njoseph :fbx:

FreedomBox core developer. Long-time Debian user and occasional contributor. Likes functional programming.

Develops proprietary SaaS software 5 days a week to survive under late-stage capitalism.

This account might post/boost things that you might find depressing, with CW most of the time.

#Privacy #FreeSoftware #FreedomBox #SelfHosting #SmallTech #nobot #nobridge

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npub13zc68nj26jz0fvuemtswhqvrzgrumjjnjllwhl8w7elsclxud0tsrvt3kn

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njoseph@social-masto-host.mostr.pub

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nprofile1qqsg3vdree9dfp85kwva4c8tsxp3yp7deffe0lhtlnh0vlcv0nwxh4c49wzfp

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Last Notes

2025-05-30 04:57:14

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@nprofile…a33k @nprofile…tslx This is good advice.
I maintain my work journal in a TiddlyWiki file. Use what works for you. Sometimes it can just be a comment in the code itself.

2025-03-27 11:19:48

LinkedIn is full of people trying to sell you "Agents" for automation of repetitive tasks. There are two problems with this:
1. Automation: LLM-based agents are the most inefficient way of automating anything.
2. Repetitive tasks: You don't want a fundamentally non-deterministic thing doing repetitive tasks and failing in unique new ways.

2025-02-07 07:43:27

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@nprofile…dewn Did you just accidentally invent the quantum computing version of Copilot? Even more uncertainty, even more energy usage so seems like it might take off.

2025-01-18 21:55:31

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@nprofile…m8mr There is no good technical reason why the community version of Synapse should not include the worker implemented in Rust. A smaller, resource constrained server, such as a single board computer with 2 GB memory would benefit from a more efficient implementation.
Element seems to be adopting the open-core business model like GitLab. I don't blame them for this; they did mention funding problems recently, but the arguments and analogies in the article don't make sense.

2025-01-08 06:03:52

Centralization is an explicit act of taking power. Decentralization is a reactionary act of redistributing it.
One can refuse to play these power games.
It is possible to start from a position of not craving power. Building peer-to-peer solutions in the commons.
#commons #powerDynamics #p2p

2025-01-05 05:41:29

What's Your Least Favourite Programming Language? (2024 soundcheck question) - Computerphile
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03lRzf7iSiU
My least favorite programming language is Go. It is the most condescending, cynically designed language that punishes cleverness and rewards mediocrity. Also, any ideas from functional programming are strongly discouraged.
Not tagging, because that will set loose a mob of gophers on me.

2024-10-08 23:36:06

Raku can be a good replacement for AWK.
Example: Strip out the timestamps from a podcast transcript (or subtitles)
A file with lines like this
"[00:00:25.680 --> 00:00:28.360] We hope you enjoy this conversation."
cat transcript.txt | cut -d']' -f2 | raku -pe '.=trim'
The same in AWK
cat transcript.txt | cut -d']' -f2 | awk '{$1=$1;}1'
The word 'trim' is a lot easier to remember than GNU AWK's weird behavior with assignment. This is also easier than using `sed s/^\s*//`.
#RakuLang #awk

2024-09-29 14:28:19

I attended a 2-hour course on Rust by Lars Wirzenius @npub18et…m5kt yesterday. Here is a post about it on my link-blog.
Free Rust training to FOSS programmers
https://njoseph.me/shaarli/shaare/MxTpmQ
#RustLang

2024-09-18 10:45:02

I am mentally preparing myself for when Mozilla will announce that they have joined Truth Social and started sending donations to Trump.
I was quite forgiving of Mozilla's many bad decisions over the years, but shutting down their Mastodon instance breaks the proverbial camel's back.
How is this a hard decision and not a political statement? You have millions of dollars to burn on useless crap. Can get an instance from masto.host if you don't have the staff to maintain it.

2024-09-09 07:03:52

So much complaining on the fediverse about a Firefox Labs feature on a nightly build, when most Labs features don't make it into the final product. But I think the complaining is warranted to prevent the features from making it into the final product.
Also, from Mozilla's perspective this doesn't hurt their climate goals, since the carbon consumed by third-party servers won't go into their carbon accounting. Maybe if they offered a Llama 70B model like DuckDuckGo does, but they don't.

