Adrian Cochrane @alcinnz@floss.social

"As projects get older, they tend to move away from the benevolent dictatorship model and toward more openly democratic systems. This is not necessarily out of dissatisfaction with a particular BD. It's simply that group-based governance is more "evolutionarily stable", to borrow a biological metaphor. Whenever a benevolent dictator steps down, or attempts to spread decision-making responsibility more evenly, it is an opportunity for the group to settle on a new, non-dictatorial system — establish a constitution, as it were. The group may not take this opportunity the first time, or the second, but eventually they will; once they do, the decision is unlikely ever to be reversed. Common sense explains why: if a group of N people were to vest one person with special power, it would mean that N - 1 people were each agreeing to decrease their individual influence. People usually don't want to do that. Even if they did, the resulting dictatorship would still be conditional: the group anointed the BD, clearly the group could depose the BD. Therefore, once a project has moved from leadership by a charismatic individual to a more formal, group-based system, it rarely moves back."

https://producingoss.com/en/consensus-democracy.html

**Adrian Cochrane** @alcinnz · Jul 01, 2018, 19:34

**Adrian Cochrane** @alcinnz · Jul 01, 2018, 19:34

These features are especially useful for generating images & sound.

**Adrian Cochrane** @alcinnz · Jul 01, 2018, 19:32

**Adrian Cochrane** @alcinnz · Jul 01, 2018, 19:32

Using the long arithmetic-based approach makes some interesting features cheap to add.

1. Subtraction can use the same circuit as addition given some constraints on how we represent negatives. Typically we do so by negating the number bitwising and incrementing.
2. We can segment a fix-sized value into multiple smaller numbers by simply blocking certain carry signals.
3. Since once we sum intermediate values after multiplying, it's cheap to add mult-add & mult-sum.
4. Division gives remainder.

**Adrian Cochrane** · Jul 01, 2018, 19:16

Adrian Cochrane boosted

**emsenn** @emsenn@mastodon.social · Jul 01, 2018, 19:16

If I say "tissue" instead of Kleenex, people know what I mean.

If I say "microblog" instead of "Twitter", people don't know what I mean.

I'm have no issue with Kleenex's brand ubiquity, however, I view Twitter's as highly problematic.

**Adrian Cochrane** @alcinnz · Jul 01, 2018, 19:14

**Adrian Cochrane** @alcinnz · Jul 01, 2018, 19:14

A simple technique to implement math in a purely functional language is to teach the computer "a number is either 0 or x+1, addition is repeated incrementing, subtraction is repeated decrementing, multiplication is repeated addition, etc."

The technique used in hardware is to use what amounts to the long addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division you learnt in school. But famously it operates in base 2, so it has different addition, multiplication, & subtraction tables.

**Adrian Cochrane** · Jul 01, 2018, 18:37

Adrian Cochrane boosted

**Davy Mitchell** @daftspaniel@linuxrocks.online · Jul 01, 2018, 18:37

Building Tkinter/Python app as an experiment. Good fun and a big change from web dev.

**Adrian Cochrane** · Jul 01, 2018, 18:16

Adrian Cochrane boosted

**Strypey (was at Quitter.se)** @strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz · Jul 01, 2018, 18:16

@njoseph the $ cost is not the major barrier. I have a friend who can do email and FB, but thinks a wiki with a WYSIWYG editor requires a "tech whiz" to operate (their words). Geeks tend to heavily under-appreciate how much experience-based knowledge we hold, and how complicated learning new digital tools and processes is for most people

**Adrian Cochrane** · Jul 01, 2018, 18:19

Adrian Cochrane boosted

**Strypey (was at Quitter.se)** @strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz · Jul 01, 2018, 18:19

@njoseph IMHO breaking folks out of the #DataFarms requires every geek to set up a VPS (or box-in-the-closet) for their tribe (150 closest family and friends), and actively trained anyone keen to learn how to do the same; #CommunityHosting more so than #SelfHosting

**Adrian Cochrane** · Jul 01, 2018, 12:15

Adrian Cochrane boosted

**Christopher Rozruch** @krozruch@ppp.marginalie.eu · Jul 01, 2018, 12:15

@switchingsocial Also, I should do this more myself, but readers with e-books looking into DRM etc. ought to try to contact any small publishers they know (and [would] support) to discuss the example of, for example, Verso, and others (like Tor?) who support Creative Commons and the like. They may not know there is a market, and indeed, it may at times appear contra-intuitive to them that this may help them find an enthusiastic audience.

**Adrian Cochrane** · Jul 01, 2018, 12:36

Adrian Cochrane boosted

**Joseph Nuthalapati** @njoseph@social.masto.host · Jul 01, 2018, 12:36

All it costs to fulfill the average person's needs for digital services is a $5 per month VPS instance. It's even cheaper if you buy a single board computer and host your services at home.

We've been letting companies steal our personal data and sell it to the highest bidder and destroying democracy in the process all to save what? A coffee a month?

This is one of the worst deals in history.

#privacy #selfhosting

**Adrian Cochrane** · Jul 01, 2018, 17:54

Adrian Cochrane boosted

**Christian Bundy** @christianbundy@social.coop · Jul 01, 2018, 17:54

just cancelled #netflix and I feel great

**Adrian Cochrane** · Jun 30, 2018, 19:59

Adrian Cochrane boosted

**switching.social** @switchingsocial@mastodon.at · Jun 30, 2018, 19:59

The #bookshop kobo.com sells lots of non-DRM eBooks! :blobaww:

However, they also sell lots of DRM eBooks, all mixed together with the non-DRM, and no filter to sort them out :blobcry:

This makes it very difficult to look for non-DRM books on #Kobo.

So, to solve this problem switching.social presents the Unofficial Kobo Search page, which lets you find non-DRM books available on your country's Kobo site:

https://switching.social/unofficial-kobo-search/

Any feedback very welcome.

#eBook #eBooks #Books #DRM

**Adrian Cochrane** · Jul 01, 2018, 15:50

Adrian Cochrane boosted

**Electronic Frontier Foundation** @eff@mastodon.social · Jul 01, 2018, 15:50

EFF's @sheeyahshee notes that privacy concerns reach "across the ideological spectrum," and that "Young people are decidedly not OK with state...or corporate-sponsored surveillance." https://www.wired.com/story/data-privacy-wins-carpenter-location-sharing/

**Adrian Cochrane** · Jul 01, 2018, 15:47

Adrian Cochrane boosted

**Workplace Eugen** @eugen.rochko@puri.sm · Jul 01, 2018, 15:47

:purism: Purism

**Adrian Cochrane** · Jul 01, 2018, 09:09

Adrian Cochrane boosted

**Vi Jay Suskind** @tuxether · Jul 01, 2018, 09:09

Re-doing the UI for anancus in bulma.io for minimizing javascript. Should definitely make a better UI this time.

**Adrian Cochrane** · Jun 30, 2018, 23:47

Adrian Cochrane boosted

h @h@social.coop · Jun 30, 2018, 23:47

@mike_hales @mako

Free Software needs many things, such as a focus on diversity, a more deliberate way to fund itself without depending on corporatism, and increased interest in other human factors like accessibility.

I believe that coops can be helpful to deliver improvements on those fronts.

Older