fdm, paredit and systemd (Was: Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy)

D <nospam@example.net> writes:

On Mon, 24 Feb 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote:
>

So if fdm can download the files in a nice spool folder format, I
might even be able to apply my small python script to copy the news
posting into Maildir folders, and there I can read, and alpine then
posts.

>
I'm sure fdm can download and write them to a Maildir: it's how I use
it.

>
Oh, that might even make my python script redundant! This gets more interesting
by the minute!

It will surely do.  (It is also a powerful filter, so you can organize
your NNTP articles into various different Maildir, essentially being
your NNTP client from the downloading perspective.  For uploading, we
will need another program.)

Go is the next on my list. What is it that makes you like lisp so
much? I have never considered it, so I am curious. Doesn't it wear out
the () keys on your keyboard? ;)

>
Lol.  [L]ots of [S]tupid, [I]rritating [P]arenthesis.
>
Have you ever used paredit-mode in the GNU EMACS?  It makes you love the
parenthesis.  You're a vim user, so you likely never heard of paredit.
If you have the energy, the time and the curiosity, you could watch a
3-minute demo at
>
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6h5dFyyUX0
>
A few seconds will be enough to get the spirit, but I don't care if you
watch it---just skip it.

>
Never heard of. It was a bit too quick, so I'm still not quite sure what it
does. Some of that jumping around can be achieved in vim, but since I'm not
familiar with lisp nor with exactly what he was doing, it is difficult
to say.

I'd bet vim can do the same. 

It's not important.  But the illustration there is that Lisp programmers
don't worry about parentheses; it's all managed by them by editors such
as the GNU EMACS (with its various packages for handling these
specialized operations).

It's a pleasure to use paredit-mode.  Let me quote Donald Norman.  I'm
gonna show a larger quote, but my point here is on pleasure of use and a
``feeling of control''.

>
This is true. I like the idea that everything is a file, and that log files are
plain text. It increases my feeling of control over the system.

Good illustration!

That is why I do not like systemd. It moves away from this philosophy
and frankly, I still have not experienced anything that I need systemd
for, that could not have been solved without it.

One thing I liked about systemd is that regular users can have their own
daemons.  But it turns out that's the only thing about systemd that I
ever liked.  And even then I changed my opinion.  Daemons are not really
meant to be managed by regular users; if there's any user that should
have the right to run a daemon, then they should have sysadmin powers,
even if specifically just for the task at hand.  Bottom line: it's a
neat thing that it does, but it might not quite be a real need.

Let's take daemontools by djb, say.  You can let regular users run their
own daemons with a simple UNIX command of letting the directory where
daemon lives have the adequate permissions for regular users to manage
their own daemons.

Now let's take the dependency management of systemd.  Is that neat and
cool?  It is.  But a competent sysadmin knows exactly what's needed in
his start-up scripts---he doesn't need something complex to handle it.
If he doesn't, he would want to learn.  Once he learns, I can't quite
see much of a point in having those things be completely managed by a
monolithic subsystem that's trying to hide details from the sysadmin.

Sad!

It's alright.  As long as there are systems that don't buy the Microsoft
way of things, we're good.  And there will always be because hackers
never buy into the nonsense.