Having lived in both the U.S. and Spain for quite some time I receive the -very popular question that anyone who has lived in another country knows -and dreads: "Do you like it better here or there?". Given, you might get -this question even if you have just visited another country or (if you live -in the U.S.) simply having lived in another state. It really is an annoying -question, so please stop asking it. Unless we went to a literal dump we -are going to like different parts of each.
- -That aside, there is something I would like to say about when people ask -this to me in Spain specifically. I have received that question in both the -U.S. and in Spain, but it feels a little different when they ask in Spain. -This is mostly because of the Spanish inferiority-complex. Most Spanish -people feel (even if they do not tell you directly) that Spain is behind -the rest of the world in just about every way possible, when that simply -isn't true, every country has its pros and cons. So when they ask me "Do -you like it better here or there?" I can always hear a tone of -self-disappointment, which pisses me off. They don't know what I'm going to -say! I might say that both the U.S. and Spain suck balls! But no, they -assume that I'm going to say that the U.S. and just about every other -country is better than them in just about everything except flamenco... -Which doesn't make sense because some of the best flamenco dancers, -singers, and guitarists are actually Japanese. Damn, if you're going to -find something that your country is good at, at least make sure it's -correct! Hey, Spain is 3rd in tourism world-wide! So every time a Spaniard -asks me this question it makes me feel bad. Mostly since one of the only -good things I can say about Minnesota (the state I lived in while I was in -the U.S.) is that its nice and quiet even in the city (most likely because -everyone has frozen to death or defected to Canada at the thought of a -Trump presidency, that or their all drooling about a 'First Woman -President'). How am I supposed to meet your expectation that Spain is so -terrible when I don't have many bad things to say? Sure, things could be -better (a lot better), but I hate this self-hatred bullshit.
- -Basically, stop asking these questions, and don't think your country is -better or worse than others at almost everything just because your economy -is shitty or doing well because you import Asians to do all the mentally -challenging work (U.S. *nudge, nudge*).
- diff --git a/blog/posts/0003-the-television-is-cancer.cfg b/blog/posts/0003-the-television-is-cancer.cfg index 4320e6f..36a9e27 100644 --- a/blog/posts/0003-the-television-is-cancer.cfg +++ b/blog/posts/0003-the-television-is-cancer.cfg @@ -1,5 +1,5 @@ filename = 2016-05-23-the-television-is-cancer.html title = The Television is Cancer -description = A rant about the damn TV. +description = A rant about the TV. created = 2016-05-23 updated = 2016-05-23 diff --git a/blog/posts/0005-the-new-era-of-script-kiddies.html b/blog/posts/0005-the-new-era-of-script-kiddies.html index e05cde2..dbb8bf2 100644 --- a/blog/posts/0005-the-new-era-of-script-kiddies.html +++ b/blog/posts/0005-the-new-era-of-script-kiddies.html @@ -42,12 +42,12 @@ to have to program the whole thing.Of course, this is all a matter of opinion, I personally don't mind the essence of what scripting is, I just don't like the fact that it has basically no standards, and if it does, the language's interpreter doesn't -enforce them (I believe the HTML & CSS are partly to blame for this, seeing -that the browser often takes care of most errors your so lazy ass doesn't -have to fix them). It's not the computer's (or in this case, the web +enforce them (I believe the HTML & CSS are partly to blame for this, seeing +that the browser often takes care of most errors so you don't have to fix them). +It's not the computer's (or in this case, the web browser's) to interpret what I mean (even though it is called an interpreter), its job is to read my code and if something is not standard or doesn't make sense, it doesn't fix it for me, it gives me a big fat -error in bold red text that tells me "Hey, this code is shitty, you +error in bold red text that tells me "Hey, this code is bad, you should change that!".
diff --git a/blog/posts/0007-why-i-hate-the-web.html b/blog/posts/0007-why-i-hate-the-web.html index 124dd31..026f820 100644 --- a/blog/posts/0007-why-i-hate-the-web.html +++ b/blog/posts/0007-why-i-hate-the-web.html @@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ hate web development, not so much the web in and of itself. on functionality and the "Does this work?" of things rather than the "Does this look pretty?". That's not my job, in fact, I'd argue that it's no one's job, developers make something functional and marketing sells the -half-assed hurried piece of shit as if it were the most important invention +product as if it were the most important invention since the print-press. But for some reason in web development people seem to care a lot less about functionality and a lot more about aesthetics, and I believe that this has to do with the fact that the web is purely @@ -21,7 +21,7 @@ including those who pay more attention to how their tool looks than "Is this working correctly?". Not only that, but it's impossible for you to create a CLI (command-line interface), that wonderful world where people can stop paying attention to X and Y locations of buttons and more on if -the damn thing works correctly. +the thing works correctly.At least in fields such as C++ or even Java the focus is still a little more focused around functionality, but this is because both can be used to @@ -37,7 +37,7 @@ graphical environment in your browser.
the web has become popular. A lot of important and valuable inventions in history that ended up gaining popular use lost any value they had as they started to be used by idiots with no respect for the pain that went into -the damn thing and complain when they see something that looks weird or +the thing and complain when they see something that looks weird or they run into a small little bug that they could just avoid (yet, they never want to contribute and fix the thing), and they end up using it to do the same stupid things they did before but now with the new technology. You @@ -54,7 +54,7 @@ matters is 'Muh convenience!' and 'Muh entertainment!'.Now, putting that aside, I still use the web (obviously, I have a website) and there are still positives to the web if you know where to go to avoid -'normies' who make into the hell-hole that it is currently. Want to know +'normies' who make into the obnoxiuos place that it is currently. Want to know where those places are? Get off your Facebook and Twitter and start going to the less popular sites where your friends most likely don't hang out.
diff --git a/blog/posts/0008-game-website-app-creators.html b/blog/posts/0008-game-website-app-creators.html index f44f28a..7aab04e 100644 --- a/blog/posts/0008-game-website-app-creators.html +++ b/blog/posts/0008-game-website-app-creators.html @@ -3,20 +3,20 @@ programs are what I consider is helping to destroy the technology industry. Not only is this causing for more people to be able to create mediocre apps (games, websites, or otherwise) and therefore lowering programming salaries and the chances real programmers have of obtaining a job, but it also -promotes shitty code leading to bloated projects. +promotes bad code leading to bloated projects.The first aspect is that these 'creators' are destroying the industry for real programmers (not people who think they're programmers because some mobile app creator helped them make a stupid clock app that they put on their phone). This is because it is allowing more people who have no -respect for the field to enter and create shitty apps. More people +respect for the field to enter and create bad apps. More people entering the field means less work for real programmers and the little work that may be found will be for lower wages (something that for now the programmer master race has been able to avoid because of the few people who want to get involved in programming due to its intense logic and, in some cases, mathematics).
-The second aspect is that it leads to shitty code and terrible performance. +
The second aspect is that it leads to bad code and terrible performance. This is because these creators turn whatever is put into their GUI into a real programming language which then gets compiled or interpreted. The issue with this kind of cross-compiling is that it makes the code a lot @@ -36,7 +36,7 @@ they turn whatever you created in the GUI to a programming language and along with it comes a ton of unnecessary code that will just take up more memory and make performance slower. In this aspect, can I blame them? No. But that doesn't justify it being a replacement for the programming the -damn app yourself.
+app yourself.Finally, even though one could say "It helps others get interested in the field.". This is wrong, very much so. How can one say that it will help @@ -49,7 +49,7 @@ programming for you ('game maker make me a game') instead of having genuine interest in making something nice.
To put it this way, I'm fine if you use a website creator, for example, to -make a personal website of yours (just don't expect me to debug that shit +make a personal website of yours (just don't expect me to debug it when things to wrong, 'cause I don't want to have to go through one very long line of HTML and CSS). Other than that, no game creators and no app creators. All these do is ruin the the programming industry and diff --git a/blog/posts/0009-why-i-am-a-gpl-advocate.html b/blog/posts/0009-why-i-am-a-gpl-advocate.html index 4b9f947..1ba227b 100644 --- a/blog/posts/0009-why-i-am-a-gpl-advocate.html +++ b/blog/posts/0009-why-i-am-a-gpl-advocate.html @@ -23,20 +23,20 @@ political ideology had moved very much left-ward where Free Software can almost be considered the licenses of the left-wing.
After a few years of running GNU/Linux I started to get rid of all the -Apple products I had (because Apple makes it hard as hell to use their shit -with anything else that isn't their shit, mostly being the damn iPod I had +Apple products I had (because Apple makes it hard to use their products +with anything else that isn't theirs, mostly being the iPod I had which didn't like syncing with my GNU/Linux machine until I found a -half-assed hack that got me to fix that shit). At one point I came to the +hack that got me to fix that). At one point I came to the conclusion that the reason why Apple products (along with others) did not play well with others is because they are non-free and do not allow people -to create programs that work with their shit (because that means you're -using someone else's stuff instead of their shit). After this pissed me off +to create programs that work with their products (because that means you're +using someone else's stuff instead of their stuff). After this pissed me off I personally decided to stop using non-free software as much as I could to the point where now the only non-free software on my computer are some wireless drivers that I need for my laptop.
While I used GNU/Linux I also started to get into programming, which is -where I was exposed to software licenses. Since I was on an old shitty +where I was exposed to software licenses. Since I was on an old computer I couldn't really do much gaming, but I could do a lot of programming, so I ended up programming small games that I could play. But when the time came to choose a license I decided on the GPL, reason diff --git a/blog/posts/0011-new-website-design.html b/blog/posts/0011-new-website-design.html index 1b73194..893cbfc 100644 --- a/blog/posts/0011-new-website-design.html +++ b/blog/posts/0011-new-website-design.html @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@ -
As you can see I've changed up the site quite a bit. Now we're back to running on PHP (no longer using Jekyll). I enjoy this theme much more as it reflects my interests (I put all that I can in the terminal, I'm writing this very post in the terminal using the Vim editor) and it also stands against the picture pretty websites that you see nowadays. You will not see anything on this site that is not pure text, it may be underlined, bold, or a hyperlink, but it will be text, like in a terminal (not the Enlightenment terminal, though, that thing's weird as fuck). Of course, the source to my website is still available on Github and it's all up to date.
+As you can see I've changed up the site quite a bit. Now we're back to running on PHP (no longer using Jekyll). I enjoy this theme much more as it reflects my interests (I put all that I can in the terminal, I'm writing this very post in the terminal using the Vim editor) and it also stands against the picture pretty websites that you see nowadays. You will not see anything on this site that is not pure text, it may be underlined, bold, or a hyperlink, but it will be text, like in a terminal (not the Enlightenment terminal, though, that thing's really weird). Of course, the source to my website is still available on Github and it's all up to date.
Despite moving towards a system that I had to program myself and now having to write my posts in HTML with a little PHP at the beginning and end, this will actually make it easier for me to upload the posts. Previously with Jekyll I had to upload three different files every time I wanted to post something (the index page, the feed.xml, and the post itself), now, although I do not have an atom feed, I only have to upload the new post because the PHP automatically detects it and adds it to the list (Jekyll was not running on my server).
diff --git a/blog/posts/0012-my-favorite-vim-plugins.html b/blog/posts/0012-my-favorite-vim-plugins.html index ba39505..103c3aa 100644 --- a/blog/posts/0012-my-favorite-vim-plugins.html +++ b/blog/posts/0012-my-favorite-vim-plugins.html @@ -14,7 +14,7 @@Trailer-Trash & Bad-Whitespace: These two make a perfect pair. The first one, Trailer-Trash, points out in red any trailing whitespaces. I hate those things, they're extra characters that I don't even know that they're there. Now I can see them, and with Bad-Whitespace I can delete all of them in one command (which, in a sense, defeats the purpose of seeing them, but oh well).
-vim-sprunge: I work in collaboration with other people, and sometimes I need to share snippets of code I have not yet commit, but going to a pastebin in the web browser is a bit of a pain in the ass. So this plugin exists so I simply have to run a command and it will give me a link to a file on Sprunge where my code has been posted for my comrades to see it. I don't even have to exit Vim.
+vim-sprunge: I work in collaboration with other people, and sometimes I need to share snippets of code I have not yet commit, but going to a pastebin in the web browser is a bit of a pain. So this plugin exists so I simply have to run a command and it will give me a link to a file on Sprunge where my code has been posted for my comrades to see it. I don't even have to exit Vim.
