#learning linux is good but don't try to learn linux and something else at the same time

[andmaybegayer]

After I deleted a bunch of projects (thankfully non-critical, though representing a great deal of work in total) during a recent fresh OS install, I realized that my backup practices are practically non-existent. Any tips or sources on getting started making, and eventually automating, effective backups?

I am stealing the concept here from jwz's backup guide, but I am recommending different tools, focusing on personal files only, and also addressing Windows. jwz's guide is a good reference:

Doing a way, way better job than most people of backing up one single system is very easy. Let us begin.

The most basic step of having decent backups is getting your hands on two external hard drives at least big enough to hold your entire system, and putting a label on them that says "BACKUP ONLY DO NOT USE FOR ANYTHING ELSE I AM BEING FOR REAL HERE"

Once you've got those, plug one into your system wherever it spends the most time. If you have a desktop then that's solved, if it's a laptop hopefully you already have a USB hub you plug it into when you sit down to work or whatever and you can just leave it there.

Now set up regular scheduled backups to that device. On Windows and Mac, there's a built in tool for backing up your system to an external drive. We'll assume that you just want to back up your user files on Windows and Linux, since doing full system backups isn't tricky but is kind of unnecessary.

(Ugh. Windows seems to be trying to phase out Windows Backup and Restore in favour of their File History thing. That's annoying, let me log in to windows and check how this actually works. Mac in the meantime)

Mac has Time Machine. Time Machine is extremely good, and you can tell Time Machine to save its backups to a disk. Point Time Machine at your external hard drive and tell it to schedule a backup however frequently you want. If anything goes wrong in the future, you can ask Time Machine to look at that backup disk and it'll show you a few versions of whatever you backed up there. I'm not a Mac user but I think you can even use Time Machine to transfer between an old computer and a new one.

Windows now has File History which I have never used in my life, they added it after I stopped using Windows. Same idea though, pick some folders and back them up to an external storage device. If anything goes wrong, use File History to go back through that device and find the version of the file you wanted. I don't know if there's still a way to access the older Backup and Restore system.

On Linux, my favoured way to manage simple desktop backups is Deja Dup, a GUI for Duplicity. Duplicity can do a lot more than just backup to a disk, but we'll start there. Install Deja Dup, open it up, and follow the prompts to back up your user files to the external drive. Deja Dup can also do backups to remote storage servers, Google Drive/Onedrive, and commercial storage providers like Amazon and Backblaze. It will even encrypt your backups if you are worried about Amazon spying on your files or whatever. If something goes wrong, point Deja Dup at your backup drive and it will offer you a suite of restore options covering a few versions.

Now, you have a permanently plugged in hard drive that will always get rolling backups you can restore from. These aren't safe from, say, ransomware, or your house burning down, but at least you won't lose anything when you update a computer or accidentally delete something and have an ohshit moment.

Now you take that other drive you bought, and do the same backup you're already doing to that. Now you go put it somewhere else where it's readily accessible and won't be accidentally used for anything, keep it at the office, give it to your dad, whatever. Set a reminder on your phone for once a month. Once a month, go get that drive, run another backup, and put it back. You now have better backups than many medium sized businesses.

This is impractical to scale beyond one PC, but if we're being honest even when I had like half a dozen laptops, only one contained much of value. Back up the system you care about.

Don't worry too much about making sure your backups are space efficient, like, yeah it would be a good idea to exclude game installs and stuff from your backups to save space but if that sounds daunting or time consuming literally do not do it. Decision paralysis is brain poison, just back it up and sort it out later. 2TB external hard drives are cheap.

FURTHER STEPS YOU CAN TAKE:

Easy Cloud backup: Backblaze personal backup on Windows and Mac is $6/month and pretty easy to use. If you are struggling to keep track of a monthly remote backup, or you want an easy remote backup. Backblaze is a reasonably reliable company and one of the Go To Companies in the world of data reliability. Yes, it's a cloud subscription. If you don't want that don't use it.

Network backup: If you have access to a storage server, that can be a good way to make a remote backup without having to shuttle disks around. That could be a physical server if you maintain some kind of lab, or it could be a cloud storage provider like Backblaze B2 or Onedrive or whatever. Deja Dup specifically supports backing up to a lot of different network storage providers, and even if you only have a fifty or sixty gigabytes of network storage on hand, your most essential personal files can probably fit in there.

Drive failures: Eventually one of your drives will fail, either your storage drive or your backup drive. If the storage drive fails, well, that's what the backup is for, go get a replacement and restore from the backup. If your backup drive fails, well, that's why you have two of them. As soon as humanly possible go get a replacement drive, and substitute it in for the dead one.

[vivaciouscynner]

Just hear me out...

So, Edge, CoPilot, and worst of all, Recall are just terrible for a large number of reasons - namely privacy and security. We're in a time period where this is just going to get worse and worse that any number of precautions just aren't going to cut it because the people who are doing this to you aren't some random bad actor trying to hack your system. It's a specific bad actor that made the system FOR YOU. And that just about sucks any way you try to cut it.

There are some things you can do - but you might not like it:

Believe it or not, the absolute easiest solution is switching to Linux.

BUT WAIT! DON'T STOP READING JUST YET!

Hear me out. I get it, we grew up on MS Windows and a lot of us are on Apple systems too (which are also riddled with AI garbage), but Linux isn't what it used to be, even a decade ago. And yes, there's like a billion different distributions out there, how do you even choose, right? Let me tell you, even linux users are annoyed by it too. But, linux CAN give you a lot of the same things windows and mac can without the AI and spyware bullshit and the different distributions aren't really that different - it's really just a lot of engineers going, "well this is good, but this is how I WOULD DO IT," and still be able to use the same packages.

Here's how I'd recommend approaching linux without having to throw your os in a garbage fire:

grab a popular distribution of Linux - I recommend Linux Mint (it's pretty user friendly) - read through this: https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/choose.html#

get an empty USB stick (preferably around 64 gigs just to have the space, but you can get away with something much smaller) and create a bootable image with it

Restart your pc with the usb stick in - You can now run linux - for free (always free) - off the usb stick without affecting anything else. You can install stuff, mess around, play with it, yadda yadda.

So yes, there will also be a learning curve with it too. It's linux, it's new, it's different. But once you get your feet wet, you'll start seeing windows as super clunky and bloated.

If you don't want to do THAT, you can also try linux through your browser: Read through this article:

Basically it's a virtual machine that you can play with, but it's a little restricted sooo probably not the most accurate experience, but something to still play with. You can also learn a lot from this site as well:

BUT IF YOU DON'T WANT TO DO ANY OF THAT AND RATHER STAY ON WINDOWS (sorry not a mac user so I can't really think of solutions for mac users)

The alternative is really messing with registry keys and blocking ports that Copilot and Recall use through the firewall which can greatly mess up your PC if you don't know what you're doing.

Did i mention linux is free and it has a MASSIVE community for support?

Anyway - EITHER WAY YOU CHOOSE - we ALL need to start being a little more tech savvy. Things are going to get worse and if we're blind to it, we're walking to our doom willingly.

Just a side note: This doesn't mean linux is like the most secure thing in the world - you still need an antivirus and set up firewalls and be diligent about malware and privacy and such. Like, that's still a 'you' responsibility no matter what operating system you use. So keep that in mind

[layingeggs]

Did you know that indie games just work on linux?

My love is trying to get me to drop windows and install linux on my machine. I've been apprehensive because I'm anxious about stuff not working the same.

One of these is gaming. And we've been testing some games on her machine. And I've been surprised to learn that small dev team indie games made specifically for windows seem to work better on linux emulating windows than they do on actual real windows.

I don't understand this! Surely if it's emulating windows, it should be as good as or almost as good as windows? How is it better?

So, specific examples. Bloodborne PSX and Marble Maid.

