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This. One man's user friendliness is another man's developer hostility. All those user friendly layers you pile on top of the raw computing interfaces just get in the way of writing your own code. So you want to run your own software on Windows or Android? Here, just buy and install this huge development environment first. Because we try to separate the users from the developers as much as possible, we can't just let anyone code around.

http://iki.fi/teknohog/rants/w...
http://iki.fi/teknohog/rants/u...

This. One man's user friendliness is another man's developer hostility. All those user friendly layers you pile on top of the raw computing interfaces just get in the way of writing your own code. So you want to run your own software on Windows or Android? Here, just buy and install this huge development environment first. Because we try to separate the users from the developers as much as possible, we can't just let anyone code around.

http://iki.fi/teknohog/rants/w...
http://iki.fi/teknohog/rants/u...

The problem comes when people come up with competing standards - like Thunderbolt - which aren't part of the spec where your only option is to fold it into USB and basically have it be "Thunderbolt over USB".

USB3 is a competing standard to USB1/2. It looks "universal" from a distance because the USB3 pins are hidden next to the old 1/2 pins. It's not even "USB3 over USB1/2", it's a bag on the side. The result is as universal as a lump of serial, parallel and PS2 connectors glued together -- sure, one of them will probably fit, but it's not really a solution to the multitude of different connectors if you just hide them all inside the same ground shell.

USB was supposed to replace "legacy ports" but now it has become a legacy port itself. I.e. even when more and more devices are USB3 compatible, we have to drag along the old 1/2 pins to keep it "universal". Yes, I've complained about this for years.

My solution? Call different technologies by different names. Make a different connector for different electrical protocols.

Not with stupid keyboard and layouts where you accidentally keep pressing page up/down: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Hey, at least it has dedicated PgUp/Dn keys which is a luxury these days ;) A lot of laptop keyboards only have Home/End/PgUp/Dn accessible via Fn on the arrow keys, and I've seen these since the early 2000s. I agree that laptop keyboards in general are crap, though. Thinkpads were nice until 2013 or so.

Proof Of Stake ... tends to work more like fiat currency than gold mining... the rich tend to get richer off the interest, and the rest of us just tend of stagnate where we are.

IMHO, a fixed percentage interest is fair. The rich don't get proportionally any richer because everyone's balance increases by the same factor. This is also how Proof of Stake in cryptocurrencies has worked since it was introduced in Peercoin around 2012.

The problem with Ethereum is that you need a minimum balance in order to gain any interest. The rich will get proportionally richer, for no good reason. This idea is similar to masternodes used in several coins. Thus cryptocurrencies that were supposed to level the playing field and fight the man have become a sad parody of themselves.

Exactly, UBI should be perceived as a way to enable transition between different kinds of economic system. I've thought about these things many years ago, and it's nice to see that ideas of basic income are spreading, but in many ways we're still stuck with Lutheran work ethics and other kinds of historical baggage.

http://iki.fi/teknohog/music/c...

However the core protocol needs end to end encryption. Not encryption where a multinational manages your private key "for" you, but true, E2E encryption.

Some chat services support end-to-end (E2E) encryption for one-to-one chat but not group chat. The point of the latter is to broadcast a message to all other users of a channel. How would end-to-ends (plural) encryption work?

It needs some more modern features like presence.

IRC protocol already has presence support, which many clients expose as the /away command. Though this doesn't include "offline" status at the protocol level, an IRC server could in theory implement "offline" as a subset of away status by providing a bouncer for all users of the server to use.

Situation: There are 14 competing USB standards.
-Ridiculous! We need to develope one "Universal USB" standard that covers everyone's use cases.
-Yeah!
(Soon:) Situation: There are 15 competing USB standards.

(I thought USB was ridiculously non-universal back when 3.0 had been released. I don't even have any devices for type C.)

"I think that would be a good idea", to paraphrase Gandhi.

Since I moved to Linux about 19 years ago, I used to wonder about the term "personal computer", and how "PC == Wintel" to many people. Looking at all of those identical Windows appliances vs. all the fun and interesting setups of Linux enthusiasts. Linux machines ranging from supercomputing clusters to wristwatches around the turn of the millennium. What exactly did the Wintel people mean by "personal"? Something familiar to the average person, or something you personalize to fit your needs and work for you?

