ramin_hal9001

ramin_hal9001, 4 days ago (edited 3 days ago)

@louis I am definitely going to switch from Ubuntu to another distro pretty soon, and I have been torn between standard Debian with Xfce, or Mint with Cinnamon. I think I will go with Xfce because they are mostly keeping up with the latest Gtk. They long ago moved to Gtk+ v3 and are gradually transitioning to Gtk4, probably to prepare for the larger transition to Wayland.

But Cinnamon has forked Gtk+ v2 into its own widget toolkit now, so it is kind of its own platform based on GLib and GObject, and it seems to be quite stable and over all a good user experience. It would be nice to have some of my apps programmed to work with either Cinnamon or Xfce. We will see if they will be able to port it to Wayland without the help of upstream Gtk.

ramin_hal9001, 13 days ago

> "As many as 300 protesters were arrested in Brooklyn on Tuesday night, where thousands of mostly Jewish New Yorkers gathered"

@DrALJONES (emphasis my own), and these are the people Joe Biden is calling "antisemitic" when he says shit like:

> "I condemn the antisemitic protests. That's why I have set up a program to deal with that..."

This delusional political double-speak is just getting more and more absurd by the day, I just can't handle this, my reflexive face-palmming is starting to hurt.

ramin_hal9001, 14 days ago

@sachac I know there must be some mnemonic, some "words" you can say to yourself, for the moves of the algorithms that can help you remember how to do them forward and backward. But personally, I have not learned of any mnemonic that I can remember very easily.

Also, I am really bad at recognizing patterns on the cube that would let me predict which algorithm to use in a given situation. I have to apply the procedure and see if it gives me the result. I can't imagine trying to do it blindfolded.

ramin_hal9001, 13 days ago

> "For pattern recognition, the tutorials tell you what colours to look for (ex: look for two corners of the same colour on one of the sides, put them in the back, then do this alg)."

@sachac yeah, I guess my problem is that I really only know 3 algorithms for the 3-cube, which is enough to solve it, but I should probably learn more if I want to solve it faster. I know all algorithms are basically "merging" of those basic 3 algorithms, but it limits my ability to recognize patterns and determine which algorithm to apply.

ramin_hal9001, 14 days ago

@DrALJONES next to "Iran" it should say "ends 1979".

ramin_hal9001, 19 days ago

@baritone_edge Some of the "hardening" that @ZacBelado is talking about is making sure not to report any information about plugins, installed fonts, or other things, it produces a false report when this information is requested. Also @Apollo2323 LibreWolf forges its signature, making itself appear to be like that of Chrome running on Windows. Occasionally while I use it, I see websites conform themselves to this signature, e.g. offering me Windows versions of apps to download.

I have also heard LibreWolf praised by differently-abled people for its good accessibility features as well.

ramin_hal9001, 20 days ago

@louis @hanspeter @thegibson I have been meaning to create a procedural nonsense generator from something like GPT2 or some LLM that is small enough to run on a laptop. Then I am going to flood my online content with nonsense at a 1/100 signal/noise ratio and let the LLM scrapers have at it. Of course I'll make it easy for a human to filter out, by placing the noise content in hidden <div>s, or by removing it with a bit of JavaScript, or coloring it the same as the background.

Gopher is a good idea too, I could put non-obfuscated versions of my documents there.

ramin_hal9001, 26 days ago

@louis congratulations! I tried VSCode a few years ago, and honestly it was pretty good. But I won't use it unless you are paying me good money to use it, and besides Emacs has me covered on just about everything.

ramin_hal9001, 29 days ago

@dekkzz76 Hyperbole creates a set of rules for identifying links which are only activated when you press the hyperlink activate key chord "M-RET" key. Of course, Emacs can already assign hyperlink properties to arbitrary text, but Hyperbole provides two advantages over an ordinary hyperlink:

1. Since the Hyperlink rules are only applied on the "activate" key chord, you can apply very sophisticated rules to just the text under the cursor without having to parse the whole buffer and assign hyperlink properties to text, which would be very slow. This makes the Hyperbole hyperlinking rules much more versatile.
2. The key chord is enabled as a global minor mode, so the hyperlink rules work in any buffer, regardless of what mode the buffer may be in. It is basically a markdown for links that can be included anywhere. The advantage of markdown is of course that it is human-readable, even if your editor does not recognize it as markdown. So you can include Hyperbole links in the comments of source code, in e-mail messages, or as the output of shell scripts, and the hyperlinks all just work (as long as you are in Emacs).

