We often get absorbed in the moment, it's tough to take a pause and reflect. However, if we never do we might forget our stances and essential parts of ourselves. So here comes the time to stop, and refresh about what I've been up to, to judge and think about the direction of things. more

Life is pretty bland today! Indeed, we're the cozy spectators of homogenization through globalization, pushed by a series of ephemeral trends, one dying after another, and carried by consumer society. It's as if the cultural vibes all seem to walk in the same direction. What is this direction? Where did novelty go, have countercultures disappeared? Yet, they were omnipresent, bubbling and thriving, in ye... more

Every so often we need to regroup and give shape to our scattered ideas, turning them into well-structured paragraphs so that they make sense. From simple observations of events to shower thoughts. That's what I'll try to do in this article, swapping heavy words for a lucid mind. more

Is someone that is subjectively experiencing something more knowledgeable than someone who didn't or currently isn't? Are analytical external observers sometimes more adept at understanding what is happening than the persons that are currently deep in the experience? more

´Life is what happens in the space between´. Indeed, since the last update article a world pandemic has passed, truces have been signed in some countries, new wars have started in others, climate is going increasingly haywire, and the global political and economic turmoils have led to protests and revolts in countless places. The world keeps moving and I'm but a tiny spec in the grand scheme of things. Yet, y... more

Plenty of cheesy quotes often say that total security stands on the opposite of total freedom. Undeniably, in computers and operating systems this is a fact. This article will focus on the topic of access control on Unix-like systems. Sit back and relax as it transports you on a journey of discovery. We'll unfold the map, travel to different places, allowing to better understand this wide, often misunderstood... more

Ten years ago I had an inner urge to lay my ideas on the web, on a place I owned. more

It's already been quite a while since the last update article in Spring last year. The dynamics around the pandemic have changed but it is still omnipresent and the constant weight is taking its toll on everyone. Similarly, I'm hearing an echo that can't be silenced, that of a need for change and return to what captivates me. As some readers might have noticed, I haven't posted nor been very ac... more

After writing a whole book about internet and narrative control I want to share what I personally do, in my own limited ways, to try not to get stuck in bubbles. The book covers a lot of ground on this used up road, especially in the last part, but let's be practical instead. This isn't meant to be didactic but only informative of my reflection on how I attempt to achieve this and the issues I've en... more

The PipeWire project is slowly getting popular as it matures. Its documentation is still relatively sparse but is gradually growing. However, it's always a good idea to have people from outside the project try to grasp and explain it to others in their own words, reiterating ideas, seeing them from their own perspective. more

It's been seven months since the last update article in October 2020. We're still in a pandemic and living a more self-reliant, distanced, and introspective life. I've personally taken the stance of slowing down, to use this intermittent time to my advantage for personal growth. Slow living and the enjoyment of little things. more

Our mini internet study has come to an end. In this series we've seen the new actors and spaces introduced by the internet, the actors using them, from the new economies, to netizens in between, to state actors. We've also took some reflective time to understand why we can be susceptible to biases and why we have so much difficulties with online interactions. Next we've looked at the big picture by... more

We can attempt to patch things, use tools and software as countermeasures, to add laws and regulations, or to let the market decide, but in the end we are at the center of everything. If we are facing difficulties with the medium it's because we haven't matured enough to handle it properly. Right now we're still in the process of trying to grasp how it works, in an apprenticeship stage. Knowing our... more

When free market and regulations fail, when the laws of rights can't properly protect anyone and trust has eroded, we're left only with ourselves. In that scenario, tech is seen as the savior of the internet, the weapon and armor of choice for everyone, building and selecting software that resolve issues. For social media platforms and other big entities such as governments, algorithms can be used for d... more

The market and corporate self-regulation have their limits. They cannot in themselves be sources of morals and ethics. This is the realm of laws, the legislations that governments make are the real arbiters of duties and rights. The governments, as state entities, can impose the rules that should be followed to be able to act on their territories. However, laws are bound by geographical areas and as such cannot b... more