Incidentally, today I used and installed Android for the first time. I've been sharing pictures on Instagram using the web extension, but I wanted to set some options that would only be available via the "app" (as if the browser were not an application, vs. the OS), so I tried android-x86. (Why I don't have a phone that runs those things is another topic, but I'm sure many a /.er will resonate.) The question is, why does one need different machines (virtual or actual) for content production and management/consumption? It is yet another frustrating example of the user-developer separation. I guess the real reasons involve something like ad revenue.

The Android experience was refreshing because I keep hearing about "smart"phones as the great consumer control and tracking platform, but it didn't seem realistic until I had a go. Or as mentioned on Wikipedia about its origins: 'Rubin described the Android project as "tremendous potential in developing smarter mobile devices that are more aware of its owner's location and preferences"'.

I'm not sure Intel is in the position to make the computer great.. erm, personal again -- something I can fully customize and control, and that runs all things computable. But it sure would be a good idea.

This! It's hard enough to find a decent desktop keyboard without it. http://iki.fi/teknohog/rants/k...

having a source distribution makes running with local patches trivial.

It also makes building or developing non-distro software much simpler. With binary distros, you always run into the issue of installing "devel" packages of libraries if you need to compile against them. You may also need to worry about compilers -- I mean, who needs a compiler when you're only trying to "use" a system? But in practice you often need to compile stuff even if you're not developing it.

Mac and Windows users may be used to this artificial separation between users and developers, so I have a hard time understanding why so many Linux distros strive for the same, by removing headers from library packages and entire compilers.

To expound on the TAS bit: you don't submit a video, you submit a file that is just a recording of inputs at each frame. This is used to verify that your submission is legit; since there is no uncontrollable RNG on the consoles, the same set of inputs on the same frames will always produce the same result (on emulators; it's possible to do so on the actual consoles, but requires special hardware and lots of time tweaking things.)
Sidenote: shout outs to Bisqwit, one of the founders of tasvideos.org; he has some really neat youtube videos and projects (currently describing the process of building a compiler to properly translate Chrone Trigger into Finnish, and it's worth checking out his patch generator for Castlevania 2)

OpenMP is where it's at, cat

https://bisqwit.iki.fi/story/h...

This! I also think there's unused potential in the number pad that's often crammed into larger laptops. I wouldn't want a number pad otherwise, but it could provide proper Home/End/PgUp/PgDn -- if only it implemented something like the classical layout. You'd get lots of useful keys with NumLock off, no need for Fn modifiers.

Also agree with the empty space issue. There's so much wrong with keyboards these days, probably related to how mice and touch screens are used; as if PgUp/Dn were made redundant by scroll wheels.

The smaller the laptop, the tighter the key spacing.

I wish this were true. Instead, I see 15'' laptops with the same keyboard as 12'' ones, and empty space on the sides. Or a numeric keypad crammed in to keep the keys small, and offset the typing area towards the left.

Numeric keypads on laptops are a special annoyance for another reason -- they often break the tradition where you can use keys 7/1/9/3 as Home/End/PgUp/PgDn when NumLock is off. These days, you generally need to press down Fn to access keys like PgUp/Dn, if you're lucky to have them at all.

Yes, it's a pet peeve of mine. As laptop keyboards, I prefer the Thinkpads from a few years back such as the x220, but it's hard to get anything like that with modern guts inside.

http://iki.fi/teknohog/music/c...

Gentoo is a Linux distro that was modelled after the BSDs from the start, and it doesn't use systemd by default (though it's available). To me it's the best of both worlds, since Linux provides better hardware support and in some cases better software availability too.

On the ports/portage system, consider software you need to build yourself (bleeding edge stuff with no hope of being packaged for distros). For this, most distros want you to install ${LIBRARY}-devel or something for the headers. There's no need to leave these out from $LIBRARY in the first place, unless you want to put up artificial barriers between users and developers. But since Gentoo works by building packages in the first place, the headers are always included. This is great not just for actual developers, but for users who need to build stuff themselves.

I'm well aware of the Real Scots^Wwhitespace issue in Python. Read all about it here.

I also use Audacious whenever I need extended functionality in terms of input/output plugins. It also ties in with my curses frontent I originally wrote in 2002 for XMMS. However, for everyday use I prefer simpler textmode players such as Herrie.

