Notices by Adrian Cochrane (alcinnz@floss.social), page 48

Regarding this, I'm aware of how precious the tech industry can be over US's Section 230. But given this case is questioning the role of automated heuristic recommendations, I'm not actually opposed to it.

Nuance is needed (there's no solid lines here), & sure heuristic recommendation engines have helped me find some stuff I like. But you know what helps me much more? Asking all of you!

Search/discovery online is broken & actively harmful. Maybe this can kick some innovation?

@ByronCinNZ

If a tiny vendor like @Fairphone can support their product with software updates for seven(!) years, don't tell me Samsung et al can't.
https://www.fairphone.com/en/2023/01/09/an-update-on-fairphone-2/

I had the same experience with #Jolla. I have the original Jolla Phone, which was released in 2013. Support ceased in 2020 — also seven years!

Big guys need to do better and need to be called out on their bullshit. Thank you to the underdogs for showing what's possible!

@polezaivsani Glad to hear! There are a couple fuzzy lines it's worth being wary of...

Here I'm wary of given any suggestion that I'm demanding someone who has already dealt with people who have demanded this to try the opensource solutions.

@TechConnectify Along this line, I'm also pleased by Ben Eater's work. It's rare to find computing explained to that low of a level let alone so well!

Then again there's other levels at which to explore computing...

@alcinnz I do! In fact I'm envious of folks like yourself who are comfortable with code. I barely know anything in that regard - and I'm working to attain a low-level understanding of computers that I currently don't have.

But I stay realistic about who wants to know this stuff. It's... not a lot in the grand scheme.

When it comes to software, I'm more like the homeowner who can't troubleshoot anything in their home and happily hires professionals to fix stuff. Those people can still own homes

@polezaivsani Even then, it is valid for different to have different priorities. @TechConnectify 's is to educate about (mostly non-digital) technology, & I love that work!

I suspect he'd sympathize with my drive to open the hood on my software to see how it works...

@mcc This is not helping to change my impression that Android frontend dev is either "secret web browser" or a house of cards built from XML and things trying to pretend they aren't Java. 🤦

Update: I have figured out the undocumented* process for specifying a custom layout xml. Now I have a new problem: I said the way to get a valid exo_player_control_view.xml is to copy the one out of github? In fact no. I have done this and the git sample xml does not work right. So either I need some other xml, or I am confused which git hash of exoplayer I have actually installed.

Imagine if I were spending this time on feature work!!

* There is documentation but the documentation is not true

If you get the xml file from the wrong version number of Exoplayer, it probably won't work. You must get the file from the correct side of the Exoplayer/Media3 divide; the two look the same for a given version, but internally the xml is quite different. I am trying to create an Exoplayer build as an alternative to our Media3 build, and it's not finding the xml, possibly because the magic location is different, or maybe on the other side of the divide you have to call a function

@alcinnz Oh sure, it's not everyone who wants to, but there's too many out there who are dismissive of "normie" problems.

I don't use Linux mainly because I use commercial software which doesn't work on Linux, and usually when I bring this up I get told to stop using the commercial software I use and embrace open source everything which... no. You ain't winning many hearts and minds with that argument, I'm afraid.

@TechConnectify Agreed!

Longterm I might prefer if you could ask for any source code you're running, but short term I'll do my small part to make the opensource options as attractive as I can. Whilst acknowledging the needs proprietary software is filling for others, and if it's working for them why switch?

P.S. While they usually overlap due to perceived business needs, I'm by no means opposed to selling software commercially.

@TechConnectify @cprovias I just try to shout down those insisting everyone wants to tinker... And enjoy my tinker-free elementary OS desktop!

(Unless you count my browserdev drive as tinkering...)

@mynotaurus @notjustbikes This is my approach to.

Though it does make sense to me that there should be clients which offer different hueristics!

(as a dev I'm not a fan of this use of the word "algorithm", but the horse seems to have left the barn)

@lapcatsoftware I've seen occasional examples of clean & simple code, but it's extremely rare. But usually it's devs erroneously dismissing complexity which is actually necessary!

foss-north is a Free Software conference in Gothenburg 🇸🇪 that brings together Nordic #FreeSoftware communities.

📢 Call for participation is open until March 5. Submit your abstract now and join us in Gothenburg in April!

💻 https://fsfe.org/news/2023/news-20230222-01.html

i reckon if you got it to tell the story as a non-fiction summary, or even narrated in a really dispassionate way without any emotions, it probably wouldn't mind, it'd come up with any disturbing shit you want, but strong sad feels just really put it off :(

...
* Remove extraneous warnings from output.
* Checks whether a test was configured to be skipped.
* Configure an expected warning.
* Close the XML logfile.
* Link LibStdC++.
* Diff results.
* Access envvars.
(More tomorrow)

Remote filesystem backends:
* rlogin basic client
* SSH basic client
* Telnet basic client
* tip basic client
* FTP basic client
* rsh basic client
* Local operations (bundled within the dispatcher)

3/3 For now...

@jk The AI has read too much schlocky scifi, it's fulfilling our expectations!

@itspomf I feel the same way. Distros shouldn't need Yet Another Package Manager (or two or thee) when they already have one built-in.

There are a few arguments I've heard in favor of snap/flatpak/appimages, some better than others, but personally I much prefer having my software updated All In One Place.

So can someone explain why on earth everyone is moving to binary blobs for linux via flatpak/snap which just sounds like the hell of npm all over again?

Particularly when all distros already have built-in package managers which can resolve *and* maintain dependencies with very simply commands?

Because personally, "sandboxing" is a pretty thin excuse when it comes with significant caveats (and even more dependencies).