Shamar @Shamar@qoto.org
Joined May 2019
Shamar
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"These events mark the beginning of a new era: a “modern” web, the web that we are still in today. A web where the role of the user is not to build the web, but to generate content and data. A web where the gap in between users and developers is unbridgeable."
Let's see if I can fix this!
On this I hope (naively?) on the influence of the right to repair on the EU: I'd like to see a law that impose free working and properly documented drivers to hardware sold in Europe.
Our market is so big that we could impose this to the world.
I agree with @haitch too (among his other works, @ekaitz_zarraga is also publishing his Spanish translation of this piece which argue more or less in the same direction: http://www.tesio.it/2019/06/03/what-is-informatics.html) but I'm not sure changing the software stack is enough: we also need people understand that informatics is about minds, not computer, and their only way to be first class citizens in a cybernetic world, is to understand how such world works under the hood.
So to fight #GAFAM and all oppressive regimes (eg. USA and China) we need to work on both sides: on one end, rebuild a better stack that is easy to inspect and hack from the ground up; on the other end, teach people informatics, so that they can effectively control their own life.
Shamar
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@ekaitz_zarraga But that wasn't all.
The worst problem we have right now is the WWW, which has become a delivery mechanism for "applications" (Surprise!) that can't be inspected. (Again, surprise!)
We followed the rules, so they took over the W3C and we kept supporting those corporate standards as FOSS.
They have fooled us twice. Will they fool us for the third time around again?
Shamar
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@ekaitz_zarraga I'm not passing blame, and it's easier to offer some hindsight in year 2020 than it was in 1985, but UNIX, GNU, and the FOSS community that ensued, unwittingly, and in most cases unintentionally helped to create the conditions necessary for this situation, which capitalist corporations gladly subverted to their own advantage.
Namely "Open Source", which is so bad even Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle love it.
Shamar
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@ekaitz_zarraga
I've been reading with interest what you guys have said here and I think all of you have a point.
My take is that the four freedoms are not enough, and that the divide between programmers and non-programmers is artificial.
That divide was deliberately created by big corporations when they decided code shouldn't be inspectable. That way the "developer class" is bribed into compliance and isolated from the rest of the working class.
Everybody should be taught to program, not just to turn the 4 priviledges to actual #freedoms, but to teach them critical thinking through debugging.
However #Informatics is still too primitive: we need simpler programming languages, simpler operating systems, simpler network protocols and so on, so that they can be fully read and learnt before 20.
Shamar
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Lemmy is similar to sites like Reddit, Lobste.rs, Raddle, or Hacker News: you subscribe to forums you’re interested in, post links and discussions, then vote, and comment on them. Behind the scenes, it is very different; anyone can easily run a server, and all these servers are federated (think email), and connected to the same universe, called the Fediverse.
For a link aggregator, this means a user registered on one server can subscribe to forums on any other server, and can have discussions with users registered elsewhere.
The overall goal is to create an easily self-hostable, decentralized alternative to reddit and other link aggregators, outside of their corporate control and meddling.
Each lemmy server can set its own moderation policy; appointing site-wide admins, and community moderators to keep out the trolls, and foster a healthy, non-toxic environment where all can feel comfortable contributing.
Note: Federation is still in active development and the WebSocket, as well as, HTTP API are currently unstable
Shamar
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Mozilla Google budget screaming
Something is just wrong here... Mozilla just extended its deal with Google (making it the numero uno search engine) for something like 400 million dollars PER YEAR. For the next three years.
That is 1.2 BILLION dollars from 2020 to 2023.
If you cannot run a freaking NON-PROFIT on 400 MILLION dollars PER YEAR that means:
a) You are paying your executives too much.
b) You don't know how to manage a non-profit.
c) All of the above.
Source: https://www.zdnet.com/article/sources-mozilla-expected-to-extend-its-google-search-deal/
Shamar
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Shamar
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So is the plan at #Mozilla now to simply sabotage every product we care about and focus on making stickers and a re-branded VPN?
@dkellner@social.coop
Legally effective doesn't mean effective.
Copying data leaves no evidence and a Law whose violations cannot be proved in a trial are just designed to calm down people with illusionary promises.
I'm really surprised they didn't di this years ago. #Google is reverse proxing surveillance so that you can't fight it.
Shamar
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QuickJS was an interesting project to study! It's a small JavaScript engine that's still well optimized and feature complete without going overboard.
Since I mentioned line counts earlier QuickJS takes ~80k, over half of which is in one file.
It's implemented as a bytecode stack machine with what V8 calls "hidden classes".
Also has a REPL loop with a syntax highlighter, C transpiler, uglifier, and I/O library. Could replace Node.js quite well!
Shamar
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Much as I like a lot of Aral Balkan's rhetoric, and rewatching him discuss the sad state of modern browsers, I just end up reflecting back to arguing with him regarding JavaScript.
He, like some others I've heard, think we need JS to build peer-to-peer technologies ontop of.
I envy you for not digging into how your dependencies work, not finding out how much JS epitimizes Big Tech. The eldritch horror drove me nuts!
Sure use JS as a stopgap, but longterm let's move away from it. Please?
Shamar
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@alex @theruran @phryk @alcinnz @humanetech
imo, the problem with JavaScript from a #smalltech perspective isn't that it's running in a VM – it's that it's running in a VM *written in 2 million lines of C++*.
That means there's no on-ramp for people who develop *in* javascript to become people who develop javascript. Which keeps big tech dominant
In comparison, many self-hosted/bootstrapped languages encourage users to engage in compiler hacking, which further encourages simplicity in design
Shamar
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Zrythm 0.8.797 has been released!
Learn more:
https://forum.zrythm.org/t/zrythm-0-8-797-release
Download:
https://www.zrythm.org/en/
Shamar
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Fallacies of Distributed Computing - Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacies_of_distributed_computing
Shamar
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"No one likes my new #COVID exposure notification app" https://xkcd.com/2342/
Joined May 2019
