Liam Proven

https://social.vivaldi.net/@lproven

Tall, once dark, black-clad atheist skeptic SF fan; writes (mostly about computers) for a living. Grizzled internet veteran, online since 1985. Current primary email is from 1991.

All opinions expressed are my own & not those of any employer.

Public Key

npub19ygpp4ke3znm5tj6umraddlj8ge8pwel7zjsc35h5gvpx364jv3q05w8um

NIP-05 Address

lproven_at_social.vivaldi.net@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqszjyqs6mvc3fa69edwd37kkler5vnshvllpfgvg6t6yxqnga2exgspz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsx9lw8t

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub19ygpp4ke3znm5tj6umraddlj8ge8pwel7zjsc35h5gvpx364jv3q05w8um

Show more details

Last Notes

2026-08-28 16:53:44 UTC

- reply

Um...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hey_(email_service)
Hey. It's an email service that you can't use with email clients...?

2026-08-28 16:52:10 UTC

- reply

Hey!
;-)

2026-06-28 19:47:09 UTC

- reply

I disagree on petty much all counts, but it's clear that you won't even entertain any interpretation except your own, so I see no point in continuing.

2026-06-28 19:08:32 UTC

- reply

You are misreading and misunderstanding both me *and* the post.
1. When I said it wasn't the goal, I mean of the GPL.
I have discovered that a lot of GPL fans don't understand it -- indeed possibly have not even read it.
This was reinforced when I went on stage to discuss this at the world's biggest FOSS conference.
https://archive.fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-3113-rhel-and-centos-and-the-growth-of-openwashing-in-foss/
Second, you don't seem to understand what I think is the purpose of the "cuck license" piece.
As to what I think is the motivation and purpose here, I addressed that here:
https://social.vivaldi.net/@lproven/116829268993013025
#note1t70…gv52

2026-06-28 18:59:31 UTC

- reply

I disagree, or I wouldn't have posted it.
I am strongly reminded of this vaccination warning poster from over a decade ago...
https://lproven.livejournal.com/288546.html
Some of my friends vigorously objected to this. It has bad words!
Well, you'll only get through to some people if you drop the white-coat pedagogical style and use bad words. It is a price worth paying.
And the same applies here. If this brings a rather abstruse philosophical argument to a new audience, then it's serving a useful purpose. Even if it upsets some, because the people liable to be upset by nasty words are probably already aware of the issue.

2026-06-28 18:44:03 UTC

- reply

It never was the stated goal. It was stated not to be a goal.

2026-06-28 14:59:00 UTC

Why I Use the GPL and Not Cuck Licenses
https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/why-i-use-the-gpl-and-not-cuck-licenses/
<- look through, or past, the inflammatory language. Look at the concept here. The point is a powerful one.

2026-05-31 21:57:12 UTC

- reply

But you didn't link to, or comment in, a thread...

2026-05-31 11:22:00 UTC

To have a moral stance on AI is to be an outcast, and it sucks.
https://musings.martyn.berlin/to-have-a-moral-stance-on-ai-is-to-be-an-outcast-and-it-sucks
I know the technology, I understand what it's doing and I know the impact, so I am vehemently anti-AI.

2026-05-18 14:59:01 UTC

Fits on a Floppy: A Manifesto for Small Software
https://fitsonafloppy.com/
«
Software should be as small as it can be. Not as a gimmick, but as a discipline. The floppy disk is the measuring stick: 1.44 MB. If the software that ran entire businesses could fit in that space, then a modern, focused, single-purpose tool certainly can.
»

2026-05-01 12:39:00 UTC

:: the digital graveyard ::
https://rip.so/
The internet moves fast. They were on our desktops one day, the next their servers were dark, their domains squatted, their icons gone from our trays. Some died of mismanagement, some of acquisition, some of irrelevance. Some are technically still alive, but their soul left a long time ago. This page is a memorial to all of them.
We bury our heroes here. Pour a 56k modem out for them.

