Just my blogroll - BlogFlock

A New Package.el Feature - Irreal

2026-01-11T15:46:16.000Z

One of the problems with the ELPA package manager is that you never know what you’re getting when you upgrade. The package manager tells you what packages can be upgraded and you can choose to upgrade or not but you don’t know what’s changed.

Happily, a new feature has just been committed. Now you can examine a diff between the old and new versions to get an idea of what has changed. It’s not ideal if you can’t read Elisp but at least those who do read it can get an idea of how the new version differs from the previous.

It’s not a big thing, I suppose, but it does show how Emacs is continuing to improve and make its users’ lives better. This new capability probably won’t be available until the next release but it’s something to look forward to.

Four stable kernel updates - LWN.net

2026-01-11T15:41:13.000Z

The 6.18.5, 6.12.65, 6.6.120, and 6.1.160 stable updates have been released. They all contain a small patch set fixing a scheduling regression associated with idle balancing; the 6.6.120 and 6.1.60 updates also contain a large set of other important fixes.

The Sunday Papers - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-11T11:44:08.000Z

Sundays are for trying to work out what the hell we’re supposed to do when every videogame company above a certain scale has business links to some kind of fearful death machine. And also, for rediscovering the joys of small fan heaters. My fan heater is called Phil. He hunkers by my feet and fills my ears with a soothing roar. Occasionally I try to dry socks on him and he gets mad, switches off and sulks for 15 minutes, but beyond that, we have a pretty good working relationship. He’s humming away right now as I assemble this round-up of Top Reads.

Oh yes, I will take a look at the Vampire the Masquerade and Indian folklore inspired RPG Rakshasa, thanks - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-10T22:56:17.000Z

Every once in a while, a game rocks up that so quickly finds itself in my Steam wishlist I don't even remember clicking the button. Today, that game is Rakshasa, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines and Baldur's Gate inspired first-person RPG set in modern India where you must face off against demi-gods and "centuries-old flesh-eating monsters" inspired by Indian folklore. Yeah! Hell yeah! Yeah, yeah sign me up!

Take a shot at Wizard Pool, a fun twist on the cue sport filled with magical balls and shapeshifting tables - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-10T21:30:01.000Z

Wizard Pool! It is, probably, exactly what you think it is. You are a wizard, and you play pool. Well, admittedly there is a smidge more to it than that, alongside a healthy amount of charm. Styled in a way that looks like an N64 game in the kind of way you remember that era looking rather than how it actually looked, you play as Kue, a budding young wizard tasked by his uncle to complete a trial in the form of a tower filled with magical, illogical pool tables.

As The Sims Project Rene switches to being "mobile-first," EA vaguely tease the series' "next evolution" - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-10T18:58:26.000Z

I think as long as you make a new year's update post before the incredibly arbitrary date of January 13th, you're still able to do so without me thinking "come on, it's almost February", which is exactly what EA did with their new years Sims update post. Perhaps reassuringly, after word came last year of EA's concerning acquisition, the post opens by doubling down on what the team has previously said regarding staying committed to their values (those values including inclusivity is welcome though I wish they'd be more explicit about who is being included). But the post also, sort of, goes into what's next for the series.

Pilot a big ol' fort with steampunky legs in the deserty extraction shooter Sand: Raiders of Sophie when it launches in March - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-10T17:59:52.000Z

Hear ye, hear ye, another extraction shooter is almost upon us, this time the smaller but still quite bold in scope Sand: Raiders of Sophie. Last time I personally heard of this game it was just called Sand, which doesn't sound great for that whole search engine thing, though I'm not entirely convinced by the subtitle. Anyway, this extraction shooter is set in an alternate 1910 where you get to roam the desert in a steampunky fortress with legs, and it's got a release month!

