@bluGill@kbin.social cover

bluGill

@bluGill@kbin.social

A programmer with an interest in transit, making music, and building things of all types.

I have dysgraphia which makes writing difficult for me. I hope you can figure out what I mean despite my issues.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. View on remote instance

bluGill ,

Your local bike store should have a nice selection. I use my EV bike all the time and the car I keep for those few trips where the bike doesn't work just sits... You should too. Don't forget to check out the local transit options (and if - as is likely - they are bad demand better)

juliaferraioli , to random
@juliaferraioli@floss.social avatar

"With mathematics, we can predict the behavior of systems before a single line of code is written." - Marc Brooker, VP/Distinguished Engineer at AWS

bluGill ,

@juliaferraioli nobody has figured out how I can use them in my real world c++. (HELP!!!)

bluGill ,

Abuse. I don't agreewithfree speach in all things. I doupt anyone does. I don't want to see constant (to the point of only) ads for vbucks. I don't want threats to my person. There are a few other things like that, that I think we all agree on., I then have a personal list of things like porn or swearing that iidon't want to see but some of you do. Where to draw theelineethus isn't clear but there is one.

bluGill ,

Nothing is exposed. There are things I want exposed, but I don't want to keep security patches up to date, even if there is a zero day. I'm looking for someone trustworthy to hire for things that it would be useful to expose, but they are hard to find.

bluGill ,

Sure, when linux loads are process it follows a standard procedure to see how to run the file. If the file has ELF markers it runs the process via the ELF loader. If the file has #! as the first then it uses a different process to run that script. (I doubt a.out executable format is supported anymore, but that at least used to be an option). There is no reason you cannot hack this process to detect windows executable and then use wine to load/run the application. I'm not sure why nobody has done this, but the basic things have been supported in linux for decades.

bluGill ,

i last looked into this about 20 years ago. I concluded I could make it work but I don't use wine enough to bother.

bluGill ,

mobiles and desktops are very diffrerent and need different user incerfaces. So you are not savin, much work. In fact trying to handle both in on may be worse because of all the special cases. Be glad you don't have to support teletypes, they demand different user interfaces.

bluGill ,

The C++ committee is actively looking at how something like rust's borrow checker could be added to C++. Likely it won't be a borrow checker, but just enforcement that some code cannot use new/delete and so must use a container (std::unique_ptr, std::vector...) which gets rid of most of the pain. Modern C++ is a much better language than C++98, but I still see a lot of people writing C++98 code.

bluGill ,

A terminal is something like a DEC model Vt220, or IBM 3270. These are physical machines with a keyboard, and a display. Most often the display was a CRT, but some were just a printer, I supposed some must have had a LCD but I've never seen one. A few did have a mouse, but that was rare. They might look like a computer, but they do not have a CPU (or they do but the CPU is very under powered). The point is you can have 100 cheap (cheap as in 4x the cost of a modern PC, without factoring in inflation) terminals connecting to an expensive powerful computer (expensive as in millions of not inflation adjusted dollars, powerful as in a modern smart phone is faster by nearly any measure). Every terminal had some special commands that programs could use to do something more fancy than plain text, but different ones had different abilities.

These days a powerful PC is cheaper than any terminal could be and vastly more powerful than those old computers, so it doesn't make sense to have one except as a collectors item. However terminals themselves did leave a useful of program design. Most command line programs know how to control a terminal to do some pretty printing. Thus we often use terminal emulators which let our computer pretend to be one of those old terminals. The DEC vt100 for whatever reason ends up being the most commonly emulated terminal when someone says terminal emulator - there really was a model vt100 terminal at one time.

Note that a web browser counts as a terminal emulator by the above definition. Nobody thinks of them that way, but they fit.

bluGill ,

Rubber are a nickel and dime feature because that is one of the few areas where dealers can make money. Most people walk into the dealer knowing the cost the dealer is paying for the car, and they are determined not to pay a penny more. this leaves zero money for the dealer to pay for the lights, building, and other overhead, not to mention a fair salary for the salesman (apologies to the tiny minority of females in car sales) who sold it.

