biomechanica

I had a facebook account once. I thought that by deleting my account it would somehow limit my social life and, of course, make it a lot harder to keep my friends and family updated.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

Not having a facebook account (or any social media website account) forced me to be more active. It forced me to contact my friends face to face. This has HUGE advantages.

This notion that facebook is integrated into our lives tightly is absolutely an illusion; one that Facebook relys on (or any site like it). Take the initiative and go out of your way to contact your friends/family "the old fasioned way".

Rallying groups for a cause isn't as hard as it seems to be, either. You just have to work a bit more. So what? Our society(ies) is/are becoming so lazy it's almost unbearable.

Facebook does not dictate your life in any way, shape or form. There are many people who don't use it and are just fine without it.

I'm unsure I agree with it also. Android has Google's wallet to fall back on. That could be one reason why it's successful.

Mobile devices fill a different "comfort", I think. Desktop OS's out there try to fill a broad spectrum of wants (and needs). I think Linus has been quoted as saying something like, "Desktop is a hard problem to solve", and that the Linux world hasn't even come close to solving it (yet).

I know a lot of people who would otherwise be lost on a Windows machine be completely comfortable with iPhone or Android devices simply because it fills that niche. Computer illiterate people seem to gravitate to, not desktop, but mobile devices.

So maybe Android is the new "desktop" for those types of users. Power users are now left to fill their own comforts. Maybe Linux powered desktops will eventually be the winner in the future. We'll see.

Open source codec race is, as far as I'm concerned, not over yet. Opus shows a ton of potential for audio related streaming/recording. Webm is supported by most browsers (except for Safari and IE). It's not a bad container, too. Compared to mp4, it's not that great, but I really can't tell the difference when watching something online anymore.

So, the wars aren't over. Android with Google's backing will be, and is, a force to be reckoned with. However, I wouldn't cancel out the possibility of another open source and free alternative coming around the corner to change that. Perhaps Firefox OS, who knows?

Was this not renamed to Persona which hit beta recently and posted on HN serveral times already?

I also see the benefits of having a Linux distribution over Windows 7(or 8). The driver hurdle is annoying on Windows. I recently helped a family member install Ubuntu 12.04 (this family member is not technically inclined at all!), I sat back and watched her install Ubuntu. No driver installs, no "enter in your license key" crap, no activation crap. It all just worked out out of the box. Even her wireless. I was pleasantly surprised that I wasn't needed anymore.

You and I may see the Linux desktop, but most people don't. Which is very sad, in my opinion. It'll come, I suppose. I just have to be skeptical.

Well, the year of linux has been around for a long time. The list of devices that use Linux is staggering.

Now, Linux as a desktop... Maybe. We'll see.

The existing decentralized software out there (except for maybe bitcoin which is actually quite simple and a couple others) are not sufficient for normal people because of the way they are presented. Diaspora failed horribly because it was hard to use on your own system. That and it was rather scrambled at launch. The code was horrible.

If there was a system that acts like current centralized systems out there it wouldn't be a matter of it being hard. The technology is becoming easier and easier.

If presented properly, there is no reason a decentralized system couldn't attract normal people.

Facebook and Google make it appear that what you are using is actually on your system. That you control the information. Yet, the so called "small" price of that is you have to give away personal information to them.

With a system that is completely decentralized and secure and keeps people's privacy while being so easy to use that my Mother can use it w/out problem, centralized systems would be in danger.

So yes, the current way of doing things is for geeks. That will change with projects like Tent. Centralized services will ultimately fail simply because of the violations to peoples privacy are starting to really piss people off. Normal people. Like me.

If I want to share my music playlist with my friends, I should be able to do it. I also don't like being censored and watched, which is exactly what these systems do. Don't believe me? Search it. And if you don't mind that type of thing for convenience, then I'm not sure you understand freedom.

And by the way, those "neckbeards" are the ones who are going to set things straight. A decentralized system doesn't necessarily have "servers". Everyone will be their own type of server.

What.The.Hell?