2024-09-09 07:03:52

2024-08-26 06:20:24

A lot of malicious software is being made these days, sometimes by the biggest tech companies in the world, but the word "malware" isn't being used to describe it anymore.
Most proprietary software these days has a bit of maliciousness baked in, so has it become too common to deserve a special term? Is "malware" a term from the innocent times?
Similarly, "spyware". All Big Tech companies make spyware, no exceptions.
We need these terms back in mainstream tech reporting.
#malware #spyware

2024-08-18 17:38:41

I maintain an Android app that doesn't get any new features. I still have to keep upgrading it once in a while. The amount of deprecations I have to deal with is crazy. It takes a day each time I touch the app to just get it working with the latest Android Studio. I am not even fixing any bugs or adding features. All this running just to stay in the same place.
Now ask me if I will consider using cloud platform services from the same company that's responsible for Android.

2024-07-19 21:50:56

Please help with packaging Helix editor for Debian.
Debian bug: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1024683
TODO list: https://salsa.debian.org/debian/hx/-/blob/debian/latest/debian/TODO
#Debian #HelixEditor #RustLang

2024-05-10 15:08:32

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@npub1m9m…rl3e Though I appreciate having a minimal package, I think naming the packages the other way round would be less confusing to existing users - keepassxc-minimal and keepassxc.

2024-05-03 09:29:59

Magit is one of the "killer apps" of emacs, which one might miss when using a different editor. Helix editor in my case.
gitu is a Git porelain offered in the form of a TUI app with keybindings similar to magit. It's still in active development. I've installed it using cargo for now.
https://github.com/altsem/gitu
#Rust #Magit #Emacs #Git #gitu #HelixEditor

2024-03-20 19:37:50

FLOSS Weekly Episode 774: Let’s Get Rusty
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/13/floss-weekly-episode-774-lets-get-rusty/
I listened to this episode twice. The book mentioned is available on the O'Reilly Learning platform. I went through the first tutorial "flappy dragon" already.
LibreQoS project is quite interesting. I restart my router once every month due to buffer bloat. It's great to see that there is a real solution to this problem and it is free software.
#podcast #rust #bufferBloat

2024-03-08 08:51:27

Though I'm glad to see some old C programs being rewritten in Rust, it seems like a step backwards for software freedom to license the new Rust programs permissively (i.e. MIT license) when the old C programs were licensed under the GPL.

2024-02-08 21:16:01

There is an F-Droid app that lets you capture your current location in terms of latitude and longitude. The coordinates can then be converted into a URL that can be opened with Google Maps or OpenStreetMaps.
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/ca.cmetcalfe.locationshare/
This is quite helpful to either share your current location or store a location which is not mapped yet.
There are many apps to continuously track your location but I found only one to statically capture your current location.
#FDroid #LocationSharing #AndroidApp

2023-09-04 06:02:41

Met the developer of https://internetshutdowns.in at DebCamp. #DebConf23

2023-06-28 04:16:36

The people who are seen as the winners under capitalism are constantly depressed and taking illegal drugs. 😐
https://www.wsj.com/articles/silicon-valley-microdosing-ketamine-lsd-magic-mushrooms-d381e214?mod=djemalertNEWS

2023-06-05 05:30:12

Some things are just easier to understand when Cory Doctorow explains them.
Pluralistic: The long lineage of private equity's looting (02 June 2023)
https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/
My favorite lines from the essay:
"The banality of evil gets even more banal when it's done in service to maximizing shareholder value."
"The crimes that monsters commit in the name of ideology pale in comparison to the crimes the wealthy commit for money."

2023-04-05 19:31:38

The original Luddites had mechanical looms to smash. How can a Luddite software engineer smash GitHub Co-pilot? :blobthink:

2021-02-26 05:06:24

Cloud computing is like factory farming for servers.
My home server is a pet.
#selfHosting