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95 posts total
Christine Lemmer-Webber

What the fuck, how does @maddy have less followers than me, that makes no sense, the fediverse is trans as fuck and loves Celeste

People, @maddy is *right over there* go follow her

25 Jul 2023 at 22:39 | Open on octodon.social
Christine Lemmer-Webber

Rust dev: "Rust is the most superior systems programming language! If you care about performance, you need Rust. Always replace C with rust."

Me: "Oh okay! Most of the places C has taken off and I've used it is in terms of 'performative code lingua franca' libraries like image rendering, etc. Is Rust good for that?"

Rust dev: "OMG Rust is PERFECT for that! You can get the performance characteristics of C but with the safety you need."

Me: "I like safety. So, this means that from my other languages I can dynamically link to rust code right?"

Rust dev: "OMG, dynamic linking is terrible. The mindset in Rust is: always only statically link."

Me: "So how do you want me to link to the Rust library from my other language?"

Rust dev: "Oh I don't want you to link to the rust library, I want you to rewrite the rest of the program in Rust too!"

Rust dev: "Rust is the most superior systems programming language! If you care about performance, you need Rust. Always replace C with rust."

Me: "Oh okay! Most of the places C has taken off and I've used it is in terms of 'performative code lingua franca' libraries like image rendering, etc. Is Rust good for that?"

13 Jul 2023 at 14:06 | Open on octodon.social
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Elias Mårtenson

@cwebber I'm sorry if you already saw this. But it's so perfect. youtu.be/TGfQu0bQTKc

13 Jul 2023 at 17:35 | Open on functional.cafe
Fanny Matrice

@cwebber Oh! I see you haven't read this suckless.org rant on "dynamic linking considered harmful" 😋

13 Jul 2023 at 17:42 | Open on piaille.fr
Mike

@cwebber your complaints about rust are much more knowledgeable and well thought out than mine are.

13 Jul 2023 at 17:48 | Open on arktos.social
Christine Lemmer-Webber

I was right about ActivityPub even though it was hard to get people to pay attention, I am even more right about Spritely now which is even more revolutionary. Look forward to 10 years from now when I can be grumpily smug about this too.

6 Jul 2023 at 16:19 | Open on octodon.social
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nebunez
@cwebber
If that's what it takes for your cool shit to get acknowledgement, I await your grumpy smugness.

Hopefully before 10 years I'll be working on a project that can use what you're building; like this multiplayer space sandbox game I have an idea for...
6 Jul 2023 at 19:04 | Open on fuzzyroots.net
Ку :emojione_bear:🇧🇬🇪🇺
dansup

@cwebber Your pioneering work is very appreciated, the fediverse literally wouldn’t exist without you!

Spritely is pretty ground breaking, and feels like the Bell Labs of the fedi, in that your innovation is laying the ground work for the future of federation!

I feel so lucky to be a part of this, thank you for all your hard work ❤️

7 Jul 2023 at 7:18 | Open on mastodon.social
Christine Lemmer-Webber

So, fun story. In the middle of ActivityPub's standardization, the Social Web Working Group nearly got shut down because we couldn't get the big corporate players to pay attention to us, and the W3C's membership structure required paid membership participation.

We tried *desperately* to get Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc to look at us. They weren't interested. What I heard was that they had written off the idea that decentralized social networks could exist or work by then.

Luckily, management agreed that the SocialWG's work was interesting enough that we should continue. And later having seen what happened when big players entered a standards group... ActivityPub was probably a better spec for being written by people passionate about it instead.

But anyway. That's all to say... it's so *weird* now to be in the present moment, as you can imagine...

So, fun story. In the middle of ActivityPub's standardization, the Social Web Working Group nearly got shut down because we couldn't get the big corporate players to pay attention to us, and the W3C's membership structure required paid membership participation.

We tried *desperately* to get Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc to look at us. They weren't interested. What I heard was that they had written off the idea that decentralized social networks could exist or work by then.

6 Jul 2023 at 16:10 | Open on octodon.social
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James M.

@cwebber interesting. Yes, it sounds like you avoided the "standards capture" risk that big corporations bring when "contributing" to standards. And the W3C, for all their great work, is flawed IMO for requiring paid membership to contribute. I prefer the IETF model (though admittedly it was decades ago that I worked on standards and for all I know IETF may have changed too).