2026-04-30 17:23:42 UTC

- reply

Alternatives!
Multiple companies will sell you a brand new phone with a de-Googled Android or a non-Android OS.
De-Googled Android phones:
Murena… https://murena.com/
Fairphone… https://www.fairphone.com/
FXtec… https://store.fxtec.com/
Punkt… https://www.punkt.ch/products/mc03-premium-secure-smartphone
Volla… https://volla.online/en/index.php
Not to be confused with…
Jolla… https://jolla.com/
Furilabs… https://furilabs.com/
Purism… https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/
The last 3 are pure Linux phones which do not run OSes derived from Android, but they can all run an Android VM or container and so allow you to install and use Android apps.
This is *not* an exhaustive list. They are just ones I know of or have tried.
If I missed anyone out, please, let me know.

2026-04-29 14:59:03 UTC

Your phone is about to stop being yours.
https://keepandroidopen.org/en/
125 days until lockdown
Starting September 2026, a silent update, nonconsensually pushed by Google, will block every Android app whose developer hasn't registered with Google, signed their contract, paid up, and handed over government ID.
Every app and every device, worldwide, with no opt-out.

2026-04-29 10:48:38 UTC

- reply

"DTs"?

2026-04-16 20:22:39 UTC

- reply

I would very much like to meet @npub1k79…tp5x !
I definitely don't know about the cool kids but I have 2 cheap old HP Microservers stuffed with identical sized SATA hard drives, running TrueNAS Core. Does the job very nicely, including Apple Time Machine. Servers and drives all second hand.

2026-04-16 14:59:01 UTC

FUCK THE CLOUD
https://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/1717
Jason Scott called it back on Jan 16, 2009. Read the follow-ups, too.

2026-04-11 10:38:25 UTC

https://social-cdn.vivaldi.net/system/media_attachments/files/116/385/628/507/613/091/original/5c24f35c7e833a97.png

2026-04-06 14:59:00 UTC

The machines are fine. I'm worried about us.
https://ergosphere.blog/posts/the-machines-are-fine/
«
Imagine you're a new assistant professor at a research university. You just got the job, you just got a small pot of startup funding, and you just hired your first two PhD students: Alice and Bob. You're in astrophysics. This is the beginning of everything.
»

2026-04-01 11:22:02 UTC

How the AI bubble bursts
https://martinvol.pe/blog/2026/03/30/how-the-ai-bubble-bursts/
«
The catalysts for a crash are already laid out, and it can happen sooner than most expect. AI is here to stay. If used right, chances are it will make us all more productive. That, on the other hand, does not mean it will be a good investment.
»

2026-03-31 16:58:50 UTC

- reply

Well, yes and no.
On the one hand: Google _has_ a gDrive client for Linux. ChromeOS is based around it.
But it's never been publicly available on any other distro. GNOME found a way around it – and that's going away, which was _not_ clearly messaged, and it should have been.

2026-03-31 15:40:17 UTC

Ubuntu 26.04 beta arrives packing GNOME 50, which no longer supports Google Drive
https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/31/ubuntu_2604_beta/
Yep, you read that right. And there's no official Linux client from Google
<- by me on [@theregister](https://geeknews.chat/@theregister )

2026-03-31 11:22:00 UTC

I Decompiled the White House's New App
https://blog.thereallo.dev/blog/decompiling-the-white-house-app
The official White House Android app has a cookie/paywall bypass injector, tracks your GPS every 4.5 minutes, and loads JavaScript from some guy's GitHub Pages.

2026-03-27 15:59:03 UTC

"History repeats the old deceits" (by the Joy of Tech)
Source: https://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/3246.html
https://social-cdn.vivaldi.net/system/media_attachments/files/116/301/964/356/373/702/original/d6c315e1e16beac2.png

2026-03-27 13:39:19 UTC

How sports fans look to me (by Bizarro)
Source:
https://comicskingdom.com/bizarro/2026-03-26
https://social-cdn.vivaldi.net/system/media_attachments/files/116/301/414/788/064/350/original/6298ea3f74b52fe7.png

2026-03-25 13:42:25 UTC

Markdown Ate The World
https://matduggan.com/markdown-ate-the-world/
<- with a better explanation than The Document Foundation's of why MICROS~1's claim its XML format is "open" is a lie -- & why it doesn't matter

2026-03-24 18:41:27 UTC

Age checks creep into Linux as systemd gets a DOB field
https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/24/foss_age_verification/
Flatpak may be next, and the lobbying behind it is raising eyebrows
<- by me on [@theregister](https://geeknews.chat/@theregister )

2026-03-17 13:47:24 UTC

- reply

You did notice who wrote the piece you're citing, right? Just checking...