In this last part of the series we'll go over the adaptations we are undergoing to remove the frictions we have with the internet — anything to make it better suited for us. We'll take multiple perspectives, primarily the ones of users, societies, and others that are encountering the issues we've seen related to this new communication channel. Let's start by taking the point of view of the mark... more

The internet brings with it technological advancements that reminds us of dystopia that sci-fi writers have written about. So let's go beyond what we've tackled so far and project ourselves in hypothetical futures to posit bigger consequences. The two archetypical stories of dystopian futures are Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and 1984 by George Orwell. more

Nobody likes to be put in a box, nobody likes to be paralyzed. In a world where the individual is put first, we want to feel in control. Yet, we are lost in a whirlpool of chaotic and clashing ideologies, memeplexes and absolutist templates. Who are we, how should we define ourselves? This makes us distrust any form of authority and renounce classical forms of media. As individuals, we're looking for authenti... more

In this part of the series, we'll explore the bigger picture and the generic issues and 'ill effects' on societies that are brought by the emergence of the internet or accelerated by it. We'll begin with a look at three inter-related subjects, a general social paralysis, an apparent sentiment of homogeneity, and the relation with the widespread neoliberal mindset. more

To be a netizen means to be part of the online social sphere. There's no way around it, to have a voice and participate people have to join a platform, which comes with its own limitations. The rules of the platforms are the rules of the information society but the platforms adapt more to fit us than we adapt to them. Anything happening on them is directly because of real people interacting together. People ... more

Humans are prone to manipulations by their own experiences and biases. Let's review what are some of the cognitive biases and cultural weaknesses that make us fall for all sort of things on the internet. We've already looked at coercion, deception, and other types of persuasion principles in a previous sections. In the following two we'll emphasize on ourselves instead of external factors. more

Since ancient times, nations have tried to write history from their own point of view. As they say, history is written by the victors. Today, the speed of the internet allows rewriting the narrative in real-time, and state actors will certainly take advantage of this. Namely, there are two ways, or generations, of state information-control practices, an information scarcity approach, aka censorship, and an embraci... more

The internet is a new resource and when introduced in our social structures it has fueled the construction of utilities around it. Like any tool it has no effects on its own but only through its usages. In particular, it has altered our capacity of communication making it interactive, multimodal, asynchronous or synchronous, global or local, many-to-many, one-to-many, one-to-object, object-to-object. In this sect... more

The artifacts we've previously seen have given rise to new types of economies, tools, and arsenals that can be used by different actors for different incentives. Let's start by focusing on the economic aspects by looking at actors such as social media platforms, newspapers, and advertisement companies. Life in an information society is about moving data, the new raw material, around our manufacturing pip... more

In this last section of our first part about artifacts and places, we'll explore memes, internet memes, and cults, their definitions, how they have transformed and crisscrossed, their relationship, their role as communication vectors, and the extreme forms that they can take. Meme is a word that comes up in many conversations. It can refer to two related definitions, the classic one and the internet-related one. more

The internet is littered with nuggets of information, some made of gold and some worthless. From this mine we can extract meta-information, inferences that can lead to more lucrative valleys. Two of the most talked about are personal data and models, also known as statistical trends visualizations, big data analysis, and predictive studies. Let's take a look at what is personal data, where and why people sha... more

With the advent of smartphones, social media platforms are on the rise. Let's step back and try to understand what social media are, not by citing events and instances happening on the different platforms, nor the countless consequences but by describing the characteristics of this new informational channel. We'll go over the rest later but let's take some distance for now. more

Our journey begins with three terms, propaganda, influence, and persuasion. To most, they sound like synonyms but each convey a different concept. Like any form of communication the internet can be used as a channel for them. What does communication consist of? The very broad domain of communication studies — with multiple sub-disciplines such as journalism, film critic, public relation, and political science — of... more

To no one's surprise, the internet has permeated all aspects of our lives. All other means of communication have dwindled in comparison, even though the technological behemoth is relatively young (around 50 years old as of 2021). Worldwide, according to statistics from 2019, people spent an average of 2 and a half hours a day on social media. The top place goes to The Philippines with 3h53min per day. more

