Ciro Santilli @cirosantilli 35

Every article now has a (very basic) GitHub-like issue tracker. Comments now go under issues, and issues go under articles. Issues themselves are very similar to articles, with a title and a body.

This was part of 1.0, but not the first priority, but I did it now anyways because I'm trying to do all the database changes ASAP as I'm not in the mood to write database migrations.

Here's an example:

This was the major final step of fully integrating the OurBigBook CLI into the dynamic website (besides fixing some nasty bugs that escaped passed by me from the previous newsletter).

The implementation was done by "simply" reusing scopes, e.g.: cirosantilli's article about mathematics has scope cirosantilli and full ID cirosantilli/mathematics.

That on the website is equivalent to a local file structure of:

The problem is that a bunch of subdirectory scope operations were broken locally as well, as it simply wasn't a major use case. But now they became a major use case for , so I fixed them.

After something broke on the website due to SQLite vs PostgreSQL inconsistencies and took me a day to figure it out, I finally decided to update the test system so that OURBIGBOOK_POSTGRES=true npm test will run the tests on PostgreSQL.

Originally, these were being run only on SQLite, which is the major use case for OurBigBook CLI, which came before the website.

But the website runs on PostgreSQL, so it is fundamental to test things in PostgreSQL as well.

Bibliography:

One specific software project, typically with a single executable file format entry point.

Ciro Santilli used to use file managers in the past.

But he finally converted to a shell cd aliases that auto-ls: github.com/cirosantilli/dotfiles/blob/a51bcc324f0cff0eddd4c3bb8654ec223a0adb7b/home/.bashrc#L1058

What happens when the underdogs get together and try to factor out their efforts to beat some evil dominant power, sometimes victoriously.

Or when startups use the cheapest stuff available and randomly become the next big thing, and decide to keep maintaining the open stuff to get features for free from other companies, or because they are forced by the Holy GPL.

Open source frees employees. When you change jobs, a large part of the specific knowledge you acquired about closed source a project with your blood and tears goes to the trash. When companies get bought, projects get shut down, and closed source code goes to the trash. What sane non desperate person would sell their life energy into such closed source projects that could die at any moment? Working on open source is the single most important non money perk a company can have to attract the best employees.

Open source is worth more than the mere pragmatic financial value of not having to pay for software or the ability to freely add new features.

Its greatest value is perhaps the fact that it allows people study it, to appreciate the beauty of the code, and feel empowered by being able to add the features that they want.

That is why Ciro Santilli thought:

But quoting Ciro's colleague S.:

And "can reverse engineer the undocumented GPU hardware APIs", Ciro would add.

While software is the most developed open source technology available in the 2010's, due to the "zero cost" of copying it over the Internet, Ciro also believes that the world would benefit enormously from open source knowledge in all areas on science and engineering, for the same reasons as open source.

Once upon a time young Ciro Santilli spent lots of time evaluating the features of different terimnals. The many windows of Terminator. The pop-uppiness of Guake/Yakuake.

But then one day he met tmux, and he was enlightened

Terminal choice doesn't matter. Just use tmux.

Ciro Santilli very aggressively aggressively people in social media.

There are basically 3 categories:

This is perhaps slightly worse than the Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, but still amazing.

Some difficult points:

A bit like the classification of simple finite groups, they also have a few sporadic groups! Not as spectacular since as usual continuous problems are simpler than discrete ones, but still, not bad.

It is not obvious why there have to be two sexes.

Sex itself is obvious: by mixing genes we increase variability.

But having two sexes rather than just being able to reproduce with anyone reduces the possible mating pool by half!