mikegerwitz

41 ms·

31.
by mikegerwitz 9y ago
I'm 28 and am a free software activist focusing heavily and user privacy and security, iving talks on those issues and meeting with my local school district to discuss how it impacts students. When I was a teenager in middle school wha
32.
by mikegerwitz 9y ago
> True, though we have reached a point where one could be really comfortable without proprietary software. I certainly am. It's just with an increasingly "appified" web that proprietary software makes again inroads on othe
33.
by mikegerwitz 9y ago
It really doesn't matter. For those who are concerned about the privacy and are mindful enough to care about the privacy of others, putting any information on anyone else's computer (like Google's servers) is a leak. You don
34.
by mikegerwitz 9y ago
Contributing to the GNU Project and having your project associated with certain principles. Some people just want to make GNU stronger or send a message about software freedom.
35.
by mikegerwitz 9y ago
While some core projects are pillars of GNU and were created either to provide a fully free Unix replacement or out of one of their initiatives, many are projects offered by individuals.[0] There is no battle. "Replace" doesn&#x2
36.
by mikegerwitz 9y ago
> Providing open source drivers/stacks will in many cases provide insight into implementation details you do not want competitors to easily understand Competitors will have the resources to reverse engineer; it's not an effecti
37.
by mikegerwitz 9y ago
Some of the songs link to the humor section. So while it has nothing to do with music, I cannot resist the urge to share my favorite that has made me burst into laughter many times over the years (sometimes during quiet work hours). A vir
38.
by mikegerwitz 9y ago
Readline's has an important history, resulting in CLISP being licensed under the GPL: http://clisp.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/clisp/clisp/doc/Why-...
39.
by mikegerwitz 9y ago
> I do like thinking of myself as a wizard, though. This doesn't address your first paragraph, but I wanted to comment on this. I identify as a hacker. The terms "wizard", "incantation", etc are fairly ingrained
40.
by mikegerwitz 9y ago
Even if you can have it transcribed (which is possible today), videos contain far more information than what is spoken: gestures, emphasis / how words are spoken, body language, objects, diagrams, etc. While skilled speakers may try t
41.
by mikegerwitz 9y ago
Another problem I have with videos is that I can't go at my own pace---I'm stuck at the pace of the speaker. Some videos I'll watch at 2.5x speed, but the speaker may speed up and slow down at times. With text, I can speed-r
42.
by mikegerwitz 9y ago
> In 2017, there's more to being a "Hacker" than just what low-level language is being used. Always has been: https://stallman.org/articles/on-hacking.html
43.
by mikegerwitz 9y ago
> Then you do some refactoring and you have to rewrite tons of tests. One of the core principles of TDD is that you write tests to facilitate refactoring---to make it _easy_ to refactor and have confidence in the system after doing so.
44.
by mikegerwitz 9y ago
> One interesting voice in signing all commits by Linus: >> Signing each commit is totally stupid. It just means that you automate it, and you make the signature worth less. I've never bought that argument.[0] You should use
45.
by mikegerwitz 9y ago
Caveat: GitHub zips/tarballs are generated on-demand and cached, so they're problematic for bit-for-bit reproducibility: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-guix/2017-10/msg00070... Of cours
46.
by mikegerwitz 9y ago
> Second would stare fixedly at screen for several seconds, whilst remaining still as a statue That eliminates many of the benefits. Was your coworker relatively new to Vim? Or maybe pondering what change to make, not how to actually m
47.
by mikegerwitz 9y ago
Host your own instance. I host my own GNU Social instance (which federates with Mastodon) and it is incredibly liberating. It's a social networking site that I am in complete control over and feel safe visiting. There's also nob
48.
by mikegerwitz 9y ago
I wrote a paper on Classical OOP with ECMAScript 3/5 back in 2012 during my work on (the then-not-GNU) ease.js, which goes into quite a bit of detail on how prototypes work: https://mikegerwitz.com/papers/coope&#x2
49.
by mikegerwitz 9y ago
As a player, you only benefit from the AGPL, as intended. What makes you use the term "restrictive", unless perhaps you wanted to make a non-free derivative or use portions of it in non-free software? This isn't a library.
50.
by mikegerwitz 9y ago
Wow...nostalgia going strong. These screenshots bring me back. https://openrct2.website/getting-started/index.html "OpenRCT2 needs the object files (containing graphics, sounds and models) from the original Rolle
51.
by mikegerwitz 9y ago
Many people find themselves in nano for a quick change. They aren't interested in learning keybindings for an editor, especially (in the case of vi/vim) when those keybindings can accidentally clobber a chunk of your configuratio
52.
by mikegerwitz 9y ago
> they don't even know how to exit the program Vim lists `:q' and `:help' prominently in the middle of the screen when you first start it. If you try to exit with C-c (in Normal mode), or C-c C-c (in Insert), you get this
53.
by mikegerwitz 9y ago
> Jailbreaking is not part of the lock-in. It's a way of doing more stuff with the hardware than the original software allowed you to do. That's precisely what rms is referring to when he says "jail": https:/&#x
54.
by mikegerwitz 9y ago
Placing trust in your ISP isn't a good decision, even if they are mandated by law---there's always bad actors, violating the law might be worth it depending on the penalty, and there's law enforcement / government warran
55.
by mikegerwitz 9y ago
More information on the FSF's position: https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-apple.html And rms' perspective: https://stallman.org/apple.html
56.
by mikegerwitz 9y ago
!Apple !== AOSP/Google With that said, the FSF endorses Replicant (which actually just had a new release and added more device support[0]). I use Replicant. Given the free software philosophy, a free program is always superior to a no
57.
by mikegerwitz 9y ago
What about the term "jailbreak"? The problem is also vendor lockin and customer loyalty (often times because people don't like change). You can leave, but most users won't or don't want to.
58.
by mikegerwitz 9y ago
Having a bunch of variables is more useful once you get into Auto{make,conf}, where programs like the compiler can be auto-discovered and can be overridden by the user at configure-time.
59.
by mikegerwitz 9y ago
It varies, even internally. Officially, yes, it's "package". "GNU Project" (capital "P") refers to GNU itself. "Project foo is part of GNU" is also common. "A GNU project" isn'
60.
by mikegerwitz 9y ago
Many GNU hackers simply don't have those skills. I don't. Someone should offer their time/skills.

More ›