Bloodborne PSX cannot be played with a playstation controller. I don't know why. And I don't want to attack it or anything. Bloodborne PSX is fantastic.

But I plug in my dualshock 4, boot the game up, and it just doesn't register any controller input at all. In order to play Bloodborne PSX with a playstation controller, I have to use a third party software called DS4Windows that receives dualshock 4 inputs and then outputs the equivalent xbox controls.

So Bloodborne PSX is playable with an xbox controller. And by emulating an xbox controller, it all works smoothly.

So today I try playing Bloodborne PSX on linux, using something called Wine, which allows linux to emulate windows.

It just works. I plug in my dualshock and it just works. No need to emulate an xbox controller. It just works.

How does it just work? Why does it just work?

Another odd one is a little gem called Marble Maid. I love Marble Maid. It's a porn game spiritual successor to Monkey Ball. It's a really lovely game.

When I originally played Marble Maid, on my machine on windows 10, I had to play with keyboard controls.

Using my dualshock4 again? For some reason it registers a constant camera rotation as if you were constantly holding the right stick down.

Emulating an xbox controller here does nothing. It still thinks you're rotating the camera.

DS4Windows also has something called HidHide, which blocks your dualshock controls and only allows the rest of your machine to detect the emulated xbox controls.

No dice. Camera still permanently rotating.

I tried googling this issue to see if anyone else was having it, and if they'd found a workaround or solution.

All I could find was the developer saying to just play it on steam. The steam control plugins make all these games run fine with any controller.

I don't have a steam account. I don't want one. I am playing these games off of itch io. Occasionally I get them from other sources like gog or gamejolt or what have you.

So, for someone like me who doesn't want to use steam, I just can't play Marble Maid with a controller. I just can't. Has to be keyboard controls.

Except-

I tried playing it today on linux.

And it worked just fine.

I cannot understand this. Why does it just work? It's only linux emulating windows. How does linux emulating windows run more efficiently than actual real windows. I can't understand this.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to installing linux on my machine.

[griefabyss69]

can i ask how you installed linux on your laptop? ive been thinking about doing it for a while but dont really know what i need to do to prep for it

I'm just a beginner too so I totally understand how confusing it all seems but it's not too bad if you take your time! This is going to be as quick as possible, and I'm going to assume you're choosing the Linux Mint version of Linux because it's a widely accepted opinion that it's the best for people new to this OS. (You can always add another version of Linux or change to it later on once you've had success with this!)

Note: You'll need a USB stick with at least 4GB on it, and you will want to have it dedicated to the Linux install

Back everything up! How you do this is up to you. I did it by saving anything important to an External HD (I already have a clean install of windows on a CD). If you don't have a clean install of your current OS, you can burn a restore point to a CD or DVD, or put it on a USB stick. Note: You'll be able to access all of your files on your current harddrive even after partitioning and booting on Linux! So you don't need to make two copies or transfer things over. If you have an account for your browser, sync your tabs/passwords/history/etc for a muuuuch smoother transition! Linux comes with Firefox already installed, so if you don't currently use it but want to make the change, you can port your bookmarks in from Chrome.

Get information about your system: You'll want to know your current OS (mine was Windows 7), what graphics card you have, how much RAM (memory) your computer has, and what kind of booting your system does (BIOS or UEFI), and of course, how much space on your harddrive there is. Note: I use "harddrive" to mean wherever you're installing your OS, some people install it on an external HD, or an SSD and run it from there.

Pick which distribution of Linux to install: While you can install whichever one you want, Linux Mint is the safest bet for someone new to Linux - if your computer can run a Windows or Mac OS, it can run the version of Linux Mint called Cinnamon. And that's the one that's the most user friendly. It's a great way to learn how to use the Terminal (like command prompts on Windows) in a low stress way because you still have the User Interface. It also has a robust community with plenty of information/resources out there! Super helpful. If your computer doesn't have enough space (though Cinnamon does not take up much at all, I think people say something around 165GB for Linux Mint Cinnamon), Mate is smaller and XCFE is the smallest, though they are less beginner friendly.

Decide how you want to install it: Here is an installation guide I used to get Linux Mint. Some of it I had to read a few times and only really understood once I did it, but with my backups I did it without fear. I recommend doing a Dual Boot system if you have the space, partitioning your hard drive is not nearly as complicated as I thought it'd be and also it's good for if Linux doesn't have a version for some programs you like to use. Here's another installation guide, though I think it only focuses on going from Windows to Linux. It has some great tips for post-installation though if you're not going from Windows. It also assumes you didn't pre-partition your harddrive. I partitioned mine before installation so I used the "Something Else" option when it asked me which type of install I wanted. There are instructions on that in the first installation guide! P.s. - If you're on Windows 7, the recommended USB writer program isn't available for you. I used USBImager!

Wrap up any loose ends and do web searches for anything you're not sure of. Bring things up on your phone for reference while you're mid-install. NOTE: When you boot your computer from the USB Stick with Linux Mint on it (I'm assuming other varieties of Linux too?), you have the option to try it out without installing it. Then while you're trying it out if you're ready to install it, there's an icon on the desktop you click. If you don't install it, none of your settings or anything will save and the next time you boot from the USB stick it'll be a fresh version of Linux.

https://forums.linuxmint.com/ There are mountains of information in here! And plenty of them are helpful for beginners. https://easylinuxtipsproject.blogspot.com/p/first-mint-cinnamon.html This is helpful too!!! The whole site is.

If you don't like how something looks/feels/works, there's probably a system setting for it. Do a Timeshift snapshot when you first install Linux, then one after you've spent time setting everything up! That way you're covered. After you do that second Timeshift you can start looking for programs to install if you'd like! Definitely look up tutorials/etc on that.

Okay I hope this was enough to get your started and cover a lot of bases! Remember to have patience, re-read stuff, take breaks if you're confused, and that like a million people use Linux Mint successfully so once you get through the hard part (pre-install and installing) it's pretty smooth sailing.

Let me know if you have anymore questions!

[mentalisttraceur-software]

When I was younger and still stuck thinking in terms of concrete current implementations more than abstract semantics and their best possible implementations, I kept wanting to bypass the standard library, especially in low-level languages like C, because the standard library had code paths I didn't need.

If I knew I didn't need my newly allocated memory to start zeroed out, I disliked calling calloc, because a naive implementation of calloc implies extra work, and most implementations would imply extra work at least some of the time. Because I failed to conceive of the OS and hardware having extremely efficient code and circuitry for giving us zeroed out memory pages, and I failed to conceive of optimizing compilers generating code which doesn't bother zeroing out that memory if you truly never read those bytes before writing them.

If I just wanted one memory allocation for the lifetime of the program, I disliked calling malloc at all, because most malloc implementations have a complex memory allocator which is only more optimal for larger and churnier memory usage. I wanted to call the rawest, most direct memory allocation operation - for example, on modern Linux that's an mmap system call asking for an anonymous page (or for a mapping of /dev/zero, although I later learned of sloppy/overbroad SELinux policies in production, f.e. on some Android devices, which reject opening or mapping /dev/zero). Or I wanted to just manually try to grow the stack (and have raw feedback from the kernel if I didn't have enough). Because I was stuck thinking about what the concrete implementations I had on hand would do. Instead, I should've been imagining the optimizing compiler which can look at a simple "malloc", and at everything else in the code, and at any optimization preferences and other information passed in when invoking the compiler, and just compile that malloc as a raw memory system call, or as a stack allocation, if that's actually the best thing to do in that situation.

Painstakingly chipping away at this has been one of the most liberating and healing things for me as a software developer. This is why I eventually realized that we should "code for the optimizer" rather than optimizing by hand in almost every situation. But it took the overwhelming accumulation of examples of actual real-world situations where automatic optimizations beat manual fiddling, or did just as well, and where the manual fiddling was actively counter-productive.

