, but feel free to use your favourite syntax highlighter. That's what the UNIX philosophy is all about!
You're taking this in weird directions. Are you trying to argue that there are no benefits to being comfortable reading code without syntax highlighting because there are tools you can apply in every scenario?
And just to counter your suggestion I often use `less` in environments where I am unable to install anything (or it doesn't make much sense to, like a Docker container).
You're trying to apply technical solutions to a problem where I was trying to highlight (pun intended) the cognitive function of a mind trained to read code without syntax highlighting vs one reliant on it (like my own). It doesn't matter if you can solve this particular one. Nor does it change the fact that someone who is used to seeing monochrome code might view colored code as playful and/or childish (like seeing colored piano keys).
I wasn't trying to argue more than that one point: the stuff about `less` was just in case you didn't know about the alternatives. I have no argument with the third paragraph of your most recent comment.
I would argue that it makes sense to install any tools that would help you, in your development environment, and that it makes little sense to ship an entire OS in your Docker container, so you shouldn't be in a situation where you have `less` and no syntax highlighting – but I'd argue with a lot of aspects of Docker-driven development, and I've learned there's little point.
I also don't use syntax highlighting because I prefer not to. But what makes it childish for other people? Let other people optimise their workflow as it suits them.
And things are often colour coded for adults to help them differentiate information quickly as well. Are yellow hazard signs childish or the different colours on traffic lights?
tl;dr: A piano with colored keys (other than black/white) would "look childish". I don't even understand why this is a debate. It seems to be more about being offended by being called childish vs. thinking about what the actual issue is. And it's not even about being called childish, it's about someone who thinks syntax highlighting looks childish.
Edit: Also, traffic signs are colored to help you make quick decisions in an unfamiliar environment. A musical instrument isn't an unfamiliar environment for long. Nor is reading code.
Coloured other than black and white? So it's about certain colours then. Perhaps if they used different shades of gray on their code it would look more grown up.
I disagree that a piece of code ever becomes as familiar as an instrument. I've actually done both coding and music professionally. Once you learn an instrument you know it to the point you can close your eyes and play what you want. But I was very rarely reading the same code for very long periods, and as such I was always navigating new structures in a sense.
> It seems to be more about being offended by being called childish vs. thinking about what the actual issue is
Yes, that's exactly it. It's very rude to dismiss other people's needs as childish just because you don't share them. No one needs to discuss if highlighting is useful or not, we are all grownups capable of making that decision. I'm myself surprised that this needs to be pointed out
> Coloured other than black and white? So it's about certain colours then.
That's the most reasonable way I am able to interpret what the original author was saying (tongue-in-cheek). Maybe it was a super petulant/arrogant/narrow way of viewing things but I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt.
> I disagree that a piece of code ever becomes as familiar as an instrument. I've actually done both coding and music professionally. Once you learn an instrument you know it to the point you can close your eyes and play what you want. But I was very rarely reading the same code for very long periods, and as such I was always navigating new structures in a sense.
Keep in mind I happily use syntax highlighting myself (to the point of feeling crippled without it). I'm just trying to put myself in the shoes of someone who a) claims to not use it and b) sees it as "childish" (presumably because of being colorful and looking playful).
I've also played music (part-time professionally) and agree that it's not a direct comparison. But you're also kind of illustrating my point: With the instrument your mind creates a bunch of patterns (note placement and fingerings) to the point where you can play the instrument without the instrument, not only making color-coded keys/strings completely redundant after the initial familiarization process but even the whole visual experience! So without a doubt do colored piano keys look childish to a professional.
With coding you obviously cannot get rid of the need for visuals completely, but (I imagine) without syntax highlighting your brain is forced to use other methods of quickly identifying comments, functions, variables etc. Like ear training. If you use notation as a crutch to learn songs you won't develop the proper pattern recocnition required to identify notes/intervals/chords by ear. And while you're right that you're rarely looking at the same code for long periods of time, you're still looking at functions, objects, variables, constructors etc, like when learning music by ear. Maybe a better analogy would be using some kind of transcription software rather than your ears (with the argument that it's more precise than your ears etc etc). :D
I am not a neuroscientist so I cannot compare non-colored pattern recognition to the reading/grokking proficiency acquired through using syntax highlighting, but I'm doubtful that many people commenting on this topic are either. And thus I just wanted to bring forth an alternative viewpoint on this.
