Ancestors

Written by yoasif on 2024-12-11 at 15:29

🚨 Leaving Reddit & Salvaging My Posts! 🚨

I’ve decided to leave Reddit, but before I go, I’m rescuing some of my best posts and comments! 📝

I’ll be reposting them here on my blog & sharing updates as I continue digging through my #Reddit history. 🔎

If you’ve read r/firefox over the years, stay tuned for some tech talks! 👨‍💻💻

👉 Check out the first update here: https://www.quippd.com/social/posts/2024/12/09/leaving-reddit-and-salvaging-my-posts.html

🔄 I’ll keep adding more as I go! #socialmedia #technology #firefox

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Written by yoasif on 2024-12-11 at 15:31

In my first salvaged post, I wrote about #movie recommendation sites!

I discovered MovieLens years ago when developing my collaboratively edited social news site way back when (a story for another time) - it is an #opendata recommendation platform that is also a research project by the University of #Minnesota.

It also predates the current #AI revolution, if that matters to you.

https://www.quippd.com/social/comments/2017/03/02/movielens-personalized-movie-recommendations.html

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Written by yoasif on 2024-12-11 at 15:33

Moving on, I wrote about my thoughts of #mozilla #firefox's prospects after the demise of XUL-based extensions post version 57.

I revisited this topic over time, but in 2017 we were deep in the middle of discussion around whether this would be the death of Firefox for a significant portion of the "power user" base.

Did you lose extensions? Did Firefox die for you then?

Do you agree with me that Firefox post-57 is still a good browser? Read on:

https://www.quippd.com/social/comments/2017/08/09/post-57-what-is-firefox-unique-selling-proposition.html

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Written by yoasif on 2024-12-11 at 19:01

At some point my interest in #opendata intersected with meatspace and I started contributing to #openstreetmap

I posted about how to get started editing on it back in 2018 - since then, I updated the post a bit to talk about my current mapping activity and how you might want to map on #android

Hat tip as well to @aredridel for their thoughts on digital redlining that felt important to mention in my updated post.

[#]maps #activism

https://www.quippd.com/social/comments/2018/05/25/how-to-get-started-contributing-to-openstreetmap.html

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Written by yoasif on 2024-12-12 at 22:51

I'm one of those people that still has a non-streaming music library stored locally, so I had set up #Airsonic to manage my #music library and manage conversion from #flac and other music formats for playback on mobile.

To scratch my own itch, I configured Airsonic to convert my FLAC music transparently to #opus on download, and shared my config.

Hope it scratches your itch too!

https://www.quippd.com/social/comments/2018/08/12/does-airsonic-support-opus.html

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Written by yoasif on 2024-12-13 at 15:55

Starting off Friday with a post about containers in the #firefox #browser.

Containers allow you to segregate your cookies on a per-tab basis, allowing you to separate your cookie jars arbitrarily.

In 2019, someone had a question about the #facebook container that #mozilla released, and how it differed from the standard container #extension.

If you use Facebook (why?), I think it is worth using: https://www.quippd.com/social/comments/2019/02/04/is-there-any-difference-between-facebook-container-and-firefox-multi-account-containers.html

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Toot

Written by yoasif on 2024-12-13 at 17:20

I saw @hipsterelectron mention that #duckduckgo is pushing Bing #AI excerpts of pages.

I'm still looking for a #search engine when looking for information on the web, not an oracle, so I tend to try to actively ignore AI results.

Still, it reminded me that other options exist, like @StartpageSearch. After I talked about them on Twitter, their account actually followed me!

Read the post: https://www.quippd.com/social/comments/2018/11/14/what-search-engine-do-you-use.html

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Descendants

Written by yoasif on 2024-12-16 at 20:02

Here's one for the #linux users -- specifically those who run #debian or derivative distributions like #ubuntu and #linuxmint

If you put a web browser binary somewhere on your filesystem (like inside of $HOME), the rest of your OS doesn't know that you can use that app to open links.

I pointed someone over to a resource on how to teach Debian that your manually-installed browser can open links: https://www.quippd.com/social/comments/2019/02/05/how-can-i-set-a-manually-installed-browser-as-the-default-on-debian-ubuntu-mint.html

Hope it continues to help people!

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Written by yoasif on 2024-12-16 at 22:13

Something more interesting for the former #Mac fans now using #linux -- you may wonder why Linux users try to run #windows apps when they can't find a Linux native app rather than a #macos app - aren't Linux and MacOS more similar, given that they are both #unix systems?

Unfortunately, it isn't easy to run Mac apps on Linux, even years later: https://www.quippd.com/social/comments/2018/09/18/when-linux-native-software-isnt-available-why-do-we-emulate-the-windows-version-arent-mac-and-linux-more-similar.html

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Written by yoasif on 2024-12-17 at 17:31

Did you know that #ui notifications in #firefox for #microsoft #windows are native?

That wasn't the case in 2019: https://www.quippd.com/social/comments/2019/02/05/what-ever-happened-to-native-windows-notifications-in-firefox.html

Do you prefer OS native notifications? Controls?

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Written by yoasif on 2024-12-18 at 18:09

Think back to your upgrade to #macos Mojave - did you notice that Apple dropped font smoothing on non-high DPI displays?

