@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ For us the most important part of 4chan is the technology board known as /g/ (fo
UPDATE: As of 2022 /g/ became literally unreadable, ABANDON SHIP. The board became flooded with [capitalists](capitalism.md), cryptofascists, proprietary [shills](shill.md), [productivity](productivity_cult.md) freaks and other uber retards, it's really not worth reading anymore. You can still read good old threads on archives such as https://desuarchive.org/g/page/280004/. Some other more relaxed boards such as /x/ may still be alright though.
**Alternatives to 4chan**: just check out other image boards like 8chan, 8kun, anon.cafe, leftychan.net, wizardchan, soyjak.party etc. Also check out other types of forums than image boards such as saidit.net, voat or [encyclopedia dramatica](encyclopedia_dramatica.md) forums.
**Alternatives to 4chan**: just check out other image boards like 8chan, 8kun, anon.cafe, leftychan.net, wizardchan, soyjak.party, 1436chan ([gopher](gopher.md)) etc. Also check out other types of forums than image boards such as saidit.net, voat or [encyclopedia dramatica](encyclopedia_dramatica.md) forums.
You won't have much success searching for these using [Goolag](google.md).
@ -13,6 +13,7 @@ Bitreich is also about humor and [fun](fun.md) (sometimes so much so that it's n
Some interesting projects they do:
- **Bitreichcon**: annual conference, running since 2017. Their slides can be downloaded in plain text.
- **Bitreich radio**
- **Day Of The GrParazyd**: point and click adventure [game](game.md). { Didn't even take a look at this yet, sorry, no idea what it really is :D ~drummyfish }
- **The Gopher Lawn**: directory/index of gopherspace, categorizing gopherhole links.
- **The Gopher Times**: a very cool printable magazine (in both [pdf](pdf.md) and [plain text](txt.md)), `git clone git://bitreich.org/tgtimes`.
@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ Some have attempted to measure bloat, e.g. the famous *web bloat score* (https:/
The issue of bloat may of course appear outside of the strict boundaries of computer technology, nowadays we may already observe e.g. **[science bloat](science_bloat.md)** -- science is becoming so overcomplicated (many times on purpose, e.g. by means of [bullshit](bullshit.md) science) that 99% people can NOT understand it, they have to BELIEVE "scientific authorities", which does not at all differ from the dangerous blind religious behavior. Any time a new paper comes out, chances are that not even SCIENTISTS from the same field but with a different specialization will understand it in depth and have to simply trust its results. This combined with self-interest obsessed society gives rise to [soyence](soyence.md) and large scale brainwashing and spread of "science approved" propaganda.
Back to technology though, one of a very frequent questions you may hear a noob ask is **"How can bloat limit software freedom if such software has a [free](free_software.md) license?"** Bloat [de-facto](de_facto.md) limits some of the four essential freedoms (to use, study, modify and share) required for a software to be free. A free license grants these freedoms legally, but if some of those freedoms are subsequently limited by other circumstances, the software becomes effectively less free. It is important to realize that **complexity itself goes against freedom** because a more complex system will inevitably reduce the number of people being able to execute freedoms such as modifying the software (the number of programmers being able to understand and modify a trivial program is much greater than the number of programmers being able to understand and modify a highly complex million [LOC](loc.md) program). As the number of people being able to execute the basic freedom drops, we're approaching the scenario in which the software is de-facto controlled by a small number of people who can (e.g. due to the cost) effectively study, modify and maintain the program -- and a program that is controlled by a small group of people (e.g. a corporation) is by definition [proprietary](proprietary.md). If there is a web browser that has a free license but you, a lone programmer, can't afford to study it, modify it significantly and maintain it, and your friends aren't able to do that either, when the only one who can practically do this is the developer of the browser himself and perhaps a few other rich corporations that can pay dozens of full time programmers, then such browser cannot be considered free as it won't be shaped to benefit you, the user, but rather the developer, a corporation.
Back to technology though, one of a very frequent questions you may hear a noob ask is **"How can bloat limit software freedom if such software has a [free](free_software.md) license?"** Bloat [de-facto](de_facto.md) limits some of the four essential freedoms (to use, study, modify and share) required for a software to be free. A free license grants these freedoms legally, but if some of those freedoms are subsequently limited by other circumstances, the software becomes effectively less free. It is important to realize that **complexity itself goes against [freedom](freedom.md)** because a more complex system will inevitably reduce the number of people being able to execute freedoms such as modifying the software (the number of programmers being able to understand and modify a trivial program is much greater than the number of programmers being able to understand and modify a highly complex million [LOC](loc.md) program). This is not any made up reason, it is actually happening and many from the free software community try to address the issue, see e.g. [HyperbolaBSD](hyperbolabsd.md) policies on accepting packages which rejects a lot of popular "legally free" software on grounds of being bloat ([systemd](systemd.md), dbus, zstd, protobuf, [mono](mono.md), https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:philosophy:incompatible_packages). As the number of people being able to execute the basic freedom drops, we're approaching the scenario in which the software is de-facto controlled by a small number of people who can (e.g. due to the cost) effectively study, modify and maintain the program -- and a program that is controlled by a small group of people (e.g. a corporation) is by definition [proprietary](proprietary.md). If there is a web browser that has a free license but you, a lone programmer, can't afford to study it, modify it significantly and maintain it, and your friends aren't able to do that either, when the only one who can practically do this is the developer of the browser himself and perhaps a few other rich corporations that can pay dozens of full time programmers, then such browser cannot be considered free as it won't be shaped to benefit you, the user, but rather the developer, a corporation.