And for this being practicable, what I assume your main point is, the non-syntax-highlighting camp would only have a strong argument in favor of it if the end goal was to eventually work without it (like a pianist eventually not looking at the keys anymore). In that case it would (likely) act as a crutch, hindering the pattern recognition from forming. The scenario of not having syntax highlighting available only happens intermittently IRL, like sometimes being forced to use `less` to read code without syntax highlighting and feeling annoyed/crippled because your pattern recognition isn't trained to read it comfortably. For me it's a compromise I'm easily willing to make but I'm also not going to bash others for choosing a different path.
I now feel a bit tempted to try going without syntax highlighting for a couple of weeks and see how it goes. I used to do it all the time back in the day (BASIC, Turbo Pascal, batch scripts etc) but that was quite a while ago.
> Yes, that's exactly it. It's very rude to dismiss other people's needs as childish just because you don't share them. No one needs to discuss if highlighting is useful or not, we are all grownups capable of making that decision. I'm myself surprised that this needs to be pointed out
The responses I was reading was mostly people getting defensive very quickly, offended by how someone dares to claim that their method is not The Right Way™. I saw it (and still see it) in a way more light-hearted way of expressing the difference in approaches, rather than being dismissive. :shrug:
Perhaps like jazz vs. classical musicians, one joking about the other's sense of time and the other about their sloppiness or lack of sight-reading skills. Only an insecure musician (or autist) would take those comments seriously. They are different styles of music and require quite different approaches. It's completely okay (or should be!) to make fun of them from the viewpoint of a completely different approach. No one with a proper understanding of the difference in styles would feel the need to defend against such a comment (or take them seriously to begin with).
Maybe some designer/typographer nerd should make syntax highlighting rules that only subtly emphasize different syntax categories. I am thinking something with italics, slightly different font weights, and very limited use of colours. A possible starting point would be to just use italics for comments and normal text for the rest of the code.
Why? I haven't used syntax highlighting for years. I can see comments instantly because a block or line of natural language looks very out of place amongst blocks of code. Adding italics just makes it harder to read.
I don't agree with their comment, but they were specifically replying to someone who suggested italics, not bringing it up as a synonym for highlighting.
We commonly did that before full syntax highlighting became common. More "aggressive" syntax highlighting became common because a lot of us want things to stand out much more.
I think they mean "Some broken links in the usesthis.com interview". Some of the commercial product links are broken, which is hardly surprising in an interview from 2011 about technology.
That page loads one line at the time. I know plan9 should be very cluster friendly, can't they balance incoming http traffic load across multiple nodes?
You can run plan9 on any hardware that supports x86, VESA and has a nominal (32MB) amount of memory. It's not a complex system and doesn't really leverage any hardware acceleration, so you don't gain too much from specific hardware, beyond a supported Ethernet card.
That being said, I don't know anyone that daily drives it, beyond maybe a few members of the team itself.
We ran out at probably over a thousand concurrent accesses.
Not much, but it is served with a shell script on a pretty small dual core vultr node.
For whatever reason, it seems like a few months ago we also attracted the attention of some poorly behaved spiders and script kiddies, so at the moment we're serving a quarter terabyte per month on average (not including the HN bump).
It desperately needs that zine no-halftone-screen* look. No mention of central scrutinizers or catholic school girls, either. I've never colon-q'd something so fast in my life. Like, gag me with a spoon.
* the halftone screens are not for use with tobacco or legal herbs.
It's a paper printing semi-analogue process to solve the problem (not enough colors, need to simulate colors spatially) that that semi-digital electronic screens use dithering for.
It's dual to "anti-aliasing", where we use an abundance of colors to simulate missing spatial resolution.
I can't do anything on my own comment. I don't know why it got flagged tho. Don't people read hacker news? Wasn't there an article yesterday or so about CSS discussions around "masonry" layout options to be added to grid or flex or whatnot? If you're ignorant move on I guess.
But for full websites that are more than a single page, the IA's Wayback Machine is even better (if they've got the site archived), because unlike archive.today they crawl links and archive (some of) them too - so for example you can click on links such as "user guide" or "what we want" and see the archived versions of those pages, whereas if you click on them from the archive.today page it hasn't saved them so it tries and fails to do it now.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240430041911/https://only9fans...
If this is a DNS issue (e.g. CloudFlare blocked due to refusing to send DNS location). Just put the IPs in your hosts file, it's easy. https://dns.google/query?name=archive.ph
90.156.209.190 archive.ph
90.156.209.190 archive.today
90.156.209.190 archive.is
90.156.209.190 archive.md
90.156.209.190 archive.fo
It changes every few months.
also: source?