Of course, I use more than these, but these are the ones I like the most. I will most likely end up installing way more in the future, but these are truly useful.
diff --git a/blog/posts/0013-my-first-superficial-impressions-of-freebsd.html b/blog/posts/0013-my-first-superficial-impressions-of-freebsd.html index ec2d973..566edd2 100644 --- a/blog/posts/0013-my-first-superficial-impressions-of-freebsd.html +++ b/blog/posts/0013-my-first-superficial-impressions-of-freebsd.html @@ -2,7 +2,7 @@Another thing that they do that I found rather interesting is how they have the ports packaging system so you can compile things from source rather than installing a pre-compiled binary (which you can still do, but through the pkg package manager). I found this quite amusing, but ended up finding it to be a waste of time (since I don't necessarily care too much for compiling absolutely everything I download), so I continued using the pkg package manager. But this does show a certain amount of consistency with a Free Software ideology, and it wouldn't be too bad to implement a system similar to it (which might already exist, I haven't tried Gentoo out yet) in which the package manager downloads the source, compiles it, installs the binary, and deletes the source except if specified otherwise. It would most likely take longer for larger projects (you tell me how long it would take to download and compile the Firefox source), but it would be pretty cool, especially for educational purposes at a school.
-Of course, if there's one thing that annoyed the hell out of me it was that Clang is the default compiler instead of the GNU compilers. I get that BSD likes the cuck licenses and the Clang has certain features that I too must acknowledge as very useful (such as suggestions when you get a compiler error as to how to fix the problem), but why can't we all just work on a common project? Separating into multiple projects is just a pain in the ass, and why haven't the GNU compiler developers copied this functionality yet? Are there legal issues? I don't see how with an attribution license, if anything the GNU people just don't want to meddle with the Apple/BSD people and vice versa (quite understandable, but not very pragmatic or reasonable from a programmer's perspective and not a political one). Apparently, after looking stuff up, I found out that the GNU compilers used to be default, but FreeBSD for some reason decided to switch to Clang (again, most likely political reasons). But whatever, I can change my default compiler if I want, not a big deal.
+Of course, if there's one thing that annoyed me it was that Clang is the default compiler instead of the GNU compilers. I get that BSD likes the cuck licenses and the Clang has certain features that I too must acknowledge as very useful (such as suggestions when you get a compiler error as to how to fix the problem), but why can't we all just work on a common project? Separating into multiple projects is just a pain, and why haven't the GNU compiler developers copied this functionality yet? Are there legal issues? I don't see how with an attribution license, if anything the GNU people just don't want to meddle with the Apple/BSD people and vice versa (quite understandable, but not very pragmatic or reasonable from a programmer's perspective and not a political one). Apparently, after looking stuff up, I found out that the GNU compilers used to be default, but FreeBSD for some reason decided to switch to Clang (again, most likely political reasons). But whatever, I can change my default compiler if I want, not a big deal.
So overall I've had a very positive experience with FreeBSD, especially with how they have a very minimal install of their OS. I would not use it as a primary OS, since regardless of how much I like how they do things there are just not as many applications for their OS, as well how they do not make the amount of effort that other OSs like Debian make to separate free software from non-free software. However, if I were ever to have the opportunity to run this as a home server I would definitely try that out (might try installing it on my Raspberry Pi).
diff --git a/blog/posts/0014-strict-compilers.html b/blog/posts/0014-strict-compilers.html index 9ab483e..7a66ca7 100644 --- a/blog/posts/0014-strict-compilers.html +++ b/blog/posts/0014-strict-compilers.html @@ -2,7 +2,7 @@Looking back, a strict compiler would fix a lot of things that have frustrated me in the past. For example, when I was in high school I was a teacher's assistant for the technology teacher and he had me and my friend correct exams of the programming students. What I found painful was when students would create variables and never use them!!! Basically, the definition of inefficiency, you're taking up resources, holding memory, that you don't need to have. I understand if maybe you don't understand how to use inline functions, or how to optimize your code in general, even I have issues with that, but creating a variable and never using it is an obvious case where there should be a compiler error, you're taking up memory without using it. So this frustrated me a lot back then, but if these kids were using a strict compiler from the start (they were learning Java, but even Java can be strict if you pass the right flags) then it would help them to break these habits.
-I will admit that it's a pain in the ass, especially when I'm developing for Ubuntu and something goes wrong, mostly because the code works on my computer (Debian Testing), Brigham's computer (Fedora), and our other comrade's computer (Arch), yet it fails on Ubuntu. I don't know what Ubuntu is doing, but they need to cut this crap out. If it weren't for the fact that between normies they're the most used distribution we would simply just stop supporting it (because I don't want to have to deal with their bullshit), but unfortunately the better quality doesn't always win majority support even for the same price (which, in this case, is free as in gratis).
+I will admit that it's a pain, especially when I'm developing for Ubuntu and something goes wrong, mostly because the code works on my computer (Debian Testing), Brigham's computer (Fedora), and our other comrade's computer (Arch), yet it fails on Ubuntu. I don't know what Ubuntu is doing, but they need to cut this crap out. If it weren't for the fact that between normies they're the most used distribution we would simply just stop supporting it (because I don't want to have to deal with their nonsense), but unfortunately the better quality doesn't always win majority support even for the same price (which, in this case, is free as in gratis).
So, in conclusion, please start using strict compilers, that way we can also weed out the normies that program for money rather than for fun (someone with genuine interest would be willing to program despite any complaints by the compiler).
diff --git a/blog/posts/0015-tox.html b/blog/posts/0015-tox.html index be718a6..88f0d28 100644 --- a/blog/posts/0015-tox.html +++ b/blog/posts/0015-tox.html @@ -8,5 +8,5 @@Another important feature is how Tox doesn't actually use usernames to find other users, but rather an ID that you have to share directly with the people you wish to add as a contact. This can sound inconvenient at first, but in reality it's actually much more convenient than usernames. Why is that? Because I don't have to search between the 20 different people called 'John Brown' or the other 30 that have some username with 'johnny' in it and then a bunch of numbers. This ID is exact. Not only that but part of it is replaceable. Let's say that someone you don't like associating with has found your ID and constantly harasses you with contact requests. You can press a button and a part of your ID will change and that person will no longer be able to find you because your ID is different. Great against spammers, right?
-Because of this, I suggest that everyone switch to Tox, or at least to something like Ring, just please stop using non-free shit like Google Hangouts or Skype, and I'll be damned if you ask me to use fucking Facetime. Which reminds me, I should do a post on why I hate Apple. I've probably shown quite a bit of hatred towards them in my blog before (and much more compared to my hatred of Microsoft). So look forward to a post hating on Apple.
+Because of this, I suggest that everyone switch to Tox, or at least to something like Ring, just please stop using non-free stuff like Google Hangouts, Skype, or especially Facetime. Which reminds me, I should do a post on why I hate Apple. I've probably shown quite a bit of hatred towards them in my blog before (and much more compared to my hatred of Microsoft). So look forward to a post hating on Apple.
diff --git a/blog/posts/0016-my-loathing-of-apple.html b/blog/posts/0016-my-loathing-of-apple.html index 2f9a6bb..176ea01 100644 --- a/blog/posts/0016-my-loathing-of-apple.html +++ b/blog/posts/0016-my-loathing-of-apple.html @@ -1,12 +1,12 @@ -I hate Apple, and I've had many shitty experiences with them. Aside from how they are spying on you being part of PRISM, in general they are assholes to anyone who wants to use their products in combination with anyone else's. Let me explain my experiences that I have had with Apple.
+I hate Apple, and I've had many bad experiences with them. Aside from how they are spying on you being part of PRISM, in general they are impossible with anyone who wants to use their products in combination with anyone else's. Let me explain my experiences that I have had with Apple.
-For the first 15 years of my life I was an Apple user, using iPods, iPads, iMacs, and iShits. I was exposed to stuff like GNU/Linux at school (because the Spanish school system actually uses ethical software, sadly only because they can't afford proprietary shit, but whatever), especially with Debian GNU/Linux because that's what my dad ran for work, but I still used mostly Apple products. However, at 15 I got my first personal laptop, which was a shitty Dell Inspiron something or another, all I remember is it was a 32-bit with 1GB of RAM, so obviously I installed GNU/Linux on it, specifically Debian GNU/Linux (at the time I had stable since my dad was the one helping me to install it). So I had my own computer, but my music player was still an iPod... Why was this a problem? Because damn iPods didn't want to sync with jack shit that wasn't damn iTunes. I had to do some shit like using my family's Apple Mac (non-free software) to turn off the journaling on that thing and then every now and then I had to do it again because the iPod noticed!!! Unlike some other music players where I can drag and drop my files.
+For the first 15 years of my life I was an Apple user, using iPods, iPads, iMacs, and iStuff in general. I was exposed to stuff like GNU/Linux at school (because the Spanish school system actually uses ethical software, sadly only because they can't afford proprietary stuff, but whatever), especially with Debian GNU/Linux because that's what my dad ran for work, but I still used mostly Apple products. However, at 15 I got my first personal laptop, which was a Dell Inspiron something or another, all I remember is it was a 32-bit with 1GB of RAM, so obviously I installed GNU/Linux on it, specifically Debian GNU/Linux (at the time I had stable since my dad was the one helping me to install it). So I had my own computer, but my music player was still an iPod... Why was this a problem? Because iPods didn't want to sync with anything that wasn't iTunes. I had to do something like using my family's Apple Mac (non-free software) to turn off the journaling on that thing and then every now and then I had to do it again because the iPod noticed!!! Unlike some other music players where I can drag and drop my files.
-That was not the only issue, but it was the first. After that I started realizing how my family (except my dad) who all used Apple applications could not communicate with anything of mine. Imagine being isolated (technologically) because you use a less shiny piece of hardware that costs significantly less. That's exactly how it was with me and my family. So I continued to hate it, especially when I went to school with my laptop and the school (who used Apple) gave me files that were Apple specific! Dick move for a public school. And so these events continued as I couldn't cooperate on shit with just about anything because of 'muh iShits'. It got to the point where I basically refused to use anything Apple, and it didn't help that one year the school starting giving all the students iPads. At least this time they were thinking "What if a student's computer can't run our software on it?" as compared to the previous times where they basically said "You can go fuck yourself!". But even then, what about my freedom? Ignoring my principles of free software which I had at the time. I basically left that machine at my house and never brought it to school in order to prove a point. Every time they said to do something on the damn iPad I would do it on my machine using free software.
+That was not the only issue, but it was the first. After that I started realizing how my family (except my dad) who all used Apple applications could not communicate with anything of mine. Imagine being isolated (technologically) because you use a less shiny piece of hardware that costs significantly less. That's exactly how it was with me and my family. So I continued to hate it, especially when I went to school with my laptop and the school (who used Apple) gave me files that were Apple specific! Bad move for a public school. And so these events continued as I couldn't cooperate on anything because of 'muh iStuff'. It got to the point where I basically refused to use anything Apple, and it didn't help that one year the school starting giving all the students iPads. At least this time they were thinking "What if a student's computer can't run our software on it?" as compared to the previous times where they basically said "we don't care about you." But even then, what about my freedom? Ignoring my principles of free software which I had at the time. I basically left that machine at my house and never brought it to school in order to prove a point. Every time they said to do something on the iPad I would do it on my machine using free software.
-So, that's how I left the realm of Apple, but once I was out I was glad to have left. Looking from the outside in all I see is mindless zombies fighting over a damn phone!!! I swear, Apple fanboys are the worst along with bronies. There is no reason for you to get the damn phone a week before everyone else for a higher price. Just let all the other idiots get the expensive one a week earlier while you (the 'smart' one) waits patiently until the price goes down... to about half a fortune instead of an entire one. Seriously, you get nothing out of Apple products that you can't get out of others for much less money. But of course, we all need to show off how much money we have (or, how much money we can suck out of our working class parents) to pay for a piece of shit phone that does the same thing as the other one that costs 70% less. But Apple has some way of convincing their fanboys that their iShit is special and better than everyone else's because it has a logo of an apple with a bite taken out of it on the back. So you're saying I can tattoo an apple to my nuts and these fanboys will start obsessing over it? Also, just because I'm saying fanboys doesn't mean this doesn't apply to women, or even men that are older. Heck, from what I've seen Apple has two main markets, teenagers who act like hipsters and adults in their mid-life crisis who are already throwing money everywhere (also, a lot of old people have Apple, not because they bought it themselves, but rather because their children who are in their mid-life crisis bought it for them, they really don't give a shit themselves).