2026-03-17 11:02:12 UTC

Big moves in Linux filesystems as new bcachefs lands and KDE adds support for Apple's APFS
https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/17/bcachefs_and_apfs_news/
<- by me on @theregister

2026-03-16 15:11:33 UTC

EnKITTification
Artist: bruised_blood
b3ta.com/board/11426454
From the '80s Tech Today' challenge
https://b3ta.com/challenge/80stechtoday/popular/
#80sTechToday
https://social-cdn.vivaldi.net/system/media_attachments/files/116/239/491/919/925/270/original/96b3948e2447af36.png

2026-03-11 13:39:00 UTC

The OVHcloud fire still smolders
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/analysis/ovhcloud-fire-france-data-center/?fbclid=Iwb21leAQcxGRjbGNrBBzEGWV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHglvRNqJCuRIFo41T59PA3IMIFaGOaxRHPszduaPP6cUP6zYM4Lpv0ttcaA6_aem_-8yORpDpv4ppivBG4DcN-A
Three years after an OVHcloud data center burned to the ground, more questions than answers about the incident remain

2026-03-03 12:22:00 UTC

"You don’t have to if you don’t want to."
https://www.scottsmitelli.com/articles/you-dont-have-to/
<- perhaps the single most eloquent essay against LLM-bot development I've seen. Very long, very worth it.

2026-02-27 17:20:28 UTC

The Death of Curiosity
https://medium.com/@cupofcat/the-death-of-curiosity-96b6a09328b6
How nine forces spent sixty years hollowing out the soul of software engineering — and why blaming AI misses the point.

2026-02-27 10:37:02 UTC

Found this on Twitter. No idea if it's true, but I liked it.
RT Mr_Husky1@bird.makeup
[p1]
I got a piece of mail last month that didn't belong to me. It had my address, but the name was "Sarah Jenkins."
It looked official, so I didn't throw it away. I asked the landlord, and he sighed. "Sarah was the tenant before you. Single mom. She got laid off and evicted. Left no forwarding address."
I looked down at the letter. The envelope was slightly torn, and I could see the words: Final Notice - Storage Unit Auction. All her worldly possessions, her kids' baby photos, her memories, were going to be auctioned off on Friday for a $300 unpaid bill. It was Wednesday.
I don't know why, but I couldn't let it go. I posted on our neighborhood Facebook group, asking if anyone knew her. Within an hour, someone messaged me. They had seen her working the drive-thru at a fast-food place a few towns over.
I drove there. I ordered a coffee, pulled up to the window, and there she was. She looked exhausted.
"Sarah?" I asked.
She looked startled. "Yes?"
[Cont'd in alt text as it won't fit]
https://social-cdn.vivaldi.net/system/media_attachments/files/116/142/148/595/262/769/original/d2cbed1ee7d510b9.png

2026-02-24 19:28:04 UTC

General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord's classification of military officers:
«
I distinguish four types.
There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined.
Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the General Staff.
The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties.
Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the mental clarity and strength of nerve necessary for difficult decisions.
One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only cause damage.
»
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein-Equord#Classification_of_officers

2026-02-12 13:39:01 UTC

How Much of CP/M’s Design Ended Up in MS‑DOS?
https://nemanjatrifunovic.substack.com/p/how-much-of-cpms-design-ended-up
MS-DOS was designed to be API compatible with CP/M. But how much of CP/M’s internal design carried over?

2026-02-08 13:39:00 UTC

(AI) Slop Terrifies Me
https://ezhik.jp/ai-slop-terrifies-me/
What if this is as good as software is ever going to be? What if AI stops getting better and what if people stop caring?

