Software Bookmarks
These links are about the software we use, the design principles to follow. Note that Programming Bookmarks and the Web Bookmarks are separate sections.
​#Software ​#Bookmarks
@akkartik wrote about what he called freewheeling apps:
These are my suggestions. Prefer software with thousands rather than millions of users, that doesn’t change often, that seems to get forked a lot, that can be modified without specialized tools, and, ideally that you can make small changes to. Yourself. In a single afternoon. – Using computers more freely and safely
Using computers more freely and safely
Colours:
relogen is a simple script that generates Regolith color schemes using pywal. – relogen
Regolith is a modern desktop environment designed to let you work faster by reducing unnecessary clutter and ceremony. Built on top of Ubuntu, GNOME, and i3, Regolith stands on a well-supported and consistent foundation. – Regolith
Mind maps:
Freeplane is written in Java using OSGi and Java Swing. It runs on any operating system that has a current version of Java installed.
Daniel Terhorst-North ~~takes down~~ *reviews* a McKinsey article about developer productivity. It talks about having no women on board, about not naming the woman of two important works they refer to, about having no control groups, of having only anecdotal evidence, the real work that programmers do (which is only in small part about typing code), and so on. McKinsey Developer Productivity Review.
McKinsey Developer Productivity Review
How to get started:
Computers are everywhere. They’re in our purses, our offices, our TVs, our hobby-dens, our cars, and our toasters. Many of us spend significant parts of our days operating these machines in the palms of our hands and on our desks or couches. They entertain us and make us laugh. They connect us to family and help us find love. They help us get reports written and make project videos at school. They facilitate our work by crunching numbers, formatting documents, and helping us express our ideas. In a sense, they are extensions of our brains. But many of us could be getting more out of our computers. This book will show you how. – Digital Superpowers 2.0
Maintenance, or not:
The linking project’s code is provided as-is, and is not actively maintained. – No Maintenance Intended
Cold-blooded software:
You can freeze it for a year and then pick it back up right where you left off. A cold-blooded project uses boring technology. The build and test scripts don’t depend on external services that might change, break, or disappear entirely. It uses vendored dependencies. – Cold-blooded software
Visualization, text user-interface:
VisiData is a free, open-source tool that lets you quickly open, explore, summarize, and analyze datasets in your computer’s terminal. VisiData works with CSV files, Excel spreadsheets, SQL databases, and many other data sources. – An Introduction to VisiData
Users and software:
*Breathe out, it’s just fucking computers*, and there’s only so much I can do to make it easier for users to swallow the fact that management wanted to replace human interactions with software that they don’t want to use. – Nobody wants to use any software, by Jane Ruffino
The truth is: I don’t want to use a product at all. The ideal user experience is that I reach my goal without doing any work. The original user story format reminded us of this by staying focused purely on the goal. Task-oriented user stories replaced the goal with the work: all downside without any of the benefits. – As a user, I don’t want to, by Pavel Samsonov
Nobody wants to use any software
It's not quite a tradewar but a kind of boycott?
We help you find European alternatives for digital service and products, like cloud services and SaaS [software as a service] products. – European Alternatives
The enemies of free software:
Since its inception, Facebook have been very careful to kill every competition. The easiest way of doing it being by buying companies that could, one day, become competitors. Instagram, WhatsApp to name a few, were bought only because their product attracted users and could cast a shadow on Facebook. … Google realised that most XMPP interactions were between Google Talk users anyway. They didn’t care about respecting a protocol they were not 100% in control. So they pulled the plug and announced they would not be federated anymore. … In fact, in 1998, Microsoft engineer Vinod Vallopllil explicitly wrote a text titled "Blunting OSS attacks" where he suggested to "de-commoditize protocols & applications […]. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS project’s entry into the market." – How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse), by @ploum@mamot.fr
How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse)
The software bro world:
I shouldn’t have to understand the business models of every little icon on my stupid pocket supercomputer to get through life! … I had moved to Pocket after Instapaper first changed ownership in 2013 or whatever and I didn’t like the new owners, and I also can’t go back to Pinboard because while I used to love that dude’s writing he’s turned into a transphobic asshole crank so fuck him, but like, why do I even know that?? Why do I know what Maciej thinks?? Why do I know that DHH is a fucking creep and a weirdo which is why I will never pay for their email service which otherwise seems pretty cool, why do I know that Brave is the homophobic browser in bed with cryptocurrency bros, why do I know that the Kagi dude thinks adding suicide prevention hotlines to search results for “how to kill yourself” is censorship, why do I know about Matt Mullendweeb’s entire existence?? The modern world is unbelievably stupid, and if you don’t pay attention to the stupidity when something bad happens someone shows up in your notifications all like, well what did you expect. I expect you to fuck off!! – modernity is stupid: a rant not about politics, by @phire@phire.place
modernity is stupid: a rant not about politics
No colour in terminal output:
Command-line software which adds ANSI color to its output by default should check for a NO_COLOR environment variable that, when present and not an empty string (regardless of its value), prevents the addition of ANSI color. -- NO_COLOR
Commercial software, apps, updates, and enshittification:
The people running the majority of internet services have used a combination of monopolies and a cartel-like commitment to growth-at-all-costs thinking to make war with the user, turning the customer into something between a lab rat and an unpaid intern, with the goal to juice as much value from the interaction as possible. To be clear, tech has always had an avaricious streak, and it would be naive to suggest otherwise, but this moment feels different. I’m stunned by the extremes tech companies are going to extract value from customers, but also by the insidious way they’ve gradually degraded their products. – Never Forgive Them, by Edward Zitron
@yaxu@post.lurk.org writes about a tech project checklist:
While I’m in the beginnings of a new tech-oriented research project, I’m getting a lot from Ursula Franklin’s “Real World of Technology” lectures, which contain the following checklist for projects … – Ursula Franklin’s tech project checklist, by Alex McLean
Ursula Franklin’s tech project checklist
Switch from push (sending emails) to pull (interested parties fetching updates):
public-inbox implements the sharing of an email inbox via git to
complement or replace traditional mailing lists. Readers may
read via NNTP, IMAP, POP3, Atom feeds or HTML archives.
