Merge 87c7f1f18d into 0aef4e7260

README.md

@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-# conditional finality - yet another developer blog
+# gradient ascent - yet another developer blog
 
 This repository hosts the source code for my blog, written in Haskell and
 powered by [hakyll](https://jaspervdj.be/hakyll/) and
@@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ you know what you are doing.
 
 Allow the `.envrc`:
 
-```bash
+```sh
 direnv allow
 ```
 
@@ -28,7 +28,7 @@ Here's how to do it locally.
 
 First, we need to build the site. Run
 
-```bash
+```sh
 hakyll-site build
 
 # sometimes, we need to ignore the cache if things aren't working
@@ -51,7 +51,7 @@ In the directory, there is a `node_modules` symlink to
 `result/lib/node_modules`. If we build the `nodeDeps` package, the
 `node_modules` will be made available at this path. So, run the following:
 
-```bash
+```sh
 nix build .#nodeDeps
 ```
 
@@ -61,7 +61,7 @@ need to re-run the above command or else node_modules will not be accessible.
 
 Finally, run the following to generate the bundled CSS and JS files.
 
-```bash
+```
 rollup -c
 ```
 

flake.nix

@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 {
-  description = "conditional finality";
+  description = "gradient ascent";
 
   nixConfig = {
     allow-import-from-derivation = "true";

src/css/default.css

@@ -13,12 +13,12 @@
 
 @layer utilities {
   .external-link {
-    @apply underline decoration-solid decoration-2 underline-offset-2 hover:text-love-light dark:hover:text-love-dark decoration-love-light decoration-love-dark;
+    @apply dark:text-violet-500 text-indigo-600 hover:bg-indigo-200 pr-3 rounded-sm dark:hover:bg-violet-950 transition-colors duration-300 relative;
   }
-  .external-link-muted {
-    @apply underline decoration-solid decoration-2 underline-offset-2 hover:text-love-light dark:hover:text-love-dark decoration-accent-light decoration-accent-dark;
+  .external-link::after {
+    @apply absolute top-1 right-[6px] w-2 h-2 border-2 border-indigo-600 dark:border-violet-600 rounded-full translate-x-1/2 -translate-y-1/2;
+    content: "";
   }
-
   .small-caps {
     font-variant: all-small-caps;
   }

src/index.html

@@ -18,7 +18,7 @@ title: "youwen wu"
         <div class="rounded-md p-2">
           <a
             href=".$url$"
-            class="w-fit dark:group-hover:text-iris-dark group-hover:text-iris-light transition-colors"
+            class="w-fit dark:group-hover:text-muted-dark group-hover:text-muted-light transition-colors"
           >
             <h3 class="text-2xl">$title$</h3>
             <p
@@ -30,7 +30,7 @@ title: "youwen wu"
           </a>
         </div>
         <hr
-          class="max-w-[200px] border-0 h-1 dark:bg-accent-dark bg-accent-light rounded-lg px-2 group-hover:max-w-[250px] dark:group-hover:bg-iris-dark group-hover:bg-iris-light transition-all duration-400"
+          class="max-w-[200px] border-0 h-1 dark:bg-accent-dark bg-accent-light rounded-lg px-2 group-hover:max-w-[250px] dark:group-hover:bg-secondary-dark group-hover:bg-secondary-light transition-all duration-400"
         />
       </li>
       $endfor$

src/posts/2024-05-25-haskell-blog.md

@@ -2,21 +2,25 @@
 author: "Youwen Wu"
 authorTwitter: "@youwen"
 desc: "a purely functional...blog?"
-image: "./images/conditional-finality.png"
+image: "./images/gradient-ascent.jpg"
 keywords: "haskell, blog, functional programming"
 lang: "en"
-title: "a haskellian blog"
+title: "why I made my blog in haskell"
 updated: "2024-05-25T12:00:00Z"
 ---
 
-Welcome! This is the first post on _conditional finality_ and also one that tests all
+Welcome! This is the first post on _gradient ascent_ and also one that tests all
 of the features.
