Notices by Adrian Cochrane (alcinnz@floss.social), page 66

@alcinnz Yes, driving a gas-powered car is easier than fighting for clean air alternatives, but you won't find Greenpeace forcing everyone to pollute in order to support their work.

@downey Agreed! But that's the argument which keeps getting made...

Honestly though it's not even true that everyone uses GitHub. Most of the components of our operating systems have always operated there, with at most a mirror. Then again that'll be excused by saying these projects are old as if that made them less worthwhile.

@downey But GitHub is what everyone uses! It is what is easy for people! /s

Interesting.

:opensource: #OpenSource Initiative #OSI using a proprietary issue tracker software for its new website.

Gotta appease those sweet sweet corporate sponsors, I guess. Even when said sponsors are selling proprietary software.

#openwashing #hypocrisy #GiveUpGitHub

https://github.com/OpenSourceOrg/dotOrg

Cool, apparently with the std::thread::scope() API in Rust 1.63.0, they managed to design it in a way that

- is still sound
- still lets you spawn more scoped threads from inside scoped threads
- does not require passing down that extra |s| argument to all the closures!

@technomancy There's a reason I feel compelled to enter the ring...

@wizzwizz4 I'm offering email to collaborators who don't want their existing one to be public.

But yeah, I'm hearing that it will be valuable to offer an alternative! I'll enjoy exploring that once Haphaestus's basics are working!

@jbowen Yeah I saw that, kind of prompted this question. I don't see many specifically complaints though there are these toots: https://social.pixie.town/@joepie91/109864083801124159

I'd say that SourceHut Todo has addressed those complaints by essentially using email as an authenticated comment box.

Question: What exactly are the objections to emailing opensource patches? Has SourceHut addressed them sufficiently?

I want to explore federating codeforges in a way that isn't specific to codeforges.
For now email (which I actually like the UX of...) is my tactic, but I may explore adding #Haphaestus-specific features once its up & running!

:boost_love:

Just released @small-tech/https version 5.2.0

https://www.npmjs.com/package/@small-tech/https

Adds support for localhost aliases place1.localhost - place4.localhost.

You can use these when testing the peer-to-peer features of Small Web apps locally (https://ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-small-web/).

@small-tech/https is a batteries-included version of the Node.js https module (automatically provisions Let’s Encrypt certificates when running in production and locally-trusted certs when running in dev).

#NodeJS #https #SmallWeb #web #dev

That file also defines an optional debugging command stringifying the current state for output disabled in production builds. There's a background handler to retrieve the output data for the `expect*` commands, though a seperate file adds more infrastructure around it. Those commands also have several other support functions, including for carefully reading the resulting stream. There's a couple obsolete functions & running subcommands.

4/4 Fin! Tomorrow: What did I miss?

`expect_after`, `expect_before`, & `expect_background` all, sharing the same code, does a lot of similar stuff. Just without checking the output stream. `match_max` sets & validates a global (or channel-property) having retrieved channels state; as for `remove_nulls`, `parity`, & `close_on_eof`. `timestamp` puts more effort into argument parsing, retrieves the time, formats it according to the given format-string, & returns result to TCL.

3/4!

As for the main attractions of Expect commands...

`expect`, `expect_user`, & `expect_tty` all (sharing the same code) interprets their args based on quantity evaluating an innerexpression, retrieves results, performs more complex argument parsing, iterates over commands & their states for deduplication, validates states, considers preparing a timeout, repeatedly reads results with handling & traversing the statemachines, compares against expected patterns of various types, & cleans up.

2/4?

Continuing on with yesterday's thread studying the APIs Expect adds to TCL...

`trap` parses flags, possibly examines current signal to get the data to return, once validated & with the list retrieved iterates over said list converting to an alternate TCL datastructure. Possibly configuring a signal handler to get it this data next time it recieves the signal in the TCL datamodel, via a background tasking checking its counters. Includes lookuptable conversions between signals & strings.

1/4?

@jbauer Oh, but have you heard about Haskell? /s

The lack of any consensus on AI safety, prompt injection attacks and other adversarial manipulations make me feel like it’s 1998 again.

Huge, open field for researchers and entrepreneurs, except the technology is already deployed into the lives of normies.

❤️ I love Free Software

#ILoveFreeSoftwareDay #ILoveFS
#krita #MastoArt

Some thoughts on how to make a book, three months after I made one - Baldur Bjarnason: https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2023/how-i-made-my-book/

The Limits of ‘Computational Photography’ - Will Yager @ PetaPixel: https://petapixel.com/2023/02/04/the-limits-of-computational-photography/

<3 Deno - matklad: https://matklad.github.io/2023/02/12/a-love-letter-to-deno.html#3-Deno

I've talked about this Magnesium / Carbon Dioxide reaction before as part of my various rambles on utilizing Magnesium as a circular, renewable fuel.

CO2 is ideal as an oxidizer for Magnesium combustion, as it's easily compressible, relatively safe, (too) widely available, and will reduce down to a solid once burned with Magnesium. This allows for a completely closed combustion system, no air in, no exhaust out.

It can even be used as a working fluid for supercritical power cycles.

Inside the Heart of ChatGPT’s Darkness - Gary Marcus: https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/inside-the-heart-of-chatgpts-darkness

Machine learning offers a fantastically powerful toolkit for building complex systems quickly. This paper argues that it is dangerous to think of these quick wins as coming for free. - D. Sculley, Gary Holt, Daniel Golovin, Eugene Davydov,
Todd Phillips, Dietmar Ebner, Vinay Chaudhary, & Michael Young @ Google Research: https://research.google/pubs/pub43146/