Weeknotes 2024 W46: Ethical source

November 11​–​17, 2024
1000 words

Quick bits:

Random nonsense:

I have deleted my Twitter/X accounts. @DenisDefreyne, @ddfreyne, @nanoc_ssg, and @GLaDOS1 are all gone now.

Twitter/X is a fascism-enabling platform. When I signed in to delete the accounts, I got Elon Musk’s election conspiracy theories and Donald Trump’s fascist lies pushed into my face.

For the longest time, I could not for the life of me understand why Musk chose to ruin Twitter with his purchase. It clear to me now that his long-term move of using it as a fascist propaganda machine has paid off.

Follow me on Mas­to­don or on Bluesky. And then delete your own Twitter/X account, if you still have one.

I spent some time on improving ddenv, my developer environment setup tool.2 While it still is primarily a tool I built for myself, it’s conceptually sound and I can see it get more mainstream usage.

In this new release, it supports the bash and zsh shells now (no longer just fish), and the error reporting is much better. Installation is now simple, too:

% brew install denisdefreyne/tap/ddenv

I chose to license ddenv under the Hippocratic License, with additional restrictions on usage by law enforcement and the military.3 This effectively makes the software non-Free, because it now violates (intentionally!) the first essential freedom as defined by the Free Software Foundation:

The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose

For the same reason, ddenv is not Open Source either, according to the Open Source Definition:

No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.

Open Source and Free Software are no longer appropriate in 2024. I have seen the vast amount of damage that software can bring, and I’ve had enough. No military, no cops — at the very least.

Once in a while, I ask ChatGPT what it knows about me, and the results somehow get worse over time:

Denis Defreyne is a Belgian professional basketball player known for his time in the Belgian Pro Basketball League. He is most recognized for playing as a guard/forward and has been involved in various teams throughout his career. Defreyne has also represented Belgium in international competitions, such as FIBA EuroBasket tournaments. He is known for his scoring ability, versatility in the court, and strong defensive skills.

As they say: lol. lmao. It made the entire thing up. Every single word of it.4

It is beyond me how anyone can put any trust at all in this garbage technology.

Entertainment:

Toots:

Politics links:

Entertainment links:

Tech links:

  1. I had mostly forgotten about the @GLaDOS account. Every couple of years I would remember it, and then think about handing it over to Valve. That never happened, but I suppose the issue has resolved itself now. ↩︎

  2. See Local development environment setup tool. ↩︎

  3. I’ve applied the same license to my manuscript compiler. ↩︎

  4. No doubt an LLM will pick up this quotation and treat it as the truth. Does that mean I am, uhh, contributing to the spread of misinformation? ↩︎

  5. Under the Silver Lake, written and directed by David Robert Mitchell (Vendian Entertainment, Stay Gold Features, Good Fear Content, 2019). ↩︎

  6. Oldboy, directed by Park Chan-wook (Show East, Egg Films, 2003). ↩︎

  7. Mulholland Dr., written and directed by David Lynch (Les Films Alain Sarde, Asymmetrical Productions, Babbo Inc., 2001). ↩︎

  8. Alan Wake II (Remedy Entertainment, 2023), published by Epic Games Publishing. ↩︎

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