 
 <img
-  alt="conditional finality"
-  src="./images/conditional-finality.png"
+  alt="gradient ascent"
+  src="./images/gradient-ascent.jpg"
+  style="height: 200px; width: 100%; object-fit: cover"
 />
 
+I'll be writing about computers, code, math, video games, and whatever else
+here.
+
 > A monad is just a monoid in the category of endofunctors, what's the problem?
 
 ## haskell?
@@ -55,6 +59,11 @@ The code highlighting is also generated by hakyll.
 Haskell is a purely functional language with no mutable state. Its syntax
 actually makes it pretty elegant for declaring routes and "rendering" pipelines.
 
+I originally wanted to build this entire blog myself. I had a working version
+with the Svelte framework, complete with GFM rendering, table of contents, KaTeX
+math, code highlighting, static generation, and other goodies. However, it
+seemed like a little too much work to maintain. I switched to hakyll because
+
 1. Haskell is cool.
 2. It comes with enough features that I don't feel like I have to build
    everything from scratch.
@@ -68,7 +77,7 @@ actually makes it pretty elegant for declaring routes and "rendering" pipelines.
 ### speaking of math
 
 We can have math inline, like so:
-$\int_{-\infty}^\infty \, e^{-x^2}\,dx = \sqrt{\pi}$. This site ships semantic
+$\int_\infty^\infty \, e^{-x^2}\,dx = \sqrt{\pi}$. This site ships semantic
 MathML math with its HTML, and the MathJax script to the client.
 
 It'd be nice if MathML could just be used and supported across all browsers, but

src/posts/2024-10-31-a-retrospective-on-nixos.md

@@ -0,0 +1,197 @@
+---
+author: "Youwen Wu"
+authorTwitter: "@youwen"
+desc: "and the future of operating systems"
+image: "./images/gradient-ascent.jpg"
+keywords: "nix, nixos, functional programming, linux, unix"
+lang: "en"
+title: "a retrospective on NixOS"
+updated: "2024-05-25T12:00:00Z"
+---
+
+Many people more knowledgeable than me have already written at length about the
+virtues of NixOS and _declarative configuration_ and _immutability_ and such. I
+doubt what I have to say is particularly novel to those already familiar with
+Nix, but I'd like to discuss precisely what brings people to NixOS in the first
+place.
+
+Many people will introduce NixOS by first introducing the Nix package manager,
+and immediately jumping into terms like _derivation_ and _immutability_ and
+_reproducibility_ and whatnot. And while these are important concepts for
+understanding the system at large, it's not very convincing for people looking
+to try out the system. After all, most people don't (or at least shouldn't!)
+choose their tools based on hype or purported benefits, but based the problems
+that they help them solve.
+
+Instead of immediately evangelizing about the virtues of Nix and NixOS, I'll
+first motivate the reasons for why I chose a tool with exactly its properties
+(but not to worry, the evangelizing will come later).
+
+Essentially: allow me to introduce you to the
+origins of the [NixOS God
+Complex](https://www.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/kauf1m/dealing_with_post_nixflake_god_complex/).
+
+---
+
+My goals for my system are as follows:
+
+- Allow my computing environment to exist on different computers at the same
+  time (essentially, sync up configurations between machines)
+- Precisely control the software and services on my machine. I should be able
+  to obtain binaries of most things to save time, but be able to step into the
+  source and apply patches or configuration as desired
+- For the OS to be absolutely unbreakable
+- Never configure the system twice; once I solve a problem, I should have a
+  reproducible solution that solves it permanently
+- Be able to backup my system configuration and quickly redeploy it whenever
+  needed
+- Avoid janky solutions to these problems that introduce tech debt. I don't
+  want to have to rely on disk images or backups, I want to be able to create
+  fresh installations quickly
+
+Essentially, I want to synchronize the configuration of my entire system across
+multiple machines while maintaining a stable and usable system I'm not worried
+will inadvertently fall apart with a routine system update. When I tweak and
+mess with some settings on my desktop, I should be able to push to a `git`
+repository and pull it down on my laptop and have the tweaks carried over. This
+even includes system-level configuration like the applications installed,
+system daemons, and other core system services.
