Posts by chris@s.the-brannons.com
(DIR) Post #AVv7Mrn8GPauYrIwVM by chris@s.the-brannons.com
2023-05-22T17:36:28.317433Z
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@galdor The colloquial phrase is “no one ever got fired for choosing X”, where X is some terrible corporate behemoth.1980: Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM.2000: Nobody ever got fired for choosing Microsoft.2020: Nobody ever got fired for choosing AWS.And yeah, it applies equally well to tools and technologies in general. Nobody ever got fired for choosing Java. And so on.
(DIR) Post #AWJD7zOyTYCIE6FB4q by chris@s.the-brannons.com
2023-06-03T05:39:43.914017Z
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@strypey Not a fan of all the glum dour hung-up Puritanism on the left.Nor, for that matter, of a lot of what has come out of leftist academiain the last 50 years or so.I tried reading Herbert Marcuse about 10 years back. My time would havebeen better spent watching paint dry.Between the Puritans and the navel gazers, we're in a deal of trouble,and ill-equipped to fight the forces of oppression.I get my leftism from logic, my heart, my inner voice, dreams ...
(DIR) Post #AWTITPLpdODS8iPD9c by chris@s.the-brannons.com
2023-06-08T01:40:01.825939Z
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@screwtape @wasamasa I'm not surprised atFennel's popularity here. Lua is ubiquitous secret sauce that shows upin lots of places, including ... my web server config. Getting up and runningwith Fennel is a breeze. It's literally a Lua script you can wget and copyto /usr/local/bin or wherever.Considering the existence of Lua frameworks like luv2d, Fennel is a goodfit for Lispers who wanna make games."Lispers found an easy way to make games" seems a bit more plausible than"game makers discovered Lisp". But maybe my intuition is wrong here.
(DIR) Post #AWVwmTZsWrvnEUXipU by chris@s.the-brannons.com
2023-06-08T20:11:18.452879Z
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Today's disappointment: OpenWRT's web interface is no longer usable withoutJS.
(DIR) Post #AX0e5vyiRUsLEmQmR6 by chris@s.the-brannons.com
2023-06-22T02:36:45.743253Z
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One thing I never hear mentioned is that with plant-based diets, pans comeclean so much more easily. We just polished off a pot of beans and rice.The pot practically cleaned itself after soaking. OTOH, pots and pans withanimal greases and juices are so much harder to clean. So much so that Iwon't wash dishes that someone used for meat. "You wanna cook and eat that,then you clean your own dishes, cuz it's gross."And all of this begs the question: if coagulated animal grease and juicesare so terrible for pans, what are they doing to human innards?
(DIR) Post #AX0e5whNlQbXTJKS3c by chris@s.the-brannons.com
2023-06-23T22:24:41.915684Z
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@lispi314 Yeah, I've been doing dishes for almost 4 decades. Burnt on / baked on anything is a pain in the ass. Yes, brown rice stuck to the bottom of a pan, I'm looking at you.
(DIR) Post #AX0uvsj3NZoFTTthbc by chris@s.the-brannons.com
2023-06-24T03:13:41.609991Z
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@screwtape @pkw @svetlyak40wt @louis Works for me. Lovely post.
(DIR) Post #AX0uvtXOMQ4jzbRu4G by chris@s.the-brannons.com
2023-06-24T03:22:14.931096Z
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@screwtape And in any case, you automatically get a passfor being one of the people I follow, because my followees are awesome.Teasing out what bugs me about "ecosystem", I think I only mind if I hear itcoming from FAANG people or the Signal dude, who entitled hispro-centralization CCC talk "The Ecosystem Is Moving".