Anyway, great work on AP!

7 Jul 2023 at 19:13 | Open on sfba.social
183231bcb

@cwebber@octodon.social So speaking as someone who knows absolutely nothing about the W3C process,

Is there a realistic danger that Meta and the others could get the W3C to publish an updated "ActivityPub 2" recommendation that adds a bunch of corporate-friendly stuff?

8 Jul 2023 at 0:09 | Open on calckey.lgbt
Stuart Longland (VK4MSL)

@cwebber All I can say right now, is thank-you to the Social Working Group for sticking it out, and to the W3C for letting them stick it out.

It's hard to argue the working group didn't produce a significant result. This is standing on its own two feet, _without_ "big social".

That gives us the upper ground really, especially if the other players keep shooting themselves in the proverbial foot!

8 Jul 2023 at 6:28 | Open on mastodon.longlandclan.id.au
Christine Lemmer-Webber

An @evan poll is an

Anonymous poll

Poll

Evan Prodromou poll
19
19.2%
Evan Polldromou
40
40.4%
Evan "get me that spiderman!!!" Jonah Jameson poll
40
40.4%
99 people voted.
Voting ended 16 Jun 2023 at 19:41.
15 Jun 2023 at 19:41 | Open on octodon.social
Christine Lemmer-Webber

The origin of the last one is that the first time I saw @evan with a mustache I said "wow, that is quite the mustache" and he said "yeah it's kinda like a J. Jonah Jameson 'get me that spiderman!!!' mustache" and I have never forgotten the hilarious way he said it

15 Jun 2023 at 19:43 | Open on octodon.social
Christine Lemmer-Webber

Please, I don't wanna hear "oops I guess you're right and that was wrong, ChatGPT must have inserted an error when it generated this statement for me" anymore

Accountability is critical in human relationships, it should be critical in our "AI" relationships too, and definitely you can't pass the buck to "well haha we don't consider *that* thing accountable and I used it"

7 Jun 2023 at 15:17 | Open on octodon.social
Christine Lemmer-Webber

Years ago I ran into Gerry Sussman and he said "I'm not interested in that. I want software that's accountable." dustycloud.org/blog/sussman-on

Cheekily he said: "If an AI driven car drives off the side of the road, I want to know why it did that. I could take the software developer to court, but I would much rather take the AI to court."

I've thought a lot about that since. he may have been being cheeky, but he's right: accountability is important to all relationships. We should be designing our systems so that we assume accountability is critical. If you can't hold it accountable, don't act like it's this brilliant thing. Brilliant things are accountable for their actions.

Years ago I ran into Gerry Sussman and he said "I'm not interested in that. I want software that's accountable." dustycloud.org/blog/sussman-on

Cheekily he said: "If an AI driven car drives off the side of the road, I want to know why it did that. I could take the software developer to court, but I would much rather take the AI to court."

7 Jun 2023 at 15:20 | Open on octodon.social
Christine Lemmer-Webber

As someone who really dislikes the mega-containerization approach and has been unhappy about it since Docker came in with a splash about a decade ago, I'm happy to see a pretty well written criticism of the idea that conatiner systems like Flatpak, Docker, etc are doing a good job of making things easier or more secure for users or devs. They aren't. blog.brixit.nl/developers-are-

So here's me speaking favorably about Debian, Arch, Guix, Nix, etc. And all of those can use Guix or Nix as a userspace package manager.

But lord have mercy. Don't use these mega black box systems. You're just accruing a gigabyte sized ball of technical debt for every component in your operating system if you use those.