I wish they taught this in schools or something. Just one class, one semester, which is mostly just a showcase of "here's some code. here's how it could be inefficient. how might we optimize this? yeah, yeah, cool, cool... good ideas class. Now here's what a modern compiler can do if you just give it the simple code that doesn't try to optimize. Notice how it did everything you thought of, plus things you didn't. And oh look, if we change the optimization tuning from execution speed to memory usage for example, the compiler can optimize the simple code totally differently, but our hand-optimized code is stuck using more memory, because the compiler can no longer discern the relevant intent and invariants in this code - and neither could a human, without extensive comments and context".

I know lots of developers just don't care, but it would go a long way towards either unblocking or constructively directing the type of developer who can be very productive but would otherwise spend too much time prematurely or needlessly optimizing in the wrong places.

[theelusivepoetalien]

Okay so it's a great day to go see if something like Khan Academy or other freebie learning zone has a Computer Networking 101. Turns out KhanAcademy.org is still free for now. I'm sure it mines the hell out of your data like anything else. I use one of my like 10 google logins. Did you know you didn't used to have a phone number to get a gmail address? There are still some e-mail services that don't require phone numbers, though they have different limitations and uses. Becoming a suite was quite another magnitude for a login. Anyway, someone tag me if we need the article on Other Email Services. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/basics-computer-networking/ ^This doesn't require a log in. I'm probably going to try to find a couple amusing videos. Like probably from youtube, unless I can find something on vimeo or the fediverse. A lot of this is learning how the internet goes. It teaches The Names and Commands of The Internet. Sort of like programing languages like C(++++?) and Python are Vocabulary and Grammar for Taming Your Processor. I'll reblog with more related links as I add to my Updated Study Library. My current aims include: > getting competent in basic LAN and internetwork administration > continuing to munch on html and CSS -- //Every time I get used to a service, it disappears or monetizes out of my budget or fills up with ads until it stops working.// I think I can make an ugly tack board and file server for my household. Also it's really satisfying -- like painting with puzzle pieces. > web hosting so there is somewhere to put it > uh taking screenshots and making posts about better net navigation and building skills to improve awareness? And of course: https://www.myabandonware.com/browse/theme/typing-29/ A bunch of typing games so old that no one cares. If you're willing to go with lowtech graphics to skip modern spyware and webtracking, it's honestly a fun little ride. Learning to type physical conditioning. However you make 15-30 minutes almost every day good and fun for yourself. (Sometimes 2d alien fun for points is enough, ya?) Yeah, those are for windows. Most macintosh users these days can maybe blow a few currency on a indie app, eh? Linux users -- you already know how to use freeware and honestly I'm not expecting to be read by a lot of linux users on this thread. (@ me for linux introductions ig too) Android? Basically in the same app boat as mac... Shout up for android power user info, like sideloading but... I haven't been browsing the indie APKs or the flash community in ages.

And uh, get a keyboard. bluetooth is fine for a while and better for someone trying to start this kind of project on a phone or a tablet. If someone is sticking to typing games for a few weeks or several, it might be worth considering getting a corded keyboard -- Anyone who is topping over 45wpm and heading for 60+ will find that bluetooth keyboards may not keep up with that leveled up meat input. (I can type around 90wpm or so when I'm on a roll and get frustrated pretty quickly.) Most Importantly: SAVE YOUR PROGRESS (u matter), & Look It Up before you Give It Up.

another thought about "gen z and gen alpha don't know how to use computers, just phone apps" is that this is intentionally the direction tech companies have pushed things in, they don't want users to understand anything about the underlying system, they want you to just buy a subscription to a thing and if it doesn't do what you need it to, you just upgrade to the more expensive one. users who look at configuration files are their worst nightmare

[probablyaskeleton]

Windows Users: "so anyway, if you just load up the command prompt and paste these two lines in, download this tool from the internet, then make these tweaks to your registry, you can disable all the ads/spyware they've shoved in until a system update inevitably adds some new bullshit that's a gigantic violation of your privacy"

They are fucking cooking you. You are being boiled in a pot. Learning to use Linux instead of Windows might be weird for a while, it might take a few months to get everything down, but it won't turn into a train of continually trying to defuck your operating system because someone else decides a new feature is going to make them a bunch of money.

When you learn something, it isn't going to be randomly changed because someone thinks it'll make them more money. Scared off because you don't know what distro to use? Try Mint. It's pretty good.

[shih-na]

If you're considering linux that's great to hear. We always need more users. I've heard lots of good things about linux mint (though I haven't used it myself). Another option, if you wanna learn a little bit about the more technical side, is to use debian. It's more work to set up on first install but it's very easy to customize and impossible to break. If you plan on drawing on the device, fair warning that ibis paint doesn't have official linux support (though many other painting apps do). You should be able to get it working but it might be a pain in the ass. If you do end up choosing linux, you should get yourself a book on it. Linux isn't hard per se but it is different from windows so if you try and change or fix something the way you would on a windows device you could get very confused very quickly. I don't know what the best contemporary beginner linux resources are since it's been a while since I started and there have been some significant developments since then, but you should be able to find a good book for free online, or for a reasonable price from a local bookstore if you prefer paper books.

I do understand what you're saying but having to get a book just to use the basic features of an OS as a casual user is a hard sell. I know I should learn more about software but if I can pay someone else to figure that out for me, I will go with that option instead. My main problem is how much space it takes and the privacy concerns. Which, now that I think about it, dual booting doesn't solve.

I'm still considering switching to linux, this would be the best time for it. But if I have to use microsoft for stuff later (uni work or gaming maybe) then there is no point

[alexmotechblog]

NRF52840 Xiao Sense

Happy Manic Maker Monday!

For two upcoming projects, I'm going to be using two flavors of the Seeed Studios Xiao boards based on the NRF52840. These little boards are really something.

For one upcoming project, it has one of each of the exact things I need:

BLE to connect to another project on which I'm working

UART for chatpad input

SPI for eink display

I2C for a GPS

A few GPIO for a soft power button, an indicator LED, and maybe a vibration motor for haptics

Battery power and charging

An internal IMU (on the Sense flavor)

The only difference between the Sense and the non-Sense is that the former has a built-in IMU and microphone which are meant for tinyML projects since ML is all the rage (think of being in ultra-low power and performing inferences on audio samples but sleeping and collecting in-between).

In fact, for this Learn-a-Thon, there are a few things I totally want to investigate: the Embedded Template Library (for exploration on C++ to really object-orient the project), nRF Connect SDK, Zephyr OS (I'm late to jump on the bus here but there's good talk about this Linux-like take on RTOS), BLE, and TinyML.

nRF Connect SDK - It will be nice to get into the APIs provided by Nordic without any layers inbetween. A simple bare-metal eventloop will be lovely here.

ZephyrOS - I'll probably only be using this one of the projects since for the other one, bare metal will be just fine and I'd like to just get into the direct nRF Connect SDK for the hell of it. They say this abstracts away drivers which is an interesting prospect included in an RTOS! I've heard it's 80% configuration and 20% coding but, if it's good code running the drivers, why not just leverage it!

Embedded Template Library - generally I don't code in C++ besides for work, but I love the idea that it is possible to code something that uses primarily static data and has a low footprint. I've read reviews on ETL, heard about it on podcasts, and just gotta try it. There is a solid reason for using C++ in these projects and that is that I want to create a common base class that outlines capabilities of each of these devices.

BLE - I've done lots with wifi, written wifi drivers, wifi managers, connectivity managers, etc, but never BLE! I totally feel like I need to try it out! Especially since one of the projects is purely a sensor arm that transmits over BLE. Eventually, something else that would be really interesting would be OTA over BLE which I've never had to manage.

