Luke Smith writes opinionated posts on Linux, minimalist computing, browsers, licensing, language learning, and philosophy, alongside his videos.
HN commenters call him opinionated but interesting, cite his Michel Thomas language learning article, and one criticizes his vegan post as crazy and reactionary.
I disagree. Work on permissively licensed software typically has the net effect of decreasing global freedom by reducing the costs of corporations to produce proprietary software. I try to avoid contributing to permissively-licensed software when possible, and I prefer to co-operate with businesses that use free software to avoid vendor lock-in as much as possible.
Why should we all do free work for corporations? At least with the GPL you can negotiate a commercial license in exchange for money, but with a permissive license you forfeit your ability to do that.
This article accurately sums up my point of view: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/why-i-use-the-gpl-and-not-cuck-licenses/
Also, the GPL does not require you to share the source code for programs that you do not distribute outside your company.
> https://lukesmith.xyz/blog
Luke Smith has some interesting ideas about free software and his Linux/Vim tutorials are very good. However, he's someone who harbors a lot of racist and hateful views. Don't believe me? Watch his livestreams.
His recent crusade to get many people on Monero likely stems from him getting busted[1] for accepting a $30,000 donation in Bitcoin from a French white nationalist who donated[2] $500,000 in Bitcoin earl to far-right groups last year, some of whom were directly involved in the Jan. 6 insurrection.
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/12/far-right-open-source-technology-censorship
[2]: https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/capitol-riot-bitcoin-donation-alt-right-domestic-extremism
His blog is pretty crazy https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/vegan
> Long story short, a bugman is someone who rejects the purpose and role of humans in their natural environment. They reject tradition, religion, their family, gender roles.
Ah, I can smell the rank mold from here.
> you're given for your acceptance some inane religious platitudes like "equality" and "rights" along with vaguely Marxist notions of "exploitation" and "slavery" and "oppressed classes,"
Plus the usual inane stuff about vegans being fundamentalist skinny soybois who will die at 40 and become impotent from their diet. Oh, and also global warming is a myth. Lovely stuff.
> 1. when I feel that urge during the workday, my emotional brain thinks "oh boy! a whole hour of this at the end of the day! I can totally wait because it will be an hour!" 2. when that hour comes, I find I only browse around for maybe 10 minutes before I get bored.
This happened to me when I moved all my YouTube / News-Aggregator consoomption to checking RSS feeds[0] once a week - I went from watching hours of videos a day to almost none. And those blog articles look a lot less compelling when you aren't using them to escape from schoolwork.
[0] https://lukesmith.xyz/blog/a-guide-to-using-rss-to-replace-social-media
Miscellaneous technical stuff:
- https://danluu.com/
- https://blog.jessfraz.com/
- https://adamwathan.me/
- https://jvns.ca/
- https://rachelbythebay.com/w/
- https://dankim.org/
- https://mtlynch.io/
- https://rgz.ee/
- https://markdotto.com/
- https://thorstenball.com/
- https://sarahdrasnerdesign.com/writing/
- https://lukesmith.xyz/ - Quirky minimalist linux & free software stuff. I don't agree with many of his opinions but his rants are entertaining + offer a refreshing view on certain things.
Non-technical:
- https://bernoid.com/
I tried to find a good article summarising Michel's language teaching method.
This references his tapes: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/learning-european-languages-michel-thomas/
ChatGPT gave a reasonable looking answer to my prompt "Summarize what is special about how Michel Thomas teaches Language".
Maybe just another case of a highly intelligent person coming up with an "obvious" solution that is great: yet is not quite so obvious to others. He clearly was talented - but also he avoided explaining the rationale behind his method for years.