Mastodawn

How old am I?

I'm so old I remember when Google search provided more value than surveillance advertising.

I'm so old I remember when an operating system was not considered an advertising platform.

I'm so old I remember when "Artificial Intelligence" was a serious enquiry filled with brilliant people, and not a scam machine populated by sleazebags.

I'm so old I remember when "user" didn't mean "product".

I'm so old I remember when "corporation" didn't mean "person".

nairou Apr 12

Fediverse, do you have resources on learning to be a good open-source steward? I've contributed to many open-source projects, but never run one before. Without a solid plan I fear I'll fall into the trap of trying to please everyone. #opensource #foss

nairou Apr 6

Andrew Kelley Apr 5

What if we made advertising illegal?

🌈 🌞

https://simone.org/advertising/

What If We Made Advertising Illegal?

What if we banned all advertising? Not regulate it—abolish it. This proposal would transform manipulation machines, and maybe save democracy itself. A thought experiment worth considering.

Kōdō Simone

nairou Apr 5

Starting a new project, which I plan to make open source, and hope to eventually build a community of contributors. However, I'm hesitant to put it on GitHub. I have my own Forgejo server, but I don't know how likely people are to contribute if they can't just use their existing GitHub account...
#forgejo #github #opensource

nairou Feb 17

Does anyone know of NixOS config examples that build for multiple machines, but use npins? Finding examples that use npins is proving difficult, and I haven't seen any that specify multiple machines.
#nixos #npins

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nairou Feb 16

Something I constantly wonder about these days, is if there is a middle ground, either within Nix or as a new distro variation. Where you have the centralized configuration, but far more control over individual package versions. Like, I wish I could say "update firefox" and it would download and install the latest version of firefox - as specified within my configuration - but without rebuilding the entire system state. Just update the links for that one package and be done.

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nairou Feb 16

For me, this means flakes have become a burden. There have been many times when I couldn't perform a rebuild (system update) because some other random package failed to build. And other times when I'd manually write an override to get a package updated to the latest version in a GitHub repo, because the nixpkgs repo hadn't been updated in a while and still showed the older version.

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nairou Feb 16

However, one thing I've learned that I don't care at all about, is the reproducibility. The locking of packages and dependencies to specific versions, and the all-or-nothing approach to system updates. My configuration files specify what software I want installed, and any configuration changes to be made, but beyond that I just want the latest versions installed.

nairou Feb 16

Having used NixOS for almost two years now, I still absolutely love managing the entire system configuration from a central set of config files. Knowing I could wipe and reinstall the system, and get everything back without forgetting what changes were made over the years is exactly why I switched to #nixos in the first place.

nairou Nov 23, 2024

ploum Nov 18, 2024

The best way to help those who are or will be under a dangerous political regime is to normalize the tools that protect them.

If you use Whatsapp, try to replace as many conversations as you can with Signal.

If you use Gmail or Outlook, switch to an independent privacy preserving provider, at least for your personal emails.

If you use Chrome, switch to Firefox.

By making those tools "normal", you are making them look less suspicious.

If you don’t do it for yourself, do it for others.