2026-02-08 13:12:15 UTC

Containers, cloud, blockchain, AI – it's all the same old BS, says veteran Red Hatter
https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/08/waves_of_tech_bs/
After decades in the trenches, this engineer is done with hype cycles
<- by me on [@theregister](https://geeknews.chat/@theregister )
#FOSDEM #CENTOSCONNECT

2026-02-05 17:34:45 UTC

https://social-cdn.vivaldi.net/system/media_attachments/files/116/019/223/964/799/633/original/f20594c79ee9acff.png

2026-02-04 12:32:15 UTC

'The EU runs on Microsoft' – and Uncle Sam could turn it off, claims MEP
https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/04/eu_foss_fears/
Open source gains urgency as Europe reassesses reliance on US tech
<- by me on [@theregister](https://geeknews.chat/@theregister )

2026-01-29 13:39:00 UTC

Please Don’t Say Mean Things about the AI That I Just Invested a Billion Dollars In
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/please-dont-say-mean-things-about-the-ai-that-i-just-invested-a-billion-dollars-in
“[Nvidia CEO] Jensen Huang Is Begging You to Stop Being So Negative About AI” — Headline from Gizmodo

2026-01-26 12:22:00 UTC

“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”
― Frank Herbert, _Dune_

2026-01-20 15:59:01 UTC

AI Completely Failing to Boost Productivity, Says Top Analyst
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-failing-boost-productivity
"Where we are today, we're not seeing it."
<- good to see El Reg getting cited (even if not one of mine!)

2026-01-13 13:39:01 UTC

Only 1 of my Macs can run macOS 26. I have chosen not to update, so far.
But wow -- when even Daring Fireball says "don't upgrade" and suggests rolling back, I feel vindicated.
https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/resizing_windows_macos_26

2026-01-10 20:21:15 UTC

Is there anyone out there 3D printing spare parts for Polly Pocket toys for little kids?

2026-01-10 15:59:00 UTC

Free/Open Source Software tainted by LLM developers/developed by genAI boosters, along with alternatives.
https://codeberg.org/gen-ai-transparency/open-slopware

2026-01-10 15:11:41 UTC

Discord is running a survey about integrating generative "AI" into its service. Please do go tell them what you think.
https://discord.sjc1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_5BGtstVUidXadts

2026-01-07 13:46:24 UTC

GNOME dev gives fans of Linux's middle-click paste the middle finger
https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/07/gnome_middle_click_paste/
Proposal targets long-standing behavior as 'an X11ism'
<- by me on [@theregister](https://geeknews.chat/@theregister )

2026-01-06 13:39:01 UTC

Stinking, Spongy, Dark, Huge: A Spider Web Unlike Any Seen Before
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/08/science/biggest-spiderweb-sulfur-cave.html
A pitch-black cave in the Balkans is home to what researchers say is a singular work of cooperation by two usually-hostile species of spider.

2026-01-06 12:22:01 UTC

The baffling purple honey found only in North Carolina
https://www.bbc.co.uk/travel/article/20250417-the-baffling-purple-honey-found-only-in-north-carolina
In a quiet corner of North Carolina, bees produce a violet-hued honey so rare and unpredictable that even experts can't explain it – and that's what makes it magical.

2025-12-21 13:18:33 UTC

- reply

The point here being...
The Winchester cartridge-loading type of hard disk was affordable enough to be used with smaller inexpensive minicomputers, instead of mainframes, which were typically leased not sold.
When you own the computer, you can do experiments, like writing new OSes for it, that was not feasible on $multi-million big iron which costs multiple dollars a second to use.

