John BS @johnabs@qoto.org

Floofer tax:

Oh my goodness, I have an adorable new puppy, but crate training is breaking my heart as she's crying right now because she is so desparate for human attention CONSTANTLY. Thank God my wife is good at this part

Professor wants us to solve 57 difficult homework questions in a week that he's not even going to grade, but we'll get a 0 if we don't do them...consider this course dropped lmao

I've had chronic pain issues for a while, but now they're in my temples.

Here's hoping that eating healthier, fasting, and exercise will help with both issues; I'm sick of feeling ill with no available explanation. 🤞

If you've got 12 minutes, please check this out. This is shocking and horrible that Tech giants don't only monopolize data, but are starting to monopolize water as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo7V4PPHijs

I was wrong about the mic q.q It's great as an audio sink, but not so much as a source on linux. Looks like I need to return yet another one 😖

I heavily recommend the Elgato Wave 3 microphone; just grabbed one and it way outclasses my old Yeti (and a Yeti replacement I tried recently). Great quality, no hissing, and it's pretty smart.

I'm honestly blown away by how fast computers can do their thing. I computed 2009! on my crappy old Thinkpad in Julia and it just cranked it out like it was nothing, less than a second. Absolutely incredible, considering the result is on the order of 10^5776.

Graham's number though? That may take a while 😂

@zpartacoos Just posted a long-form comment on Louis Rossman's channel to help him defend right to repair, if you (or anyone else who sees this) has anything to add that I've missed, go give his latest video a quick watch and see if you can help, we NEED right to repair to get through.

Hi Louis,

I'm a bit of an armchair logician, so I'd like to see if I can help with defending right to repair and you from these clearly disingenuous/uninformed critics. Unfortunately, the 4th amendment has been being turned into Swiss cheese for a while now. So convincing government officials (who honestly don't care about property rights, as evidence by recent legal precedent) to care without inspiring a large enough group of people to pressure them is, well...unlikely. Convincing individuals is likely even more difficult, as many of them "don't know how bad things really are".

One of your strongest attacks should be how this will impact the economy of the areas in which this is passed:

1. Thriving small businesses are critical for a healthy middle class, which has been consistently eroded in recent years. Right to repair will increase 3rd party repair, and the number of small businesses. Competition will drive down repair prices for consumers, create jobs, and **create more taxable revenue in the process** (the only thing these guys care about). Overall a win/win/win for everyone but the tech behemoths, who aren't losing much in the process.

2. The right to repair property in general is one of the clear markers of "true" ownership. If you own something, but are being prevented from repairing it yourself, then you really only own it for as long as the manufacturer allowed you to through their planned obsolescence. In this way, the manufacturer forces further consumption, which we know is worse for consumers, and the environment. By forcing the manufacturer to supply repair parts, we increase the life of our devices, which is better for my wallet, and overall less wasteful. Contrary to popular belief, nobody needs the newest iPhone to prevent themselves from going into Apple withdrawals. Longer device lifetime can ONLY benefit the consumer in the long term.

3. The current implicit "right to repair" (really just basic property rights) respects the property owner's right to repair their home, car, papers, land, and more. By extending this to devices, it only further protects the rights of individuals, who do not have the power to fight large companies without a class-action suit, which honestly provides little restitution to the individuals, as the lawyers take a large cut, and the remainder of the settlement is divided among (typically) thousands of participants. Honestly, we need to bolster property rights in this country, and I'm hoping right to repair is the catalyst for starting that change (look up Institute for Justice on YouTube if you want to get more informed about this garbage).

Your primary defensive arguments should be trying to reason by analogy to other property that we actually do have the right to repair (though again, this is becoming increasingly limited by private entities like HOAs etc. which is just ridiculous):

1. Many people choose not to change their oil, rotate their tires, or maintain their vehicle outside of taking it to a certified repair shop; however, that doesn't mean that allowing car manufacturers to have a monopoly on repairing their vehicle, and preventing oil from being sold to people who want to change their oil themselves, is a good thing for car owners. Clearly the owners will try to up-sell you either on "better" oil, unnecessary part replacements, or even telling you "the whole car is broken, we can't fix it" and forcing you to buy a new one because YOU CAN'T GET A SECOND OPINION SANS CONFLICT OF INTEREST WITHOUT 3RD PARTY REPAIR (thought I should emphasize that point). Same thing for devices.