Silent Hill f writer Ryukishi07 explains how the cultish town isn't just a place now, but a "phenomenon" - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-10T16:59:26.000Z

Last year, after a bit of a wait, Silent Hill was released, and with it came some changes to the series. The combat was a lot more actiony, the format for multiple endings was drastically different, but the most obvious change was its setting. We're not in Silent Hill anymore, Toto! We're in Ebisugaoka, Japan, also a fictional town, though clearly not a fictional country. And that's because Silent Hill, the place, is now also Silent Hill, the "phenomenon."

Running Emacs As A Service - Irreal

2026-01-10T15:44:46.000Z

Matthias over at Ahoi Blog makes an observation that I’ve also made many times: Discussion about Emacs startup times ends as soon as you run Emacs as a daemon. The startup is instantaneous and if you prefer a Vim-like way of operating where you start and stop Emacs each time you need it you can have it. Of course, Emacs doesn’t really stop. It’s still running as a daemon and will pop up a new frame for you whenever you need one.

With this model, the Emacs startup time is absorbed into the system boot time, which presumably happens rarely. The question is, how to get the daemon started. If you want to have it happen at boot time, the exact method depends on your operating system.

Matthias shows how to do this in Linux. It’s a little finicky because of systemd but really just amounts to making an entry in a configuration file. You can see the details in his post. The other issue is how to start, stop, and interact with the Emacs daemon when it’s running. Matthias has a simple script that automates all that so that you don’t worry about the intricacies of systemctl and journalctl.

The other possibility is to simply never exit Emacs. That’s what I do. I run it in its own workspace so I don’t have to worry about hiding it when it’s not in use. I also start server mode so that I can instantly pop up a frame (either GUI or terminal) if I want to for some reason. I really do think this is the best solution but others obviously disagree. If you like to bring up your editor when you need it, quit when you don’t, and your editor is Emacs, you should take a look at Matthias’ post. It will tell you how to run Emacs the way you want to and you’ll never have to think about startup time again.

Canonical call for testing their Steam gaming Snap for Arm Linux - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2026-01-10T13:30:09.000Z

Doing something similar to what Valve will do for the Steam Frame, Canonical have announced a Steam gaming Snap package for Arm.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

What are we all playing this weekend? - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-10T08:00:00.000Z

Saturdays are for putting your hand in a bucket of ice, swallowing a mouthful of honey and lemon, and breathing a sigh of relief. All that practice you put into your welcome handshake and 'Here comes trouble!' paid off. Almost every member of the treehouse has been successfully greeted home.

All bar one. But I'll get him. I'll get him good.

Evans: A data model for Git (and other docs updates) - LWN.net

2026-01-10T01:06:59.000Z

On her blog, Julia Evans writes about improving Git documentation, including a new data model man page she wrote with Marie LeBlanc Flanagan, and updates to the pages for several other Git sub-commands (add, checkout, push, and pull). As part of the process, she asked Git users to describe problems they had run into in the documentation, which helped guide the changes that she made.

I'm excited about this because understanding how Git organizes its commit and branch data has really helped me reason about how Git works over the years, and I think it's important to have a short (1600 words!) version of the data model that's accurate.
The "accurate" part turned out to not be that easy: I knew the basics of how Git's data model worked, but during the review process I learned some new details and had to make quite a few changes (for example how merge conflicts are stored in the staging area).

Larian hope to have future companions spend less time jumping straight into your bed, and more time with each other - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-09T17:11:19.000Z

With Baldur's Gate 3 and its gang of rowdy adventuring mates in the rear view mirror, Larian are hoping to improve a couple of aspects of how they handle companions going forwards - a process that'll likely kick off in Divinity. In particular, the development of deeper relationships between party members and a more subtle build to the moment when the player's relationship veers into deeply horny territory are on their list of learnings.