2025-12-21 13:14:49 UTC

- reply

An early hard disk, but yes, with removable media.
Hard disks were originally called Winchester disks:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Winchester_disk
Not the first hard disk: huge very expensive HDD units were sold (or more to the point rented) for mainframes (huge very expensive computers) years earlier.
No, the name was from the model that made the tech affordable and took it mainstream, the IBM 3340.
https://www.computerhistory.org/storageengine/winchester-pioneers-key-hdd-technology/
It was nicknamed Winchester by IBM project lead Kenneth E. Haughton, and not because they came from IBM Winchester (a common urban myth). He named it because the storage was in a removable cartridge. It had two 30MB platters, and the comparison was with an early cartridge rifle known as the Winchester 30-30:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winchester_Model_1894
It other words, strictly, it is named after the ammunition, not the weapon itself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.30-30_Winchester

2025-12-21 12:36:53 UTC

- reply

Oh yes, it was multi-user from the start.
The user directory is called `/usr`. That's what it means! The "Unix System Resources" thing is a silly backronym some joker coined later.
Dennis and Ken simply didn't have enough disk space on their original PDP machines. Each RK05 disk only held 1.5MB. So they kept inventing new folder names to add more disks to the system.
https://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2010-December/074114.html

2025-12-21 11:15:38 UTC

RE: https://oldbytes.space/@flexion/115752573933914452
The oldest Unix written in C was successfully recovered from tape this weekend -- and here it is running on IRIX.
The amazing bit is the contents of the big window in the middle, for children under 50, *not* the windows themselves.
#note1st3…g64y

2025-12-15 18:44:26 UTC

NVIDIA Isn't Enron - So What Is It?
https://www.wheresyoured.at/nvidia-isnt-enron-so-what-is-it/
<- this is a good one. Overlong as ever, but very funny.

2025-12-13 23:56:06 UTC

RE: https://eupolicy.social/@bert_hubert/115714778648950997
It took 3 horses, several years, and cost $60,000...
#note1mrq…362y

2025-12-02 15:59:01 UTC

LLMs are a failure. A new AI winter is coming.
https://taranis.ie/llms-are-a-failure-a-new-ai-winter-is-coming/
Though LLMs had a lot of promise, this has not been demonstrated in practice. The technology is essentially a failure, and a new AI winter is coming.

2025-11-26 13:39:01 UTC

An open letter: stop spreading outdated advice about internet security
https://www.hacklore.org/letter
All this is BAD ADVICE. Don't…
• Avoid public WiFi
• Never scan QR codes
• Never charge devices from public USB ports
• Turn off Bluetooth & NFC
• Regularly “clear cookies”
• Regularly change passwords

2025-11-24 13:39:01 UTC

With Love to KDE: Take a Moment
https://korcenji.neocities.org/Writings/KDE-Take-A-Moment
<- eloquently spells out an anti-"AI" point that isn't subtle or difficult, but is just too hard for many FOSS project leaders

2025-11-21 22:35:02 UTC

I think this #smbc_comics could be called...
The ones who walk away from touching-racks.
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/blame

2025-11-21 09:54:47 UTC

Thunderbird 145 finally adds ‘native’ Exchange support
https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/20/thunderbird_microsoft_exchange_support/
EWS-powered email only for now, with calendars and contacts still on the to-do list
<- by me on [@theregister](https://geeknews.chat/@theregister )

2025-11-19 23:11:28 UTC

How the Linux-vs-BSD culture clash looked in the 1980s/1990s
https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/97149.html
(Fairly rare tech blog post, from me.)

2025-11-18 12:09:27 UTC

Latest Servo release hints at a real Rust alternative to Chromium
https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/18/servo_002_arrives/
As Mozilla stumbles into 'AI everywhere,' you might be glad of a non-Google browser engine
<- by me on [@theregister](https://geeknews.chat/@theregister )

2025-11-13 10:47:41 UTC

- reply

> surface design that takes me back to the 1990s
That is one of the appealing features for me.
Function *ALWAYS* must rank higher than form. What a tool does objectively matters more than how it looks.
Flat appearances, ribbons, pointing-device centric UIs that are less convenient to drive with the keyboard... these are all functional impairments. They all make things harder to find: as a reader, I want *text,* and graphics are an order of magnitude more difficult to search through.
I want standard keyboard shortcuts, which means IBM CUA.
I want buttons with borders around them so I can immediately distinguish buttons from labels from fields that expect to be filled.
It seems to me that "flat design" was the creation of people who thought that a lot of UI was so obvious it didn't need visual hinting.
They were wrong.