-- Public Inbox
@bert_hubert@fosstodon.org writes:
We now have the bizarre situation that anyone with any sense can see that America is no longer a reliable partner, and that the entire US business world bows to Trump’s dictatorial will, but we STILL are doing everything we can to transfer entire governments and most of our own businesses to their clouds.
Not only is it scary to have all your data available to US spying, it is also a huge risk for your business/government continuity. From now on, all our business processes can be brought to a halt with the push of a button in the US. And not only will everything then stop, will we ever get our data back? Or are we being held hostage? This is not a theoretical scenario, something like this has already happened.
-- It is no longer safe to move our governments and societies to US clouds
It is no longer safe to move our governments and societies to US clouds
@makeworld@merveilles.town writes:
What are the best ways to send a file today, when common solutions like email or Google Drive are not an option? This page lists a few high quality peer-to-peer options. -- Sending Files
Accessibility matters. The problems blind users encounter are the problems that sighted people like me will encounter later in life. And when the complaints are about complexity, brittleness, lack of testing and lack of backwards compatibility, you know that eventually you’ll get hit.
Now the audio stack kicks in. Is it PipeWire? PulseAudio? Is ALSA enabled? Is the correct fallback sink selected? Is the audio device owned by root? Is the socket exposed to your session? Who knows. – I Want to Love Linux. It Doesn’t Love Me Back: Post 1 – Built for Control, But Not for People
I Want to Love Linux. It Doesn’t Love Me Back: Post 1 – Built for Control, But Not for People
Watch movies using xterm, according to lkh, who saw it on some YouTube video:
Not only does xterm support tektronix and ansi graphics. There's also support for sixel. Add this to your `.Xresources`: `XTerm*decTerminalID: vt340`, run `xrdb .Xresources`, open a new xterm and then do something like `convert <your image file.jpg> -resize 800 sixel:-` or even `mpv --vo=sixel --really-quiet <your movie.m4v>` – so yes, you *can* watch Star Wars on the terminal.
A web app for exercises: Trak Lift, by @jenniferplusplus@hachyderm.io.
Good things about systemd making me think about replacing cron with timers and the like:
The year is 2025 and I’m here to repent. Not only is `systemd` a worthy successor to traditional `init`, but I think that it deserves a defense for what it’s done for the landscape – especially given the hostile reception it initially received (and somehow continues to receive? for some reason?). No software is perfect … but I think that systemd has largely been a success story and proven many dire forecasts wrong (including my own). I was wrong! – systemd has been a complete, utter, unmitigated success, by Tyler Langlois
systemd has been a complete, utter, unmitigated success
Generate a static website for your audio files: A static site generator for audio producers.
A static site generator for audio producers.
When the US comes for one of your islands or some rare minerals in your earth, you had better be prepared. The Cloud Act will be a big problem, but so will be all your credit cards no longer working.
The final point AWS makes - and one no doubt aimed at European rivals trying to exploit the data sovereignty movement - is that the Cloud Act does not only apply to US-headquarterd companies, it is applicable to all "electronic communication service or remote computing service providers" that do business stateside. -- Microsoft admits it 'cannot guarantee' data sovereignty
Microsoft admits it 'cannot guarantee' data sovereignty
doxx is "a viewer for Microsoft Word .docx files in the terminal."
Terminal Trove "curates and showcases all things in the terminal such as command line interface tools (CLI), text mode interface tools (TUI), developer tools and more no matter what platform or medium."
git-bug is a standalone, distributed, offline-first issue management tool that embeds issues, comments, and more as objects in a git repository, enabling you to push and pull them to one or more remotes.
Printers, old school. By @ratfactor@mastodon.art.
I have now achieved the printing capabilities of the 1970s and it’s a huge step…​forward? – Brother Laser Printers and CUPS, Dave Gauer
Brother Laser Printers and CUPS
Hypercard? I never used it but it sounds so intriguing.
