#i mostly just wanted to share the “tinker tinker engine engine keyboard keyboard” bit

[playingplayer2]

So. In the middle of a Percy Jackson hyperfixation. That happens every 6-18 months, it's normal.

(This of course, always brings to the forefront, my lifelong fascination and interest in Greco-Roman mythology (my mother prefers Roman (*cough* Latin *cough*) things, I've always preferred Greek. I subjected both my mom and siblings to like 2 hours of who and why my favourite Greek gods are my favourites. Should have spent more time on Hestia, inll have to do that tmrw, but my mom didn't know who Asclepius was, so I had to rectify that ASAP, also I had to give a verbal essay on Ares because that's just how I roll, and then I had to justify liking Apollon because my mom's knows a number of his myths, so I started with listing off domains and some more of his myths which led to the Asclepius bit. So. Yeah. Anyways-)

Right, so, last night I was like "hey mom, Greek or Roman?” because. Like. I was remembering some post- I think it was on here actually- about how instead of thinking about which god/dess you think you'd be a demigod of, but rather which god/dess your 'mortal' parent would pull.

And she was like "context" and I was like "because" and so she said "Norse." And I was like "uhhhhhhhhhhg mom no"

Because this is so easy for me. Soooooo easy. Riordanverse gods? Easy easy easy. My mom would totally be pulling Hephaestus. My sibling? Could fit into cabin 9 just fine.

(my argument to my mother was "tinker tinker, engine engine, keyboard keyboard" (got the most goddamn deadpan-but-affronted stare lmfao) and "tell me what you would if you had access to a forge" and then she and my sibling both started talking and while my mom was like "oooooo" my sibling was all "well technically you could make a small forge pretty easily-" and my mom was like "you're just proving the point" and I just started into the corner like in the office) (my other idea was Minerva bc my mom looovesssss fiber arts and architecture and math and science and art and history and learning and and and. Or maybe Demeter because my mom's always been interested/invested in gardening and permaculture and stuff. (I just want a rose garden and a poisonous plant garden and my favourite fruits.))

Problem is me.

Me and building things? Eh. Weaving? Cool but not my main thing, much more interested in how to make and use the dyes. Metalwork? Not a chance. I'd probably accidentally kill myself by blinking or something. No actually I'd roast like a turkey in the oven. Computers? Shoot me in the gut, it'd be kinder. Architecture? Love it, wouldn't be able to do it, way too much math and math and physics are my second biggest weaknesses right after electronic technology and navigating maps.

I like painting. Healing. Archery. Poetry. Singing- gods I love singing. Bit awful at it though. Hell most of my morals are based around protecting people who need protecting.

(I mean fuck, I learned about "noblesse oblige" when I was like 4 and it shaped me permanently and got invested in The Art of War before I was 12)

Would my mom ever go for, SPECIFICALLY, riordanverse!Apollo? Absolutely not. Not even a little bit. Would he go for her? Back when she had me and my sibling? Maybe. Probably not. Hephaestus, Minerva, Demeter. They're much more likely. (I would die; not interested/skilled in the right things; love plants, but they need to be kept outside....)

So. Shoe-in for Apollo, right? My friends thought so in middle school. So. Maybe.

But me? No.

However. How. Ever. Mars. Not Ares, Mars.

Namely aspects like strategy and protection, also as a harvest god. Those could fit.

My mom... She's got really strict morals. She's also pretty strategic, prefers if people would be straightforward and blunt, and though she doesn't like war or bloodshed, nor do I, really, but she can understand them. I guess. We don't agree on everything. I'm a lot more willing to spill blood if it means conflict drawing to a close. Neither of us like senseless violence of any kind. We both value honor. Though I think it means different things to us.

Tbh, most of my reasoning for Mars is ... More personal. Not personal for me, whatever I overshare on the internet regularly. But like personal for my mom. So just know I've got good arguments.

Anyways. I think in the world of Percy Jackson, my sibling would be a demigod child of Hephaestus (I would say Vulcan, but my mom pointed out that she knows more about Hephaestus than she does Vulcan), and I would be a demigod child of Mars.

[system76]

Open Up: Open Source Hardware — A Chat with Carl

System76 is now a couple years into manufacturing open source hardware, with our efforts expanding in the form of an open source keyboard. In this week’s blog post, we sat down with System76 CEO Carl Richell to discuss the company’s journey into open source hardware and where its future may lead.

What is open source hardware?

