I love LaTeX because it can do things nothing else can. I have to use it, because it can do things nothing else can.

But it has some deep problems.

Packages

I think the biggest root of problems is having packages, rather than just having people submit a pull request on a central repository and add whatever feature …

These are some commands you can do from any Linux terminal. They all run through someone else's server, so any information you send will be visible to the owner.

Get the Current Weather

curl wttr.in

It's best to open the terminal full-screen here to see the full result.

You can also do a city. For some reason, the …

It's the little things that make me feel comfy.

Services are Simple

Systemd is fine, but I have to look up how to make a new unit file every time, and then input the path to the executable, which is generally some script I've written. With Void's runit, the service file is the script. There's nothing to learn or look …

I have doubts about self-driving cars. The entire argument rests on analogy with software translators.

Software translators began as simple dictionaries. You type in 'cat', it returns 'le chat'. Next, programmers started to feed in simple rules, so 'black cats' could return 'les chats noire'. The rules became so …

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In one …

Privacy for one makes very little sense. As individual as an individual might be, humans think in groups. We talk, research, and revise ideas together.

I once had super-encrypted email with Tutanota. Nobody could see it, even with a court order, because the emails were persistently encrypted on the server's disk, and …

Printers never waged war on pens, they simply made pens redundant.

I suspect that if robots ever take over, we'll go the way of the pen rather than the dodo.

Once machines can bake bread, calculate the proper tax rate and generally take care of what needs done, and do so cheaply, humanity can take a breather. I'm not …

Too much ASCII has been spilled debating about whether or not Arch Linux is worth the time, but I'd like to offer yet another way to judge the situation, starting with the cost.

Costs

• Starting Arch requires that you already know the basics of bash (or zsh). Playing about with a terminal in Ubuntu and following …