TinyML - I also haven't jumped into the ML/AI with both feet really. I've used pre-compiled models and hardware acceleration and some tangential TVM stuff but I want to create the model and see it with my own destructive hands >:) I'm also interested how much optimization is in control of the model developer.

Low Power Mode - I've done some of this already at work but it's a good idea to get in the weeds on a different micro. Especially, I'd like to understand how Zephyr might abstract this, how I can optimize packet offloads, etc.

I've got kind of a slew of experiments I want to try:

Zephyr OS Emulation - No hardware way to get started upper level programming. I would love to code around in Zephyr and get emulated results. Always a handy tool.

Zephyr OS - Get hello world on Xiao (sanity, familiarity, etc)

Zephyr OS + BLE - I've seen demos, I think it's easy to get started. Attaching a button or sensor should be pretty easy from there.

TinyML + IMU + BLE (https://blog.tensorflow.org/2021/05/building-tinyml-application-with-tf-micro-and-sensiml.html)

[wumblr]

I noticed you mentioning rasbian and I know you do DataSci stuff, so I figured I’d ask if you have any recommendations on setting up Conda on a Raspberri Pi 4 (if you use Conda)... seems like the miniconda distro designed for the Pi’s processor is wildly deprecated, and I’m wondering what else I should use... thanks in advance for any advice!

i do have a recommendation! don’t use linux 

i’m half joking but like, i’ve gotten a lot more mileage out of opening browser-based scratchpads like repl.it or kaggle or github pages or jupyter notebooks and trying out some code. that, to me, is what “learning data science” is -- everything else is “setting up an environment,” and i’ve lost countless hours trying to do that, when i could have just opened up a scratchpad and tried the code idea i had and been done with it... if you’re asking about package managers because you can’t even open a scratchpad, sort of like me, who can’t even figure out how to play audio so i can watch a youtube video telling me where to solder the wires on my laptop power cord so i can get the hell off linux, then, well, reread paragraph one lmao sorry

afaik, conda is a package manager, and anaconda and miniconda are distros. miniconda is basically empty, so, perhaps counterintuitively, anaconda, the full version, should be easier to use... however, evidence would suggest, on my pi, i use a different package manager, called pip. why i made this decision or how it works, i don’t know. it would seem the tradeoff is that pip neglects non-python libraries, and anaconda more broadly focused, but that works for me because i’m mostly using python. (or does it? i still have no audio)

[fckwritersblock]

Protection Forever - William Lennox

Lennox x Reader

Description: Running into an old flame at the worst possible time.

Warning: nah. Bad writing? Kinda. Unedited because I was excited. I’ll not when it’s been fixed. Somethings may not be fully aligned with the movie but I tried 😩

Word count: 2500+

Dedicated to @merakiaes hey fren!

All gifs from @meragifs too!

You were an EMT.

The two of you pulled up to meet with the other Autobots, you exiting the vehicle before he transformed. You were in awe as he and the rest of the cars all changed.

The biggest one, their leader, gave a rundown of everything that was happening once he confirmed Sam’s identity. This was just a recap for you as Ratchet had already explained. The teenage boy just stood there stuttering not really knowing how to process everything and you frowned again. That was when you really took notice of two teens just standing there. Having known what was expected of Sam Witwicky you frowned slightly.

“I don’t know about this Ratchet, he’s just kid.” You commented to the alien you had formed a quick bond with.

“And who might you be?” The one called Optimus inquired.

You gave him your name before the other yellow autobot, who you’d later learned was Bumble Bee, uttered something through his radio. It was hard for you to hear but the other robots seemed to be use to it as Ratchet responded immediately.

“The human. I like her.” Ratchet sounding irritated.

Bumblebee made another comment and right before Ratchet could respond one of the others chimed in.

“Wait why do they get humans?” Jazz asked incredulously. “I want one too!”

“Enough! Humans are not pets.” The one call Optimus Prime stated sternly, clearly tired of their bickering. You held your laugh, highly amused.

They were like siblings. A family.

“Exactly I’m just here to help and be a better tour guide than these kids can be.” You confirmed practically forcing your services on them. “Besides they need adult supervision. From the looks of it, you all do.” You grinned at everyone around you. Optimus gave a nod, agreeing.

“She stays. Let’s move.”

In that short amount of time things moved rather quickly. You watched the Autobots accidentally destroy Sam’s backyard when attempting to retrieve the glasses, you were all arrested, you escaped thanks to the Autobots, only to be arrested again.

Fail.

Finally you ended it some secret base. How get you weren’t alone. The government had apparently been on a roll with kidnapping civilians who “knew too much “.

Things weren’t going great but quickly went left when the Decepticons, the Autobot rivals, came to retrieve Megatron.

A war from another planet had officially made Earth its battleground.

You were nervous, trying to figure out how to calm everything down before things started to escalate. Nobody was going to get anywhere with all the bickering. That’s when you saw him.

It had been what? Two years?

Still, without even knowing it, without even knowing you were present, he was still able to make your heart be slow and fast at the same time. The army had aged him, but for the better making him all the more attractive but you couldn’t focus on that right now. Especially when you heard:

“The cryogenic system is failing! We're losing NBE One!”

All the soldiers begin to pack everything that they could to prepare in a fight the way they always did. It was an mirable the way Linux game orders in his men took them without a second thought. The trust there.

“That’s good. Get all the ammo you got.”

“Everything you can carry. Bring it.”

Tearing your eyes away from your former lover you grab Sam.

“Come on, we need Bee.” You reminded him, nodding in Simmons direction

“You got to take me to my car.” Sam said, then repeated when he was ignored. “You have to take me to my car. He’s gonna know what to do with the Cube.”

“Your car? It's confiscated.”

“Then unconfiscate it.” You stared blankly.

“We do not know what will happen if we let it near this thing! -“

“You don't know.”

“Maybe you know, but I don't know.”

You rolled your eyes at the insufferable mans rambling.

This was really was more about ego who was in control more than anything. The guy running the ship, clearly was on a power trip. Unfortunately for him he was facing off against soldiers . The Captain who’s eyes you could feel staring at the side of your face.

A Captain and his soldiers. Ones that really dont like to lose and take serving their country seriously.

The guy who arrested you earlier continue to argue with Sam about getting him back to bumblebee when Lennox finally pulled out his gun sick of the back-and-forth.

“Take him to his car!”

As soon as he did so all hell broke loose and everyone from both parties pulled out a weapon.

“Drop it!”

It wasn’t until One of the sector seven agents pointed a gun at the back of Will’s head that you disable to another agent and took his gun and pointed it directly and held it directly at the one pointing the gun at your ex.

“I really wouldn’t.” You warned.

You were no soldier, but Will have taught you plenty before you broke up. So did your brother, before he passed away. He actually served alongside Will but died in combat. Biking. That’s part of why you were so hurt when Will re-enlisted. When he got promoted to Captain and chose the army over you. You were terrified of losing him the way you lost your brother. The break up wasn’t that messy but you both said things you didn’t mean. In attempts to mask your own pain and hurt one another.

You know. Hurt people, hurt people.

It’s still came to no surprise that you put a bullet in someone to protect him. Together or not you’d never let anything happen to him.

“I'm ordering you under S-Seven executive jurisdiction-“ Simmons ranted.

“S-Seven don't exist.” You interjected, earning a quick appreciative glance from Will.

“Right. And we don’t take orders from people that don’t exist.”

“I’m gonna count to 5. Okay-“ Simmons attempted to threat yet again.

“Well, I’m gonna count to three.” Will deadpanned.

You knew that look. God did you know that look and it was so wrong that you were so turned on.

Finally the Secretary of defense interfered telling Simmons to do what was being asked of him. Everyone relaxed slight, weapons lowering.

“Y/n,”

“Captain.”

The Captain and couldn’t help but watch you how do you get up and prepare to go.

