Andy Valencia @vandys@mastodon.sdf.org

Thanks to various expressions of interest & support, I've freshened my old ForthOS. It builds its own GDT/IDT, has a proper RTC handler, and all I/O is interrupt based (previously it was a polled system). On qemu it no longer pegs the host CPU at 100%. It's still free, open source, and so forth. Try the new image disk image (source included):

http://sources.vsta.org/forthos/bochs/

@tindall In fact, profound complexity creates a huge moat around software which intends to be open to open source participation. Firefox OS suffered from this, as does Firefox itself, along with projects like ubports. Most enthusiasts--even those with a lot of SW experience--are hard pressed to climb the mountains of complexity (usually barely documented) to understand enough about the system to contribute meaningful changes.

Unbounded complexity might be the defining challenge in SW.

COVID-19 is weakening, could die out without vaccine, specialist claims

"It was like an aggressive tiger in March and April, but now it's like a wild cat." Even elderly patients – who a few months ago would have died – "are sitting up in bed, and breathing without help."

https://www.jpost.com/health-science/covid-19-is-weakening-could-die-out-without-vaccine-specialist-claims-632324

We actually have TWO pandemics running. A virus, and a first-of-its-kind social pandemic. Like most new epidemics, a lack of resistance makes it very dangerous.

Global social media, amplified by algos optimizing for engagement, make it spread like crazy. Lockdown slowed the virus but amplified these effects.

The result is skewed decision making, resulting in self-destructive behavior. Please consider a two-week "lock down" break from social media.

I don't understand how even a rough approximation of vi's notion of "marking" a location in a file so you can jump right back to it hasn't been adopted by every other editor in the world. Heck, even in non-editing contexts, it would be amazing. I would kill to be able to mark and jump between browser tabs, and between points in webpages. Why is this not a thing?

The MUF actually got high enough that I made a contact on 15 meters - to South America even! Idk if all hams know about this site but it tells you the highest frequency likely to produce ionospheric propagation at 3000km. Very helpful for seeing which bands are "open"

http://prop.kc2g.com

An essential resource for any serious software developer... https://ohshitgit.com/

A friendly reminder

I kind of wish there were a way to post to the local timeline, but not to federated. (But still to my followers, and still public; sort of like a combination of public and unlisted.)

#Mastodon

The Great Affordability Crisis Breaking America

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/the-great-affordability-crisis-breaking-america/ar-BBZKHPt?li=BBnbfcN

Well worth a read, this!

“Decentralised SMTP Is For The Greater Good”

https://kevq.uk/decentralised-smtp-is-for-the-greater-good/

Topic 1: IM NG

Historically, XMPP messages were routed to only one receiving device. That may be the device with the highest priority, or a particular device identified by the resourcepart of the jid (eg. vanitasvitae@jabberhead.tk/phone is a phone).

To improve the user experience in modern multi client scenarios, extension protocols like Carbon Copies and Message Archive Management were introduced to adjust the message routing to changed user expectations.

You should update your Firefox. Right now.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/security/advisories/mfsa2020-03/

#firefox #vulnerability

My wife's Folk/Celtic radio show, latest episode:

http://foresthalls.org/wordpress/?p=3373

Play it on-demand:

http://archive.voiceofvashon.org