**How much bloat can we tolerate?** We are basically trying to get the most for the least price. The following diagram attempts to give an answer:
@ -34,6 +34,14 @@ Going for the simple technology doesn't necessarily have to mean we have to give
See the article on [less retarded society](less_retarded_society.md), it contains a detailed FAQ especially on that.
### So is there a whole community here or what? Do you have forums or anything?
Well, firstly LRS by anarchist principles avoids establishing a centralized community with things such as platforms, senior members, moderators, bureaucracy, codified rules etc. Every nice thing that went this way went to shit once it became more popular and grew, corruption always appears (see [Wikipedia](wikipedia.md), [GNU](gnu.md)/FSF etc.). So we rather aim for a community of decentralized, loosely associated individuals and small entities with greatly overlapping sets of values rather than any organizations etc. So rather think something like many people with their own websites referring and linking to each other.
At the moment this wiki/movement/ideology/etc. is basically me (drummyfish). There are a handful of people who told me they like this wiki a lot, share many of my views and values and who I am in regular contact with mostly over email. Then there are quite a few people who like this to various degree and contact me from time to time, many just write me a one time email, suggest something, thank me, suggest I kill myself etc., from which I estimate there is a non-negligible number of lurkers (given than only 1 in many readers will actually write me an email).
A forum, mailing list or something would possibly be nice, but so far no one made any and I would be hesitant to call it an "official" LRS forum anyway, exactly to prevent growing into some kind of corrupt "democratic internet community" of which there are too many nowadays. I am also pretty anxious of collaborating with someone, making hard connections to other project etc. So if you'd like to make a LRS-focused forum (or anything similar), it would be best if you just make it your own thing -- of course I'll be very glad if you refer to my stuff etc., I just won't be able to keep up with another project, I will only be able to be a regular user of your forum.
### Why the name "less retarded"? If you say you're serious about this, why not a more serious name?
I don't know, this is not so easy to answer because I came up with the name back when the project was smaller in scope and I didn't think about a name too hard: this name was playful, catchy, politically incorrect (keeping SJWs away) and had a kind of reference to *suckless*, potentially attracting attention of suckless fans. It also has the nice property of being unique, with low probability of name collision with some other existing project, as not many people will want to have the word "retarded" in the name. Overall the name captures the spirit of the philosophy and is very general, allowing it to be applied to new areas without being limited to certain means etc.
Go (also golang) is a compiled [programming language](programming_language.md) advertised as the the "[modern](modern.md)" [C](c.md) and is co-authored by one of C's authors, [Ken Thompson](ken_thompson.md). Neverheless Go is actually [shit](shit.md) compared to C. Some reasons for this are:
- It is developed by [Google](google.md) and presented as "[open-source](open_source.md)" (not [free software](free_software.md)).
- It downloads additional [dependencies](dependency.md) during compilation, a huge defect due to which it's been rejected e.g. from [HyperbolaBSD](hyperbolabsd.md) (https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:philosophy:incompatible_packages).
- It has (classless) [OOP](oop.md) features.
- It has [bloat](bloat.md) such as [garbage collection](garbage_collection.md), built-in [complex number](complex_number.md) type, [concurrency](concurrency.md) and something akin a [package manager](package_manager.md) (*go get/install*).
- It forces a programming style in which an opening function bracket (`{`) can't be on its own line. LMAO
- Huge standard library with shit like crypto, image and html.
Anyway, it at least tries to stay *somewhat* simple in some areas and as such is probably better than other modern languages like [Rust](rust.md). It purposefully omits features such as [generics](generics.md) or static type conversions, which is good.
Anyway, it at least tries to stay *somewhat* simple in some areas and as such is probably better than other modern languages like [Rust](rust.md). It purposefully omits features such as [generics](generics.md) or static type conversions, which is good. But rather don't use it.
