@alcinnz@floss.social
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

alcinnz

@alcinnz@floss.social

A browser developer posting mostly about how free software projects work, and occasionally about climate change.

Though I do enjoy german board games given an opponent.

Pronouns: he/him

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

ajroach42, to random
@ajroach42@retro.social avatar

You know how there's a bunch of critical infrastructure powering the internet (and presumably a lot more than the internet) is badly maintained and underfunded (often by just a few people)?

We know about several examples in the open source world, but I'm sure we all also know about several examples in each of our personal lives, in each of our places of business.

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

@ajroach42 I hear horror stories about Australian disaster management...

No one is keen to fund that work! Because they don't see the immediate need! But when there is a need, their government ends up relying on hobby projects.

alcinnz, (edited ) to random
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

After I finish studying freedesktop's text stack with LibICU, should I proceed to studying the servers I'm running, or the viewers I'd be keen to deploy next to my HTML/CSS engine?

The viewers would include:

  • GhostScript (PDF)
  • Ruffle (Flash)
  • GStreamer, etc (audio & video)

The servers include:

  • Prosody (XMPP Chat)
  • Maddy (eMail)
  • SourceHut (codehosting, heavily summarised)
    Might discuss the clients I use too...
alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

This was a tight, if small, election. But I'll follow the plurality & (after skimming LibICU) I'll study the servers the servers I'm running for Haphaestus, followed by those viewers I mentioned!

I'll probably look into the clients I'm personally using, but I won't promise to toot about them. I rarely find user-facing apps worth it!

alcinnz, (edited ) to random
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

For it's more traditional UI I have a couple subprojects planned for Haphaestus:

  • "Bureaucromancy" will provide menus for filling in webforms.
  • "Hearth" would provide a startpage with an addressbar, bookmark-management, topsites, webfeeds, etc.

Popquiz: Which show did I source these names from?

alcinnz, (edited )
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

The correct answer was "Magus Elgar"!

Didn't get many votes on this popquiz, but there was 1 correct vote!

2nd popquiz: Which of those shows entrenched the name "Haphaestus" for my TV browser engine?

smallcircles, to random
@smallcircles@social.coop avatar

Ping @alcinnz want to pass recent finding to ya:

https://social.coop/@smallcircles/110445148829899767

I guess what Hixie is proposing is not in line with direction you wanna give to your browser impl? Not sure. But this intriguing. For a different project I've been looking a bit into - what I call a "#WebAssembly. Everywhere." paradigm shift based on #WASM, #WASI and Component Model.

(Very much in 'hype cycle' stage for early adopters with growing attention in corporate world. Not so much so in #FreeSoftware circles yet)

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

@smallcircles Yeah, not the direction I'm going. But if I'm asked about a web platform for "intricate web applications" out of existing standards, that'd be more-or-less what I'd propose!

alcinnz, to random
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

A new method for modelling location information are "Discrete Global Grid Systems" (DGGS), an alternative to the coordinate-pair model many erroneously think of as "real world"!

A DGGS models areas by tesselating squares, triangles, or octogons accross the Earth's surface & subdividing each of those into more of the same to form a hierarchy of zones (mathematicians use the term "space filling curve"). We take sets of these to represent those areas.

1/2

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

This makes geospatial processing trivial, basically the same as processing numeric sets! Or maybe you process the value assigned to each zone! Significantly more performant than the scanline-algorithms used currently for geospatial processing!

This reflects on how easy DGGSs are to reason about as humans.

Also, real harm has been done by people taking infinitissimaly small points (which never really exist) as being more meaningful than they actually are!

2/2

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

@silmathoron Depends on the system, maybe their fudged. Or maybe we place the octogons on the intersections.

alcinnz, to random
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

All the Hard Stuff Nobody Talks About when Building Products with LLMs - Phillip Carter @ HoneyComb: https://www.honeycomb.io/blog/hard-stuff-nobody-talks-about-llm
Simon Willison's description: https://simonwillison.net/2023/May/27/hard-stuff-llms/
Hackernews: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36096811
I would say I really don't mind being "behind on this curve"!

alcinnz, to random
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

Easy, secure and private information transfer with magic-wormhole - Ramakrishnan Muthukrishnan @ LibrePlanet 2022: https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/easy-secure-and-private-information-transfer-with-magic-wormhole/ (video)

alcinnz, to random
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

Linear feeds are a dark pattern - dzwdz: https://tilde.town/~dzwdz/blog/feeds.html

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

@baschdel Yes, I use "mark all as read on occasion!

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

@baschdel Can't say I've faced this being an issue with my reader. And I do subscribe to plenty of sites!

Though maybe that's because I avoid building up much of a backlog...

devinprater, to random

Lol so I saw a post on here a few days ago that was like “You shouldn’t ask people to describe their images, you should just describe them in a reply.” Okay sure, I’ll do that using AI tools.

