R. A. Dehi @radehi@qoto.org
I read a lot. Sometimes I learn things. I like making things. I think reading and doing are complementary.
Joined Nov 2022
R. A. Dehi
boosted
Sad news from UNC Chapel Hill Computer Science — Fred P. Brooks, the founder and long-time chair of the department (and a major influence on my professional outlook) passed away a few hours ago.
R. A. Dehi
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@alcinnz Well, so, the effect of any finite-length string on a particular DFA is a finite map from possible states at the beginning of the string to resulting states at the end of the string. For the empty string it is the identity function.
You can compute the effect of a concatenation of strings by composing these maps. If you do this bottom-up on a long string, starting from all its one-character substrings and then consolidating them into a tree of substrings of length 2, 4, 8, etc., each exhaustively covering the original string, you have a log-time parallel algorithm for DFA evaluation on the string. The final step is to apply the finite map computed for the entire string to the initial state defined by the DFA.
Then, if desired, you can propagate the results back down the tree to find the state of the DFA at every character.
Is precisely the parallel prefix-sum algorithm, with the monoid operation being function composition rather than, for example, integer addition.
Does that make sense? I don't know how to evaluate the clarity of my explanation in part because I don't know how familiar you are with the background.
R. A. Dehi
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"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people are so full of doubt." – Bertrand Russell, paraphrased from The Triumph of Stupidity”, Mortals and Others: Bertrand Russell's American Essays, 1931-1935
https://twitter.com/MNateShyamalan/status/1592287177542696963
R. A. Dehi
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Switched out Serial for PPP and ... we can now also use all the on device internet tools like it's 1999. Can telnet to the host with Hermes, so nothing lost.
It's broken. Nothing works. Everything wants https and 50MB downloads.
However this all works the way I want it now. Another revision of the lid and I'll print the final version.
Quoting [a post on the orange site](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33639015):
*Me and my colleagues will be affected by the end of Z library and co related projects.*
*Here in Brazil and for sure in most second and third world countries, people don't have money to spend in books.*
*You can argue that people can go to the library, but in most cases it's even expensive to take a bus or taxi even a Uber.*
*I'm a law student at an university in brazil. Law books are really expensive. Even though my university have a library, sometimes it doesn't have the books that the professors ask us to read.*
*Since I found z library I could have access to most of books that I needed.*
*I do know that the writers and publishers have costs and they need to make money, but I don't agree with the fact that we have to pay to have knowledge. It's more like if we don't have money, we can't have knowledge.*
Sad #piracy news, Z-Library founders arrested in South America: https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/two-russian-nationals-charged-running-massive-e-book-piracy-website
R. A. Dehi
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This one is for all the new people on #Mastodon: did you know that the #fediverse has more than just a microblogging replacement? And that they can all interoperate with your Mastodon account?
Check them out!
Facebook replacement: Friendica
Instagram replacement: Pixelfed
YouTube replacement: PeerTube
Spotify replacement: Funkwhale
MeetUp replacement: Mobilizon
Reddit replacement: Lemmy
Podcasting replacement: Castopod
GoodReads replacement: BookWyrm
R. A. Dehi
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@radehi being at peace, now there's a skill worth having
R. A. Dehi
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#plan9 from Bell Labs is a research operating system developed at Bell Labs starting in the late 1980s.
Its original designers and authors were Ken Thompson, Rob Pike, Dave Presotto, and Phil Winterbottom. They were joined by many others as development continued throughout the 1990s to the present.
R. A. Dehi
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I just presented Art Spiegelman with the National Book Award Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, on the same day that PENAmerica put out a letter signed by Art and Margaret Atwood and me, among others, protesting the latest round of book bannings.
https://pen.org/spiegelman-atwood-sign-pen-america-letter-against-missouri-book-bans/
R. A. Dehi
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If you download your Twitter archive it arrives wrapped as a static HTML page, which is not very useful for doing anything with, and worse: it requires the original account to be still active to do useful things like enlarge the images since they use t.co links.
So here's a Python script to convert a Twitter archive to markdown or other formats: https://github.com/timhutton/twitter-archive-parser
Now you can archive your tweets in any way you want.
R. A. Dehi
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@radehi
Yeah.
I don't have the one I did for Xanadu up, since it's not open sourced yet, but here's something that translates between a span-based format and tkinter's mark-based format: https://github.com/enkiv2/misc/tree/master/mtv
(It's more complicated than it needs to be, because tkinter has a coordinate system for text positions that's fiddly and underspecified.)
R. A. Dehi
boosted
Layout is really counterintuitive.
Then, when you have an algorithm to do a "good enough" job at it (like an HTML renderer has), all the knobs for changing default behavior end up being even more counterintuitive, because other behaviors will interact with whatever you change in unexpected ways.