Audio on Unix is a little zoo, there are so many acronyms for projects and APIs that it's easy to get lost. Let's tackle that issue! Most articles are confusing because they either use audio technical jargon, or because they barely scratch the surface and leave people clueless. A little knowledge can be dangerous. more

The year of the Linux desktop is coming, and it looks like a piñata of micro-services. Let's break it and see the candies inside. more

Resolving hostnames (DNS?) might not seem like it, but it's complicated. Let's take a moment to see if we can at least demystify what happens on the client side instead of seeing it as a big tangled mess of configurations, libraries, and tools. more

Seven long and perilous months have gone by since my previous article, what feels like an eternity, and yet feels like a day — Nothing and everything has happened. All I can add to the situation in my country, that I've already drawn countless times, is that my expectations weren't fulfilled. Indeed, after a governmental void and a horrific explosion engulfing a tremendous part of the capital, I'm n... more

We live in a world that is gradually and incessantly attracted by over-rationality and order. In this article we'll burst the enchanted bubble and embrace corruption and chaos — We're going to discuss the topic of image glitch art. more

Freetype, included in the font stack on Unix, is quite complex. There are so many layers to get it to do what it does that it's easy to get lost. From finding the font, to actually rendering it, and everything in between. Like most of the world, I use a rather low screens definition (1366x768 with 96 dpi) and rather old-ish laptop, unlike some font designers that live in a filter bubble where everyone has the... more

Compilers, these wonderful and intricate pieces of software that do so much and that so many know little of. Similar to the previous article about computer architecture, I'll take a look at another essential, but lesser known, CS topic, Compilers. I won't actually dive into much details but I'll keep it short to my notes, definitions, and what I actually found intriguing and helpful. more

Computer architecture can be considered a boring topic, one that is studied during CS education, then put aside, and leaves place to the shiny new toys that capture the attention. I've recently revisited it, and I'd like to summarize some takeaways. more

Finally, The project about mapping wild mushrooms in Lebanon is out! The project consists of a map with wild mushroom specimens, their locations, along with pictures and descriptions of them. It is based on the only two research papers on the topic I've found, Joseph Thiébaut research paper Champignons observés dans le Liban et la Syrie de 1930 à 1933 along with Nadine Modad research paper Survey and identif... more

Dbus and Polkit are two technologies that emanate an aura of confusion. While their names are omnipresent in discussions, and the internet has its share of criticism and rants about them, not many have a grasp of what they actually do. In this article I'll give an overview of these technologies. more

In a previous post, I've underlined the philosophy behind Domain Driven Design, DDD, and now I'd like to move to a practical approach that handles real issues in software development and architecture, requirements that constantly change, and models that are never precise, never current, and/or never using the best technology available. One of the solution to such problems is to build an evolutionary arch... more

We're used, as software engineers to try to make things perfect, to see things from above, to think we're great architects and creators. What's more important though is to create software that does an important job for someone. What are the best ways to create such software? more

An article covering everything you need to know about time on Unix. Time, a word that is entangled in everything in our lives, something we're intimately familiar with. Keeping track of it is important for many activities we do. more

What are software distributions? You may think you know everything there is to know about the term software distribution, but take a moment to think about it, take a step back and try to see the big picture. more

How would you describe yourself? How do you usually talk about yourself? Do you feel like you are the writer of your own narrative? Who are you? more

Here comes another life update. My biological clock seems to have chosen to remind me to post these updates once every 6 months, with seasonal changes. more

No this isn't a post trashing shell scripting. Handling files on the command line is most of the time a non-reversable process, a dangerous one in some cases (Unix Horror Stories). There are tricks to avoid the unnecessary loss and help in recovering files if need be. more

We often hear discussions about X configuration files and their roles. Namely, xinitrc,xserverrc,xresources,xdefaults,xprofile,xsession,xmodmap. So let's try to clear up this mumbo jumbo of words. more