If everyone (not just you!) would go to buy a new car with the plan to get a fair win-win deal for everyone then the dealer wouldn't have to find all these ways to nickel and dime you on extras.

bluGill ,

You can have good luck just by buying 10 year old cars - they might have connectivity, but the it will be to a cell/network standard that no longer exists and so for practical purposes the car cannot connect to anything.

bluGill ,

Even before the official end man, towers were retired and so odds were against getting a connection though somecimes you could

bluGill ,

Docker gives you a few different things which might or might not matter. Note that all of the following can be gotten in ways other than docker as well. Sometimes those ways are better, but often what is better is just opinion. There are downsides to some of the following as well that may not be obvious.

With docker you can take a container and roll it out to 100s of different machines quickly. this is great for scaling if your application can scale that way.

With docker you can run two services on the same machine that use incompatible versions of some library. It isn't unheard of to try to upgrade your system and discover something you need isn't compatible with the new library, while something else you need to upgrade needs the new library. Docker means each service gets separate copies of what is needs and when you upgrade one you can leave the other behind.

With docker you can test an upgrade and then when you roll it out know you are rolling out the same thing everywhere.

With docker you can move a service from one machine to a different one somewhat easily if needed. Either to save money on servers, or to use more as more power is needed. Since the service itself is in a docker you can just start the container elsewhere and change pointers.

With docker if someone does manage to break into a container they probably cannot break into other containers running on the same system. (if this is a worry you need to do more risk assessment, they can still do plenty of damage)

bluGill ,

The duolingo format was never popular with polyglots. The game format makes it easy to feel like you did something which is a great thing, but the is the only pro people who have learned multiple languages find with it.

There is a lot of debate about what the best way to start is, but all agree that you need to interact with the real language in real world type settings (watching a movie in the language with subtitles is real world, though you need to make an effort to listen not just read!) They also agree that time is important, you need to study at least an hour every day to make progress.

bluGill ,

While technically you don't need to study an hour every day, if you don't put that much time into it you will eventually look back and see you have spend a year+ and don't know anything and then give up. An hour a day means it is likely you have made progress between reviews of your life and thus the effort is worth continuing. At 10 minutes per day you will be dead before you know the language, so giving up is the right answer.

Enough people fail to learn a language in school as to consider the whole idea of school bunk. (but some do learn, and some schools are better than others - but the better ones all feature time as a factor)

sj_zero , to Fediverse

Link aggregators have a problem on the fediverse. The approach is server-centric, which has positives, but it also has major negatives.

The server-centric approach is where a community belongs to a certain server and everything in the world revolves around that server.

The problem is that it's a centralized formula that centralizes power in a the hands of a whichever servers attract the most users, and potentially breaks up what might be a broader community, and makes for a central point of failure.

Right now, if user1@a.com and user2@b.com talk on community1@c.com then a lot of things can happen to break that communication. if c.com defederates b.com then the communication will not happen. If c.com breaks then the communication will not happen. If c.com shuts down then the communication will not happen. If c.com's instance gets taken over by management that doesn't want person1 and person2 to talk, then the communication will not happen.

Another problem is that user1@a.com and user2@b.com might never meet, because they might be on community1@a.com and community1@c.com. This means that a community that could reach critical mass to be a common meeting place would not because it's split into a bunch of smaller communities.

Mastodon has servers going up and down all the time, and part of the reason it's able to continue functioning as a decentralized network is that as long as you're following people on a wide variety of servers then one server going down will stop some users from talking but not all of them so the system can continue to operate as a whole. By contrast, I'm posting this to one server, and it may be seen by people on a wide variety of servers, but if the one server I'm posting this to goes down the community is destroyed.

