I’m going to work that into every conversation I can now. My workplace is theoretically involved in supplying IT functions to a university but mainly seems to employ an army of yak shavers.
I like the term "Yak shaving", however the story told was quite anticlimactic. Yak at a zoo? Really?
Why not go all the way to Tibet. (Acknowledging the exclusive western perspective here. I fail to think of an analogy for the west...)
There is an opportunity missed pointing out the ignored complexity of related implied conditionals (like flying across the globe), which were consequently not exploded onto the described stack. That is, within the narrative. Missed, because the scope of conditional complexity is pretty much arbitrary (point in the reader's resonance); "importance" is mostly a matter of subjective perception merely experienced as rational thoughts. Every egosyntonic thought is experienced as rational.
Internal task prioritization is part of executive functioning and e.g. broken in ADHD (everything feels important). However, it's perceived as consistent with the internal model of reality and not foreign (aka egosyntonic; "rational") no matter the expression and functional applicability.
There is the problem. It's not a question of better thinking or simple rules for analysing a problem, it's a problem asking for an hypervisor, who cares about time management/energy expenditure, not reasonability. For some people an instance can be internalized, or even just works out-of-the-box; for others it needs to be externalized.
"Shaving the Yak" is great. However I often think of the MITM video when in these situations; and personally refer to it as "Hal's Tangent" which has a kind of philosophical/mathematics feel to it.
But have you tried turning off and on the power for at least 5 minutes? There is a known bug that happens with some vendors causing malfunction of the bus, losing power or bricking your device.
Yes, the name is a bit cumbersome. I simply call my operating system "GNU", no need to specify the kernel.
Paired with a neat interface (black xterm on a solid black background without panel nor window decorations), people walk confusedly by my computer and ask: what's that wicked system of yours? And I say: "That's the GNU operating system, man!" It never ceases to cause a stir.
Only almost everything of the programs (ls, grep, bash, gcc, etc). Linux is just the kernel. Stallman lead development of most of the shell environment you use today.
I don't want to diminish rms and gnu's work in progressing software freedom and these programs are of course big contributions to a lot of Linux systems. However, I use i3 instead of gnome, systemd isn't a part of gnu, I also use Firefox instead of Epiphany.
Should I refer to my system as gnu/i3/systemd/Mozilla/Linux?
It's easier to refer to modular systems using the one guaranteed common element, in this case, the kernel. It's not necessary to specify every major user-space program.
You are correct, it is not necessary to specify every major user-space program. But with GNU/Linux, GNU is the operating system. In fact, there have been Linux distros ported to run on *BSD kernels.
It's more like this: the whole OS is GNU (the coreutils), minus the kernel (most of which is device drivers). That's why they do it. Or at least why there are those that are passionate about the naming.
Also the reason why, had 4.3BSD not been in legal limbo, we'd all most likely be using GNU/FreeBSD.
You forgort to mention that the actual reason to call it GNU/Linux is not so much these technical details, but to attract attention to the GNU project and its fight for freedom (while Linux is just "open-source").
Quote:
Granted that the GNU Project deserves credit for this work, is it really worth a fuss when people don't give credit? Isn't the important thing that the job was done, not who did it? You ought to relax, take pride in the job well done, and not worry about the credit.
This would be wise advice, if only the situation were like that—if the job were done and it were time to relax. If only that were true! But challenges abound, and this is no time to take the future for granted. Our community's strength rests on commitment to freedom and cooperation. Using the name GNU/Linux is a way for people to remind themselves and inform others of these goals.
Yes, it's the same reason to say Free Software, or FLO[1] Software, instead of Open Source Software. Technically the definitions are the same, but they have a different political message.
Tbh there’s also the growing real need to specify that you’re talking about a GNU userland. At this point it’s not very rare to see Busybox and the many others that exist mentioned while googling for things.
Conversely, if you get a root shell on an Android device and muck around for a bit, it feels very, very different from your typical Linux desktop or server. (Which only proves your point.)
