Notices by Christine Lemmer-Webber (cwebber@octodon.social), page 7

@stdh @d_j_fitzgerald @notevenarealperson @cvwise @vv ... now that you said it, what the hell, how is my arm so long here, is it always this long

The Verge has a new article about ActivityPub. And it's pretty damn good: https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/20/23689570/activitypub-protocol-standard-social-network

There's a number of quotes from me in there. I enjoyed being interviewed for this: David Pierce was a very thoughtful interviewer.

I have more comments than that, but I'll put them in a followup in this thread. In the meanwhile, go read the piece. It's nice to read some well informed journalism.

Okay, here's some more comments. By the time David and I spoke, most of the people interviewed for the piece seemed very optimistic that we did it, we're in The Future, ActivityPub made it and this is it, this is our moment! Apparently I was a refreshing change of pace by *not* delivering only that attitude. There's reasons for celebration of this moment and also caution and also a sense that things are not done and I'm glad the post carried those forward. In other words, the moment we're in deserves a *lot* of emotions, and I think the piece reflects them.

A lot of what I spent time on in the interview, and it was a few hours and a lot was cut out, was about the history of the fediverse as it came to be and the challenges I perceive the fediverse, as it stands today, as likely to hit, and thus how we're positioning our research within the Spritely Institute.

As usual, most of the things you say gets cut. But I'm happy with the parts that made it in.

I'm also happy with this moment, that all that work was very much so not going to waste. But I am looking forward with where decentralized networks have yet to go, and I'm even more optimistic about that.

@mhoye @emacsomancer Two of my favorite programs have long had this same response from newcomers: Emacs and Blender.

But Blender has improved for newcomers. I think Emacs could too.

@mhoye @emacsomancer Note that both of them have a certain amount of inherit level of overwhelmingness to them. Blender hasn't completely gotten past that, and maybe it can't and also provide the incredibly powerful toolbox it has; I just don't know.

But it has gotten *much better*. Some of this is because it has gone through some major overhauls, including some of it a bit jarring to long term users. Some of it is simply because Blender has achieved enough critical mass that there are a lot of resources available and the assumption is that it's "the tool" to use. But I think real work has happened and succeeded.

@mhoye @emacsomancer You might appreciate the Systems Crafters videos.

IMO the manuals are really good... if you can learn to read them in Info, and learn the style of how to read them. But it's counter-intuitive to how most manuals are read or learned. Occasionally opening and flipping through the manual to look at subjects is how I learned tons of emacs stuff... but also emacswiki, the #emacs irc channel, and a lot of patience.

These days I'd recommend watching the Systems Crafters videos as a way of getting started/immersed though.

But really unlocking Emacs is a matter of learning how Emacs wants you to learn. Emacs provides an *incredible* amount of self-documentation. But learning to access that is weird.

`C-h h` is your friend though.

@mhoye @emacsomancer Emacs precedes most contemporary UI. Has its own universe of ideas and terms. It's a big payoff if you're willing to immerse yourself. One must achieve the mental state to wish to become one with emacs to become so :)

Why yes, work is progressing on Guile Hoot (Spritely's Guile Scheme->WASM project ), a few deets by @wingo here:
- https://mastodon.social/@wingo/110152158713808698
- https://mastodon.social/@wingo/110152164598388024

And oh my gosh, there is code, it does run! You can even compile the following Scheme program to WebAssembly (get ready for it):

42

That's it, that's the program! Okay that doesn't sound like much but to get there, in a sensible way, has required a lot of smart architecture, and more programs are coming :)

https://gitlab.com/spritely/guile-hoot-updates

I did that sketch of Xenia earlier this morning and a few people have said this is the first time they've heard of her! Here's a wonderful video talking about Xenia, a literal Linux trans icon, and the really cool collaborative story of her development: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0b4eW1KAuWE

For more about Xenia, @efi has a lovely website: https://xenia-linux-site.glitch.me/

And here's my little sketch (it's nothing special tho): https://octodon.social/@cwebber/110135819349888250

Teared up a little at @evan's post here today: https://cosocial.ca/@evan/110118213178919473

> This protocol was made by trans people and this culture was built by trans people.
>
> If you love the #fediverse, thank your #trans friends, colleagues and allies today.

Given how instrumental Evan has been to *everything* on the fediverse, that was a wonderful thing to read. But yes, ActivityPub the standard was primarily authored by trans folk and so much of fediverse software development, so many instances being run have happened thanks to many wonderful trans folk.

Twitter's advertising revenue down 89% (yes, 89%!!!!!) since Musk joined https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-30/twitter-s-revenue-drops-amid-advertisers-concerns-over-elon-musk

tzag'in it

wow there's been a lot happening lately huh

and I do mean that very broadly

What's that? Meta is launching an ActivityPub powered decentralized social network? https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/startup/meta-mulls-a-twitter-competitor-codenamed-p92-that-will-be-interoperable-with-mastodon-10223961.html

This activitypub thing has really jumped the shark (and we don't jump sharks around here we hug them!!)

don't pronounce ".webp" out loud in public

@aaronpk weird, what causes this I wonder?

@Wizarth @nova famously I have never done this

I had such a nice time hanging out with such nice people today

Being with my fellow queers, I think it's a thing I need more of in my life

Testing out Guix's relocatable builds feature. Seems to work pretty nicely. If you'd like to try:

$ mkdir supertux
$ cd supertux
$ wget https://dustycloud.org/tmp/supertux-tarball-pack.tar.gz
$ tar xvfz supertux-tarball-pack.tar.gz
$ ./supertux-bin/supertux2

(Warning: it's packing in everything, everything you use to run the game operating-system wise, so it's nearly 400mb.)

I generated like so:

$ guix pack -RR -S /supertux-bin=bin supertux

Not a new feature but first time I've tried it. Thrilling!