+
+I want a source and binary based distribution simultaneously. And I want a
+self-documenting reproducible system where every tiny tweak is
+deterministically applied. And I want to be able to install my configurations
+onto a new computer, from scratch, in an installer, effectively creating my own
+custom Linux distribution.
+
+Oh, and I also want to solve the "works on my machine" problem, and never have
+trouble using software someone else packaged and claims works on their end, but
+fails on my computer.
+
+All or even just a few of these goals seem unattainable to the typical Linux
+user (not to mention those still on Windows and macOS $\dots$ _oh, the
+horror!_). But I was in fact able to achieve all of them.
+
+---
+
+To begin, let's examine how one might try to approach these problems with the
+common solutions.
+
+Let's talk about sharing configuration among multiple computers first, which
+can be thought of as some form of "settings sync".
+
+Most people have encountered solutions to sychronizing configuration in two
+ways: either the entire service is ran in the cloud, so it's really the _same_
+environment accessed from multiple places (eg. Google Docs), or it's some often
+half baked opaque solution involving you making an account and sending all your
+settings to a sync server (eg. Mozilla Firefox).
+
+The more technically minded may instead opt to create a "dotfiles" repository,
+holding their vast collection of meticulously crafted configuration files.
+These repos often come with a janky `install.sh` script that does its best to
+install all the files into the correct place. This usually works the first
+time, but trying to keep the installed dotfiles in sync with a central
+repository is a whole other problem.
+
+There are also dotfile manager like `chezmoi` or GNU Stow. I have not tried
+these so I make no judgements on their utility for their intended purpose.
+These dotfile management solutions may work well for managing configuration
+files, but they both have the same issue: you also need to install the software
+you're configuring!
+
+The software and the configuration are fundamentally tied together; these are
+not concerns to be separated. If the software is installed, it almost always
+needs to be configured anyways. If the configuration exists, the software
+should be installed. So a sane solution needs to both put the configuration in
+the right place, _and_ set up the system's programs along with all their
+dependencies!
+
+So, the most obsessive *nix hackers reach for tools like
+[Ansible](https://www.ansible.com/), that promise automatic configuration of
+entire systems. Though Ansible was initially designed to deploy cloud servers
+quickly through the Infrastructure-as-Code approach, some people opt to use it
+for deploying and managing their systems quickly as well. I have not personally
+tried it beyond playing with a few examples The consensus seems to be that it
+seems to work fine for simple use cases but gets quite unwieldy for more
+complex purposes (especially for personal systems, which aren't expected to be
+as ephemeral as servers).
+
+A system like Ansible combined with a system to manage configuration files
+might be able to achieve a few of our goals. We can keep configuration in sync
+between computers and we can quickly redeploy our system. But anyone who has
+tried this will tell you that it's incredibly uncomfortable to use; our
+existing operating systems are simply not designed to be managed in this
+manner. Inevitably you will experience desynchronization between the
+configuration and the actual state of the machine.
+
+Also, this does not solve some of our other problems. We'll still need tools
+like Docker to reproducibly build software and figure out a way to keep our
+system stable.
+
+If you agree with the premises I've laid out up to this point, that none of
+these solutions provide a satisfying solution to our computing woes, you might
+come to the conclusion that I've made. We need a solution that does _all of
+it_. A unified tool for reliably deploying software and managing your system
+configuration. And it must necessarily be declarative and reproducible, because
+that is the only sane way to manage a system. Imagine working on a programming
+project where recompiling with the same source code would non-deterministically
+produce different results based on the environment! We should be able to write
+files that declaratively and precisely specify the state of whole system, and
+then be able to revert these files or tweak them with deterministic results
+that don't leave behind any broken programs or files.
