zero-st4rs

I'd wish we would have a real "write once, run everywhere"...

Hi! I'm trying my best okay? Hokusai Pocket might currently be composed of wood and string, but one day he will be a real boy!

hear hear!

Yeah! That's pretty accurate, although it's not quite css/html.

It also integrates some helpful libraries, like libuv for cpu intensive tasks and I'm currently working on adding networking/HTTP and builds for android (it already runs on a pinephone).

The thing I think that is cool is that you don't need to compile your apps, you can just run them with the binary.

Thanks for the question!

The motivation came from building desktop applications and working with awesome but cumbersome GUI toolkits like Nuklear.

I built a graphics backend-agnostic GUI library in CRuby called Hokusai, but Hokusai uses FFI, isn't portable, and is hard to distribute. (Need a Ruby interpreter on the target)

I ported the library to MRuby, developed some build tools, and now have a portable binary for different platforms that can run a dynamic desktop application/game that is written in Ruby.

You can try it yourself by downloading the latest release and running an app like: https://github.com/skinnyjames/hokusai_demo_paint

If you notice the paint repository, there is nothing to build, just ruby scripts and assets.

The tool also has commands to build your application for different platforms as standalone binary, but I'm currently working in that space for other reasons.

There are of course constraints to using MRuby vs CRuby, but I hope I speak to how this library addresses those.

I mean, I can follow ops intent to a general degree, it sounds interesting, but ..

Thanks for trying to meet me halfway. I hope I can bridge the gap.

The repository is the codebase for a GUI toolkit. It runs ruby scripts that make use of a custom templating language (like html), and a super class that provides similar component technology you'd likely find in vue or react. (Hokusai::Block).

When the ruby script is run from the binary built from the codebase (hokusai-pocket), it spawns a window with your application. There are releases for x86 linux, windows, and osx - and also arm64 linux. You just write your application, and run it with `hokusai-pocket run:target=app.rb`

The hokusai-pocket binary also include a command for publishing your application as a standalone binary for different platforms, but I'm currently working on that.

So all in all, it is a gui toolkit + runner that you can download for x86 linux, windows, and osx to dynamically run desktop applications.

I mentioned cutting its teeth on a photoshop clone. Here's a screenshot: https://file.skinnyjames.net/demo.gif

https://www.linkedin.com/legal/user-agreement

8.1. Dos

Use your real name on your profile; and

8.2. Don’ts

Create a false identity on LinkedIn, misrepresent your identity, create a Member profile for anyone other than yourself (a real person), or use or attempt to use another’s account (such as sharing log-in credentials or copying cookies);

But profile pictures are here >

https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/a1377087/profi...

You can use an illustration, caricature, or other artistic rendering of yourself, but your profile photo must reflect your likeness. We may remove profile photos that don’t comply with our User Agreement and Professional Community Policies, including images that consist solely of the following:

I'm pretty sure even this has been updated to accommodate all the Ghibli AI avatars that people use.

I think the distinction is pretty easy imo. HN is topic centered, Social Media is person-centered. Before MySpace there was a pretty big proliferation of forums and other topic centered discourse. The profile was such a minor part of those tools.

When MySpace came out, the profile was the home page for a lot of people, and the content orbited around that. Coupled with the mass movement to represent oneself faithfully online as in the real world, (maybe for banking, maybe for surveillance), I think social media sort of operates as a trap. On facebook, you are encouraged to upload your real photos of drunken night out, family vacation, or whatever IDs you in life. On LinkedIn this is mandatory, your "avatar" must mirror your physical self. I have a lot to say on this, but I think I'll just leave it at topic vs profile.

Author + Art School dropout here,

This link points to a collection of artworks made from a variety of media which generally employ some kind of constraint or deterministic system in their fabrication.

If anyone is interested in this kind of thing, I'm happy to speak to any of the choices I've made as well as my emotional state in making this collection.

I'm not sure if you wrote this with AI, but could you provide examples?

Knowledge is shaped by constraints which inform intention, it doesn't "drive it."

"I want to fly, I intend to fly, I learn how to achieve this by making a plane."

not

"I have plane making knowledge therefore I want and intend to fly"

However, I totally understand that constraints often create a feedback loop where reasoning is reduced to the limitations which confine it.

My Mom has no idea that "her computer" != "windows + hp + etc", and if you were to ask her how to use a computer, she would be intellectually confined to a particular ecosystem.

I argue the same is true for capitalism/dominant culture. If you can't "see" the surface of the thing that is shaping your choices, chances are your capacity for "will" is hindered and constrained.