Let's have a discussion about all the kinds of trust stores found on Unix-like operating systems. For those not in the know, trust stores are places where the operating sytems generally, or the specific software, stores private and public keys (asymmetric), trusted CAs, and symmetric keys (decryption keys). more

Collapse, the word that is on everyone's lips in Lebanon. What does it mean, will Lebanon fall or survive, and what does the future have in store? "We can predict everything, except the future", I hear someone say, but can we at least get some possibilities. more

As the field of SE/CS is getting more press, graduates are flooding the market. Yet, the curriculum given in many universities still seems barren when it comes to professionalism, forcing newcomers to learn via unpolished street creds. Not only is it leading to mysticism about what skills are required but is also leading to a lack of discipline, duty, and craftsmanship. more

In Lebanon conspiracy theories are such a common occurrence that the whole world but yourself is to blame for your ailment. I usually dismiss them but the one in this post got on my nerves, and moreover a quite simple experiment could finally shatter it and remove it as an option from all conversations. more

In the blink of an eye 6 months have gone by. Since then, I've written a single article about time on the internet and thus the blog needs an update on my latest endeavours. more

Time can be measured in all sorts of ways, some more accurate than others, but the perception of its flow varies widely depending on the subjective experience. That's the distinction between physical and psychological time. Psychological time is influenced and influences our cognitive systems. It influences how we act and respond to information and events around us, and the information and events around us ... more

The new year has begun... A while ago! My last post Was almost 9 months ago, more than half a year has passed. A lot has happened but I still feel like time has passed quickly. more

In this article we will put some light on a lot of tools used in the world of Unix desktop environment customization, particularly regarding wmctrl, wmutils, xev, xtruss, xwininfo, xprop, xdotools, xdo, sxhkd, xbindkeys, speckeysd, xchainkeys, alttab, triggerhappy, gTile, gidmgr, keynav, and more. If those don't make sense then this article will help. Let's hope this can open your mind to new possibilities. more

In this post I'm going to go over "fonts for xcb" a mini-project I've been working on recently and I'll document the parts that are not usually found online. more

In this article we're going to go over the big list of words found in the title. When I worked on 2bwm I didn't have much experience with X programming in general. I've sort of learned it on the spot. That's why I'm trying to gain more knowledge before continuing to re-rewrite 2bwm from scratch. Now that I've got a bit more background I think it's good to share it with the worl... more

Five months have past since my last post about personal projects. more

Let's say you've been using a machine for a year or two and over time you gradually become more attached and dependent on it. This is a situation I've found myself into more than once and it is quite annoying, it's straining for the brain. I've been through it the past few days and it and I kept wondering about the ways I could make it less of a pain. Imagine if today you suddenly lost acc... more

Today we take for granted the concept of software as a tool but it didn't always exist. Mini-scripts, the interoperable programs, the small utilities for specific tasks, etc. This is what we're going to discuss, where do they come from, the history, and a bit more. more

In this article I'm going to pose a not so novel compatibilistic idea about the so-recurrent philosophical discussion of free will and determinism. However, this can apply to any topic where reductionism is over-used. Let's get started. more

This article is about nothing surprising but may act as a reminder to anyone that wanders online or that manages a community. There's too much already written about the subject of echo chambers so what I'll do is list ideas that I find interesting but that aren't mentioned enough. more

Five months have past since my last post about personal projects and endeavours but it feels like I've been stagnating for much longer. more

Libraries and banks, amongst other institutions, used to have a filing system, some still have them. They had drawers, holders, and many tools to store the paperwork and organise it so that they could easily retrieve, through some documented process, at a later stage whatever they needed. That's where the name filesystem in the computer world emerges from and this is one of the subject of this episode. We&a... more

This article is about a rarely discussed component that resides in the background of our lives. No word clearly describes this phenomenon as it's a fusion of different ideas. We blueprint ourselves according to media that display extravagant versions of winners and losers. The profiles on social media are facade created around individuals — Profile being a well-chosen word as it misses the other angles. All... more

