From: smirzo@example.com
D writes:
> On Mon, 24 Feb 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote:
>
>> D writes:
>>
>>> On Sun, 23 Feb 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote:
>>>
>>>>> It saves all messages in a local spool folder, and since nntp is a
>>>>> nice and simple retro-protocols, it is trivial to understand the
>>>>> format. So what you could do, between 2 leafnode servers, is to just
>>>>> reverse engineer the format and "copy" the spool directory between the
>>>>> two leafnode installations and all the messages will pop up on the
>>>>> other leafnode as well.
>>>>
>>>> Okay, but the question was to just to confirm my mostly-forgotten
>>>> recollections of Leafnode. I wouldn't mind working on it to make it
>>>> peer via NNTP itself. But I would much rather write a completely new in
>>>> a non-C language.
>>>
>>> I wonder if there are any good C to Go converters out there? Would be
>>> interesting to see how much effort it would take to convert
>>> leafnode from c to
>>> go? Maybe then, it would be an easier code base to work with?
>>
>> I know C a lot more than I know Go---nothing. :) I've already began
>> some work in Common Lisp.
>>
>>>>> I think is perhaps somewhat of a downward trend. I feel awe when
>>>>> talking to the older generations who had to learn the hardware,
>>>>> program in assembler and so on.
>>>>
>>>> I feel the same. Like you, I feel great learning from the older
>>>> generations. In fact, I often think that they were privileged for being
>>>> able to be there first. I identified this easily enough to develop a
>>>> passion for studying the history of computer science, which makes me
>>>> look very old now because I use a lot of very old tools, which are
>>>> awesome tools despite their age. I got a web post by Joel Spolsky the
>>>> phrase that ``software doesn't get dusty''.
>>>
>>> True. I have a retro-class on thursday and will show them some nice
>>> stuff in the form of vim, alpine, and midnight commander. Apart from
>>> a shell (bash) those are my main tools in the terminal.
>>
>> Hey... GNU EMACS. :)
>
> Hah... wrong church and religion! ;)
Lol. I have been feeling pretty religious lately indeed. :)
>>>> Nevertheless, I feel obsessed by computers and I try to get close to the
>>>> hardware by more abstract means. For instance, I've been reading about
>>>> the 6502 and it seems like such a simple CPU that it makes up for a very
>>>> great computer architecture first introduction, unlike x86, say.
>>>
>>> I remember programming for the Z80 when I was young, on my
>>> calculator, and also, of course, assembler on the 486. Those were
>>> the days! =)
>>
>> Lol. You have more experience than I do. I did own a 486 DX2 66 MHz
>> (that was my first), but I wrote no assembly at all---I didn't even know
>> there was assembly or machine code back then. I did get to know the
>> BIOS pretty well, though, but I had not much of an idea how it really
>> fit into the hardware. (I took four to five years to realize that I had
>> to get involved with programming to really understand the computer.)
>>
>> Pretty funny, though, the first book I read was called ``HARDWARE''. It
>> was an x86 computer architecture book, superficial, that explained how
>> the parts connected or something. That book was very influential
>> because it showed me that, by reading it, I could actually make sense of
>> taking the computer apart and putting it back on. I consciously
>> realized---I can read and get knowledge. (Schools always recommended
>> reading, but they never really recommended technical reading---they
>> seemed to recommended only national literature.)
>>
>> From that point on, I never stopped to read technical books, which gave
>> me a new realization of how amazingly broken schools are. And the
>> problem is not so much in the system itself---it's more in the people
>> who run that system.
>>
>> Many years later, as a result, when I was in graduate school, instead of
>> choosing a topic to write on, I chose an adviser to work with. I
>> couldn't care less about any topic; I asked my adviser---what are you
>> working on? Let's work on that. You see? Anything is interesting so
>> long as the people working on it are interesting. When they are not,
>> no method will do.
>
> True!
>
> I don't actually read that many books on technology. My technology
> exposure these days is more through blogs, usenet, and the occasional
> networking event. Oh, and work of course, but that is more "organical"
> exposure, and not really something I do actively.
Yeah. This probably implies you're getting a lot of screen reading
time. I like books because I can get off the screen. And, the book
being good, is usually so much more carefully written than most papers
and blogs.
I try to go to the beach every day. Today, for instance, I biked to the
beach, swam and then drank coconut water and do my reading. If I'm not
reading a book, then I go to Hacker News (news.ycombinator.com) and I
print out what I find interesting there. It's so much slow and
pleasurable to read off screen. At the beach, I cannot just skip too
many texts because I have just a few with me. And I shouldn't read too
fast because then I have nothing else to read. So I take a long time on
every word and so the reading is a lot more fun.
I'm even reading non-technical stuff. Since December, I read
``Hackers'' by Steven Levy (1984) and then I also read the book ``No
Filter'' by Paulina Porizkova (2022), the model. :) She's an excellent
writer. I enjoy the music from The Cars. Paulina was Ric Ocasek's
wife. He died in the pandemic, though not from COVID-19. She seemed
interesting and I found her book interview-ads while listening to The
Cars songs on YouTube. I enjoyed the book, but, yeah, I was just
snooping into other people's lives, which perhaps I shouldn't.
--- SoupGate-DOS v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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