samc

samc, 1 day ago

Kotlin targets the JVM right? I think you’d need either a port of the runtime (dalvik?) Or an api translation later a la WINE.

But I don’t actually know anything, so don’t listen to me. Having a fully Foss phone with support for the android app ecosystem would be wonderful though

samc, 2 days ago

I always thought that people using searx etc over duckduckgo were just gluttons for punishment. Having gone an entire morning without search, maybe now is the time to dive down that rabbit hole…

samc, 13 days ago

Machine learning is just gradient descent through a subset of algorithm-space

samc, 24 days ago

Whilst I’ve heard lots of talk that lunduke is getting increasingly politica, and I disagree quite strongly with his politics, I’ll have to agree with him here. IA did something unnecessarily risky (redistributing unauthorised copies of print books), which has more jeopardised their mission of archiving the internet.

I also agree with everyone here saying that current copyright laws are ridiculous (and not just because they are “outdated”, the Victorians had better copyright laws than we do). However, I think only the most radical overhaul of copyright law would condone what IA did, and that isn’t coming any time soon (If ever).

samc, 1 month ago

There’s a former apple designer on the team I think, which they’ve been leaning into hard to get the hype train rolling.

samc, 1 month ago

How bloody dare you!

samc, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

There is, they just don’t publicise it. Actually one of my favourite features of the service tbf. Just load up a web page and all my messages are there, regardless of where they came from.

samc, 1 month ago

Thanks, fixed! (TIL you need the https:// bit on Lemmy)

samc, 1 month ago

Iirc microkernels have been the future since before Linux existed. There was a bit of a flame war between Linus and the guy who wrote the MINIX kernel about how being monolithic would be the death of Linux.

GNU Hurd also wanted to show the world how good microkernels could be, but sadly never got off the ground.

I’m not saying microkernels are bad, but I do wonder if there’s some reason we don’t see them out in the wild much.

samc, 1 month ago

Isn’t production JavaScript usually minified/obfuscated to make it hard to read?

Also wasm is actually bytecode, which I believe has a 1:1 conversion into a text-based format called wat.

I agree with your main point though, it’s kinda creepy when you realise just how much we are expected to allow other people’s code to run on our machines.

samc, 1 month ago

There’s a common thread between a lot of the missteps listed here and Embeacer group’s recent troubles. The idea that you could fund 230 Spiderman 2’s for the same price as buying 1 Activision-Blizzard-King really drove the point home to me.

The problem (in my obviously uneducated opinion) is that when you spend so much money in acquisition, especially of established companies, you’re neither funding nor rewarding innovation. You spend $70B on ABK and some randos in suits get a huge payout that they invest in oil or crypto or whatever. Spend $70B on talent and early career devs and you could unleash a tidal wave of creativity and experimentation.

samc, 1 month ago

Is it me or does this feel like it was originally a saga?

samc, 2 months ago

The mention of cost has me curious. Are by-elections costly for (I’m guessing) the electoral commission to run?

I imagine the main costs involved are party funds for campaigning, but they probably see it as a proxy for the main event, so hardly money wasted. Even if it were, its not public money.

samc, 2 months ago

I do wonder if this being an election year has an effect? Maybe there’s a trend if you go back far enough.

samc, 2 months ago

By default, XWayland apps are now allowed to listen for non-alphanumeric keypresses, and shortcuts using modifier keys. This lets any global shortcut features they may have work with no user intervention required, while still not allowing arbitrary listening for alphanumeric keypresses which could potentially be used maliciously

This is… very smart actually. Any reason this is limited to Xwayland? (Is that XDG portal a thing yet?)

samc, 2 months ago

Is this the one that was planning to be a full open world RPG originally? (Sui Generis IIRC) I’m guessing that’s unlikely to happen by this point. Exanima still looks fun though

samc, 3 months ago

I think she puts it best in that article. The problem isn’t helping people to own their own house, its that the stock of social housing isn’t being replaced.

samc, 3 months ago

The point of Linux on phones isn’t to have a phone that requires you to constantly fix it with CLI tools. The point is to have a free and open software platform for a device that is increasingly necessary for daily life.

As a side effect, developing Linux for phones would probably help us eliminate the need to reach for the terminal on desktop Linux as well. I believe snaps (which laid the groundwork for flatpaks) were originally developed for Linux on “smart” devices. The whole ecosystem improves when we try to bring Linux into a new domain.

P.S. I use termux (a terminal for android complete with its own tiny Linux environment) from time to time when I need to access my server over SSH. It’s a bit clumsy, but super handy!

samc, 3 months ago

I wish there was an option for an android style system where, when an application wants to use a permission for the first time, you get a pop up asking you to grant that permission.

Or, more generally, just some way to ensure that (a) a flatpak isn’t granted the permissions it wants automatically and (b) I can then manually grant those permissions as conveniently as possible

samc, 3 months ago

Best I’ve ever had was like 60mbps down. Might be a budget thing though, I refuse to pay more than £30/month for internet

samc, 3 months ago

At the end there’s a little jab towards Wayland:

Today, the Wayland enthusiasts like to talk about how they are modernizing the Linux graphics stack. But Linux is a Unix, and in Unix, everything is meant to be a file. So any Wayland evangelists out there, tell us: where in the file system can I find the files describing a window on the screen under the Wayland protocol? What file holds the coordinates of the window, its place in the Z-order, its colour depth, its contents?

As far as I’m aware nobody has even considered extending the file metaphor to the graphics stack, and it sounds a bit ridiculous to me.

It also reminds me of this talk that suggests maybe trying to express everything as a file might not be the best idea…

samc, 3 months ago

permission denied: /dev/display/3/349/1045

samc, 3 months ago

I’ve had to give up on KISS launcher recently because of this. 95% of the time it works fine, until it scrolls right to the end of the lost and won’t allow you to scroll back. Swiping left and right then also breaks and the only thing to do is force stop quickstep.

EDIT: Just tried with Niagara and got the same issue almost immediately. (Seems to be triggered by opening recent apps from the launcher itself)

For reference, I’m on a Fairphone 5 using the stock ROM

samc, 3 months ago

Underrated comment.

samc, 3 months ago

On a tangential note: got caught out be it saying “next Saturday” is the 24th. I know that this is common terminology, but to me next feels like it means soonest, and I know I’m not the only one.