commit b770e0f9aa6edbcd131ece2e104378b320d990e2
parent bbbf0f7cbfe986af56a5ed89a6ec8992799f084a
Author: Andrew Laack <andrew@laack.co>
Date: Mon, 11 May 2026 12:30:50 -0500
Some notes
Diffstat:
3 files changed, 28 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
diff --git a/posts/wip/just-because-youre-right-doesnt-mean-it-matters.md b/posts/wip/just-because-youre-right-doesnt-mean-it-matters.md
@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
+# Just because you're right doesn't mean it matters
+
+- Free software
+ - yes, proprietary software will generally become crap, no that doesn't mean free software is necessarily the correct course of action
+- Yes, package managers will always be supply chain attack vectors, no it doesn't mean we definitively shouldn't use them
+ - This is just a consequence of them, not something that obviates their entire value prop
+
+basically, it is super easy to predict something bad will happen in the future. This doesn't mean the bad thing you predicted matters, and frequently predictions about bad things happening are outweighed by the positive short term benefits. The specifics of this are variable, and I do think free software is better than proprietary software, but it's not that useful to say stallman was right because of course he would be! Of course some prop software will become bad, this is super obvious to me. What's less obvious is his overall correctness, which I agree with, but is a bit more nuanced than a simple stallman was right because muh pdf viewer is crap now.
diff --git a/posts/wip/rent-seeking-software.md b/posts/wip/rent-seeking-software.md
@@ -0,0 +1,15 @@
+# Rent-Seeking Software
+
+## Learned Helplessness
+
+Rent-seeking behavior is when individuals manipulate policy and market conditions to amass wealth without providing value. In some contexts, like actual rent, such behaviors are quite logical; property is a scarce resource, there are laws around development, and so there is an incentive to manipulate these laws to amass wealth.
+
+The confusing part of this is why rent-seeking behavior exists in software. Instructure provides no value in their hosting of Canvas beyond what two sysadmins could manage with a VPS, the software is licensed under the AGPL so they are not peddling proprietary software, they have simply tricked people into believing they are helpless to do anything such that they have to pay for every service they want.
+
+Frequently people claim it is cheaper to outsource their software services, which I am highly suspicious of, and it decreases their exposure in the case of a cybersecurity incident. This is such an inconsiderate stance. If a crime is commited against your employees, your customers, or the public and your primary concern is how this will impact you financially you are failing morally.
+
+People selfhost services all the time. This isn't something that requires a high degree of sophistication, just the ability to read, and a couple of weekends. I find selfhosting to be more difficult than hosting commercial software because hosting commercial software generally comes with commercial resources whereas selfhosting frequently means running docker on a rasberry pi sitting on the floor, a much less resilient configuration.
+
+---
+
+This is sort of all over the place, but this is reactionary to the canvas / instructure breach which has impacted a fairly sizeable number of students who really shouldn't've been impacted by this because this was likely an instructure problem, not a canvas problem (shinyhunters seem to mostly do social engineering type stuff).
diff --git a/posts/wip/your-gemini-search-engine.md b/posts/wip/your-gemini-search-engine.md
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+# Your Gemini Search Engine
+
+The current Gemini search engines are decent. Given how small Geminispace is, I wondered how reasonable it would be for anyone to create and run their own search engine. Modern computers are quite performant and all that. This is my exploration of that idea.
+
+##
