Computers | End the War on Freedom

Anatomy of a Gab Post URL

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Wed, 24 May 2017 22:52:54 GMT <== Computers ==>

I've taken to reporting each time that number of posts on Gab crosses a multiple of a million. It recently passed eight million posts. Some have asked how I determined that. This post is the answer.

https://gab.ai/billstclair/posts/8016964 is my post reporting on eight million posts. Here are it's components:

Name	Text	Description
Protocol	https://	Tells your browser to use the HTTPS protocol, SSL-encrypted Hypertext Transfer Protocol.
Host	gab.ai/	The internet host containing the web page.
Gab User	billstclair	The ID of the user who made the post. Stop here to show that user's profile page. There are a bunch of special tokens that can go here that may NOT be a userid, e.g. "home", "tv", "popular", "lists", "chats", "settings".
Content Type	/posts/	Says that the rest of the URL will identify one of the user's posts.
Post Number	8016964	The number of the post. This is a global counter of all posts ever made. This is what I used to determine that there were over 8 million posts.

Note that you need to know both the user ID AND the post number to address a post, so there's no way to step through the posts by simply incrementing the post number. This was a smart, security-conscious decision on @e's part.

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kek.gg

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 13 Feb 2017 21:44:04 GMT <== Computers ==>

https://kek.gg is a new (to me) image hosting site. They allow 5 megabyte uploads, and have a dirt-simple interface, with only one page, the home page, apparent. I discovered them via a Gab post that used them for its attached image, as I have done for the image below of the home page.

They appear to be hosted by Amazon and cached/distributed by Amazon CloudFront.

Registrant information is "WhoIsGuard Protected", so I don't know who owns them.

The .gg top-level domain is for the Balliwick of Guernsey, which apparently sells domains. Gandi.net, the registrar for kek.gg, charges $75/year for a .gg domain. Simple .com domains go for less than $10/year.

Cool.

https://infogalactic.com/info/Guernsey
https://www.gandi.net/domain/gg/info
https://www.gandi.net/domain/price/detail/gg/

kek.gg
https://kek.gg/i/7mzw8g

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Elm Digital Ocean Interface

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sat, 11 Feb 2017 01:00:10 GMT <== Computers ==>

I have built an Elm interface to a subset of the Digital Ocean HTTP API.

http://package.elm-lang.org/packages/billstclair/elm-digital-ocean/latest
https://www.digitalocean.com
https://lisplog.org/elm-do

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Kakuro Dojo on Android

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Tue, 17 Jan 2017 16:50:59 GMT <== Computers ==> <== Entertainment ==>

My Kakuro puzzle game, Kakuro Dojo, is now available from the Google Play Store. You may now play on iPhone, iPad, iPad Touch, Android phones and tablets, and a web browser on any device.

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Kakuro Dojo iOS App Ships!

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Fri, 13 Jan 2017 17:02:09 GMT <== Computers ==> <== Entertainment ==>

My Kakuro puzzle game, Kakuro Dojo, is available from the iOS App Store.

You can also play it online at Kakuro-Dojo.com.

Next: Android version

Zen Master

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Qubes OS

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Wed, 02 Nov 2016 14:31:01 GMT <== Computers ==>

Qubes OS bills itself as "a reasonably secure operating system." It uses hypervisors to provide separation between different domains on your computer. You can make as many of them as you want. They share read-only application software, but cannot write to each other's file storage, unless you explicitly copy between two of them. The windows for each domain are color-coded and identified, in a way that application code can't forge, so you always know which domain you're working with.

Great idea. Haven't tried it yet.

On Twitter @QubesOS.

Available as a 4 gig ISO image or a Torrent. Or on a live bootable USB.

Lots of Asus, Apple, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Sony, and Toshiba hardware have been reported to be compatible.

There's a good half hour overview here (embedded below).

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Gab Emojis

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Wed, 26 Oct 2016 01:54:43 GMT <== Computers ==>

I snarfed from the page source at Gab all the Emojis that are available there, by typing a colon (":") followed by the first characters of its name. I made a big table at:

billstclair.com/gab-emojis.html

Enjoy!

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Kakuro-Dojo Is Good Enough to Play

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Tue, 25 Oct 2016 17:37:56 GMT <== Computers ==>

Kakuro-Dojo.com is now mobile-friendly and remembers your state. If you like Sudoku, you might like Kakuro. Check it out.

More details at lisplog.org/kakurodojo_is_good_enough_to_play.html.

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Kakuro Dojo

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Wed, 19 Oct 2016 19:19:22 GMT <== Computers ==>

I've been working for about ten days on a browser-based puzzle game, Kakuro. I discovered it a few months ago, and have been solving puzzles in an app I got for my iPhone. I had a new idea for the game, so I decided to write my own. I made some progress in plain JavaScript, but got stumped at creating new puzzle layouts.

I recently happened across a new computer programming language, Elm. It's a pure functional language that compiles into JavaScript, and has libraries that make web programming very easy. I decided to convert my Kakuro game to Elm and continue development.

I haven't had so much fun in years! I still didn't figure out how to generate puzzle layouts, but I wrote a Haskell program to scrape layouts from another game site, so that I could continue on game play development, and worry about layouts later. Haskell is a much older programming language, on which Elm is based.

Anyway, the game is now playable, though it doesn't help you any. It's sort of like filling out a Sudoku puzzle in a newspaper. But I'm working on feedback, and noticing when you've successfully completed a puzzle.

The game is most easily played with the keyboard, but the keypad below the game board makes it playable on touch screens. I have yet done window auto-sizing, so you may have to zoom a bit to get the right size.

Aim your JavaScript-enabled browser at Kakuro-Dojo.com, and watch that space for new features as I write them.

I originally called it "Kakuro Master", but I discovered a couple of days ago that somebody has already used that name for a PC product.

The source code is at github.com/billstclair/kakuro-master.

I plan to eventually wrap the game for sale on the iPhone and Android app stores.

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Installing Arch Linux on Wandboard

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Thu, 01 Jan 2015 06:22:18 GMT <== Computers ==>

I have a dual-core Wandboard on which I've been running a Debian install a coworker built. I decided to try Arch Linux on it, for yuks, and to see if it fixed a multi-core thread switching bug I recently discovered in Clozure Common Lisp (CCL).

I followed the installation instructions, but when I booted up the Wandboard, it printed a few screen-fulls, ending with successfully mounting the file system I created, but then got:

Failed to mount devtmpfs at /dev: no such device

and the boot hung. Google was no help. Searching the Wandboard and Arch forums was no help. I finally went to #archlinux-arm on Freenode, where leming asked whether I had used the micro-SD card from which I was booting for another OS or machine. I had. He suggested zeroing the start of the card and reinstalling. So I did:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=1M count=1000

This cleared the first gig of the 8 gig card, more than I needed, but after reinstalling the bits, the boot succeeded.

The new Linux still tickles the CCL bug.

I'm liking Arch on the Wandboard. Fast, spare, stable. Debian worked well, too, but somehow this new install feels snappier.

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Government doesn't work. Never did. Never will. Can't. But there are lots of good people. Love them.

-- Bill St. Clair

The Atlanta Declaration

Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

-- L. Neil Smith

Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair