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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • That’s most of what we do today.

    Every web app you use right now - which is most of your day for most users - is just a dumb terminal UI hitting some API on some foreign computer.

    Plan 9 uses the file system as a way of interacting with apis. Linux took this idea directly by copying in the/proc filesystem from 9, which are not bytes on a disk but are instead the kernel presenting its running processes in the format of files and directories in your file namespace, and with which you can interact to control those processes.

    It also took this idea and created FUSE - file systems in user space - so that you can do the same thing on Linux as a user, but with not quite the same ease you have on plan 9 - and notably, fuse file systems are not naturally network file systems, and so you can’t export them as easily to the network as you can with nine machines, where it’s implicit.

    Last, Linux took the idea of per-process namespaces from 9, setting the stage for all of the docker, snap, etc. tools we use today.

    In short, a lot of nine already is mainstream because it’s been adopted by Linux. However, using plan 9 and then returning back to Linux feels like putting on bulky gloves, because Linux did not start with these concepts in mind, but bolted them on after.

    /Tinyrant


  • I absolutely loved my apartment, but I pulled myself out of it because it was just far too much money and I knew that nearly all of that money was going into a hole.

    Lived with a buddy for 2 years to save up a down payment, and got a house that’s nice - but honestly the renovation bit that I couldn’t do with an apartment that I really like is that I put solar panels on it. I wouldn’t have that option if I was still in my apartment.

    And of course I pay people to mow the lawn, so some money still goes in a hole for sure, as it is with paying mortgage interest. But I have way more control now over how much, and whenever I plan to move I can trade a lot of that money going into the mortgage for wherever I go next, or pass it on.





  • From one of the admins:

    To the people who are like “What did you expect to happen when you picked a .af domain, are you idiots?”

    Yes, we were aware of the possibility of suspension from the start Yes, we were aware that political circumstances could change But thumbing your nose at conservative autocrats as an even minor form of protest is fun In the end pretty much everyone has migrated out successfully (and I’ll continue to help anyone who remains) We’ve all gotten a fun story out of this

    I’ve been signalling the probable demise of queer.af to my followers for the past year. We knew the end was coming; we just anticipated it to take a little longer

    So long; it was fun while it lasted.




  • It’s convenient. Can’t hurt to get used to it, for sure, in that it’s useful to not have to go through dependency hell installing things sometimes. It’s based on kernel features I don’t see Linus pulling out, so I think you’ll only see it more.

    As someone who runs nix-only at home, I mostly use its underlying tech in the form of snaps/flatpaks, though. I use docker itself at work constantly, but at home, snaps/flatpaks tend to do the “minimize thinking about dependencies and building” bit but in a workflow more convenient for desktop applications.




  • marzhall@lemmy.worldtoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldthis AI thing
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    11 months ago

    Lol, the AI effect in practice - the minute a computer can do it, it’s no longer intelligence.

    A year ago if you had told me you had a computer program that could write greentexts compellingly, I would have told you that required “true” AI. But now, eh.

    In any case, LLMs are clearly short of the “SuPeR BeInG” that the term “AI” seems to make some people think of and that you get all these Boomer stories about, and what we’ve got now definitely isn’t that.