Zompist Bboard Again

Firefox question: You know how Firefox lets you export bookmarks as .json files? Now, is there any way to merge several of these files into one file, with the resulting file containing all the bookmarks from the various merged files?

Unrelated:

Raphael wrote: ↑Sat Dec 31, 2022 3:28 am I changed the system language on the Linux side of my computer to English, as part of a reinstall. I thought that might make reporting the exact wording of error messages easier. Interesting experience.

Silly trivial note: turns out the part of the main menu of various operating systems that is called "Zubehör" in German is called "Accessories" in English. Hey, before I learned that, I would have associated the word "accessories" with things that interior decorators buy to do their job, not with computer UIs.

Raphael wrote: ↑Thu Jan 05, 2023 9:16 am Silly trivial note: turns out the part of the main menu of various operating systems that is called "Zubehör" in German is called "Accessories" in English. Hey, before I learned that, I would have associated the word "accessories" with things that interior decorators buy to do their job, not with computer UIs.

That reminds me of desk accessories on the old, classic MacOS - they started out as mini-programs that could be run within other programs, back in days before the classic MacOS even had cooperative multitasking (IIRC they operated at interrupt time).

Travis B. wrote: ↑Thu Jan 05, 2023 9:54 am

Raphael wrote: ↑Thu Jan 05, 2023 9:16 am Silly trivial note: turns out the part of the main menu of various operating systems that is called "Zubehör" in German is called "Accessories" in English. Hey, before I learned that, I would have associated the word "accessories" with things that interior decorators buy to do their job, not with computer UIs.

That reminds me of desk accessories on the old, classic MacOS - they started out as mini-programs that could be run within other programs, back in days before the classic MacOS even had cooperative multitasking (IIRC they operated at interrupt time).

I just checked on Google Translate, and it translates StG Zubehör to accessories in English.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Thu Jan 05, 2023 9:54 am That reminds me of desk accessories on the old, classic MacOS - they started out as mini-programs that could be run within other programs, back in days before the classic MacOS even had cooperative multitasking (IIRC they operated at interrupt time).

Which reminds me - wasn't Apple a bit late to the multitasking party? Kinda weird for a company that has such a reputation for producing high-quality products.

Raphael wrote: ↑Thu Jan 05, 2023 12:22 pm

Travis B. wrote: ↑Thu Jan 05, 2023 9:54 am That reminds me of desk accessories on the old, classic MacOS - they started out as mini-programs that could be run within other programs, back in days before the classic MacOS even had cooperative multitasking (IIRC they operated at interrupt time).

Which reminds me - wasn't Apple a bit late to the multitasking party? Kinda weird for a company that has such a reputation for producing high-quality products.

The original Apple Macintosh was actually a rather limited system, specifically to cut costs after the failure of the Lisa - multitasking only appeared with MultiFinder in System 6, and only got fully integrated into the system with System 7, and even then it was cooperative (whereas, say, the Amiga has preemptive multitasking from the start). True preemptive multitasking across the board only appeared with Mac OS X (now macOS), which was based on NeXTSTEP, even though it was present in a limited fashion in support for multiprocessor machines IIRC in later versions of classic MacOS.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Thu Jan 05, 2023 12:36 pm The original Apple Macintosh was actually a rather limited system, specifically to cut costs after the failure of the Lisa - multitasking only appeared with MultiFinder in System 6, and only got fully integrated into the system with System 7, and even then it was cooperative (whereas, say, the Amiga has preemptive multitasking from the start). True preemptive multitasking across the board only appeared with Mac OS X (now macOS), which was based on NeXTSTEP, even though it was present in a limited fashion in support for multiprocessor machines IIRC in later versions of classic MacOS.

Yeah, I remember zompist's post from back when OS X was new (http://www.zompist.com/rants03.html scroll to 8 Oct).

bradrn wrote: ↑Sun Jan 01, 2023 8:13 am Does anyone know of a good IPA keyboard layout for Linux? I’m using SIL’s keyboard currently, but that requires Keyman, which doesn’t seem to work too well on my machine…

IMO the best way to go about it is by using custom combining keys, editable in ~/.XCompose (or was it ~/.Xcompose? I have all capitalisation variants symlinked to each other since I forgot the proper path name and spent several week wondering why the custom combinations aren't working)

Zju wrote: ↑Thu Jan 05, 2023 1:17 pm

bradrn wrote: ↑Sun Jan 01, 2023 8:13 am Does anyone know of a good IPA keyboard layout for Linux? I’m using SIL’s keyboard currently, but that requires Keyman, which doesn’t seem to work too well on my machine…

IMO the best way to go about it is by using custom combining keys, editable in ~/.XCompose (or was it ~/.Xcompose? I have all capitalisation variants symlinked to each other since I forgot the proper path name and spent several week wondering why the custom combinations aren't working)

I’m already using .XCompose for my custom keyboard layout, though, since I couldn’t get it to work with IBus.

