Lexinonymous's recent activity
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Comment on Oracle, Silver Lake consortium to control 80% stake in TikTok in US in ~finance
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Comment on Oracle, Silver Lake consortium to control 80% stake in TikTok in US in ~finance
Lexinonymous (edited )Link ParentWhat I'm trying to say is that "Open Source" as a movement is rotten, because it sets projects up to either be vehicles of exploitation or be exploited themselves. Sometimes one or the other,...What I'm trying to say is that "Open Source" as a movement is rotten, because it sets projects up to either be vehicles of exploitation or be exploited themselves. Sometimes one or the other, sometimes both at different times, sometimes never due to circumstance, but the seeds of possibility are always there.
What I'm not trying to say is that all open source projects are inherently and naturally exploitative. If that's the impression I gave than I'm sorry for not being more clear.
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Comment on Oracle, Silver Lake consortium to control 80% stake in TikTok in US in ~finance
Lexinonymous Link ParentYou can just use the wayback machine to dig up one of the older versions of the OSI website that goes into detail about the history and origins of Open Source This is how Open Source is sold to...You can just use the wayback machine to dig up one of the older versions of the OSI website that goes into detail about the history and origins of Open Source
This is how Open Source is sold to the business world. Pragmatic and business friendly approach to development, without the moralizing.
Check out who the biggest sponsors of the OSI are. Near the top of the list is Automattic. Next up, Google, Microsoft and Red Hat. That list at one point contained AWS and Meta. Seems to me like they're getting their money's worth.
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Comment on Oracle, Silver Lake consortium to control 80% stake in TikTok in US in ~finance
Lexinonymous Link ParentMullenweg also benefits from the WordPress community's open source code contributions. He is also a large enough player to steer the direction of the project wherever he pleases, regardless of the...Mullenweg also benefits from the WordPress community's open source code contributions. He is also a large enough player to steer the direction of the project wherever he pleases, regardless of the desires of the community. This fact was keenly demonstrated with his bull-in-china-shop approach to his users while navigating the WPEngine drama.
This isn't an accident, these are the rotten grounds on which the Open Source movement was founded. An open, pragmatic, and business-friendly alternative to Free Software, without such an emphasis on pesky moralizing and user control.
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Comment on Chris Houlihan is real in ~games
Lexinonymous Link ParentUnreal that this turned out to be true. For the curious, here is more information about why the room exists.Unreal that this turned out to be true.
For the curious, here is more information about why the room exists.
Chris Houlihan's Room is a failsafe in the game - it is only accessed when the game cannot load the room associated with a hole Link is falling into because of corrupt location data.
[...]
In the Game Boy Advance port of this game, the corrupt location data bug was patched, and the room can only be accessed through glitching or using cheating devices. -
Comment on Throwback Thursday: Let's talk old flash and memes! in ~talk
Lexinonymous Link ParentDon't forget about Irrational Exuberance - otherwise known as the Yatta song meme.Don't forget about Irrational Exuberance - otherwise known as the Yatta song meme.
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Comment on Three years in the wild: how a fugitive father has hidden his children for so long in ~life.men
Lexinonymous Link ParentOh thank goodness.All three children are unharmed, Rogers said.
Oh thank goodness.
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Comment on Bear is now source-available in ~tech
Lexinonymous Link ParentI only point it out because it's not a small distinction, it's a very fundamental differences in the baseline set of morals that underpin the two. And if I'm being honest, I don't blame people for...Though in retrospect it's probably a safe bet that people on the Tech subforum of Tildes in a thread about code licensing would be able to discern the two terms.
I only point it out because it's not a small distinction, it's a very fundamental differences in the baseline set of morals that underpin the two.
And if I'm being honest, I don't blame people for getting them conflated. The Free Software Foundation has been a horrendous steward of Free Software and Copyleft over the past few decades, and has essentially sat back and let Open Source eat its lunch after releasing a compromised version of the GPL that was at once too principled for some (Tivoization) and didn't go far enough in the parts that actually mattered (The network hole).
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Comment on Bear is now source-available in ~tech
Lexinonymous (edited )Link ParentYou are confusing Free Software and Open Source. Free Software prioritizes user freedoms above all else. Open Source is a non-confrontational, pragmatic and business-focused movement that extols...Open source is a philosophy. It's based on the belief that I should be allowed to know what runs on my computer, and I should be allowed to freely modify the behaviour of code running on my computer, because it's MY computer. If there are restrictions on my ability to modify code on my computer, then it stops really being my computer: I am giving the developers of whatever program I'm running power over my computer.