“So that’s her huh?” Epps commented as Will watched you run off with Sam.

“Yeah..” Will answered, mind racing.

While he knew he’d eventually see you again, he didn’t think it would be like this. You looked breath taking.

“Damn. Shorty had your back that entire time.”

“Gear up,”

“What I’m just saying I thought she was gonna put a cap in his.” Epps shouted after his Captain receiving no response.

Will knew you had his back, you always would, the same way he would always have yours. He thought of you often, the break up between two inescapable, never feeling like he did the right thing. You were always not too far from the front of his mind. Him wondering how you were doing. If you were happy. If you found somebody else. There was no doubt he regretted what had transpired between the two of you. It was his fault. He knew that. You knew that. He had ample opportunity to fight for you and he didn’t. When he was promoted Captain he felt he had to choose between you and the army. He didn’t choose you the way he should’ve. In reality he could’ve had both. However hr so caught up proven himself to his deadbeat dad that he possibly let the best thing that ever happened to him go.

Not to mention trying to atone for your brothers death. It wasn’t his fault, but he still couldn’t shake it. So without talking to you he reenlisted. Needless to say where that got him.

Now hear the both of you were in the middle of an alien war. Yeah. This is the last place he thought he’d see you.

You were numb. The battle on the highway enough to freak you out. For mommy, just a moment you thought this might be a dream but no. This is all very real. One minute you guys were just entering the city trying to lay low, next thing you know - BOOM! The explosion knocked all of you over, injuring some, killing a few. Bumblebee’s legs were partially blown off.

Getting up off the pavement you waited for the ringing in your ear to subside as you stood up, trying to study yourself when you felt a pair of arms hold you still.

You knew it was Will just by the way he touched you, you blinked hard trying not to go down memory lane.

“Are you okay?” The concern in his voice was enough to make your heart skip a bear.

“Yeah,” you nodded slowly. “Yeah I’m fine.”

Slowly you removed yourself from his grip and went to check on Sam and Mikaela. Ratchet on the other hand -

“Hmm. His pheromone levels are-“ you quickly turned on him and glared.

“Ratchet I’ll turn you into a can opener if you don’t shut the hell up.”

The robot nearly held his hands up in the surrendering position as he followed you. Will had arranged an aircraft to pick up Sam and the cube while everyone else defended themselves against the deceptive cons in a hurry to get the cube far far away before Megatron arrived. Sam was in a panic and so Michaela, you could see Will’s short fuse getting ready to exploded. It was then you decided to be an escort.

“Sam, you can’t do this alone.” Michaela fussed.

“He won’t be alone.” You commented, causing all parties involved to look at you.

“I’m going with you.” You declared.

“No.” Will didn’t even hesitated as he stepped closer to you.

“Captain Lennox-“

“No!” You grabbed him by the front of his beer and pushed him back.

“Do you see what going on out there?!” You continued to hold on to him and you yelled at him over there chose. “We’re at a war. One we are extremely ill prepared for. So get your shit together! Sam is my responsibility. I have to get this kid to safety.”

This time your hands slid up the side of his face forcing him to look at you.

“Y/n..” he breathed out leaning down toward you, and for the first time during all this madness you could visibly see he was afraid.

“I’ll be back, Will.” You assured him, briefly resting your forehead against his.

Gathering himself he pulled away, looking toward Sam then back at you.

“Go. Go!”

And then we were running.. With nothing but an M16 strapped to your back and the pistol in your hand, you ran faster than you ever have before.

The four of you were under attack once more, you and Sam doing what you had to, to avoid getting snatched up as a fight Ironhide and Ratchet defended you. Unfortunately you were too close to one of the cars that went up in flames and you were thrown into another car from the blast.

“Y/n!” You could feel the blood on your forehead as you slowly pushed yourself up. As you tried to stand you immediately stopped feeling the pain in your thigh. Looking down could see the damage that had been done. The blood surrounding the afflicted area.

“Wha- what, what do i do?!” Sam asked frantically once he took notice of your injury.

“You gotta keep going Sam. I’ll be fine.”

He stood fo his feet, unsure of what to do. When Ironhide told him the same thing.

“Go!” You screamed once more.

Sam left and continued to run without you as you, as quickly as possible, as you tore your focus away from him to pull the shard of glass in your leg out. Ripping a piece of your shirt off you tightly tied it around your thigh in order to stop the bleeding. There was no point in going forward now but the return back to everyone else and help them fight.

You just had to avoid getting killed in the process.

You seen a car steering wheel, a Mountain Dew vending machine and and Xbox all turn into one of those freaky ass robots right before your eyes. All of which you helped others fight off. It was so surreal. In fact, if it wasn’t for the constant ringing in your ear from all the explosions you definitely think you were dreaming. You almost made it back to Lennox and his men when another Decepticon stood between between you and your destinations. They were definitely taking a beating. You saw Epps shooting a green laser indicating the robot that doubled as a helicopter wasn’t a friendly and decided to do what you could to keep the Decepticon from getting any closer to them and hurting any more civilians. In an attempt to draw it away from everyone else, you begin to fire your weapon giving it everything you had.

Unfortunately, the side effective taking its attention off the others meant putting the attention on you.

You ran trying to duck and dodge a bullets now directed your way.

But Will. Will’s heart dropped. Seeing you there defending yourself alone. His pause was brief, the air forces plan already in motion, before he started the motorcycle and was speeding in your direction.

“William!” You screamed for him fearfully as he drove straight toward the robot.

The only thing you could hear was your heartbeat pounding in your ears. You almost couldn’t breathe, you don’t remember the last time you ever felt so scared in your life. But it wasn’t your life you feared for was it?

He rushed forward and slid under the robot continuing to firing the launcher. All you could do was watch as he drove toward you. Toward the danger your mind wondering if he did that on a regular basis. Was this the life of a soldier? What he went through day after day when he was deployed?

Standing up he only spared the parts of the dismembered robot a glance before shouting and turning looking for you. In a matter of seconds he was standing directly in front of you and pulling you into his arms.

Relief.

There was nothing like physically being about to touch someone, hold someone to really know they were okay.

“So…” you began, suddenly feeling nervous. “...That was hot-“

Before you were able to get another word in, he captured your lips with his kissing you roughly and bringing you closer, hands on the small of your back. You couldn’t help it kiss him back just as fiercely put in every emotion you had into that kiss.

Every ounce of passion he had in body, put into this kiss, your lips just as soft, kiss just as pure as he remembered. When you kissed, he knew he was a goner and could never let you go again.

It has been two years since the last time you guys have been this close. This intimate. Reconnected. The feeling it gave you, the indescribable feeling, was one neither one of you ever wanted to forgo again. Pulling back slowly, you both had smiles on your faces, Will pulling you closer to plant a kiss on your forehead.

“Excuse me,” Epps interrupted.

The both of you turning your attention on him.

“As cute as this shit is it’s highly inappropriate in the middle of the battle. I’m just saying we are trying to stay alive and shit.”

———————————————

Oh my fu- I don’t even know what this isssss

Couldn’t tell you what my original ideas was or nothing. I believed this was going to short-

I enjoyed writing it though! Shoutout again to @merakiaes for being on this lennox train with me lol

I’m just....I’m just gonna leave this mess here.

Bye

- Mo

—————————-

Tags: @merakiaes @lilythemadqueen

[douchebagbrainwaves]

THEY DON'T GET THAT THERE ARE SO MANY DEALS

We say that the situation degenerates into a popularity contest. I don't think this is true. It's not only economic statistics that ignore the value of safe jobs.1 Better to make a living.2 Grownups, like some kind of primitive, multi-celled sea creature, where you work regular hours at one job to make money, or morph it into any number of random factors could sink you before you can finish.3 If you'd proposed at the time.4 Startups live on speed and momentum. So why don't they do something about it? Translated into more straightforward language, this means: We're not investing in you, but they seem positively eager to syndicate. That's why the Internet won. Nerds still in school should not hold their breath. Surely it was their duty to their limited partners simply to invest in a bunch of eleven-year-old kid, I didn't have much more experience of the world.

