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Through the projects and activities contained in this book, it is possible to understand how the central component of networking in Italy is the web of relations: going to a conference, participating in a festival, talking and sharing projects with others, organising a thematic meeting and at the same time, meeting in a bar or a restaurant with people who share our interests, become creative occasions to produce new activities and projects.

A preview of the full source code.

This is part 2 of CELLULAR CHAOS' studio session in May 2011.

CELLULAR CHAOS is Ceci Moss, Marc Edwards & Weasel Walter.

A blistering live solo drum improvisation by the master of disaster with longwinded liner notes covering the dramatic arc of WW's 2009-2014 New York period

"Robert Wyatt, the composer, songwriter and onetime Soft Machine drummer, recently announced his retirement from music at age 69. As his role in the Softs was coming apart in 1970, he released his first solo LP, titled End of an Ear, which announced an entirely different sonic imprint than heard on most period Canterbury records (and was made in opposition to his former bandmates).

One can hope that drummer/guitarist Weasel Walter will keep pushing back at least that long; End of an Error marks his geographic departure from New York and the city’s improvisational underground. However, for the past year and change, he’s been on the road with Lydia Lunch and Cellular Chaos and thus setting the kit aside, as noted in the accompanying essay, so perhaps what better way to announce the next phase than returning to his roots? Walter’s first release was a cassette of multi-tracked solo music, The Final Solution (1991), and as much as he claims an aversion to solo drumset recordings, End of an Error makes a case for his ability to compel with a narrow palette.

Contra crowd pleasers like Han Bennink, Pierre Favre or Paul Lytton, Walter uses a pared-down and high-tuned kit, augmented only by scattered gongs, roto-toms, ratchet, and jam block. There is a noticeable and serious arc to this 26-minute live performance, building on sharp, isolated micro-phrases and accenting bombs, condensed and needling movements accentuated by garish, sashaying gestures. At the five-minute point, small sounds are overlaid and the focus turns to a larger field of action, though not without customary, haranguing clusters. Of course, even as a solo operating within several parallel areas, there are common phrases and a concentrated heft, allowing this admittedly lengthy piece to hang together as a totality (even in seeming asides, like the fiddling section at 18:25). Piling dry, discrete notes and spreading them out in a study of directed contrasts, Walter’s approach is reminiscent of European and Japanese free players, though with a manic clarity drawn from no wave and metal. But rather than a summation of what’s come before, End of an Error is a statement of purpose, and a reminder that committed, absolutist art is the only step forward that’s worth taking."

• Clifford Allen

Avec des vrais morceaux de graphistes dedans !!

Like many others in the tech industry, I’m tired of companies referring to web/software developers as “ninjas” and “rockstars.” Recruiters’ job postings are littered with phrases like “rockstar developer” and “coding ninja,” which just don’t make sense. Take a look at Merriam-Webster’s definition of ninja:

A person trained in ancient Japanese martial arts and employed especially for espionage and assassinations

There’s nothing in this description that is relevant to software development. Sure, you could probably make an argument about how the physical agility developed through martial arts is somehow related to the professional agility of technology teams practicing ADM, but that’s a bit of a stretch. Ninjas are trained spies and killers. If you’re using war characters as your metaphorical ideals for software developers, wouldn’t you rather look for people skilled in defense who can fortify your city (i.e. make your product as strong as possible)?

Hiring technical talent is often cited as one of the most difficult parts of scaling a startup. Great companies are built by great teams so naturally, when it comes to technical talent, companies are competing harder than ever to entice the best of the best. The rationale you'll typically hear is along the lines of "a great developer is 10x as productive as a mediocre one." That might be true, but it is an impractical startup hiring strategy.

I get very tired of people looking for rockstar and ninja developers. I find it arrogant and actually detrimental to the whole market of development. We are professionals and we should take our jobs serious. We should also make sure that people who start in a company don’t have to deal with a terrible mess rather than being able to contribute immediately.

To have a specific package skipped when upgrading the system, specify it as such:

$ yaourt -Syau --ignore foo,bar,baz

For multiple packages use a space-separated list,

This document is a collection of Unix/Linux/BSD commands and tasks which are useful for IT work or for advanced users. This is a practical guide with concise explanations, however the reader is supposed to know what s/he is doing.

The Linux folks have their penguin and the BSDers their daemon. Perl's got a camel, FSF fans have their gnu and OSI's got an open-source logo. What we haven't had, historically, is an emblem that represents the entire hacker community of which all these groups are parts. This is a proposal that we adopt one — the glider pattern from the Game of Life.

About half the hackers this idea was alpha-tested on instantaneously said "Wow! Cool!" without needing any further explanation. If you don't know what a glider is, or why it would make a good emblem, or if you're dubious about having an emblem at all, read the FAQs page.

I first proposed this emblem in October 2003. It has since entered fairly widespread use, as you can see by the number of international translations over on the left. Not universal, because many hackers object on principle to the idea of having an emblem at all, but it appears to be a successful meme.

Acme is a powerful text editor, development environment and textual-user-interface platform developed by Rob Pike originally for Plan 9 from Bell Labs research operating system, and now has ports available for all major platforms.

Werc is a minimalist web anti-framework built following the Unix and Plan 9 tool philosophy of software design.

Werc avoids the pain of managing collections of websites and developing web applications.

• Database free, uses files and directories instead.
• Written using the rc shell, leveraging the standard Unix/Plan 9 command toolkit.
• Minimize tedious work: eg., no need to ever write HTML, use markdown (or any other format) instead.
• Very minimalist yet extensible codebase: highly functional core is 150 lines, with extra functionality in modular apps.

Cat-v.org hosts a series of sites dedicated to diverse subjects that share an idiosyncratic intellectual perspective, questioning orthodoxy and fomenting elitism and high standards in topics from software design to politics, passing by art and journalism and anything else interesting.

Other than total and complete world domination, the overriding goal is to encourage and stimulate critical and independent thinking.

We represent a group of scientists, hackers and other misfits.

As part of the International Day against DRM (“digital handcuffs”), on May 3th, 2016, April is republishing a video on the issue of e-books and DRM.

This day of protest is an opportunity to remember how dangerous these digital handcuffs are for free software users and developers alike, and how far they go toward restraining legitimate uses of works.

The e-book landscape has not changed much since last year, and the video we released a year ago today, to bring attention to the issue of DRM and e-books, is still very relevant, so we are republishing it, to mark the International Day against DRM.

DRM greatly reduces readers' rights, and is what makes an e-book different from a printed book in terms of user freedom. With a DRM-free e-book, the user has essentially the same rights as with printed books (the ability to lend them, to read them as many times as s/he wishes, anywhere, and on any device, etc.), while with a DRM-locked e-book, the user has but limited rights. Please view, share, and re-share this video, in support of computing freedom, and to help us continue to raise public awareness of the restrictions' insidious attacks on computer users' freedom.

And don't even try to fix a wobbly table with your e-book.

The video is in French with English sub-titles. Sub-titles : French, and English (SRT format).