Lynne

the ebooks bots (the ones i using the code i made, anyway) use something called markov chains. markov chains are a mathematical concept, and in computer science (computers are the only thing i know about), they are generally used for predictive text. when you type “how are” on your phone… Read More »Lynne Teaches Tech: How do mstdn-ebooks bots work?

Let’s use twitter and mastodon for our examples.Twitter is centralised, while Mastodon is not. This means that it’s possible for Twitter to disappear at any time – the CEO could (theoretically) shut it down and delete anything at a moment’s notice. The company behind twitter has complete control over everything… Read More »Lynne Teaches Tech: What does “decentralised” mean?

when you see a website that’s HTTPS rather than HTTP, it means the connection is secure. most popular browsers will display a green padlock in the URL bar to symbolise that (and colour it yellow or red if something’s wrong). to verify that a connection is secure (and not just… Read More »Lynne Teaches Tech: What does HTTPS mean?

There are a lot of ways you could define “free software”. For example, you could say Candy Crush or CCleaner is free software, because you can install it for free. When people say that software is “free as in freedom”, or “libre”, they mean something else. Under these definitions, neither… Read More »Lynne Teaches Tech: What is “free software”? Why do people say software isn’t free, even though you can download it for free from the app store?

paraphrased Wikipedia quote:In 1991, the Linux kernel appeared. Combined with the operating system utilities developed by the GNU project, it allowed for the first operating system that was free software, commonly known as Linux. in other words, the linux kernel and GNU utilities work together to form the linux operating… Read More »Lynne Teaches Tech: Why do people say GNU/Linux or GNU+Linux?