There are a few ways to solve the problem...

one method could work as something like a specific "federated network community". There would be a local community, and the local community would federate (via local mods, I presume) with communities on other instances creating a specific metacommunity of communities on many instances that could federate with other activitypub enabled communities, and if any of the federated communities go down the local community remains. If any servers posed problems they could cease being followed, and in the worst case a community could defederate totally from a server (at a community level rather than a server level) In that case, community1@a.com and community1@b.com could be automatically linked up once both connect to community1@c.com (I'm thinking automatic linking could be a feature mods could turn off and on for highly curated communities), and if c.com shuts down or defederates with one of the two, user1@a.com and user2@b.com would continue to be able to talk through their federated network.

Another method would be something more like hashtags for root stories, but I don't know how server-server links would be accomplished under a platform like lemmy, kbin, or lotide. I don't know how hashtags migrate on mastodon type software and how that migrates. In that case, it might be something like peertube where a network is established by admins (or users, I don't know) connecting to other servers manually.

Finally, I think you could implement the metacommunity without changing the entire fediverse by having the software auto-aggregate metacommunities. You could create a metacommunity community1 on a.com that would then automatically aggregate all posts on communities called community1 on all known servers. The potential downside of this is you could end up with a lot of noise with 100 posts of the same story, I haven't thought much about how you could handle duplicates so you could participate but wouldn't have 100 similar posts. In this case with respect to how to handle new posts, each metacommunity would be a local community and new individual posts would be posted locally and federated to users on other metacommunities. If metacommunities of this sort became the norm, then the duplicates problem may be solved organically because individuals using metacommunities would see the posts on other metacommunities and wouldn't bother reposting the same story, much like how people see a story and don't repost in individual communities.

One big problem is scaling, doing something like this would definitely be a non-trivial in terms of load per community. Right now if one person signs up to one community, they get a lot of posts from one server. Under a metacommunity idea like this, if one person signs up to one community, they get a lot of posts from many, many servers. lemmy.world has 5967 total instances connected to it, and 2155 instances running lemmy, lotide, kbin, mbin, or friendica that could contain similar types of community, that's a lot of communities to follow for the equivalent of one single community, especially if some of the communities in the metacommunity have a lot of traffic in that community. You'd have to look at every known server to first see if it exists and second if it has a community appropriate for the metacommunity, and the metacommunity would have to routinely scan for dead hosts to remove from the metacommunity and live hosts that may start to see an appropriate metacommunity has been created.

I'm sure there are other solutions, but I'm just thinking of how things work within my current understanding.

Of course, for some people, the problem is one they don't want solved because it isn't a problem in their view (and that's a legit view even if it's one I'm not really amenable to). Some people prefer smaller communities, or want tighter control over their communities. For servers or communities that don't want to be brought into a metacommunity, it seems like some sort of flag to opt-out (or opt-in as the case may be) should be designed in -- I'm thinking something in the community description like a textflag NOMC or YESMC that server software would be designed to respect.

With respect to moderation, It seems to me that you could have a variety of strategies -- you could have a sort of default accept all moderation where if one instance moderates a post other instances take on the same action, or whitelist moderation where if one instance or one set of moderators on a whitelist take an action then other instances take the same action, or a sort of republican moderation where if a certain number of instances take an action then other instances take the same action, and probably an option for individual metacommunities to only accept moderation from the local community the original post came from. I suspect you'd want a choice in the matter per metacommunity instance on a server.

bluGill ,

the problem with automatic meta communities
is not all are the same despite the name. Communities on a nsfw server do not belong with the rest. I can imagine a server where the policy\purpose is to mock a topic, or mayb humor takes servers.

bluGill ,

Not exactly worthless. It is worth more than gravel. The cost to crush it is so high you still have to pay to remove it, but you don' have to pay the landfill fees as the crushers will take it cheaper.

bluGill ,

Mostly they are the same people.

bluGill ,

I switched a few months ago to see how bad it is. Never found anything not work so I'm still using it.

