Open Source

Yes, the fact that people have to choose between writing open source software and affording decent healthcare is a problem deeply rooted in our current implementation of zero-sum capitalism, and not at all a problem that can be laid at the feet of the free software movement.

While looking at my Github news feed today, I spotted an app via one of Jeff Triplett’s stars. The app is Sloth by Sveinbjorn Thordarson, and it provides a GUI frontend for lsof that can quickly show you which processes are interacting with various files, directories, IP sockets, or Unix sockets.

Writing for Wired, Vijith Assar raises some excellent points on how bad actors with capital are the most dangerous threat to any system. Capital can kill code. Capital can kill anything.

Reader, I did it again. I joined another social network. I know, I know. I should know better, right? But this time feels different. There’s something special about this one. Maybe it’s simply the contrast from Facebook and Twitter that makes it so appealing, but I can’t help but feel there is great promise in Mastodon.

Love this demo video of the MikroKopter. The GPS integration in the device is slick, and I love that it’s an open source, DIY device. The parts aren’t even all that expensive considering what they are, but as a project it’s still a little too pricey and time consuming for me to tak on right now.

Google has released their own programming language, appropriately named Go. I haven’t had time to dig deeply into this yet, but I’m seeing some interesting stuff that I like such as fast compilation, garbage collection, easy to read syntax, built in support for multicore machines and of course an open source BSD-style license.

Seriously, a group of young gentlemen have developed a recipie for beer incorporating guarana which counters the drowsiness you feel when you drink beer. They have released the recipie under the Creative Commons license as an experiment to discover what happens when you use the open-source model on a real-world product like beer.