Why not? Some variants of embedded Linux distros have graphic server (Wayland), init system, libc, and toolset (busybox), in their name. It's faster to sort out irrelevant ones.
what people call "Linux" is much more "GNU" (system tools, commands, shell, system programms, libraries, stadards, conventions) and less "Linux" (only the kernel).
Honestly I think this is probably like 90% of the reason Linux won the naming war to describe open-source Unix-like systems.
You can tell people your startup's web-servers are running on Linux, a new open-source OS written by a guy named Linus, and the conversation stops there, or you can tell them they're running on the guh-nu, or maybe it's just "nu", OS, and depending on which pronunciation you have chosen either start with a bit of the "Who's on first" routine where you try to explain "no, the name of the OS is new" or dive right into explaining that the answer to the question "Well, if guh-new is not Unix, what is it?" is Unix, and in either case your investors have already decided to pass on your company because you made them feel stupid and not in the way that made them think you were smart.
I used Void/musl as the daily driver for a while; but I switched to the GNU libc version as I had to run VirtualBox for my (at the time new) job, and that doesn't work with musl libc (or perhaps it does with some workarounds/chroot/whatnot, but I couldn't be bothered).
There are some other things that won't work out-of-the-box either; such as the whole Widevine thing, or most Linux games from GOG.com.
None of this is musl's fault of course; but in general I found that for me, personally, running Void/musl on the desktop was too much effort with not enough benefit. I'm not a huge fan of GNU's libc, but it does work quite well overall.
I do use Alpine on my servers, and haven't had any issues there.
That's a bit of an exaggeration; Xorg isn't GNU, neither is Firefox, or a lot of other desktop and server applications and programming environments beyond gcc.
It also depends heavily on the machine; if you use GNOME then you've got another big chunk of GNU in there, but in my case the only major part that I actually use frequently is GNU libc, a subset of the GNU coreutils (which I'd very much like to replace with something better by the way), and maybe a few others libraries left or right used by some applications.
But beyond that it's just occasional stuff (GIMP for example).
On my Alpine Linux servers I'm not sure if there's any GNU.
It also depends heavily on the machine; if you use GNOME then you've got another big chunk of GNU in there, but in my case the only major part that I actually use frequently is GNU libc, a subset of the GNU coreutils (which I'd very much like to replace with something better by the way), and maybe a few others libraries left or right used by some applications.
Isn't GNOME independent from GNU nowadays, it has its own foundation?
I'm not sure; it's listed on the GNU website but https://www.gnu.org/software/gnome/ redirects to gnome.org, and I can't find GNU mentioned on gnome.org at all. GNOME also has its own infrastructure. So yeah, any relationship between GNOME, GTK, and associated projects seems very weak at best, if it still exists at all.
Alpine Linux already does it, musl + busybox. Not BSD though. Nowadays I use "GNU/Linux" vs "Linux" to distinguish between an ordinary Linux distro (which comes with gcc, glibcs, coreutils, and all the other tools you expect) vs a minimum or embedded distro or system (OpenWrt, Android, Alpine, etc).
1 said it is ok to use the new light bulb but 350 said no because it is under gpl 3.0
1 said the whole thing using electricity is no good to earth and start to use solar based light system instead, and his web site on how to do got 10,000 comments in HN for commenting not the light bulb, but his using python static site.
(There's more where this is coming from. If you want to help me write a book for ages 5-7 entitled "ed and the awk", I have a first draft and would enjoy sharing it).
After debugging configuration error for last 7 days, where even logs didn't help because manufacturer decided to use reference clock from different pin which was not documented officially to be able to do this - moder IoT sucks, because chip manufacturers release documentation as confidential and then firmware is implemented by hardware guys. As a programmer who can design some simple digital circuits, I could very mean things about HW guys doing SW/Fw, but I can see how much my HW skills suck and how funny my designs look from the other side.
What I’m finding is the components themselves are so cheap ... if you’ve a little knowledge you can rig up your own IOT setup that you actually have control over for pennies. Raspberry Pi is a great place to start.
You are VERY underestimating knowledge required to do this. Most people don't even know what is an ip address (and google wants to even remove url bar). How will they setup a server to control their devices?