+So, that's how I left the realm of Apple, but once I was out I was glad to have left. Looking from the outside in all I see is mindless zombies fighting over a phone!!! I swear, Apple fanboys are the worst along with bronies. There is no reason for you to get the phone a week before everyone else for a higher price. Just let all the other idiots get the expensive one a week earlier while you (the 'smart' one) waits patiently until the price goes down... to about half a fortune instead of an entire one. Seriously, you get nothing out of Apple products that you can't get out of others for much less money. But of course, we all need to show off how much money we have (or, how much money we can suck out of our working class parents) to pay for a phone that does the same thing as the other one that costs 70% less. But Apple has some way of convincing their fanboys that their iStuff is special and better than everyone else's because it has a logo of an apple with a bite taken out of it on the back. So you're saying I can tattoo an apple to my nuts and these fanboys will start obsessing over it? Also, just because I'm saying fanboys doesn't mean this doesn't apply to women, or even men that are older. Heck, from what I've seen Apple has two main markets, teenagers who act like hipsters and adults in their mid-life crisis who are already throwing money everywhere (also, a lot of old people have Apple, not because they bought it themselves, but rather because their children who are in their mid-life crisis bought it for them, they really don't care themselves).
-Worst is with my poor grandparents, one of their children (you know who you are) bought them an iPad and a Macbook, but the poor souls don't know any better, so now they don't know that if they want to hold on to those family photos better continue to buy expensive Apple products when that breaks. I'm still waiting for something to break so I can intervene first and have them use free software, it also helps that I'm physically closer to them than 'that family member' is. The day will come... just hope it arrives a little faster (-_-). Soon they'll be saying "Bye bye Apple, hello Debian!" (no way I would install Ubuntu considering that even they have done some shady shit recently).
+Worst is with my poor grandparents, one of their children (you know who you are) bought them an iPad and a Macbook, but the poor souls don't know any better, so now they don't know that if they want to hold on to those family photos better continue to buy expensive Apple products when that breaks. I'm still waiting for something to break so I can intervene first and have them use free software, it also helps that I'm physically closer to them than 'that family member' is. The day will come... just hope it arrives a little faster (-_-). Soon they'll be saying "Bye bye Apple, hello Debian!" (no way I would install Ubuntu considering that even they have done some shady stuff recently).
-So now you know my story. I hate Apple, I hate them even more than I hate Microsoft and their bullshit, in the case of Apple it's just personal. So if you ever know me, or already do and never knew this, don't get me anything Apple. It might be harsh but I would probably end up either asking you for the receipt or at the very most saying thank you and then stashing it somewhere in someone else's house where it can't track me (damn PRISM!!!). Speaking of gifts, if you're reading this and wondering what to get me now that you can't buy me the latest iShit, please refer back to my blog post on Ethical Giving which uses the FSF's guide to finding an ethical technological gift for someone.
+So now you know my story. I hate Apple, I hate them even more than I hate Microsoft and their nonsense, in the case of Apple it's just personal. So if you ever know me, or already do and never knew this, don't get me anything Apple. It might be harsh but I would probably end up either asking you for the receipt or at the very most saying thank you and then stashing it somewhere in someone else's house where it can't track me (PRISM). Speaking of gifts, if you're reading this and wondering what to get me now that you can't buy me the latest iStuff, please refer back to my blog post on Ethical Giving which uses the FSF's guide to finding an ethical technological gift for someone.
diff --git a/blog/posts/0017-what-is-lacking-in-education?.html b/blog/posts/0017-what-is-lacking-in-education?.html index 56c62ad..1a2837a 100644 --- a/blog/posts/0017-what-is-lacking-in-education?.html +++ b/blog/posts/0017-what-is-lacking-in-education?.html @@ -1,31 +1,31 @@This is a question that is asked quite a lot, and although I don't have a definitive answer, I do have a few things that I believe to be very important that are being disregarded when it comes to the education of a student. Some of them are already being implemented by some school systems (in some cases it's only at certain schools), but I am not completely sure as to whether they are actually doing what I am going to expose here and if those results can be comparable statistically with those of a normal school. Either way, here are some things that I believe need to be improved. Also, in this list are things that are both common and specific, and they are based on my experiences with the American and Spanish educational system, therefore I will divide this into common issues, Spanish issues, and American issues.
0. Technological Literacy: Yes, I actually started with 0 for this one, if there was some basic technological literacy you would know why (if you already do, you're doing a good job). It pains me that in this day and age where technology is at the foundations of our society, where everyone owns some sort of computer (yes, your phone counts as a computer), and where if there were a catastrophe that destroyed all digital technologies society would basically fall apart, that people know little to nothing about technology (that is, if you're one of those people that once you get an error or warning message you call tech support you're part of the problem, everyone knows you look that up in a search engine first, or I suppose I should speak in your terms, Google it!). Since we live in such a society it is very important that we learn the fundamentals of programming. Our society is not dependent on the fine arts, but it is on digital technologies. If art goes away we're still all here, the world is a much uglier place, but we're all still civilized. If digital technologies go away we're all fucked. This is not to say that a basic education in art shouldn't be obligatory, I just think that technology deserves more time than art does (it's sad when the amount of obligatory classes for art and technology are the same). Everyone should know what the fuck a file format is and that you can't just copy a binary from a Mac machine to a Windows machine and expect that shit to work. They should also know the difference between a text editor and a word processor (like the difference between Notepad and Microsoft Word, for those of you who don't know those terms). So please, fix this.
+0. Technological Literacy: Yes, I actually started with 0 for this one, if there was some basic technological literacy you would know why (if you already do, you're doing a good job). It pains me that in this day and age where technology is at the foundations of our society, where everyone owns some sort of computer (yes, your phone counts as a computer), and where if there were a catastrophe that destroyed all digital technologies society would basically fall apart, that people know little to nothing about technology (that is, if you're one of those people that once you get an error or warning message you call tech support you're part of the problem, everyone knows you look that up in a search engine first, or I suppose I should speak in your terms, Google it!). Since we live in such a society it is very important that we learn the fundamentals of programming. Our society is not dependent on the fine arts, but it is on digital technologies. If art goes away we're still all here, the world is a much uglier place, but we're all still civilized. If digital technologies go away we're all in trouble. This is not to say that a basic education in art shouldn't be obligatory, I just think that technology deserves more time than art does (it's sad when the amount of obligatory classes for art and technology are the same). Everyone should know what a file format is and that you can't just copy a binary from a Mac machine to a Windows machine and expect that to work. They should also know the difference between a text editor and a word processor (like the difference between Notepad and Microsoft Word, for those of you who don't know those terms). So please, fix this.
-1. College Entrance Exams: This is one of the stupidest things I've ever seen. Why is it that for every other public educational institution I can just get in as long as I've passed the previous year, but college is somehow a special snowflake that requires a damn entrance exam? Yes, I'm talking about ACT, SAT, Selectividad, and all that bullshit. It should be as simple as "Oh, you passed the last year of high school? Here are some colleges you can go to. Pick a few, we'll see which one you get into, then you're off on your way.". But no, fuck that, we want to annoy the shit out of people with standardized tests. I understand wanting a standardized test, but please stop it with the fucking entrance exams.
+1. College Entrance Exams: This is one of the stupidest things I've ever seen. Why is it that for every other public educational institution I can just get in as long as I've passed the previous year, but college is somehow a special snowflake that requires an entrance exam? Yes, I'm talking about ACT, SAT, Selectividad, and all that nonsense. It should be as simple as "Oh, you passed the last year of high school? Here are some colleges you can go to. Pick a few, we'll see which one you get into, then you're off on your way.". But no, we want to annoy people with standardized tests. I understand wanting a standardized test, but please stop it with the entrance exams.
-2. Teachers as Guides: If there's one thing I love about most programmers is that we're pretty much all self-taught and have genuine interest in the field (with a few exceptions being those who never write code unless it's for class or for work, you guys can fuck off). However, this can also apply to other fields, and I've found that it's extremely beneficial, as it allows you to learn at your own pace and with much more enthusiasm. So, basically, what should teachers do? Well, instead of telling you "Hey, learn this for next week" instead they should say "Oh, you're interested in doing 3D Game development? Well I know a few resources to get you started with game development in general and then you can slowly make your way to your goal!". Of course, I would see this working better in a university context rather than a primary school one where everyone says "I want to be a firefighter!". This also helps weed out those who don't actually have any interest, those will be the people who say "I don't know what to do.". Essentially, the teachers will be there to guide you to your objective rather than creating your objective and then dragging you there while you struggle with it all.
+2. Teachers as Guides: If there's one thing I love about most programmers is that we're pretty much all self-taught and have genuine interest in the field (with a few exceptions being those who never write code unless it's for class or for work). However, this can also apply to other fields, and I've found that it's extremely beneficial, as it allows you to learn at your own pace and with much more enthusiasm. So, basically, what should teachers do? Well, instead of telling you "Hey, learn this for next week" instead they should say "Oh, you're interested in doing 3D Game development? Well I know a few resources to get you started with game development in general and then you can slowly make your way to your goal!". Of course, I would see this working better in a university context rather than a primary school one where everyone says "I want to be a firefighter!". This also helps weed out those who don't actually have any interest, those will be the people who say "I don't know what to do.". Essentially, the teachers will be there to guide you to your objective rather than creating your objective and then dragging you there while you struggle with it all.
3. Homework Shouldn't be Mandatory: Yes, please stop this. I get it for stuff like elementary school, and a little for middle school, but in high school the students should have enough maturity to know whether they are familiar with a subject enough to need to do the homework or not. Homework should definitely be suggested, telling the students what exercises that they could do to practice, but it should not be mandatory.
0. Selectividad: I've already gone over college entrance exams, but this one is just horrifying. Do you know how much stress students get over this thing? Please take it down a notch! I mean, I know Spain is going to end up getting rid of this, but damn, it's fucking horrifying. I've had friends who've taken this and they were extremely stressed not only studying, but also waiting for the results. Please bring this down a notch before a bunch of people start committing suicide over it.
+0. Selectividad: I've already gone over college entrance exams, but this one is just horrifying. Do you know how much stress students get over this thing? Please take it down a notch! I mean, I know Spain is going to end up getting rid of this, but it's horrifying. I've had friends who've taken this and they were extremely stressed not only studying, but also waiting for the results. Please bring this down a notch before a bunch of people start committing suicide over it.
-1. Student Privacy: Teachers in Spain, please stop pointing out the students that are not doing their school work, for all you know they already know the shit you're teaching and don't feel like doing homework which supposedly is something to remember what you did in class. Luckily students aren't graded on that shit.
+1. Student Privacy: Teachers in Spain, please stop pointing out the students that are not doing their school work, for all you know they already know what you're teaching and don't feel like doing homework which supposedly is something to remember what you did in class. Luckily students aren't graded on that.
2. Extracurricular: This is something that the American system takes to an extreme, but at least they have them. Spanish schools need to promote and even host educational extracurricular activities. A programming club, a medieval literature club, a political analysis club, anything that's educational, just please add it. This allows students who have productive interests outside of what they're learning to have a place to express those with other people they know and to do things together.
NOTICE: There are most likely more things that I could point out, it's just been a long time since I've been in the Spanish educational system, I guess I'll see more this year and have more complaints, might make another post for that.
0. Grammar: Teach your students some fucking grammar!!! Do you know how bad the grammatical knowledge of the American population is compared to that of foreigners in the English language? It's complete shit! I go to school and no one knows what the fuck an adverb is, or a possessive, or a predicate, or any basic grammatical concepts. How am I supposed to explain that in Japanese a sentence's structure is subject (sometimes called object)-predicate-verb if they don't know what any of those are? How the hell did any of these kids play Madlibs when they were children? Did they guess what words to use? Please teach the American children some damn grammar so they can understand how fucking shitty their own language is.
