alex

alex, 10 hours ago to random EN

Oh no, I installed the Medley Interlisp system on my laptop because I've been following @amoroso for too long! 😅

The first goal is to have a retro-computing environment that can be useful. As far as I can tell, the documentation buttons open links in the browser outside (!) the Medley Interlisp system, i.e. I can read the documentation on my default browser.

The second goal is to have a Lisp machine where everything is Lisp. I mean, I guess I usually treat Emacs as a Lisp machine.

I feel a bit of that Plan 9 energy, but from a different planet.

alex, 4 days ago to random EN

Ohhh, this is so good. And a nice ending, too!
"You want to order from a local restaurant, but you need to download a third-party delivery app, even though you plan to pick it up yourself. The prices and menu on the app are different to what you saw in the window. When you download a second app the prices are different again. You ring the restaurant directly and it says the number is no longer in service…"
https://www.takahe.org.nz/heat-death-of-the-internet/

alex, 8 days ago to random

“Yes, there are well-known problems with Microsoft. As they are with every mega-corporation or plutocrat. We have legal-institutional arrangements that enable the rise of such platform-owners, “platformarchs” as I call them, who control the very foundations of entire industries. To reform those, we need to get involved in politics. It is not pretty, I know all too well, but it is the only way we have to campaign for thoroughgoing changes. But the impression I get from many of the hacker types out there is the sentiment encapsulated in the phrase “let’s keep politics out of this”. You can have a purely technical discussion, sure, though you cannot expect to have others be your voice when you yourself remain silent: politics will run its course and you will be left there trying to come up with some half-measure that does more harm to yourself than the status quo.”
https://protesilaos.com/codelog/2024-04-30-re-emacs-github-freedom-microsoft/

Oof, I need to think about this. I guess in a way it’s a reminder that “vote with your feet” is the recourse of those that have no voice in politics. The big players use politics to their advantage – and we must, too.

alex, 9 days ago to random EN

The amount of hours I sunk into this Markdown-to-plain-text converter is harrowing. But I think it works, now. With tests.

alex, 13 days ago to random

I love our solitary bees. In the late morning hours when it’s still cold they sit at the opening of their tubes, looking out, warming up, trying to find the inner strength to get up and start doing things and I can relate so much.

alex, 18 days ago to random EN

Here's something for my Firefox about:config:

image.animation_mode = once

Do you have opinions on media.autoplay.default or media.seamless-looping? I'm always interested in small steps to end that sensory onslaught.

alex, 19 days ago to random

« Posting this on behalf of a member who would like to remain anonymous:
I'm an art director and supervisor for a large studio. The studio heads had the bright idea before I started to hire prompters. Several bros were brought onto the film project. I absolutely hated myself for not quitting on the spot but stuck with it because it's mercenary out there. Have a family to feed etc. I decided to use this time wisely. Treat them as I would any artist I had hired. First round of pictures of a sweeping Ariel forest landscape comes through and it's not bad. They submit a ton of work and one or two of the 40 are ok. Nearly on brief. So first round feedback goes through and I tell them about the perspective mistakes, colour changes I want, layers that any matte painting would be split into. Within a day I get 5 variants. Not changes to the ones I wanted but variations.
Again. Benefit of the doubt I give them another round of feedback making it clear. Next day it's worse. I sit there and patiently paint over, even explaining the steps I would take as a painter. They don't do it, anomalies start appearing when I say I want to keep the exact image but with changes. They can't. They simply don't have the eye to see the basic mistakes so the Ai starts to over compensate. We get people starting to appear in the images. These are obviously holiday snaps.
"Remove the people"
"What would you like them changed to?"
"... grass. I just don't want them there"
They can't do it. The one that can actually use photoshop hasn't developed the eye to see his mistakes, ends up getting angry at me for not understanding he can't make specific changes. The girl whose background was a little photography has given me 40 progressively worse images with wilder mistakes every time. This is 4 days into the project.
I'm both pissed about the waste, but elated seeing ai fall at the first hurdle. It's not even that the images are unusable, the people making them have no eye for what's wrong, no thicker skin for constructive criticism and feedback, no basic artistic training in perspective and functionality in what they're making.
Yes the hype is going to pump more money into this. They won't go anywhere for a while.
But this has been such a glowing perfect moment of watching the fundamental part fail in the face of the most simple tasks. All were fired and the company no longer accepts Ai prompters as applicants. Your training as an artist will always be the most important part of this process and it is invaluable. I hope this post gives you a boost in a dark time. » – from a Facebook group called Artists Against Generative Al, via Danielle Sanfilippo, @scottfgray, @Hyades51

alex, 24 days ago to random

“Rewilding the internet is not a nostalgia project for middle-aged nerds who miss IRC and Usenet.”
https://www.noemamag.com/we-need-to-rewild-the-internet/