Going back to this.

What's yourself without your material possessions and social connections? There is no such thing as yourself without these.

I don't think my very ability to make choices comes from owning stuff and knowing people.

What's yourself without your material possessions and social connections? There is no such thing as yourself without these.

perhaps a being that has the capacity for intention and will?

I read the intersection as this:

We shape the world through our choices, generally under the umbrella of deterministic systems. AI is non-deterministic, but instead amplifies the concerns by a few wealthy corporations / individuals.

So is AI effective at generating marketing material or propagating arguably vapid value systems in the face of ecological, cultural, and economic crisis? I'd argue yes. But effective also depends on an intention, and that's not my intention, so it's not as effective for me.

I think we need more "manual" choice, and more agency.

Thanks for raising this question.

From the discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43938309, it probably won't stay PPL for much longer. It just needs to be worked out.

This is a great question that I don't yet have an answer for.

Ideally, there should be an automated way builtin to the gem that packages apps.

Currently, I use a tool I wrote called Barista to package an an application with it's dependencies, (part of it was modeled after chef/omnibus). This might not be the best way though, so I'm open to ideas.

Thanks! _why is the person who really sparked my love and engagement with Ruby so this means a lot.

Thanks so much for the clarifying and thorough information.

I will admit that my choice to use PPL is reactionary to the ecosystems of software development as they are now, which I'm not sure GPLv2 addresses. I personally don't really understand why all information shouldn't be free without conditions. Cooperative ethos is also voluntary, so it also isn't my intention to enforce that.

That being said, I might have to think on it for a bit. Hokusai was originally made with Crystal lang, but now uses a Ruby interpreter, so a considerable portion of any derivative source will be available regardless of using the GPL or not. Could a more permissive license prevent an end-user from re-publishing these sources?

There is also an issue with resource allocation (eg. time). The reason I don't think the GPL works well is that most individuals cannot sustain the effort to fully develop many projects that could supplant competitive ones (a necessary condition for equity imo) because they have to live, and living requires money (time).

The closest model I am able to think of is software that has very cheap licenses for the lifetime of that project (as opposed to monthly subscriptions or licenses that are absurdly expensive). Maybe sponsorships are a better answer to these questions.

All in all, these are probably concerns with how companies and people exploit each other as opposed to how software should be available. Maybe GPL2 or a more permissive license is the way to go?

Yeah, the main thing I understand about PPL is that it behaves like the GPL license, but has provisions for worker owned cooperatives or non-profits. 4.c. (Looking at the information again around this license, I suspect I may be incorrect though)

And you are correct, including colorize does break GPL2, I'm surprised I missed that.

Any lawyers out there? :)

Thanks! I'm really interested to hear how it "plays" for people. Would love updates if you use it.

Pretty cool! I've heard a lot of good things about Qt.

Interesting, for sure. I don't know much about Ruby on android (the resulting application will absolutely need a ruby interpreter) but I thought Windows would be a no-op and I got it working there, so who knows? :)

Good question! Most of the development build fetches and compiles C dependencies. xmake happens to be really good at this, especially considering xmake-repo.

Rake tasks don't have builtins for this iirc.

Great question. From what I understand of RubyMotion, it compiles directly to native, calling into Objective C APIs, and like DragonRuby the Ruby implementation is not MRI.

Since Hokusai uses MRI, one can pull in from that ecosystem of gems.

RubyMotion also appears to support (iOS, Android, OSX) whereas Hokusai intends to support OSX, Linux, and Windows.

Implementation-wise, the framework itself seems different. Looking at the following [RubyMotion app](https://github.com/HipByte/RubyMotionSamples/tree/master/ios...), the logic is spread out over separate files and it doesn't appear to have a templating language.

On the other hand, Hokusai UI components are just a class that inherits from Hokusai::Block, and are self contained blocks that can be stitched together.

Hokusai is more like Vue Single file components in this regard. Hokusai also doesn't make a distinction between a "component" and an "app", they are all just Blocks.

Does that answer your question?

Yup! https://hokusai.skinnyjames.net has a guide with screenshots.

The repo itself has more examples.

For layout that privileges text documents with arbitrary length, html is nice.

For interactive interfaces, I think it's not very good.

This page speaks to a different approach (I'm the author) https://skinnyjames.codeberg.page/hokusai/concepts/layouting...

Yeah, but unless you think that taxation is theft and thus violates property rights there is nothing that prevents a capitalist state from taxing people with excess and giving that to people in need.

