BlackXanthus

There are two tensions here:

1. Community building
2. Code production

Community building can be done without any coding, coding can be done without any community. However, to build a large project you need them both.

In a large volunteer project like this, not everything can be worked on. You become selective. We are going to major on this thing, or specifically talk about that project to get community engagement and get the thing done. This drives the project, she helps it to stop chasing hairs. Someone has to decide what feature is going in this release to make it ready to be a release candidate.

That group of people, ultimately making and influencing those decisions, is the CoC.

Let's take a for-instance: Sign up boxes.

For years, Linux sign up allows you to record random data into your profile, office, phone number, etc. These are text, and can be anything. Now, what if there's a rising need to add a minicom number(minix, used to be used by the deaf to send messages to an organisation, before email). As a hearing person, this is going to be a low priority for me, so I work on something else. I've got spare capacity, so if the project leaders are calling for help on this thing, I can go and help.

This, ultimately, builds a better over-all product, but it's not something I'd have noticed by myself, because I'm not part of the deaf community.

In our example with NixOS, asking for someone from the community to be a representative on it is not about code quality, but about the issue of visibility. Is there some need that that section of the community needs? Is there a way that the community can do y thing to make the os as a whole more accessible? I don't know the answer, because I'm not a member of that community, just as I'm not a member of the deaf community.

In this case, the merit, the qualification, for being on the CoC is being a member of a section of the community. It brings valuable a viewpoint, and adds a voice at the table that can make a real difference. Most coders know that having a wish list of features at the start can make it infinitely easier to add them, than having to go back an rewrite to make them happen. Having a voice that might need that feature makes a difference

The debate for CoC is about merit, but merit isn't just stubbornly focused on a single talent, it can also be about life experience.

I don't run Ubuntu, but was surprised I'd not heard of this.

This is canonical trying to make money for security updates, and stopping companies just running it for free, instead of using a licence (my own take). They are following a model by IBM, apparently.

You can get round it by getting a 'pro' licence for free for up to 5 machines. At least according to ask Ubuntu. https://askubuntu.com/questions/1452299/im-getting-the-message-the-following-security-updates-require-ubuntu-pro-with

More reasons to avoid Ubuntu, imo.

Quick, someone ask the lettuce their opinion! We need an experienced post-holder as a counter point!

Choose an unclear gender (other, agender, etc) and your data becomes less useful. Marketing campaigns are based on broad categories, like male or female, so choosing neither lowers your data's value.

Similarly, lie about your education and your employment. Pick a made up job, be a wizard, or a spaceman. Jobs, again, are wide categories, so nonsense jobs, the more niche the better, the less they have to market things to you.

In theory you can do the same with hobbies, but three points of data, even made up data, is sellable somewhere.

Lie, of course, if you can. I'm sure there are more denizens of Hell on Facebook than the real place.

Where possible, choose other.

I see what you did there.

Oh lookit! Trying to fleece people using your product in good faith backfires.

Who'd have think?/s

Damn, screwed twice by the same Ape...

Didn't they say that there last time though? That there was no way the orange guy can win, and yet...

In the modern world, I'm not sure a blog without advertising is going to work - especially hosted on your own domain.

You will have better luck with substack or koffi, who's search algorithms will at least suggest related sites - and increase your visibility.

For decent views you are going to need a way of generating audience - that used to be Facebook and Twitter, but Twitter is dead, and Facebook is showing reduced returns of a saturated market. However, reduced is but 0, so it's still worth throwing up a page.

After that, a public Mastodon profile will help in audience creation, but that's very much a slow burn, and you'll have to make sure you #tag properly.

Comrade lemming, I love your enthusiasm. I think I get the basic idea that a quaternion is a number made up of 4 squares.

I love your belief that I know a complex number! (I don't).

I would love to have a better grip on maths, but it has always alluded me. I once got a maths PhD student to tutor me, and they said I lacked a fundamental understanding of number.

I will keep reading, it may click!

Thanks for your reply!

I would be very interested in the list of banned books, and how it would be curated.

For 64gb, you might have to extend the years to be: banned books ever, and then break down that list by reason. Just to fill space you'd end up including dubious books, and you'd need to be clear on where/who/why a book got banned.

A book being 'banned' from a pre-school for being 'not age appropriate' by some pointless helicopter parent wouldn't count unless the book was actually age appropriate.

Then you would need a category of 'banned by author banned'(or similar). Books that were considered age appropriate at the time, but now definitely aren't. I'm thinking here of the recent removal/editing of Dr Seuss books to remove problematic racial stereotype. Not necessarily banned in their original form, perhaps, but still censored (perhaps, rightly so for the target age).

64GB is a lot of books. You would end up even including 'The tale of (Darth) Pelagius'

(Pelagius was considered a heretic in the early years of the church, and his writings were banned)

I did not understand a word of it, but I appreciate the length of post, comrade lemming. One day I will understand quaternions - today is not that day. Gave me flash-backs to my Undergrad maths for software engineering. I didn't understand it then, either.

That said, I should probably understand vectors first.

Your post needs more love by people who do get it.