+
+Well, [Nix](https://nixos.org/) is the _purely functional_ package manager
+(i.e. declarative, reproducible), and NixOS is a Linux distribution that is
+managed entirely by Nix. Essentially, Nix provides a solution to the problem of
+_software deployment_, and in fact was purpose built to do so in Eelco
+Dolstra's seminal [PhD
+thesis](https://edolstra.github.io/pubs/phd-thesis.pdf). It effectively solves
+the problem of "works on my machine" by _forcing_ the user to actually specify
+all required dependencies. This makes it a little harder to write the initial
+build configurations due to the strictness imposed. But the reward is that if a
+piece of software builds on one machine, it's guaranteed to build on another.
+
+NixOS is a system that takes the power of Nix and applies it to declaratively
+configure an _entire Linux system_. All of the installed software and activated
+services can be specified precisely using the Nix expression language, a purely
+functional DSL used by Nix. And alongside the software, it also configures it,
+effectively acting as a dotfile manager. Indeed, many core NixOS services and a
+wide range of programs can be set up through _NixOS modules_, where the program
+is installed and configured in the same place. (and many programs like `fzf`,
+`btop`, etc have similar corresponding `home-manager` modules).
+
+NixOS is also _immutable_, which means that the system cannot be modified after
+it is built from the Nix files that declare it. How do you make changes to the
+system then? Obviously, we just create a new system where the changed programs
+and files are included, and the old ones are removed. But they are not deleted
+from the hard drive, they still exist in the _Nix store_. So, the system can
+provide precise atomic rollbacks between each "generation" of itself. Broke
+your GRUB configuration so your system won't boot? Messed up your kernel
+settings? Just select an older working generation from the boot menu and you
+instantly have a working system again. You never worry about breaking things
+during either routine or massive system updates.
+
+And because the system is fully declarative, and modifying the system is done
+only through modifying its Nix configuration files,  you can version and sync
+them up with Git. This solves the problem of keeping system environments in
+sync; now, you truly only have to keep one repository of all your configuration
+in sync, and all the software installation and deployment is handled for you by
+a system designed precisely for that purpose.
+
+This makes it possible for me to share common configuration between a multitude
+of entirely distinct machines, including an `x86_64` desktop, an `x86_64`
+laptop, an Apple Silicon Macbook running NixOS `aarch64` using [Asahi
+Linux](https://asahilinux.org/), and the same Macbook running macOS with
+`nix-darwin`, sharing `home-manager` configuration with NixOS. Specific
+configuration necessary to adjust hardware-specific details between each
+machines are isolated to the [hosts](./hosts) directory.
+
+This works exceptionally well, evidenced by the fact that I have (almost) the
+exact same environment across three separate machines, spanning two entirely
+distinct CPU architectures.
+
+In essence, the primary failure of deployment scripts, Ansible and the like is
+that they are _imperative_ - they must specify precisely _how_ to set up the
+system, down to minute details, whereas in a _declarative_ approach, the user
+can simply specify what the system _should look like_, and abstractions take
+care of the _how_. This is what NixOS does, and it gives you remote syncing,
+versioning (via `git`), and rollbacks _for free_.

src/templates/default.html

@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 <!doctype html>
 <html lang="$lang$">
   <head>
-    <title>$title$ | conditional finality</title>
+    <title>$title$ | gradient ascent</title>
 
     <meta charset="utf-8" />
     <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" />
@@ -116,7 +116,7 @@
           <a
             href="/"
             class="dark:hover:text-muted-dark hover:text-muted-light transition-all duration-500 text-nowrap tracking-wide"
-            ><em>Conditional Finality.</em></a
+            ><em>Gradient Ascent.</em></a
           >
         </h1>
         <div
@@ -126,18 +126,18 @@
       <p class="mt-8 mb-3 px-1 italic font-light">
         a web-log about computers, math, hacks, and all the rest.