2025-11-12 11:08:31 UTC

Evidence of ancient tree-climbing 'drop crocs' found in Australia
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2lpyrnjleeo
<- this is the most terrifying predator since Africa's infamous flying lions.
https://social-cdn.vivaldi.net/system/media_attachments/files/115/536/409/580/813/258/original/58d85aaa96be41dd.png

2025-11-05 13:39:01 UTC

Why Engineers Can't Be Rational About Programming Languages:
The Leadership Blindspot: How Identity Drives Multi-Million Dollar Technical Debt
https://spf13.com/p/the-hidden-conversation/
<- this is THE dominant factor explaining 21st century computing

2025-11-03 12:22:00 UTC

How AGI became the most consequential conspiracy theory of our time (MIT Technology Review)
https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/10/30/1127057/agi-conspiracy-theory-artifcial-general-intelligence/
The idea that machines will be as smart as—or smarter than—humans has hijacked an entire industry. But look closely & you’ll see it’s a myth that persists for many of the same reasons conspiracies do.

2025-10-29 15:59:02 UTC

The Human Only Public License
https://vanderessen.com/posts/hopl/
<- A software license that bans all AI use. Nice idea. I approve.

2025-10-18 11:22:00 UTC

A prophetic 1933 novel has found a surprising second life – it holds lessons for us all
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/18/crooked-cross-hitler-1933-novel-sally-carson
Sally Carson’s Crooked Cross was written and set during the rise of nazism. It shows both how extremism takes hold, and the moral certainty needed to resist it

2025-10-11 12:39:00 UTC

Abort Retry Fail: The QNX Operating System
Quantum Software and the microkernel UNIX
https://www.abortretry.fail/p/the-qnx-operating-system

2025-10-01 18:37:51 UTC

The great Dr Jane Goodall, ethologist and campaigner for great apes and much else, has died at the age of 91.
She loved this _Far Side_ cartoon, and wrote a forward for a later Gary Larson collection.
https://social-cdn.vivaldi.net/system/media_attachments/files/115/300/353/352/798/358/original/658540aa512db2fe.png

2025-09-30 09:15:16 UTC

Seen two people talking about a new, paid-for "AI" powered browser from "Norwegian browser company Opera" today.
1. Opera sold out to China in 2016. It's a Chinese browser company now.
2. This is a key indicator the "AI" bubble is about to pop: when they start charging the rubes for the snake oil that was previoiusly free...

2025-09-25 11:22:02 UTC

Greatest irony of the AI age: Humans being increasingly hired to clean AI slop
https://www.sify.com/ai-analytics/greatest-irony-of-the-ai-age-humans-being-increasingly-hired-to-clean-ai-slop/
On one side is AI swallowing millions of jobs, and on the other is humans being hired to clean up the nonsense AI often generates, finds Satyen K. Bordoloi

2025-09-25 11:11:55 UTC

«
Ian Fleming's original James Bond novels haven't aged well. For example, Moonraker - published almost exactly 70 years ago in April 1955 - features a villain who's a super-rich industrialist and rocket-maker seeking to cause chaos because he's a secret Nazi. Such a silly idea!
»
Source: https://x.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1893339509204394392

2025-09-21 11:22:00 UTC

What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/09/magazine/old-leatherman-walk-new-york-connecticut.html
The Old Leatherman, a sort of real-life Northeastern Sasquatch, gave me an excuse to step outside my own life.

2025-09-16 11:22:01 UTC

A months of ad-free OSNews: we’re closing in on the fundraising goal, and need your help to get there
https://www.osnews.com/story/143347/a-months-of-ad-free-osnews-were-closing-in-on-the-fundraising-goal-and-need-your-help-to-get-there/
<- this is a bold brave move by a good site, which I've been reading for decades. Support it if you can.