+0. Grammar: Teach your students some grammar!!! Do you know how bad the grammatical knowledge of the American population is compared to that of foreigners in the English language? I go to school and no one knows what an adverb is, or a possessive, or a predicate, or any basic grammatical concepts. How am I supposed to explain that in Japanese a sentence's structure is subject (sometimes called object)-predicate-verb if they don't know what any of those are? How did any of these kids play Madlibs when they were children? Did they guess what words to use? Please teach the American children some grammar so they can understand how bad their own language is.
-1. Too Fucking Easy: Do you want to know how many times I actually studied for a test while I was in high school? I'll give you a hint, you can count them on one hand. Ready? I studied a total of two times. That is, I studied only for two different tests. Want to know why those don't count? Because they weren't even American tests, they were International Baccalaureate tests, which are made by people in another country. So for American tests I studied a total of zero times. So, what grades did I tend to get? Well, on tests I could get anywhere between D+ to B (there were exceptions on both ends of course, but this is what there normally was). Pretty average grades for someone who never studies. I get that failing never feels good, but some people have to fail, in this case it was me. Fix this shit!!! If I can pass all your damn tests without studying once then your system has a big gaping flaw. And if you're thinking that it's just because I'm naturally bright or something like that then you're wrong, in Spain if I didn't study for a test I was basically asking to fail. I'm not sure there is a way to fail in the American system. Also, remember how I said that the Selectividad was too hard? Well ACT is basically the polar opposite. I took that exam with no preparations because I knew that it didn't matter in my case for going to college since I was going to Spain and not the U.S., so I didn't study and I only took the exam half seriously, yet I ended up getting a score of 24 (which is pretty average). Want to tell me how this shit happens? I don't study, I take the test without really giving a shit about the results (that is, not motivation whatsoever), and yet I get an average score? How do Americans struggle with this shit?!?!?! Please fix this educational system, there's too much wrong with it.
+1. Way Too Easy: Do you want to know how many times I actually studied for a test while I was in high school? I'll give you a hint, you can count them on one hand. Ready? I studied a total of two times. That is, I studied only for two different tests. Want to know why those don't count? Because they weren't even American tests, they were International Baccalaureate tests, which are made by people in another country. So for American tests I studied a total of zero times. So, what grades did I tend to get? Well, on tests I could get anywhere between D+ to B (there were exceptions on both ends of course, but this is what there normally was). Pretty average grades for someone who never studies. I get that failing never feels good, but some people have to fail, in this case it was me. Fix this! If I can pass all your tests without studying once then your system has a big gaping flaw. And if you're thinking that it's just because I'm naturally bright or something like that then you're wrong, in Spain if I didn't study for a test I was basically asking to fail. I'm not sure there is a way to fail in the American system. Also, remember how I said that the Selectividad was too hard? Well ACT is basically the polar opposite. I took that exam with no preparations because I knew that it didn't matter in my case for going to college since I was going to Spain and not the U.S., so I didn't study and I only took the exam half seriously, yet I ended up getting a score of 24 (which is pretty average). Want to tell me how this kind of stuff happens? I don't study, I take the test without really caring about the results (that is, not motivation whatsoever), and yet I get an average score? How do Americans struggle with this? Please fix this educational system, there's too much wrong with it.
-2. Stop 'Making Learning Fun': No, just no. Learning is fun if the student thinks it's fun, not if you butcher it into a game rather than a lesson. When I learn programming I think it's fun, not because they teach it to me in a fun stupid little game, but rather because I actually genuinely enjoy learning how to program. If the student wants to learn they will, and if they don't it won't matter how many ways you butcher the lesson they still won't learn shit from it. You don't make learning fun, you make the student think that the field itself is fun, not by butchering the field but by having them see how it's interesting. If they don't find it interesting that's not your fault as a teacher, it's their flaw as a student. It's the student who is failing at his/her job.
+2. Stop 'Making Learning Fun': No, just no. Learning is fun if the student thinks it's fun, not if you butcher it into a game rather than a lesson. When I learn programming I think it's fun, not because they teach it to me in a fun stupid little game, but rather because I actually genuinely enjoy learning how to program. If the student wants to learn they will, and if they don't it won't matter how many ways you butcher the lesson they still won't learn from it. You don't make learning fun, you make the student think that the field itself is fun, not by butchering the field but by having them see how it's interesting. If they don't find it interesting that's not your fault as a teacher, it's their flaw as a student. It's the student who is failing at his/her job.
-3. School Is for Education: First, this is not a bash on all extracurricular activities, the educational ones are great. This is mostly on stuff like school dances, senior events, and all that shit. Yes, they're fun, and I fucking enjoyed them, but do I think they belong in a school? No. Do I think that public money should be put into funding these? No. If the students want to organize a student dance at the recreational center I have no problem, that's fine, but don't expect the school to waste time and resources for this, and don't use it as a fucking excuse to be lazy at school or not attend it!. Too many times have I seen people who skipped school because of a dance or some school event (including myself since I knew the teachers weren't going to do anything since there would only be 5 students in class that day). School is not a social club, it's not where you go to hang out with your friends, it's a place where you go to learn to be a productive member of society (something that a lot of educational systems fail at since there are so many unproductive people who when asked for their hobby they say "I like to watch Netflix."). So stop expecting schools to entertain you and start learning that school is a job, like all jobs there are times when you can chat, but most of it is work.
+3. School Is for Education: First, this is not a bash on all extracurricular activities, the educational ones are great. This is mostly on stuff like school dances, senior events, and all that. Yes, they're fun, and I enjoyed them, but do I think they belong in a school? No. Do I think that public money should be put into funding these? No. If the students want to organize a student dance at the recreational center I have no problem, that's fine, but don't expect the school to waste time and resources for this, and don't use it as an excuse to be lazy at school or not attend it!. Too many times have I seen people who skipped school because of a dance or some school event (including myself since I knew the teachers weren't going to do anything since there would only be 5 students in class that day). School is not a social club, it's not where you go to hang out with your friends, it's a place where you go to learn to be a productive member of society (something that a lot of educational systems fail at since there are so many unproductive people who when asked for their hobby they say "I like to watch Netflix."). So stop expecting schools to entertain you and start learning that school is a job, like all jobs there are times when you can chat, but most of it is work.
-4. Homework Should be Less of Your Grade: I'm one of those people that believes that tests should be essentially your entire grade, or at least something like 80% of it. I've heard the argument people have put as to why homework and projects should be worth more points, and I find it stupid and flawed. Their reasoning is that not everyone is good at taking tests and therefore certain students have advantages. First of all, please show me a proper scientific study demonstrating this. The Eastern Asian countries have very test based scoring systems and they rank highest on almost all the charts! Please explain to me how this works. Besides that, the reason why I believe tests are more important is because if you cannot properly explain the why and how of something in written form then you truly do not understand it. Meanwhile, on homework and projects you can easily just copy work from somewhere else, which isn't necessarily bad if you're reading through the work and attempting to understand it, but there's no guarantee of that happening. With projects there's also the common case of the lazy ass who doesn't contribute to the project and yet gets the same grade as you. Meanwhile, in a test you are in a controlled environment where the teacher can see exactly what you know. The teacher shouldn't expect you to know data, but rather he/she should be testing you on whether or not you know how to work with data that is given. I distinguish between knowledge and intelligence. Someone who is knowledgable is someone who knows many things, someone who is intelligent is someone who knows what to do with information that he/she has or is given. So someone can be knowledgable and still stupid (basically, your computer is fucking stupid, but it's knowledgable as fuck). So stop adding so much importance to homework.
+4. Homework Should be Less of Your Grade: I'm one of those people that believes that tests should be essentially your entire grade, or at least something like 80% of it. I've heard the argument people have put as to why homework and projects should be worth more points, and I find it stupid and flawed. Their reasoning is that not everyone is good at taking tests and therefore certain students have advantages. First of all, please show me a proper scientific study demonstrating this. The Eastern Asian countries have very test based scoring systems and they rank highest on almost all the charts! Please explain to me how this works. Besides that, the reason why I believe tests are more important is because if you cannot properly explain the why and how of something in written form then you truly do not understand it. Meanwhile, on homework and projects you can easily just copy work from somewhere else, which isn't necessarily bad if you're reading through the work and attempting to understand it, but there's no guarantee of that happening. With projects there's also the common case of the lazy one who doesn't contribute to the project and yet gets the same grade as you. Meanwhile, in a test you are in a controlled environment where the teacher can see exactly what you know. The teacher shouldn't expect you to know data, but rather he/she should be testing you on whether or not you know how to work with data that is given. I distinguish between knowledge and intelligence. Someone who is knowledgable is someone who knows many things, someone who is intelligent is someone who knows what to do with information that he/she has or is given. So someone can be knowledgable and still stupid (basically, your computer is stupid, but it's knowledgable). So stop adding so much importance to homework.
diff --git a/blog/posts/0018-the-https-hype.html b/blog/posts/0018-the-https-hype.html index 69842a9..a6aff06 100644 --- a/blog/posts/0018-the-https-hype.html +++ b/blog/posts/0018-the-https-hype.html @@ -4,7 +4,7 @@So usually this wouldn't bother me that much, people do stupid things for no reason all the time. The problem with it this time is that it seems people are beginning to not trust sites that do not have HTTPS even though they may be like mine where there is no reason to use it, and it wouldn't surprise me if browsers began to adopt a 'HTTPS-only' policy soon because of this (seeing that users matter more than actual reasonable arguments most of the time).
-You know a site that does need HTTPS? My comrade bkeys' website. He has logins, uploads, and a shit ton of other stuff that should be encrypted. Not only that, but because he has HTTP login forms which Firefox will soon be marking as unsafe which might cause some issues as this HTTPS hype progresses for him, they'll probably end up banning such connections.
+You know a site that does need HTTPS? My comrade bkeys' website. He has logins, uploads, and a ton of other stuff that should be encrypted. Not only that, but because he has HTTP login forms which Firefox will soon be marking as unsafe which might cause some issues as this HTTPS hype progresses for him, they'll probably end up banning such connections.
Basically, HTTPS is a good thing in general, but stop trying to force it down website admins' throats.
diff --git a/blog/posts/0020-adobe-flash-needs-to-die.html b/blog/posts/0020-adobe-flash-needs-to-die.html index 117deaf..473d954 100644 --- a/blog/posts/0020-adobe-flash-needs-to-die.html +++ b/blog/posts/0020-adobe-flash-needs-to-die.html @@ -1,10 +1,10 @@ -It's slow, it's inefficient, it's buggy, it has memory leaks, it no longer supports GNU/Linux, and it's proprietary as fuck. Ladies and gentlemen, it's Adobe Flash.
+It's slow, it's inefficient, it's buggy, it has memory leaks, it no longer supports GNU/Linux, and it's proprietary. Ladies and gentlemen, it's Adobe Flash.
One of the few great decisions Apple has ever made was when the decided to get rid of Adobe Flash on the iPad, and thanks to that and a number of other factors (such as the heavenly arrival of HTML5, CSS3, and modern JavaScript frameworks) Adobe Flash has been losing influence on the web to the point that it's getting harder and harder to see it anywhere, especially since you can now program anything in JavaScript and it will be faster, more efficient, and integrated with the browser (unlike Adobe Flash which requires a plugin). This is true to the extent that not so long ago I uninstalled the Flash plugin from my computer and mostly everything works just as it did before.
However, it seems that there are still some places where Adobe Flash is still present, and those niches need to die, now. Nowadays we are in the era where such terrible technologies are no longer needed and we can more than get by on JavaScript (even though I don't particularly like how the language is structured as compared to my wonderful C++ and Java). So why are we still settling for Adobe Flash? Is Adobe bribing people to continue to use their products in fear that they'll start losing market? They already have Photoshop, they should be content with that.
-What's even worse are these websites where the entire website is in an Adobe Flash app. That's right, not just a section of a page, not just a webpage, but the entire fucking site. These sites need to be burned, meaning the machines hosting those VPSs need to be confiscated, disassembled, crushed, and melted. Who has so much time on their hands that they are going to go through the hassle of writing an entire website in Adobe Flash? Seriously, who thinks of this as a good idea?
+What's even worse are these websites where the entire website is in an Adobe Flash app. That's right, not just a section of a page, not just a webpage, but the entire site. These sites need to be burned, meaning the machines hosting those VPSs need to be confiscated, disassembled, crushed, and melted. Who has so much time on their hands that they are going to go through the hassle of writing an entire website in Adobe Flash? Seriously, who thinks of this as a good idea?
