neil @neil@social.coop

Spread good vibes and good info.

Listening to #librelounge again - the episode on funding free software development.

Only a little way through touching on rivalrous and non-rivalrous goods, marginal costs, commons, so-called tragedy, free rider problem - good discussion!

https://librelounge.org/episodes/episode-8-funding-free-software-development-pt1.html

I got some feedback on my elisp exercism.io exercise, took a little while but it was really useful! Good advice to use `let` to scope the variable locally, and I learned the `or` macro as an alternative to an if conditional.

The downside of 'scratch your own itch' is that it leaves a lot of itches unscratched.

Either you need:

a) a way of enabling more people to scratch their own itch
b) a way of encouraging people to recognise and scratch other people's itches

Or both.

Reading about Chile in 1970, the book makes a few references to the comparative lack of computing technology in Chile at the time (50 computers) compared to other nations.

What's a modern-day analagous technology that access to is regarded as giving a country some kind of advantage over others? (Not including overtly militaristic stuff like missiles etc.)

Ooo, Magit Forge is niiice.

Let's me work with issues in a Github/Gitlab repo straight from Magit in Emacs.

(https://github.com/magit/forge)

exercism.io seems like a nice approach to learning to code in new languages where you solve problems and get advice from a mentor on your solution.

Trouble is that for elisp the mentors seem to be AWOL...

'For this reason, commons are not merely social spaces in which work and life might unfold in richer, more autonomous and sustainable ways beyond the scope of capital; the commons are also sites in which critique and resistance have the potential to develop'.

http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-13-open/open-access-bouillabaisse/ephemera-the-commons-and-their-impossibilities/

(Gotta chuckle though that the paper looks to be written in Microsoft Word...)

At first blush there feels like some overlap between the Viable System Model and Elinor Ostrom's Institutional Analysis and Development framework.

In that they both approach structures from a multi-level conceptual map, with units acting autonomously at each level but communicating between them. The polycentrism thing.

Would be interesting to compare and contrast them.

Also the Liberty Machine sounds pretty fun:

'a sociotechnical system that functioned as a disseminated network, not a hierarchy'

'treated information, not authority, as the basis for action'

'prevented top-down tynranny by creating a distributed network of shared information'.

First introduction to the Viable System Model: 'a general model that he believed balanced centralized and decentralized forms of control in organizations'.

I know nothing of the details, but the general overview sounds pretty good so far: 'It offered a balance between centralized and decentralized control that prevented both the tyranny of authoritarianism and the chaos of total freedom.'

A mixture of horizontal autonomy with channels for vertical communication and stabilisation.

And you can also execute SQL in org babel and get the results back in your current buffer. This could be really really useful for those times when I have to hunt around in the DB to figure out some issue with the data, and I want to keep a journal of how I figured something out.

Oh heck. There is (obviously..) an interactive SQL mode in Emacs. Can't believe I didn't know about this until now and have been fluffing about with the basic mysql shell.

'Computers did not need to reinforce existing management hierarchies and procedures; instead, they could bring about structural transformation within a company and help it form new communications channels, generate and exchange information dynamically. .... [Beer's] focus was not on creating more advanced machines but rather on using existing technologies to develop more advanced systems of organisation.' -- Cybernetic Revolutionaries

I think this is a very good tech policy from Incarcerated Workers (h/t @clayton). Pragmatic but striving to improve. Any other examples of good tech policies?

'We must employ a divest/invest strategy to the technology we use if we are to combat surveillance capitalism and build radical infrastructure that reflects our vision of the world.'

https://incarceratedworkers.org/resources/iwoc-technology-policy

The 'sensible course for the manager is not to try to change the system's internal behaviour... but to change its structure - so that its natural systemic behavior becomes different.'

Good advice, Stafford Beer, good advice...

According to loco2.com I would be saving 145.8 kg of CO2 by taking the train over flying. Average CO2 per year of a Briton seems to be around 10000 kg. So around 1%? Hmm it's all back of the envelope calculations but was kind of hoping for more bang for my buck there. If only rail was subsidised like air travel is.

It costs about twice as much to get the train to Berlin as it does to fly. What is this nonsense.