I’m not talking most people. I’m saying what little knowledge I have on this topic has saved me hundreds if not thousands on my home setup and I have complete control over it
> In case your Smarter Coffee machine has become stuck while updating, please follow the steps below to manually perform the firmware update...
- Turn product off at the wall.
- Press and hold the 2 left buttons on the control panel.
- Turn the power on at the wall and keep holding the two buttons for 10 seconds.
- The "Update" screen should then appear. (Check this has appeared on the screen, good news if it has!)
- Connect to the "Update" network and wait for it to connect. (Check that the signal bars at the top of the iPhone screen are there, this can take up to 55 seconds)
- Open the Smarter app
- Select "update" firmware either via the 'pop-up' or from the 'About' page
- Select 'next', it will take you to the page where it tells you to connect to update network.
- Close and open the app ONCE.
- Press next
- It should update...
- Once it reaches 100%, the coffee machine screen will say "Loading" while it reboots.
Regarding that burning - my home wood pellet furnace needed software updates after installation to start fully working. Good luck that I had mobile internet available.
> needed software updates after installation to start fully working
Not too bad, at least it's a one-time job, better than some IoT thermostats that crash randomly in winter midnights and freeze everyone to death (figuratively)...
> The Nest Learning Thermostat is dead to me, literally. Last week, my once-beloved “smart” thermostat suffered from a mysterious software bug that drained its battery and sent our home into a chill in the middle of the night.
We recommend counting with Mississippi (1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, 3 Mississippi, etc.).
Start with your bulb off for at least 5 seconds.
Turn on for 8 seconds
Turn off for 2 seconds
Turn on for 8 seconds
Turn off for 2 seconds
Turn on for 8 seconds
Turn off for 2 seconds
Turn on for 8 seconds
Turn off for 2 seconds
Turn on for 8 seconds
Turn off for 2 seconds
Turn on
Bulb will flash on and off 3 times if it has been successfully reset.
TIP: If the factory reset above was unsuccessful, you might have an older version of the C by GE bulb. Please follow the instructions below to reset.
Given the state of modern software, it blows me away that anyone is dumb enough to buy that junk. I work with computers all day, the last thing I want is more of that hassle in my life.
Very insecure to run all your light bulbs in the same user context. I use SELightBulb to isolate light bulb actions. If you add PAM and pam-fingerprint you can require a fingerprint to alter lightbulb state for better security. Advise two-factor unless you really don't care for electricity at all.
> 1 former GNU/Linux user who still frequents the forum, to suggest to install an Apple iBulb, which has a fresh and innovating design and it costs $250.
Well, in this particular case the reality got funnier than the joke.
Hella Nor Cal or Totally So Cal?: The Perceptual Dialectology of California
Mary Bucholtz, Nancy Bermudez, Victor Fung, Lisa Edwards and Rosalva Vargas.
Journal of English Linguistics 2007; 35; 325. DOI: 10.1177/0075424207307780
Abstract
This study provides the first detailed account of perceptual dialectology within California (as well as one of the first accounts of perceptual dialectology within any single state). Quantitative analysis of a map-labeling task carried out in Southern California reveals that California’s most salient linguistic boundary is between the northern and southern regions of the state. Whereas studies of the perceptual dialectology of the United States as a whole have focused almost exclusively on regional dialect differences, respondents associated particular regions of California less with distinctive dialects than with differences in language (English versus Spanish), slang use, and social groups. The diverse socio linguistic situation of California is reflected in the emphasis both on highly salient social groups thought to be stereotypical of California by residents and nonresidents alike (e.g., surfers) and on groups that, though prominent in the cultural landscape of the state, remain largely unrecognized by outsiders (e.g., hicks).
All of `fortune -m Californian` is worth reading (and probably mostly
dated).
(riddles)
%
Q: How many Californians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Five. One to screw in the light bulb and four to share the
experience. (Actually, Californians don't screw in
light bulbs, they screw in hot tubs.)
Q: How many Oregonians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Three. One to screw in the light bulb and two to fend off all
those Californians trying to share the experience.