I still have yet to see any Type C connectors in person, so using "existing cables" isn't much of a selling point, personally.

This. There's nothing universal about USB the way it is evolving. http://iki.fi/teknohog/rants/u...

This is probably not very relevant, but in Finland we have this thing called http://iki.fi/ that provides permanent redirect addresses for web and email. They charge a one-time signup fee around 30 EUR for life. It's only for Finnish residents, though. The closest international equivalent I can think of is http://sdf.org/ -- I also paid a similar one-time fee for a somewhat expanded account.

so called "programmer" can't even program a keyboard

How exactly does one program

1. nonexistent keys into existence, such as pgup/pgdn?
2. small keys into big ones? As in arrow keys that are squeezed down to half the size of regular keys, or other important keys like Enter that are shrunk into oblivion.
3. spaces between certain keys, for a nicer mechanical layout to help access special keys by touch? For example, a smooth row of F1..F12 vs. a traditional grouping into fours?

http://iki.fi/teknohog/rants/k...

It presents you with a command prompt, ready to be programmed on. You can do things like shell one-liners to automate pieces of your work as you go on, without entering any special programming modes. And when you need to do more serious programming, there are no artificial barriers. In short, it doesn't enforce any unnecessary separation between users and developers.

You must live in a country which has a nice '[' key on the keyboard. Most keyboards in the world access those symbols with Alt-Gr.

(Sucks to be them, I know...but this will make it suck even worse)

Most of my keyboards have the Alt Gr stuff. That doesn't mean I have to use the stupid localized layout that's printed on the keys. I use UK or US layouts because I want to enjoy programming and Unix shells without tying my fingers in a granny knot. http://iki.fi/teknohog/rants/k...

God I hate this flat button craze that is infecting all software, let me see what is a button, if it looks like a button, I know I can click on it.

Good point. Skeuomorphism is fine if it actually works on a computer, such as buttons you can click on. A worse example would be a rotary knob on music software, since you cannot actually grab and turn it. It's somewhat OK with a mouse wheel, because you have some kind of rotation going on, but even that's stretching it.

IMHO, the point of doing things in software is that you can escape some of the limitations of hardware. But since a lot of software is designed to act like old-fashioned hardware, you also get a lot of the same old limitations.

(More on this in my keyboard/mouse and GUI rants)

God I hate this flat button craze that is infecting all software, let me see what is a button, if it looks like a button, I know I can click on it.

Good point. Skeuomorphism is fine if it actually works on a computer, such as buttons you can click on. A worse example would be a rotary knob on music software, since you cannot actually grab and turn it. It's somewhat OK with a mouse wheel, because you have some kind of rotation going on, but even that's stretching it.

IMHO, the point of doing things in software is that you can escape some of the limitations of hardware. But since a lot of software is designed to act like old-fashioned hardware, you also get a lot of the same old limitations.

(More on this in my keyboard/mouse and GUI rants)

obligatory http://iki.fi/teknohog/music/c...

Because girls aren't interested in a bum who collects social benefits and doesn't work. This incentive will never change.

It really depends on what you mean by "work". I've had a relationship go down the drain, largely because of work that took too much of my time and energy. At some point I decided I'm not going to let work ruin my life again. I now pursue my own thing in art and science -- with a journal article and a conference talk coming up, I guess I'm doing something right. The girls don't seem to mind all the fun and interesting projects I'm doing instead of a soul-crushing day job.

Personal stuff aside, a discussion such as this should get its definitions right. Most people are doing all kinds of interesting and useful things all the time, but outside of a defined "work" -- think open source software, for example. Or raising children. It's more or less arbitrary which part of this great human thing goes under the "work" umbrella, which I define by getting paid for it. Traditional economic theories only seem to care about things that involve money, ignoring the big picture altogether. This is exemplified in the following bit of the article.

1. Shorten working hours, bringing supply down to meet demand, and improving the quality of life by providing more leisure time.
2. Invent—or import—new things for people to buy that will improve their quality of life.

To me, having to choose between these seems rather silly. My general idea of life is to get more leisure time, in order to do/invent fun things for me and others to enjoy. "Work" with its schedules and bureaucracies just isn't very compatible with my creative wants. Besides, I'd expect real communists to ditch this idea of money/buying/selling for good.

While you mention volunteering, I'd take a major step further: Join your local amateur theatre!