-In any case, stop making Flash shit, it's a waste of time and it's only going to become obsolete (which I guess is strange coming from someone who has an all text website that is built with PHP, but at least my website with render without a fucking plugin).
+In any case, stop making Flash stuff, it's a waste of time and it's only going to become obsolete (which I guess is strange coming from someone who has an all text website that is built with PHP, but at least my website with render without a plugin).
diff --git a/blog/posts/0022-avoiding-youtube-non-free-javascript.html b/blog/posts/0022-avoiding-youtube-non-free-javascript.html index 479686b..cf279d6 100644 --- a/blog/posts/0022-avoiding-youtube-non-free-javascript.html +++ b/blog/posts/0022-avoiding-youtube-non-free-javascript.html @@ -2,7 +2,7 @@Now, as for avoiding using YouTube's website, I've found two programs that can be used to watch YouTube videos without having to visit the website. The first is `mps-youtube' (might also be called `mpsyt', that's the name of the Debian package, at least). This is a CLI program that lets you browse and download YouTube videos without having to visit the site. It gives you a set of commands which can be used to search, download, and play YouTube videos all from the command-line. It's quite advanced and should allow you to avoid using YouTube all together. I myself haven't truly explored all of its functionality yet (I mostly just use it to look up some quick videos), but expect it to be missing some of the website's functionality (duh).
-The other option has to do with when you're given a YouTube link. To my knowledge mpsyt can't necessarily watch videos based on a URL (again, I haven't explored all of its features yet), and there's always that friend who's going to be sending you YouTube links, yet you don't want to click them. So you can simply use `youtube-dl'. It's a very common tool that you can use to download YouTube videos (along with videos from other sites, a friend of mine downloads his porn using youtube-dl from websites that do a shitty job at hiding the video's URL) and can even do things such as convert to other formats and extract audio from the files. Therefore, whenever someone sends you a YouTube link just run `youtube-dl ' and you'll never have to visit YouTube again.
+The other option has to do with when you're given a YouTube link. To my knowledge mpsyt can't necessarily watch videos based on a URL (again, I haven't explored all of its features yet), and there's always that friend who's going to be sending you YouTube links, yet you don't want to click them. So you can simply use `youtube-dl'. It's a very common tool that you can use to download YouTube videos (along with videos from other sites, a friend of mine downloads his porn using youtube-dl from websites that do a bad job at hiding the video's URL) and can even do things such as convert to other formats and extract audio from the files. Therefore, whenever someone sends you a YouTube link just run `youtube-dl ' and you'll never have to visit YouTube again.
With this it's relatively easy to live without running YouTube's non-free JavaScript. Although from now on any media you want to upload you should do so through the more ethical alternatives mentioned before.
diff --git a/blog/posts/0024-for-tabs.html b/blog/posts/0024-for-tabs.html index 52de298..35fb762 100644 --- a/blog/posts/0024-for-tabs.html +++ b/blog/posts/0024-for-tabs.html @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@ -It's time for me to get involved in one of the most polar debates among programmers, even more polar and controversial than Vim vs. Emacs, which is tabs vs. spaces. In the Vim vs. Emacs debate many programmers tend to get left out and don't care because they('re noobs and) use GUI editors. While in the tabs vs. spaces debate, unless you only program in Assembly (and even then) or some obscure language that doesn't use indentation (or you just don't use indentation, in which case you are either retarded or a dick), you have used either one for your indentation and can most likely know what the hell the conversation is about.
+It's time for me to get involved in one of the most polar debates among programmers, even more polar and controversial than Vim vs. Emacs, which is tabs vs. spaces. In the Vim vs. Emacs debate many programmers tend to get left out and don't care because they('re noobs and) use GUI editors. While in the tabs vs. spaces debate, unless you only program in Assembly (and even then) or some obscure language that doesn't use indentation (or you just don't use indentation), you have used either one for your indentation and can most likely know what the conversation is about.
To start off I am in favor of tabs. I'm not too religious about it, but if we're going to use spaces then it's gotta be 4. I actually don't have too many problems with using spaces, especially since my Vim has a plugin to detect indentation. However, if I am to choose how indentation is done then I choose tabs over spaces any day. My reasoning for this is simple: if tab characters are used then everyone gets to see the indentation they prefer. Remember how I said that if I use spaces it has to be 4? Yeah, that's because my tab size is set to 4. If tabs are used then I get to see a 4 column indentation, someone else gets to see a 2 column indentation, and someone else can see an 8 column indentation. Typically this is seen as a disadvantage of tabs, however I see it as advantageous since every programmer gets to see their code in the way they want it. Some may complain that they have to get used to pressing the tab key instead of the space bar, but to them I say that they should've setup their editor to convert tabs to spaces from the beginning instead of having to hit the space bar 4 times just to indent a line of code.
diff --git a/blog/posts/0027-why-i-use-cli.html b/blog/posts/0027-why-i-use-cli.html index 5ed8cae..0df3528 100644 --- a/blog/posts/0027-why-i-use-cli.html +++ b/blog/posts/0027-why-i-use-cli.html @@ -4,7 +4,7 @@Another reason why I use CLI is to avoid using the mouse. Using the mouse usually takes me much more time than it does to type out a command or press a keybinding, and although GUI applications have keybindings, they are not as obvious or used as in the CLI alternative (sometimes you have to set the keybindings manually because they don't have defaults). Therefore CLI applications allow me to get work done much faster.
-What I find to be much more important is that CLI is much less distracting. Being only text, no bells, no whistles, just text, I find it much easier to concentrate without notifications and beeps and noises everywhere. Of course, there are settings to disable these on GUI applications, but by default they tend to annoy the hell out of me, and I prefer to keep close-to-default options so when I switch computers I don't have many issues. It also helps that I put all of my applications that I usually have up in a TMUX instance, that way it only occupies one terminal window, but also I am not distracted by what may be happening in another TMUX window. However, when I used IceDove for e-mail, apart from annoying e-mail notifications, every time I switched workspaces to change my music, if I had new mail I would see that and get distracted by it, while now with Mutt inside the same TMUX instance as my music player I never have this problem.
+What I find to be much more important is that CLI is much less distracting. Being only text, no bells, no whistles, just text, I find it much easier to concentrate without notifications and beeps and noises everywhere. Of course, there are settings to disable these on GUI applications, but by default they tend to annoy me, and I prefer to keep close-to-default options so when I switch computers I don't have many issues. It also helps that I put all of my applications that I usually have up in a TMUX instance, that way it only occupies one terminal window, but also I am not distracted by what may be happening in another TMUX window. However, when I used IceDove for e-mail, apart from annoying e-mail notifications, every time I switched workspaces to change my music, if I had new mail I would see that and get distracted by it, while now with Mutt inside the same TMUX instance as my music player I never have this problem.
If you're interested in moving applications of yours to CLI then here's what I use for my different tasks: e-mail - Mutt, IRC - irssi, password manager - pwman3 (I suggest getting it from `pip3' instead of the system package manager), music player - cmus, to-do list - tudu. I have all of these inside of a TMUX instance. If you want to use a CLI web browser then there are browsers such as links, lynx, elinks, and w3m, of which I have only tried links(2) and elinks.
diff --git a/blog/posts/0030-books.html b/blog/posts/0030-books.html index abb950a..09a0e52 100644 --- a/blog/posts/0030-books.html +++ b/blog/posts/0030-books.html @@ -4,11 +4,11 @@Then there is also the aspect of physical space and resources. Compare a ton of bookshelves to a single USB stick. The amount of physical space occupied by the USB stick is thousands of times smaller, heck, it's smaller than every single book on those shelves individually, and therefore is much more portable and much less space consuming (more living space). Then you must also consider resources, the thousands of millions of books that can fit on, say, a server in PDF format for people to download and view on their devices, and then delete when they're done with it. Think of a massive library accessible to the entire world at their fingertips and they don't even have to wait to check out the book. Now compare this to the physical books, even if it's a library they still occupy a lot more space and will use many more resources, especially since most people will want a book of their own and will end up getting copies of said book instead of checking it out. This ends up being much more wasteful.
-There's also another aspect of these "reading books is better" people that I very much dislike. When I read on my computer I read a lot of useful information: news and Wikipedia articles, studies, documentation, essays, civilized discussions on advanced topics (well, maybe not that civilized, but at in depth for sure). Meanwhile, what do these people read in their books? Novels. Not even good quality ones most of the time. Often times it's shitty teenage drama novels. This kind of reading is not useful for anything except personal entertainment, and therefore is the same as simply watching the TV or playing a computer game (although at least with playing a computer game you actually do some thinking). If reading physical books means ending up like these people I'd rather not, these people are just as bad as those that get home and sit in front of the TV all day, there is no difference, the only thing that changed was the means of their entertainment.
+There's also another aspect of these "reading books is better" people that I very much dislike. When I read on my computer I read a lot of useful information: news and Wikipedia articles, studies, documentation, essays, civilized discussions on advanced topics (well, maybe not that civilized, but at in depth for sure). Meanwhile, what do these people read in their books? Novels. Not even good quality ones most of the time. Often times it's bad teenage drama novels. This kind of reading is not useful for anything except personal entertainment, and therefore is the same as simply watching the TV or playing a computer game (although at least with playing a computer game you actually do some thinking). If reading physical books means ending up like these people I'd rather not, these people are just as bad as those that get home and sit in front of the TV all day, there is no difference, the only thing that changed was the means of their entertainment.
So overall I think that this trend needs to die, or at least be a little smarter about how they market it and realize that there are people like me who read things digitally that are of much more use than their fiction reading.
-Of course, I do enjoy physical books for some things, namely when reading philosophy, mostly because I like to underline and take notes, which on most digital devices is a pain in the ass compared to on a book. However, I'm fairly certain that a technology that does this book annotating better will arise, and at that point I will no longer have this preference since I can do it just as easily on my laptop.
+Of course, I do enjoy physical books for some things, namely when reading philosophy, mostly because I like to underline and take notes, which on most digital devices is a pain compared to on a book. However, I'm fairly certain that a technology that does this book annotating better will arise, and at that point I will no longer have this preference since I can do it just as easily on my laptop.
So, next time you're about to tell some kids in a classroom about how "important it is to read from a book", just remember that some people read a lot more productive material online that those who read it from books.
diff --git a/blog/posts/0032-getting-esperanto-diacritics-on-gnu-linux.html b/blog/posts/0032-getting-esperanto-diacritics-on-gnu-linux.html index fd854dd..2cbe901 100644 --- a/blog/posts/0032-getting-esperanto-diacritics-on-gnu-linux.html +++ b/blog/posts/0032-getting-esperanto-diacritics-on-gnu-linux.html @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@ -Recently I've decided to start learning Esperanto alongside Japanese. I have my reasons for liking Esperanto, but this post is mostly on how to get the Esperanto diacritics (namely ĉ, ŝ, ĥ, ĵ, ǔ, and ĝ) on your keyboard for GNU/Linux. There are multiple ways of doing this, the ibus system has some Esperanto IMEs (like the x-system and h-system), but I've found those to be extremely annoying while typing (just try to use them, if you're used to typing using a Japanese IME for hiragana and katakana then this will annoy the fuck out of you). So instead I decided to use a method I used to use back in the day for getting Spanish tildes, dieresis, and the 'ñ' characters: Xmodmap. Basically I mapped a key I barely used (like the right `alt' and `shift' keys) to tilde and 'ñ'.
+Recently I've decided to start learning Esperanto alongside Japanese. I have my reasons for liking Esperanto, but this post is mostly on how to get the Esperanto diacritics (namely ĉ, ŝ, ĥ, ĵ, ǔ, and ĝ) on your keyboard for GNU/Linux. There are multiple ways of doing this, the ibus system has some Esperanto IMEs (like the x-system and h-system), but I've found those to be extremely annoying while typing (just try to use them, if you're used to typing using a Japanese IME for hiragana and katakana then this will annoy you). So instead I decided to use a method I used to use back in the day for getting Spanish tildes, dieresis, and the 'ñ' characters: Xmodmap. Basically I mapped a key I barely used (like the right `alt' and `shift' keys) to tilde and 'ñ'.