@rml

ramin_hal9001, 28 days ago

> "If I'm understanding links/buttons correctly, it would enable me to create commands from text (and at any point I want to do so)?"

@zyd yes, there are two button markups for calling arbitrary Emacs Lisp commands:

• Curly bracket-delimited key chords will run whatever command is bound to those key chords, for example {C-20 M-g M-g} will call "goto-line" with 20 as an argument. (Make sure the cursor is placed somewhere within the brackets, not on or before the brackets).

• Angle bracket notation executes arbitrary Emacs Lisp code within the brackets. (It is safe because you can see what code will be executed.) For example:

  <mark-whole-buffer>

  <eval (save-excursion (goto-char (point-max)) (insert "Hello, world!n"))>

And of course you can define your own functions and commands with descriptive names:

<my/git-fetch-and-pull-here>

@dekkzz76 @rml

ramin_hal9001, 29 days ago

> "Or, we could just build our own Mastodon client with Common Lisp."

@louis this would be my solution. Although I would go with Guile Scheme instead of Common Lisp, because of Guix packaging. And I would make a server too, and make it more like Kbin where you can do both Mastodon and Lemmy like posing.

ramin_hal9001, 1 month ago

@civodul "shepherd" in NixOS is a little dissapointing:

"A utility for applying code changes across many repositories"

@Mehrad that's nice, if there were a copyright battle, GNU Shepherd would win.

ramin_hal9001, 1 month ago

@Mehrad @civodul it is true, Guix will need a lot more engineering resources (full-time, paid software developers) before it could become useful. It especially lacks hardware support unless you go out of your way to setup non-free software package channels.

For the most part, if you stick to only using the main package channels, and don't do anything fancy for developing your own apps like changing package dependencies or build options, everything just works. This at least gives you access to instant roll-backs, and things like GNU Shepherd.

I prefer to use Guix as a package manager, in particular, I will use Guix as an alternative to FlatPak, Snap, and AppImage. It co-exists perfectly with any Linux distro's native package manager. So I let my Linux distro handle my operating system and desktop environment, and I install my favorite apps with Guix.

ramin_hal9001, 1 month ago

@Mehrad @civodul I think if you go to the Guix hompage, there is a "Help" menu, and there are links there to a Guix reference card, the Guix cookbook, and the Guix manual. So this serves as a single entry point, does it not?

Part of the problem is that Guix can be used as an Linux distro and a package manager, and the package manager is highly configurable with various channels. So your "entry point" to Guix might be different from other people, depending on how you want to use it. I think the Guix homepage does a pretty good job of providing resources for general purpose use cases. It seems to me that if you are using the HPC channel, you are not in the group of people who use Guix for general purposes.

> "For example as one of the most confusing parts: there is https://packages.guix.gnu.org/ and https://hpc.guix.info/browse to search for packages, (why?)"

The reason why is because there are multiple channels for packages. I recommend you use Guix command line tools to search for packages, rather than using the websites, because the Guix command line will search all the channels that you have access to, rather than you needing to know which channel provides which package and searching the channel website.

guix package --search='name-of-thing*'

> "Guix extremely relies on info pages. But that is not well known to 99.9% of world population."

For what it's worth, I really love the Info manual pages, it is very easy to find all the information I am looking for in this documentation, as long as you use Emacs (which I do) or the stand-alone "info" CLI utility. All you need to do is use the search features: index search (press "i" and type your query with tab completion) and menu search (type "m" and type your query with tab completion). The "index" is the index of all keywords in the manual, it is good to use if you do not yet know what you are looking for. The "menu" is a list of all documentation subsection titles, it is good to use if you already know what you are looking for.

ramin_hal9001, 1 month ago

@freakazoid I got my kids on Minetest (the free Minecraft) from a young age. They play minecraft now, but they will always be ablt to go back to Minetest.

ramin_hal9001, 1 month ago

@msquebanh @krusynth "The Breakfast Clib" movie still feels fairly modern, it is kind of hard for me to beileve that the kids in the film (if they are the same age as their fictional characters) would be 57 or 58 years old now.

ramin_hal9001, 1 month ago

> "Who was your fave character/actor in it?"