Yes of course, internet appliances are capable of DNS-blocking whatever their operators tell them to block. This is not news to me, nor to anybody else reading Hacker News.
Also the vendor of this appliance does not classify things as "Extremism". The owner/operator of the appliance does those things. Claiming that "SonicWall is classifying it as Extremism" is like claiming that "Intel marked your email as spam" because your SMTP server uses an Intel CPU.
I'm still seeking a source here.
I was suggesting it had been incorrectly classified previously by a single vendor, presumably in response to a report (or a court order) for a single page. There's no nuance to the filtering, so the whole site gets blocked.
It happens regularly for Imgur: Someone posts CSAM, and the whole site gets added to Cleanfeed (the UK ISP level filter) for a couple of hours until the original image is removed.
If you use dnsmasq (either bundled inside pihole or not), this line in its config will make it use google dns to resolve archive.is and archive.ph:
I started using blocky instead of pihole recently, and I have this in my blocky config.yaml to do the same thing:[1]: https://9fans.github.io/plan9port/
[2]: https://usesthis.com/interviews/russ.cox/
I can't not quote that in a Cereal Killer voice now.
The ways people found to circumvent his hubris are pretty entertaining [1].
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/5penft/parallelizing_...
Go's backstory dates back to Alef/Inferno and Plan9, and tangentally related to Plan9's C compiler suite.
If any, Go was born to replace C/POSIX and all the bloat which grew up over 40, (forty) years. The same with 9front with Unix, which is closer to the Unix philosophy than any close relative, such as OpenBSD. Everything it's a file under 9front, even the windows themselves.
Rust wants to replace C++ mainly.
Calling it childish is a little wrong though for sure.
It gives me good consistency between Mac and Linux (or WSL), so I highly recommend plan9port as a gateway to plan9 and 9front.
It should work similarly on X11, though I never tried.
What makes it better than say vi and not just different?
One clear example for me is that using `less` is always painful for me due to having used syntax highlighting as a crutch for so long. Those not using colored stuff will feel right at home with a wider range of tools. Just like people who don't use colored guitar strings can pick up any guitar.
If you're always using your own gear then there's not that much downside to customizing it. Unless those times where you need to use something else is of utter importance.
tl;dr: It definitely hurts something. Question is to which extent. Answer to that is probably that it depends.
I'ma stop you there: more than one brain exists, and they don't all behave the same.
> using `less` is always painful for me
`less -R` preserves colours.
Let me stop you there then: From that perspective viewing syntax highlighting as childish is normal for some brains. Empathy goes both ways.
> `less -R` preserves colours.
Preserves but doesn't magically add.
And just to counter your suggestion I often use `less` in environments where I am unable to install anything (or it doesn't make much sense to, like a Docker container).
You're trying to apply technical solutions to a problem where I was trying to highlight (pun intended) the cognitive function of a mind trained to read code without syntax highlighting vs one reliant on it (like my own). It doesn't matter if you can solve this particular one. Nor does it change the fact that someone who is used to seeing monochrome code might view colored code as playful and/or childish (like seeing colored piano keys).
I would argue that it makes sense to install any tools that would help you, in your development environment, and that it makes little sense to ship an entire OS in your Docker container, so you shouldn't be in a situation where you have `less` and no syntax highlighting – but I'd argue with a lot of aspects of Docker-driven development, and I've learned there's little point.
Note that I was quoting Pike earlier.
tl;dr: A piano with colored keys (other than black/white) would "look childish". I don't even understand why this is a debate. It seems to be more about being offended by being called childish vs. thinking about what the actual issue is. And it's not even about being called childish, it's about someone who thinks syntax highlighting looks childish.
Edit: Also, traffic signs are colored to help you make quick decisions in an unfamiliar environment. A musical instrument isn't an unfamiliar environment for long. Nor is reading code.
I disagree that a piece of code ever becomes as familiar as an instrument. I've actually done both coding and music professionally. Once you learn an instrument you know it to the point you can close your eyes and play what you want. But I was very rarely reading the same code for very long periods, and as such I was always navigating new structures in a sense.
