But the way people save and consume content on the web has evolved, so we’re channeling our resources into projects that better match browsing habits today.

Soo… nobody needed that tool any more? Did they ever though?

Oh yeah. This looks like a much better way to do it. My solution is pretty bare bones by comparison.

Absolutely not, quite the opposite actually. However, the end result is close to 100% CPU load, which is good enough for some purposes. Let’s say you want to test the performance of your CPU cooler, or overclock stability, this should good enough. There are also dedicated tools for people with more advanced needs.

As an absent admin myself, I can assure you that the system can take a surprising amount of neglect and abuse. There were times when I feared the system was beyond repair, but I’ve been surprised time and again by how resilient it actually is. Nowadays, you can also use your least hated LLM to give you suggestions and help with interpreting logs.

The thing is, you can neglect your system for long periods of time, run system updates blindfolded, but eventually, the tasks pile up and catch up with you. My latest misadventure involved finding out the hard way that lots of packages that used to be in core, were moved to extra. You know, reading those announcements might be a good idea… Anyway, I was unable to update my system, because about half of the packages were no longer available in core. Eventually, I figured it out, enabled extra, fixed some of the stupid mistakes I made along the way, and the system was back to normal. Yay! After about two hours of messing around, I can finally get back to neglecting my admin duties again.

That’s a horrifying concept. Better not think about it.

That reminds me of the CPU stress test I ran many years ago.

dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/null

If you have 8 cores, just open 8 terminals, and run that code in each of them.

See also: /dev/null

It’s basically a black hole where you can throw anything.

Same. Many years ago, I tried a bunch of low spec browsers, and Midori was the best one at the time.

All the others were really light and stripped down, which also made them pretty much completely incompatible with the modern web. So what exactly can you browse with them, if not the web, I was left wondering. Well, Midori was the best compromise. It’s very light, but still capable of doing things.

My thoughts exactly. My bare bones installation didn’t come with one. I had to specifically install it myself.

And why is it that people don’t want to see any ads at all? Some people argue that ads can help you discover products and services you might want to buy? Well, I tried that.

Got a separate computer just for this experiment. Installed Chrome, used online services that have ads etc. I exposed myself to tracking and ads for a while, and the ads I saw on that computer are still completely irrelevant. I’ve even told some sites exactly what I like, and the ad targeting still sucks.

Nobody benefits from this, except for the ad companies. Advertisers loose their money, and they get no sales in return (at least not from mme). Ad companies and related platforms get the money for showing me stuff I will never buy, while the ads infuriate me at every turn.

Even in the best case scenario where the ad companies have all of my data, they still can’t figure out what I might want to buy. The whole idea of ads is just completely broken. On my other computers where I actually do more serious stuff, I use every tool in my arsenal to block all of this digital cancer.

Oh, I totally agree. US english has diverged from UK english by making certain things more sensible, but there’s still a long way to go.

I think I’ve seen some organization try to change the spelling of health to helth. Maybe it was an Australian clinic or something. Can’t remember. Anyway, I totally agree with that sort of spelling reform. Just make the spelling closer the pronunciation and get rid of all the random nonsense.

Unlike many other languages, English doesn’t have a central authority thay could even propose changes, let alone dictate them. Spelling reforms have been attempted many times before, but it doesn’t look like we’re getting anywhere.

English is also incredibly widespread, which is beginning to turn into a burden at this point. If you want to change something, your new spelling won’t be compatible with the rest of the world. If you make the spelling match the pronunciation, you need to choose one dialect. Which one though? Oh, I’m sure that decision won’t be controversial in the slightest and everyone will be totally ok with the outcome.

Predictability is key. As long as thouse double letters don’t misbehave, this system should work just fine.

Just from that table alone, I can tell that there are many “collisions” (to borrow a cryptography term) where single letter can map to multiple sounds or vice versa. As long as the rules are clear, you don’t necessarily even need spelling bees.

That’s pretty cool. Tell me more about your system. Is it fully consistent, or only partially?

Yeah, I think sonic shorthand sounds good. Or maybe auditory? It even helps me remember absurd spellings like gothi.

The actual pronunciation and correct spelling may have some convoluted mechanism connecting the two, but I don’t need to worry about layers of history, a list of exceptions, language of origin and other things. I just memorize a particular sound and generate the correct spelling based on that. I guess that’s a shorthand of sorts. Not the shortest route really, but doing it properly is way beyond my memorization skills.

You just reminded me of a brilliant Numberphile video about french numerals. This stuff is truly mind blowing!

And yes, you’re right. The layers of history can be seen in the disconnect between spelling and pronunciation. The Great Vowel Shift is just the tip of the iceberg.

IPA can’t help with spelling because it aims to record sounds in character format.

My idea is to convert a hard to memorize character strings into an easy to memorize sounds. The human brain just works like that for some reason. Anyway, these two concepts are related, but distinct. I can totally see where this question is coming from.

When writing, you don’t need to remember the letters. You just recall the absurd sound and convert it back to a sequence of seemingly unrelated characters we call “correct spelling”.

Should have called it EurOS. A lost opportunity, just saying.

I asked GPT and Copilot some pride related questions, and they were both pretty supportive. GPT went into more detail, while Copilot used more rainbow emojis. Either way, I didn’t see any right-wing rhetoric.

Nice! KaOS is still hanging around after all these years. I remember trying it many years ago, because I liked the idea of it. Sadly, I didn’t like the number of applications available on it, so I didn’t stick around for more than a few weeks. I wonder if things are better now…