[Meta] Since I have a few different kinds of topics I would like to write about, I've decided to prefix some titles with an icon to represent the domain of discourse of a post. It should usually be evident from the title, but I imagine the icon sets the tone quite appropriately, at least for myself in writing the post. I have been planning on writing on social issues and on gardening, but I haven't come around to it because computer programming has taken so much of my mind space, and it usually does when writing on the computer. Oh well.
One of the reasons that I don't use Discord is quite simply that it takes a long time to load. If it is a chat application, why does it have to load so much bloat? I've always found it ridiculous to have to rely on so much code, especially proprietary code, to do something that's dead simple and computers have always been able to do for decades already.
This applies to websites in general. It's interesting that almost 30 years have passed since I first started using the internet, and many websites still take as long to load as they did in the days of dialup.
This is one reason that I want to stop using web browsers altogether, or, at least, the so-called """modern""" web browsers that so many users deem essential to an operating system. I recall a common critique for systems like plan9 which I find absolutely ridiculous: It doesn't boast a """modern""" web browser. Good riddance.
When I say stop using web browsers and the web altogether, I don't really mean "altogether", but I would stick to using simple, web-1.0 static sites, much like the https version of the smol.pub, which is what I am using to write this post.
If I am not going to use web browsers, what would I use? What could I possibly use as a replacement for Discord? gee, I wonder. If only there existed a chatting protocol that was lightweight, that has existed since at least the 80's, and for which a client can be implemented in a few lines in any language with socket support, and for which a plethora of clients already existed...
This is the same issue I have with the likes of Whatsapp. Suppose everybody in your country used whatsapp, and suppose whatsapp stopped running on devices older than 3 years or so. And suppose the web version of whatsapp blocked you in such a way that you actually need to log in from a phone first. And suppose there was a porotocol that were exactly what whatsapp used behind the curtains, only slightly modified to make it proprietary and, thus, incompatible with normal clients of that protocol itself. Of course, it would be unthinkable that silicon valley croonies would do something such just to force users into their datamining applications. It would be a bit like technological serfdom!
Anyway. I guess that's why Emacs is such an appealing environment for some. I don't really like Emacs, but it's the best I have found out there to replace the web browser, as it already has many capabilities that can help me replace the use of the web browser for almost everything I do there... so why don't I use it more? Again... I don't really like Elisp. Oh well...
The whole point of this seemingly aimless rant is just that there are low-tech alternatives to the "technological serfdom" of the web browser, and that, as per my previous post... I really, really would like to break out of the web browser and get used to using these kinds of environments more. That they already exist, especially the protocols, even if the actual "low-tech" environments are somewhat lacking. Perhaps that's the reason I come to complain so much. So far, I've only found Emacs to be a somewhat decent replacement for the web browser, and I don't like it so much. But I should stop complaining and start learning Elisp already!
By books I mean more than just books, but any resources whatsoever. Most importantly: downloadable resources. Thanks to libgen, I have access to all sorts of copyrighted books with great information. But that is not enough, and PDF, while a decent format of it's own, is often inappropriate. There is another problem, though: books are often too long. I can't get myself to read through a book when I have 10 or 20 books on my stack. And I don't like the fact that they are not "free as in freedum" (I detest that last word, and I actually am expecting to write a post soon entitled "Against freedom", but that's for another time). There are many books that are, in fact, open, if not free, among my favorites which I've been reading recently are SICP, On Lisp, Thinking Forth, to name but three of the more outstanding ones. But there is a lack of some such resources. This is not to say there are none. In fact, as I said, there are good resources in many other formats, but again, they are often scattered and, more often than not, in the form of blog posts, which make them a bit hard to keep around.
What kind of open resources I would like to see more of? In the case of programming, I think literary programs would be best. Org files are also a good format, as I've already found a few of them, a good example being Protesilaos' Elements of Emacs Lisp.
So it is that I would like to advocate for more of these. I would like to stop downloading copyrighted books in pdf format and, instead, collect org-mode files, literary programs, and other such forms of transmitting information, mostly in plaintext form.
Today I just felt like dumping so much of what I was thinking by bringing up my main concerns with computer usage under two related headings: low tech and open (not) books. As a result, this post may be all over the place, but I hope I have at least got my point through.
But all of this for what? I decry the tyranny of the web browser, especially of the "Web 2.0", but I have also admitted that there are already alternatives out there. The conclusion I draw from this is that I ought to resist the "convenience" of web browsers and it's lures, and instead to put in a little work in working under these slightly more technically challenging systems, such as Emacs.
In fact, I have recently realized that there is a very interesting ecosystem that seems to check all the boxes of the kinds of things I would like from a computer system, and that is the Racket language and it's tooling. It has a web module, it has scribble for writing literary programs and other such documentation, and it is a nice Scheme-descended language that is probably enjoyable... But I'll have to look into that.
Sometimes the problem, as I already said, is putting some effort into learning and using these systems instead of being a passive "end user" who submits to the tyranny of a cloudflare screen or a recaptcha, or who waits for a discord tab to load... and to submit to all the blocks that these """services""" put out there to prevent you from using them at all! I've already said this elsewhere, I consider cloudflare to be a "self-DDoSing suite", as it takes minutes (sometimes as much as 5 whole minutes!) to load, and my knee-jerk response to seeing a cloudflare screen is to just close the tab.
Hoperfully, at some point (hopefully soon, too), I'll be able to do without the web browser altogether, and I won't be jumping hoops to try to pirate copyrighted material (for the record, I don't respect the idea of copyright, and I always advocate for pirating such material, I just find it inconvenient and, in a way, if they make such an effort to prevent me from accessing them, I don't want them at all), I want to use a saner and more open way to use the internet that doesn't put me at the mercy of the "techno-serfdom" of silicon valley shit, all of the """services""" of which absolutely suck ass.
That's all I got for now, please excuse the diatribe.