Logos and artworks in the Unix world, where do those come from. We'll try to analyse a bunch of popular Unix mascots and logos. Throughout my research I could distinct two groups of mascots and logos. Even though it's not fun to have a binomial vision of the world, black and white, but this is what I found and this is mostly what it is. more

In this episode we'll tackle a topic that joins many parts of the systems and so is hard to fully cover. It has a relationship with everything in the system, it glues it together. We're going to be discussing processes on Unix. more

It's been four months since the last post about my personal projects and endeavours. These past months I've been following, slowly but steadily, on the activities I had set the pace for previously. more

It's not uncommon to hear, from persons that relocated to a new country, discussions related to the dissatisfactions with the new land they've set upon or the land they've just left behind. Apart from the stifling reply, "they're just not used to it", what else is hiding behind this phenomenon. Let's dissect this case. more

You check your processes and see some hanging around with a weird status and using no resources. You don't know if you should remove them or not. Then you try removing them and it doesn't work. In this episode we're going to discuss zombie processes. more

We've had a previous episode discussing xcb, x11, wayland, all about display servers. I've said in the beginning of the episode that it would not be about window managers. Well, today folks we're going to do just that. This one is going to be about window managers and desktop environments. more

The idea of green text on black background comes from the "Green screens" aka monochrome monitors. It was nicknamed Green screen even though the monochrome monitor came in many other different colors other than green. A monochrome monitor is a monitor that only has one color, as the name implies. It was used before color screens were invented in the early days of computing, from 60s till the 80s, as a ... more

What's a shell, what does it do, why would we need that? A shell is a program that acts as an intermediary between the user and the operating system, the kernel. It lets you execute commands on a computer. Specifically, on Unix, the shell is a command-line interface, a prompt that waits for commands entered by the user, interpret and execute them, and when its done, prompts again for a new command. It sta... more

Understanding the Unix philosophy and what makes a Unix system Unixy. Let the good discussion flow, let all arguments and ideas be put down on the table. more

We spend so much time typing at a terminal and yet the underlying mechanisms and history behind it are often overlooked. The TTY is an integral part of Unix, and we take most of its behavior for granted even though it has a huge history baggage that it carries to this day. For instance pressing control-C or control-Z to stop or put in the background a process, or using control-A to go to the beginning of the lin... more

System calls are one subject that scares many people. Actually most of the low level stuffs happening on the operating system scares a lot of people. I admit, I was a bit afraid of dealing with this subject. Not because it's hard or anything but because it's something that we're not used to dealing with every day, it's like a hidden magic spell. I was also afraid of dealing with this subjec... more

Everything is a file, right. Files on Unix have no specific format, nothing is imposed about how they should be, and there's no need to incorporate anything specific for them to be files. There's no file type, all the files are the same. But that's not really true. There are two differentiations. One is at a higher level, a meta level, using mimetypes which we discussed in an earlier episode ab... more

We've had an episode about display servers and libraries, and then we had another episode about window managers and desktop environments, and so the next logical step is to do one about ricing and customization. This is what we're going to do today in the company of xero, neeasade, and halfwit. more

What would you say or give as advice to newly unix users. What is there first to dabble with. Today we're discussing advices and tips you'd like to tell newcomers. Remember the first time you laid your hands on a Unix box, most probably you were lost, just like most people. Now that you've got some experience with Unix in general what would you tell yourself from the past. Guests, thlst, abhx/stark more

Unix is known for its set of small command line utilities. What are your ideas and features for the best CLI programs. What makes a complete utility. more

The world of licenses is the legal world, a world where the literal meaning of words is important and where all the crevasses are exploited. I'm not a lawyer, nor have I studied laws, and whatever I say will be based on what I understood from my reading. In this episode we're going to do a small overview of the topic of licenses on Unix. But beware, a "small" overview in the legal world is qu... more

Understanding how the fonts work on Unix isn't simple. I had never thought when starting this research that this field was this deep. Not only is it overwhelming, but the information around the subject is also not easily digestable. The last two weeks I've been researching this and in this podcast you'll barely find but the essential. It's still skimming the surface of the topic. If I explain ... more