You would figure companies out there would have learned a lesson or two by now.

Wow.

It's seems like there's been a lot of posts about Go lately. Maybe I'm delusional..

I find Go to be nice to work with. I'm just starting out in it so I'm not exactly proficient yet, but it feels a lot easier to program with against say, Java.

In regards to the GC. I saw a post a little while ago made by Rob Pike, I think (could be wrong) about how there are many improvements coming where they see 50% speed ups (sometimes even more). So, as young language I think Go has come pretty far and more is to come.

This is one of the reasons I stick to LTS releases (Long Term Support). The releases between LTS are sort of "unstable" in comparison (for a lack of a better way of putting it).

Personally, I have had no issues upgrading from one LTS to another LTS system.

I agree, however, that there should be more work done on the upgrade system. It is a sort 50/50 in a lot of peoples eyes.

With that said: Ubuntu is not the only distro out there that is easy to use. There are other distro's out there that are built on Ubuntu - Linux Mint, Xubuntu, Kubuntu etc. etc. etc. - that may be more suitable for some people. With Ubuntu 12.04, things are really starting to look up. It is becoming a rather nice, usable system, regardless of the controversy of Unity. Yes, there are issues with 12.04 right now. For instance OpenGL performance under Unity is bad. With Steam coming on board, I will bet it will be fixed in due time.

Anyway, yes issues are still around. Though, really, it isn't as bad as your luck, I guess? I don't mean that in any condescending way, of course. I just think perhaps you might want to take another gander at it some time.

Under which distro did your GRUB break?

Anyway, Ubuntu has become the norm in my parents household. Yes, a new laptop or computer will come with Windows pre-installed, but what happens when you need to reinstall windows? This happens more than one may think. You have to worry about installing those darn drivers off the DVD that laptop came with (sometimes, it won't even come with a Windows DVD).

For my Mother this is not going to go over too well. In fact this happened and she spent an afternoon trying to install her new system. Enter Ubuntu -> Stuck in the USB key, filled in user info, clicked on what timezone to use and everything else was smooth as butter. No driver install disks. Everything just worked.

Sure, mileage may vary among the newest and greatest hardware. I'll grant that. However, those same new systems come with driver CD's coupled with a lot of useless software that just so happens to be checked for install by default.

I don't know much about cryptography. So, what you're saying is basically that cryptographic algorithms are largely implemented relying on primes?

This is fascinating.

What a ridiculous question.

As an individual, yes, horrible and unforgivable is the response.

However, I don't think giving up our rights because some "junkie" decided to murder a child is a good or necessary thing to do.

What you're asking is to give up our rights for a single possible case of a person doing something horrible. No, we have a system that punishes that person already. We don't need to restrict peoples rights to prevent a rather uncommon thing from happening in the future.

You can not stop a mentally ill person or a criminal from doing something horrible. If they are going to do it, then they will find a way to do it.

The trick is to recognize the symptoms. Sometimes it is almost impossible to recognize it, but it is possible. Education can help in this case, too.

But to track people who are innocent and basically call them potential criminals before any crime is committed, is asinine.

What a ridiculous question.

They are going to use Python 3 for the system, yes. Python 2 will be available, as expected, in the repo's.

They are encouraging developers to transition their code to Python 3.

A VPN will help keep you semi-private for surfing the web. However, when it comes to something like Torrents, someone with a decent amount of knowledge and paycheck would probably not be stopped from finding out who you are.

For using bit torrent or other file sharing in a private, anonymous session, I would use I2P. In fact, they welcome it.

I'm not sure why a lot people put VPN's up on a pedestal. VPN's are useful for other things but I wouldn't rely on them for 100% or even 90% privacy against a foe that _really_ wants to know who you are.

I2P, my friends.

Gnome may not be dead and it's nice to see them work hard to achieve a suitable user experience. However, I personally don't like the look of it. To me it seems the windows don't fit the rest of the U.I. The borders are too big, in my opinion and the buttons don't "feel" right or look right.