%
Q: How many mathematicians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: One. He gives it to six Californians, thereby reducing the problem
to the earlier joke.
%
(ethnic)
%
Hear about the Californian terrorist that tried to blow up a bus?
Burned his lips on the exhaust pipe.
%
To a Californian, a person must prove himself criminally insane before he
is allowed to drive a taxi in New York. For New York cabbies, honesty and
stopping at red lights are both optional.
-- From "East vs. West: The War Between the Coasts
%
To a Californian, all New Yorkers are cold; even in heat they rarely go
above fifty-eight degrees. If you collapse on a street in New York, plan
to spend a few days there.
-- From "East vs. West: The War Between the Coasts
%
To a New Yorker, all Californians are blond, even the blacks. There are,
in fact, whole neighborhoods that are zoned only for blond people. The
only way to tell the difference between California and Sweden is that the
Swedes speak better English."
-- From "East vs. West: The War Between the Coasts
What's scary is Hue bulbs are some of the MORE performant of the IoT stuff I have - and work when offline.
That second part is the key - so much stuff is designed "cloud first" and that introduces lots of delays and errors when the Internet isn't working perfectly.
Yup, If you are prepared to crank out some JSON to your Hue hub, you can 100% control them offline. I do this via scripts for my Hue based outside lights. My Hue Hub is blocked from accessing the internet too.
Light bulbs and cars have significant marginal costs that software does not have. Some types of software (operating systems, DB, browsers) also have a network or platform effect, so people actually have an incentive to get other people to use or even improve their software.
Even so, geek themselves are a pretty nice market. Would you not buy an open source printer? I know I hate HP after the last one died just after warranty ended and they have no spare parts whatsoever.
Same with other things. I would buy those things.
And if they really are good they can become a mass market product.
Yet, we only get a phone or something and that's it.
My answer would be: The cost of distributing or running a software package is almost zero, same is not true for hardware, followed by an argument of how hardware manufacturing depends on the economics of scale, unlike software.
However, I soon realized your question is much deeper. It is not "Would you not buy an open source printer?", but "If you can buy an open source phone, would you not buy a printer?" - I think it's a good thought-provoking question. I'm not sure about the answer yet.
183 comments
[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 220 ms ] threadOf course it doesn't end there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbSehcT19u0 (lightbulb scene from Malcolm in the Middle).
Why not go all the way to Tibet. (Acknowledging the exclusive western perspective here. I fail to think of an analogy for the west...)
There is an opportunity missed pointing out the ignored complexity of related implied conditionals (like flying across the globe), which were consequently not exploded onto the described stack. That is, within the narrative. Missed, because the scope of conditional complexity is pretty much arbitrary (point in the reader's resonance); "importance" is mostly a matter of subjective perception merely experienced as rational thoughts. Every egosyntonic thought is experienced as rational.
Internal task prioritization is part of executive functioning and e.g. broken in ADHD (everything feels important). However, it's perceived as consistent with the internal model of reality and not foreign (aka egosyntonic; "rational") no matter the expression and functional applicability.
There is the problem. It's not a question of better thinking or simple rules for analysing a problem, it's a problem asking for an hypervisor, who cares about time management/energy expenditure, not reasonability. For some people an instance can be internalized, or even just works out-of-the-box; for others it needs to be externalized.
But in Hals case he simply discovers other problems and gets distracted, e.g. He could still change the bulb before he fixes the shelf.
/s
Paired with a neat interface (black xterm on a solid black background without panel nor window decorations), people walk confusedly by my computer and ask: what's that wicked system of yours? And I say: "That's the GNU operating system, man!" It never ceases to cause a stir.
(actually, my setup is like I described, but nobody notices)
Linux is a kernel, the rest are just a programs.
Should I refer to my system as gnu/i3/systemd/Mozilla/Linux?
It's easier to refer to modular systems using the one guaranteed common element, in this case, the kernel. It's not necessary to specify every major user-space program.
It's more like this: the whole OS is GNU (the coreutils), minus the kernel (most of which is device drivers). That's why they do it. Or at least why there are those that are passionate about the naming.