Why are peertube channels federated like a magazine or a community on lemmy? ( kbin.social )

I've been using #Kbin for a while since reddit exodus, but it wasn't until like a week ago that I decided to create an account. It's been great, it is the best way for me to experience the #fediverse, I used mastodon and firefish before, but I think I like more the community format, and not losing the possibility to follow...

/kbin logotype
ALT
bluGill ,

I don't think kbin is intended to work. While you can follow things, peertube does some different things that if not designe in will not work. It would be nice, but Ernst has a lot of other work

rolle , to random
@rolle@mementomori.social avatar

I’m so tired of the capitalist argument that an open source project cannot be successful because it’s based on nonprofit or donations instead of vc funding and corporates.

Some people seem to actually believe in this narrative that Linux, Mozilla products and the Internet itself are all alive solely because of for-profit industries while forgetting that the actual people, inventors, universities and organisations do exist in this world. Also the contributing factors by companies do not nullify the brilliance of the original project. FFS, it is not all because of the money.

bluGill ,

@rolle capitilism was a strawman. it is what ever best fits yoour need for evil. In the real word what it pretends to represent is far too complex to understand, much argue about

YouTube screwing itself with adblockers again

I use Firefox and uBlock Origin. Not sure what kind of experience anyone else is having with YouTube, but recently my home page has been empty because I “don’t have watch history turned on”. Okay, fine. I won’t be able to browse suggested videos, and I’ll spend less time on their platform....

bluGill ,

Statistically you will buy that so the ad companies pay google to ignore your prefferences.

bluGill ,

Let me add the regular reminder to look for content on peertube first.

bluGill ,

I think there are higher priority issues. Not that you are raising invalid issues, just too much work for too few Ernst's

bluGill ,

Thanks for this. I'm starting to learn it, but already feel like I make less mistakes without autocorrect. Sad as I'm a bad speller.

SoniEx2 , to random

how hard would it be to take a standard off-the-shelf printer and replace its controller board?

it's not like you can put DRM on a motor. and let's be honest, sourcing the parts for a printer is the real hard part. programming it/figuring out how to drive it is hard, sure, but it's just firmware, anyone can download it off the internet.

you wouldn't buy printer parts. but you can buy a microcontroller and download firmware.

thoughts?

bluGill ,

@SoniEx2 i'm sure I could do it, but it would probably take a couple years. The hard part is figuring out how the print head works.

ascott , to random

Question for the keeb people... Is it possible to build a custom keyboard with shaky hands?

For reference, I build my own desktops but the tiny screws are very difficult sometimes. It takes several minutes, at least, just to mount the motherboard properly.

I have a couple prebuilts and it would be really cool to make my own the way I do PCs, however I don't want to buy a kit if I'm just going to make myself sad.

bluGill ,

@ascott you can get prebuilt with your choice of switches for cheap, so i'm not sure why you want to diy

bluGill ,

@ascott design a board in kicad and then have it assembled. Or at least the right sockets for hot swap keys. Soldering chips in place seems iffy at best, but you can hire that done.

ajsadauskas , (edited ) to Technology
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

Are agile scrums an outdated idea?

Here's a video on YouTube making the case for why agile was an innovative methodology when it was first introduced 20 years ago.

However, he argues these days, daily scrums are a waste of time, and many organisations would be better off automating their reporting processes, giving teams more autonomy, and letting people get on with their work:

https://youtu.be/KJ5u_Kui1sU?si=M_VLET7v0wCP4gHq

A few of my thoughts.

First, it's worth noting that many organisations that claim to be "agile" aren't, and many that claim to use agile processes don't.

Just as a refresher, here's the key values and principles from the agile manifesto: http://agilemanifesto.org/

  1. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
  2. Working software over comprehensive documentation
  3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
  4. Responding to change over following a plan
  • Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
  • Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.
  • Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
  • Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
  • Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
  • The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
  • Working software is the primary measure of progress.
  • Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
  • Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
  • Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential.
  • The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
  • At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

Your workplace isn't agile if your team is micromanaged from above; if you have a kanban board filled with planning, documentation, and reporting tasks; if your organisation is driven by processes and procedures; if you don't have autonomous cross-functional teams.