As someone who really dislikes the mega-containerization approach and has been unhappy about it since Docker came in with a splash about a decade ago, I'm happy to see a pretty well written criticism of the idea that conatiner systems like Flatpak, Docker, etc are doing a good job of making things easier or more secure for users or devs. They aren't. blog.brixit.nl/developers-are-

6 Jun 2023 at 16:55 | Open on octodon.social
Christine Lemmer-Webber

A lot of this stuff got out of hand because Nix and Guix *didn't* exist for a long time, and thus the easiest way to do things was to develop a language-specific package manager which bypassed the underlying distro, but none of those compose, and hence containerization as a way to make things "easier"

6 Jun 2023 at 17:00 | Open on octodon.social
Christine Lemmer-Webber

christine what do you think about bluesky christine what do you think about it

1 May 2023 at 19:38 | Open on octodon.social
Christine Lemmer-Webber

my precise opinion on this matter is *blood begins pouring from every pore of my body and begins filling the room*

1 May 2023 at 19:39 | Open on octodon.social
Christine Lemmer-Webber

Guix (and Mes) have achieved a FULL source bootstrap! This is INCREDIBLE STUFF! guix.gnu.org/blog/2023/the-ful

> We are delighted and somewhat relieved to announce that the third reduction of the Guix bootstrap binaries has now been merged in the main branch of Guix! If you run guix pull today, you get a package graph of more than 22,000 nodes rooted in a 357-byte program—something that had never been achieved, to our knowledge, since the birth of Unix.
>
> We refer to this as the Full-Source Bootstrap.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Guix (and Mes) have achieved a FULL source bootstrap! This is INCREDIBLE STUFF! guix.gnu.org/blog/2023/the-ful

> We are delighted and somewhat relieved to announce that the third reduction of the Guix bootstrap binaries has now been merged in the main branch of Guix! If you run guix pull today, you get a package graph of more than 22,000 nodes rooted in a 357-byte program—something that had never been achieved, to our knowledge, since...

26 Apr 2023 at 14:39 | Open on octodon.social
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aeva

@cwebber Now all you need to do is build your own FPGA from 357 transistors and then not only will your system be immaculate all the way up, it'll also be immaculate all the way down

26 Apr 2023 at 17:15 | Open on mastodon.gamedev.place
Raito Bezarius
Michelle Hughes

@cwebber

What about a bootloader that starts and then kicks off the build, so you don't even need an OS to do the compiling on.

26 Apr 2023 at 19:21 | Open on a2mi.social
Christine Lemmer-Webber

If you or your employer are ever in need of hiring some genius cat girls and can provide a safe and loving work-home for them, please let me know, I always know too many who are absolutely brilliant and I tend to know in which ways and they need work

I am basically a free job recruiting tool in this way

19 Apr 2023 at 12:56 | Open on octodon.social
Indieterminacy

@cwebber Theres a nascent community room regarding the promoting of the #fediverse (no doubt emphasizing its community chops).

matrix.to/#/#fediverse-marketi

Any chance that some of these genius cat girls match their talents with regards to volunteering?

9 Jun 2023 at 15:43 | Open on social.coop
Christine Lemmer-Webber

Trans Day of being a VeryGoodGirl

31 Mar 2023 at 15:56 | Open on octodon.social
Christine Lemmer-Webber
Christine Lemmer-Webber

Kinda wish it was publicly traded still so we could watch the stock tank

30 Mar 2023 at 23:24 | Open on octodon.social
Christine Lemmer-Webber

BTW, if you see ⸮ in my posts, that's because I'm aware I'm making a post that MIGHT NOT BE OBVIOUS that it's humorous or sarcastic to some readers. (I will not always mark my humor/sarcasm.) In other words, it's similar to /s, but a bit broader. And there's a character for it!

Read up on "Irony punctuation"! It has a history! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_pu

7 Mar 2023 at 15:59 | Open on octodon.social
Christine Lemmer-Webber

Which of these worlds sounds best for FOSS:

a) a world where all the projects have clear steps to compiling, participating

b) a world where you trust the developers to compile and put things together from black boxes, don't touch them, the devs know what's best for you

fuck flathub/flatpak/docker as "the way to run FOSS software", go guix and nix and debian

down with "father knows best" architecture

24 Feb 2023 at 16:26 | Open on octodon.social
Mauve 👁💜

@cwebber Just got whiplash imagining a world where I have to compile electron and chromium from source to install a shitty desktop app 🤣

24 Feb 2023 at 17:02 | Open on mastodon.mauve.moe
Christine Lemmer-Webber

OMG! YES! I can finally announce that the one and only @wingo will be leading the Guile -> WASM compilation project we launched at @spritelyinst! spritely.institute/news/andy-w

Note this is in addition to the compiler engineer we're hiring! spritely.institute/jobs/compil

Wingo is not only Guile's maintainer, he's also a major contributor to some of the main javascript engines that power the web! There's nobody who could be more qualified to lead this effort!