Another Mu4e Workflow - Irreal

2026-01-09T15:49:03.000Z

It’s been a long time since I’ve written about my Mu4e configuration. Back in 2015, I read Ben Maughan’s post on his system for achieving Inbox Zero with Mu4e. I was immediately taken with the idea and although it took me some time, I eventually implemented his ideas at Irreal. For the last ten years I’ve been using Maughan’s system which requires that every email be dealt with immediately by either acting on/answering it, deleting it, or generating a TODO to deal with it later. In any event if the email isn’t deleted, it’s saved in a single directory relying on Mu4e’s excellent search ability to retrieve it if necessary

My system differs slightly from Maughan’s in that I have a temporary directory to save emails that I want to save for a short while but then delete. The main example is notices from Amazon that they’ve shipped some order. When it arrives, I delete the entry but in the meantime I have the details saved if I need them.

James Endres Howell has a very nice post that describes his Mu4e workflow. He uses his email provider to sort incoming email into work, personal, and a few other low priority mailboxes. His system views emails in two states: waiting to be acted on or irrevocably consigned to a permanent resting place that he dubs “the archive”.

He has Mu4e set up so that messages that he’s sent or that are in the archive are shown newest first because they are the most recent and apt to be what he’s looking for and those in the other mailboxes oldest first on the grounds that have been hanging around the longest and need to be dealt with before the more recent ones.

Howell has code implementing all this that you can examine if your interested. Although I like his post and code, the minions have been tugging on my sleeve insisting that I mention that his horrible Emacs theme makes the code virtually unreadable. Protip: Don’t put darkblue text on a black background. Your over forty self will thank you.

[$] READ_ONCE(), WRITE_ONCE(), but not for Rust - LWN.net

2026-01-09T15:47:14.000Z

The READ_ONCE() and WRITE_ONCE() macros are heavily used within the kernel; there are nearly 8,000 call sites for READ_ONCE(). They are key to the implementation of many lockless algorithms and can be necessary for some types of device-memory access. So one might think that, as the amount of Rust code in the kernel increases, there would be a place for Rust versions of these macros as well. The truth of the matter, though, is that the Rust community seems to want to take a different approach to concurrent data access.

Emacs Lisp Doc String Curly Quote Controversy (2015) - Xah Emacs Blog

2026-01-09T15:14:24.000Z

2026-01-08

emacs curly quote docstring Alan Mackenzie 2026-01-08 14970

Emacs Lisp Doc String Curly Quote Controversy (2015)

What's that appalling stench? Ah yes, Pathologic 3 is out on PC today - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-09T14:48:41.000Z

This is proving to be one of the worst weeks of my life, for various reasons (no, not because Jason Schreier is mad at me). In my time of need, I open the magic portal of escapism and find Pathologic 3 looking back at me like a poison toad.

Larian will no longer use GenAI for Divinity concept art, and any genAI used for other games will be "trained on data we own" - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-09T14:23:55.000Z

Larian CEO Swen Vincke has provided an update as to how the studio are planning to go about handling the use of generative AI in the making of Divinity. In an effort to alleviate concerns, the newly decided plan is to avoid using it in any capacity as part of the concept art development process. In general, Larian are aiming to ensure any in-game generated assets in their games come from models "trained" on data Larian already own, rather than risking the charge of creative theft or actual copyright breach.

Security updates for Friday - LWN.net

2026-01-09T13:59:47.000Z

Security updates have been issued by Debian (pdfminer and vlc), Red Hat (kernel, kernel-rt, and microcode_ctl), Slackware (libtasn1), SUSE (apptainer, curl, ImageMagick, libpcap, libvirt, libwget4, php8, podman, python311-cbor2, qemu, and rsync), and Ubuntu (gnupg, gnupg2, gpsd, libsodium, and python-tornado).

Hooded Horse ban AI-generated art in their games: "all this thing has done is made our lives more difficult" - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-09T13:00:02.000Z

Manor Lords and Terra Invicta publishers Hooded Horse are imposing a strict ban on generative AI assets in their games, with company co-founder Tim Bender describing it as an “ethics issue” and “a very frustrating thing to have to worry about”.