zykotick9 zykotick9@datamost.com

In sane environments, that's up to the user. And in sane programs, that's derived from the environment.

Too bad there's so much insanity in both areas... 😕

Here's my public safety announcement: Have you backed up today?

I just realized that my APT repository for Linux-libre is 9 years old this month. https://jxself.org/linux-libre/

I'd like to thank someone -- who asked to stay anonymous -- with donating 2 build servers for Linux-libre. You know who you are.

Seattle enters 2020: https://jxself.org/New_Years_at_the_Needle.webm

Sadly, the windy weather made it unsafe to shoot off the fireworks that were set up to go along with the light display.

I'm afraid you'll just have to imagine fireworks shooting off from the Space Needle in coordination with the lights and music.

Airline ticket obtained for the trip to LibrePlanet in March.

When the Incompatible Timesharing System crashes. If only our error messages were this good these days.

LEVEL 2 BUGHALT. FIND A WIZARD OR CONSIDER TAKING A CRASH DUMP. THE SYSTEM HAS CRASHED AND CANNOT BE REVIVED WITHOUT EXPERT ATTENTION. IF YOU CAN'T FIND HELP, RELOAD THE SYSTEM. YOU ARE NOW IN DDT.

Hooray; I have registered for the FSF's yearly LibrePlanet conference in March. I plan to arrange another of those unofficial pre-conference dinners consisting of an informal dinner and drinks for people who are in town on the Thursday night before LibrePlanet.

Slavery never went away! 😅

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2019 October 9

Explanation: Is this galaxy jumping through a giant ring of stars? Probably not. Although the precise dynamics behind the featured image is yet unclear, what is clear is that the pictured galaxy, NGC 7714, has been stretched and distorted by a recent collision with a neighboring galaxy. This smaller neighbor, NGC 7715, situated off to the left of the featured frame, is thought to have charged right through NGC 7714. Observations indicate that the golden ring pictured is composed of millions of older Sun-like stars that are likely co-moving with the interior bluer stars. In contrast, the bright center of NGC 7714 appears to be undergoing a burst of new star formation. The featured image was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. NGC 7714 is located about 130 million light years away toward the constellation of the Two Fish (Pisces). The interactions between these galaxies likely started about 150 million years ago and should continue for several hundred million years more, after which a single central galaxy may result.

I have found that I really agree with the ethical and social issues that RMS brings up in his talks about free software. I've renewed my FSF membership with $1,000 ($500 from me and $500 as an employer match.) I really like that I can donate to the FSF and my employer will match it. I sent an email to the FSF saying my expectation is that they will stay true to the way RMS has led it over these years. I intend to continue to be supportive of the FSF for as long as that remains true.

No. 5 is alive!

My good friend Damien Zammit has ported CoreBoot to the Lenovo X230T and provided me with one of these machines. I'm super happy with it; it's significantly more powerful than my X200, more cores, more memory, better 3D graphics performance, DisplayPort, USB3, great battery life, better screen, but still very compact. I can compile big Guix packages like qtwebkit in the background while I'm working without any issues. I didn't realise, but the tablet screen is actually a proper Wacom tablet with a pressure-sensitive stylus. Super useful for annotating PDFs, but who knows, even some art?

As a left-handed person it takes care to write without either smearing on either the paper, my hand, or both. Plus, the world is filled with lots of objects useful only to right-handed people. Like scissors. Lefty scissors are impossible to find when you need them. As a child I had to teach myself to use right-handed scissors rather than struggling with backwards scissors that didn't cut properly. They still feel backwards. Oh, the pains that right-handed people will never know...