Usability wise, it's still lacking, I think. I'm a grumpy sob, I guess. I hope they succeed but I have to be honest, I don't think they will.

/end grump

For using *BSD as a desktop, going with something like PC-BSD would be a good choice. PC-BSD is basically a friendly FreeBSD with its own sort of package system called PBI while still maintaining the ability to use the ports system.

FreeBSD by itself can be used as a desktop OS but can become troublesome compiling everything (you can use pkg_add for installing pre-build packages). However, by using PC-BSD you won't need to do this.

Also, FreeBSD/PC-BSD does have the proprietary NVidia drivers. I do not think DragonFly/Net/OpenBSD has it.

All in all, I have found PC-BSD to be quite nice.

I like how they support Tor hidden services. Though I wish they would go a step further and support I2P.

It's really nice to see people are working on ways to sort of "replace" the current centralized services out there.

Let us hope they are attractive enough to developers and users.

Sadly, the way the system is right now they really have no other option other than bring in the shit storm and hope reform happens.

It's good to see Go officially supported.

I actually quite like this language. I'm learning C right now and love it, but I gotta say, Go is really starting to catch my eye.

Wouldn't mind seeing Emacs ported to NaCl. That would be a fun project, I think.

I don't know of any, to be honest. However, Closure Library is really just part of the equation. It becomes much more powerful when used with all of the Closure Tools.

I have tried the closure tools for my own internal uses and while I don't particularly expect myself using it for all my projects, it definitely shines on bigger projects. It is a pretty good set of tools.

Every single time I look at images captured by the rovers on Mars, it throws a wave of tingles through my spine.

The technology and brain power to achieve this picture, the landing, engineering and the science to come is so mind blowing to me that I almost feel drained!

Such a massive amount of awesomeness.

I agree. It's not perfect.

I guess I was thinking more along the lines of the actual network it sits on will help, too. Like CJDNS, an added protective layer for privacy, at least.

Public key encryption generated automatically for each user using the freedom box (I think I watched a video of someone explaining their concept of this for the freedom box).

In the end, I don't know. I'm only starting to get involved.

Well, in the context of making a new Facebook that is as successful, no I don't think it can be achieved. I go on to explain what can be achieved, though.

Well, the very first of these social networks is, I would say, the Internet itself. Facebook, MySpace and co., are/were basically trying to bring all that traffic to a single place where they could take advantage of the sharing.

I agree, there should be something created completely different. However, I don't think that can really be achieved. I think it can be made to look different but in the end it will just be a different implementation of the same thing.

I think the next big thing won't be necessarily social networking. Social is basically an expected feature of all new software. There is nothing new to be had there. People like to share things and talk with friends, meet new people, etc. That won't change.

The appearance will change and the technology that becomes big will have all of that stuff in it. I just hope it's free software and disconnected from a centralized source.

Personally, I think the next big thing will be accidentally created by the "the people" and not some corporation.

Well, there is Diaspora, heh.

Personally, I think the future of "social networks" will, in a sense, go back in time once again where it will be peer to peer, encrypted end to end.

I think the guys working on the Freedom Box are trying to crack the riddle.

Yes, I believe it is called PNaCl. It uses LLVM as its back end.

edit: I suppose a link should be presented.

http://www.chromium.org/nativeclient/pnacl/building-and-test...

I know that the Mono C# is now supported. I think it's due to its LLVM support. So basically, any language that supports LLVM JIT can be used with NaCl.

I could be wrong, but I remember reading about it somewhere. Either way, it is pretty cool technology of which nobody else seems to want to support. Which is too bad, really.

I don't know if buying DDG would be a good investment.

Yahoo! had a great search engine to begin with. There wasn't anything wrong with it, really. I think Yahoo! just got a bit carried away with the UI aspect of it.

DDG prides itself on privacy and no tracking while giving good results. I don't think Yahoo! would be interested in keeping that tradition.

Though, I could be wrong, of course.

edit: was supposed to reply to the other guy... oops.. message still stands.