Sooo... anyone know of some antivirus that's both free and doesn't spam you every six hours with notifications and ads and stuff?

Torco wrote: ↑Fri Jan 06, 2023 9:00 am Sooo... anyone know of some antivirus that's both free and doesn't spam you every six hours with notifications and ads and stuff?

Install Linux, or better yet, a BSD.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Fri Jan 06, 2023 10:40 am

Torco wrote: ↑Fri Jan 06, 2023 9:00 am Sooo... anyone know of some antivirus that's both free and doesn't spam you every six hours with notifications and ads and stuff?

Install Linux, or better yet, a BSD.

Travis, that's simply not helpful advice. Frankly, your attitude towards this reminds me of my own attitude in the mid-to-late 2000s. Back then, I thought that everyone should use Linux, too. But now, I understand that many people have good reasons why they can't, or don't want to, do that. When someone asks you for advice on how to cook a specific meal, "Get a new stove!" is rarely ever useful as advice. The person you're talking to might have all kinds of reasons why they can't or don't want to get a new stove.

Torco: sorry, I doubt that such a thing exists. But perhaps someone else might prove me wrong.

Unrelated, very minor technology-related vent: Why does everyone insist on measuring network speeds in bits per second? What kind of person counts any amount of data larger than 7 bits in bits? It's as if an adult human being would provide their age in months.

Raphael wrote: ↑Fri Jan 06, 2023 11:21 am

Travis B. wrote: ↑Fri Jan 06, 2023 10:40 am

Torco wrote: ↑Fri Jan 06, 2023 9:00 am Sooo... anyone know of some antivirus that's both free and doesn't spam you every six hours with notifications and ads and stuff?

Install Linux, or better yet, a BSD.

Travis, that's simply not helpful advice. Frankly, your attitude towards this reminds me of my own attitude in the mid-to-late 2000s. Back then, I thought that everyone should use Linux, too. But now, I understand that many people have good reasons why they can't, or don't want to, do that. When someone asks you for advice on how to cook a specific meal, "Get a new stove!" is rarely ever useful as advice. The person you're talking to might have all kinds of reasons why they can't or don't want to get a new stove.

Torco: sorry, I doubt that such a thing exists. But perhaps someone else might prove me wrong.

Emphasis added; what I bolded is why I said what I did, because I highly doubt the existence of antivirus software which is both gratis and spam-free, so if one wants to be (relatively) safe from malware without shelling out money or putting up with spam, using an operating system that comes with less malware overall, such as Linux or one of the BSD's is probably your only real option.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Fri Jan 06, 2023 10:40 am

Torco wrote: ↑Fri Jan 06, 2023 9:00 am Sooo... anyone know of some antivirus that's both free and doesn't spam you every six hours with notifications and ads and stuff?

Install Linux, or better yet, a BSD.

hahahaha. reminds me of my years of unironically typing windowze. I'm not commited to the cause enough to want to go with BSD, but I have a linux machine at home and I use it for web browsing and coding and so on. It's lovely, but a) for work I need to use SPSS and MSExcel (Data Analysis pays my bills these days, it's not that fun but neither is skipping rent) and b) for my house machine, I really value running games natively. Like, I agree in principle that MS is an evil scam... I wish nobody used anything by MS, or made software that <rounding decimals> only runs on the latest MS OS, but alas, they do, and I kinda have a life to live. I know you *can* get games to run on linux through wine, and you *could* get decent GPU drivers for your model, and you *can* learn to fix things when you update your version of python upon which some library you used to fix wine depends, and you *can* use linux-native office software to make reports and graphs and whatnot, but honestly, it's like nine times more faff than I want to engage in. That being said, you brought a smile to my face. Fucking antiviruses, man, they block KMSPico.

Torco: sorry, I doubt that such a thing exists. But perhaps someone else might prove me wrong.

man, I miss the old world sometimes. before notifications and normies on smartphones clogging up my internet.