There's a high demand for "geeky" people in theatre, for things like light and sound tech. Most people only think of the acting bit, and consequently there's an oversupply of the acting type. But there's a lot of interesting and important work behind the scenes, and you get to experience the entire production from the inside. More artistic background work includes things like poster graphics, set design and music/sound design.

The light and audio setups in most amateur theaters are relatively small and simple, and anyone can learn them to a basic extent, but it helps if you have a more systemic understanding to begin with. However, it usually happens in a small, tightly knit group that everyone does a bit of everything, and you might end up in a completely different role.

Disclaimer

I did a school project on hoverboard technology back in the day. Every time I mention this and the unlikely practicality of the lightning-like ionization levels required, someone invariably points out how cool that would be, power consumption and safety be damned.

I think you're being sarcastic, but seriously... why not have a single universal port standard for everything from USB-like peripherals to networking to video in/out to charging etc???

If that were technically feasible, it would only stay universal for a while. USB is now 'universal' because it has the old and new interfaces bolted together for backwards compatibility. It has made a legacy port out of itself.

A related issue is dragging VGA along as the backwards compatible standard, even when the displays themselves are digital.

I think you're being sarcastic, but seriously... why not have a single universal port standard for everything from USB-like peripherals to networking to video in/out to charging etc???

If that were technically feasible, it would only stay universal for a while. USB is now 'universal' because it has the old and new interfaces bolted together for backwards compatibility. It has made a legacy port out of itself.

A related issue is dragging VGA along as the backwards compatible standard, even when the displays themselves are digital.

This. Gentoo's Portage is modelled after BSD Ports, and it follows a minimalist unix style in many other ways. At the same time, it uses the GNU userland on the Linux kernel for a much better hardware and software availability. And no, it doesn't use systemd by default. As a side effect of the compilation thing, Gentoo is a nice environment for developers.

Now that I have a crap camera to hand at all times, I use it for all sorts of useful things. Sometimes I photograph wired/interesting things I see and want so show people, sometimes I photographs pictures of something I need to show someone who lives in a different country, sometimes it's stood in as an ad-hoc scanner, or simply photographing ID numbers, MAC addresses etc printed on things and so on.

The thing is none of those is up to the standard of a professional with a professional camera, but they are all useful to me and sometimes my work regardless of them not being "professional standard". If I had to rely on "proper" photography, then none of them would be taken.

I guess it's the same with programming.

I guess the programming equivalent would be writing shell one-liners, small macros/scripts etc. only for your personal use. Unfortunately, most people today never see a proper shell. IMHO, the Microsoft and Apple "experience" is all about separating users from developers, by providing special proprietary dev kits as the correct way to programming. Meanwhile, users of free unices will find shells and interpreters all over the OS.

You do realize that there's no such thing as a pure digital display, right? LCD and Plasma are still all analog displays - they have digital display controllers driving an analog display surface.

This isn't quite true, IMHO -- you'll have to be more specific. The colour of an individual pixel still needs analog control, but with digital you can do exact pixel addressing. Contrast this to VGA where you're basically sweeping a spray can of a variable colour across the display. This is also why VGA monitors need adjustments to align this spray of colours with the display dimensions. No need for that with digital, where you always know which pixel you mean to light up.

http://iki.fi/teknohog/rants/v...

On the fringe you can add Monero

Fringe? IMHO, Monero is the Microsoft of second generation cryptocurrencies -- it's the big, slow, conservative choice of Cryptonote coins. For a leaner and generally more interesting alternative, have a look at Boolberry, but keep Monero in mind for long-term investment. (At the moment, a Monero node is taking over 14 GB of virtual memory on my machine, Boolberry "only" 4.)

It looks like the OP is a newbie to cryptocoins, so let me elaborate a bit. Traditional 'altcoins' are based on the Bitcoin codebase, so for things like proper anonymity, look for independently developed codebases such as Cryptonote (whose implementations include Monero and Boolberry) and Ethereum.

For mining profitability, Boolberry and Ethereum on GPUs are doing nicely at the moment, Bitcoin and Monero not so much. Of course, this may change rapidly and you need to do your homework. Good old bitcointalk.org is still a useful hangaround for learning about coins, though many notable coins have their own forums for more detail.