Carl: From a broader lens, to produce “open source hardware” means that we have developed and shared the recipe to create a high-end commercial product that can be learned from, adapted, and used by anyone else. In the same way we’ve stood on the shoulders of the Linux and open source software giants who came before us, we now get to be pioneers in developing open source hardware for those who come next. If you want to learn more how a computer is designed or how something is made, our schematics are the instructions for how to do it. It describes every step of the process, from each piece of the machine and its dimensions, to the type of aluminum used and how to bend it.

It’s similar to open source software in that you can learn from the product, adapt it to your needs, and distribute it. The difference is that it requires outside equipment to produce your own version. Open hardware has become more accessible with 3-D printing, but as we found when we were making acrylic prototypes of Thelio, you reach a point where it’s time to work with metal, which presents its own challenges. You have to cut it, bend it, and paint it, all of which requires specific equipment.

We’ve also laid the ground work for the supply chain, in that anyone can use the same vendors for the fans or the same specs for how long the cables are. All those small yet extremely important pieces are open source.

How does open hardware fall into the System76 philosophy?

The phrase “intellectual property” gets thrown around a lot. It is my opinion, and the opinion that we express in this company, that intellectual property is a false idea. That nothing was just born out of nothing in your mind and just becomes your property. All these things you came up with, someone else was part of the building blocks for you to get there in the first place. And so you can’t own it. You can’t have it. It’s not yours. Like that hinge you’re making, well you’ve had some good ideas, you’ve tinkered with it for a while, you’ve figured out a cool hinge. But I guarantee you’ve looked at every other hinge out there and learned a lot from that research, just as we’ve done with everything we’ve ever built.

The world is full of smart, incredible people, and these ideas are mostly locked up in institutions and companies through the desire to maintain power and control over them. This is a broader idea we don’t believe in. Instead, we believe that ideas are free; that there is no such thing as “intellectual property”.

Why does System76 use copyrights for its hardware?

The reason we use copyright is because reputation matters. Our reputation is our name, it’s who we are, it’s how people perceive our value and the value that we put into something as individuals and as a company. You can’t just slap System76 on everything and say it’s a System76, because we have a reputation that we maintain through the product we deliver. But everything about that product is owned by the user just as much as it’s owned by us. Those beliefs and ideas that exist within open source software are no different than with open source hardware.

Speaking of open source, if there’s anything that should be open source, it’s a vaccine for COVID-19. There’s no lack of supply or resources to produce a vaccine, yet people are hiding secrets from each other to win a race for money. It’s absurd! We’re the ones paying for it. It should be a completely open source effort. I have quite a bit of confidence that the scientists and others working on a vaccine are in it because they really care about the science and getting results. That’s a striking example of where open source would make a lot of sense.

What would you say to someone who is interested in building machines, but is worried that making them open hardware would negatively impact their business?

There’s a risk if you build anything that is a commodity. When your product is a commodity, it doesn’t take a significant amount of effort to make it unique in the marketplace. It’ll just be copied by someone who can make it cheaper, with cheaper labor. With open hardware, what you want is for your product to be innovative and constantly progressing so that you’ll always be the best deliverer of that product. I think we’ll always be the best deliverer of the Thelio desktop product line—even if we’re not, I’m okay with it. The purpose of he GPL license is to lift all boats. If someone else comes along and does something innovative with our designs, the tide has risen.

We built Thelio Io, which is an open source hardware PCB (printed circuit board). It’s a commodity, but it’s one component of the entire system. You could take this to a manufacturer and have them make it, and then you have a 4-slot backplane that you can use in your design. That means you have the recipe for an open source backplane, controller, firmware, and software thermal system. Now Thelio Io is available on another company’s system because they can use our work? That’s fantastic! If they adopt the same philosophy, something they do in the future would be available for us to use as well.

What it really boils down to is, it doesn’t matter if your product is proprietary or open source; if people like it and it gets highly adopted, it will just be made by someone else. By making it open source, maybe their path is a little faster, but with reverse engineering and how quick product development is these days, it doesn’t seem to matter. You have to disarm at some point, you know? And somebody has to take the lead disarming. We have nukes and they have nukes, so nobody gets rid of their nukes, because that’s our leverage. We’re saying we don’t want this leverage anymore. We want to lead by example. We’re going to disarm and give away the instructions for how to make what we make.

Want to learn more about our open source efforts? Check out the software and firmware installments of our Open Up series.