#techiscoolsometimes — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #techiscoolsometimes, aggregated by home.social.
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Firefox has a neat feature in the context menu for a link. It's called 'Copy Clean Link' and it removes a buncha tracking shit.
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I accidentally discovered a new-to-me feature in Sakura (also in Konsole). If I hit F11, I'll get a truly full screen version of the console ... while still having the extra benefits that come with running it in a GUI as opposed to a virtual terminal.
(Example things that work better from the GUI side: changing font size, better color support, better mouse integration.)
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So Long, Marianne
If you use a streaming service to listen to music, you might already be familiar with having lyrics play on the screen as the music goes. Read more
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If you're considering linking to something that may fold under the weight of Mastodon servers trying to ping it for OpenGraph data, jort.link has been made for that specific purpose.
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I set environment variables for some of my most common folders. So now I can go
cd $writingorpushd $projectswhenever. Saves me a ton of typing.It's slightly more annoying to set up on Linux and Mac than on Windows but, if you use the command line a lot, it's hugely worth it.
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Did you know you can interact with Lemmy / Kbin / PieFed from your Mastodon account? This functionality offers an entry point to the advantages of federated discussion forums that doesn't require you to create another account.
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Regarding the last boost, I'm not sure I'd program regular software in it.
But when you combine QB64 with Inform, it seems to meet the "Holy Grail" of compiled GUI software that you can program once and use on Windows / Mac / Linux without packaging in Yet Another Browser.
I don't think I'll leave Python for it, but there are a few projects I might consider using it to implement.
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CW: Tech history - WASTE, an early, decentralized P2P protocol
In 2003, Justin Frankel (from #Nullsoft, developer of #WinAmp) released a peer-to-peer file sharing application called WASTE. This is actually slightly after the initial release of BitTorrent. WASTE is named for a motto in Thomas Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49. The acronym WASTE stands for We Await Silent Tristero's Empire. It's a term used by an underground postal service. Their symbol is a crude, stick figure image of a horn with a trumpet mute in it.
WASTE as software did more than just allow file transfer. It had chat built in. Like the Fediverse, it's decentralized. However, the networks don't necessarily connect to each other. You would need an in with someone else to join a WASTE network.
Almost as soon as Justin published it, the company that owned Nullsoft (AOL) pulled WASTE back and said that Justin hadn't been authorized to distribute the software so the GNU GPL license it had been released under wasn't valid.
WASTE has been reimplemented a number of times with new features and protocol changes that, in some cases, aren't cross compatible with other WASTE implementations. According to a Sourceforge page, Blackbelt WASTE had its most recent update on 2025-01-27, hinting that WASTE is alive and in operation today.
(This toot owes an obvious debt of gratitude to Wikipedia for the particulars. I had the WASTE software, but never used it beyond opening it. I read The Crying of Lot 49 but it's hard to know whether I read it before Justin released the software.)
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Should have tagged that #TechIsCoolSometimes . BeepBox.co ... lots of fun.
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Earlier this week, I was watching a Youtube video called Basic Guide To The Personal Web. It made me aware of two search engines I hadn't heard of before.
About itself, Wiby says:
The Wiby search engine is building a web of pages as it was in the earlier days of the internet. In addition, Wiby helps vintage computers to continue browsing the web, as pages indexed are more suitable for their performance.
It has a neat surprise me... feature which takes you to a random site it has crawled. If you have an appropriate page you want indexed, you can submit it.
Marginalia "is an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed."
Neither are going to replace Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing, or your favorite search engine but they can help uncover cool parts of the internet you could probably never find through your usual search engine either.