Files, the predominant representation of everything on Unix, how are they scattered around? more

An executable is something that causes a computer to perform some tasks according to encoded instructions. It's in opposition to a data file which must be parsed by another program to be meaningful, for example an image or video. The instructions are usually in machine code, read by the cpu and so dependent on the cpu architecture. An executable once compiled will only work on a particular family of proces... more

A set of dynamic values, helper or configuration values, that can affect the way a process runs. Usually it's the process that queries those values, they are part of its "environment" and consequently the name. They are there so that the process can know the suitable values of the system it's running on. They are metadata, so to say. For example, the temporary location to store temporary fi... more

You've certainly heard of daemons, those processes that lurk in the background and do what they're supposed to do. You might even have written and run programs that are daemons. Today we'll talk about them, those daemons ({day,dee}mon), what there is to know about their mechanism and details. A big generic overview of daemons on Unix. more

Browsers, your windows to the WWW What do you use, customize, the problems you've stumbled upon, how we're using those browsers in the Unix world, the most used browsers, why we use them, and all the problems we've encountered I'm venam and you're listening to. The nixers podcast more

At the beginning of time there was nothing... But that all depends on your definition of nothingness, what is nothingness... A power button is pressed, and suddenly BIG BANG... After a while, you get a Unix login prompt. Have you ever wondered what led to this, what happened behind the scenes from the time you pressed the power button until this prompt appears? In this episode we're discussing the boot pr... more

The topics in this episode are fairly simple, even basic, but I'd like to tackle them from a different perspective. The information in a computer is represented in binary form. For them the bit is the basic unit of this information. Bits are binary, and binary means that there can only be two states, or it's the first or the second state, nothing else. The CPU has some built-in commands to manipulate a... more

There may exist someone in your entourage, someone you may care deeply about, or maybe even yourself, that is being crushed by the real and raw perception of themselves. They may appear to an external observer as someone who expresses a lot of self-deprecation or negativity, but the observed categorized this as realism. We often hear the sentence "I am not a pessimist, but I am a realist," which doesn&a... more

It has become rampant nowadays to find many persons misinterpreting or skewing evolutionary psychology studies to praise or blame the stance they fancy or despise. The slants are non-sense and blot this relatively new field of social science by conflating it with bigotry and excruciatingly non-scientific arguments. Many of the pernicious individuals that advance them are confabulating and fabricating ideas to fit... more

Hello fellow readers, This is the first post of 2017, let's recap what I've been up to since the start of the year. Show me how you spend your day and I'll tell you what you care about more

Hello fellow readers, It is finally up! more

We take actions based on our unconscious mind, we follow our unspoken norms and taboos. For a little while we may think we are original or creative, but we aren't — at least not following the definition we attributed to the terms. This is not uncommon, everyone thinks that they are innovative. A positive illusion or just the opposite, let's not discuss determinism. The human brain works by re-interpret... more

Welcome to hell, choose your default program! You'll soon learn in this podcast why this subtitle was chosen. Let's go, follow my train of thoughts and don't get lost. The default programs... more

What if you could see your life from a third person point of view. What if you could get closer to yourself. Who are we anyway? more

You're hungry on your way home and are thinking of passing by a restaurant, to sit down, relax, and eat, but there's an uncertainty feeling emerging. Why is it so uncomfortable to eat alone in a restaurant? At first glance it seems like an appropriate solution, You're hungry, tired, and there's someone there waiting to cook for you. What might be holding you back? more

Mind maps are, from wikipedia, A mind map is a diagram used to visually organize information. A mind map is hierarchical and shows relationships among pieces of the whole. It is often created around a single concept, drawn as an image in the center of a blank page, to which associated representations of ideas such as images, words and parts of words are added. Major ideas are connected directly to the central conc... more

What's happening here! This isn't a podcast about window managers and the ways to make one. (Though we might record one in the future) It's about the architectural differences between the different ways of interacting with the system to display graphics. Be it by interacting with other layers such as X11 or higher or by directly drawing them on the screen. It's really not about how to use t... more