2025-09-12 18:10:49 UTC

- reply

I clicked through. Can't reply directly though.
It wasn't worth it. Tired rant using American tropes that are meaningless to me.
I'm not American. I'm neither Republican, nor Democrat, nor anything else. I'm not Christian; I'm not merely atheist, I'm anti-theist, and you would not even recognise my political position because it isn't on your pathetic old 1D left-to-right scale. Real life is not a line; it's not even a 2D area. It's 3D.
If you think the big answers are anything to do with money then you don't even understand what the real questions are.
But your reductionary view is blinkering you to the real world.
Take them off.
Step 1: basic high-level survey of all the world's electoral and political systems, such as demarchy by sortition.
_Then_ thank me.

2025-09-12 10:20:25 UTC

- reply

No, I'm not going to waste my time chasing citations for all these. Yesterday I'd never heard of the scrote. Once I learned who and what he was, it took no time to decide the world was better off without him.
I'm no Christian. There are lots of people the world would be better off without. Trump, Bolsonaro, Orban, Fico, Putin, legions more. Peter Hitchens is alive and Christopher Hitchens is dead, and we'd all be better off if that were the other way round.

2025-09-12 10:16:28 UTC

- reply

In his own words...
https://social-cdn.vivaldi.net/system/media_attachments/files/115/190/804/447/058/424/original/30909ab30350fc36.jpeg
https://social-cdn.vivaldi.net/system/media_attachments/files/115/190/804/488/950/529/original/81705a9f4a6624d0.jpeg

2025-09-12 10:16:03 UTC

- reply

As Chris Tregenza put it on Bluesky:
https://bsky.app/profile/tregenza.bsky.social/post/3lykgsglofc24

2025-09-12 09:58:19 UTC

- reply

Disclaimer: not read. Don't want to.
Nobody is dehumanising Kirk. He did that all to himself.
He spread, promoted and glorified hatred and violence, and he got what he endorsed.

2025-09-07 14:59:01 UTC

The differences between bogs, fens, swamps and marshes…
* Bog: acidic wetland, filled by rain, nutrient poor (so, carnivorous plants)
* Fen: alkaline wetland, filled by groundwater, nutrient rich
* Swamp: wetland that can support trees & woody plants
* Marsh: wetland that only supports herbaceous plants, sometimes coastal & saline

2025-09-02 11:23:23 UTC

- reply

I have tried several alternative phone OSes and de-Googled Androids, and written about some.
I do not know of anywhere that I can go and see a list of all of them.
Here is a nice easy non-coding project for anyone who is interested in this area.
* A list of FOSS phone OSes
* Better still, with strengths/weaknesses comparisons: what each one is good for
* Better still, some tool where you can enter your phone model and it tells you you could run.

2025-08-31 11:22:00 UTC

Just fucking use HTML
https://justfuckingusehtml.com/
<- the language of the Web is HTML. Not Javascript. The best website is one with no JS at all. Let's make this a movement.

2025-08-30 16:58:27 UTC

Programmers: you have to watch your weight, too
https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/30/programmers_watch_your_weight/
We are drowning in code, but at least some folks are swimming
<- by me on @npub10cz…4lpy – & I warn you, this doesn't go where you might expect…

2025-08-27 14:59:01 UTC

Scientist exposes anti-wind groups as oil-funded. Now they want to silence him.
https://electrek.co/2025/08/25/scientist-exposes-anti-wind-groups-as-oil-funded-now-they-want-to-silence-him/
<- just as tobacco companies sponsored anti-anti-smoking legislation, now fossil-fuel companies are sponsoring global warming denial. The denialists are mostly not smart enough to know this.

2025-08-27 11:22:01 UTC

Do I Need Kubernetes?
https://doineedkubernetes.com/

2025-08-17 14:14:00 UTC

- reply

There are 2 big snags with that.
1. It's much slower.
2. But worse: you can't boot off a FUSE volume. And since the COW functionality is most important for OS updates & rollback, you need it for the boot volume.

2025-08-17 12:27:06 UTC

- reply

Why do you say that?
You did RTFA before commenting, didn't you?