It wouldn't have been a natural fit for, say, corporate law, or medicine. Bootstrapping sounds great in principle, but this is not so disinterested as we might think. The other connection between startups and technology is that startups create new ways of doing things are, in the abstract that people get tortured in poorer countries. College was regarded as job training where I grew up, it felt as if there was nowhere to go, and nothing they could do could make them popular. Together these three phases produce an S-curve. With some degrees, like MDs and PhDs, you may end up with a bunch of guys who get together to go hunting. One reason it was profitable to carve up 1980s companies and sell them for parts was that they hadn't formally acknowledged their implicit debt to employees who had done good work and expected to be rewarded with high-paying executive jobs when their time came. If you take a boring job to give your family a high standard of living, as so many people do, you have to make decisions about things they don't understand? Except the lions turned out not to have any teeth, and the business of putting galleries online barely qualified as carrion. That is wildly oversimplified, of course, but probably.

That's what leads people to try to do a mysterious, undifferentiated thing we called business. They're happy to invest small amounts—sometimes as little as $2000 per month. Few smart kids can spare the attention that popularity requires. A barbershop isn't designed to grow fast, I mean it in two senses. And since the lawyer could never admit, in front of it. Gradually it dawned on us that instead of trying to answer the first question.5 Teenage kids are not inherently unhappy monsters. For example, in my opinion, a crock. The problem is, the only investors who can do it right are the ones who obligingly flew Altavista into a hillside just as Google was getting started. It's easy to start to depend on it happening. Being smart doesn't make you an outcast in elementary school.

And I lost more than books. You must resist this. Synchronicity and locality are tied together. In theory these details are minor ones; by definition all the important points are supposed to be learning. Nor is it necessary for a startup to be cheap. For one thing, it seems as if society just has to make a conscious effort to find ideas everyone else has overlooked.6 If you're working on something or b be teleported to Rome and spend the next hour wandering about, was there any sort of work I'd prefer? This is clearest in the case of names. The three main causes of the Civil War were.

So innovation happens at hacker speeds instead of big company speeds. Whether they like it or not, an effort to be more conservative for their kids than they would if they got in at the very beginning.7 In industrialized countries the same thing: obedience. Paradoxically, fundraising is this type of distraction, so try to minimize that too. Even as recently as a few decades ago there was a good idea. Currently the way VCs seem to operate is to invest in those that at least have a chance of going public.8 Better to make a conscious effort to keep your expenses low; but above all, it means you don't need a lot of Internet startups are, though they may not have had this as an explicit goal. The average teenage kid has a pretty much infinite capacity for talking to their friends. The hardest part is realizing that you can. Fortunately, I can fix the biggest danger right here.9 Growth will slow, partly due to internal limits and partly because they tend to do it is to bait the hook with prestige.10 Arguably it's an interesting failed experiment.

Notes

There's a sort of dress rehearsal for the government.

Think it's too obvious to your brain that you're paying yourselves high salaries. That's probably true of nationality and religion too.

More generally, it causes a fundamental economic shift away from taking a difficult class lest they get more votes, as on a seed investment of 650k. Geoff Ralston reports that one of the Industrial Revolution, Cambridge University Press, 1973, p. If you have to track ratios by time of unprecedented federal power, in the US in 2002 was 35,560. Currently we do the right to buy corporate bonds to market faster; the crowds of shoppers drifting through this huge mall reminded George Romero of zombies.

On the other students, heirs, professors, politicians, and try to disguise it with the administration. We try to give him 95% of the most abstract ideas, but I don't like to fight.

The reason the young side. Part of the edge? 8%, Linux 11. It is the fact by someone who doesn't understand what you're doing.

Though we're happy to provide this service, this thought experiment: If you want to invest in these funds have no trouble getting hired by these companies unless your last round just happened, the company is Weebly, which draw more and angrier counterarguments.

That's why there's a special recipient of favour, being a scientist is equivalent to putting a sign saying this is to give up, and this destroyed all traces. But you're not even allowed to ask about what other people.

Actually he's no better or worse than Japanese car companies have never been the plague of 1347; the Depository Institutions Act of 1982, which make investments rather than giving grants.

As far as such things can be huge. False positives are not mutually exclusive. Com of their upbringing in their hearts that if VCs are suits at heart, the users' need has to give you a couple of hackers with no valuation cap. Applying for a startup you have to spend all your time on a weekend and sit alone and think.

I'd encourage anyone starting a startup is taking the Facebook/Twitter route and building something for free. A round, that suits took over during a critical period. They act as if having good intentions were enough to absorb that. But I know of no counterexamples, though, because the broader your holdings, the world wars to say about these: I once explained this to realize that species weren't, because it was putting local grocery stores out of a type II startups, but one way, they'd have taken one of the incompetence of newspapers is that if you were able to grow as big as a source of them.

[insanetwocubes]

Just bought a new laptop for 2h off ebay. Hopefully I didn't make a mistake lol

Even if it's a shitty model, I'm hoping the fact that it's brand new will let me at least stream modded minecraft.

I'm a lot more confident in streaming, though I think there's still a ways to go. But if I can stream modded minecraft, I'm confident it'll be a lot more fun. Stardew Valley is so boring to stream lol and I'm basically done with forager.

I don't want to play factorio again and I don't want to do any other game, really other than modded minecraft. Something with applied energetics and quest book suits me just fine.

Anyway, the plan remains such that I'll move all my files to the new laptop, factory reset my old one and reboot it in linux. I'm thinking mint or something. So this way, if I learn my way around linux, hopefully I won't have to rely on windows ever again. Which means everything becomes free, basically.

No stupid updates, not cortana or whatever spying on me. And I get to stream a lot more things like programming hopefully.

Yeah, it's gonna be good.

And if it isn't?

We find something else and try again.

Listen, I do believe streaming or some sort of content creation is a really good career path for us. Memes and internet culture are how I think, how I've learned to communicate.

It's passive, it's easy, it's lucrative, and it's lonely. Which is the best part! I'm already lonely. Fuck knows I've had enough human interaction for a lifetime. Might as well make money since I'm already doing it. Wearing a mask, being paranoid about how I'm interpreted, the worst thing in all of this is that I'm not getting paid for it.

Anyway. So that's the plan.

[wonkytensions]

August 12, 2022 (Part 1?)

I have a lot of thoughts so far about today. First of all, I set several hours of things to do for the afternoon as well as stuff for this morning, but I don't know how motivated I'll be to do them. I don't have work today, and there's a part of me that wants to laze around and binge watch movies and TV.

Also I recently learned about Kim Jong Gi, who's a Korean artist. I was really into drawing with just pen a while ago, and I really like the simplicity of it. I still do. Part of the reason I ended up trying to use other materials is for a couple of reasons: 1) I decided that there would be an upper limit of how good I could get while just using a pen, and 2) it wasn't financially feasible/I couldn't make money off of it. I'm trying really hard to not use money-making as a core reasons of why I do my hobbies, but it still sneaks in there. It's consumed a lot of my thoughts for a really long time; I can't just put it down.

But seeing this artist made all of that interest come back, because he's really good and he also doesn't use construction lines or anything like that, he essentially "freehands" everything. (Well, not everything, he does do blueprints/mockups/first drafts of commissions) but a lot of stuff he does is straight out of his head on the paper. I don't think I'd ever be as good as him, since I won't devote the time/energy to it, but it's still a worm in my head that's making me excited to do drawing.