> It seems to be more about being offended by being called childish vs. thinking about what the actual issue is
Yes, that's exactly it. It's very rude to dismiss other people's needs as childish just because you don't share them. No one needs to discuss if highlighting is useful or not, we are all grownups capable of making that decision. I'm myself surprised that this needs to be pointed out
That's the most reasonable way I am able to interpret what the original author was saying (tongue-in-cheek). Maybe it was a super petulant/arrogant/narrow way of viewing things but I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt.
> I disagree that a piece of code ever becomes as familiar as an instrument. I've actually done both coding and music professionally. Once you learn an instrument you know it to the point you can close your eyes and play what you want. But I was very rarely reading the same code for very long periods, and as such I was always navigating new structures in a sense.
Keep in mind I happily use syntax highlighting myself (to the point of feeling crippled without it). I'm just trying to put myself in the shoes of someone who a) claims to not use it and b) sees it as "childish" (presumably because of being colorful and looking playful).
I've also played music (part-time professionally) and agree that it's not a direct comparison. But you're also kind of illustrating my point: With the instrument your mind creates a bunch of patterns (note placement and fingerings) to the point where you can play the instrument without the instrument, not only making color-coded keys/strings completely redundant after the initial familiarization process but even the whole visual experience! So without a doubt do colored piano keys look childish to a professional.
With coding you obviously cannot get rid of the need for visuals completely, but (I imagine) without syntax highlighting your brain is forced to use other methods of quickly identifying comments, functions, variables etc. Like ear training. If you use notation as a crutch to learn songs you won't develop the proper pattern recocnition required to identify notes/intervals/chords by ear. And while you're right that you're rarely looking at the same code for long periods of time, you're still looking at functions, objects, variables, constructors etc, like when learning music by ear. Maybe a better analogy would be using some kind of transcription software rather than your ears (with the argument that it's more precise than your ears etc etc). :D
I am not a neuroscientist so I cannot compare non-colored pattern recognition to the reading/grokking proficiency acquired through using syntax highlighting, but I'm doubtful that many people commenting on this topic are either. And thus I just wanted to bring forth an alternative viewpoint on this.
And for this being practicable, what I assume your main point is, the non-syntax-highlighting camp would only have a strong argument in favor of it if the end goal was to eventually work without it (like a pianist eventually not looking at the keys anymore). In that case it would (likely) act as a crutch, hindering the pattern recognition from forming. The scenario of not having syntax highlighting available only happens intermittently IRL, like sometimes being forced to use `less` to read code without syntax highlighting and feeling annoyed/crippled because your pattern recognition isn't trained to read it comfortably. For me it's a compromise I'm easily willing to make but I'm also not going to bash others for choosing a different path.
I now feel a bit tempted to try going without syntax highlighting for a couple of weeks and see how it goes. I used to do it all the time back in the day (BASIC, Turbo Pascal, batch scripts etc) but that was quite a while ago.
> Yes, that's exactly it. It's very rude to dismiss other people's needs as childish just because you don't share them. No one needs to discuss if highlighting is useful or not, we are all grownups capable of making that decision. I'm myself surprised that this needs to be pointed out
The responses I was reading was mostly people getting defensive very quickly, offended by how someone dares to claim that their method is not The Right Way™. I saw it (and still see it) in a way more light-hearted way of expressing the difference in approaches, rather than being dismissive. :shrug:
I've always felt that Linus didn't show enough skin.
Maybe find them amusing - or happy to see their creation being pushed forward
That being said, I don't know anyone that daily drives it, beyond maybe a few members of the team itself.
Found a minor mention of it on the Wayback Machine: http://web.archive.org/web/20221114163056/https://100r.co/si...
We ran out at probably over a thousand concurrent accesses.
Not much, but it is served with a shell script on a pretty small dual core vultr node.
For whatever reason, it seems like a few months ago we also attracted the attention of some poorly behaved spiders and script kiddies, so at the moment we're serving a quarter terabyte per month on average (not including the HN bump).
SOMETIMES THE REASON IS YOU'RE STUPID AND MAKE BAD DECISIONS.
9front System.
* the halftone screens are not for use with tobacco or legal herbs.
EDIT: referring to parent's mention of https://9front.org/propaganda/
when you used analogue b/w reproduction to produce a 'zine, continuous-tone images would be badly posterised unless you used screens to halftone them
It's a paper printing semi-analogue process to solve the problem (not enough colors, need to simulate colors spatially) that that semi-digital electronic screens use dithering for.
It's dual to "anti-aliasing", where we use an abundance of colors to simulate missing spatial resolution.