Ethan Blanton @elb@mastodon.sdf.org

It looks like a #SDF #Mastodon update at the end of 2021 caused a number of instances from other parts of the #fediverse to lose follower/following status from SDF users. I lost about half of the accounts I was following and a somewhat smaller proportion of followers.

If I was following you, or you were following me, and the connection was lost, it wasn't intentional! Please re-follow or remind me that I used to follow. I'd hate to lose that good #retrocomputing or #floss content!

Relevant: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/06/daycare-apps-are-dangerously-insecure

My kids aren't in day care, but ... same story. This stuff is obviously terrible on the surface of it.

The disgust and disdain I have for text spammers is unreasonable.

Every meaningful message my kids' school sends comes through either a clicktracker or a third-party cloud service with accounts. They literally NEVER just send a plain text email or text message. They'll send a ten word message in the form of a PDF that I have to download through a clicktracker.

I hate it.

#Electron apps are terror on battery life. #Keybase, #Element ( #Matrix ), and #Slack are all huge drains; running all three of those is worth about 10% of my CPU, even if they're all minimized to their little tray icons.

Stop doing this, people!

1970s and #retrocomputing problems:

"You must also know what character to type as the
end-of-line on your particular terminal."

A Tutorial Introduction to the UNIX Text Editor, Brian W. Kernighan

I'm really bad about remembering to unlist replies (particularly when a quick reply turns into a longer thread). I feel like there could be some UI to help with this.

Time to #askfedi -- is there anything like HGKeeper (https://keep.imfreedom.org/grim/hgkeeper/) or the old mercurial-server for #git?

I would like to grant access to specified git repositories, over ssh, using ssh keys for authentication, but without a persistent daemon -- just let ssh handle it.

There's lots of instruction for setting up a more-or-less globally accessible set of repositories using git-shell, but not for access management.

OK, I got it to work by using a different computer, authorizing a different Adobe ID on that computer, and copying _just_ the one book over.

I guess being an affluent, computer-savvy person in a position of privilege allows me to read books in today's world.

#Adobe #DRM is a scourge. I have checked a book out of my University's library, and because I use Free Software, I cannot figure out how to get it onto my reading device. I'm even happy to use Adobe Digital Editions (via Wine or VMware or on a Mac that I have access to), but it seems that I have to de-authorize my _other_ books in order to do that!

It may not look like a lot of work, and it's not its forever home, but my #Teletype Model 35 is at least on the correct level of the house. It required disassembly and reassembly, but now I can move it (eventually) to its permanent home solo. A solid bit of #retrocomputing work completed!

I'm sure it's just ignorance of CL (or maybe quicklisp?), but ... I just don't see documentation for how to unpack this, at least in places that I understand.

(For reference, I'm trying to do things like get M-. working on https://github.com/nibbula/yew/ in lish/)

I'm not saying the documentation is bad, but ... the guideposts for someone new to the ecosystem are hard to find.

2/2

The barrier for getting started with #SLIME and #CommonLisp in #Emacs is really high -- and I'm a very experienced developer, and have even written a moderate amount of Lisp (elisp, scheme, racket, but not CL).

All of the tutorials say "look at how to do these super simple things!" Which is great. But like ... how do I open up a large, existing project, and start exploring? Mostly I get package loading errors when I do that.

1/2

This book suggests that "1,920 character terminals" (that is, 80x24) might display too much data at once and confuse the operator.

That hasn't aged well.

I found an L. Ron Hubbard book on a little free library style shelf on campus, so I refiled it with related works.

When I found out this book existed, it took me approximately 13.28 seconds to order a copy.

I just gave to https://computerhistory.org/ to help support their efforts to keep computer history alive. If you have the means, consider supporting them or one of the other great computer history museums, organizations, or archives!

#retrocomputing #ComputerHistory