A Word on Omarchy

Pro tip: If you’ve arrived here via a link aggregator, feel free to skip ahead to the Summary for a conveniently digestible tl;dr that spares you all the tedious details, yet still provides enough ammunition to trash-talk this post in the comments of whatever platform you stumbled upon it.

In the recent months, there has been a noticeable shift away from the Windows desktop, as well as from macOS, to Linux, driven by various frustrations, such as the Windows 11 Recall feature. While there have historically been more than enough Linux distributions to choose from, for each skill level and amount of desired pain, a recent Arch-based configuration...

What's up with FUTO?

Some time ago, I noticed some new organization called FUTO popping up here and there. I’m always interested in seeing new organizations that fund open source popping up, and seeing as they claim several notable projects on their roster, I explored their website with interest and gratitude. I was first confused, and then annoyed by what I found. Confused, because their website is littered with bizzare manifestos,1 and ultimately annoyed because they were playing fast and loose with the term “open source”, using it to describe commercial source-available software.

FUTO eventually clarified their stance on “open source”, first through satire and then somewhat more soberly, perpetuating the self-serving myth that...

Photo Walk: 5 “Radioactive” Places in Paris Worthy Of Visiting

Let’s Combine Science, Fun, and History

Continue reading on Never Stop Writing »

The Small Web 101

Info: This is a living document. It will be updated in the future and I am happy for recommendations to add to it!

Disclaimer: I am intentionally not featuring products – let’s say, a paid search engine run by a company that supposedly lets you find things on the small web – or platforms like IndieWeb, that publish articles like “Set up an Indie Website using Known on Amazon Web Services”, “Set up an Indie Website using Blogger” (a Google service), and “Get Started on WordPress”, because that is exactly what the small web is not about.

I will not feature <insert your favorite webring here> because while webrings are great for...

Connecting an Airthings Radon Detector to Home Assistant with Python and MQTT

Adding a Radon Detection to your Smart Home

Continue reading on Level Up Coding »

IoT in Python For Beginners: MQTT and Home Assistant Integration

Let’s Work with Hardware (no Soldering is Required)

Continue reading on Python in Plain English »

Cloudflare bankrolls fascists

US politics has been pretty fascist lately. The state is filling up concentration camps, engaging in mass state violence against people on the basis of racialized traits, deporting them to random countries without any respect for habeas corpus, exerting state pressure on the free press to censor speech critical of the current administration, and Trump is openly floating the idea of an unconstitutional third term.

Fascism is clearly on the rise, and they’re winning more and more power. None of this is far removed from us in the FOSS community – there are a number of fascists working in FOSS, same as the rest of society. I don’t...

I Bought a Trinitite Online - Is It Real?

Let’s Combine History, Physics, and Some Fun

Continue reading on Never Stop Writing »

Atomic Distros

Hey, does anyone here have strong opinions or real experience with atomic distributions, like Fedora Silverblue? I am considering it for a professional laptop, where I want to avoid components breaking so the immutability and containerization is something that sounds good. And I have come to terms with GNOME, so that is not an issue for me at least. What I worry about is, e.g. with Fedora Silverblue, that my previous experience with regular Fedora always degraded after an upgrade or two, and I don't know if this is something that Silverblue can help me here.

A better future for JavaScript that won't happen

In the wake of the largest supply-chain attack in history, the JavaScript community could have a moment of reckoning and decide: never again. As the panic and shame subsides, after compromised developers finish re-provisioning their workstations and rotating their keys, the ecosystem might re-orient itself towards solving the fundamental flaws that allowed this to happen.

After all, people have been sounding the alarm for years that this approach to dependency management is reckless and dangerous and broken by design. Maybe this is the moment when the JavaScript ecosystem begins to understand the importance and urgency of this problem, and begins its course correction. It could leave behind its sprawling...