guylhem

Let selection and mating sort it out.

Maybe very intelligent deaf humans would outcompete the rest of mankind in a few generations? You may not like that, but why exactly should I care?

Parents do have the best interest of their children in mind. Let them be free of making the best choices instead of government imposed ones.

I'm not sure I understand the use of least squares here.

Why not use a Hough transform with each drawn point voting for a center, then average the radius?

It's not a critic - just me wondering why.

To all those who do not want immortality and prefer death - I will be very happy to take what you do not want, and let you have what you want.

Please let me have what I want. I promise I won't complain about immortality being boring and all that.

Thanks for your concerns about my immortal soul and whatever, but just give me what I want.

Membrane keyboards are not all that bad.

I moved from macbooks to thinkpads for many reasons (including freedom - I want a machine that runs coreboot) but the keyboard was just a big unexpected surprise.

Now, I am a big fan of the pre-X220 "classic" 7 rows keyboards, found on every model before. It's simple, comfortable and standard. I remember how a Thinkpad 600 felt "good" about 15 years ago, and now I just get the same good feeling back. Maybe it's nostalgia, but it feels quite good.

For my desktop computer, I have a SK8845 (same thinkpad keyboard in usb form factor), with a trackpoint + a trackpad + 5 mouse buttons all in one device. Very handy, and no window keys to bother me. You can fetch a new one off ebay for like $30. The SK8855 are expansive - a new one will set you back by $200.

Before that thinkpad keyboard, still in a membrane, I enjoyed the Apple raised USB keyboard- not the contemporary aluminum chiclet keyboard, the plastic one. On amazon, it's the M9034LL http://www.amazon.com/Apple-M9034LL-A-USB-Keyboard/dp/B0000A...

I guess for me the difference is not so much the hipster "click" noise but the size of the key. I don't want an empty space between my keys.

EDIT: fixed the model numbers

My only question: can you physically have a 512Gb ssd inside that thing? Anything else is irrelevant to me. The previous Chromebook pixel had the mini PCIe port used by the WWAN modem wired with only the USB lines, meaning you couldn't do that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0_u8bjQFzg

I won't buy a chromebook pixel until I can at least get a decent storage. It doesn't have to be sold with this storage. The motherboard just needs the right tracks to the mini PCIe and mSATA support so that I can do it. Google might have saved 2 cents, but won't be getting a dollar from me and other people from this thread who say "this laptop would be absolutely perfect for me if it had more storage"

Having inspiration, whether from any ideal or from God, is what makes one burn the midnight oil, and design something out of the ordinary.

It increases not just efficiency but something else harder to define, something that could be said to be beauty. It makes the result stand out as a something special, where all the parts have a purpose and are arranged in just the right way. Read http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/djb to get a better idea of this something:

djb’s programs are some of the greatest works of beauty to be comprehended by the human mind. As with great art, the outline of the code is somehow visually pleasing — there is balance and rhythm and meter that rivals even the best typography. As with great poetry, every character counts — every single one is there because it needs to be. But these programs are not just for being seen or read — like a graceful dancer, they move! And not just as a single dancer either, but a whole choreographed number — processes splitting and moving and recombining at great speeds, around and around again.

But, unlike a dance, this movement has a purpose. They accomplish things that need accomplishing — they find your websites, they ferry your email from place to place. In the most fantastic movies, the routing and sorting of the post office is imagined as a giant endless choreographed dance number.

TempleOS is impressive. The only thing I could say after watching the youtube presentations was "wow". I see great value in it, at least as a teaching tool - a bit like Minix.

But there's more to it. Another potential use would be for hardware intensive tasks, when you want to squeeze the last bit of juice you have. Maybe for nodes doing distributed computation where GPU are not the solution, to remove the cruft of a full OS. The compiler would have to be quite optimized too, and some network features would be needed. Then there are some scaling issues, but still, if TempleOS could be say 10 to 20% more efficient than a standard Linux, there could be a usecase. Even for a smaller percentage, I believe some guys in finance would like that advantage for high-frequency trading.

I will follow your progress with great interest. Best of luck!