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

@devinprater I can see the point here (and it is what I do), but I certainly wouldn't ask it of you!

alcinnz, to random
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

Lawyer cites fake cases invented by ChatGPT, judge is not amused - Simon Willison: http://simonwillison.net/2023/May/27/lawyer-chatgpt/#atom-everything

Simon Willison celebrating his tool being taught in another language: https://simonwillison.net/2023/May/27/exploration-de-donnees-avec-datasette/

alcinnz, to random
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

Skimming more of Apache Solr today, there's a sizable subsystem (which is becoming decreasingly useful as harddrives enlarge) to manage multi-machine deployments. With several small-ish classes aggregating various cluster state, or updating collections via (often) a handful of support classes.

Surrounding that HTTP API is a larger suite of code distributing load, managing it's own collections. Including automated elections for which instance should coordinate things.

1/?

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

Ofcourse there's plenty of locking in this "cloud" subsystem! It's implemented with the aid of Apache ZooKeeper, via a couple abstractions, with a CLI interface.

A seperate subsystem provides messages with which to synchronize "clusters".

Amongst the "core" subsystem there's routines for saving, modelling, & restoring backups with their repositories & snapshots.

There's some core Java-interfaces & data modelling for everything to build around.

2/3?

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

That "core" subsystem includes logic others can hook into to dispatch requests or whatever. And generally it provides infrastructure for everything else to use. Also there's caching, configuration, plugin-management, etc.

2.1/2.1 I think I'll leave it here. Resuming on Solr soon enough! After Pkg-config & some LibICU skimming.

Following the Linux From Scratch schedule, I would've been studying GCC. But that took me forever to study so I'm not revisiting!

alcinnz, to random
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

How to Build a Native Web Component From Scratch - Go Make Things & Teach Jenn Tech: https://gomakethings.com/how-to-build-a-native-web-component-from-scratch/ (Embedded YouTube & GitHub)

alcinnz, to random
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

I've just uploaded my threads on...
Linux's "capabilities" privileges: https://adrian.geek.nz/gnu_docs/system#kernel-side
FreeType's support for traditional Windows fonts: https://adrian.geek.nz/graphics_docs/text#windows-fonts
My initial Skimming of Apache Solr: https://adrian.geek.nz/network_docs/searchmysite#miscallaneousoverview

I've just prepared to skim LibICU to finish my discussions of the text-rendering stack. I'll study Pkg-Config between that, & resume skimming Solr after Pkg-Config.

alcinnz, to random
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

3Demos: A collaborative visual calculus system - Nikolas Nyby @ LibrePlanet 2023: https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/3demos-a-collaborative-visual-calculus-system/ (video)

alcinnz, to random
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

I should be able to get CatTrap running again tomorrow, I've theoretically adjusted all the code to use the new Balkon APIs! Just need to work through compiler errors...

Though I would want to make some tweaks afterwords. Add some output restructuring, & I'm needing to reconsider conversion factors between Harfbuzz & CatTrap...

alcinnz, to random
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

Reviving a Dinosaur - Ernie Smith "Tedium": https://feed.tedium.co/link/15204/16150221/sgi-irix-revival-efforts

alcinnz, to random
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

Offsite - Robin Rendle: https://robinrendle.com/notes/offsite/

alcinnz, to random
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

Syncing my emulator saves with Syncthing - Xe: https://xeiaso.net/blog/deck-yuzu-syncthing

alcinnz, to random
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

Distributing freedom: How package managers empower software users - Sebastian Crane @ LibrePlanet 2022: https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/distributing-freedom-how-package-managers-empower-software-users/ (Video)

Regarding language-specific package managers, I'm in favor. As a useful & simpler variation on this problem. Though it'd probably be helpful to have standards the transition into system packages. Haskell already provides Nix packages for every "hackage".

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

P.S. I have heard of a tool "Fucking Package Managers" to package software for multiple distros simultaneously, but I struggle to find it in search engines.

alcinnz, to random
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

JShelter for browsing securely - Libor Polčák @ LibrePlanet 2023: https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/jshelter-for-browsing-securely/

Makes some LibreJS talking points I disagree with (I prefer Haketillo aiding me in actually exercising The Four Freedoms), but JShelter is a vital project!

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

@freakazoid It was discussed at last year's LibrePlanet. A browser plugin aiding you to block, edit, & share any JavaScript on the pages you visit. So your JS runs instead of the site's.

Includes a codeforge under the assumption that many people would want to edit the same site in the same way.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • megavids
  • khanakhh
  • mdbf
  • ethstaker
  • magazineikmin
  • GTA5RPClips
  • rosin
  • thenastyranch
  • Youngstown
  • InstantRegret
  • slotface
  • osvaldo12
  • kavyap
  • DreamBathrooms
  • JUstTest
  • Durango
  • everett
  • cisconetworking
  • normalnudes
  • tester
  • ngwrru68w68
  • cubers
  • modclub
  • tacticalgear
  • provamag3
  • Leos
  • anitta
  • lostlight
  • All magazines
    •