Well, a lot of people did when they were using #firefox, because it arrived with a bug that coincided with the macOS release that made fonts too blurry.

Mozilla eventually released a fix matching the platform behavior: https://www.quippd.com/social/comments/2019/01/23/text-in-fonts-too-bold-or-blurry-in-firefox-on-macos-mojave.html

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Written by yoasif on 2024-12-19 at 19:26

Sometimes, you just gotta have fun with your devices.

Every once in a while, I decide to try to spruce up my application UIs by using themes. While a lot of people tend to go cutesy, I end up playing with #retrocomputing themes - UIs that were used in the past but aren't anymore, or sometimes, themes that were unreleased.

While playing with #firefox color, I put together a theme resembling the unreleased #macos Drawing Board theme for Mac OS 8.

Hope you enjoy it!

https://www.quippd.com/social/comments/2018/06/06/firefox-color-theme-inspired-by-classic-mac-os-drawing-board.html

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Written by yoasif on 2024-12-19 at 21:40

Every once in awhile, people switching from #Chrome to #Firefox realize that their #chromecast won't work in Firefox.

People often wonder why #mozilla simply doesn't pay people to implement support in Firefox.

I've written up some thoughts as to why doing this really ought to be up to #Google -- they produce the proprietary product intended to promote Chrome usage:

https://www.quippd.com/social/comments/2020/01/22/does-firefox-support-chromecast-and-accelerated-mobile-pages.html

PS: Nothing stops people from keeping a Chromium browser installed to "cast" videos.

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Written by z3rOR0ne :anarchy: on 2024-12-16 at 22:18

@yoasif There is the Darling emulator, but it doesn't appear to be easy to setup. Full disclosure I haven't tried to use Darling.

https://www.darlinghq.org/

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Written by yoasif on 2024-12-16 at 22:26

@z3rOR0ne I mention that in my post, unfortunately it only works for CLI apps, and running GUI apps remains experimental.

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Written by freechelmi on 2024-12-16 at 22:25

@yoasif i m comparing linux and macos on macbookair 2013 and crazy how macos is more difficult to find compatible apps than linux

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Written by yoasif on 2024-12-16 at 22:30

@freechelmi Are you running an unsupported macOS? That can be annoying. There's always OpenCore Legacy Patcher: https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/ for those machines.

I think that support is going to vary based on the hardware, but Linux can definitely be an option for older Mac hardware, if hardware is supported.

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Written by freechelmi on 2024-12-16 at 22:33

@yoasif well almost , i run the latest supported on mba 2013 which is big sur

Running unsupported macos might be against my religion 😀

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Written by yoasif on 2024-12-16 at 22:40

@freechelmi Unfortunately Big Sur is unsupported as of September 26, 2023.

If your software isn't supported on that OS, I would look at other options for your OS.

Web browsers in particular seem to require Catalina (both Chrome and Firefox), so I hope you aren't browsing the web on that machine in #macos.

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Written by freechelmi on 2024-12-16 at 22:52

@yoasif thx i know :-) this is why i provide linux in this machines , keeping people on mac os is a dead end

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Written by freechelmi on 2024-12-16 at 22:43

@yoasif yes ubuntu 24.04 is really great on mba2013 even with 4bB ram

Although i have to say big sur feels also really snappy

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Written by freechelmi on 2024-12-16 at 22:50

@yoasif in the end , it s a bit sad but i feel the best way to beat vendors that don t release linux apps is to seamlessly virtualize with #winapps windows 10 machine

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Written by Lianna (on Mastodon) on 2024-12-16 at 20:27

@yoasif @hipsterelectron @StartpageSearch I mean, if LLMs are actually good at something, it's modelling large amounts of language data. Summarisation is one of the few valid use case for LLMs.

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Written by yoasif on 2024-12-16 at 20:41

@lianna @hipsterelectron @StartpageSearch Really?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd0elzk24dno

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Written by Lianna (on Mastodon) on 2024-12-16 at 20:46

@yoasif @hipsterelectron @StartpageSearch Yes. I work in the field.

I said "large amounts of language data". A few one-sentence (if at all) notifications are not enough data to reliably summarise, especially when context or cultural knowledge like irony or metaphors are required to understand large parts of the content.

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Written by yoasif on 2024-12-16 at 20:47

@lianna @hipsterelectron @StartpageSearch Is this enough data?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd11gzejgz4o

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Written by Lianna (on Mastodon) on 2024-12-16 at 21:05

@yoasif @hipsterelectron @StartpageSearch Do you even know anything about how the technology works or are you just googling "AI fail bbc"?

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Written by yoasif on 2024-12-16 at 21:09

@lianna @hipsterelectron @StartpageSearch I don't claim to be an expert in any way, I just know that the products don't work, no matter how the technology is designed to work.

Why should I believe a summary with lies in it? Why should I waste my time consuming content that the vendor disclaims?

Getting fake knowledge isn't a goal for me even if technologists and business want me to rely on it.

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Written by d@nny mc² on 2024-12-17 at 02:59

@lianna @yoasif @StartpageSearch "i work in the field" so you're doing propaganda for your employer got it

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