OMG! YES! I can finally announce that the one and only @wingo will be leading the Guile -> WASM compilation project we launched at @spritelyinst! spritely.institute/news/andy-w

Note this is in addition to the compiler engineer we're hiring! spritely.institute/jobs/compil

15 Feb 2023 at 16:07 | Open on octodon.social
Christine Lemmer-Webber
Christine Lemmer-Webber

If you're looking for a promising young developer at your organization may I recommend hiring @juliana

22 Dec 2022 at 23:33 | Open on octodon.social
Christine Lemmer-Webber

Reasons why you might hire @juliana :

- She's cool
- She's made contributions to Guix and a few other FOSS projects
- Webassembly to RISC-V compiler internship say what
- She co-hosts a podcast sometimes which is pretty good podcast.librepunk.club/tctc/
- You'd be helping out a smart translady figure out what's next
- I said so, it's a good idea

22 Dec 2022 at 23:42 | Open on octodon.social
Christine Lemmer-Webber

Nevar forget the Quadro Tracker, the device sold to police agencies allegedly able to track anything, which instead of a circuitboard was revealed to just have ants glued to paper with epoxy en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadro_T

1 Dec 2022 at 15:02 | Open on octodon.social
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Carl Andreas Myrland

@cwebber
Who'da thunk Wade L. Quattlebaum, former used car salesman, could be a fraud?

1 Dec 2022 at 15:24 | Open on snabelen.no
Sean Tilley

@cwebber This is one of my favorite crazy stories. Absolutely incredible.

1 Dec 2022 at 15:35 | Open on social.treehouse.systems
Andreas

@cwebber Please remember that the cops still buy quadro tracker styled hoax devices.

They do call them "lie detector" or "polygraph" though.

1 Dec 2022 at 15:36 | Open on mastodon.bawue.social
Christine Lemmer-Webber

Hey! Are you excited about any of #scheme, #guile, #racket, #lisp, #emacs, #guix: express that excitement here! And how did you get excited and into it? Let's have a little fediverse party!

And if you aren't into any of these things YET I will make three suggestions (because you will be!):

- A Scheme Primer (by me, published by my work): spritely.institute/static/pape and its associated video youtube.com/watch?v=DDROSL-gGO share.tube/w/gdtnuipKbbVdR2u1m
- Systems Crafters videos youtube.com/c/systemcrafters
- Sacha Chua's blog: sachachua.com/blog/

Hey! Are you excited about any of #scheme, #guile, #racket, #lisp, #emacs, #guix: express that excitement here! And how did you get excited and into it? Let's have a little fediverse party!

And if you aren't into any of these things YET I will make three suggestions (because you will be!):

- A Scheme Primer (by me, published by my work): spritely.institute/static/pape and its associated video youtube.com/watch?v=DDROSL-gGO share.tube/w/gdtnuipKbbVdR2u1m

30 Nov 2022 at 15:43 | Open on octodon.social
Katherine Cox-Buday

@cwebber A long time ago, in a terminal far away, I was programming in vim when a friend recommended #emacs. I switched and never looked back.

My responsibilities at work outgrew my tooling, and I found #OrgMode and began writing #elisp to help me out. It was awesome so I picked up #CommonLisp (now my favorite).

Found #Guix; Nix ideas with Lisp? Yes.

Now I solve problems with various lisps while people tell me those problems can't be solved.

30 Nov 2022 at 15:59 | Open on mstdn.social
Christine Lemmer-Webber

Hey I've been hearing a lot about ActivityPub could someone please tell me how it works?!?!?!?! THANKS!

24 Nov 2022 at 20:45 | Open on octodon.social
Christine Lemmer-Webber

(okay this maybe is kinda mean)

24 Nov 2022 at 20:46 | Open on octodon.social
Christine Lemmer-Webber

please boost this message across the network as far as you can I think it's really about time someone explained activitypub to me

24 Nov 2022 at 20:54 | Open on octodon.social
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