khalid_salad

joined 5 months ago
[–] khalid_salad@awful.systems 2 points 3 days ago

Yeah I stopped using it after switching to Proton.

[–] khalid_salad@awful.systems 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

I have a subscription for Private Internet Access that I was using before subscribing to Proton Mail (which comes with Proton VPN). I figured it was all the same (they all have a slightly skeezy feel to me).

Then I checked out Mullvad's website and it's really quite awesome. Everything about their service has a "we want to make this accessible to everyone" vibe, which I appreciate. I am going to try it out. <3

[–] khalid_salad@awful.systems 7 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

That is a good rule. The GPU programmers seem to think this is good code and that it's well-documented. I am still pretty out of my depth in this field, but it feels so silly to me. There is this historical bullshit about fortran only allowing 5 characters for a function name, and that (combined with some appeal to domain-specific knowledge) is used to justify stupid, freshman level shit like

if uplo == 'U':
    # manually fill in this part with the version of the algorithm that is for upper triangular matrices
else:  # just assume it's always U or L without checking, god forbid you use something modern like an enum, or even just a boolean
    # manually fill in this part with the version of the algorithm that is for lower triangular matrices

edit: if memory serves, booleans were first discovered in 2011 by John T. Boole, which is why they don't show up in fortran

[–] khalid_salad@awful.systems 5 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I’m sorry

me too, also i lied/forgot to mention that my particular PhD situation is so fucked up that i went from pure mathematics to cuda

[–] khalid_salad@awful.systems 5 points 3 days ago

Both of these suggestions are very nice, thank you!

[–] khalid_salad@awful.systems 4 points 3 days ago

Thanks for the suggestions! VPN is mostly to tell my ISP to fuck off. Tuta sounds cool but I am worried about it enshittifying as well. I am relieved to hear that switching from Proton was easy.

[–] khalid_salad@awful.systems 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (4 children)

also, how are you liking bitwarden?

I am happy with it. That they only charge $10 a year for services I don't even need (I could use a separate 2FA app) and allow you to self-host is a good sign. I plan to eventually set up a workflow in Sway (Wayland tiling WM) with a CLI tool (e.g. https://crates.io/crates/rbw, or the official one), so the interface is not terribly important to me. I would definitely recommend trying a free account to see if it fits into your workflow.

it’s gotten so bad that I’ve started pondering writing my own, because good god does basically every option out there depress me

I am in the same boat, except all of the software I've ever written has been TeX, or giving contrived examples to undergrads to demonstrate why dp[i][j] is a shit table name or why is better than float('inf') or MAX_INT in pseudocode. So I am only theoretically up to the task, which is ... IDK maybe I should start grifting?

But for real, I have considered writing my own:

  • VPN client where we don't have to jump through the hoops of learning a new shitty client, or finding out that their client runs like ass in Linux (Proton)
  • Password Manager
  • Config editor, so I don't have to edit /home/${USERNAME}/.config/sway/config.d/90-fuckyou-this-is-where-we-keep-system-suspend-shit.conf every time I want to change something. "Oh no you gotta edit the Kanshi config for that one." It's tedious to remember where various programs look for the config and whatever particular syntax is chosen (isn't this fucking solved with toml files already?)
  • An Android reminder app that isn't some stupid Taylorist metric-worshipping bullshit.

PS: There is Goldwarden which I know absolutely nothing about but looks neat. It does suggest that you could just write your own that is bitwarden compatible.

[–] khalid_salad@awful.systems 7 points 3 days ago (18 children)

Y'all, with Proton enshittifying (scribe and wallet nonsense), I think I am never going to sign up for another all-in-one service like this. Now I gotta determine what to do about:

  • Proton Mail
  • Proton VPN
  • Proton Drive
  • Proton Calendar

and I'd be forced to reassess my password manager if hadn't already been using BitWarden when Proton Pass came out.

Self-hosting is a non-starter (too lazy to remember a new password for my luggage). Any thoughts? Are other Proton users here jumping ship? Should I just resign myself to using Proton until they eventually force some stupid ass "Chatbot will look at the contents of your Drive and tell you which authorities to surrender yourself to"?

[–] khalid_salad@awful.systems 9 points 4 days ago (3 children)

i once had a coiner demand in outrage that i prooove my claim that bitcoin was started by libertarians.

who the fuck else would start it?

[–] khalid_salad@awful.systems 8 points 4 days ago

mine showed up in spam 🤣

[–] khalid_salad@awful.systems 11 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

I think you would need to deliberately choose a mathematical problem to solve, otherwise the most difficult thing you'll come across will be binary representations of numbers and why floats are FUCKING BULLSHIT (seriously though they can be tricky if you think they are just "numbers in a calculator").

If you want to really understand programming language theory, or computer science more generally, you will definitely need mathematics. But if the goal is "I want to tell this chip what to do," you don't need to learn a lot of math, in my opinion.

Edit: also, if you need help with any math, feel free to DM me. I am a former math teacher and sometimes teach algorithms (basically screaming "what is your induction variable") at the undergraduate level.

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