Pocket reposted an older QZ article about Leftpad and it's sort of reignited the controversy, at least for me. [Here's the link.](https://getpocket.com/explore/item/how-one-programmer-broke-the-internet-by-deleting-a-tiny-piece-of-code?utm_source=pocket-newtab) I'd love to hear what you think of this, but here are my thoughts: One, why is this not in the JS standard library? It's a *super commomly used* method with equivalents in every programming language, right? JS is pretty notorious for being bloated (which isn't necessarily a bad thing IMO), but the fact that it lacks this basic function is kind of ridiculous? Two, people were calling him out as the villain for having the *audacity* to delete a method he knows powers most of the internet, and to those people I ask: Have you even looked into why that happened? The most common story was just that he was butthurt because "NPM didn't treat him like royalty like he wanted", but, what actually happened was Kik, yes, the messaging platform notorious for being infested with child groomers, that Kik, wanted to publish their own library (I think it was an API for their app), and Koçulu already had a library called kik. So what does Kik do? Are they like any other programmer who would go "aw man, that name is taken, better come up with another name for my thing then!" No! They go to fucking NPM and essentially allege trademark violation (which is bullshit because Koçulu's kik was not a commercial product, and trademarks only apply to names used in commerce). But NPM still removes Koçulu's kik package, at which point Koçulu removed all his libraries and deletes his account in protest, and the rest is history. Long story short, it ends with NPM restoring his packages against his wishes, and as far as I know he never released anything on NPM again. So, generally I see two hiveminds when it comes to this controversy. One is of course people mocking Koçulu for being a snowflake or whatever, that he needs to control his anger and not withdraw his packages because he didn't get his way. Obviously, I disagree with that. I think Kik was being a snowflake for throwing a hissy fit that their name was already taken for something completely unrelated, by someone who almost certainly did not even use their app. They could have named their library kik-chat, kik-app, kik.com, whatever, and it still would have been the same library and people still would still have discovered it. NPM claims that they did this to "reduce confusion", but at best that is massively underestimating the intelligence of people who *already know how to program*, and is a complete lie cooked up by their PR team at worst. Needless to say, I don't think he was in the wrong at any point of this. The other hivemind was really mad at NPM, which is a step in the right direction, but they were mad that they restored his package. That makes no sense either, because one of the pillars of open source is that anyone can publish or distribute it as long as they distribute it with the original license and give credit. NPM is an asshole, but they still have the right to distribute an open source library. What we *should* be mad at NPM for is that they threw him under the bus by removing his package in the first place. Again, Kik has no legs to stand on and NPM was never in any legal trouble because of this, trademarks do not apply to non-commercial products. They're called *trade* marks. Trade. As in commerce. Also, it really highlights their priorities that they hold a corporation infamous for enabling children to be victimized in higher regard than someone making code used by the entire internet and not getting paid for it. I also don't see enough people being mad at Kik. What they did was absolutely unacceptable and they should have faced the brunt of the hate. Then again they've already shown themselves to be horrible so they probably would have shrugged it off or maybe even played into it for publicity. What can the open source world learn from this? Well, for one, I think it has become clear that having your open source dependencies managed by a for-profit company is bad. I wouldn't be surprised if Kik paid NPM a ton of money and essentially "bought" the kik name like a fucking NFT. The solution would be a combination of package repositories managed by worker co-op nonprofits with transparent financial reports, and decentralized/independent package sources hosted by the authors themselves. If JS took inspiration from Java just a bit more and also made their dependency naming system work by domains, we would have gotten `com.koculu.kik` and `com.kik.kik`, and no conflict. Almost like a federated package manager. Especially now that NPM is owned by Microsoft and Yarn was always owned by Facebook, we really do not have a good, trustworthy JS dependency repo, which is a problem because like the language or hate it, it is still extremely important for our modern computing environment. I think it's long overdue to break their duopoly. IDK, that's the end of my rant. Didn't really mean to write a wall of text, just saw this article and got me wanting a retrospective, but yeah. What do you think? Do you agree? Disagree? Why or why not?

Internet Archive on Mastodon: As most of you know, our library is being sued by 4 corporate publishers who want to stop the Internet Archive from lending books. The date for oral argument has just been set for March 20.

Privacy means being in control of ones own personal information. It does not mean secrecy but deciding on your own what you share and with whom and what you do not share. On computers you can only have this control over your data when you have control over your computer. You should be the one deciding what your computer does, what software runs on its processor, what it does with your hardware and what it does with your data. That is your personal freedom. Software should respect this freedom. That means you have to be in control of the software. This requires the following things: * You should have the freedom to use the software for any purpose. Only you should decide and control what you do with your hardware and data. * You should have the freedom to see what the software does. The software should be transparent and open source. To be in control of your data and your hardware, to be able to freely decide over it software should be open source so that you and anyone else who obtains a copy of it can freely check and see for themselves what the software does. * You should be allowed to freely modify the software. To be in control of the software and in extent your device and data you need to have the right to modify the software to your liking: to remove any features that you dislike, that handle your hardware or data in a way you do not approve of, to modify features to your liking so that they suit your use case and use your hardware and data in the way you choose and to add new features so that you can do with your hardware and data what you choose to. * You should be allowed to freely redistribute and publish the software and your modifications to it. You should not be forced to keep your copy of the software and your changes to it to yourself. Others should have the ability to profit of them as well if you want them to and you should have the ability to profit of the work and modifications of others if they want you to be able to. Your freedoms over your device are only effective if you can run the software developed and published by anyone. You should not need to develop all changes to the software yourself. Everyone including people who cannot develop software themselves should have freedom over their device and data and people developing and modifying software should have the freedom to collaborate and to build upon another. Innovation, peace, human culture and progress depend on people working together and building on the work of others. Software that adheres to these freedoms is called free software. Free as in freedom. You can only own a device if it runs free software. You can only have privacy if your personal information is processed by free software. This work is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

cross-posted from c/softwareengineering@group.lt: https://group.lt/post/44632 > This kind of scaling issue is new to Codeberg (a nonprofit free software project), but not to the world. All projects on earth likely went through this at a certain point or will experience it in the future. > > When people like me talk about scaling... It's about increasing computing power, distributed storage, replicated databases and so on. There are all kinds of technology available to solve scaling issues. So why, damn, is Codeberg still having performance issues from time to time? > > ...we face the "worst" kind of scaling issue in my perception. That is, if you don't see it coming (e.g. because the software gets slower day by day, or because you see how the storage pool fill up). Instead, it appears out of the blue. > > **The hardest scaling issue is: scaling human power.** > > Configuration, Investigation, Maintenance, User Support, Communication – all require some effort, and it's not easy to automate. In many cases, automation would consume even more human resources to set up than we have. > > There are no paid night shifts, not even payment at all. Still, people have become used to the always-available guarantees, and demand the same from us: Occasional slowness in the evening of the CET timezone? Unbearable! > >I do understand the demand. We definitely aim for a better service than we sometimes provide. However, sometimes, the frustration of angry social-media-guys carries me away... > > two primary blockers that prevent scaling human resources. The first one is: trust. Because we can't yet afford hiring employees that work on tasks for a defined amount of time, work naturally has to be distributed over many volunteers with limited time commitment... second problem is a in part technical. Unlike major players, which have nearly unlimited resources available to meet high demand, scaling Codeberg's systems... TLDR: sustainability issues for scaling because Codeberg is a nonprofit with much limited resources, mainly human resources, in face of high demand. Non-paid volunteers do all the work. So needs more people working as volunteers, and needs more money.