You're missing one thing - a mouse easy to access, as on the thinkpad where it's in the home row. If only for browsing, a mouse is a godsend.

There's something not bad for the ergodox on https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=55960.0 but it would be better on a thumb.

Some other poster is talking about "hubris", "neopotism", or "tales from the aristocracy."

Are we so focused the 99% / 1% difference that we are too blind to see we're all in the same team, team Humanity?

Nothing is sadder that a live going away, knowledge, experience, etc all going to waste. Sentient creatures have a moral duty to live.

Extending our lifespan is also a necessary first step for serious large scale projects. I don't think we are ready with a 70 years lifespan to care about the consequences of our present days actions in 500 years, or to tackle serious projects such as building a Dyson sphere.

To all those who talk about how some people won't have access to that technology - yes, just like how they don't have access to antibiotics, cellphones or the internet in Africa.

Great article. After using AZERTY in France, I remember experimenting with alternative layouts, then preferring the Canadian CSA layout (standard on Macs, PC picture on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACNOR) for 2 reasons: - it had the accents I needed for french - it was QWERTY, which mean no more problems in the BIOS or anything else like grub, lilo etc. - it was easy to get - in any Applestore, and also for Thinkpads - even as a replacement part!. Now try to order a mainstream laptop with a Dvorak keyboard.

Everybody else around me was still using AZERTY, but it just made sense to switch. I haven't looked bad ever since, except I'm now using the US QWERTY as the accents in the 3rd level (using the control keys for the 3rd level, and caps as a control key) are even easier.

Is QWERTY perfectible? Yes. It QWERTY good enough? Yes too, even for French.

So with the network effects, bothering with anything else is a waste of time and money.

Unless you want bloatware that sucks RAM and battery, what else are you supposed to use?

I went from Firefox to Safari to Chrome and back to Firefox. Firefox was bloatware before. Now it's acceptable when compared to Chrome and Safari.

Either Firefox was improved, or wasn't improved while hardware was, and while Safari and Chrome added useless feature after useless feature.

In any case, I do not see any alternative to Firefox for 'power users'. I'm very happy to use it. The report that Firefox marketshare is shrinking is weird. I've seen more and more people using it recently.

Maybe I'm just odd but I love firefox on MacOS, Linux and android because it just works at a decent speed.

Dear Bryan who may never read this,

As you clearly say, your job is to serve your clients, the manufacturers who do not want their BIOSes to be replaced with something else like coreboot.

You say "Intel has to consider the needs of the system manufacturer along with the end user", but the balance is obviously slanted in one direction. The reason is simple: we end users are not your customers.

As pointed out before, the trickiest issues are with Intel ME and AMT, who can not be removed except on the X200. Otherwise, the luckiest machines will reboot every 30 minutes only. The others won't boot.

You say "Making firmware more open and more secure is an interesting balancing act, and I hope we work towards getting it right". I'm sorry but you don't. Having a backdoor that the physical owner of the machine can not remove is neither secure nor open. If there was a jumper than could be used by the knowledgeable end user to override all his, yes. There is no such things, only barriers.

This is a nice PR attempt to deflect the heat towards Lenovo (for the thinkpads), but sorry, that's vacuous.

There is a moral responsibility in a given design.

At the moment, this is at best the moral equivalent of making weapons without a safety and saying it's not your fault if they can harm the end user, and that the end user should direct the complains to whoever is selling these defective guns. Sorry, but I disagree.

Mortality is the #1 bug of human hardware (with cancer a close #2). It may have been a feature a few thousand years ago, with limited resources, but it's now hampering our progress.

I don't want mankind achievements to be limited by our limited lifespan. The first 20 to 30 years are wasted on learning - almost like 1/3 of a average life. But with linespans in the 200 to 300 years, that would be 10% - and these added productive years could bring so many more good things. Imagine if Feynman and Einstein were still alive today, having new ideas, discovering new things. Imagine if we still learn during 1/3 of the lifespan - the amount of knowledge that would be acquired, and the marvels we could achieve with it.