Gopher is a network [protocol](protocol.md) for publishing, browsing and downloading files and is known as a much simpler alternative to the [World Wide Web](www.md) (i.e. to [HTTP](http.md) and [HTML](html.md)). In fact it competed with the Web in its early days and even though the Web won in the mainstream, gopher still remains used by a small community. Gopher is like the Web but well designed, it is the [suckless](suckless.md)/[KISS](kiss.md) way of doing what the Web does, it contains practically no [bloat](bloat.md) and so [we](lrs.md) highly advocate its use. Gopher inspired creation of [Gemini](gemini.md), a similar but bit more complex and "[modern](modern.md)" protocol, and the two together have recently become the main part of so called [Smol Internet](smol_internet.md).
Gopher is a network [protocol](protocol.md) for publishing, browsing and downloading files and is known as a much simpler alternative to the [World Wide Web](www.md) (i.e. to [HTTP](http.md) and [HTML](html.md)). In fact it competed with the Web in its early days and even though the Web won in the mainstream, gopher still remains used by a small communities (however the more dedicated, see e.g. [bitreich](bitreich.md)). Gopher is like the Web but well designed, it is the [suckless](suckless.md)/[KISS](kiss.md) way of doing what the Web does, it contains practically no [bloat](bloat.md) and so [we](lrs.md) highly advocate its use. Gopher inspired creation of [Gemini](gemini.md), a similar but bit more complex and "[modern](modern.md)" protocol, and the two together have recently become the main part of so called [Smol Internet](smol_internet.md). Gopher is much better than Gemini though.
As of 2022 the Veronica search engine reported 343 gopher servers in the world with 5+ million indexed selectors.
As of 2022 the Veronica search engine reported 343 gopher servers in the world with 5+ million indexed selectors. As of 2023 the Gopher LAWN directory (made by [bitreich](bitreich.md)) contains 281 selected quality gopher holes.
Gopher **doesn't use any [encryption](encryption.md)**. This is good, encryption is [bloat](bloat.md). Gopher also **only uses [ASCII](ascii.md)**, i.e. there's no [Unicode](unicode.md). That's also good, Unicode is bloat (and mostly serves trannies to insert emojis of pregnant men into readmes, we don't need that). Gopher simple design is intentional, the authors deemed simplicity a good feature. Gopher is so simple that you may very well write your own client and server and comfortably use them (it is also practically possible to browse gopher without a specialized client, just with standard [Unix](unix.md) [CLI](cli.md) tools).
@ -12,6 +12,8 @@ Gopher is just an [application layer](l7.md) [protocol](protocol.md) (officially
**Gopher [software](software.md)**: sadly "[modern](modern.md)" browsers are so modern they have millions of lines of code but can't be bothered to support such a trivial protocol like gopher, however there are Web proxies you can use to explore gopherspace. Better browsers such as [lynx](lynx.md) (terminal) or [forg](forg.md) ([GUI](gui.md)) can be used for browsing gopherspace natively. As a server you may use e.g. Gophernicus (used by [SDF](sdf.md)) or search for another one, there are dozens. For the creation of gophermaps you simply use a plaintext editor. **Where to host gopher?** [Pubnixes](pubnix.md) such as [SDF](sdf.md), [tilde.town](tilde_town.md) and [Circumlunar community](circumlunar.md) offer gopher hosting but many people simply [self-host](self_hosting.md) servers e.g. on [Raspberry Pis](rpi.md), it's pretty simple.
**Some basic/interesting gopher links**: gopher://bitreich.org/1/lawn (directory of gopher holes), gopher://gopher.floodgap.com/7/v2/vs (search engine), gopher://circumlunar.space:70/1 (circumlunar space), gopher://gopherpedia.com ([Wikipedia](wikipedia.md) on gopher), ...
## How To
For now take a look at stuff in this repo: `git clone git://bitreich.org/gopher-tutorials/`.
@ -15,6 +15,8 @@ The following is a "constantly work in progress" list of subjectively selected f
- 1816, so called **year without summer**, probably caused by great volcano eruption whose effects might have given a glimpse to what it looked like after the impact of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs -- however this time many people wrote first hand witness accounts (you can find many in old books and reports, many times just scanned on Internet archive).
- Back before [reddit](reddit.md) became such huge shit interesting stuff could be discovered e.g. at https://old.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/top/, however nowadays it seems to be just a propaganda ground -- current all-time top two posts are both literally uninteresting political posts about Ukrainian war? :D Use internet archive to try to dig up the good stuff from the past maybe.
- People with [perfect pitch](perfect_pitch.md) (rare condition that makes one be able to precisely identify any musical tone) always lose this ability some time in their 50s.
- [North Korea](north_korea.md) due to its isolation and secrecy, e.g. its own [intranet](kwangmyong.md). Also other secret computer networks like [JWICS](jqics.md), [SIPRNet](siprnet.md), [NIPRNet](niprnet.md) etc.
- hybrids: No, we don't actually know if humans and apes can interbreed or not, humanzees have been reported, as well as hybrids of humans and other animals, there exist some real weird photos. Ligers and tigons are also cool, but there are many other interesting possibilities. See http://www.macroevolution.net.
