Daniel Lowe @dl@cantos.social

@chr
If this is your first moot
You _have_ to toot.

#introduction

I used to be a lot weirder. I'm a middle-aged geek, father to two boys, and I bang out code at #Google. I live near Boston now, but I grew up in central Mississippi.

I know the conlangs #Lojban and #TokiPona. I write hobby code in #Tcl and #CommonLisp.

I play a bunch of #music instruments, but none well enough to perform. I've been playing around with a DAW.

I started the cantos.social instance, trying to be a part of the small-scale Internet.

I try to be as kind as I can.

I'm software RAIDing two bare hard drives with a USB dock in Linux and wondering where I went wrong in life.

Why aren't we thinking about #ActivityPub as the next replacement for #SMTP?

If Nazis, Stalinists, and Francoists banned #Esperanto, maybe we should all be learning it.

When I was a kid, like 9 or 10, I picked up my dad's copy of Gödel, Escher, Bach and noted, delightedly, that there were fun little stories at the beginning of each chapter starring Achilles and a Tortoise (ignoring the dense text). I read every one multiple times, and it gave me exposure to the ideas far, far earlier that I otherwise would have.

Don't ever criticize a book for having really simple parts.

I'm a big fan of keyboards with mechanical switches. I love Cherry Browns for typing on - when you type, the keys activate before bottoming out, so it's less stress on your fingers. However, I'm starting think they're actually bad for gaming, since one does tend to mash the keys pretty hard. Thinking about getting another keyboard for gaming (with blues, maybe?)

I just learned today about anti-cafés, which seem like a great idea for this era. It seems like a more social version of shared workspaces. Some anti-cafés would make a great meeting place for small communities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-caf%C3%A9

@scalzi Grats on finishing your *two* books! Have a sink cat!

A moment of sympathy for those just awakening from their three-year comas.

Microsoft buying GitHub means they have access to every private repository on the site. Microsoft also has a large patent portfolio that it isn't afraid to use. Maybe this will make the $7.5b figure seem more reasonable.

I'm having a few grumps about the next Elder Scrolls game being on mobile. It appears from the demo that you only get one enemy to fight at a time with constrained movement, probably to keep poly count low.

E3 trailer is https://youtu.be/o2aB-ZgUYcs

Becoming a parent subtly altered my perspective on the value of human life...

OMG, do you know how hard it is to make one of those things?!? Treat them with some respect!

A new idea for a community server keeps swirling in my head. You get an account with multiple auth methods (username/pw, fb, google, github, openid, keybase, whatever) including 2FA (mobile text, TOTP, U2F). Lots of redundancy.

Once you get an account, you have access to a masto instance, an email address, access to internal IRC, photo sharing, shared wiki,
private wiki, maybe a gitlab. You know, stuff.

The parts are out there. Just need to bring them together.

Facebook has bought every single ad space (like 15 spots per car) on this subway, filling it with smarmy propaganda ads about how great they're going to treat clickbait and your data. This is on the Red Line subway in Boston, used by Harvard, MIT, and a lot of tech workers.

Given the timing, I am even less convinced now of their goodwill now than I was.