Noah Loomans @nloomans@mastodon.technology
- Keybase
- nloomans
- Website
- https://noahloomans.com
- Timezone
- Europe/Amsterdam (UTC+1)
- Language
- en, nl;q=0.9, de;q=0.2
I like writing code. I enjoy writing low-level C code, building servers, making webapps, and learning how stuff really works. Oh, and I’m in love with robotics.
Joined Mar 2018
Noah Loomans
boosted
Watch this SpaceX launch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhrkdHshb3E
T-14 minutes, they're going to deliberately destroy the launch vehicle
Noah Loomans
boosted
So, SourceHut is not hosted in anyone's cloud. I own all of the hardware outright and colocate most of it in a local datacenter.
I just built a new server for git.sr.ht, and boy is she a beat. It cost me about $5.5K as a one-time upfront cost, and now I just pay for power, bandwidth, and space, which runs about $650/mo for *all* of my servers (10+).
Ran back of the napkin numbers with AWS's price estimator for a server of equivalent specs, and without even considering bandwidth usage it'd cost me almost TEN GRAND PER MONTH to host JUST that server alone on AWS.
AWS is how techbro startups pile up and BURN their investor money.
@sir
I was reading the source code out of curiosity and found this interesting line: https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/himitsu/tree/9659aa4c416730c807891370bd441cb27cd36c10/os/os-linux.c#L54
Why are you using a pointer to memset instead of calling memset directly? What security difference does it make?
Noah Loomans
boosted
So I was recently asked why I prefer to use free and open source software over more conventional and popular proprietary software and services.
A few years ago I was an avid Google user. I was deeply embedded in the Google ecosystem and used their products everywhere. I used Gmail for email, Google Calendar and Contacts for PIM, YouTube for entertainment, Google Newsstand for news, Android for mobile, and Chrome as my web browser.
I would upload all of my family photos to Google Photos and all of my personal documents to Google Drive (which were all in Google Docs format). I used Google Domains to register my domain names for websites where I would keep track of my users using Google Analytics and monetize them using Google AdSense.
I used Google Hangouts (one of Google’s previous messaging plays) to communicate with friends and family and Google Wallet (with debit card) to buy things online and in-store.
My home is covered with Google Homes (1 in my office, 1 in my bedroom, 1 in the main living area) which I would use to play music on my Google Play Music subscription and podcasts from Google Podcasts.
I have easily invested thousands of dollars into my Google account to buy movies, TV shows, apps, and Google hardware devices. This was truly the Google life.
Then one day, I received an email from Google that changed everything.
“Your account has been suspended”Just the thing you want to wake up to in the morning. An email from Google saying that your account has been suspended due to a perceived Terms of Use violation. No prior warning. No appeals process. No number to call. Trying to sign in to your Google account yields an error and all of your connected devices are signed out. All of your Google data, your photos, emails, contacts, calendars, purchased movies and TV shows. All gone.
I nearly had a heart attack, until I saw that the Google account that had been suspended was in fact not my main personal Google account, but a throwaway Gmail account that I created years prior for a project. I hadn’t touched the other account since creation and forgot it existed. Apparently my personal Gmail was listed as the recovery address for the throwaway account and that’s why I received the termination email.
Although I was able to breathe a sigh of relief this time, the email was wake up call. I was forced to critically reevaluate my dependence on a single company for all the tech products and services in my life.
I found myself to be a frog in a heating pot of water and I made the decision that I was going to jump out.
Leaving GoogleToday there are plenty of lists on the internet providing alternatives to Google services such as this and this. Although the “DeGoogle” movement was still in its infancy when I was making the move.
The first Google service I decided to drop was Gmail, the heart of my online identity. I migrated to Fastmail with my own domain in case I needed to move again (hint: glad I did, now I self host my email). Fastmail also provided calendar and contacts solutions so that took care of leaving Google Calendar and Contacts.
Here are some other alternatives that I moved to:
Gmail → Fastmail → Self-hosted (via Cloudron)
Google Contacts → Fastmail → Nextcloud Contacts
Google Calendar → Fastmail → Nextcloud Calendar
Google Search → Bing → DuckDuckGo
Google Maps → Bing Maps → OpenStreetMaps and OsmAnd
Google Analytics → Matomo Analytics
Google Drive → Nextcloud Files
Google Photos → Nextcloud Files/Gallery
Google Docs → Collabora Office (Nextcloud integration) and LibreOffice
Google Play Music → Spotify / Plex → Spotify / Jellyfin
Google Play Movies/TV → Plex → Jellyfin
Google Play Audiobooks/Books → Audible/Kindle
Google Play Store (apps) → F-Droid / Aurora Store
Google Android → Lineage OS → Ubuntu Touch on PinePhone (coming soon?)
