Gemini* and Gopher

• Science

  • Think ω

    I was pondering the traditional frequency-capacitance-reactance problem, and what would be the nicest way to set that up with simple slide rule scales. By nicest way, I mean so that we can set up one ratio of scales, and then just slide the cursor around to see different possible solutions. I'll make the practical assumption for now that we have a fixed target frequency, and what we are interested in is what combinations of capacitance and reactance are possible.

    It simplifies things for us, if we first convert frequency to angular velocity, or ω. Angular velocity is equal to 2πf, where f is frequency. Then the formula for capacitive reactance is simply 1 / (ωC). Roughly, your frequency is about ⅙ (1 / 2π) of your angular velocity, or conversely your angular velocity is about 6 times your frequency. My N-16-ES slide rule, made for electronics, conveniently has a frequency scale and an ω scale aligned with each other on the same side of the center rule, along with a λ (wavelength) scale, allowing easy conversion just by moving the cursor around.

• Technology and Free Software

  • Unlearning literacy

    I was reminded of this quote from Italo Calvino's *If on a winter's night a traveler* during a midterm this evening. My professor was using this timer web app to tell us how much time we had left before the exam was over. The web page had like, six large banner ads on it, and my professor didn't have an ad blocker. Genuinely, it was kind of hard to focus on anything except the advertisements. It makes me wonder how people manage to live in a world without basic protection on the web. But they do. They find a way.

    I had the opposite feeling the other day when another professor showed up to class with what appeared to be an entirely AI-generated slide deck. AI generated images, even some of the newer, less obvious ones, are disturbing to look at for a number of reasons. But whereas advertisements feel overwhelming, AI generated images feel like… nothing. I can't help but look at them, picking out every little detail, swimming in that discomfort, because despite containing a lot of symbolic data, they're just semantic noise. They're nothing.

    A few months ago I was hanging out with some people who don't spend most of their time touching computers, as every healthy person should, and I asked them if they had ad blockers on their browsers. They all said no, and so I asked why. Each of them gave more or less the same answer: they didn't feel like it.

  • Firefox 148 and the AI Kill Switch

    I've been a user of Firefox for a very, very long time - since it was still called Mozilla, so probably at least 25 years, maybe longer. I've been using Firefox for so long, that at this point, it's reflexive: get a new computer, immediately go and download it.

    Muscle memory more than anything else, though strange to think that a web browser has survived a quarter-century when so many came and went back in the 90s. Lately, I was enormously discouraged by the amount of AI stuff creeping in. I wonder how much of this is strings-attached (either explicitly or implicitly) from the funding it gets from Google? Or it might just be that, despite having written code since my teens, despite being online almost every day for well over 30 years, I'm out of step with the Silicon Valley types.

  • Preparing for Marchintosh '26

    Marchintosh is upon us once again! I feel like I only _barely_ participated last year, so I'd really like to put in at least a _little_ more effort this time around... To that end, I started my preparations this evening -- intending to follow through on my idea to establish an "experimental Unix" AppleTalk group this year -- featuring A/UX on my IIsi. This is a machine I picked up many years back and I've never quite been able to part with it, despite sitting in a box for much of that time.