Bitcoin is still the gold standard in value of cryptocoins, technically viable and well accepted by merchants. Forget about mining it, but don't dismiss it otherwise. For example, the programming aspects of Ethereum were largely present in Bitcoin already, it's just that Ethereum takes these to the front stage and makes them easier to use.

http://iki.fi/teknohog/hacks/c...

USB 3 is a completely different design from USB 2. Thus to maintain the illusion of universality, v3 comes with v2 pins bolted on the side. The idea of "legacy free" was that you replace a bunch of older connectors with a single new type, which is clearly not happening with USB. I guess in the future we use "USB" for everything including CPU sockets, though in reality it's a chimera of 10 different ports bolted together for the sake of universality.

http://iki.fi/teknohog/rants/u...

the language looks pretty impressive: the ease of python/matlab with the speed of fortran/c.

My two favourite languages since about 2000 have been Python and Fortran, so you can imagine my joy of finding Julia. Of course it's not a perfect solution for everything, and I still prefer Python for most tasks that are not compute heavy. This is mostly due to the plethora of libraries available by default.

On the issue of ease, Julia's syntax actually borrows heavily from Fortran, and thus avoids most of the whitespace thing.

This. For surface independence, try developing plasma levitation instead.

The mass media likes to equate hoverboards with magnetic levitation. That might be the case if the boards only worked over special magnetic rails, or at least conductive surfaces. If you want a freely moving vehicle, like a hovercraft without all the noise and the rubber flaps, think plasma levitation.

Linux is better because it had the 20 years ago today moment over 4 years ago.

I don't get the problem either. I like to use virtual screens a lot so I can focus on one thing at a time, and I often have just one or two windows per screen. A project might be spread over several desktops, for example due to having a single Emacs session for everything. I think a single monitor with multiple virtual screens actually helps me focus better than trying to see everyhting at once. This is one reason why the whole desktop metaphor is stupid.

The song just wouldn't work with "It was 24 years ago today" so I'll just keep posting this every year. http://iki.fi/teknohog/music/c...

Those where the days when the web was just getting exciting and java applets and gif were exiting. Man did I spend a LOT of time on Macromedia Flash 4 making animations. Still have them on floppies tucked away,not sure if they still work.

http://www.thevoid.co.uk/
http://www.nrg.be/archived/
http://janit.iki.fi/shit/megac...

https://www.adobe.com/showcase...

Ethanol is one of the smallest organic molecules, most drugs are huge in comparison. It might help to think of it as a solvent, not unlike water.

I hear ya. Small molecules are why DMSO nicotine patches may exist but not generally, prescription drug patches (never mind the dosing nightmare). Just like the Java Sandbox concept or Microsoft Wallet, many biological barriers/frontiers that were once considered difficult or impossible to breach have been crossed.

The skin: while small-molecule poisons and toxins, even simple hydrocarbons were long known to pass through the skin, it was only ~1963 when it was realized that DMSO can help carry larger molecules into the bloodstream.

The Blood brain barrier has been known to be weakened by inflammation but has been breached outright by gas microbubbles and localized ultrasound (too damned creepy!).

And the Placental blood barrier opens in late pregnancy, presumably to give the developed fetus a survival-edge of antibodies from the mother, but long before that there are specialized mechanisms to transport only fats or glucose or eliminate waste. What if some miracle drug has the unintended effect of compromising the mechanism that decides when and how it is opened? In the case of (S)Thalidomide it was not the drug itself, but compound CPS49 produced from it by the liver (the mother's I think) that crosses the barrier.

So nature's greatest defenses have become small hurdles...

not your grandfather's mandelbrot

I like. This one actually resembles my grandfather.

I guess it depends on what you're used to. I practically grew up with laptops, so I always type numbers with the upper row, even if a numeric pad is available. I also think the number pad is a matter of space and reach, even on a desktop, but especially on a laptop where keys are already crammed. I'm sure a lot of proficient typists also appreciate a centred keyboard on a laptop.

This. Laptop keyboards are already full of compromises, so the extra space should be used for better keys, not just more keys. To me, a good keyboard was one of the key reasons for getting a Thinkpad, but I wouldn't pay for this crap.

I've had it with these motherfucking eels on this motherfucking hovercraft!

I've had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking F train. http://gothamist.com/2015/06/2...

I've had it with these motherfucking eels on this motherfucking hovercraft!