Notices by Stuart Langridge (sil@mastodon.social), page 2

Looking at Fastly for hosting static websites, which https://www.fastly.com/blog/no-origin-static-websites-at-the-edge/ claims it can do with "compute@edge", and I have fallen at the first hurdle. I dropped a reasonable-sized static site into a public folder and ran "fastly compute serve" and... "memory index 0 has a minimum page size of 3075 which exceeds the limit of 2048". This seems to be some sort of hardcoded limit in "viceroy", the server; someone talks in a bug about recompiling it. Do I know any fastly peeps? @devs maybe?

@robinwhittleton ah. But the CDN requires me to actually host the site somewhere else. https://www.fastly.com/blog/no-origin-static-websites-at-the-edge/ suggests that if I want to host it at fastly, this compute thing is the way, no? Did I misunderstand? Certainly avoiding all this wasm compilation stuff feels sensible

Is it worth spending lots of money on a really good computer mouse? Or is that just mouse snobbery by people who want to be able to configure button 9 to shuffle their windows into alphabetical order and the like?

@powersoffour Blades is great and I like it a lot, but waaaay more in-depth than I'm looking at here for this particular project. By "rules-light" here I mean stuff like Risus or Freeform, where character generation is "pick three cool sentences about your character, and we're done", and dice rolls are more like "roll 1d6 and 4-6 is a success" :) Never heard of Kids on Bikes; I'll check that out!

I'm researching rules-light #ttrpg games for novice players. I want something with some vague of crunch -- that is, there should be *some* mechanics, not a pure storytelling game -- but not much crunch at all. Also, not rules intended for comedy wacky games, or rulesets which cost money to look at (I'm only looking for inspiration here, so I'm not buying a game to read once). On the list already are Risus, Freeform Universal, Fate Accelerated, Lasers & Feelings, Fireside; suggestions welcomed!

"Banning TikTok won’t protect Americans from targeted misinformation or misuse of their personal data, which American data brokers routinely sell and share." Well said, Representative Sara Jacobs (D-CA) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sara_Jacobs?useskin=vector), as quoted by @mmasnick in https://www.techdirt.com/2024/03/14/once-more-with-feeling-banning-tiktok-is-unconstitutional-wont-do-shit-to-deal-with-any-actual-threats/.

Outside and I can hear Rihanna’s “Umbrella” playing, which obviously made me think of the excellent Tom Holland lip sync video. Does this also trigger the rule about resharing it? Or do I have to have actually seen the video?

Actually, what the hell, let’s trigger another round of sharing, because it’s worth it. https://youtu.be/Brq-exSvB7Q?si=670qju7XRQZ6Gzcz

@mjg59 I think there's, as you say, an implicit assumption that "source code" is low-level enough that you can understand how the program does what it does. What your theoretical model does is undermine that idea, because the source code expresses a wish rather than an algorithm; there's no explanation of how it's accomplished, which historically people have always assumed that source code has to do. The model is more like a genie that brings you what you wish for; you're dependent on it.

@mjg59 this is a question of philosophy, I think. Is "be my ideal word processor" adequate source code? If you've got a compiler that can compile that correctly, yes. If you haven't, no. Is the Python source for that word processor adequate source code? I think yes even if you don't have a Python interpreter because you can see how it works, not just that it works. This feels like I'm talking myself into a different position than the one I intuitively thought.

@mjg59 agreed entirely! and I'm in favour of that. But that's because it didn't really need to be; all previous compilable languages had the property that even if you didn't have the compiler, you could work out how the compiler *worked*, and therefore in a pinch could write your own. (A lot of work, but doable.) But with this, you don't know how to build the compiler, and the source code is not enough by itself to build the program.

@mjg59 I think if you know how to produce the model (or something equivalent to the model) then this is all fine, right? At that point, "make the word processor of my dreams" is perfectly adequate source code for a programme because you know how to make the compiler that can compile it; nobody can take that compiler away from you, so all is good. That's my intuition anyway!

@mjg59 assuming that either you also publish the instructions you gave for that binary so I can see them, or that "make a thing which does exactly what Matt Garrett's thing does" is an instruction I can give the model and get back software which is a clone of yours, then yes. Having the source code isn't the point; being able to make the changes I want and nobody being able to stop me from doing so is the point. If I have a magic wand, I don't need source code.

@mjg59 that is: the idea behind having the source is that if I want to change the program ten years from now, even if the compiler is not easily available, I can in theory also build that compiler from source, or write my own, and therefore I can still run the program. If the compiler (in this case, the model) isn't available and I also cannot create it because I don't know how it worked, then having the source code for the program isn't very helpful.

@mjg59 (this assumes that the model itself can't be taken away, of course. If it can be taken away or restricted in use in future, then I'm in two minds about whether this meets the goals of free software, because a year from now if I want to make changes to my or your software, I can't if I can no longer use the model.)

@simon yup. This is why I am loath to buy domains for small projects; I killed soonsnap, and put farmbound on kryogenix.org because (among other things) I don't want to be on the hook to pay for domains for them every year for all eternity.
On the other hand, what are the chances that some company reliant on VC money won't get bought or bored in the next ten years? Low.
So neither situation is good.

@simon My new-internet-thing rules are, I think, these:
1. if you have a personal domain already then you're likely to keep it. Host things there, not on their own domain.
2. if you don't, then you have no pre-existing inclination toward internet permanence. Decide whether you or VC-funded companies are likely to have more staying power
2a. if you think it's you, buy a domain and host your thing on it
2b. if it's not you, pick a company with a good record (github, wordpress &c) and put it there

Nice to see that real places recognise that the web is best and “install an app” is not something that actual people really want to do for something they’ll do once.

People who dig the #SteamDeck: here's @bkardell and @Meyerweb from @igalia, who I did not know were doing lots of work on the Deck, talking to other Igalia people who are doing lots of work to make the Steam Deck better. Interesting podcast!

https://www.igalia.com/chats/steam-powered-open-source

@avlcharlie Firefox is based on Mozilla's engine, Gecko. Safari and Epiphany are based on WebKit, and every browser on iOS is required to be a Safari webview. Most other browsers (except on iOS) these days are based on Blink, Chrome's engine, which started as a fork of WebKit but has evolved differently. (As you note, Opera was based on Presto, Opera's engine, a long time ago, but is now Chromium.)

seen people post an image about how many browsers are Chromium under the covers these days, except Firefox, which is true (and why I use Firefox). Here's an addition to that bit of knowledge, because of the #AppleBrowserBan .