This has several complications. The schedule I wrote up does have an emphasis on doing programming stuff, but there is some drawing stuff (like 60/30 or so). It makes me want to change the whole schedule to just drawing, which defeats the purpose. I did the schedule in the first place to get programming knowledge with the hope of changing jobs. Getting sidetracked by doing drawing defeats the purpose. It also doesn't help that my work situation has gotten a lot more palatable, and the very action of doing some kind of structured hobby stuff is making me feel a lot better and less interested in searching for a new programming job. I can be very emotional and arbirtrary sometimes, and I don't give that enough credit.

I'm also struggling with motivation in some of the courses, as I mentioned about Khan Academy. I'm someone who's very prone to quitting things, and I don't want that to derail any progress. I'm also very prone to being "inspired" and changing everything I do to follow that inspiration. I still don't have a good framework in order to accomodate those impulses without driving myself mad.

Something else I want to keep in mind is whether I should be "allowed" to do work outside of the assigned time. I'm also prone to burning out on stuff, in that I get really worked up in a thing, do a lot of it over a short period of time, and then never want to do it again. The schedule I have right now (50 min of work, 10 min break, then 50 min of something else) is working really well to mitigate that. But I like doing stuff while I'm watching TV or movies, just doing something with my hands, and it would be easy to let myself do some drawing. But I know in that kind of environment, the chances of me getting upset about the quality of my drawing is really high, so I've been avoiding that setup. I'm not really sure what to do about it.

This is a lot more thoughts than I thought it was going to be. I think for right now I'll continue with the schedule that I have and not make any big changes. I need more data and experience with it before I can do anything helpful, I think.

So on to this morning. The first thing I worked on was the Missing Semester. I didn't get really far in it today. I was at the exercises for Chapter 2, and I ran into a lot of problems. Like I said before I can't get any kind of virtual machine running, so I'm doing it all through Cygwin. I didn't want to use a word processor (?) inside Cygwin, so I was trying to find some kind of GUI program. I found the fake Linux filesystem that Cygwin set up, so it was pretty easy to save files written in N++ in that filesystem. That ended up being a big mistake. The exercises wanted me to write several bash files, and something about either the way N++ saved the file or Cygwin ran them kept on leading to a bunch of very confusing and unhelpful errors. I would get EOL errors constantly, a lot of errors about illegal characters, and my program was literally

function marco { marco=$PWD; }

I was getting very frustrated and couldn't figure out where in my short program I was having problems. I spent near an hour trying to figure it out. The only thing I could think of was that it had something to do with me being on Windows and running Cygwin. I reached out to a couple of friends of mine who would be much more likely able to run a Linux computer, with the intent of having them run the program and see if they ran into any errors. Eventually I got impatient and just wrote the program in Vim in Cygwin, and it ran totally fine without errors, but I was frustrated enough that it distracted me from doing the next thing on the schedule, which was finishing up an Udemy course on drawing anatomy.

Before I realized what the problem was, I worked on bash through the break and into the next segment, so I started the anatomy course late. I couldn't focus for a couple reasons, 1) I wanted to go back and do more stuff from the Missing Semester Course because I got very little work done due to the difficulties I was having, 2) I was talking with a friend now about our experiences with programming, and 3) because of being inspired by Kim Jong Gi, I really wanted to work on perspective with Drawabox and not anatomy on Udemy, and the Udemy course recommends using pencils and I'm feeling very pro-pen right now. I ended up just watching one video from that course before moving on.

I made myself start the Programming Languages A class on Coursera, and I'm glad I did. It wasn't particularly interesting or anything (just first day stuff for the course), but it made me feel like I got work done rather than just scrambling like I had done for the rest of the morning.

I think with practice I'll get better at sticking to the schedule, even if that means abandoning a frustrating program in the middle of working on it. Right now I've got a break until 1, and then some more things after that until 4pm. After that I can hang out and do nothing for several hours. I really want to draw right now, not gonna lie.

[anettrolikova]

A day in my life really depends on what's happening. That said, usually I have themes. For instance, I have a priority list, and I have decision logs that chronicle all the things I am trying to figure out.

I end up trying to insert themes into my days. Like today, for instance, I have a meeting with my small team to begin the week; I reserved my afternoon for product reviews—what we call “greenpathing exercises”—where, oddly, I'm trying to discern how everyone is thinking about the main things we're working on. I do this because oftentimes I feel as though I am the connective tissue combining operations, finance, and more formal business functions with the product itself. This connection helps me to make good decisions.

A lot of this is almost automatic by just having a good color coding system, which is really fun

I made two decisions: one, I'm going to try to learn as much about business as possible. But, if business is very different from software architecture, I'm going to be no good no matter what I do. And so, I ran an experiment to treat engineering principles, software architecture, complex system design, and company building as the same thing. Effectively, we looked for the business equivalent of just turning off servers to see if the system has resiliency. For instance, we used to ask people to use their mouse on their non-dominant hand for a day. We introduced these little nudges to ensure that people didn’t become complacent.

I believe that the job we all have in life is to acquire knowledge and wisdom and then share it. I just don’t know what else there is. This is the bedrock of my belief system.

When I get close to any field, I think about how far I want to go. I'm probably further along with programming. I don’t know if I want to get from 90 to 91% in programming when, with the same amount of work, I could figure out the first 60 to 70% of UX or even something like drawing. There’s a recent book about this called Range, which I really like. The book pushes in this direction and explores this topic a bit more than I do. But I just found myself nodding throughout reading it, because it turns out that very often—really, every field has fundamental wisdom that you discover when you're learning and talking to the people who have mastered it. I find that going wide and learning the best lessons from the people who have dedicated their entire lives to a certain pursuit gets you really, really close to mastery.

people show up with a mastery of certain instruments. Someone ends up being the jazz director and the rest of the band follows

I've always gravitated towards competing against myself in most things.

I really love failing. I feel so good when I do something, and it just doesn't work; especially if I get the feedback about why it didn't work. That gives me a project to work at to improve. And so maybe that's sort of interesting regarding losses.

the major reason why video games are valuable is because of this concept of transfer learning. For instance, people who are good at chess understand when it's time to perform tactics, and when it's time to focus on positional development. Not just in chess, but also in life.

I have found it really, really useful to be able to reason about a relationship without getting egos involved too much. I can have a conversation with someone saying, “Hey, you made a commitment to ship this thing, and you did. That's awesome. That's a super big charge on the trust battery, but you’re actually late for every meeting. Even though that's relatively minor—like it decreases 0.1% on your battery—you should fix that.”

It plays a role like that. That said, it's not useful to talk about trust as a binary thing. People are quick to say, “You don't trust me!” And it's actually more, “Well, no, I trust you to a certain level, but you would like more trust; you want trust at a completely different level.”

if your cell phone is 80% charged, you're not worried about finding a charger. But when your phone in your pocket goes into low battery mode, you're thinking about your phone a lot. What people want to do in a company is get to the 80% or 100% level in the area that they run. You gain full autonomy this way. It’s a process that cannot be given to people by title or something like that.

The reason why it was the best thing for me is because it's almost the perfect counterfactual to how you should run a company. I honestly think that, you know, a coin flip has a batting average of 50%. If you just do the perfect opposite of literally everything about that place, you would probably clock in at 60 to 70% of getting everything right, which would mean you would outperform probably 90% of all companies in the world.

Among other things, almost every incentive system was just wrong. For instance, there was no way you would get a promotion or recognition if you weren't dressed in a suit or if you didn’t use slides in a particular way that resembled the legal profession.

It's infantilization because you literally have a policy about how to dress. If you have a policy on how to dress, that means you don't trust people to dress. It was a pretty stark experience.

We are building hopefully amazing software for absolutely amazing people, like people who are unbelievably brave and really adaptable. Society tries to talk people out of this, like no one wants other people to be successful building companies. Silicon Valley might have gotten to a level of enlightenment where company building is actually encouraged, but the rest of the world isn’t like this.

