Recent content on Ryan Prior
After the recent round of Guix security vulnerability disclosures introduced a regression in the unprivileged guix-daemon , I was left with a Guix installation that refused to download substitutes . Using Guix without substitutes is possible by just passing --no-substitutes to any Guix command, but this is a tradeoff with huge consequences: building my entire package tree from sources and minimal…
I set out with a simple goal: use Guix to install what I can for my Lua project, then let LuaRocks handle the rest, installing local dependencies into the .luarocks directory. I began full of hope that these would work together seamlessly, but things did not go so smoothly. Hours later I had resolved five errors: linux/limits.h: No such file or directory openssl/crypto.h not found ld: unrecognized…
I've been having a repeated conversation lately, where somebody complains to me about YouTube and my internal response is "it doesn't have to be like that!" With a few browser extensions, you can reliably bypass many of the most common complaints about YouTube and enjoy your video time much better. I'll show you how. Your browser is your User Agent The web browser is software that you own and…
During software development and maintenance we use an array of commands to build, test, deploy and release our software. When nobody writes these commands down, they're tacit knowledge: the floor-level of computing know-how that's necessary to contribute to the project. This is widely acknowledged as a barrier to entry and an accessibility pain point for Free software. Tacit knowledge of…
Content All content on ryanprior.com © 2021-2025 Ryan Prior unless otherwise specifically marked. I allow and encourage sharing according to the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives license. You are free to: Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format for any purpose, even commercially. Under the following terms: Attribution — You must give appropriate…
M-x doctor I am the psychotherapist. Please, describe your problems. Each time you are finished talking, type RET twice. I despair that everyone is enchanted with talking to machines You have your mind on machines, it seems. Certainly. I deal with machines in my work as a software engineer. But a machine ought to be a tool, not a replacement for a person. Is it because a machine ought to be a tool…
In middle school, I learned that one of the creators and frequent posters in an online technology forum I frequented also lived nearby. I invited him, an adult professional, to give a presentation for my 8th grade careers class and was thrilled to meet him in person after years of reading his posts, to make that connection feel real in a way it hadn't before. He even gave me a book he'd helped…
“Yondergrove” (name has been changed; see below) is a fantasy roleplaying video game set amid great forests, lakes and rivers. Started in 2020, it is a public alpha that's free to play, and caters to small-group roleplaying. There are no enemies to slay, no levels to gain, and no non-player characters to interact with. Like a game of make believe in the park, the narrative pace is entirely set by…
an advanced distribution of the GNU operating system ‑ the GNU Guix website a purely functional package manager, and associated free software distribution ‑ the Guix subreddit I find these descriptions uninspiring and wouldn't be so excited about Guix if that's really all it was. So what is Guix really, how does it relate to these descriptions, and what makes it so compelling and different? Guix…
The GNU Guix package ecosystem is growing rapidly, and given all of the amazing features Guix delivers, I always check Guix first to see if the software I want is available. When it's not, there's still a possibility that a search will reveal somebody else has packaged what I want. For example, I share packages that I'm testing before I submit them upstream. Downloading a package definition to…
Earlier today I learned the dismaying news that one of my friends in Free software was shot by police with a less-than-lethal round and assaulted with chemical weapons. While recovering at home, they warned me to be careful. Another friend in our group chat asked: is this group also about defunding and eliminating the police? I see software freedom as a necessary part of a larger human freedom…
The #elementary channel on Freenode got an interesting question today: How can one change the Suspend / Turn off screen settings to interval smaller than 5 minutes ie. turn off screen after 1 minute and suspend the laptop after 2 minutes when idle? Despite spending a lot of time working on elementary OS I don't know the answer, so I start with the power menu. Power settings ⌘+Space opens the…
In the world of front-end JavaScript tooling, Svelte is one of the most exciting new options. It promises to clear away a lot of the cruft and indirection associated with other popular systems: We took a step back and asked ourselves what kind of API would work for us… and realized that the best API is no API at all. We can just use the language. (from "Rethinking Reactivity" ) Svelte's primary…
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It’s March 2020 and lately I’ve been looking forward to relaunching my website. One thing that’s been holding me up has been my worry about whether I have “enough content to do it for real,” so I’m pushing past that with a bold plan to pursue a nearly content-free relaunch. This will free me to add content as I’m ready instead of satisfying my inner critic…
Ryan Prior helped build and sell a cybersecurity start-up, built software to operate quantum computers, and has experience in varied fields including ecommerce, B2B finance, construction tech, and airline operations. He’s focused on making systems humane, reliable, secure and understandable.