What about nano? Is it OK to choose a safe middle ground? I mean with ed I could just as well use butterflies.
BTW, notepad++ is popular on Windows. That's the sort of software what gets hijacked.
this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2026
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Vim and Emacs are popular in ultra critical environments, and as far as we know they aren't compromised by any intelligence agency.
but I like nano!
nano likes you too. But real h4x0rs use vim. Or emacs if they have 40 fingers.
nano good for idiot. me stupid. me nano for edit config file. nano not scary to leave, nano tell you exactly how!
Thank you for not only the laughter this morning but also for perfectly explaining why I always go for nano.
you nice to me. me thank.
You know, I know the command to leave is written every time emacs is opened, but it confuses me every time.
im pretty sure you can operate emacs with only one finger with some insane configuration tho
im pretty sure you can operate emacs with only one finger with some insane configuration tho
Yes. They call it "Evil Mode".
lol, but evil is vim keybinds. i was thinking of something more like morse code with one key
I'm pretty sure someone already did a Morse IME that could be used for that.
I have – were I more artistically talented – often wanted to create graphics and stickers for Emacs utilizing the noble octopus.
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nano's great
I used to like nano too. Then I found micro.
Yeah micro is my go to these days when i just want a terminal editor that does require me to learn a whole new system for something I’ve been doing most of my life
Well just wait until you find out about mili then 🙏
I love nano, if only because nano means child in my language, and as slang it's more or less equivalent to "bro"
Bro, please I need to edit my docker compose.
I know it's only funny for me. That's enough
depends,
do you want to edit the textfile, or nanodit it?
I actually prefer to microdit.
I spend several hours cursing the creators of Golang for making their language so annoying to compile on anything but the most common architectures.
Then I realised I could compile micro-2.14 with gcc-go...
Everybody gangsta til XZ Utils gets an update
the only book i own on text editingUpstream infrastructure was compromised. Implying it’s a fault with Notepad++ fault is disingenuous. What OSS maintainer is going to think, “I need to pick a hosting provider that’s not going to get hacked by the Chinese government”? Unless your favorite editor is being hosted on infrastructure hardened against state level hackers, it’s not any better.
Did you not read the part about n++ not changing/rotating credentials? I think there's enough blame to go around.
They also weren’t doing any kind of SSL verification for the download request, nor were they doing any kind of hash verification or signing. The former would have prevented a redirect attack in the first place, and the latter would have prevented downloaded files from being modified or swapped out.
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Would anybody be around to notice if it was?
Believe it or not, but ed (or in Addition sed) gets used quite a lot when editing files or strings in bash scripts.
I've used a lot of sed but never ed. Should skim the man page at sone point.
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vim is all i need and is all i’ll ever need.
Emacs* is bloatware
Vims just bloat on ed
ed is the only answer.
Our true salvation
*being an acronym for "Eight Megabytes And Currently Swapping"
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But what if you don't get it?
Ed. /s
(Except actually I guess that could happen)
vim is for people who want to see the file they are editing
ed is the standard text editor https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.en.html
When I use an editor, I don't want eight extra KILOBYTES of worthless help screens and cursor positioning code! I just want an EDitor!! Not a “viitor”. Not a “emacsitor”. Those aren't even WORDS!!!! ED! ED! ED IS THE STANDARD!!!
eMacs wasn’t compromised!
I f'ing love emacs, but don't get cocky. It's a security disaster.
Well, if you use any packages fetched from the net anyway.
All of our modern infrastructure is.
Fair point
I was being like 99% facetious and the 1% serious has more to do with how eMacs updates are distributed as compared to Notepad++. To your point, any non-vetted packages would be a huge source of risk, and even vetted packages should be monitored.
me reading this title and being transported to LiveJournal in 2005
editors are bloat, manually flip the bits you want with your HANDS like a REAL programmer
Relevant xckd
Correct me if I'm wrong, but initial news about it serving malicious updates were false. You never got anything malicious thru updates, neither was the exe file/installer tampered with. The worst they actually did was redirect you to a fake site when pressing download, where the malicious file was distributed. GitHub and signed versions were never affected. What's also interesting is that the attacker selectively redirected people, not all of them. I always installed n++ using Ninite, so I'm in the clear.
The whole thing seems blown out of proportions. The amount of affected people is likely very small.
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