Unrelated, very minor technology-related vent: Why does everyone insist on measuring network speeds in bits per second? What kind of person counts any amount of data larger than 7 bits in bits? It's as if an adult human being would provide their age in months.

the number is bigger. I bet if bits could be subdivided, marketing people would measure it in SEVEN HUNDRED SEPTILLION NANOBITS PER HOUR.

Raphael wrote: ↑Fri Jan 06, 2023 11:37 am Unrelated, very minor technology-related vent: Why does everyone insist on measuring network speeds in bits per second? What kind of person counts any amount of data larger than 7 bits in bits? It's as if an adult human being would provide their age in months.

Transmission speeds have always been measured in bits per second, whereas the size of a byte was not always fixed in size; there have been machine architectures that used six-bit or nine-bit bytes. Also, not all transmission protocols actually operate in fixed-sized bytes.

Torco wrote: ↑Fri Jan 06, 2023 1:10 pm

Travis B. wrote: ↑Fri Jan 06, 2023 10:40 am

Torco wrote: ↑Fri Jan 06, 2023 9:00 am Sooo... anyone know of some antivirus that's both free and doesn't spam you every six hours with notifications and ads and stuff?

Install Linux, or better yet, a BSD.

hahahaha. reminds me of my years of unironically typing windowze. I'm not commited to the cause enough to want to go with BSD, but I have a linux machine at home and I use it for web browsing and coding and so on. It's lovely, but a) for work I need to use SPSS and MSExcel (Data Analysis pays my bills these days, it's not that fun but neither is skipping rent) and b) for my house machine, I really value running games natively. Like, I agree in principle that MS is an evil scam... I wish nobody used anything by MS, or made software that <rounding decimals> only runs on the latest MS OS, but alas, they do, and I kinda have a life to live. I know you *can* get games to run on linux through wine, and you *could* get decent GPU drivers for your model, and you *can* learn to fix things when you update your version of python upon which some library you used to fix wine depends, and you *can* use linux-native office software to make reports and graphs and whatnot, but honestly, it's like nine times more faff than I want to engage in. That being said, you brought a smile to my face. Fucking antiviruses, man, they block KMSPico.

Then, your best option is probably paying for antivirus, TBH.

Or just get vaccinated. Everybody's doing it these days, so I hear.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Fri Jan 06, 2023 1:26 pm

Torco wrote: ↑Fri Jan 06, 2023 1:10 pm

Travis B. wrote: ↑Fri Jan 06, 2023 10:40 am
Install Linux, or better yet, a BSD.

hahahaha. reminds me of my years of unironically typing windowze. I'm not commited to the cause enough to want to go with BSD, but I have a linux machine at home and I use it for web browsing and coding and so on. It's lovely, but a) for work I need to use SPSS and MSExcel (Data Analysis pays my bills these days, it's not that fun but neither is skipping rent) and b) for my house machine, I really value running games natively. Like, I agree in principle that MS is an evil scam... I wish nobody used anything by MS, or made software that <rounding decimals> only runs on the latest MS OS, but alas, they do, and I kinda have a life to live. I know you *can* get games to run on linux through wine, and you *could* get decent GPU drivers for your model, and you *can* learn to fix things when you update your version of python upon which some library you used to fix wine depends, and you *can* use linux-native office software to make reports and graphs and whatnot, but honestly, it's like nine times more faff than I want to engage in. That being said, you brought a smile to my face. Fucking antiviruses, man, they block KMSPico.

Then, your best option is probably paying for antivirus, TBH.

Alas

A brief comment on algorithms: it's true that, as some people have pointed out, algorithms and AI are getting really creepy these days. So I find it a bit comforting when they still mess things up. For instance, I often buy ebooks that very few other people buy, or at least few other customers of Germany-centered ebook stores. And then, I often get recommendations for those books that are apparently the store's generally best-selling books of all times, such as the first Harry Potter book or the best-established German spelling dictionary.

I think the algorithms are annoying but not that smart.
One really stupid thing I noticed: if I buy, I don't know, a washing machine, an oven or a grand piano online, the vendor will keep on bombarding me with ads for ovens, washing machine or grand pianos even after I made the purchase. Because apparently people usually buy dozens of these? Man, I'm pretty confident one washing machine is more than enough and I sure hope not to buy a new one any time soon!