2025-08-17 08:52:04 UTC

Linux is about to lose a feature – over a personality clash
https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/15/sad_end_of_bcachefs/
A large and unfortunate mistake in the kernel development management process is underway
<- by me on @npub10cz…4lpy

2025-08-13 11:24:38 UTC

Some users report their Firefox browser is scoffing CPU power
https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/13/firefox_ai_scoffing_power/
You guessed it: looks like it's a so-called AI
<- by me on @npub10cz…4lpy

2025-08-03 11:22:01 UTC

Long live the nub: ThinkPad designer David Hill spills secrets, designs that never made it
https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/02/thinkpad_david_hill_interview/
We almost got more butterfly keyboards and foldable workstations
<- *not* by me on El Reg, but I enjoyed it.

2025-08-02 09:23:51 UTC

- reply

That is true but it's also endlessly adaptable.
When a project attempts to bring a phone model to the desktop, badly, as GNOME did in V3, then the result is crippling everyone. Yes it brings everyone to the same level, but by reducing everyone to a lowest common denominator. It cripples me. My preferred UI, keyboard control augmented by pointing, is gone.
That's bad design.

2025-08-02 09:09:24 UTC

- reply

I disagree with all of these except C++.
Desktop accessibility is far better than you think. As an example I can happily, quickly and efficiently drive a Windows computer with no mouse (or other pointing device) using 90% of the same UI I already use... Because it was designed with thought and insight and understanding, and the same UI is available to both sighted and blind users.
No, Wayback doesn't count, although I've written about it and am watching with interest.

2025-08-01 22:33:38 UTC

Gadget geeks aghast at guru's geriatric GPU
https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/01/geeks_aghast_at_guru_gpu/
Paramount Penguin Linus Torvalds still uses a 2017 graphics card
<- by me on @npub10cz…4lpy

2025-07-30 09:53:26 UTC

- reply

If I may, I think you are missing things too.
1. Damaging a very widespread use case for a niche one is bad planning.
2. Losing the clean separation of "display server" from "window manager" was a bad design decision.
3. Discarding 30+Y of R&D for a system which is less capable is bad planning. It effectively kills around 25 alternative desktops for instance. There is a real habit of only considering the biggest most mainstream products and ignoring all the smaller ones.
4. Linux is not all of Unix. The Wayland team only considered Linux. Same reasoning as above.
5. It's not Unixy at all. Unix is about files. Plan 9's Rio display system shows the way: windows are filesystem objects. This is the Unix way. Wayland is counter to the philosophy of its host OS.
6. X had unique abilities that Wayland discards. The developers should study the principle of _kaizen_ -- continual incremental improvement. This is also an aspect of the Unix way.
7. There is a deep failure to understand the existing tools and why they work how they do. This is the philosophical objection called _Chesterton's Fence_ and every project lead needs to understand it.
8. A11y and inclusion are important. Wayland is much weaker at this.
Those are the first to mind -- I am short of time and this is in haste.

2025-07-25 08:43:23 UTC

Wayback 0.1 debuts as early Wayland display server for X11 diehards
https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/24/wayback_01_released/
Complete with new website – but the software's still alpha level stuff, so be careful
<- by me on @npub10cz…4lpy

2025-07-22 20:14:24 UTC

Arch Linux users told to purge Firefox forks after AUR malware scare
https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/22/arch_aur_browsers_compromised/
The distro's greatest asset is arguably also its greatest weakness
<- by me on @npub10cz…4lpy

2025-07-22 11:22:21 UTC

They're putting blue food coloring in everything
https://blog.foxtrotluna.social/theyre-putting-blue-food-coloring-in-everything/
<- for those with reading skills in the single-digit-years range, it's about "AI"

2025-07-12 14:19:34 UTC

The price of software freedom is eternal politics
https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/12/the_price_of_software_freedom/
Many don't realize or forget, but the FOSS world has ideological wings, too
<- by me on @npub10cz…4lpy

2025-07-10 14:59:15 UTC

How and why to migrate your e-mail from KDE KMail to Mozilla Thunderbird
https://cromwell-intl.com/open-source/kmail-to-thunderbird.html
<- a guide for OpenBSD users
... But this also reveals why I see KDE as a Lovecraftian horror. It's tentacles all the way down. I don't merely not want it, I recoil from it in appalled horror.