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Arnt Gulbrandsen
Personal blog · rant.gulbrandsen.priv.noprogramminghistory
Arnt Gulbrandsen writes Eloquence unleashed, a personal blog at rant.gulbrandsen.priv.no about programming and history. Since 2012, 6 different Hacker News readers have linked it 25 times, most often “Email tracking pixel support”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-20, and you can follow it by feed.
25mentions?
6HN people?
2012–2025first – last linked?
Most-linked posts?
- Email tracking pixel support2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-10-22
- Trolltech's Documentation Process2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-05-01
What Hacker News says?
I use linux/X11, with a compose key and a large repertoire. If I type compose ( 4 ) (that's four keystrokes, in sequence) I get ④, compose ~ e gives me ẽ, which I'm sure some language uses but I've no idea which. http://rant.gulbrandsen.priv.no/xcompose describes my configuration (as it once was).
Comment linking /xcompose
on “Solar Surpasses Gas and Wind as Biggest Source of New U.S. Power”Submitted Trolltech's Documentation Process as a story · 56 points
HN discussionBut Jon Postel didn't mean what people now think he did. His famous principle is about border cases, when the spec is vague, handwavy or thought by some to be vague. It's not about the other cases. Remember that Jon Postel was the RFC editor. He didn't want anyone to ignore the RFCs, he wanted the RFCs to be readable and pleasant, and he wanted implementers to do the right thing when when an RFC erred on the side of…
Comment linking /postel-principle
on “OpenSSL Security Advisory”Submitted Email tracking pixel support as a story · 23 points
HN discussionI really like those ;) They're not as practically useful as —, ⅓, → and a few others, but I really like them. I type compose (a) to get ⓐ. See https://rant.gulbrandsen.priv.no/xcompose for how I did it, it's mostly a matter of using someone else's .xcompose file from github.
Comment linking /xcompose
on “Cognitive deficits in people who have recovered from Covid-19”Submitted Writing Class Documentation as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThey updated to 8.1 and I got a security update not many months ago. It's a fine phone for some people. It runs the apps I need to run and is tiny, and timewaste apps are unattractive. BUT the battery lifetime. https://rant.gulbrandsen.priv.no/jelly is verbiage about.
Comment linking /jelly
on “Essential shutting down after failing to launch ‘GEM’ smartphone”Submitted Ex-Troll on how they managed to produce excellent Qt documentation as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI think this niche doesn't get filled because of the gap between what you want and what you buy. The gap between what you (ought to) want and that which makes a good first impression on you. I have, use and like a small android phone called "unihertz jelly pro", small enough to fit in any pocket and good for my use. After a while with that phone, using a phablet one evening was an absolute eureka moment. I was looki…
Comment linking /unihertz
on “Business card-sized Japanese phone bucks the giant-phone trend”Submitted SEO at Trolltech ca. 1996 as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThey do more than aggregate public sources. I looked into it in 2013, and found data in maxmind that was available from no public sources. https://rant.gulbrandsen.priv.no/digital-envoy-maxmind jfyi
Comment linking /digital-envoy-maxmind
on “Changes to accessing and using Geolite2 databases”Submitted A four-fours advent calendar as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI feel like ranting here, but I'll keep it short. Documentation is a task that is never trivial, but it can be made bloody hard, or not, if you optimise for that. If you ignore documentation as a priority you're optimising for everything else, which implicitly breaks documentation. But it doesn't have to be impossible, if the trivial aspects as designed to be minimal and the impact on documentation is allowed to dom…
Comment linking /udoc/trolltech-documentation-process
on “Why programmers don’t write documentation”Submitted An advent calendar for nerds as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI've been using a Unihertz Jelly Pro for a while now. That's tiny and runs android 7. The thing that has surprised me most is that it's all utility. I can run Google Authenticator, I can read what I need to read, I can find out when the bus leaves, but the phone is no fun. The tiny screen doesn't attract or tempt me. I thought I'd get something small that fits in every pocket, but stumbled upon something else. Maybe…