Google’s Android Apps → Simple Mobile Tools
Google Chrome → Mozilla Firefox
Google Domains → Hover
Google Hangouts → Matrix and Nextcloud Talk
Google Allo → Signal
Google Podcasts → PocketCasts → AntennaPod
Google Newsstand → RSS
Google Wallet → PayPal and Cash App
Google Voice →Ting Mobile
Migrating away from Google was not a fast or easy process. It took years to get where I am now and there are still several Google services that I depend on: YouTube and Google Home.
Eventually, my Google Home’s will grow old and become unsupported at which point hopefully the Mycroft devices have matured and become available for purchase. YouTube may never be replaced (although I do hope for projects like PeerTube to succeed) but I find the compromise of using only one or two Google services to be acceptable.
At this point losing my Google account due to a mistake in their machine learning would largely be inconsequential and my focus has shifted to leaving Amazon which I use for most of my shopping and cloud services.
The reason that I moved to mostly FOSS applications is that it seems to be the only software ecosystem where everything works seamlessly together and I don’t have to cede control to any single company. Alternatively I could have simply split my service usage up evenly across Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple but I don’t feel that they would have worked as nicely together.
Overall I’m very happy with the open source ecosystem. I use Ubuntu with KDE on all of my computers and Android (no GApps) on my mobile phone. I’ve ordered the PinePhone “Brave Heart” and hope to one day be able to use it or one of its successors as a daily driver with Ubuntu Touch or Plasma Mobile.
I don’t want to give the impression that I exclusively use open source software either, I do use a number of proprietary apps including: Sublime Text, Typora, and Cloudron.
@tristan957 He is handing out sourcehut stickers at FOSDEM I believe.
@fedilab
Perfect! I was in the middle of repeatedly pressing that button when I saw this toot.
Also I would make the button stand on it's own between two posts, not attached to the top one. Now it looks like the more action is somehow related to a single post. I was quite confused about its function when I initially saw the button. And maybe call it "Fetch skipped toots" instead of "Fetch more toots".
@switchingsoftware Looks nice! Have you considered adding https://www.invidio.us/ to the list? While it is not a YouTube-alternative, it does allow you to realistically use YouTube without a Google-account, as it can keep track of your subscriptions for you. I can see many people not being ready to switch fully away from YouTube and something like invidious seems like a good middle ground.
Why are threads on Mastodon displayed as if they are linear while in fact they are branching? Wouldn't something similar to how Reddit displays comments make more sense?
@nifker @sir In this case I personally think that tabs with an unspecified tabstop used for alignment is the best way, but there is a lot of valid debate here. And I prefer it when an option is chosen for the community for the sake of consistency, even if I would have personally made the choice different.
@sir I'm not dismissing Zig for this reason btw. I always try to have an open mind when looking at a new language. I just thought this was an interesting choice.
@sir I'm on Linux. It's complaining about the tab character.
@sir I heart about zig a while now and thought I would try it now. This is... interesting.
/home/cyborg/archive/personal/zig/hello.zig:4:1: error: invalid character: '\t'
const stdout_file = try std.io.getStdOut();
Noah Loomans
boosted
@ky0ko @fribbledom So much this. There is a post on the r/JavaScript subreddit which explains this really well: https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/c8drjo/nobody_talks_about_the_real_reason_to_use_tabs/
Noah Loomans
boosted
Just created my first pull request for an open source project. It's an amazing feeling to contribute to something bigger and is just really satisfying.
@fribbledom Tabs for indentation, spaces for alignment is the only sane answer.
The best thing about tabs is that different contributors can choose a tab size which they like. But then you must align using spaces so that the tab size really doesn't matter. (Or just don't align at all, creates smaller git diffs anyway).
- Keybase
- nloomans
- Website
- https://noahloomans.com
- Timezone
- Europe/Amsterdam (UTC+1)
- Language
- en, nl;q=0.9, de;q=0.2
I like writing code. I enjoy writing low-level C code, building servers, making webapps, and learning how stuff really works. Oh, and I’m in love with robotics.
Joined Mar 2018