(DIR) Post #AX6muNrfUBK4qX8Swr by chris@s.the-brannons.com
2023-06-27T06:33:39.016217Z
1 likes, 1 repeats
TIL that on FreeBSD, the interpreter in the shebang line of a script must be a binary executable (presumably ELF), not a script or similar. On Linux, using a script as an interpreter is totally cool. The fix is easy: just use #!/usr/bin/env in the shebang line, which is probably a good idea anyway. If your shebang line does happen to point to a script, execution doesn’t fail. Oh no. Instead, the system shell is invoked with whatever you were trying to pass to some other interpreter. This is absolutely terrible. Instead of getting a sane error message like “Sorry Dave, I can’t do that, and here’s why”, you’ll get some bizarre syntax error from the shell … if you’re lucky! If you are particularly unlucky, then who the fuck knows what will happen. Your guess is as good as mine.Somewhat relatedly, the following has made its rounds on HN and Lobsters more than once: Actually Portable Executables. For people who haven’t seen it, this is basically a technique to create a “polyglot” x86 binary that runs on Unix, DOS/Windows, Mac, bare metal, and so forth. On Unix, this works by exploiting an ancient misfeature that has evidently been codified in bloody POSIX. Here’s a longish quote from the post:One day, while studying old code, I found out that it’s possible to encode Windows Portable Executable files as a UNIX Sixth Edition shell script, due to the fact that the Thompson Shell didn’t use a shebang line. Once I realized it’s possible to create a synthesis of the binary formats being used by Unix, Windows, and MacOS, I couldn’t resist the temptation of making it a reality, since it means that high-performance native code can be almost as pain-free as web apps. Here’s how it works:There are already plenty of ways to use the wrong interpreter on the wrong code. This one would be easy to prevent. But nope, likely not gonna happen, at least on POSIX systems.
(DIR) Post #AXfFK3a9ZiaZA0h1ea by chris@s.the-brannons.com
2023-07-13T21:35:38.568412Z
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@alison @lanodan A very famous line, yeah.The English translation is: "It's dead, Jim."
(DIR) Post #AXsSsbxD2r4kAPOfgW by chris@s.the-brannons.com
2023-07-20T05:03:42.971700Z
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@strypey My GF hates AIC. No idea why.We joke-fight every time I play anything of theirs. "WTF is wrong with you?"She'll listen to Nirvana though, and likes Pearl Jam. I had no appreciationfor Pearl Jam in my teens, but that has changed somewhat now.I'd also recommend (not strongly, but worth a listen) the group Mad Season.For 90s vocals, my faves would be: Mazzy Star (I would listen to Hope Sandovalif she sang passages from the phonebook). Screaming Trees. Radiohead.
(DIR) Post #AY4AX0TrqQ2TYHPYPY by chris@s.the-brannons.com
2023-07-25T03:52:29.377702Z
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@strypey Seems to me that anyone who believes in moralitylicenses or shared source implicitly accepts the concept of intellectualproperty, which is even more ridiculous than the concept of physical property.I'm both fond of and uneasy with AGPLv3. Fond of, because it's a legitpro-user and anti-exploitation license. Uneasy with, because I know thatat the end of the day, the solution is to eliminate capitalism, not doubledown on its pernicious legal fairy tales like intellectual property.
(DIR) Post #AYEmebHQZP1L0IRZcu by chris@s.the-brannons.com
2023-07-30T23:47:48.105914Z
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@strypey @pglpm @pluralistic @aral @hisham_hm @aperezdc Perhaps of interest, from the FSF: Web Environment Integrity is an All-out Attack on the Free Internet
(DIR) Post #AYGZymEwcXWThPUcWe by chris@s.the-brannons.com
2023-07-31T15:24:33.761408Z
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@strypey I appreciated that on a couple of levels.It's almost like a different song. The title didn't ring a bell with me,and then about 3 minutes in I'm like, "Oh yeah, now I remember theSinéad O'Connor version! It got tons of play-time on the radio."Also I'm a huge sucker for acoustic guitar.Chris Cornell, also of Temple of the Dog.I've had their song Say Hello to Heaven wedged in my brain for hours at atime at various points.> Yet Peter Thiel and ZuckerBorg live on, and probably sleep like babies.As someone else who struggles with chronic and often crippling depression,that certainly resonates. You don't get to have billions of dollars withoutstomping on huge numbers of people. And then once somebody has all that money,they can afford to surround themselves with sycophants to tell themhow greatthey are, dulling their conscience even more. It's like a vicious circle.Yet among people who work in tech, depression seems very prevalent. Thoughmaybe that's just my own cognitive bias.
(DIR) Post #AYaBN8COnDXzqWNpZo by chris@s.the-brannons.com
2023-08-10T08:46:37.576948Z
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@louis @galdor I've been called elitist and so forthover the years. It's true. I am. I'm an elitist gatekeeper and proud of it.But I'm an elitist who believes in the ability of people to be empowered.An elitist with an unbridled faith in humans and their abilities,who realizes that he's nothing or no one special.The Pike quote just drips with another kind of elitism, a harmful paternalistickind. "They aren't capable of understanding", A.K.A, I know what's best forthem. Essentially, what Pike is saying here, and he actually says it, is thathe wants to *use people as means to an end*. It's a very sick attitude.If you unpack that quote and strip it of all the "nice" phrasing, what youhave is essentially: "I built Go to exploit dumb keyboard monkeys".I'm not a Go programmer, but I don't hate it. It's readable. Peopledo some really awesome stuff with it. Rock on. Not dissing it here, onlydissing paternalistic Pike.