cross-posted from: https://fediverse.ro/post/5047 > # [Creative Commons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons) licensed Content > > **📰|Journalism:** > > - [ProPublica](https://www.propublica.org/) > - [The Conversation](https://theconversation.com) > - [openDemocracy](https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/) > - [Knowable Magazine](https://knowablemagazine.org/) > - [Freedom](https://freedomnews.org.uk/) > - [Kaiser Health News](https://khn.org/) > - [Reveal](https://revealnews.org/) > - [Wikinews](https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page) > - [TorrentFreak](https://torrentfreak.com/) > - [The Markup](https://themarkup.org/) > - [Science in the News](https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/) > - [Common Dreams](https://www.commondreams.org/news) > - [Democracy Now!](https://www.democracynow.org/) > - [E-International Relations](https://www.e-ir.info/) > - [The Bureau of Investigative Journalism](https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories) > - [dailykos](https://www.dailykos.com/) > > **📖|Articles & online magazines:** > > - [The New Inquiry](https://thenewinquiry.com/) > - [Pesquisa FAPESP](https://revistapesquisa.fapesp.br/en/) > - [Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research](https://thetricontinental.org/) > - [OpenMind](https://www.openmindmag.org/) > - [Open Society Foundations](https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/publications) > - [Mosaic](https://mosaicscience.com/) > - [YES! Media](https://www.yesmagazine.org/) > - [Pluralistic](https://pluralistic.net/) > - [Gwern Branwen](https://www.gwern.net/index) > - [Open Society Foundations](https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/publications) > > **📝|Blogs:** > > - [Electronic Frontier Foundation](https://www.eff.org/) > > **✍🏻|Blogging Platform:** > > - [fediverse.blog(Plume)](https://fediverse.blog/timeline/2) > > > **🕮|Wiki:** > > - [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) > - [Citizendium](https://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Welcome_to_Citizendium) > - [RationalWiki](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Main_Page) > - [HandWiki](https://handwiki.org/wiki/Start) > > **❓|Q&A:** > > - [Wikipedia reference desk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk) > - [Codidact](https://codidact.com/) > - [Stack Exchange](https://stackexchange.com/) > > **✨|Learn:** > > - [Saylor Academy](https://learn.saylor.org/) > > **🎵|Music:** > > - [Jamendo Music](https://www.jamendo.com/start) > - [Free Music Archive](https://freemusicarchive.org/genres) > - [Musopen](https://musopen.org/music/) > > **🖼️|Photos:** > > - [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) > - [Kaboompics](https://kaboompics.com/gallery) > - [Public Domain Pictures.net](https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/index.php) > - [Pickupimage](https://pickupimage.com/) > - [Gratisography](https://gratisography.com/) > - [openphoto](https://openphoto.net/) > - [Picography](https://picography.co/) > - [ISO Republic](https://isorepublic.com/) > - [picjumbo](https://picjumbo.com/) > - [Good Stock Photos](https://goodstock.photos/) > > **😂|Satire:** > > - [Uncyclopedia](https://uncyclopedia.com/wiki/Main_Page) > > **💭|WebComics:** > > - [xkcd](https://xkcd.com/) > - [Poorly Drawn Lines](https://poorlydrawnlines.com/) > - [Diesel Sweeties](https://dieselsweeties.com/) > - [Callous](https://www.callouscomics.com/) > - [Leftycartoons](https://leftycartoons.com/) > - [The Other End Comics](https://www.kohney.com/) > > **✨|Misc:** > > - [🍲 Based Cooking 🍳 ](https://based.cooking/) > - [Sourcehut](https://sr.ht/projects) > > > I will add more resources when I have time. > > If you want to add a website, comment it and I will check it and add it. > > Share this list and use it.

I'd like to try Matrix, but I still don't know of a good client. I don't want Electron on my computer, so the official client is out of the question. I tried `nheko`, but I didn't like it (though I can install it again if it turns out that there is no better option). So, can anyone here recommend me a Matrix client? Either terminal-based or GUI, both are fine.

see also https://servo.org/blog/2023/01/16/servo-2023/ comments on lobste.rs: https://lobste.rs/s/yvkxmt/servo_advance_2023

I am new ,how iI can I share my paintings

I gave them one of my micro office PCs I was using as a server as our living room home theatre PC, because the previous one was Windows Vista which is absolutely not safe to be running connected to the internet anymore, and the new computer (hopefully) managed to get them to stop using the apps on the smart TV both due to my privacy concerns and because they are no longer being updated and don't work that great anymore (thanks for no longer supporting your few years old thousand plus dollar TV Samsung, you planned obsolecense assholes!) This is their first Linux computer in a family that has pretty much been exclusively been using Microsoft operating systems really since they got access to computers. So, pretty big deal that I finally convinced them to give Linux a try. It's running Fedora with KDE Plasma. Here's hoping everything goes well.

A tutorial on how to edit videos in a fashion where you can draw over them.

"Mozilla is now trying to diversify its revenue stream and, in some markets, has different default search engines. For example, it partners with privacy-championing Chinese search engine Baidu"

I'm in agreement!