For those who will lament on how this would be bad/capitalism/not respecting nature or (insert your favorite deity), nobody will force you do to anything. Die of old age at 90 if you want.

Personally, I want extended life or immortality to do crazy thing when I'm still young in my early 200 (or young again thanks to cures we can't even imagine at the moment)

In healthcare, there are many skeletons in the closet - and many closets.

This FDA story is sad, but not surprising. The article seems to suggest the European equivalent (the EMA) is way better. Maybe it did behave better on this case, but as a rule of thumb, I strongly doubt it is much better.

The only advantage Europe has is how it works: if you want to bring a drug to the market, you either have it to get it accepted in one member state (then you can sell it everywhere) or go to the EMA. That's moderate competition. It may works slightly better, but it's still limited by the number of countries and regulatory agencies.

The only conclusion we should make from such stories is that there should be no public bodies susceptible to regulatory capture, but various independent organizations doing that.

See that as adding redundancy - if one was found to cheat and lie, it wouldn't be too big to fail, and a competitor would be glad to update its rating on say the 40 generics whose bioequivalence ratings are based on cooked data. That's a bit like how I trust Michelin guides more than any government evaluation of restaurants.

EDIT: I noticed a comment about financial ratings agencies. You realize there are only 3 big ones (Moody's, S&P, Finch) and that they have very strong ties to some governments, right? I predict they give you more quality that the FDA (because it's a legal monopoly), but less than what more competition could bring.

Really? He says he doesn't want to look anymore, then that it's too complicated. He mustn't have searched really hard, or he would have found it's udisk job.

So why couldn't he find it?

It's not that a current linux system is N times more complex than the sid he used to run, it's that things changed: as was properly noted by someone else on this thread, dbus was one of these important changes. Now it's systemd. Next it'll be wayland or something else.

You're correct in that he still tries to do some search, but he expects things to be like they were in the past, where he "could always get in there and fix it fairly quickly, whatever it was", i.e. to be just as efficient, without learning the new tricks!

The beginner's spirit is to want to learn new tricks, looking for answers and being really insistent in understanding better, instead of stopping after a google search and a comment on a bug report.

As said in another post I loved for it straight-to-the-fact comment, "In contrast, to 10 years ago, I do not like hours of debugging to get USB working anymore. It was fascinating then".

It's not more complex. A Linux system is a time investment, where knowledge has a half line. If you no longer can or wants to commit to learn new things at the same pace, but still want to fix things as before, maybe it's not the best idea to stick to Linux.

IHMO, the author would be best served to try say FreeBSD, where things seem to change at a slower pace. But he would still have to learn this new thing, and I strongly believe he doesn't want that - just a system as before, without any changes. Ain't gonna happen.

Relevant quotes for TLDR:

"It worked, but I don’t know why"

"I don’t even know where to start looking."

"That’s about as comprehensible as Vorlon poetry to me"

Potentially non politically-correct answer to the article title: maybe it's not Linux who lost its ways, but some old-time users? (who forget the beginner's spirit to look for answers on forums, manuals, to try to understand before casting a judgment)

Linux has always innovated around the paradigms, taking inspiration from everywhere. It was never "clean, logical, well put-together, and organized". It has always been messy, but in a good way.

When I first discovered linux, I had to adapt to all these new things. That was in 1992. When I decided to use again a modern linux distribution on my laptop in 2014, I had to adapt - again. I have no doubt I will have to keep adapting in my lifetime.

The error would be to consider that the "right ways" are fixed, and that innovation should be stopped.

There will be many new things, some will be kept, some will be discarded. Change is the only thing one can constantly bet on.

That thinkpad is my main computer. You have full control over it - brings back the pleasure to do things.

Now that I'm mostly done with my hacks (check http://en.blog.guylhem.net/post/106153399669/how-to-recreate...), I have a spare one to sell. It's the tablet version, with a wacom digitizer (works with xournal)

$ systemd-analyze Startup finished in 763ms (kernel) + 579ms (userspace) = 1.343s

Email me if you are interested.

You're guessing wrong, even if I'm less involved in free software that I was a few years ago.