Signals have been there since the very first version of Unix. They were just a bit different from what we know today. For many reasons in fact, they've gone through many iterations of development and ideas. Today we have one single system call to catch all signals but that only appeared in version 4 of Unix and before that there were different system calls to catch different types of signals. In version 7... more

Let's start with definitions because the words themselves are not representative of my perspective. I think there's a clear distinction between words. We have different words for a reason, they have different meanings. They might be thought to be synonymous but do have backgrounds, connotations, history, roots, that differ, The generic aspect of what it should mean. more

Hello fellow readers, In this post I’ll list some of the projects and experiments I worked on or finished since last time, or planing to work on in the next few weeks. more

We are born, we live, and we die. Yet, humans presumptuously want to ply meaning with their existence. What am I — Just a coincidence? What makes me special, am I distinguishable? We're not blind and won't be satisfied with the unlaborious mythological answers. Which are only enough for the simple minds. The essence is there, somewhere downstairs... more

Hello fellow readers, In this post I’ll list some of the projects and experiments I’m working on or just finished. My last projects update was in February. more

I find it fervently infuriating when someone uses the word passion and degrades it. They degrade the meaning of the word. Passion is the ultimate upgrade of the hobby, a cultivated curiosity. Something you're currently dedicating your life to. You diminish it when blurting that a person that doesn't spend any time outside the "obligatory work hours" on his passion, not even a thought, to be pas... more

This is my philosophy of life. I hope it resonates with you. It's ubiquitous, we tacitly agree to it. The anxiety, the stress, the fear, the conflicts, the mystical, the norms, the religions, reputation, we use those blocks to build walls around us. The cold concrete hurts our hands — We're proud of our construction. Isn't it what we are supposed to do? more

Ten years ago we moved to Lebanon. There was a culture clash. In this post I'll explain why some locals go on destructive paths. We all know generalizations have the nasty effect of activating justice warriors. My intention is not to trigger rage, generalizations are what they are, a resonance of the state of mind *we* are living in. While everyone is not going to read this post and take value out of it I... more

Hello fellow readers, This post is a refresh on correlated subjects I've discussed in the past. I'm revisiting them considering the recent media coverage. Social awakening is at the door. more

Hello fellow readers, This article is about driving in Lebanon. I used to spend my whole day walking until I bought a car. Walking was time-consuming and tiresome. On the long run I got used to it and with my "wasted" time on transportation I read books, watched movies, and listened to podcasts. I also had many adventures on my way. I now still listen to podcasts in the car but I can't read while... more

Hello fellow readers, This post is about the recent projects I've been working on and planning. more

Giving life is not a simple decision, if it even is a decision at all. The world, the societies, are moving fast. Who can tell what the future will hold. Only children and their children will be part of it. I wonder what it would be like to teach someone à la `tabula rasa` — even if I'm still learning to be an adult myself. more

It's 4:45am, you wake up! Rusty, you get out of bed. Man up, drink some water because your mouth is sore. You wash your face with cold water. Then, stand up for 5 minutes, simply looking at the fridge to realize you're still too numb to be able to eat or even to choose a meal... Anyway, you just want to leave as soon as possible. You pack up your stuffs and get into your vehicle. You suddenly tell yours... more

Hello fellow readers, In this post I'll discuss what programming and computing are for me. Computers are tools. Their functions can be summed to entertainment, utility, and information. It's common to find persons loosing themselves to a tool, slave to their creation. Programming is something useful. It's a big domain where you learn languages to instruct a machine to take actions. Those instruc... more

Hello fellow readers, In this post I'll talk about group and community projects. Everyone has been part of multiple group projects throughout their life. From school researches, to university presentations, to work. It's only by sharing ideas and finding common grounds that goals can be achieved. However, it's hard to maintain cohesion and investment in a group. There's a multitude of prob... more

Hello fellow readers, In this post I'll depict the most memorable events that happened on my way to work. It's a strange world. more

