Posts by jackwilliambell@rustedneuron.com
(DIR) Post #AyHE082uWOBqFA4v8C by jackwilliambell@rustedneuron.com
2025-09-16T21:55:44Z
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@divVerent There's a *big* reason I prefer flatpaks – especially in conjunction with flatseal. Can you guess why?
(DIR) Post #AyHExnFCzSuN6THTLk by jackwilliambell@rustedneuron.com
2025-09-16T22:03:42Z
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@divVerent Ah, but not necessarily the SAME versions of those libraries! Close, but still not the right answer.
(DIR) Post #AyHFtgRMRg9MnTZM4O by jackwilliambell@rustedneuron.com
2025-09-16T22:17:00Z
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@divVerent I find them ALL to be security holes. Often unfixable ones.And I'll take a leaky sandbox people pay attention to over no sandbox at all.
(DIR) Post #AyHG6YtHpGe59AlvO4 by jackwilliambell@rustedneuron.com
2025-09-16T22:19:21Z
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@divVerent Oh, I use apt. Not saying I don't. But I try not to install anything that isn't a system utility with it. Meanwhile there's no way in hell I'm installing an Electron app without some kind of protection.
(DIR) Post #AyHGL6RTsYM9G8hSHA by jackwilliambell@rustedneuron.com
2025-09-16T22:21:59Z
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@divVerent Not gonna argue for venv or it's variants. Hell, I don't even like pip.But I still use Python. I just avoid external dependencies if I can.
(DIR) Post #Az0erOTLigqPDbXy8u by jackwilliambell@rustedneuron.com
2025-10-08T18:51:29Z
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The goal is to have a specification you can read and grok in an afternoon – and then implement something usable in a week.After that we create a bridge from RSF to ActivityPub and we let a thousand implementations bloom…[fin]
(DIR) Post #Az0ohHQc3PTi185D8a by jackwilliambell@rustedneuron.com
2025-10-08T20:01:59Z
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@silverpill> "But ActivityPub is the evolution of Atom/RSS, with JSON instead of XML..."Not exactly. ActivityPub is based on ActivityStreams. And ActivityStreams are a variant of RDF using JSON-LD instead of RDF XML. So, at best ActivityPub is based on RSS 2.0. (Which itself is overly complex IMHO.)> "Perhaps you actually want a 'Really Simple ActivityPub'?"Sort of. I want something much simpler anyway. But I don't want to use JSON-LD, so no direct interop will be possible.
(DIR) Post #Az0ohIygIEK8p51vsW by jackwilliambell@rustedneuron.com
2025-10-08T20:10:06Z
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@silverpillFollow this link and scroll down to my contribution:> (fixed url) https://circumstances.run/@davidgerard/115335451897410462There I explain (a) I don't have a problem with subject/predicate/object triplet-based network graphs, but (b) lots of people have difficulty conceptualizing them.JSON-LD, like RDF XML, is incredibly flexible and you can do amazing things with it based on few simple rules. But, as I wrote in this ancient Slashdot post, RDF is hard PRECISELY because RDF is simple:> https://slashdot.org/~Jack%20William%20Bell/journal/16717
(DIR) Post #Az0ohJL0xCBjwLTlgm by jackwilliambell@rustedneuron.com
2025-10-08T21:06:44Z
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@silverpill While I'm referring to that ancient Slashdot post, let me surface a comment offering a reason why Dave Winer didn't like RDF and my response. The point here? Whenever we have something like JSON-LD or RDF XML (or, for that matter, SOAP) we are dealing with what some people (and I among them) will call an over-engineered mess. In this conceptualization ActivityStreams are capable of supporting nearly ANY use case. But they are over-engineered for 80% of use cases.
(DIR) Post #Az0ohJz4YGENwaDl7w by jackwilliambell@rustedneuron.com
2025-10-08T21:12:32Z
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@silverpill Also, FWIW? In the end Dave Winer was right about the 'Semantic Web'. Not only did it *not* take the web by storm, it failed PRECISELY for the reasons Dave said it would fail.You can say a lot of things about Dave, I know I've said most of them. But I've come to fully internalize and accept his main orgainizing precept: "Do the simplest thing that could possibly work."
(DIR) Post #Az1ayr19mYZn7PccTY by jackwilliambell@rustedneuron.com
2025-10-08T21:59:02Z
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@silverpill Gotcha. But compare and contrast to:- Atom – http://www.atomenabled.org/OR- JSON Feed – https://www.jsonfeed.org/version/1/And ask yourself why you need a type and name and a list consisting of names and URLs for hashtags. URLs which are then ignored by the implementation (Mastodon in my case) and given URLs on the local server? IOW? Why even have hashtags as part of the protocol? Why not let the implementation decide how to parse and handle them in the first place?