But indeed, I'm quite passionate about GNU/Linux and say the gluglug X60 since it's a unique offering to respect ones' freedoms: http://www.fsf.org/news/gluglug-x60-laptop-now-certified-to-... but I'm actively trying to improve boottime.

In case you are curious, here's a kernel patch integrating a few things I (badly) fixed to get such boot times, and an explanation: http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.bios/80414

You see, it's a very small patch - yet it took some work. There's no magic, just effort.

And for those who think that's not replicable anywhere beyond the confines of my workstation, I intend to release very soon a debian based distribution with "proper" systemd support that gets me from grub to dwm in less than 2 seconds instead of 3s, kernel and systemd time included, on the X60 (I had some inspiration tonight!!)

It's a work-in-progress, it could be improved on the non-tablet version, but it's still something that's possible right now on 8-years old hardware. That's what I call hacking.

For me, free software is not a tribal identity. It's very practical, with great benefits far beyond fast boot times.

Things change because people work on them, and yes they're usually proud of their work, sorry about that. Pride is part of hacking.

I must say I have been quite surprised by the general tone of this thread, including the ad-hominem attacks ("Seems he is working for Intel on CoreOS") on the OP that was trying to explain stuff. Many people don't post content, they just criticize.

Indeed, I'm very pompous since I'm quite proud of what a modern linux install can do.

Sorry if I don't partake in this unwarranted Mac adoration.

Instead, I explain how to do the same on linux, and actual results when it's possible to do better (with among other things i915.fastboot=1)

$ systemd-analyze

Startup finished in 781ms (kernel) + 648ms (userspace) = 1.430s

Add ~1s to the above to start X with SNA if you prefer a graphic mode - and that's on a 2006-era laptop, a 8-years old machine, so color me unimpressed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinkPad_X_Series#X60_Tablet

That's at least the 3rd time I see that article posted here!!!! It's NOT exceptional or some special kind of wizardry. Even NetworkManager now does that.

If you have an old setup, you can get matching speeds with dhcpcd and the following options added to the bottom of debian /etc/dhcpcd.conf:

ipv6rs #ipv6ra_own #ipv4only noipv4ll noarp

The latest 2 options are the helpful ones for speed. The rest is for my IPv6 setup - can't remember if the Macs give you a dhcpv6 lease that fast.

Since it's bragging time, my debian+systemd thinkpad x60 laptop using coreboot want to say it resumes from suspend in about 1 second, and it boots its kernel in 0.7s and the userspace tools in 0.5s (add another second for X thanks to SNA, and another second for LXDE/conky/etc.)

What is the boot time for mac already?

EDIT: linux laptops properly resuming is still impressive for me as I remember a time not so long ago when one had to use some kernel patches, tweak the drivers or at least do a few rmmod, and even then a proper resume could take several seconds due to the drivers reinitializing.

Linux has come a long way since them. What might have been surprising before is now taken for granted (as it should be!).

EDIT2: I see downvotes. I guess some fanboy is quite sad that linux can do the same or better.

I run a similar setup, on a X60, with more "modern" adaptations :

- systemd allows me to have insanely fast boot, and perfect control on what get started at boot. Debian likes to start everything and the kitchensync by default, after you installed it. My systemd is compiled with a non-standard path so only the .services I put there get run.

- coreboot replaces the bios, likewise for the added freedom, the hackability, and the speed gains. At the moment I can boot to a command line in less than 5 seconds (because of grub and stuff), but I want to optimize that further (the kernel and systemd each take less than 1 second, coreboot a bit over their total - 3s is feasible now by removing grub menus, but I'd like less than 2s so I guess I'll have to dig into things :-)

- xorg is nice because it's like having an almost infinite number of VTs. Yeah I know screen and the likes, but there're other nice things you get from X, like the ability to display many different fonts, a very large unicode range, graphs, etc.

- lxde is quite minimal and non intrusive, yet you get modern things like default application, .desktop file to start programs, etc.

- for all my office needs, I use Microsoft Office in wine. Runs very fast, fully unicode aware. That's cool because I'm using a xmodmap for mathematical greek letters in the 3rd level, it all works!!