Also the reason why, had 4.3BSD not been in legal limbo, we'd all most likely be using GNU/FreeBSD.
Upd: https://www.gnu.org/gnu/why-gnu-linux.html
Quote: Granted that the GNU Project deserves credit for this work, is it really worth a fuss when people don't give credit? Isn't the important thing that the job was done, not who did it? You ought to relax, take pride in the job well done, and not worry about the credit.
This would be wise advice, if only the situation were like that—if the job were done and it were time to relax. If only that were true! But challenges abound, and this is no time to take the future for granted. Our community's strength rests on commitment to freedom and cooperation. Using the name GNU/Linux is a way for people to remind themselves and inform others of these goals.
[1] Acronym for free/libre/open
Including mindbogglingly complex tools such as wc and y.
> most of which is device drivers
Dull stuff that every bootcamp graduate can write.
I think you've captured the essence of why people thing "GNU/Linux" is such a pedantic moniker.
but, it's not. you can use e.g. debian/kFreeBSD or debian/hurd and the actual day-to-day user experience is pretty much exactly the same
Seems a bit of a stretch to say that providing a bunch of command line utilities gives operating system naming rights.
You can tell people your startup's web-servers are running on Linux, a new open-source OS written by a guy named Linus, and the conversation stops there, or you can tell them they're running on the guh-nu, or maybe it's just "nu", OS, and depending on which pronunciation you have chosen either start with a bit of the "Who's on first" routine where you try to explain "no, the name of the OS is new" or dive right into explaining that the answer to the question "Well, if guh-new is not Unix, what is it?" is Unix, and in either case your investors have already decided to pass on your company because you made them feel stupid and not in the way that made them think you were smart.
Android is Linux but not usually gnu-linux as no glibc.
Do any of the major distros use musl or any other libc in a meaningful way?
I'm playing with voidlinux/musl in a virtual machine and it's pretty neat. Just found a couple of non-posix-isms in my programs thanks to that.
I've been considering using Alpine Linux or Void Linux as my main driver, though I haven't had a chance to investigate if it's a viable option.
There are some other things that won't work out-of-the-box either; such as the whole Widevine thing, or most Linux games from GOG.com.
None of this is musl's fault of course; but in general I found that for me, personally, running Void/musl on the desktop was too much effort with not enough benefit. I'm not a huge fan of GNU's libc, but it does work quite well overall.
I do use Alpine on my servers, and haven't had any issues there.
I wonder if switching between musl and glibc makes it change the uname output between Linux and GNU/Linux :)
It also depends heavily on the machine; if you use GNOME then you've got another big chunk of GNU in there, but in my case the only major part that I actually use frequently is GNU libc, a subset of the GNU coreutils (which I'd very much like to replace with something better by the way), and maybe a few others libraries left or right used by some applications.
But beyond that it's just occasional stuff (GIMP for example).
On my Alpine Linux servers I'm not sure if there's any GNU.
Isn't GNOME independent from GNU nowadays, it has its own foundation?
..Ok, I'll get my coat.
Linux runs 20 000 000 notebooks shipped annually (Chromebook).
BSD is kernel and userspace.
GNU is kernel and userspace, but HURD is not ready.
it still cracks me up everytime I read it :D
1 said the whole thing using electricity is no good to earth and start to use solar based light system instead, and his web site on how to do got 10,000 comments in HN for commenting not the light bulb, but his using python static site.
The same user to repeat the above every day OP responds until OP gives up.
4 to resign from their positions as leaders of the mailing list, blaming the daemon for their stress.
Half the community to insist that daemons are against their philosophy.
The other half to argue that it's an improvement on the old days when they had to bash rocks together to start a fire to have light.
One to accidentally try connecting the new lightbulb to a pipe, before realising it doesn't accept stdin.
A vocal 10% of the community to insist that dark mode is better.
A system tester to insist that the room is still light during working hours. Credit where due: https://devhumor.com/media/it-jobs-explained-with-a-broken-l...