In this specific case I used `xev' to find out the `keycode' for my right `alt' key and then made a file in my home directory called `.Xmodmap' containing the line `keycode 108 = dead_circumflex' (make sure to change `108' with whatever your `xev' gives you for your dead key). After this just run `xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap' and it you will be able to use the circumflex by typing the right `alt' (or whatever you set it to) and then the character, such that `ralt+s' would give 'ŝ'. NOTE: you do not need to hold down the `alt' key, just press it once ;D.
diff --git a/blog/posts/0043-judgement.html b/blog/posts/0043-judgement.html index 4b6d2f3..ebcdf11 100644 --- a/blog/posts/0043-judgement.html +++ b/blog/posts/0043-judgement.html @@ -6,5 +6,5 @@I believe that this fad of 'non-judgement' comes from an insecurity that we feel, where we dislike being wrong, we dislike being told something opposed to our own opinions, beliefs, and ideals. It is normal to wish to reject that, but it is also childish and immature to let that take over your rational side. In all reality you are wrong about a great deal of things and so am I, what's more, no one knows the absolute truth about anything. However, luckily, we have wonderful tools called science and reason that let us get closer and closer to the truth, the only requisite is that we must be willing to accept that we may be wrong and must judge our opinions to find the most reasonable and most empirically backed hypothesis that will then turn into the theory accepted as a temporary truth until proven otherwise. This 'anti-judgement' trend is something that stops us, individually even, from improving. How am I supposed to improve myself if a third-party cannot tell me that I am doing something wrong? That something I am doing doesn't make sense? By not allowing others to 'judge' you (which in reality is simply not allowing them to express their judgement, they have already judged you) you are prohibiting your own self-improvement.
-Therefore, please don't talk about judgement this way, it's annoying as fuck and you're making yourself look like a stuck-up prick who can't accept rational criticism. Instead listen to the other person's judgement, and if you don't care for their judgement then just ignore it, at least you listened.
+Therefore, please don't talk about judgement this way, it's annoying and you're making yourself look like a stuck-up prick who can't accept rational criticism. Instead listen to the other person's judgement, and if you don't care for their judgement then just ignore it, at least you listened.
diff --git a/blog/posts/0044-patch-files.html b/blog/posts/0044-patch-files.html index 12df380..5b6f436 100644 --- a/blog/posts/0044-patch-files.html +++ b/blog/posts/0044-patch-files.html @@ -1,18 +1,18 @@Something that really annoys me about most repository hosts nowadays is that all of them are highly dependent on using pull-requests to contribute code, when originally all VCSs had (and still have) ways to contribute via patches (that and the `patch' command) which can be sent via e-mail. Now, I understand that having these changes more accessible to the public would be useful, and mailing lists aren't always best. However, why not simply use the same infrastructure of an issue tracker and apply it to uploading patch files? They would be organized just like pull-requests are, and would essentially be the same thing as a pull-request... except directly with a patch file instead of having to go through such a long process just to contribute to a repository.
-So, why are patch files better than pull-requests? First of all, pull-requests are still useful if someone makes a real fork of a project (not what they're calling 'forks' nowadays which is someone making a copy just to modify something and then merge it back into upstream). However, if I am contributing to a project it is much easier and faster to make a patch file than to deal with web interfaces endlessly just to contribute two lines of code. When you make a patch file the process is as follows: clone the repository, make the change, create patch file, submit patch file. Easy, right? Now, let's look at this same process for pull-requests: 'fork' a repository, clone your 'fork', make changes, push changes to your 'fork', and finally create the damn pull request. Patch files have 4 steps, while pull-requests have 5. You may say "Well, but that's only one extra step, it's not that bad". Okay, but let's move forward.
+So, why are patch files better than pull-requests? First of all, pull-requests are still useful if someone makes a real fork of a project (not what they're calling 'forks' nowadays which is someone making a copy just to modify something and then merge it back into upstream). However, if I am contributing to a project it is much easier and faster to make a patch file than to deal with web interfaces endlessly just to contribute two lines of code. When you make a patch file the process is as follows: clone the repository, make the change, create patch file, submit patch file. Easy, right? Now, let's look at this same process for pull-requests: 'fork' a repository, clone your 'fork', make changes, push changes to your 'fork', and finally create the pull request. Patch files have 4 steps, while pull-requests have 5. You may say "Well, but that's only one extra step, it's not that bad". Okay, but let's move forward.
-Pull-requests almost always require you to work with web interfaces for a good part of it, and everything that uses web interfaces is slow as fuck compared to native desktop applications (like my VCS client which generates the patch file), especially if you are concerned about privacy and use TOR + blocked JS + a shit ton of privacy add-ons.
+Pull-requests almost always require you to work with web interfaces for a good part of it, and everything that uses web interfaces is slow compared to native desktop applications (like my VCS client which generates the patch file), especially if you are concerned about privacy and use TOR + blocked JS + a ton of privacy add-ons.
-Also, pull-requests will always require you to create an account on said website, which is always a pain in the fucking ass (hence why Google and Facebook have been doing so well by allowing you to log in to other services using your Google/Facebook account... please never do this). Meanwhile, with patch files, even though one could hypothetically require you to create an account it is not strictly necessary. Patch files can be sent to mailing lists, e-mail addresses, or a web form can be created where one can simply upload a patch file no account (although perhaps asking for an e-mail for updates).
+Also, pull-requests will always require you to create an account on said website, which is always a pain (hence why Google and Facebook have been doing so well by allowing you to log in to other services using your Google/Facebook account... please never do this). Meanwhile, with patch files, even though one could hypothetically require you to create an account it is not strictly necessary. Patch files can be sent to mailing lists, e-mail addresses, or a web form can be created where one can simply upload a patch file no account (although perhaps asking for an e-mail for updates).
-Patch files also help add to the decentralized nature of many VCSs, so one is not dependent on one particular platform (eg. GitHub, GitLab, NotABug, etc.). Instead, each person can host their own repositories where ever they fucking want to and contributors don't have to go through hell (ie. the web) and back just to contribute a couple lines to fix a minor bug.
+Patch files also help add to the decentralized nature of many VCSs, so one is not dependent on one particular platform (eg. GitHub, GitLab, NotABug, etc.). Instead, each person can host their own repositories where ever they want to and contributors don't have to go through hell (ie. the web) and back just to contribute a couple lines to fix a minor bug.
-This being said, I congratulate GNU Savane for not requiring fucking pull-requests like everyone fucking else (this is probably mostly because they also allow you to use a variety of other VCSs other than Git). Only issue I would have is that they require you to log in (and some other issues that they have in general, but that's besides the point). Based GNU wins the day!
+This being said, I congratulate GNU Savane for not requiring pull-requests like everyone else (this is probably mostly because they also allow you to use a variety of other VCSs other than Git). Only issue I would have is that they require you to log in (and some other issues that they have in general, but that's besides the point). Based GNU wins the day!
-Now, some of you may be saying "Well, we should use pull-requests because they're more user-friendly!". Fuck you. We're hackers, we should all be used to the command-line by now. That aside, why can't all these GUI clients work with patch files instead? Common GUI clients such as the GitHub client could easily be configured to create patch files and automatically upload them to GitHub (or where ever else). How difficult would it be to have a simple menu item that says "export patch"? So I don't see how 'user-friendliness' is an argument. Just because something in "in the web" doesn't make it user-friendly, and it doesn't make it more efficient either. What's more, sometimes the older tools are more useful than the new ones! Yet for some reason something being 'old' is somehow a reasonable excuse to dismiss it as an option.
+Now, some of you may be saying "Well, we should use pull-requests because they're more user-friendly!". We're hackers, we should all be used to the command-line by now. That aside, why can't all these GUI clients work with patch files instead? Common GUI clients such as the GitHub client could easily be configured to create patch files and automatically upload them to GitHub (or where ever else). How difficult would it be to have a simple menu item that says "export patch"? So I don't see how 'user-friendliness' is an argument. Just because something in "in the web" doesn't make it user-friendly, and it doesn't make it more efficient either. What's more, sometimes the older tools are more useful than the new ones! Yet for some reason something being 'old' is somehow a reasonable excuse to dismiss it as an option.
-The web is useful for some thing, namely broadcasting and making information public (information such as text, music, art, etc.). It's a great place for sharing. However, that doesn't make it a great work place. What is the web good for in terms of code? The web is a great place to post things like screenshots, samples, binaries, code samples, patch files, etc. But no one in their right mind should think that we should be editing code in our damn browsers. Pull-requests aren't for 'publishing' something, especially because they require you to 'fork' it. Therefore, it's not what we need in the web. Patch files are about publishing something, publishing changes in the code. What's the difference? The difference is that in the pull-request scenario one has the repository do the merging and has to 'fork' an entire fucking project while in the other a patch file is published to an issue tracker (you know, like in forum posts).
+The web is useful for some thing, namely broadcasting and making information public (information such as text, music, art, etc.). It's a great place for sharing. However, that doesn't make it a great work place. What is the web good for in terms of code? The web is a great place to post things like screenshots, samples, binaries, code samples, patch files, etc. But no one in their right mind should think that we should be editing code in our browsers. Pull-requests aren't for 'publishing' something, especially because they require you to 'fork' it. Therefore, it's not what we need in the web. Patch files are about publishing something, publishing changes in the code. What's the difference? The difference is that in the pull-request scenario one has the repository do the merging and has to 'fork' an entire project while in the other a patch file is published to an issue tracker (you know, like in forum posts).
So please, stop promoting this cancerous disease known as "the pull-request". Patch files were perfectly fine. If you're going to write your own new repository hosting web framework or whatever, be sure to incorporate patch files. As I said before, pull-requests are good only if we're talking about real forks, not a 'fork' that someone made of a project to contribute 2 lines of code and then never touch it again.
diff --git a/blog/posts/0045-from-parabola-to-arch.html b/blog/posts/0045-from-parabola-to-arch.html index 30677e2..e658c5a 100644 --- a/blog/posts/0045-from-parabola-to-arch.html +++ b/blog/posts/0045-from-parabola-to-arch.html @@ -1,10 +1,10 @@I have recently switched from Parabola to Arch. First of all, I would like to mention that this is not because I want to use any non-free software in the Arch repos or install non-free firmware and drivers for some pieces of hardware I may have (I am still using Linux-libre on Arch), but rather for other reasons that I would like to explain.
-Firstly, the number one reason I am leaving Parabola is that the distro gets in my way too often. Mostly with its policy that anything that 'promotes non-free software' is non-free. I am an adult who knows every well what non-free software is, I can easily not install something that I see is non-free (namely for `pacaur', which would be so useful if only it were available on Parabola). This kind of blocking of any software that 'promotes non-free software' is useful for distros such as Trisquel, which are aimed at people who could hardly be described as tech-savvy, since these kinds of people do not necessarily know how to distinguish between free and non-free software (it's simply not something that's part of their daily lives). However, for experienced hackers like myself, this just gets in our way of quickly getting access to tools we want to use. It's nice when our OS doesn't constantly get in our way for these kinds of things. This is, in fact, the exact reason why I use Free Software to begin with and why I like GNU/Linux. I used to use Mac many many years ago, however I had almost no ability to make the computer do what I wanted it to, Apple products constantly worked against me and whatever I wanted to do with them (as if they had a mind of their own and purposely wanted to fuck me over), and I dislike that I am feeling this again with a GNU/Linux distro. Therefore, I would suggest that if you're an experienced hacker and get stressed when your OS gets in the way, don't use a free distro, they're aimed for newbs who are new to the idea of Free Software, not you.
+Firstly, the number one reason I am leaving Parabola is that the distro gets in my way too often. Mostly with its policy that anything that 'promotes non-free software' is non-free. I am an adult who knows every well what non-free software is, I can easily not install something that I see is non-free (namely for `pacaur', which would be so useful if only it were available on Parabola). This kind of blocking of any software that 'promotes non-free software' is useful for distros such as Trisquel, which are aimed at people who could hardly be described as tech-savvy, since these kinds of people do not necessarily know how to distinguish between free and non-free software (it's simply not something that's part of their daily lives). However, for experienced hackers like myself, this just gets in our way of quickly getting access to tools we want to use. It's nice when our OS doesn't constantly get in our way for these kinds of things. This is, in fact, the exact reason why I use Free Software to begin with and why I like GNU/Linux. I used to use Mac many many years ago, however I had almost no ability to make the computer do what I wanted it to, Apple products constantly worked against me and whatever I wanted to do with them, and I dislike that I am feeling this again with a GNU/Linux distro. Therefore, I would suggest that if you're an experienced hacker and get stressed when your OS gets in the way, don't use a free distro, they're aimed for newbs who are new to the idea of Free Software, not you.