Hey everyone, I’ve got a software suggestion for all you hatters of closed gardens. It's basically an all-in-one messenger. It will aggregate multiple messengers on android (whatsapp, facebook messenger, sms, rcs, discord, signal) including imessage! NO MORE GREEN BUBBLES!!! Best part (other than imessage), they're going to keep it free for as long as they can. (at least that’s the vibe I’m getting from the discord server). This app looks so freaking cool! Currently they’ve just got it open to some alpha testers but they will start releasing it to beta list soon. Let me just say, the alpha’s screenshots of imessage are looking very nice. You can use this link to sign up for the beta https://sunbirdapp.com/?r=jVmdy **Update:** Ok everyone, as far as my legitometer is a curate, they've got a ten. I got into the alpha testing and have been successfully sending imessages to people for a couple days now. This is incredibly impressive and I am so looking forward to its completion.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/183203 > **Copie Gauche**, a new French publisher dedicated to open license content, is calling for original solarpunk short stories. > They'll make a book out of the best, under an open license, with fair remuneration. > > > > - Direct link : [copiegauche.fr/projet-null/](https://copiegauche.fr/projet-null/) > - [Their Mastodon](https://mastodon.social/@CopieGauche)

I didn't realize that being a supporter would warrant me *a real paper bulletin!* What a pleasant surprise. Feels way more personal than some pdf file which I wouldn't likely read.

Just wondering: is there a service where you can replace the domain of a YouTube URL with, that will automatically redirect you to a random, well-running Invidious or Piped instance? That way we automatically spread out the load to more instances. Same question for other Alternative Client projects like Nitter for Twitter, Teddit & Libreddit for Reddit, ScribeRip for Medium, etc? Example: I want to be able to take https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ and turn it into something like https://altclient.to/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ and then have that URL redirect to any one of the popular Invidious or Piped clients, like https://yewtu.be/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ or https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ​ I'm aware of LibRedirect, but it's a browser extension for a single user. I want to be able to post a URL, say on Lemmy, and have it auto-redirect to a random instance for everyone that clicks in it. My main goal is to help balance out the load on all the instances so the most popular one isn't just swamped with requests while all the others are basically never used. If there isn't, I might just build it. Shouldn't be too hard.

I had originally asked [in this thread](https://lemmy.ml/post/52789) if we should allow non-copyleft open source projects on this community at all, but I didn't get enough responses to come to a decision, so I will still continue to allow non-copyleft until further notice. Instead, I decided on this as the alternative: When sharing a Libre project, please include the name of its license in the title. For example: "Lemmy: Building a federated alternative to reddit in rust (AGPL-3.0)" It doesn't have to be formatted exactly like that, but please at least include the acronym of the license, and the version number if there is one. At some point, I will start removing new posts that do not follow this rule, but I won't start doing that right now to allow for a transition period. I'm open to feedback on this, comment them below.

:/

For anyone looking for Plex/Emby replacement, whose developments have gone astray. For those unfamiliar, Jellyfin is a libre fork of Emby, which (similar to Plex) has gone closed-source, resorted fully to the freemium model, to the point where it's literally not possible to use the free version, started including tremendous amounts of telemetry (mostly Plex). And just on a basic level, it sounds a bit ridiculous to pay for software for media that you provide **yourself** hosted on the hardware that you provide **yourself**. Anyway, the project is kind of in the early state, but the development is rather fast, just in the couple months that I've been using it a lot of things have been improved/introduced, most important for me being: - iOS clients have been released - pause/resume is now universal across all devices for the same user (i.e. start playing on one device, continue watching on another one from the moment you stopped) There's native support for Linux, macOS and Windows (why would you use those?) and Docker and Kubernetes images available. Anyway, the developers are committed to keep the software libre forever, so that's a nice thing :) *btw are we posting software recommendations here?*

Hey everyone, I had a bit of an interesting idea recently. We should have our own Libre Culture Lemmy Book and/or Film Club! The rules are quite simple. Any content we choose to discuss must be either in the public domain or must have a license that's approved for [free cultural works](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definition_of_Free_Cultural_Works). Every three months, we vote on a new film or novel to read, or a collection of short stories that are about the length of a novel combined. Other media could be allowed as well. Downvoting suggestions isn't allowed, unless the suggested content is inappropriate. I can't wait to see how this'll go! Please let me know what you guys think of this idea, and let's begin voting in this comment section what we'd like to watch/read in March!

Post some of your favourite software/service/alternatives. For example, I've started using Red Reader now that Reddit requires me to be signed in in order to display entire threads. Also, I got youtube-dl working on termux, an android app, via 'pkg install python' and then 'pip install youtube-dl'. What are your favourites and recent discoveries? Even if you think people have already heard of it, there's a possibility they haven't. https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/ten_thousand.png