(There's more where this is coming from. If you want to help me write a book for ages 5-7 entitled "ed and the awk", I have a first draft and would enjoy sharing it).
> Firmware update in the coffee machine
It isn't funny any more...
> https://support.smarter.am/hc/en-us/articles/115005135369-My...
> In case your Smarter Coffee machine has become stuck while updating, please follow the steps below to manually perform the firmware update...
- Turn product off at the wall.
- Press and hold the 2 left buttons on the control panel.
- Turn the power on at the wall and keep holding the two buttons for 10 seconds.
- The "Update" screen should then appear. (Check this has appeared on the screen, good news if it has!)
- Connect to the "Update" network and wait for it to connect. (Check that the signal bars at the top of the iPhone screen are there, this can take up to 55 seconds)
- Open the Smarter app
- Select "update" firmware either via the 'pop-up' or from the 'About' page
- Select 'next', it will take you to the page where it tells you to connect to update network.
- Close and open the app ONCE.
- Press next
- It should update...
- Once it reaches 100%, the coffee machine screen will say "Loading" while it reboots.
Not too bad, at least it's a one-time job, better than some IoT thermostats that crash randomly in winter midnights and freeze everyone to death (figuratively)...
> https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/fashion/nest-thermostat-g...
> Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold
> The Nest Learning Thermostat is dead to me, literally. Last week, my once-beloved “smart” thermostat suffered from a mysterious software bug that drained its battery and sent our home into a chill in the middle of the night.
Quoted from https://support.gelighting.com/hc/en-us/articles/36001580519...
Bulb Reset Sequence:
We recommend counting with Mississippi (1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, 3 Mississippi, etc.).
Start with your bulb off for at least 5 seconds.
Bulb will flash on and off 3 times if it has been successfully reset.TIP: If the factory reset above was unsuccessful, you might have an older version of the C by GE bulb. Please follow the instructions below to reset.
lightctl --user --room # command
Per room session otherwise you'll control all the lighting and annoy other users.
Perfect! That strikes me as the real punchline ;-P
Well, in this particular case the reality got funnier than the joke.
A: Hella!!!
Q: How many Southern Californians does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Totally!!!
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6492j904
Hella Nor Cal or Totally So Cal?: The Perceptual Dialectology of California
Mary Bucholtz, Nancy Bermudez, Victor Fung, Lisa Edwards and Rosalva Vargas. Journal of English Linguistics 2007; 35; 325. DOI: 10.1177/0075424207307780
Abstract
This study provides the first detailed account of perceptual dialectology within California (as well as one of the first accounts of perceptual dialectology within any single state). Quantitative analysis of a map-labeling task carried out in Southern California reveals that California’s most salient linguistic boundary is between the northern and southern regions of the state. Whereas studies of the perceptual dialectology of the United States as a whole have focused almost exclusively on regional dialect differences, respondents associated particular regions of California less with distinctive dialects than with differences in language (English versus Spanish), slang use, and social groups. The diverse socio linguistic situation of California is reflected in the emphasis both on highly salient social groups thought to be stereotypical of California by residents and nonresidents alike (e.g., surfers) and on groups that, though prominent in the cultural landscape of the state, remain largely unrecognized by outsiders (e.g., hicks).
(this joke is dated, I know)
If so totally unusable. Basically Satan.
—hn yesterday
> One more is required to complain about top posting.
https://archive.fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/iotwelcome/
https://twitter.com/internetofshit/status/986006653605687296
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onZ4KMM94yI
https://youtu.be/y8OnoxKotPQ
That second part is the key - so much stuff is designed "cloud first" and that introduces lots of delays and errors when the Internet isn't working perfectly.
The pinnacle of technology is mostly free and open source.
Yet, I don't see this in any other industry sector.
So... is tech ahead of the curve of the most idealistic one?
Same with other things. I would buy those things.
And if they really are good they can become a mass market product.
Yet, we only get a phone or something and that's it.
However, I soon realized your question is much deeper. It is not "Would you not buy an open source printer?", but "If you can buy an open source phone, would you not buy a printer?" - I think it's a good thought-provoking question. I'm not sure about the answer yet.