Alex Schroeder @kensanata@octodon.social

Emergent behaviour of agents in early text adventure games (The Hobbit, released 1982): https://if50.substack.com/p/1982-the-hobbit

They really don't want you to discuss pay. Support the union and tell the bosses to go fuck themselves.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56659212

Also considering the need for Gemini, it's not only about comprehension and security. It's also about autonomy.

When the specifications are giant and constantly expanding then in the busy world who has the time to even begin to try to understand this? High complexity of the web creates a centralising dynamic and a “just leave it to the experts” attitude. There is then a priestly class of gatekeepers with special powers not attainable by mortals.

@jalcine From a purely utilitarian user perspective there isn't any need for Gemini. It does some things which are the same as the web - linked documents - but is a lot less capable than the web.

From a userops perspective Gemini fulfils a need for mastery. You can fully understand the specification in a reasonable amount of time, whereas the web is a gigantic set of specifications which you could spend years studying without full comprehension. Gemini also breaks the dependency upon certificate authorities and all that comes with them. It has a small, well defined attack surface, and its lack of complexity makes tracking and advertising not so viable as it is on the web. Being unattractive to advertisers can be seen as an asset.

Our university has developed this new innovative thing where instead of providing supporting services for our projects, they sell those services to us.

if thats not wholesome i dont know what is

Today we went up Gowbarrow Fell, and enjoyed perhaps one of the best hikes I’ve ever done.

Loads more photos here, plus the story of this hike -> https://www.iancylkowski.com/blog/2021/4/6/gowbarrow-fell-lake-district-spring 👍

#landscape #nature #travel #photography #photo #photographie #spring #waterfall #mountains #lakedistrict #cumbria #uk #britain #england

in the course of writing a comment i didn't ultimately post anywhere about how i got started programming, i found this:

https://github.com/qb40/abcarchive

an archive of the All Basic Code packets, 1995-2003.

"The All BASIC Code (ABC) Archives contains hundreds of BASIC source codes ranging from ASIC/LibertyBASIC/QB/QBasic/PDS/PowerBASIC/VBDOS/VBWIN, and various other BASIC languages (like BasicBasic)."

@kelbot

What do you use for calendaring on your little devices? I just started playing with remind and feel like it's exactly the sort of tool you'd be into.

https://dianne.skoll.ca/projects/remind/

Is there an open source browser that doesn't harvest my organs for google, that isn't attached to a dying organization, that isn't just a clone of one of those likely to share its fate, and that isn't operated by creepy crypto dorks? like anything? Is it just dillo? Am I stuck with Dillo?

I was using (well, not really) #Chrome on Android since FF changed the UI completely and broke my entire workflow on Android, but the recent news are unfathomable. I didn't really want to go back to Firefox either, so after some search I found
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid/
which is Firefox but stripped of some of the annoying bits. Plus it's on F-droid so no breaking updates behind my back.

🤷

Things like using free software, avoiding corporate clouds, and being online privacy conscious can be great personal choices, for excellent reasons, but they are usually more work.

Don't forget how they might affect others around you if you are gone. Life is so dependent on digital memories, online accounts and identities these days. Make it easy for them if you can.

well, utopian is an amazing little font family for fans of piet mondrion, mac/memphis patterns and geometric fonts

https://alextrochut.com/project/utopian-dystopian/

@distel @vfrmedia after all, this is toronto. WE! DO! BRUTALISM!

woohoo, thank fuck

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/18-956_d18f.pdf