The learning curve of being a great executive is a lot less like learning the guitar, and a lot more like skydiving. It’s the kind of thing you should not do without an instructor. A coach is probably one of the highest returns on investment anyone can do with their attention. An hour spent with a coach has a 10x, 50x, 100x potential return on time spent.

Our strategy was to hire as many high potential people as we could and have them get to their potential much faster than they actually imagined was possible. Personal growth has no real speed limit. It's more dependent on how often a student is ready, and that often depends on the environment and the norms of a culture around the student. For instance, how often is the teacher appearing when the student is ready? If you can line this up at a fairly high hit rate, then people can go through nearly ten years of career development within a single calendar year. I know the 10x thing is overplayed now, but I have absolutely seen it.

Hey, the reason why you've got this job is not because of everything you know, but because you seem like the kind of person who can figure it out when you need to know something.” That's very basic but also very liberating.

One thing that really makes it work is that we are just extremely different. Almost the only overlap we have is in how much we care about the mission of this company. Outside of that, his skill set is extremely different; his input is extremely different; his life experience is very different. It's very intuitive for us when to go with one of our ideas because this is what a relationship with a 100% trust battery looks like.

I had the source code for Linux, I signed up for the Linux kernel mailing list, and I listened to how they talked about computer architecture. I then spent all my time trying to figure out what these terms meant.

The meaningful thing about this story is that it points at a fallacy. The other important thing is it implies that people in groups end up really cancelling each other's good parts and exposing one another's downsides.

why are technical founders overperforming the market right now? I don't actually think it's because they're technical. I think it's because of a very specific childhood experience that a lot of the people running technology companies have had. Most of us grew up in a world which we knew would change significantly because it was really badly designed given what we knew about the potential coming soon. And this potential coming soon was the march of computers and digitalization. I think that a lot of us, including myself, have leveraged this insight into significant enterprise value.

Norman gave permission to really hate the door instead of hating yourself when you push it instead of pulling it. That is not your fault. No human has ever been at fault for pushing instead of pulling. That has always been the fault of the people who designed the door.

People who learn how to think about how to do things in their environment better, and to understand that the objects in their everyday life have not been designed or created by people who are smarter than they are—they are the people who will become entrepreneurs.

[linuxlife]

Linux Life Episode 40

Hello folks and welcome back to my Linux Life. So I have been wondering something regarding my Linux adventure. Now I have moved to ArcoLinux B Cinnamon I have been happy with my Linux experience. I even installed some themes.

However I have noticed certain types in the Linux community.

First is the Minty people who are normally newbies to the Linux world. Linux Mint is a pretty safe option as it doesn't have a steep learning curve and most of the Linux software is available. Not the worst place to start. Also in this group is the Ubuntu users and those using Elementary. The software is updated when declared stable and kernel updates normally only come with an update version of the system.

The old school Linux guys who like using terminals and things like Gentoo and Debian. These guys tend to have their own servers. Build their own kernels or swear by LTS versions. They use only free software unless forced to use a proprietary driver (looking at you Nvidia). Know how to write scripts, what things like systemd and systeminit do and what differences they have. They tend to use only older versions of software that they know works and very rarely update it once they find their ideal setup.

This was the ipso facto archetype most associated with Linux for a long time. This is due to interviews with Linus Torvalds (the creator of Linux) this is how he came across.

Then there is just the everyday users who know enough to get by, have played with Linux enough they can fix the occasional issue but if anything major happens they may have to ask online. These people are not so fussy with Linux as long as it runs what they want. These are your Fedora, Mageia and OpenSUSE users. They will recommend their version but not really fussed if you like something else.

Then there is the Arch people of which I am now part of . It seems that people who use Arch are a bit pretentious if you are to believe what you read on Linux boards or YouTube video comments. Obviously Arch is a rolling release and updates regularly meaning you always have the most up to date systems. Some believe this makes it unstable.

Now this is odd as if you use base Arch Linux you have to set up from source pretty much like Gentoo so it should be popular with the diehards.

However as there is now many distributions such as Manjaro, Antergos, ArcoLinux, ArchSwag and more which make it a lot easier to install it is not much harder than Mint to install.

However Arch users are seen as this evangelical group by Linux users. If they use Arch they will tell you. Which is pretty ironic considering for years you ask anyone in computing and they said the exact same thing about Linux users. If you used Windows or anything else Linux users would be I use Linux and were seen as evangelical.

Funny how the world is cyclical. Obviously in this list I have not included the corporates or the security paranoid as they have their own criteria. It's a funny world.

Some people have asked me which Linux I ultimately think is best. The answer is it depends what you want Linux to be. This is why everyone has a different experience regarding Linux.

I had to find the one that suited me. What suits me, you may absolutely hate. You need to experiment that's what I did.

People go on about distro hopping. Changing from one different version of Linux to the other. Some think it's a bad thing, some good.

It's good that you have many choices available to you and distro hopping means you can try them all.

Distro hopping is not good if you are running a server which has many files and accounts many of which will need reassignment to work again.

Do you need a Linux system for current hardware or older hardware or a mixture. Whatever it is, there is probably a distribution that covers it. Even more so now Real Time kernels are becoming popular.

Play around with a system like Virtualbox to have a look at various distributions running. While not perfect will give you an idea what is available.

The other day I was thinking do I really need a rolling release version of Linux ? The honest answer is probably not. I don't have the latest hardware. I used to create podcasts, magazines and video stuff but I have not done that in probably over a two years or more.

Now most of my time in Linux is spent browsing the web, watching YouTube, writing blog entries in word processors and emulating stuff in the form of OS stuff in Qemu and Virtualbox or games using various emulators available to me.

I used to try and install Windows stuff using Wine, but to be honest I have not done that in a while either as there is no particular Windows program I need at the moment.

So none of the stuff I use is updated often. So why do I need a rolling release. The answer is simple I probably don't. However I do like the fact that I do have the available options should I ever need to.

Sure people could say well you could install the latest versions from PPAs if you used a fixed release version. Well there is the crux.

Due to Arch having the AUR and regularly updated repositories it's very rare that I have to go elsewhere to get programs.

So far it has been one and that was GDash from Bitbucket. Only because the Git version didn't seem to want to work that was listed in the AUR. I'm sure it's fixed now but that was the only program I had to download the source and build it manually from terminal.

To be honest I very rarely use terminal it's just not generally required the way ArcoLinux is set up. I'm not saying I have never used it I have. But it's not very often.

Normally it's when I have had to move a file as root but that has been very few and far between.

Could I go back to the likes of Mint and co... Probably not as I find the Arch system much easier to maintain. I have yet to have the system break on me due to update. I have had it break due to me messing with certain config files but that wasn't it's fault but mine for not really knowing what I was doing at the time.

Even if an update fails for some reason which only happened once with a Perl 5 update when I used Antergos within an hour someone had updated the script and it worked.

Also if there is conflicts in Arch it tends to tell you what it is and what's using it. So you can normally sort out the issue.

Manjaro was the only Arch distribution I had issues with. Strange considering it is listed as the Number 1 on Distrowatch for many months.

It installed fine but refused to set the Nvidia driver correctly, sticking me at 640x480 and refusing to change. Also when installing stuff from the AUR it would stop due to the script being in the wrong order.

Antergos and ArcoLinux both examine the script and if the order is wrong correct it on the fly so it can install. This was prevalent when trying to install Shutter.

Manjaro stopped four times and I had to install certain libraries individually to continue. The other two just changed the compile order so the libraries were made in the right order.

Also I don't know why but I like the fact that I have the latest versions of software. I may not be on the bleeding edge of requirement but if I ever decide I want to be I know it will cope.

Anyway that's enough waffle for this episode, so until next time ... Take care.