I worked on ZZOGL, which had a very simple layout system that I quite like, but it was tough to get grid-like patterns with it unless you created invisible objects that overlapped visible ones (which I introduced to the spec specifically to make these layouts easier).
R. A. Dehi
boosted
🟣🔵🔴⚪🔵🟡🔵🟣⚪
This is your friendly reminder that contrary to the hype and marketing hullabaloo going around right now but #Mastodon is not the #fediverse! The “Mastodon Network” that Eugen Rochko claims to have created is the very same #federation that has existed for well over 10 years. The #fediverse is a huge tapestry of thousands of servers and volunteers, and dozens if not hundreds of developers and even more volunteers, who have made this space what you see today.
There is no “Mastodon Network”. It’s simply the #fediverse. That’s like Facebook saying they are the Internet. We all know what an absurd claim that would be. Facebook is an application accessible over the Internet that provides a walled-garden to its users. Well, Mastodon is just one of many applications accessible over the Internet that provides access to the #fediverse (which is not a walled-garden).
So what is the fediverse? Here’s my definition. The “Fediverse” can be thought of as a giant park that is not owned by any one person, company, group, government, or organization. A park where people gather to meet, explore, collaborate, discuss, watch videos, listen to music, chat, and do a whole lot more. A park that you can only get to by using a piece of software that lets you inside. Mastodon is just one (and currently the most popular) type of that software.
Mastodon is a door-way into the park for anybody that uses it. Same for Pleroma, Friendica, Misskey, PeerTube, Pixelfed, BookWyrm, and others.
Since journalists aren’t writing any articles about the real #fediverse, and since it (and the wonderful projects that are at its center) aren’t getting the recognition they so very much deserve, allow me to introduce you to them instead.
Because when you either accidentally or intentionally or through ignorance or apathy spread the misinformation that Mastodon=Fediverse, you erode the very foundation of what has drawn you (and the rest of us) here in the first place.
You are marginalizing and gaslighting great projects and their users.
Note: The following is not intended to be a history of the fediverse. The following is my opinion, understanding, and interpretation. If I’ve gotten something wrong, let me know. But take the following as opinion and interpretation, not fact.
👉 Akkoma — #Akkoma is a hard fork of Pleroma that is heavily centered on user expression.
👉 BookWyrm — #BookWyrm is a federated version of GoodReads. A federated instance by book lovers and for book lovers.
👉 Castopod — Next generation podcasting software #Castopod allows podcasters of all sizes to interact with audiences in the fediverse. Your podcast becomes a social network: your episodes can be shared, liked and commented on without depending on anyone. Podcasts can be monetized or not, you have rich audience metrics and analytics, and series can be deployed to Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, and other podcast services.
👉 Diaspora — One of the oldest federated instance software. Pioneered the concept of “circles” and “aspects” where users could sort their followers into logical groups and control who sees what.
👉 Friendica — The one app that lets anyone or any organization literally create their own private #facebook on the fediverse and make it accessible and federated with the rest of the World. It also has very modest hosting requirements making it accessible to more people to host without requiring a VPS or complex server setups.
👉 Funkwhale — #Funkwhale is a federated version of Soundcloud or Bandcamp for sharing your music library with other Funkwhale users and the Federation.
👉 GnuSocial — One of the original fediverse implementations of a Twitter-like service. One of the oldest projects around (ca. 2008). Far more simpler hosting requirements than other fediverse software. (PHP+MySQL)
👉 Hubzilla — The successor to Friendica, #Hubzilla took what was great about Friendica and made it all the better.
👉 Lemmy — #Lemmy is a federated version of Reddit (or Digg or HackerNews). It’s a federated link-aggregator. Individuals can stand up their own servers or communities of topics.
👉 Mastodon — #Mastodon came on the scene in 2016 and promised a more user-friendly experience. Coupled with some fortunate timing and early publicity it quickly became the darling of the fediverse. It’s certainly the software with the most amount of users. Marketing tends to do that to brands.
👉 Misskey — Several years before Mastodon there was #Misskey. A microblogging platform what provided features not seen in other projects and allows users to customize many aspects of their feed and timeline. Misskey still has a very passionate userbase and is still being developed.
👉 Mobilizon — A federated alternative to Facebook Events. #Mobilizon allows activist groups and organizations of all sizes to stand up a service for organizing events and meetups right here on the Federation.
👉 Peertube — Calling #PeerTube a “YouTube competitor” doesn’t do it justice. PeerTube is so much more than a competitor to YouTube. In a very real sense it’s a YouTube killer, if only more people knew about it and more people used it. PeerTube lets anybody stand up a service and then instantenously their published videos become accessible to the entire Federation (and vice versa).