Anyone can use Decker to create E-Zines, organize their notes, give presentations, build adventure games, or even just doodle some 1-bit pixel art. The holistic "ditherpunk" aesthetic is cozy, a bit nostalgic, and provides fun and distinctive creative constraints. As a prototyping tool, Decker encourages embracing a sketchy, imperfect approach. Finished decks can be saved as standalone .html documents which self-execute in a web browser and can be shared anywhere you can host or embed a web page. Decker also runs natively on MacOS, Windows, BSD, and Linux. – Decker
How do you determine that an app is phoning home?
OpenSnitch is a GNU/Linux interactive application firewall inspired by Little Snitch. – OpenSnitch
@jack@berlin.social writes:
A curated collection of HCI demo videos produced during the golden age from 1983-2002. -- Classic HCI Demos
Translation:
- Firefox has local translation.
- Kagi Translate, free for non-members.
cleed is a feed reader for the command line.
@andrewnez@mastodon.social writes about the use of git for package management but says the same applies to wikis and similar systems. Git means relying on the file system, which is not great.
The progression is predictable. Start with a flat directory of files. Hit filesystem limits. Implement sharding. Hit cross-platform issues. Build server-side enforcement. Build custom indexes. Eventually give up and use HTTP or an actual database. You’ve built a worse version of what databases already provide, spread across git hooks, CI pipelines, and bespoke tooling. – Package managers keep using git as a database, it never works out by Andrew Nesbitt
Package managers keep using git as a database, it never works out
Perma computing. The text of the guide was written by anna andrejew, @praxeology@post.lurk.org and @latentspace@post.lurk.org based on interviews with @anmeisel@mastodon.social (London Permacomputing Club), @archipielago@mar.archipielago.uno (Middle America Archipiélago I community servers), @colm@post.lurk.org (Wilderland permacomputing group), @cmos4040@post.lurk.org and @decentral1se@varia.zone (rotterdam.permacomputing.net), @praxeology@post.lurk.org (Berlin Permacomputing Meet Up), @michal@biophilicresearch.net (Node9), @sister0@systerserver.town (Autoluminescence Institute), @freebliss@post.lurk.org (permacomputing Vienna), and Steve McLaughlin (Philly permacomputing + solar punk meetups at @iffybooks@post.lurk.org hosted together with Dave Slinger). Copy editing and advice by @l03s@post.lurk.org and @320x200@post.lurk.org. Design for the dedicated website and PDF by @doriane@post.lurk.org with illustrations from @raquelmeyers@post.lurk.org.
brewing collectives. how to start a permacomputing collective
xq formats and highlights XML, but it also allows processing using XPath.
jq formats JSON and allows processing using its own language.
@mhoye@cosocial.ca writes for maintainers:
Access to code is no promise of access to people. This repository is an effort to help developers manage the relationships around their code, particularly with respect to community expectations about communication norms, participation and developer reponsiveness. – Maintenance Terms
@donmccurdy@fosstodon.org writes:
I've been wondering: would open source work better for maintainers if expectations on support were stated up front? The clarity could directly benefit maintainers and users, and studies based on these statements could spark conversations about compensation and business models in open source. … My categorization covers three areas: *Maturity, Development,* and *Support.* … – Healthy expectations in open source, by Don McCurdy
Healthy expectations in open source
DNS Checker to check whether the DNS changes have propagated.
BSD? @mwl@io.mwl.io offers this:
- OpenBSD has more of a learning curb.
- With pkgbase, FreeBSD has some echoes of Debian. The installer is the worst part for new folks.
- NetBSD is minimal, but just works.
- If you want a desktop OS, you might try GhostBSD. It's FreeBSD with friendly installer, defaults, GUI, etc.
Your problem with Vim is that you don't grok vi. A StackOverflow post about editing text with vi.
Your problem with Vim is that you don't grok vi.
Do I need a separate OpenBSD category? Not yet!
- OpenBSD Copyright Policy
- OpenBSD Handbook (I've heard it say that this handbook is not official…)
The Git Commands I Run Before Reading Any Code: Five git commands that tell you where a codebase hurts before you open a single file. Churn hotspots, bus factor, bug clusters, and crisis patterns. By Ally Piechowski.
The Git Commands I Run Before Reading Any Code
To compare Markdown parser implementations, use babelmark3.
Another no-AI fork, this time for KeePass: KeePassχ.
oasis is a small, statically linked Linux. It uses smaller and simpler implementations of libraries and tools whenever possible: musl instead of glibc; sbase instead of coreutils; ubase instead of util-linux; pigz instead of gzip; mandoc instead of man-db; bearssl instead of openssl; oksh instead of bash; sdhcp instead of dhclient or dhcpcd; vis instead of vim or emacs; byacc instead of bison; perp and sinit instead of sysvinit or systemd; netsurf instead of chromium or firefox; samurai instead of ninja; velox instead of Xorg; netbsd-curses instead of ncurses.