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Debian's Dilemma
  • I've argued this for point for so many years and have become exhausted to the point where I don't even bother any more.

    Free software advocates, God bless them, are fighting a good fight but we will never see the average computer user giving up functionality for the sake of some computing ideology; whether that ideology be free software, privacy or security focused. I'm glad some people are willing to do so as I believe strongly that the world would not be where it is today if it weren't for it's existence offer the last two or three decades. But the reality is that 90% of the world views computers, phones and tablets as tools; a means to achieving an end, not the end in and of itself. There may be some subset of people who are willing to give up some convenience or utility if they believe strongly enough in one of these ideologies, but most of them will never care about the license of their software as long as it gets the job done. But this is precisely why we need people who do care about these ideologies because software freedom ultimately is important and people do benefit from it. It just needs to be as good as, if not better than, it's non-free counterparts

  • What's the best way to have a .bashrc that I can use throughout systems?
  • I recently started uses dotbot for managing dot files across my systems. It sounds very similar, in terms of the simplicity of the implementation, to yadm. You define a config file in yaml or json and run the "install" script which calls the dotbot utility, passing in your config file. With a simple change to the install script, I've been able to create multiple config files, one per environment (work, home, linux, mac, etc.) and I've been thinking about how I could automatically sync changes to git whenever I edit a config file. Leaning towards setting up an autocmd in neovim to automatically commit and push changes on save when I have one of the config files open. Just not yet sure how to do this in a way that would only run the sync for the configs and not every json or yaml file on my system. I've only ever set up autocmds for specific file extensions but the syntax leads me to believe it's flexible enough that any arbitrarily specific file name or path could work the same.

  • What's the best way to have a .bashrc that I can use throughout systems?
  • This sounds really similar to how I do things but I use Ansible. What are the advantages to something like yadm, that is specifically designed for dot file management, and a generic config management utility like Ansible?

  • Dwarf Fortress gets a Linux Beta on Steam
  • This is great news! I have always wanted to try Dwarf Fortress but I know myself and I know from past experiences playing ASCII MUDs and rogue-likes that I don't play them enough to memorize what the different symbols represent and that inevitably causes me to drop the game entirely out of frustration. It seems like a small thing, but having the graphical version of the game on Linux is a huge win to me.

  • 2FA app
  • Still use Google Authenticator. I know there are alternatives out there that have other features but I'm a pretty strong believer that my 2FA shouldn't be backed up digitally. I keep any recovery information offline and prefer it that way.

  • What's a book you really enjoyed, that you feel like no one else on lemmy has read?
  • Red House by Sarah Messer

    In her critically acclaimed, ingenious memoir, Sarah Messer explores America’s fascination with history, family, and Great Houses. Her Massachusetts childhood home had sheltered the Hatch family for 325 years when her parents bought it in 1965. The will of the house’s original owner, Walter Hatch—which stipulated Red House was to be passed down, “never to be sold or mortgaged from my children and grandchildren forever”—still hung in the living room. In Red House, Messer explores the strange and enriching consequences of growing up with another family’s birthright. Answering the riddle of when shelter becomes first a home and then an identity, Messer has created a classic exploration of heritage, community, and the role architecture plays in our national identity.

    I recently found this book at a book store in Vermont while on a road trip and I've absolutely fallen in love with it.

  • What is the biggest lesson that employment has taught you?
  • Boundaries. Establish them and defend them with every ounce of your being. If you don't, most employers will grind you in to the dirt and send you out to pasture when you eventually crack under the pressure. Better to establish healthy boundaries up front. Not only will you find yourself more frequently surrounded by people you like and share mutual respect with, you will be happier and land fewer "shit" jobs because employers looking for people to send to the meat grinder will see that they can't grind you down and you'll be filtered from the hiring pool before you ever have to suffer at their hands.

  • What is the biggest lesson that employment has taught you?
  • 100%. The rebranding of some HR departments as "People Officers" or "People Team" drives me bonkers. When push comes to shove, they will always protect the interests of the business before the interests of the employee. Full stop.