@msquebanh

> "i think i could relate to the goth girl (Ally Sheedy), but tbh it's been so long, i would have to see the movie again."

@blogdiva

> "that was who I related to most - I loved Ally Sheedy in that role."

@msquebanh Oh jeez, I still have a crush on Ally Sheedy's character in Breakfast Club, she is so beautiful. I don't know if she was supposed to be goth per say, but they referred to her as "a basket case" in the letter to the principle at the end of the film, so maybe? But yeah, I related mostly to Ally Sheedy's character, and to a lesser degree, the nerdy kid who admitted to suicidal thoughts.

@krusynth

ramin_hal9001, 1 month ago

@daviwil of course I have never met your wife, but I can tell that this kid takes after her, she is way too cute to have taken after you! 😝

ramin_hal9001, 1 month ago

@rml Python and JavaScipt are the languages of the liberal petite-bourgiouse. There can be no freedom until these are overthrown.

ramin_hal9001, 1 month ago

> "2023: Guile #scheme, Guix

> 2024: Stalin scheme, Red Star OS"

@rml ah, the compiler that single-handedly defeated the Nazis during the second world war. I get the sense that we again have a need nowadays for some good Nazi-smashing technology.

I have never tried Stalin, but I think it is R5RS only, and that would make it a bit difficult to run on the majority of my code which is R7RS.

ramin_hal9001, 1 month ago

> "Legend has it that #emacs intermittently flashes the word #COMMUNISM across the screen as a subliminal "fuck you" to the man. I think its working."

@rml "git grep" wont work as-is because it is encoded in the source code with ROT-13, so you would have to grep for the ROT-13 encoded string for "COMMUNISM" in order to find it. They aren't stupid enough to leave a subliminal clue like that as plain text right there in the source code.

LBH UNIR ABGUVAT GB YBFR OHG LBHE PUNVAF

ramin_hal9001, 1 month ago

> "Have you heard of expert systems?"

@timnitGebru https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S3m0V_ZF_Q

This epsidode of "The Computer Chronicles" mentions expert systems and Lisp systems.

Also, I am pretty bitter that Python became the language of choice for statisticians and therefore modern machine learning and neural networks, when back in the 70s and 80s everyone thought Lisp machines were computers that was going become sentient. Lisp is superior in quality to Python in almost every way.

ramin_hal9001, 1 month ago

> "Historically speaking, centrists capitulate to fascists while they will utterly and violently reject the 'left'"

> "to be afraid to criticise Biden because of what the other side is doing would be very dangerous"

@fedwards9965 @ozzy @blogdiva damn, ain't that the truth. Looking at the centrist comments in this thread is proof positive of that. Centrists love to think of themselves as so much more reasonable than the Trump right, but then lose their shit when anyone criticizes their president, casting around accusations of "ruining our democracy".

So the centrists defend thir own brand of fascism while calling it "democracy", and claim to be "anti-fascist." They oppose the fascism of Trump simply because Trump isn't the brand of fascism they prefer, and to that end defend a president who... (checks notes) assists in committing genocide of simitic/arab people in Gaza, but that's OK because Trump would do the same and worse. Yeah. "Reasonable" people, not "far left." Well done guys.

I'll vote Democrat because, as @blogdiva has said before, it is harm reduction, and I will still criticize Biden and the Democrats for every single last amoral thing that they do office, because that is the moral thing to do.

> "I just think that demanding that Biden snap his fingers and fix everything is just another example of American Exceptionalism"

> "Stop the attacks on our President."

> "I am anti-facists ... But I am not 'far-left' by any means. "

> "I'm not worried about criticism, I'm worried about depressing turnout."

> "this toot is just. massive load of poop ... If you help Trump get elected "

@ShredderFeeder @barney @ariaflame @lovelylovely @mloxton @thetechtutor you all are closeted fascists who are tacitly supporting genocide, every one of you. I am so sick of all of your bullshit.