Hello fellow readers, In this post I'll introduce futurists, some people with a very special occupation. more

Hello fellow readers, In this post I'll discuss a subject that has been nagging me. Justification After Actions I usually write to clear my mind about a topic. These days I can't really keep up with all the things that bug me. This subject is a preparation to a broader subject that I'm preparing to write about. more

Sometimes you need to boost up, to push yourself up. Shia LaBeouf motivational video is pretty good at that, I'll do the same in this post. more

Hello fellow readers, In this post I'll list some of the projects I'm currently working on. more

Hello fellow readers, This week is TTY week at nixers.net. Last summer we did the same challenge and it turned out a pretty enjoyable and a great learning experience. I'm going to add logs in this post and hopefully it'll render beautifully (because I can't check my blog from the TTY.) more

I've been meditating lately, trying to fight the parts of me that aren't in equilibrium. After starting my full time job, my way of life shaped to fit the situation. Beyond the changes, those inner thoughts kept surfacing telling me to stay true to myself. I am far from an hypocrite, but society brainwash system is strong and if you find yourself in a weak corner it'll strike hard. In this article... more

Hello fellow readers, The last two months I've been extremely interested in evolutionary programming and group dynamics. In this post I'll try to gather some important factors I've noticed repeating themselves across the multiple opinions and examples, and the ones that just seemed noticeably important. more

Hello fellow readers, This post is about a little adventure I had with maths. I'm currently reading a book called `clever algorithms`, I go along at my own pace doing researches on hard subjects or things I forgot from high school. Digging through the cross entropy algorithm I had to take a break and learn more about distribution. Namely, I wanted to refresh my mind about the normal/Gauss law. more

Hello fellow readers, This post is about an analysis of social changes in 2015. more

Hello fellow nixers, This thread is about having your machine help you remember things throughout your days, to be your companion. more

About a week ago an instructor at university was asking why most students did not try the step-by-step tutorials at home, or why they didn't at least read it. He then started a speech, trying to understand us and saying that we would not be able to enter the work world easily with this mindset, and asking students what they thought of it. more

A hot subject these days is privacy. Since the Snowden's leaks we have been getting headlines about privacy every two or three days. This post is not about something new but it's to dwell into ways of thinking we haven't been accustomed to. I don't personally have any interest in conspiracy theories and secret societies but it's still interesting to relate it with terrorism, as we are in ... more

Hello fellow readers, This post is simply to link to the ricerous project threads. more

Hello nixers, In this thread you'll learn how to write a very simple man page for your programs. more

Hello fellow Unixer, This thread is about a must have software engineer tool called an UML(Unified Modeling Language) designer. More precisely, it's about finding the open source UML Editor/Designer that you need. more

Hello fellow readers, This thread is about obfuscating the content of a webpage. This might not be so useful, security wise, because all the sensitive information should be kept server side. However, for the ones trying to reverse engineer the page this is a huge obstacle. more

Hello fellow Unixers, In this thread I'll explain how to enjoy playing games on free Unix OS for a cheap price. The rumor that gaming on Unix is bad has been around for quite some time now. While it's almost true for the newest games with the 3D rendering that makes hair looks so real that it feels like your own hair are fake, it's still not true for all games. I won't start blabbering about... more

Hello readers, valgrind, from the man page, is a suite of tools for debugging and profiling programs. I'll introduce you to the memory leak finder feature of valgrind. (note, valgrind only works on posix compliant OS) more

Hello fellow readers, I've been away of the social networking scene for a year, after obvious wrong events such as Facebook entering the stock market. This post is a reminder of those horrible, so called, online social networks. Social networks make people look stupid! On a personal level, I've been out for a year and I still feel the weird nausea arising when looking at people wasting their precious... more

Hello people, Yet again, I came up with another _little_ quote. Feel free to use it in any context or to give your opinion about it. more

Hello People, I was about to sleep when I came out with this more

I have been watching a lot of video conferences on security and I'm wondering what will happen in the next couple of years. more