Now it’s getting personal! 😅

alex, 27 days ago to random

Amazing. It’s cheaper to buy oil companies and shut them down than to use carbon storage solutions to pay for the shit they dig up.
Sorry for the Linkedin link.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/john-poljak-40436b4_carboncapture-fossilfuels-carbonprice-activity-7185027356137304064-ykkV
Via @isotopp

alex, 1 month ago to random EN

Whenever I hear talk about the state crumbling (and since my wife works for the federal government in Switzerland I hear plenty of that), the first thing many people think is that the fault lies with the balanced budget amendment ("Schuldenbremse"). And indeed, that is the obvious cause for many of the problems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balanced_budget_amendment

Arguing about the balanced budget amendment is doomed, however. Most people don't understand the difference between household economics and state economics. A much simpler solution exists, however. One that everybody understands: INCREASE TAXES FFS!

Now I know why countries like Switzerland don't like to increase taxes: Where would all the oligarchs go? Where would all the great holdings go? And within Switzerland, same thing: as soon as one canton dropped inheritance tax they all feared that the rich would move elsewhere and started dropping their inheritance taxes. And now there is practically none, for descendants. Wealth can stay in the family, like in the good old days of feudalism.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erbschaftssteuer_in_der_Schweiz

Progressive taxes are great. The more you own and make, the more you can afford to support the public good. Pay proportionally more!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_tax

Taxes are great for redistribution of wealth. We don't need to argue about Universal Basic Income (I support it!) or new subsidies or anything else like that: We can simply use existing mechanisms to redistribute wealth, reducing that Gini coefficient, increasing happiness, increasing the feeling of living in a fair and just society, increasing the feeling that work can get you to the top.

Taxes are great to fight inflation, too! If the state hands out more money in a time of crisis, that excess money has to be taken back via taxes. This keeps the money flowing (and only money flowing is what counts). Of course you don't want to bring it back via asocial taxation schemes like a fixed per-head tax, or a VAT, but something like progressive income tax or progressive wealth tax.

This makes sense, even in broken system like ours: COVID money for everybody, everybody is squeezed by landlords and industry, then tax them to get the money back. Virtuous cycle!

Next up: Fighting tax evasion, fighting the free movement of capital, fighting for a global tax (do not follow the Swiss model of malevolent compliance!), and more. The fighting just never stops, I know.

alex, 1 month ago to random EN

I did not know that the EU was working on abolishing the time switch eventually! Surprising! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_time_in_Europe#Future
At the end of that section, however:

"As of December 2021, the decision has not been confirmed by the Council of the European Union. The Council has asked the Commission to produce a detailed impact assessment, but the Commission considers that the onus is on the Member States to find a common position in Council. As a result, progress on the issue is effectively blocked."

Not surprising. 😩

alex, 1 month ago to random EN

For some people, a war doesn't end with a peace agreement.
In this case, another British "high capacity" (HC) blockbuster bomb was discovered in the harbour of Kiel, Germany. It seems to be intact. 3,000 lb of explosives, 3 fuzes, it's all still there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbuster_bomb

Apparently, it was found by accident as the mine sweepers were checking the harbour in preparation of some ship manoeuvres. Defusing the mine is supposed to happen tomorrow.
https://www.kn-online.de/lokales/kiel/bombe-im-hafen-kiel-entdeckt-erstes-bild-von-der-grossen-luftmine-7ZVFH3ZPJFHY5NTHI2VU54BMOI.html
via @masek

alex, 1 month ago to random

Just saw a toot claiming that capitalism was the natural state of being since the world just wasn’t altruistic, that is just the way things are.

I… I don’t know where to start. The entire idea that production is part of a natural state is bonkers. Nobody else purchases things. What about other non-altruistic systems like dictatorships, slavery, feudalism, we have so much choice in terrible solutions… and what a strange reaction in face of one’s lack of imagination to just lie down and give up instead of insisting on human ingenuity and demanding that we do better.

If you ever see anybody say anything about the natural state, the first thing is to ask: are they a philosopher? A biologist? Or are they an economist? Or a haver of opinions?