You are confusing Free Software and Open Source.
Free Software prioritizes user freedoms above all else. Open Source is a non-confrontational, pragmatic and business-focused movement that extols the benefits of an open development process from the businesses' point of view.
Here it is, straight from the horses' mouth. To wit:
We realized it was time to dump the confrontational attitude that has been associated with "free software" in the past and sell the idea strictly on the same pragmatic, business-case grounds that motivated Netscape.
In other words, Open Source being friendly to businesses isn't a second-order effect that fell out of moral obligation to its users. Instead, the point was to promote the use of an open development process to businesses, so they could take advantage of free labor, without the "confrontational" moral arguments concerning user freedom. And the sponsors of the OSI are certainly getting their money's worth.
In my opinion, Open Source licenses are ill-suited for any individual, community, or small business software project unless:
- You don't particularly care that you're giving away free labor to large corporations, or your competition.
- You are a large corporation and have enough resources to steer a project and ignore the needs of the community.
Unfortunately, I suspect most developers default to MIT out of habit, not thinking the project will go anywhere, or remembering a time where a copyleft or source-available license prevented them from using a particular piece of software, and only discover the downsides of Open Source after they've personally been bitten.
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Comment on Dallas Cowboys are trading three-time All-Pro LB Micah Parsons to the Green Bay Packers in ~sports.american_football
Lexinonymous Link ParentThat's fair. I don't know many Cowboy fans personally, and was judging based on outside observation. I'm also not old enough to remember the reaction to the Jimmy Johnson trade first-hand. Still,...That's fair. I don't know many Cowboy fans personally, and was judging based on outside observation. I'm also not old enough to remember the reaction to the Jimmy Johnson trade first-hand.
Still, they've had a lot of contract screwups and post-seasons collapses in the recent past, and it was always fun to laugh at their misfortunes. But something felt different about this. It's the first time I can recall genuinely feeling bad for Cowboys fans.
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Comment on Dallas Cowboys are trading three-time All-Pro LB Micah Parsons to the Green Bay Packers in ~sports.american_football
Lexinonymous (edited )Link ParentJerry Jones is the owner and general manager of the Dallas Cowboys, the most lucrative team with the most die-hard fans in the NFL. They were historically very good, even for a bit after Jerry...Jerry Jones is the owner and general manager of the Dallas Cowboys, the most lucrative team with the most die-hard fans in the NFL. They were historically very good, even for a bit after Jerry Jones bought the team in 1989. However, they have consistently underachieved in the post-season since their last Super Bowl win in 1995.
The reason this trade is big news is that Micah Parsons is widely considered a generational talent who is in the prime of his career. However, when it came to negotiating a new contract, Jerry Jones actually talked to him without his agent present, and when whatever handshake agreement the two came to fell through due to the agent stepping in, Jerry took it personally and tensions between the two parties escalated until Micah finally requested a trade.
In theory, Jerry Jones could refuse this request and have let Micah sit out the rest of his existing contract. However, Jerry decided to trade him to the Green Bay Packers - a team that has been a thorn in the side of the Cowboys for quite some time - for compensation that is widely considered extremely lopsided in favor of the Packers. The Packers then signed Micah to a $47 million per year contract, higher than the $40 million that the Cowboys were offering, making him the highest paid non-QB in the league and giving other players far more leverage in their future negotiations.
And as the cherry on top, Green Bay plays the Cowboys in Week 4 of Sunday Night Football, in the Cowboy's home turf of AT&T Stadium. The Packers have historically had very good luck playing in AT&T Stadium; they had played and won Super Bowl XLV inside "Jerry-world," and more recently put a heartbreaking end to the Cowboys season as the massively unfavored underdog in the 2023-2024 NFC Wild Card game...by blowing them out over the course of the first 3 quarters for the game.
Cowboy fans are usually perceived as being annoying by other fanbases due to their tendency to ride on their past successes, and their tendency to have blind loyalty and always think that any given year is their year despite all evidence to the contrary. However, as someone who shares these beliefs - in good fun, mind you - I genuinely feel sorry for them at this point, and they are finally starting to "get it" that Jerry is an issue.
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Comment on Dallas Cowboys are trading three-time All-Pro LB Micah Parsons to the Green Bay Packers in ~sports.american_football
Lexinonymous LinkWow. Unless there's something he knows that we don't, Jerry botched this one big time.Parsons and the Packers already have reached agreement on a four-year, $188 million contract.
Wow. Unless there's something he knows that we don't, Jerry botched this one big time.