2. Computers and other electronic tools are even more ubiquitous (and arguably more important to people's lives) than automobiles, so why would the right to repair only impact automobiles, when it should more realistically apply to devices which can literally contain the keys to your entire life, identity, memories, and more. The economic impact of not being able to repair a phone or a computer is WAY bigger than not being able to repair a car, as any car that is similar to yours can be a functional replacement. Your devices likely have unique data that is irreplaceable. Thus, in terms of lost work, diminished productivity, and the need to recover key information like passwords, ssh-keys, photos, documents, programs, etc., sub-optimal device repair is currently a huge drain on the productivity of our economy by preventing the affected individual from working at full capacity.

(rant time)
Honestly it's just common sense that people who own something should be able to do whatever they want to with it, and the companies that produce these devices should be supporting the consumer's purchase and allowing them to fix it when needed, rather than bleeding the consumers dry like bloated ticks. I hope you manage get this passed Louis, these massive, unaccountable companies are a blight on society that's masked by emotionally manipulative marketing, and I hope we finally start winning back some rights to own our stuff that we purchased with our hard earned money, rather than being treated like serfs living on Apple(et. al)'s land.

Good luck!

Grading is done, finally time for a break 😩

You know, if you think about it, we're all (locally) flat earthers. The only difference is how you define local...

Merry early Christmas everyone, here's my favorite bass singer doing what he does best!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8Sxh5E2u_g

For those of you with ADHD or difficulty focusing in noisy/distracting environments, a pair of noise cancelling headphones, along with mynoise.net is an absolute blessing (it's free btw).

I really like the distant thunder paired with music, or the "medieval library" sounds as well.

Finally, cleaning up my desk seems to help a lot too, so don't overestimate how a change in your environment (even small ones) can impact your productivity and creativity!

Looking into developing a pretty involved website with Clojurescript. Does anyone have any experience in this domain, or suggestions they can throw my way?

P.S. HAPPY END OF THE SEMESTER EVERYBODY!

I hope everyone has a wonderful time spending the holidays with people they care about ❤️

Just got a new keyboard. Old one had buckling spring switches, this one has Gateron blues. I'm considering the Kailh box jades for the extra stability and maybe fliming them to reduce flex. Anyone here have other clicky switch suggestions?

Currently carrying 2 more group projects in an attempt to save my grades from my teammates.

No progress from them on the code at all, and none on the report yet either. I could at least accept that if I'm going to do most (see: nearly all) the code, that they would write the report. Looks like that's not happening either, unless they churn it all out at the last minute as usual.

I'm honestly not sure how well we're going to do, and I'm getting really sick of this nonsense. Hopefully I can speak with the professor tomorrow, but it's immensely frustrating that I have to consistently resort to this strategy.

Even worse, in this case they basically told me "You did enough, we'll take it from here", and proceeded to make 0 progress for over a month. I actually thought I finally got a decent group; oh well 😩

I found an awesome new browser add-on on hacker news that brings HUGE quality of life improvements to Wikipedia.

I love the themes, and customizable text fonts/spacing along with the little touches like moving the "related/navigation" section to a minimizable sidebar. I may ask the author to add support for dyslexic friendly fonts too, but if you use Wikipedia for your job or for fun, you should check this out!

https://www.modernwiki.app/

Installing Guix on a test laptop until I get things operational to migrate. I've not been this excited to configure a system in a long time :D

So, apparently the plastic recycling symbol isn't actually a recycling symbol. It's a "resin identifier symbol" (designed to look like the recycling symbol though, to confuse the public) and doesn't actually mean the material you put in the recycling bin is recyclable...which basically means all the due diligence we do to try to prevent environmental damage and personal bodily harm via micro plastic exposure is literally for nothing... Mircoplastics are in bloody fruits and veggies now somehow; we can't get rid of them, so clean eating is basically impossible.

When do we finally collectively pull our heads out of our butts and realize the lobbyists are nearly always the bad guys who sell the health of entire generations just to make a buck? I'm so done with this.