These are not alike. And philosophy and biology are great topics, that is just the way things are. 😁

alex, 1 month ago to random EN

The office is running a phishing sensibilisation campaign with a partner where you get fake phishing emails that you have to report; reporting then gets you extra little tips about phishing. The idea is interesting. The gamification is cringe-worthy. Collecting stars! There's an upcoming treasure crate! And here I am, participating like a child even though I am 50. It does feel a bit demeaning. And today it explained something about emails that promised more privileges or permissions, ending with: "The fewer unnecessary permissions you have, the safer you and your employer will be." Giving me 1984 vibes. "Weakness is Safety. Power is Vulnerability."

alex, 2 months ago to random

That essay by Andrew Perfors about meaning in the world we live in is so good I could add a dozen quotes.
perfors.net/blog/creation-ai/

alex, 2 months ago to random

Made some hummus with salt lemons, forgot about the salt, added more salt, and now I’m salty.

alex, 2 months ago to random EN

I kept feeling that mail wasn't all that important anyway these days but now that Migadu has been having problems with my mail for more than five hours I feel that email is extremely important! :angry_laugh:

alex, 2 months ago to random EN

I recently set a different default font for my browser and every time I see a website use this font it makes me jump – including when I visit my own blog, using this browser. That's how rare it is for websites to not change the default font.

alex, 2 months ago to random EN

My program has man pages and now I'm wondering whether I should add a lot more comments to the code itself … maybe even turn it into some sort of literate programming artifact. Then again, I don't know. I haven't ever read good documentation of a program from beginning to end. It's either just simple function references, which is nice, but that already works, no extra required. Or I need to search the web for examples of how to use the functions where I don't understand the documentation. If that's the case, then it would be enough to just writer better documentation for packages and functions.
I guess I'm figuring out whether Knuth is right: "The practitioner of literate programming can be regarded as an essayist, whose main concern is with exposition and excellence of style. Such an author, with thesaurus in hand, chooses the names of variables carefully and explains what each variable means. He or she strives for a program that is comprehensible because its concepts have been introduced in an order that is best for human understanding, using a mixture of formal and informal methods that reinforce each other." I saw this quote in Jon Udell's Literate programming in Go where he talks about the code-as-wiki approach falling "far short of the standard set by Donald Knuth".
https://www.infoworld.com/article/3677772/literate-programming-in-go.html

alex, 2 months ago to random EN

Sometimes I fear that scaling images to 1200px and quality 75 is no longer good, even for casual browsing.
https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2024-02-18-wallis-again
Contains pictures of Hepatica nobilis and Pulsatilla vulgaris.

alex, 3 months ago to random

Patriotism is a terrible topic for a song. That’s what makes me cringe when I listen to Preciosa Puerto Rico by Marc Anthony. But when that tempo change in the middle around the 3min mark comes up, it just makes me want to get up and shout with jubilation! It is only later that I wonder: what if this had been a German singing about Germany (substitute your own boogeyman). Aaargh! I am convinced: patriotism is an illusion used to achieve something. It might be something good, a national infrastructure project, but inevitably it will be used for evil. But that song … ah, it melts my heart!

alex, 3 months ago to random

I made two strategic mistakes. The first was reading about how to install a Python program using virtual environments until I had tears streaming down my face and finally it failed because I think I need the Qt 5.15.4 runtime installed and I didn't know how to proceed. Then I made the second mistake when I thought it was probably a good idea when I read "If you have Docker installed, the webapp can be run in a container…" It's been downloading and installing stuff ever since.

alex, 3 months ago to random

The post on commit signing by @glyph reminds me of my reluctance to electronically sign private emails. To me, signing documents is a tool society uses against the people doing the signing. It’s a liability I take upon myself in order to get something: a wedding, a house – the other party is binding me to something. Conversely, when I’m not getting something of value I’m not signing anything. I prefer the liberty to repudiate everything. “I didn’t write this.” I’m not promising anything.
https://blog.glyph.im/2024/01/unsigned-commits.html

alex, 3 months ago to random

I want to love Forth and Lisp and Perl and Go and I sort of want to know Rust and Haskell and OCaml and Elixir, but really, the most important electronic computing platform for the largest number people is … spreadsheets.
Formulas and graphs turn these into the multifunctional tool that spread from accounting specialists to financial reporting to project managers planning to household budgets to birthday and wedding guest lists.
If you think about it, spreadsheets for the masses succeeded where Emacs failed. Spreadsheets allow you to build the tools you need. And sure, as a programming professional I have heard my share of horror stories: salary distributions and bonus programs, airport light systems, and many other things that should have used relational databases and REST services and whatever. But people know spreadsheets and use them to solve their problems.
Spreadsheets are underappreciated. Certainly they are underappreciated by programmers, I think.

alex, 3 months ago to random

I remember being very disappointed in the Sennheiser noise cancellation headphones for in-office work because they cancelled the droning of ventilation and computers and air conditioning and the like, so when you put them on it's like being under water, but they didn't cancel human voices all that much. In fact, project managers on the phone, people mentioning my name, questions related to the project I was working on – it all stood out, now. My interpretation was that this sort of noise cancellation was optimized for noisy workplaces where you still needed to hear your colleagues. Like (military) airplanes, for example. Which is exactly what I hate the most.