       </p>
-      <a class="text-sm text-iris-light dark:text-iris-dark hover:text-love-light dark:hover:text-love-dark" href="https://youwen.dev"
+      <a class="text-sm external-link" href="https://youwen.dev"
         ><em>by </em>Youwen Wu</a
       >
       <span class="ml-2 font-serif">|</span>
       <button
         id="theme-toggle"
-        class="ml-2 text-sm hover:text-accent-light dark:hover:text-muted-dark"
+        class="ml-2 text-sm hover:bg-indigo-200 dark:hover:bg-violet-950 rounded-sm transition-colors p-1 duration-500"
       ></button>
       <span class="ml-2 font-serif">|</span>
       <button
         id="font-toggle"
-        class="ml-2 text-sm hover:text-accent-light dark:hover:text-muted-dark"
+        class="ml-2 text-sm hover:bg-indigo-200 dark:hover:bg-violet-950 rounded-sm transition-colors p-1 duration-500"
       ></button>
     </header>
     $body$
@@ -149,14 +149,14 @@
         &copy; 2024 Youwen Wu. Generated by
         <a
           href="https://jaspervdj.be/hakyll/"
-          class="external-link-muted"
+          class="external-link"
           target="__blank"
           >Hakyll.</a
         >
         View the source
         <a
           href="https://github.com/couscousdude/blog"
-          class="external-link-muted"
+          class="external-link"
           target="__blank"
           >on GitHub.</a
         >
@@ -164,7 +164,7 @@
       <p class="text-sm leading-relaxed mt-2">
         Content freely available under
         <a
-          class="external-link-muted"
+          class="external-link"
           target="__blank"
           href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.en"
           ><span class="smallcaps">CC BY-NC-SA</span> 4.0</a

ssg/src/Main.hs

@@ -28,13 +28,13 @@ import Text.Pandoc.Options (
 -- PERSONALIZATION
 
 mySiteName :: String
-mySiteName = "conditional finality"
+mySiteName = "gradient ascent"
 
 mySiteRoot :: String
 mySiteRoot = "https://blog.youwen.dev"
 
 myFeedTitle :: String
-myFeedTitle = "conditional finality"
+myFeedTitle = "gradient ascent"
 
 myFeedDescription :: String
 myFeedDescription = "on computers, hacks, math, and life"

tailwind.config.js

@@ -10,42 +10,24 @@ module.exports = {
       },
       colors: {
         primary: {
-          //dark: "#e7e5e4",
+          dark: "#e7e5e4",
           light: "#44403c",
-          dark: "#e0def4",
-          //light: "#575279",
         },
         secondary: {
-          //dark: "#4c1d95",
-          //light: "#4338ca",
-          dark: "#1f1d2e",
-          light: "#fffaf3",
+          dark: "#4c1d95",
+          light: "#4338ca",
         },
         accent: {
-          //dark: "#9ca3af",
-          //light: "#78716c",
-          dark: "#908caa",
-          light: "#797593",
+          dark: "#9ca3af",
+          light: "#78716c",
         },
         muted: {
-          //dark: "#6b7280",
-          //light: "#a8a29e",
-          dark: "#6e6a86",
-          light: "#9893a5",
+          dark: "#6b7280",
+          light: "#a8a29e",
         },
         background: {
-          //light: "#d6d3d1",
-          //dark: "#101017",
-          dark: "#191724",
-          light: "#faf4ed",
-        },
-        iris: {
-          dark: "#c4a7e7",
-          light: "#907aa9",
-        },
-        love: {
-          dark: "#eb6f92",
-          light: "#b4637a",
+          light: "#d6d3d1",
+          dark: "#101017",
         },
       },
     },