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lproven
8,777karma·4,928submissions·December 30, 2013
about
Tall dark black-clad atheist skeptic biker SF fan; writes, mainly about computers, for a living.
# Work
Currently the FOSS & cloud correspondent for the Register.
https://www.theregister.com/Author/Liam-Proven
Work email: lproven+hn@sitpub.com
# Personal
Comments here (or anywhere else, unless otherwise stated) are personal opinion and not on behalf of any employer.
Based in Douglas, Isle of Man.
Quick info:
https://about.me/liamproven/
Personal blog:
http://lproven.dreamwidth.org/profile
Tech blog:
http://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/profile/
Socials:
https://social.vivaldi.net/@lproven
https://bsky.app/profile/lproven.bsky.social
https://x.com/lproven
https://meet.hn/city/im-Douglas
recent activity (4,928 total)
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How long have you got? It's a gratuitously overcomplex implementation of a relatively simple concept which uses opaque complex tooling to fake a filesystem, lying to the user about what's on…
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No, it is not correct, and trying to coerce it into the reductive box of an incomplete view does not help. Comparison: you are angrily maintaining "Orange is a colour! It is right there in the …
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> "Oberon is an operating system" was indeed evident, No, it is not evident: this is not correct. Oberon is bare-metal self-hosted programming system. It is both a language and an OS. &…
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The best potted intro I know: https://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/04/22/oberon/ A more in-depth look for folks with some comp-sci knowledge: https:/…
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You might enjoy the FOSDEM talk I did about half a dozen years ago: https://archive.fosdem.org/2021/schedule/event/new_type_of_c... I adapted most of it into an article…
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> What is it satirizing? Being provincial. Assuming sentients look and act like us, whoever "us" is. (Cf. whales, or elephants.) Assuming that what "we" do is the right, proper …
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We are metazoans? Well, I can't be sure about you, but I am and all my friends too.
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TBH Vernor Vinge did it a _lot_ better.
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Indeed. As an example, it's important they don't read David Brin's Uplift series, or Terry Pratchett's excellent The Dark Side of the Sun .
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He opened for Gorillaz in Prague about 8Y ago, and did a good set. Dude looked old and tired, but also happy to be there, performing live.
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SEO is a scam, too. AI is a scam. SEO is a scam. Blockchain -- all applications, no exceptions -- is a scam. Kubernetes is a scam: it's real, it works, and nobody except Google itself ever need…
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Some relevant discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47601168
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Some discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47601168
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Some discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47601168
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Relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47590348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47601168 …
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> an independent implementation of a BSD driver It is not. That is the point here. It's not independent. If an LLM were able to generate code that can access ext4, then that LLM has to have…
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Pioneering and seminal early Lisp AI work, ~50 years before LLMs. From the mind behind the Cyc project. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_Mathematician …
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I've covered it a few times on the Register. :-) 5Y ago: https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/04/waterfox_firefox_fork... Last year: https://www.theregis…
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> The differences of Librewolf and Waterfox is pretty hard to grasp I use Waterfox on Linux and one of the things I like the most is that it works with the global menu bar in Unity, Xfce and so on.…
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> Ok maybe I’m too young, but what is BeOS? Does this help? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47520510 …
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> There's a Windows app I used to use that supports the same kind of thing for Windows Taekwindow: https://ttencate.github.io/taekwindow/ I rarely use Windows but any box…
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A later successor was Cosmoe: https://gitlab.com/haydentech/cosmoe-classic/ This has evolved into a new UI layer for Wayland, on top of Linux... https://cosmoe.or…
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It is a bit. I tried to cover some of that here: https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/96552.html …
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> How is it different from GNU/Linux or BSDs? I am risking the one full-time paid developer of Haiku popping up here and shouting at me, because he's done that a few times before and eve…
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> Sure would've been nice if the Desqview engineers and the GEM guys could've merged their efforts... OMG yes. I thought this myself at the time. The thing is that they were rivals. QEMM3…
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> I have been trying to track down whoever the hell owns the license to Concurrent/Multiuser DOS to try and make a case for them to release the source code Yeah, me too. You can read a little …
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Here is a different recent -- and IMHO much better -- history which covers that: https://nemanjatrifunovic.substack.com/p/history-of-the-gem-... …
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:-D
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> we never had a single program to run on it Amstrad GEM came with a couple of apps thrown in! LocoScript BASIC 2, a full GUI BASIC language, and GEM Paint. Pics of the media here: https:/&#x…
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Did you know Protext is freeware now? https://www.aptanet.org/protext/ I do a bootable DOS system on a live USB key and it includes Protext. :-) https://github.com…