Okay, definitely sorry for the confusion. Let me sort of explain where I'm coming from.

My primary point is pretty simple.

any economic system that privileges socially intentional results is simply a better model.

I do think it's very counterintuitive for a word like "Captialism" to have a slippery meaning with regards to regulation, so maybe we could agree on the following assertion:

--- Capitalism is an economic system that privileges private ownership over social intention ---

If that is acceptable, then I'd like to break it down from my perspective. My understanding of work has way more to do with (social) agency and (our) my ability to provide intentional value than it has to do navigating a bloated system that is undermined by corporate interests. Please note that I am most certainly not taking a cue from Europe on the economic situation in the U.S. as I think the landscape (literally) is a bit different.

If Capitalism can be demarcated by privileging private ownership and enterprise over social intention, I believe the value proposition is that the nature of competition will create social value (jobs that give people money to eat) as a side effect of producing and distributing "innovative" products that speak to social desires. (demand). If the company cannot be competitive, perhaps there is no demand, or they can't pay well, then it's accepted that the company probably shouldn't exist.

There is also a strong notion of individual agency, in which a motivated go-getter can work hard and do well for themselves and their family.

So, I think it's fair to say that the virtuous parts of Capitalism are the idea that anyone can pull themselves out of poverty, and the mechanic of self regulation, which speaks to the ability for Capitalism to eventually meet social intention in a roundabout way.

My assertion is that mechanic of Capitalism (competition) might eventually meet social intention eventually at first through the virtue of self regulation, but the further it drifts, the harder it this becomes.

Of course, we can slap some government, social welfare, and regulatory committees on it, so now social intention (which absolutely should be exercised by meaningful work) becomes contingent on voting every so often.

Meanwhile, wealth is aggregated into the top 10% or 1% of the population, and since people are not perfect, we end up with laws like money is considered free speech, so private interests end up having a dominant say in legislation. It is not surprising that the U.S. has a wildly polarized 2 party culture, when considering how bad the current system is for both parties.

If we have more of our individual agency deferred to government, then we have more taxes and less freedom. If we don't, people starve and/or literally die.

This mechanic is absolutely a double bind with no apparent answer, aside from rethinking the mechanic of the original value proposition.

I like paying taxes for streets and schools and welfare, even though I don't have kids. I don't like paying taxes to bail out large corporations and banks who (with the government's help) reduce our social agency in the first place. So yeah, one is not theft, but think the other absolutely is.

Contingency on government for social intention in a place where hostage politics, voter suppression, and gerrymandering are very *real* things, is not a good thing.

So in all, the critique is largely against the "effects" of advanced capitalism, but also the "competitive mechanic" that allowed it to get that way in the first place.

I don't think a collective mechanic like open source is the answer either, unless developers start privileging GPL.

No, markets completely regulating themselves would be anarchism. Protecting your property rights and your contracts is a form of regulations in itself, that is the fundamental part of capitalism and is what enables large companies to form without military might.

Huh, I am from the U.S. and I wasn't aware that Socialism was sort of all or nothing. (I'm not a socialist). I would say that it is presented differently (or at least culturally differently) where I am. Good catch.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism says:

The degree of competition in markets and the role of intervention and regulation, as well as the scope of state ownership, vary across different models of capitalism. The extent to which different markets are free and the rules defining private property are matters of politics and policy.

I do think that the point of my comment is definitely still at play, even if regulation is absorbed into the definition. Happy to speak more to it.

----- I can't seem to reply to comments, so let me rephrase.

"Huh, I didn't know that, thanks for the learning opportunity! I'm very used to hearing Socialism thrown around as a boogeyman in my country whenever a policy is mentioned that benefits people disenfranchised by the aggregation of capital into the hands of a few. I think my point is still valid, regardless."

Or more generally, badly regulated anything tends to create new power centers. .. So this has nothing to do with capitalism

Capitalism is the idea of the market regulating itself, no?. Regulation / Government is a mixed economy (Socialism (edit: this is incorrect)) at best.

The whole talking point (when it is convenient) around "free enterprise" is the lack of regulation, see neoliberalism.

Regulation is also not the answer when the people in charge of regulation are or are funded by the corporate entities being regulated.

Worker cooperatives or really any economic system that privileges socially intentional results is simply a better model. I'd much rather own the means of my production than have someone else regulate the work I also do for someone else. I'd also happen to need less government and have more agency to care for the welfare of others. Hmmm..