Notices by Jack William Bell (jackwilliambell@rustedneuron.com)

Challenge accepted.

#advertising #stupid #funny #humor #deshittification

I just sent an email to my local library offering to run a pair of 'install #Linux on your computer' clinic sessions: one for the actual installs and a followup to help resolve issues found since.

I'm really not all that engaged with the local community and this isn't really an attempt to do that. But I feel like I need to give back a little and, besides, I can't think of a better time than the present for people to move away from Windoze.

#MountainLiving

One of the most important teachings of #Stoicism is: if you can't change it, don't waste time worrying about it.

Which is a damn good thing to do – if you can do it. I personally find this particular precept very challenging.

#philosophy #HumanCondition

@evan

Too many polls.

@kaia

Andy Warhol got it wrong: It wasn't, "In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes," it was, "In the future everyone will be famous to fifteen people."

Once again @pluralistic has managed to distill into once sentence something I've had trouble finding the words to explain. I'll be stealing this one!

> "The classic leftist distinction goes: leftists want to abolish a system where 150 white men run the world; liberals want to replace half of those 150 with women, queers and people of color." https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

See also: Why I refuse to be labeled as a 'Liberal'. (I'm not a 'Leftist' either, exactly. But I'll leave that for another toot.)

@gimulnautti @pluralistic

The first thing to understand about USA politics is: everything is shifted one slot to the right.

Forex, Democrats aren't wishy-washy 'Liberals' really. They are more like a European Center Right party. What Europeans call 'Liberals', we call 'Socialists' and what Europeans call 'Socialists', we call 'Communists'.

The founding fathers of the USA tried to create a system hostile to political parties. In the end they created a system favorable to only two parties.

@mattly

This isn't quite what you are looking for, since it doesn't provide exactly the same affordances as MacOS, but I found the transition to Cosmic (the PopOS WM) quite easy when I moved permanently to Linux two years ago. Plus I like everything else about PopOS.

> https://system76.com/cosmic/

Cosmic has a tiling mode I found absolutely intuitive and continue to use, but you can turn it off if you don't like tiling WMs.

@inthehands @blogdiva

I have a whole riff about why building a bridge and writing an application are completely different for one very specific reason; it basically boils down to: You only build a new kind of bridge one time, after which you are simply adapting the basic design (and ancillaries like the schedule) to the context. Whereas with software EVERY TIME is the FIRST TIME.

Then there's the separate issue of management: bridge engineers are never told to cut corners or ship a prototype.

@blogdiva

I've been saying this exact thing for DECADES now.

Here's the first time I said it for publication:

> https://news.slashdot.org/story/99/08/24/1327256/featureopen-source-as-an-ant-farm

Software is *not* an engineering practice, except in extremely limited and constrained fields. It's a *craft* and, for some, an art form. Coding has more in common with cabinet making that it does with building airplanes that don't fall out of the sky.

@cstross

If rusgov didn't have a stranglehold on journalism they would have one hell of a problem with grass roots anti-war activism right now. You can jail political rivals, but it's a lot more difficult to jail a hundred thousand mothers and students.

In truth? I'm surprised it isn't already happening.

Russian losses in Ukraine (est): 200,000+ killed, 550,000+ wounded.

USA losses in Vietnam: 58,220 killed, 153,372 wounded.

Sources:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War#Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine_(2022%E2%80%93present)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War#Casualties

I got an email from Google advising me that an upcoming software update will reduce the battery life of my Pixel 4A. Following the links indicates the only possible remedies are a rebate, a price break on a newer model Pixel, or to mail in my Pixel for a battery replacement. There is no option to not accept the update.

Also? There's no real explanation of *why*. They do explain some of the *how*, which seemingly casts the blame on the battery itself (see also 'replace the battery').

[contd]

@ErikUden @setiinstitute

I've often pointed out one solution to the Fermi Paradox is simple and quite frightening: There is something out there which eats intelligences. It finds it's food by the radio waves they emit.

It's coming our way now, smelling 'I Love Lucy' and 1960's pop radio, and it's salivating…

@alan @dougmerritt @pluralistic

Shades of IBM 360 manuals in 3-ring binders.

This meeting could have been a … Wait. I'm retired. I don't have to go to meetings anymore!

[Draws cartoon on whiteboard and leaves.]

@dougmerritt

Yes. But I didn't do it DURING the meeting!

Well, not most of the time…

Really? I drew a lot of boxes and arrows. I got really good at boxes and arrows.

My favorite whiteboard story involves @pluralistic when he gave a speech at Microsoft in the mid 1990s.

I got to the room early because I wanted to meet him in person. He and another guy show up laughing their asses off.

Turns out? They were going into every meeting room and writing, "do not erase' on the whiteboards.

@katyswain @pluralistic

The quote I most want on a t-shirt is from Iain Banks:

> "Fuck every cause that ends in murder and children crying."

@pluralistic

Are you running a bot Cory? 'Cuz that got boosted *way* too quick…

> Penn Jillette Wants to Talk It All Out. https://www.cracked.com/article_40871_penn-jillette-wants-to-talk-it-all-out.html

h/t @pluralistic.

#politics, #uspol #HumanCondition

Yet another OS written in #Rust. (It's in Alpha, of course. Hobby OS's almost never seem to get out of Alpha.) The key feature here is it cryptographically verifies filesystem and memory operations. Which sounds kind of interesting from a security viewpoint, but probably burns CPU cycles like crazy every time you copy a file.

> VEKOS is an experimental operating system written in Rust that focuses on verification and security at its core. https://github.com/JGiraldo29/vekos

#programming #OperatingSystems