  • Hey Linux devs - Build a GUI or gtfo
  • There's a difference between complaining and providing constructive feedback. This post falls in the former category. If you are a user of a free product and you don't like how it works, you are entitled to a full, no questions asked, refund. You're welcome to make suggestions but devs who work hard to provide something at no cost and on their own time owe nobody anything. I've seen this play out year after year in the open source community and it's led to a lot of very good projects shutting down when the developer gets fed up with the demands and behavior of the community of users.

  • An announcement regarding Kris Nóva [RIP]
  • Damn! I know she was going through some rough stuff in her personal life recently. I fear it’s all connected, though I sincerely hope I’m wrong.

    I met Kris a couple of years ago at GopherCon. At the time I was very new to Go and she mentored me early on and was very friendly. She and I worked together during the GopherCon hackathon and produced the early version of a tool that ultimately became Kubicorn.

    EDIT: seems like this was a climbing accident. Truly sad to hear. But going out doing what you enjoy… could be worse I suppose.

  • What is your opinion on men that make use of sex worker services?
  • This is something I struggle with too. On the one hand, I don’t want to say all instances are bad but there exists, definitely in Asian countries, sex work that caters specifically to ethnically based fetishes. On the one hand, fine, whatever gets your jimmy’s off as long as it’s consensual but I also think that these are often going to result in more exploitative environments when they occur in lower income areas.

  • Do you still write notes with pen and paper?
  • I’ll answer with a simple test. Do the following first on your phone and then on a piece of paper:

    Design a thing, something physical; a box, a house, a chair, whatever. In addition to the diagram, this note must include a description of the item, the bill of materials, the dimensions and, if applicable, assembly instructions that you could confidently hand to someone else and have them follow. Ideally, you should include the dimensions of the object directly on the sketch itself.

    Now give this to someone and see how accurately they can reproduce the item while you go off and make a phone call.

  • Starting today Facebook must pay $100.000 to Norway each day for violating our right to privacy.
  • Exactly right. Facebook will factor this in as am expected cost of doing business (if they didn’t already) and their stock will go up. This isn’t a penalty, this is just like paying a bribe. In the end, both are just lining the pockets of officials more interested in appearing to do something for the next news cycle so they can get re-elected.

  • Linux on an ESP32

    I’ve always been a fan of extremely small Linux installs. Back when I first started using computers, I didn’t have access to great hardware. In the early 2000s I was using Pentium133 and eventually a Pentium III based system and I remember running floppy Linux (live boot off a floppy disk) and DSL (damn small Linux) in attempts to maximize the performance of the hardware I had.

    Running Linux on a tiny ESP32 board just blows my mind!

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    Twitter Removes Public Access to Tweets
    www.cnn.com Twitter isn't letting users view the site without logging in | CNN Business

    Twitter appears to be restricting access to its platform for anyone not logged into an account.

    Twitter isn't letting users view the site without logging in | CNN Business

    These platforms are really trying to push users away, aren’t they…

    0
    I’m so confused right now… what is this video?

    I view Lemmy from the mobile site on my phone and there’s a link on the top right of the page that opens this video on YouTube… is there a joke I’m missing here?

    !

    2
    Hello friends!

    Hello everyone! Been an SDF member for many years. I'm an open source contributor and software engineer who's recently decided to cut ties with Reddit. It saddens me in a way because I've been a member there under a number of different names since the early days; I joined pretty soon after the demise of Digg. Unfortunately, the site has been in slow decline for some time now and the recent changes have pushed me to my breaking point. As a contributor to open source software, some of which may be impacted by the announced API changes, I can't continue to use the service in good conscience and have moved my presence over to the SDF Lemmy instance. In addition, I've moved my open source contributions away from alternative Reddit clients and am now focusing my spare time on improving Neon Modem.

    I look forward to watching this community grow and interest and adoption in federated and open social platforms continue to expand as more commercial platforms drive people away.

    1
    InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)EL
    Elw @lemmy.sdf.org
    Posts 4
    Comments 74