James_Dixon / James_Dixon is on Nostr

Gab refugee.
Retired computer tech.
Slackware user.

🔗 bridged from James_Dixon@poa.st (fediverse)

Last Notes

2026-10-22 15:28:14 UTC

While it's never stated in those words, former Cincinnati and WVU basketball coach Bob Huggins obviously has Alzheimer's:
https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/50241421/hall-famer-bob-huggins-progressive-cognitive-condition

2026-10-20 03:51:23 UTC

The three musketeers:
https://i.poastcdn.org/0a/ac/dd/0aacdd4f19fac18806acea16ff758cf0ad18627108160f81908c732a54db221d.png

2026-10-19 21:27:44 UTC

Declining stocks led advancing stocks 56.6% to 38.7% to start the week. The was not reflected by the major indexes as only the Dow lost ground for the day:
DJIA -36.38 (-0.07%)
S&P 500 +31.29 (+0.41%)
NASDAQ +290.85 (+1.11%)
Russell 2000 +6.93 (+0.25%)
It was reflected in my portfolio, which lost 0.23% for the day and lost to all the indexes. ☹️
#Investing

2026-10-16 19:13:48 UTC

By now most Linux users have probably heard about the Artcraft apps.
They are supposedly clean room implementations of existing applications, such as:
Autocad
Acrobat
Photoshop
Micrososft Word
Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Powerpoint
to name a few. There are thirteen such apps in all, written in Rust and available to download for Windows, MacOS, and Linux. The Linux versions are available in flatpak, appimage, .deb, .rpm, and tarball formats. So they will work on most distributions.
Slackware is not most distributions. The only option that "might" work is the flatpak, and that only if it includes the needed version of glibc. The others fail. I hate flatpaks and even if I didn't, the disk space requirements of flatpak apps alone make them a non-starter on my system installed on a 128GB SSD.
You can't even compile the apps from the source code on a default Slackware 15 installation, as it requires Rust 1.90 or newer and Slackware comes with Rust 1.58.
However, there is an updated Rust package (rust-opt) available at http://slackbuilds.org which provides Rust 1.98. If you install it using sbopkg and export the directory to your path, the build instructions on their github site work, at least for Photocraft. It does not, however, install the app for you. You'll have to do that manually.
You can also compile and install the artcraft-launcer, which is supposed to install. launch, and update the various apps for you. It also builds and runs fine on Slackware, but it doesn't work. It downloads the appimage files and, as already noted, the appimages don't work with Slackware. You can fix this by copying the working app you already built over top of the appimage, but future updates will simply break them again, so the only thing the launcher is good for is launching the apps you build yourself and letting you know when new versions are available.
So yes, you can make the artcraft apps work with Slackware, but it's a tedious task that most users won't want to bother with.
I may build the current versions of the apps for Slackware and put them up on my Google Drive. If I do I'll post the links here.

2026-07-18 18:30:41 UTC

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@npub1d96…7s4c @npub1y6c…jkf0 > I need to study this.
You're currently running Windows?
You have two options for trying out Linux Mint.
Option 1:
1) Download the ISO from https://linuxmint.com/download.php
2) Download Rufus from https://rufus.ie/en/#download
3) Burn the iso to a USB drive using Rufus and boot from the USB drive (process varies with computer model) to try it out.
Option 2:
1) Download the ISO from https://linuxmint.com/download.php
2) Download VirtualBox and the extension pack from https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
3) Install VirtualBox and the extension package.
4) Create a virtual machine (VirtualBox will practically walk you through the process) that exceeds the Linux Mint virtual requirements.
5) Boot the virtual machine from the ISO and install Linux Mint on the Virtual Machine.
In either case you Windows machine remains as is so you can keep using it. The VirtualBox option means Linux Mint is available without rebooting Windows.
If you decide you want to try it full time, use an old machine you have or pick up a cheap refurbished machine from NewEgg or Amazon to try it on. Something like this:
https://www.newegg.com/dell-optiplex-9020-student-home...
Wpuld run Linux Mint fine.

2026-07-18 18:14:50 UTC

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> I expect Social Security to collapse before I get my money out of it…
Collapse, maybe not. But change, yes. The trust fund will be exhausted in about 6 years and there won't be enough money to pay the current recipients.
> So my only other option is to pour money into a 401(k) which goes into speculative AI stocks against my will
Your 401K doesn't offer midcap or small cap index funds? That would avoid the high cap AI stocks. For that purpose the Vanguard Extended Market Index Fund is probably the best option out there, VEXAX for the mutual fund and VXF for the ETF.

2026-07-15 13:43:33 UTC

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@npub1u5r…ztw8 @npub16ty…m0cj > So still half a step better than Jews.
Yeah, they don't reject Christ. But they're still screwed unless they accept him as what he is:
"Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me."
We really have no idea how Christ's judgment will work. We only know that their salvation is in his hands and his judgment will be perfect.
We do know that rejecting him in this life pretty much closes the door though. He made that clear to the Pharisees.