Yet in many "agile" organisations, I've noticed that the basic principles of agile are ignored, and what you have is micromanagement through scrums and kanban boards.

And especially outside software development teams, agile tends to just be a hollow buzzword. (I once met a manager at a conference who talked up how agile his business was, and didn't believe me when I said agile was originally a software development methodology — one he revealed he wasn't following the principles of.)

@technology

bluGill ,

@Zaktor

@technology @ajsadauskas @jordanlund @pixxelkick @7u5k3n the point is you can say if you have problems and quickly find if someone else knows the solution or if you need to spend time digging in.

bluGill ,

@Zaktor

@technology @ajsadauskas @jordanlund @pixxelkick @7u5k3n no, people can say things like that faster than they can type. Unless you are not native

bluGill ,

@Zaktor

@technology @ajsadauskas @jordanlund @pixxelkick @7u5k3n if there is nothing to discuss my meetings take 3 minutes. I can't verify spelling of just my status email in that time. We don't leave our desks for the meeting, so it is three minutes. They are called standups for a reason, sitting down should not be worth it (except for the one disabled person )

Your problem seems to be how the meeting is run.

I'm starting to see some serious downsides to being able to see who downvotes you. ( kbin.social )

A few days ago I downvoted someone's comment, and the next day I happened to notice every single comment I've ever made had at least one downvote. All from the person I dared to downvote the ONE time. I straight up asked why they did it, and they seem to think I'm an "obvious" troll account that "apparently just exist to...

/kbin logotype
ALT
bluGill ,

Still a good idea, kbin doesn't need to use your downvotes as part of any algorithm if you are negative.

bluGill , to /kbin meta

@ernest I'm trying to reply to a federated toot and the add comment button changes to "sending" for a while then comes back without posting anything.

https://kbin.social/m/random/p/3447135/Maybe-someone-well-intentioned-once-thought-we-could-make-Portland-into

Anything more I can do? this problem has happened before but I can't figure out when/why

abesamma , to random

Does AWS worry about the poor business model of many open source projects? Nalley sighs. [...]

“Inside AWS we have the concept of strategic open source projects. [...] We don’t want to learn that this thing that’s really important is maintained by a guy living in a basement on public assistance. That is not acting in the best interests of our customers.”

AWS exec: 'Our understanding of open source has started to change' • The Register https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/04/david_nalley_interview/

bluGill ,

@danjac

@abesamma If you depend on an open source project then you want there to be at least two guys working on the project - the bus factor otherwise comes into play.

bluGill ,

Label those pictures though, they are more useful. When my grandma died we showed her old photos to a man who looked at one and said, that is my mom, I never saw a.picture of mom before she was married before. However if my grandma hadn't labeled the pictures it would be some girl nobody knew 70 years later '

bluGill ,

Back in the day facebook only had a like button and people demanded a dislike button. I don't know what facebook thought internally.

I think what kbin really needs is reasons. (like slashdot - though I havne't been there in 20 years so I don't know what is current). Upvote because it is funny is different from upvote because it is insightful (I may want to filter on that). Downvote because it is SPAM vs downvote because it is insightful on how someone who is wrong thinks (which probably should count as an upvote) Of couscous I don't know what the fedration protocol allows.

bluGill ,

Come to think of it, I think downvotes should become a message to the mod - either delete this unacceptable content, or remove the downvote. I'm not sure what the logistics of that are though - I'd be shocked if there are not serious unintended consequences of that.

bluGill ,

I don't want downvote for disagreement. Learn to debate a point and then leave it. Downvote for disagreement just discourages people from holding forth on complex unpopular positions ,even if they are correct. Of course it is most abused in politics where we can't objectively give a correct answer, but elsewhere i've seen real experts downvoted when they point out the popular narrative doesn't fit the facts.

bluGill ,

Fastmail does a great job for me. Spam isn't a problem with legitimate email providers anymore.

bluGill ,

Because the people who developed X11 (that is Xorg) haven declared that. Maybe they should have named it X12, but they didn't for whatever reason. However the people doing the work have already given up on working on X11 they gave up on X11 beyond the bare minimum almost 10 years ago because some real issues with X11 as a protocol are not fixable.