(DIR) Post #AYl45fzmXgpHeSt4bo by chris@s.the-brannons.com
2023-08-15T14:29:51.431372Z
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@hannah @lanodan Well, you probablycan't if you're blind. The oldest braille book I've seen was a copy ofthe Gospel of Matthew from the early 1930s. It wasn't in good shapecirca 1990 when I found it. Braille on thermoform has even less of alifespan.OTOH I can download a book from Project Gutenberg produced 40 years agoand read it with `less`.
(DIR) Post #AYlW9jFZBIdvcWzVcu by chris@s.the-brannons.com
2023-08-15T20:04:51.820201Z
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@lanodan @hannah Wouldn't be surprisedif there are some fairly old phonograph records with audio books on them.Or magnetic wire spools. Open tape reels. Etc.But probably no or few full-length books from before the 1930s or so.I stumbled on some ancient 78-RPM records as a kid in the 1980s. These werethick and heavy. Like, the size of a standard 33 and 1/3 RPM record,but the thickness and weight of a glass dinner plate. One was from 1901,and it had a few minutes of comedy recorded on it.Assuming the media are properly preserved, you still need the technologyto play them.In the late 20th century, audiobooks for the blind were typically madein special formats. In the US: 4-track cassette at 15/16 inches persecond (half of standard speed), phonograph records at 8 RPM. The 4-trackmeant separate recording on each of the two stereo tracks of a side of a tape.One track would be recorded forward and the other reversed. With a computer,a standard tape deck, and the sox utility, anyone can decode these things.After the rise of Audible, all bets are off. Unless someone pirates anaudiobook and strips the DRM, no way will anyone be able to decode thoseat some unspecified point in the future. One good reason to pirate all thethings. DRM is an attack against culture akin to book burning.
(DIR) Post #AZtFdhcGhsrJZXgUKG by chris@s.the-brannons.com
2023-09-18T11:18:11.921664Z
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@strypey Also, perpetual war.Then there was the time the US government tried to do a Babylon 5 styleNight Watch, with the TIPS program.
(DIR) Post #AaKufKCQMTu71MEHD6 by chris@s.the-brannons.com
2023-10-01T18:55:59.235417Z
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@lanodan @mattApologies for hijacking the thread, but I saw the mention of non-GUIaudio chat.There are a few non-GUI VOIP and audio chat solutions.There's the Mumble client barnard, https://github.com/bmmcginty/barnard.This has bit-rotted to a certain degree. It has become wildly unstable,either due to changes to Go or to libraries that it is using. And I knowof at least one memory leak. I'm too sick nowadays and don't know Go wellenough, or I'd try and fix it. Funnily enough, it is far more stable onFreeBSD than on Linux. And yet, there are a few blind people (me included)who use it all the time.SIP from the terminal has been around in some form for a while: pjsua,baresip, and the linphone command-line client linphonec.I use baresip in daemon mode, where it accepts commands over TCP. Commandsand responses are sent as netstrings. So this is pretty easy to work with.I wrote a little command line program, bscmd, for sending commands to it.So I can make and receive calls directly from my shell.`bscmd dial sip:+18004444444` will dial a landline phone number through myVOIP provider, and `bscmd accept` will answer an incoming call.`bscmd hangup` to end a call, `bscmd mute` to mute. I've used this plusa land-line dial-in number to participate in Zoom calls (without video of course).All from the comfort of a Unix shell.
(DIR) Post #AdEBhtAlQvBfQsN1zE by chris@s.the-brannons.com
2023-12-27T07:28:20.627964Z
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@lanodan @coolboymew Years ago, a friendof mine had an insanely great idea, replacing voice menus with Gopher. So if youcalled some company on the phone, you could deal with their Gopher menuinstead of the voice one. There's your BBS style interface. We have atechnology for making and displaying them easily. Maybe replace Gopherwith Gemini. Or maybe not; Gopher was made for this kind of thing.Perhaps Gopher requests and responses exchanged over SMS?Voice and touch-tone menus could stay around for people who want them.Implementing them would be much simpler, too, because they could just bethin Gopher clients with a voice and touch-tone interface.