binarycat

A niche programming pattern to satisfy the borrow checker.

an incredibly simple protocol for reliably and correctly downloading large immutable files.

My Plea to the W3C: Giving a semantic meaning to an “Obsolete” element.

One simple trick to fix the worst part of the platform.

refining the ideas behind HTTP, BitTorrent, Gemini, and 9p to create a simple protocol for reliably transferring large immutable files.

Firefox's best-kept secret feature.

When you bookmark a page, firefox opens an editor with the following options: * Name * Location * Tags

But there's actually a secret fourth field...

What

imagine you have two devices, a client and a server, connected in a peculiar way:

1. the server cannot send messages to the client without the client asking for them
2. there are two channels, a request on one channel can only be responded to on the same channel
3. the first channel has infinite bandwith and is perfectly reliable, but each message is obscenely expensive.
4. the second channel is free, but can only send messages with a single payload bit, and the message has a 50% chance of being dropped

You've just been tasked with building a layer on top of this so that the server can send messages to the client, what do you do?

Rust is a language with a lot of features. Sometimes those features have rough edges. Sometimes those rough edges are funny. Let's look at some.