¬∞ / ¹≈ / ²≠ / ³∇ / ⁴∀ / ⁵∪ / ⁶∩ / ⁷∈ / ⁸⊂ / ⁹≽ / ⁰≿ / ⁻ ⃗ / ⁺±

θΘ / ωΩ / ɛƐ / ρϱ / ꚍꚌ / ψΨ / υϒ / ι∫ / ϖϵ / πΠ / ̂ ̈ / ̃ ̧ / ̊ ̀

α∂ / σΣ / δΔ / φΦ / ɣΓ / ηϘ / ϕϑ / 𝟀κ / λΛ / ̅ ́ / ̆ ̇

ζϟ / ξΞ / ςϚ / √⊥ / βϐ / νͲ / μϡ / ≤≺ / ≥≻ / / ⃝

I fully agree that starting from a minimal debian install is the way to go to avoid too much cruft. There are many things I'm glad I'm not using, such as NetworkManager and the likes (hopefully to be superseded by systemd some day) but my setup is generally modern enough to do everything I need, while fast enough even on 2006-era hardware, and old-school enough as in "if there's a problem, I can pinpoint where it comes from and fix it"

It even replaced a very-recent macbook as my default computer.

There're many gains from using "modern stuff". I'd have killed to get something as good as systemd and the current support of wine in the early 2000.

My take is to take the best free software has to offer, whether it's old or new, to match your needs.

EDIT: I boot my laptop whenever I want to use it, because a few seconds is a rounding error, and this saves more power than software suspend. I do suspend when I take a short break. Congrats on the fast boot time without systemd, but it's not the easiest way :-) My systemd starts a minimal debian testing in 700 ms. The kernel takes a bit above that.

As a kid, I had the pleasure of playing with Deskmate sound and Deskmate music, on a Tandy 286 with no harddrive - only a floppy.

It worked quite well, and I remember taking sample of various thingies and making music.

I also did as the article says - putting the samples on the sonatina because it was quite funny.

That should have been the star feature of the computer. Too bad the sales team didn't focus on that.

(I wonder if someday I'll be able to play back these tracks that I must have saved somewhere?)

EDIT: correction from the article: they seem to have used the mouse controller, not the joystick controller, cf the project manager post on https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.sys.tandy/fq1OO44... and further interesting technical details

He briefly removed his subdomain and rethought his security systems. It was a really fun week.

Sorry, it is not fun for your friend unless he had an absolute trust in you, and knew you'd help him remove every backdoor/keylogger/etc.

He may have spent a lot of time securing his machine, time he'd rather have invested in different things.

Seriously, don't do that. Just tell him about the obvious weakness - send a proof of concept if needed.

But a friend is more precious that some cracker creds.

I used that exact phone (well, it had a different plastic shell was called "cardphone" - no bluetooth) for a year as my main cell phone.

It worked very well, had about 3 days of battery time (given my uses). The best part is that I never forgot it, given how small it was - always there with my credit cards

Unfortunately, the headphone died after a bad fall (I could still use on speakermode).

I'll be very happy to buy a new one, especially it has bluetooth now. (if there's someone from China I would be interested, it usually sells for 3 times as much on ebay :-)

TLDR : "the age U-shape in life satisfaction is driven by unmet aspirations that are painfully felt during midlife but beneficially abandoned and felt with less regret during old age"

Basically, most people hope they will do great, but instead fail miserably in their expectations and finally even let go of the hope.

Thoreau said 'Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.'. Apparently, this is wrong, as this would suggest even the song leaves them.

They live a life of quiet despair, then forget their dreams and - boom - happiness! Ignorance must really be bliss.

As another commenter said, "Basically "midlife crisis" is a way for people who are married with families to put down anyone having more fun or experiencing more freedom than them."

Agreed. I plan to have fun without encombering myself with things that would reduce my freedom (and I'm sure a lot of people will hate that and say that's not responsible, etc)

Doing without kids will be a good start, so that the life/energy/money is invested on my projects intead of another biologically related person.

