Brandon Barker
@nusentry.org
Software builder exploring health, behavior, and humane technology. Rust · Unison · AI · CompBio I like to run, play around with programming languages and other computing tech, read biology and math, as well as lots of popular nerdery (like Tolkien).
I had my first experience using the jcode harness, and it was on a Raspberry Pi 3. Being able to use a massive LLM on such low-end hardware is pretty fun. Here's how cross compiled: github.com/bbarker/jcod... Looking forward to using jcode more
Pull requests · bbarker/jcode
The most RAM efficient harness. Contribute to bbarker/jcode development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
I spoke to Weekend Edition's Scott Simon about the Maine initiative to end Super PACs (now being considered by the First Circuit): https://www.npr.org/2026/08/08/nx-s1-5922464/legal-scholar-lawrence-lessig-on-how-a-maine-law-could-topple-super-pacs
act.eff.org/action/tell-... I haven't posted a call to action for a while, but this seems like one most people could get behind. My older son brought it to my attention.
Tell Congress: Don’t Force Age Checks Online
The House recently passed the KIDS Act, a disjointed internet bill that would pressure websites and apps to determine users’ ages before allowing them to read websites, send private messages, or parti...
act.eff.org
The Deficit Myth by @stephaniekelton.bsky.social is so good. Wish it had been available back when I studied econ would have changed my life. www.amazon.com/dp/1541736192
The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People's Economy
The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People's Economy [Kelton, Stephanie] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People's Economy
amazon.com
www.theverge.com/science/9187... What a miserable time we've created for ourselves.
Trump fires the entire National Science Board
Federal funding for scientific research was already in turmoil.
theverge.com
I built a Tigerbeetle client in Unison by building a Tigerbeetle wrapper client in Zig to the official Tigerbeetle C client. I had no other choice. It was hard and fun. Read more to find out. #zig #unison #tigerbeetle
🪲 Building a Tigerbeetle Client in Unison
Or learn Zig the hard way
notes.kaushikc.org
In the vast majority of cases, AI systems are all remote workers (to the extent they can currently be considered workers).
OK, first pass at a tiling window manager for OSX is a thing 🎉 This is me updating Penrose to remove the X11-isms and then implementing a backend for OSX that lets you drop in pretty much all of the existing functionality. #rust #rustlang #osx github.com/sminez/penro... github.com/sminez/penrosx
Not much experience with @deno.land , but I thought I'd try to install @anthropic.com 's claude-code with it deno install --global \ --allow-read \ --allow-net \ --node-modules-dir=auto \ --allow-scripts \ -n claude-code \ npm:@anthropic-ai/claude-code@0.2.29
I created a #nix flake for @nikl.me 's excellent game template project using the #rustlang #bevyengine : github.com/NiklasEi/bev... I've tested on NixOS, Pop!_OS (Linux) and MacOS (Intel). For those interested in such things, more testing and feedback would be most welcome.
add flake.nix by bbarker · Pull Request #127 · NiklasEi/bevy_game_template
This has been tested on NixOS (Linux), non-NixOS Linux, and MacOS (intel).
github.com
I built a gorgeous slide deck this week using typst and now I will not go back! typst.app It is just `typst` in nixpkgs, btw.
Typst: Compose papers faster
Focus on your text and let Typst take care of layout and formatting. Sign up now and speed up your writing process.
typst.app
Any other #nixos users noticing odd behavior with dev shells in 24.11? nusentry.org/posts/intera...
NuSentry
nusentry.org
As someone who absolutely wouldn't want to program in C, I think it's a great first language for CS. You learn a bit about the computer itself, as well as programming, and eventually, why you don't want to use C.
Sariel Har-Peled@sarielhp.bsky.social · 2y agoWhat should be CS first programming language? (Absolutely not Java, C or Rust [too low level] or Python [too many bad habits, and so so implementation].) I would suggest Julia (if Academia uses it, industry would follow), sure there are other good options... developers.slashdot.org/story/25/01/...
In software development, the hard decisions almost never seem to be this or that, but how much of this and how much of that.
Cagatay Ozdemir@cagatayozdemir.bsky.social · 2y agoWho heard YAGNI before? You Aren't Gonna Need It! A magna states that you should NOT implement something thinking that it will be needed. I don't completely agree but I see the value of it that tries to prevent waste of effort. Correct balance is important!
I really should write a post about writing a lambda calculus in @unison-lang.org ; it has been quite fun to add syntactic sugar: {{ tru = λt. λf. t; }} untyped.tru : '{LCtx untyped.Binding, Exception} untyped.Term untyped.tru = do λ "t" (tt -> λ "f" (ff -> mkVar tt))
And on that note I have a small @unison-lang.org library where I've started to put `@html` utilities: share.unison-lang.org/@bbarker/htm... It isn't properly documented yet; I'll hopefully write a small post about it; posting in case you are looking for a home for your odd html utility function.
Unison Share
Explore, read docs about, and share Unison libraries
share.unison-lang.org
Brandon Barker@nusentry.org · 2y agoThanks to Mitchell Wrosen @unison-lang.org for showing how to move code between projects (why have a utils namespace when you can have a utils library?) github.com/unisonweb/un...
Thanks to Mitchell Wrosen @unison-lang.org for showing how to move code between projects (why have a utils namespace when you can have a utils library?) github.com/unisonweb/un...
Move code to another project? · unisonweb unison · Discussion #5488
Is there a recommended way to move terms or namespaces to another project? I suppose one way would be to make the "old" project a dependency of the new project, move things, then delete the depende...
github.com
Today I found a powerful tool for working with JSON in the terminal! 🚒 🌀 jnv: Interactive JSON viewer and jq filter editor. 🚀 Supports filter auto-completions, hint messages & more! 🦀 Written in Rust! ⭐ GitHub: github.com/ynqa/jnv #rustlang #json #terminal #jq #commandline #interactive #tool
I made a purchase using perplexity.ai today. Overall experience beats using Amazon, although surely Amazon will catch up. Still it's really astounding how much they've missed the consumer #AI boat. It's almost like watching IBM lose control of the personal computer.
Perplexity
Perplexity is a free AI-powered answer engine that provides accurate, trusted, and real-time answers to any question.
perplexity.ai
I love the idea of locally stored LLM chats! venice.ai/blog/welcome... The blog link didn't work but found this one.
Welcome to Venice
Introducing Venice: private, permissionless AI.
venice.ai
I've been using github.com/sminez/penrose on Linux; I look forward to trying komorebi on Windows!
GitHub - sminez/penrose: A library for writing an X11 tiling window manager
A library for writing an X11 tiling window manager - sminez/penrose
github.com
(1/9) Less than a month till Trump. I asked Claude what it thought about his writing - pretty generous! (thread) Related; I've been listening to Lucky Loser recently, which has a lot of interesting history, including about Atlantic City, which I recently visited. Not particularly inspiring though.
Claude
Talk with Claude, an AI assistant from Anthropic
claude.ai
readwise.io is a great way to accumulate notes from different sources and remember them (like Duolingo for your notes); it would be great to have @bsky.app integration, so we could save skeets easily: readwise.canny.io/reader-featu...
Bluesky integration | Reader Features | Readwise
readwise.canny.io