Comment linking /unihertz
on “Smartphone sales fall for the first time, says Gartner”Depends on the threat model. In India, the threats were things like the ability to print enough forms without leaks to counterfeiters, transport them on Indian roads, store them until polling day in villages where no doors have locks, and so on. And while the counting was highly parallel and scrutinised by auditors, it was also painful, because here was a rule along the lines of "both vote forms and counters' hands…
Comment linking /indian-election-machines
on “Argentina's voting machine system leaked?”I did, and liked it. https://rant.gulbrandsen.priv.no/jelly I use a Sony XZ1C now, though. The battery lifetime of the Jelly was a problem when I was travelling, and at 52 years I need a bit larger fonts. I wonder whether to get this one, though... Unihertz rocks, the phone supports the android upgrade stuff (DSU), the battery might just be big enough for me, AND: I loved the way the Jelly just wasn't a timewaste ma…
Comment linking /jelly
on “Jelly 2, World's Smallest Android 10 4G Smartphone”When I worked on Qt, I introduced differences between code and documentation on purpose. I deleted documentation about things that worked in principle but led to user trouble and support questions, I deleted things that we intended to change in a future version. https://rant.gulbrandsen.priv.no/udoc/use-the-source-luke Which is more accurate, the documentation that describe the current and future source code, or tha…
Comment linking /udoc/use-the-source-luke
on “Trolltech's Documentation Process”You might be interested in this: https://rant.gulbrandsen.priv.no/indian-election-machines One size does not fit all (threat models).
Comment linking /indian-election-machines
on “Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro is barred from office until 2030”Some of those derisive people are terribly draining. Enough to be a factor in in abandoning an open source project and getting a job at Accenture instead. I might go to fosdem this winter. If I do, it'll be the first such event in almost 20 years: https://rant.gulbrandsen.priv.no/openssl-hate
Comment linking /openssl-hate
on “Open source development is not sustainable”Ah, email tracking. If you're a puerile hacker, tired after a long day's work and need to send someone a gentle prank, https://rant.gulbrandsen.priv.no/hack/web-fonts-email is for you.
Comment linking /hack/web-fonts-email
on “How email tracking works behind the scenes”Going off on a tangent… I'm not sure whether it's improved or deteriorated IMO, myself. I'm pretty sure I have an opnion, but I'm honestly uncertain what it is. It seems to change by the day. I wrote https://rant.gulbrandsen.priv.no/programming/suckiness-today on a frustrated day long ago, but maybe I'd rather make the opposite point today: If modern code reuse leads to less knowledge of what the (third-paryt) code…
Comment linking /programming/suckiness-today
on “Why is software quality worse than a decado ago”It's not that simple. Two of my last five laptops were macs, three linux boxes, if you consider corporate laptops as "mine". One of the three linux laptops just worked beautifully (wrt. battery and other driver issues), one didn't at all, and one worked poorly until I installed some software that shouldn't matter for battery lifetime, and since then it's had excellent battery management. There was a long list of dep…
Comment linking /hardware/attovax
on “Unix legend Ken Thompson announces he's switching From macOS To Raspberry Linux”I wrote a semi-rant on mine years ago, http://rant.gulbrandsen.priv.no/arnt/ideal-office If your office is yours, you're free to optimise it as the years pass. Mine has grown ever more colourless and quiet. I'm struggling with keeping the rest of the family out at the moment. It matters to me, not to them. I want to feel that family doesn't exist when I'm in there. Not sure what to do.
Comment linking /arnt/ideal-office
on “Show HN: IndieWorkspace – A sneak peak at remote workspaces”Maybe, or maybe not. Look at India's for a different outcome. They had many problems related to paper:p printing enough voting forms, transporting them on village roads, storing them until election day in villages where there might or might not be a door with a lock, etc. I wrote this during a HN thread long ago, IIRC: https://rant.gulbrandsen.priv.no/indian-election-machines The MSB is perhaps that the machine is v…
Comment linking /indian-election-machines
on “Finnish hacker Harri Hursti hacks U.S. voting machine on live podcast”