-Secondly, with all the respect in the world to the members of the Parabola community (they are very nice people, friendly, and helpful), the community itself is impossible to deal with. This issue does not involve me directly, despite how much I have been involved in it, but the Parabola community over the past few months has been aggravating the hell out of me and others by placing packages on the `your-freedom' blacklist (such as `qt5-webengine') with no proof. It started out as an issue with Chromium, claiming that Chromium was somehow non-free (apart from their 'promotes non-free software' thing). At first this wasn't bad, it was just one package, one small thing that affected no one in the Parabola community as far as we knew, but then there was a small bit of publicity on the Qt5WebEngine website that caused a small contained issue into a huge mess. Qt5WebEngine claimed it included "the entire Chromium framework", which, from the eyes of people who think Chromium is non-free, meant Qt5WebEngine is as well. So very quickly `qt5-webengine' (a package very much needed by a fuck ton of applications) got put on the blacklist. This issue was a few months ago... yet no evidence has been proposed that hasn't been shot down almost immediately for being either false, fixed, or simply outdated. And despite all evidence getting shot down, things continued in the direction where the Parabola community was questioning about forking Chromium and something else about Qt5WebEngine. In any case, they have ignored our criticism of them having a lack of (or rather, absolutely no) evidence and decided to continue to decide on a sentence for a suspect that has not yet been convicted. You can read more about the whole thing on the Parabola Dev mailing lists.
+Secondly, with all the respect in the world to the members of the Parabola community (they are very nice people, friendly, and helpful), the community itself is impossible to deal with. This issue does not involve me directly, despite how much I have been involved in it, but the Parabola community over the past few months has been aggravating me and others by placing packages on the `your-freedom' blacklist (such as `qt5-webengine') with no proof. It started out as an issue with Chromium, claiming that Chromium was somehow non-free (apart from their 'promotes non-free software' thing). At first this wasn't bad, it was just one package, one small thing that affected no one in the Parabola community as far as we knew, but then there was a small bit of publicity on the Qt5WebEngine website that caused a small contained issue into a huge mess. Qt5WebEngine claimed it included "the entire Chromium framework", which, from the eyes of people who think Chromium is non-free, meant Qt5WebEngine is as well. So very quickly `qt5-webengine' (a package very much needed by a ton of applications) got put on the blacklist. This issue was a few months ago... yet no evidence has been proposed that hasn't been shot down almost immediately for being either false, fixed, or simply outdated. And despite all evidence getting shot down, things continued in the direction where the Parabola community was questioning about forking Chromium and something else about Qt5WebEngine. In any case, they have ignored our criticism of them having a lack of (or rather, absolutely no) evidence and decided to continue to decide on a sentence for a suspect that has not yet been convicted. You can read more about the whole thing on the Parabola Dev mailing lists.
-After this, I thought that I may be constructive in my criticism and create a means by which these situations could be avoided and things could actually get done. So I created a Quarantine Policy Proposal, and gladly welcomed anyone to edit it and give suggestions... except it was mostly ignored, the etherpad received practically no edits, and people continued to decide on the sentence of Qt5WebEngine. I have received quite a few compliments for the idea amongst those in the Parabola community, and although I'm glad they appreciate it, what I really want is for the damn thing to be implemented already, or at least something like it so that these kinds of issues don't continue to occur (and the current issue doesn't persist).
+After this, I thought that I may be constructive in my criticism and create a means by which these situations could be avoided and things could actually get done. So I created a Quarantine Policy Proposal, and gladly welcomed anyone to edit it and give suggestions... except it was mostly ignored, the etherpad received practically no edits, and people continued to decide on the sentence of Qt5WebEngine. I have received quite a few compliments for the idea amongst those in the Parabola community, and although I'm glad they appreciate it, what I really want is for the thing to be implemented already, or at least something like it so that these kinds of issues don't continue to occur (and the current issue doesn't persist).
-With this I say that I will most likely never return to Parabola, even if the Quarantine Policy is implemented, for the reasons I mentioned first in this post. However I would still suggest that the Parabola community start to pull its shit together and stop trying to shy away from having actual protocols. Debian is one of the largest community-oriented projects that is not controlled by a corporation in the background, and they have a ton of protocols and policies. If the Parabola community wishes to efficiently handle the challenges that await them in the future, it's time for them to start organizing themselves instead of leaving things as chaotic as they are.
+With this I say that I will most likely never return to Parabola, even if the Quarantine Policy is implemented, for the reasons I mentioned first in this post. However I would still suggest that the Parabola community start to pull itself together and stop trying to shy away from having actual protocols. Debian is one of the largest community-oriented projects that is not controlled by a corporation in the background, and they have a ton of protocols and policies. If the Parabola community wishes to efficiently handle the challenges that await them in the future, it's time for them to start organizing themselves instead of leaving things as chaotic as they are.
diff --git a/blog/posts/0050-technology-literacy.html b/blog/posts/0050-technology-literacy.html index 975f915..b102062 100644 --- a/blog/posts/0050-technology-literacy.html +++ b/blog/posts/0050-technology-literacy.html @@ -1,8 +1,8 @@ -It's quite annoying to hear, as it is for most techies, whenever people say that millennials are the 'technology' or 'digital' generation. Let's begin pointing out why this is wrong. When I ask a millennial to write a plain text file and they open a word processor, that's technological illiteracy; when I am told by a millennial that their internet was going slow so they upgraded their RAM, that's technological illiteracy; when a millennial doesn't understand that VLC can't play an iMovie project file (they copied the iMovie project file from a Mac computer to a Windows computer), that's complete technological stupidity. If you would like more information on why millennials are technological know-nothings you can visit this blog post which does an excellent job at explaining the issue. In reality, millennials are just as computer literate as our parents were television literate (ie. I know how to press the buttons to make it go on and off, but the day one minor thing doesn't work in exactly the same way I shit myself and have to call in tech support).
+It's quite annoying to hear, as it is for most techies, whenever people say that millennials are the 'technology' or 'digital' generation. Let's begin pointing out why this is wrong. When I ask a millennial to write a plain text file and they open a word processor, that's technological illiteracy; when I am told by a millennial that their internet was going slow so they upgraded their RAM, that's technological illiteracy; when a millennial doesn't understand that VLC can't play an iMovie project file (they copied the iMovie project file from a Mac computer to a Windows computer), that's complete technological stupidity. If you would like more information on why millennials are technological know-nothings you can visit this blog post which does an excellent job at explaining the issue. In reality, millennials are just as computer literate as our parents were television literate (ie. I know how to press the buttons to make it go on and off, but the day one minor thing doesn't work in exactly the same way I freak out myself and have to call in tech support).
So, you may be asking "Why is it important that we have computer literacy in the first place?". The answer to which is quite simple: because you depend on it. When you depend on something, typically you learn enough about it so that when things go wrong you have a basic knowledge of it and aren't drooling like an idiot. Hence why in primary school we learn basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division (and many other things later on that are also fundamental to our ability to survive in society). If you depend on something you should at least have a minimal understanding of how to actually use it and how it works. The same way that when you get a car you learn the different parts of the car and how to check and make sure it's in shape, you still have to know how to check the oil and such.
-So, what should people learn in order to be technologically/computer literate? I'm not going to ask that everyone be a programmer and learn to script, or that everyone learn how to compile things from source. However, there are basic concepts that people need to understand, such as how you actually connect to the internet, what the internet is actually about (which is a bunch of other computers we call servers that people connect to, and domain names being retrieved from DNS servers, and what the hell ports are as well as basic protocols like HTTP, HTTPS, and FTP), they should learn what a file format is, they should learn what an operating system really is (not what they're lead to believe by Windows and Mac which hide absolutely everything from you so you take things for granted), they should learn how to check the health of their system and use a resource manager to figure out why their OS is running slow, they should learn about directory trees so they can figure out what's actually taking up all their hard drive space, etc. This is absolute basic shit which people should be learning in schools as their basic education, and it wouldn't even take that long to teach, you could probably fit this into a one year course, and if there's space left over introduce them to the command-line so that they can see that by running the program in the command-line they get more information about why it crashes which can be given to developers so they have a better idea of why it crashed in the first place.
+So, what should people learn in order to be technologically/computer literate? I'm not going to ask that everyone be a programmer and learn to script, or that everyone learn how to compile things from source. However, there are basic concepts that people need to understand, such as how you actually connect to the internet, what the internet is actually about (which is a bunch of other computers we call servers that people connect to, and domain names being retrieved from DNS servers, and what ports are as well as basic protocols like HTTP, HTTPS, and FTP), they should learn what a file format is, they should learn what an operating system really is (not what they're lead to believe by Windows and Mac which hide absolutely everything from you so you take things for granted), they should learn how to check the health of their system and use a resource manager to figure out why their OS is running slow, they should learn about directory trees so they can figure out what's actually taking up all their hard drive space, etc. This is absolute basic knowledge which people should be learning in schools as their basic education, and it wouldn't even take that long to teach, you could probably fit this into a one year course, and if there's space left over introduce them to the command-line so that they can see that by running the program in the command-line they get more information about why it crashes which can be given to developers so they have a better idea of why it crashed in the first place.
-This is not something that's completely out-of-this-world, it's quite basic shit, and the fact that most people (especially millennials) don't know this stuff makes them extremely vulnerable to all sorts of scams and stupid decisions, and helps them to be convenienced pieces of shit who can't look things up on their own before asking for help (now that I mention this, perhaps the first thing they should learn is how to use a search engine to find a solution to their problem instead of asking the closest techie). I'm not asking for everyone to turn into computer wizards, I'm asking them to at least be able to detect more or less where a problem is coming from when they get an issue and for them to attempt to solve it themselves (via searching the problem first) before coming to people like me. If all I have to do in order to solve your issue is put your error in a search engine, that's something you could've done yourself.
+This is not something that's completely out-of-this-world, it's quite basic, and the fact that most people (especially millennials) don't know this stuff makes them extremely vulnerable to all sorts of scams and stupid decisions, and helps them to be convenienced people who can't look things up on their own before asking for help (now that I mention this, perhaps the first thing they should learn is how to use a search engine to find a solution to their problem instead of asking the closest techie). I'm not asking for everyone to turn into computer wizards, I'm asking them to at least be able to detect more or less where a problem is coming from when they get an issue and for them to attempt to solve it themselves (via searching the problem first) before coming to people like me. If all I have to do in order to solve your issue is put your error in a search engine, that's something you could've done yourself.
diff --git a/blog/posts/0051-why-windows-sucks.html b/blog/posts/0051-why-windows-sucks.html index b7011d9..2684d4c 100644 --- a/blog/posts/0051-why-windows-sucks.html +++ b/blog/posts/0051-why-windows-sucks.html @@ -1,15 +1,15 @@ -For those of you who use GNU/Linux or BSD (or basically any other UNIX-like system) this post will come as no surprise to you, but I still felt the urge to make it anyways. I currently do not run Microsoft Windows anymore, but I still have to use under certain circumstances for classes and such as well as constantly hearing from friends (who run Windows as their main OS for some stupid reason) and news articles about the newest stupid thing they've added to fuck over their users. So, let's get started on the bashing of the dead horse. (Why? Because it's fun.)
+For those of you who use GNU/Linux or BSD (or basically any other UNIX-like system) this post will come as no surprise to you, but I still felt the urge to make it anyways. I currently do not run Microsoft Windows anymore, but I still have to use under certain circumstances for classes and such as well as constantly hearing from friends (who run Windows as their main OS for some stupid reason) and news articles about the newest stupid thing they've added to annoy their users. So, let's get started on the bashing of the dead horse. (Why? Because it's fun.)