EDIT: I'm not bitter, I just want to avoid a potential problem by making adjustments. I would consider giving up on my hopes and my dreams a much more serious issue that trying to adapt myself to a problem

All the sensors + apparently a very lightweight OS + small form factor = I like it.

The killing feature is the integrated GPS. As mentionned on the website, you can go without your phone. That alone could make it a buy if it supports wireless charging (I don't want to bother with wires in 2014)

Also, it is multiplatform, which is a big plus. I do not want an android watch or an iwatch, but something that will work regardless of the cellphone I chose.

I wonder if there's a devkit to read the data. If some HN is from Microsoft, I'd love some links to the devkit page (simple stuff, like retreiving GPS log, heartrate log, etc)

Great quote about how spreadsheets where empowering:

The company’s chief financial officer wanted certain information, and his top “experts” had difficulty providing it. So one weekend he brought an Apple computer and a copy of VisiCalc home with him. Monday morning, he called his people in and showed them how he had gotten the information he had been clamoring for. “With one swipe of the diskette, he cut them off at the knees.” Stein said. “He out-teched them. His experts! He’d cut the chain. The following week, they all came down to learn VisiCalc – fast.”

That's the kind of disruptive technonology that'll get you sales. Making things done, and having Cx0s demanding your product.

Before, I wondered how such things could not be found in violation of the constitution, while they were obviously taking property without prosecution, guilty until proven innocent, etc.

The answer is simple: because someone in power said so, and with his thugs buddies pressured the right people to turn it into law - aka "might makes right"

A recent US exemple: civil forfeiture, even of the money you set aside for your own legal representation, is totally ok, even if it actually impedes your right to defend yourself, cf http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/02/ci...

To those who still can't believe civil forfeiture in the US, here is a sweet example in the EU. The constitution explicitely says : "The Union shall not be liable for or assume the commitments of central governments, regional, local or other public authorities, other bodies governed by public law, or public undertakings of any Member State" (article 125 of the Maastricht treaty aka constitution)

Yet the european court of justice, equivalent to the supreme court, found that bailing out Greece etc. by the European Stability Mechanism (purchase of dubious greek debt) was perfectly kosher.

Now people object to the idea of the european central bank doing quantitative easy, for similar reasons - because it's against the basic premises of the ECB, the constitution, etc, but it will be done, regardless of what the law says, if enough pressure is applied by those in power to result in what is in practice disregarding the law.

Basically, you can have a crystal clear constitution saying X is strictly illegal, but unless it's followed in practice, it's as worthless as the freedom of expression that was granted to the citizens of USSR by its own laws.

There used to be a separate judiciary power - even the state was subject to laws. It is no longer the case. This separate power is being swallowed by the state.

Is it profond disrespect of not just the spirit, but the letter, of any constitution? Whatever. "Might makes right"

(Edit: clarified)

Long story short - you did it the wrong way.

systemd on debian tries to reuse far too many /etc/init.d scripts, whose quality and performance I find questionable.

Follow the guide on http://www.holgerschurig.de/linux/systemd.html to get a good experience. You can also use my scripts (cf http://libreboot.org/docs/future/#fastboot) to compile your systemd

For the specific zfs problem, I can't say for sure (I use xfs), but a simple script you wrote yourself is usually the best. I also had fstab related errors for swap (I use luks) until I disabled the automatic stuff and wrote a replacement script.

systemd is well done and such fixes don't take long, once you understand the logic of it. (usually a symlink to /dev/null to disable the script and a few lines of ascii text for the replacement)

My results: on a thinkpad x60 (2006 era laptop), after coreboot, I boot in about 3 seconds, cf http://www.coreboot.org/pipermail/coreboot/2014-July/078215.... (link to a youtube video of another person doing the same thing). Suspend works very well out of the box, and even better (ex: renewing dhcp leases) after adding a few scripts.

systemd makes many things possible and easy, but with debian at least, the out-of-the-box experience has to be improved. Nothing impossible if you have say a day to spare to learn how systemd works and write your fixes.

Wrong. See my post above, along with the perl script that's used. It's controlled over IRC channel #apache on chaos.legend.rocks by the "god","ARZ","Zax" users.