Which of these old CSS tricks do you actually miss?

Both not tricks, and I can't say I miss them, because I didn't work as web dev at the time. I only witnessed the trailing part of the pain, when I started, there were mostly flexbox-related browser inconsistencies.

Anyway:

  cursor: hand !indispensable;

seems vastly superior to

  cursor: pointer !important;

And I once came across the CSS "script expressions" out of web history curiosity.

Dangerous but appealing idea.

Seems like every web dev (well, those working on server-rendered markup and without AI, at least) would feel a desire for this at some point, but it was doomed at the time.

In some ways, reminds me of Houdini regarding the CSS->JS coupling (the other direction is already normal, sure).

But the intent behind it was probably just to allow maximum flexibility... well

  div.title { background-color: expression( (new Date()).getHours()%2 ? "#B8D4FF" : "#F08A00" ); }

does look quite funny :)

I'd love to hear more from people who actually used this.

None of them — they were all ugly hacks, and we wasted stupid amounts of time and brainpower testing sites and then researching and applying the hacks.

I still hate Microsoft for 'winning' the browser war and then letting IE stagnate for so many years. So much time and money wasted because of their behaviour. Arseholes.

How close is the emulation to being usable as an actual music player?

Some improvements are still needed, but the idea is to run the original Apple firmware without modifications. I'd like to be able to run it on a Raspberry Pi Zero someday... a very thin layer will lift the iPod Classic 6G emulator

Does this mean trees can actually “sense” when they're growing in the wrong direction?

Would automated mutation testing actually make a big difference for agents, or would they just find new ways to game the metric?

I believe it would. Automated mutation testing is the test coverage metric that is nearly impossible to cheat.

What tends to be the biggest surprise when bringing Linux up on completely new hardware?

It tends to be vendor drivers / vendor patches. Getting frustrated that my changes aren't applied just to see that the vendor decided to hardcode a field or dynamically patch the device tree in undocumented ways is what usually gets me

If a salad can become soup depending on how much dressing you add, where do you think the actual boundary is?

I'd like to point out that this isn't a theoretical question.

You can add a bit of kefir to a potato-based salad, and it will remain a salad. But at one point it will actually turn into a cold kefir soup, which is a thing that exists.

Personally, I think it's the floating. As soon as first ingredient becomes buoyant (even partially), it's a soup.

This also got me thinking.

When does a soup become a smoothie (or vice versa)?

In some cases I might argue that difference could well be plating. Put a smoothie like cold soup on a plate and you have a soup.

Maybe we need to also first define smoothie.

Or maybe you have a cold sauce?!

You also have soups in cups. Is a gazpacho soup in a cup still a soup? Technically tomato is a fruit, so you got a cold blended fruit sauce in a cup, which to me is a smoothie.

And let’s not get started on cocktails, like the Bloody Mary. That’s just another smoothie.