This'll probably be it for the Windows bashing, but if you use MacOS/OSX, don't think you're off the hook, "Why MacOS Sucks" is coming very soon.
diff --git a/blog/posts/0053-why-macos-sucks.html b/blog/posts/0053-why-macos-sucks.html index 043d88c..7c649fd 100644 --- a/blog/posts/0053-why-macos-sucks.html +++ b/blog/posts/0053-why-macos-sucks.html @@ -1,9 +1,9 @@As promised, a criticism of Apple MacOS (or whatever people are calling it nowadays), of course, this will mostly be mixed in with issues I have with Apple itself, and some of them may sound familiar (because they're the same as with Windows). I'd also like to note that I haven't seen or used a Mac computer for personal use for maybe 7 years, so the information I provide may be antiquated, or I may be leaving stuff out that they came up with recently (or simply I forgot because of how bad it was). So let's jump into this!
Another thing, I don't care what anyone says, Mac and Windows are not user-friendly (sometimes for different reasons). First, let's start with a Windows-only issue: it just doesn't work. Windows crashes, it's buggy, you have to constantly reinstall drivers, it gives you errors for the stupidest of things. This is not user-friendly. Secondly, both of these operating systems are completely unstable in terms of their interfaces. Somehow, these companies (Apple and Microsoft) believe that by updating the interface (and forcing everyone to find everything again) that this somehow means the OS is modern and new. All it means is I have to spend another 10 minutes finding a button that they moved from point X to point Y for my grandparents. This lack of stability may seem harmless, but it's annoying and unproductive. For this, the solution is simple: install a GNU/Linux distribution (like Debian Stable or Ubuntu LTS) with a generally stable and non-changing interface, such as MATE, Xfce, or Cinnamon, anything that doesn't constantly change interfaces to prove that it's new and flashy.
-I'm saying this because it's sad that every time I go on break and return to my home, my family has new issues with their software failing because the developers changed something stupid or they made it way more complicated than it needs to be. It's fine for people who like changes, but don't tell me that shit's user-friendly and then get everyone to buy it as if it were so.
+I'm saying this because it's sad that every time I go on break and return to my home, my family has new issues with their software failing because the developers changed something stupid or they made it way more complicated than it needs to be. It's fine for people who like changes, but don't tell me that it's user-friendly and then get everyone to buy it as if it were so.
diff --git a/blog/posts/0067-blog-upgrade.html b/blog/posts/0067-blog-upgrade.html index 51e854d..6e3b3f0 100644 --- a/blog/posts/0067-blog-upgrade.html +++ b/blog/posts/0067-blog-upgrade.html @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@ -Recently I've decided to change how my blog works to make it easier to manage. Now I'm using databases to store my posts. Using a database has provided me more versatility than simple PHP files, which is what I used before. This has also drastically diminished the amount of files necessary for my blog as well as certain redundancies that were annoying the hell out of me.
+Recently I've decided to change how my blog works to make it easier to manage. Now I'm using databases to store my posts. Using a database has provided me more versatility than simple PHP files, which is what I used before. This has also drastically diminished the amount of files necessary for my blog as well as certain redundancies that were annoying me.
With this I've been able to add other stuff, like a post description, as well as not having to choose between categories and a unified RSS feed. This also means that it'll be very easy to add new things, since the DB automates a lot of things for me, and I'd only have to edit a few files instead of all my posts like I would have before.
diff --git a/blog/posts/0069-getting-more-women-in-technology.html b/blog/posts/0069-getting-more-women-in-technology.html index 8bcd732..50493ed 100644 --- a/blog/posts/0069-getting-more-women-in-technology.html +++ b/blog/posts/0069-getting-more-women-in-technology.html @@ -4,7 +4,7 @@So, since we know that the percentage of women in the field of computer science was rising up until the mid-80s, when it lagged behind the rest of the STEM fields where women went on to represent nearly 50% of the field, what happened there? Well, as the NPR article above pointed out, a major change took place in computing during that time in which computers went from being a professional tool to do fast calculations and simulations, to being a household electronic device, but more importantly, a gaming station for kids, specifically being placed in the "boy's toys" section in supermarkets. It is speculated that this may have been a major influence on the percentage of women in tech today. Had it been put in the "girl's toys" section, the tech field might have been taken over by women and we'd be wondering how to get more men into the field!
-Now, simply because you play with something (in this case, a boy plays with a computer) doesn't mean you gain an interest in how it works underneath and start to tinker with it. However, it does increase your chances of obtaining these interests. This may be anecdotal, but I can say that many of the people I know in my degree joined because they play video-games in their free time and they wanted to be a part of that, and I don't doubt that such is the case of most people in tech (if not video-games, something else). Hell, it's what got me into computers (as well as the 90s movie Hackers, which I now look back on in shame due to how unrealistic it is).
+Now, simply because you play with something (in this case, a boy plays with a computer) doesn't mean you gain an interest in how it works underneath and start to tinker with it. However, it does increase your chances of obtaining these interests. This may be anecdotal, but I can say that many of the people I know in my degree joined because they play video-games in their free time and they wanted to be a part of that, and I don't doubt that such is the case of most people in tech (if not video-games, something else). It's what got me into computers (as well as the 90s movie Hackers, which I now look back on in shame due to how unrealistic it is).
Knowing this, it seems quite evident to me that we should not be trying to attract more women into the field when it's already too late for them and they've already developed a personality, likes & dislikes, but earlier in their development when they're children. Therefore, the first and most important responsibility falls down to the parents (as in most cases). Parents should introduce their girls to computers and even computer games. The parents (especially the mother, who serves as the female role model) should also take a little interest in tech (or simply the sciences) to encourage this behavior. When the girl is old enough, teach her to use a program like Scratch, a software from MIT that helps children learn the basics of logic and programming while making fun games. Maybe when they're a teenager do some family projects with a Raspberry Pi or a Pine64.
diff --git a/blog/posts/0070-arm-the-future-of-free-software.html b/blog/posts/0070-arm-the-future-of-free-software.html index db434af..d549339 100644 --- a/blog/posts/0070-arm-the-future-of-free-software.html +++ b/blog/posts/0070-arm-the-future-of-free-software.html @@ -6,5 +6,5 @@An issue that some people may have with using ARM (in the context of laptops/desktops) is architecture compatibility. However, this only applies if we're talking about non-free software. First of all, most operating systems have already been ported to ARM a long time ago, especially OSs such as GNU/Linux and the free BSDs (i.e. FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, etc.). As for software, if it's free software it's likely already ported to ARM, or one could simply compile it. In reality, ARM is much more accessible from the free world than it is from the proprietary.
-All this considered, it's not certain that ARM will lead the way in software freedom, but currently it provides much more freedom in drivers and even firmware than x86 providers do. To make things better, this freedom comes out of the box instead of through reverse engineering and buggy hacks. Also, as another pro, most non-free applications are not ported to ARM, and therefore it gives you a technical excuse not to use them instead of the "muh freedom" argument that (as most of us free software supporters have discovered) annoys the hell out of our relatives and friends.
+All this considered, it's not certain that ARM will lead the way in software freedom, but currently it provides much more freedom in drivers and even firmware than x86 providers do. To make things better, this freedom comes out of the box instead of through reverse engineering and buggy hacks. Also, as another pro, most non-free applications are not ported to ARM, and therefore it gives you a technical excuse not to use them instead of the "muh freedom" argument that (as most of us free software supporters have discovered) annoys our relatives and friends.
diff --git a/blog/posts/0075-more-settings-less-locale.html b/blog/posts/0075-more-settings-less-locale.html index e0ebb61..d22f4a0 100644 --- a/blog/posts/0075-more-settings-less-locale.html +++ b/blog/posts/0075-more-settings-less-locale.html @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@I speak and use American English for all my computing because it's the English I grew up with (plus, it's typically the most complete language for any software package). Therefore, my locale is almost always set to en_US. This is fine for the most part (especially since most of my applications are quite minimal and configurable), but recently I've installed GNOME Calendar to start scheduling my week and found that the week starts on Sunday in GNOME Calendar. Now, although I was born in the USA, I've spent many years in Spain and have become accustomed to the week starting on Monday (which makes sense since we call Saturday and Sunday the "weekend" and not the "weekends"). So I went into the settings (which are very lacking) and did not find any setting to have the week start on Monday instead of Sunday. When I looked this up it turns out GNOME Calendar chooses which day the week starts on based on your locale, so I'd have to either change my locale to en_GB (therefore changing my language settings everywhere on my system to British English, and using the British Pound as the default currency) or put up with the Sunday first week format.
This is the problem with locales. Although it works for people who use all the settings from one country (typically people who have only lived in one country their entire lives) it sucks for having any kind of complex configuration. In my case, I want my language to be in American English, my dates to be in YYYY/MM/DD format, and my currency to be in Euros. Yet, there is no locale that will configure with all these settings. And this is probably a small part of the list. What are the solutions? Either more customizable locales (which would be a pain in the ass since locales have already been pretty standardized) or applications can have more robust settings. Of the two, the easiest to work on right now is the latter.
+This is the problem with locales. Although it works for people who use all the settings from one country (typically people who have only lived in one country their entire lives) it sucks for having any kind of complex configuration. In my case, I want my language to be in American English, my dates to be in YYYY/MM/DD format, and my currency to be in Euros. Yet, there is no locale that will configure with all these settings. And this is probably a small part of the list. What are the solutions? Either more customizable locales (which would be a pain since locales have already been pretty standardized) or applications can have more robust settings. Of the two, the easiest to work on right now is the latter.
diff --git a/blog/posts/0079-the-cancer-which-is-pre-installed-applications.html b/blog/posts/0079-the-cancer-which-is-pre-installed-applications.html index 8f1413c..cbcf79d 100644 --- a/blog/posts/0079-the-cancer-which-is-pre-installed-applications.html +++ b/blog/posts/0079-the-cancer-which-is-pre-installed-applications.html @@ -2,7 +2,7 @@My grandparents have Android and MacOS devices, and the storage on these is always being filled. It's not because of photos and videos, because even though my Grandmother takes many whenever there is a family event she puts them all on Google servers (Google Photos or something). No, they are filled up to the brim with stupid apps that my grandparents will never use. The only apps my grandparents need are WhatsApp, Wire, phone, camera, browser, and the app to get the bus schedule. However, the phones they have come with a bunch of other applications that they will never use, such as: sports app, stock market app, PDF reader, document editor (which is stupid for a phone anyways), stupid mobile games they've never played, etc., and none of these can be uninstalled. All these extra apps on their devices do nothing more than to complicate their user experience, giving them a harder time managing their devices. At the end of the day, they come to me to solve their issues, and there's nothing I can do since I cannot uninstall the apps. I try to factory reset the apps (i.e. remove updates) which helps a little, but then the app store wants to update them.
-So the question here is, why, for the love of God, do these companies put all this trash on our devices? Answer: politics and profits. OS development companies (especially mobile OS companies) tend to get revenue from contracts with app development companies so their apps are pre-installed on devices, and these contracts tend to include compensation for the OS development company. There is also the issue that smart phones are primarily used and purchased by youths, who have an easier time managing resources and navigating new UIs on devices. This means that the primary demographic these companies are after aren't old people, who would be better suited with a simple UI, few apps, and consistency, but rather they are after the youths who prefer more features, new and shiny UIs, and a changing environment to keep things fresh. So in order to appeal to this younger audience, they treat the elderly like shit (the wonders of the free market, but that's a different topic).
+So the question here is, why, for the love of God, do these companies put all this trash on our devices? Answer: politics and profits. OS development companies (especially mobile OS companies) tend to get revenue from contracts with app development companies so their apps are pre-installed on devices, and these contracts tend to include compensation for the OS development company. There is also the issue that smart phones are primarily used and purchased by youths, who have an easier time managing resources and navigating new UIs on devices. This means that the primary demographic these companies are after aren't old people, who would be better suited with a simple UI, few apps, and consistency, but rather they are after the youths who prefer more features, new and shiny UIs, and a changing environment to keep things fresh. So in order to appeal to this younger audience, they treat the elderly horribly (the wonders of the free market, but that's a different topic).
I will recognize that there are mobiles you can buy that come with plain Android, which come only with certain Google apps installed by default, and are generally much more lightweight. However, there's a catch: they're more expensive. That's right, somehow you're paying more to have less crap on your device. What's more, you typically won't be able to buy these devices directly from your mobile/internet service provider, instead you'll have to buy it separately and set it up yourself (something that the elderly may have problems doing on their own).