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Dallas Cowboys are trading three-time All-Pro LB Micah Parsons to the Green Bay Packers
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Comment on Spotify is adding direct messaging to their music streaming app in ~tech
Lexinonymous Link ParentApologies. I freely admit that I might be massively wrong and Spotify is holding some sort of high card here. I don't see it, but I also let my Spotify subscription lapse years ago for YouTube...I think that's leaning into too rigid of terms.
Apologies. I freely admit that I might be massively wrong and Spotify is holding some sort of high card here. I don't see it, but I also let my Spotify subscription lapse years ago for YouTube Premium, so I don't have a ton of skin in the game either.
An analogy people on this site may better understand is Steam. Is Steam a "social media"? Kinda, but I don't think it's trying to be the "Facebook of Gaming" either (if nothing else, it predates Facebook).
That's an interesting comparison. In my experience, Steam used to be a lot more active, but Discord seems to have stolen a lot of Steam's thunder from a social media point of view. The activity of my PSN and Xbox Live friendgroups also fell off a cliff around the same time.
My hunch is that Discord did this by offering a more widely accessible and flexible product that didn't hyper-focus on one specific platform. If we're analogizing, this would make Spotify more similar to Steam/XBL/PSN's position than Discord's.
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Comment on Spotify is adding direct messaging to their music streaming app in ~tech
Lexinonymous Link ParentSure, I'm open to the idea that I could be massively wrong and Spotify is holding some sort of high card that would cause it to be the hip new place to hang out. I don't see it, but I also have no...Sure, I'm open to the idea that I could be massively wrong and Spotify is holding some sort of high card that would cause it to be the hip new place to hang out.
I don't see it, but I also have no skin in the game. We shall see.
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Comment on Spotify is adding direct messaging to their music streaming app in ~tech
Lexinonymous Link ParentI suppose I just don't see the utility of a social media site that leans so heavily on its music catalog when you can share music on other platforms already. It feels to me like attempt to be "the...All of which have integrated messaging while letting people share videos and pictures (and songs associated with them) via DM.
I suppose I just don't see the utility of a social media site that leans so heavily on its music catalog when you can share music on other platforms already. It feels to me like attempt to be "the Facebook of music" or something similar from a decade ago.
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Comment on Spotify is adding direct messaging to their music streaming app in ~tech
Lexinonymous (edited )Link ParentMusic is only one part of a larger social experience. When I want to share my music, I post a link to it in the group chat or #music channel of an existing social media site. This is a not-just-me...Music is only one part of a larger social experience. When I want to share my music, I post a link to it in the group chat or
#musicchannel of an existing social media site. This is a not-just-me observation, this is how I see music engaged with in social places on the internet in general.I can't imagine the need for a social network that is centered around music, it has a real "The Facebook of <blank>" energy from a decade ago. Either give us the API's that allow us to surface this on other platforms (which is already possible) or I suppose nobody will know what I'm listening to at a particular moment, which gets a shrug and an "Oh Well" from me.
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Comment on Should C be mandatory learning for career developers? in ~comp
Lexinonymous LinkFor me it's very simple - at some point, on any modern computing device, a stack trace will more likely than not cross a C ABI boundary at some point. Even in my web developer days, sometimes I...For me it's very simple - at some point, on any modern computing device, a stack trace will more likely than not cross a C ABI boundary at some point. Even in my web developer days, sometimes I had to cross that boundary to figure out things like the behavior of the webserver I was working with.
For me, learning C had the best effort to reward ratio of anything I've learned in my 20+ year career. It's probably not required, and you certainly don't have to love it (or even like it) but I'd highly recommend it to anyone who cares about their craft.
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Comment on Adventures in state space in ~comp
Lexinonymous LinkThe conceit of this entire video is a visualization of the state space of the Klotski sliding tile puzzle. I don't think there are any particularly deep insights in this video necessarily, but the...The conceit of this entire video is a visualization of the state space of the Klotski sliding tile puzzle.
I don't think there are any particularly deep insights in this video necessarily, but the visualization itself, along with pointing out which states various parts of it represent, is one of the coolest things I've seen in recent memory.
Also, right before I submitted this video, I noticed that it reminded me of another recent visualization of lambda calculus. The video is here - What is PLUS times PLUS and as it turns out, it's from the same author.
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Adventures in state space
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I already contribute to open source, and I do it with both eyes open.
I wish more people would understand what they're giving away when they do, and think very carefully about what they're giving away before starting a greenfield project with a permissive license.