There were other attempts to a successor to X11, but they never got the support of people doing the work on X11 (in part because they didn't understand the problem with X11 and so kept many bad things while 'fixing' things that were not broken)

Which is to say: you have two choices: get involved with continuing X11 development, or jump to Wayland. Throw a couple million $$$ per year at X11 (either pay developers, or convince a dozen developers to maintain X11) and I'll retract my statement, until then X11 is dead. If you cannot do that then Wayland is your only option.

bluGill ,

C, because I can find a compiler or interpreter for other language written in C (I may need to run a few steps to get there), and thus work around your silly and nonsense question. Seriously, I use multiple languages because there is no one true language to rule them all. I use C++ for problems where bash would be wrong, and bash where C++ would be wrong. And some python, cmake, lua mixed in for good measure. I'm looking at Rust to add (rust doesn't like the way our system designed so it is hard to figure out how to implement it)

To those genuinely interested in moderating ( kbin.social )

@Ernest has pushed an update which allows users to request ownership/moderation of abandoned magazines. Ghost/abandoned magazines were fairly prevalent after the initial wave of hype due to users either squatting magazine names or becoming inactive for other reasons. Now is your chance to get involved, if you were waiting to do...

/kbin logotype
ALT
bluGill ,

Seems like names like that should be in a 'if you create the mag you are automatically banned ).

bluGill ,

How long do these last / how reliable are they. I'd love to have a braille display, but since I can see fine $3k isn't worth it, but $100 I'd have one to play with. However if I was blind I might be willing to spend $3k if it is better (note that I am well off and can afford $3k if I really want to - most blind people are not well as well off as me)

bluGill ,

If it lasts me a year, that is two days for a blind person. In just a few months the 3k.version is cheaper for them. I don't think quality will improve in a few months, more likely they go bankrupt from warranty claims (if open source develop a bad reputation and nobody uses it)

bluGill ,

You said that it was last me one year. Since I'm not blind, only someone vaguely interested that would be two days - not for me, but for someone who is blind and thus needs to use this all day.

As for how long it will last? That is an open question. It has small moving plastic parts Making those last is a difficult engineering challenge, so while 2 days (for the blind) wouldn't surprise me, I'm not actually stating anything. Fortunately it is easy for them to test: build one, figure out how fast blind people read, and then throw project Gutenberg at it repeatedly for a while to see how long it lasts. Since it is so easy I'll just stick with how long it lasts is a real worry, but I expect someone to do some tests and tell everyone. Ideally it would be the creators as they can do a failure analysis and maybe fix problems.

If it lasts a blind person a year this is a good win.

bluGill ,

Forget about a camera, setup a local server to read the camera's data and have that server send data to the internet. There are open source servers you can use, though I have not tested any so I won't recommend one. Then have your firewall block the camera from the internet completely (you can open a hole to apply an update if you think an update would be helpful, just close it when the update is done).

The PineCube might be a useful camera for this, but AFAIK nobody has really written software for it. still it might be an option if you want to go through a lot of work.

bluGill ,

Linux is the imposter here. Segmentation fault refers to how the PDP-(I forget) hardware organized memory. It comes from the original unix implementation which linux has never had any part of.

bluGill ,

It does matter because projects like *BSD can prove continuous usage of the term. As such either the trademark is easy to break (it is common use), or it can only be a trademark in very specific contexts that are unlikely to apply.

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