👉 Pixelfed — #Pixelfed is the federation’s answer to Instagram. By standing up a public or private Pixelfed server you enable yourself (or the public) to post rich multimedia content (photos and videos), “stories”, and more that instantly are accessible to the rest of the federation.
👉 Pleroma — #Pleroma is a lightweight alternative to Mastodon that at the time ironically offered a more user-friendly experience than Mastodon itself and pioneered features years ago that are just now being implemented by Mastodon and other projects. Pleroma’s big claim to fame was that you could stand up a robust instance on a single RasperryPi with little trouble.
👉 WriteFreely — A blogging platform that is built to federate. #WriteFreely federates your words and your content as your write them, and your readers can follow and comment on your posts without having to leave their local timeline.
In closing let me be clear, I have nothing against Mastodon or Eugen. I think it’s a fantastic project and it is an amazing piece of software. I am thankful for the level of awareness and exposure it has given the Fediverse as a whole.
But to continue to perpetuate the misinformation that Mastodon somehow created the fediverse or that the Federation is Mastodon is something that I can’t let stand without challenge.
It’s gaslighting.
❤️🧡💛💚💙💜🤎🖤🤍 Updated 2022-11-10
bofh.social, which is the instance I operate, runs Pleroma using the SoapboxFE. (CC-BY-SA)
@alcinnz If I see you boosting more hate directed at "weird nerds" I am going to block you. I get enough of that stuff in day-to-day life without having to deal with it on Mastodon too
R. A. Dehi
boosted
@publicvoit Likewise!
If you're interested in seeing how #LotusAgenda did things, there's a [slow-paced #demo on YouTube starting at 8'16"](https://youtu.be/GsJzRv-UDUM?t=496) The previous several minutes are mostly an explanation.
Like, *very* slow paced; he [finally adds an item at 17'28"](https://youtu.be/GsJzRv-UDUM?t=1048). Later he demonstrates [auto-tagging based on text content](https://youtu.be/GsJzRv-UDUM?t=1318) and [at 37'36"](https://youtu.be/GsJzRv-UDUM?t=2256).
A thing I'd forgotten is that when you're adding an item in a view with a column for some category C, you can type a new value D into that column to create a new subcategory D within C.
(He also demonstrates its features only peripherally related to #tagging, like [an item being sorted on entry](https://youtu.be/GsJzRv-UDUM?t=1239), [adding a note to an item](https://youtu.be/GsJzRv-UDUM?t=1095), and [setting a value in a numerical category](https://youtu.be/GsJzRv-UDUM?t=2152).)
R. A. Dehi
boosted
@radehi Very interesting properties, thank you.
A tag hierarchy is quite common in many non-trivial tagging tools. I personally don't need it but I understand its purpose and value.
Table view: cool.
mutually exclusive tags: I've integrated a mutual exclusive feature to my #filetags project: https://github.com/novoid/filetags and I'm using this quite often.
It's nice to have an interaction who obviously has much knowledge about PIM research and tools! 👍
The dissertation of @publicvoit on TagTrees, while interesting in its own right, also has a very interesting overview of historical #PIM #HCI research:
https://karl-voit.at/tagstore/downloads/Voit2012b.pdf#chapter.2
Oddly, though, even though it focuses on organizing personal information including files using free-form tags, and even talks about photo management and bookmark management as application areas, it doesn't mention Indecks cards (or other edge-notched cards), Lotus Agenda, or Flickr. It does mention del.icio.us once in passing on p. 67.
The TagTrees method he proposes doesn't rely on organizing the tags themselves in a tree (like Agenda). Rather, the #tags in a TagTrees path are intersected without any concern for their order; the tree view is just an "associative browsing" affordance.
`toot tui` is a bit snappier. I think maybe they forgot the command to scroll down in a toot when it doesn't fit on the screen, as well as a command to get a pastable link to media attachments. (There's a help screen listing the key commands on "h".)
Freezes when you type "t" to look at the thread of a toot until it's loaded the statuses (several more seconds).
Seems like a promising prototype! Maybe I'll try it again in six months.
This toot thing is pretty cool. I installed it with
```sh
pip3 install toot
```
It doesn't seem to handle Markdown formatting well, it takes 3-7 seconds for `toot timeline` or `toot notifications`, and it inserts newlines into media URLs when it displays them (but it does display them).
And although it is *mostly* CLI-controlled, it does occasionally have uncontrollable fits of interactivity, like in `toot timeline`:
```
Continue? [Y/n]
```
So it isn't the instantaneous responsivity you might hope for from a CLI app. But it does work and you can presumably run it easily from an arbitrary cloud VM over ssh.
@radehi Oh, I didn't write it! I just 'apt install toot' 'd it. There's also tut, which is a TUI based client. https://github.com/ihabunek/toot ...
I read a lot. Sometimes I learn things. I like making things. I think reading and doing are complementary.
Joined Nov 2022