(DIR) Post #B06XBN6xMCcQmi5ung by jackwilliambell@rustedneuron.com
2025-11-08T18:55:47Z
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@futurebird It's funny to me how this thread turns into a conversation about how the Orange One isn't a 'smart man', completely missing the point of your initial post.And also? Completely missing the (to me) obvious fact there is more than one kind of intelligence and you can be dumb as a rock about engineering principles and math, but smart as hell about people. (Or, like me, the reverse of that statement.)
(DIR) Post #B0FFmAX8op0zQMg0Se by jackwilliambell@rustedneuron.com
2025-11-14T18:50:14Z
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@ricci TIL… 😲
(DIR) Post #B0FpQe6BoOAT6A6elE by jackwilliambell@rustedneuron.com
2025-11-15T01:20:04Z
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@futurebirdMy first full-time job working with a computer involved a Burroughs Accounting Machine that used 'ledger cards' the size of A17 paper, which had a magnetic strip containing the last ledger entry. The strips often failed, so you had to re-enter the data printed on the card.They had a separate card sorter unit.I was hired to facilitate the conversion from that monstrosity to a 'more modern' (early 1980s) NCR minicomputer. But I still had to use it for 6 months.
(DIR) Post #B0HApr1BCwz0bMaIyG by jackwilliambell@rustedneuron.com
2025-11-15T07:54:38Z
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@moira @futurebirdIt was a full-fledged computer–you could load programs for things like data entry and reports from paper tape but there was also a 'pinboard' containing the bootloader as wires connecting registers. You weren't supposed to touch that.Storage was on the ledger cards. It would read them by the platen pulling it down and back up past a magnetic head. It was LOUD: KrCHUNK! ZZK! Then you type and it printed and then did it again to write. Reports used a feeder.
(DIR) Post #B0HApypQAYKYpD91km by jackwilliambell@rustedneuron.com
2025-11-15T07:58:21Z
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@moira @futurebird The feeder could process a ledger card in about a second. Imagine the sound of running year-end reports on that thing. Of course something always went wrong when running reports, so you had to babysit it. RIGHT THERE IN THE NOISE. It would jam or error a ledger card and require re-entry and a write or even shred a ledger card entirely, so making a replacement was really fun.
(DIR) Post #B0HAq5ocBwqSUjoyy8 by jackwilliambell@rustedneuron.com
2025-11-15T08:11:32Z
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@moira @futurebird The sorting unit fascinated me. It was essentially a bubblesort implemented in hardware. It had eight slots and it would sort all of them into four slots, then sort each slot with the other four slots, then repeat until all the cards were sorted. You could change sort order with another pinboard.ETA: And, yes, it jammed too.
(DIR) Post #B0HIdRVf1M91eBR01g by jackwilliambell@rustedneuron.com
2025-11-15T18:31:43Z
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@tomjennings @moira @futurebird The Burroughs Accounting Machine wasn't a mini, but a different class entirely. (I'm not exactly sure *what* class.)The NCR we replaced it with *was* a mini. Less CPU power than a modern smartwatch in a box like a really big refrigerator, plus we had two printers and two removable 5MB disks; all the size of big washing machines.We ran six terminals off it.
(DIR) Post #B0YE6eKDtfjkw3N236 by jackwilliambell@rustedneuron.com
2025-11-23T22:31:12Z
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@tomjennings I do exactly that when I pay cash. My pet peeve is card machines automatically adding a 20% tip and making it difficult to select something more appropriate. (And that goes directly to the person instead of to their boss, who then decides who gets what and likely takes a cut.)FWIW? Both of our peeves could be solved by simply paying service folk a decent wage. If you complain about tipping and are against a $15 minimum wage, you are either confused or an asshole.
(DIR) Post #B1eT2BDqQRo48XcbEe by jackwilliambell@rustedneuron.com
2025-12-26T19:40:15Z
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@RemittancegirlI have a whole rant about the 'both sidesing'. Short version?'Fair and Balanced' reporting in politics does not mean downplaying terrible behavior on one side and finding fault with every peccadillo of the other in order to make the two sides seem more balanced.It means applying the same rigor and fairness to both sides. If this results in one side looking like Fascists? This is probably because that side are basically Fascists. And it's totally fair and balanced to say so.