Lizzy Fleckenstein

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Table of contents

  1. Table of contents
  2. Introduction
  3. Notable work
  4. Links
  5. Tech stack
  6. Hobbies
  7. Friends
  8. Opinions

Introduction

I'm a programmer from Germany. I use artix linux and contribute to free software. I've been passionate about programming since the age of 11, and it's what I spend most of my time on. I'm a computer science student at TU Darmstadt and I work as a wine/proton developer for Codeweavers. You can find my resume here.

I'm primarily interested in development of performance critical systems, and I like to actually understand what I'm doing, even if I interact with an API that abstracts internals away. I've worked with many programming languages; I'm especially passionate about Lua, C and Rust however. Many of my projects are game engine related. I'm also interested in building operating systems and programming languages.

I like making new friends. Feel free to hit me up on matrix or fedi.

I write romantic short stories sometimes, and you can find them here.

I'm trans and bisexual, and I'm happily taken by my witch, Anna.

Notable work

Most of my projects are hosted on my github. I make heavy use of github's organizations feature, so much of my important work isn't hosted at my account directly (check out the organizations I'm in). I only list my most used/interesting work here.

Tech Stack

Hobbies

Video Games

Music

Anime

Friends

Some links to people I know & like who have an online presence, like a YouTube, Website or GitHub (some ppl are not listed here since I don't have a link to them). Not sorted in any way.

IRL friends

Online friends

Opinions

The Web

The www was originally created for sharing interconnected information (Markdown is, in many ways, what HTML originally aimed to be).

It has developed into a general-purpose application platform, today the web is probably the primary way to deploy end user applications. While such a technology is in itself useful and beneficial, it is built on frameworks created for manually writing documentation (HTML and CSS), which makes it, in many ways, fundamentally flawed.

Additionally, the strong focus on network interaction and applications that store data on a server rather than on the client machine creates privacy concerns. Lastly, the web has also been perverted from it's original purpose. Because fancy web technologies exist, everyone and their grandma thinks they have to use them. This has lead the accessibility of information to suffer; instead of providing you with information in a simple and readable manner, many sites throw fancy graphics and interactive/reactive elements at you.

Abusing web technologies like this hurts everyone:

Please, if you make a website that hosts information, keep your frontend simple and at least free of JavaScript and complex frameworks. Yes, I know you're a great programmer and want to show off your web development skills. But making a good website is a lot more about what you chose to leave out than what you chose to add. Show some restraint.

Intellectual Property

Intellectual property is the single most harmful thing humanity has ever created.

Applying the restrictions of physical objects to intellectual goods like ideas, media and software which are infinitely reproducable and sharable is a stupid, made up, concept that obviously primarily hinders the progress of humanity.

Since files can easily be copied, intellectual properly is largely ineffective at protecting people who want to sell their work. Piracy is easy, and tracking down pirates costs more than it's worth (depending on their opsec). Many people who pirate also wouldn't even be finanically able to purchase the product they are pirating, and estimates of losses are almost always inflated by disregarding this simple fact. DRM mostly worsens the quality of the product and worsens the paying user's experience, while being insecure by design (it can always be bypassed, it's just a matter of effort).

In practice, any small or medium sized entity producing intellectual goods professionally already can't rely on restricting the produced good, and has to enter different business models. E.g. selling support for software, offering cloud services/hosting, relying on trust/donations, doing art comissions etc. Copyright and intellectual property often even harm creators (every few years there is a new copyright strike drama on youtube).

Intellectual property exists to protect the interests of big companies who have the resources to take each other to court, and who want their "infinite money glitch" to go on forever (Being able to copy and sell software infinitely after it has been written).

IP is not a tool of justice or equality.

The FSF

I agree with the FSF on the issue of intellectual property, I use their GPLv3 License for my projects, and I use many pieces of GNU software. This does not mean that I full endorse (or reject) the FSF and Stallman however.

Stallman has been associated with questionable takes in the past, and I find the FSF's behavior regarding naming issues (GNU/Linux vs. Linux, Free Software vs. Open Source) especially childish. If it gets the point across, there is no need to bitch about it. Use whatever terminology you want to.

The FSF also sees itself as an ethical authority regarding stuff like licenses or git hosters and is - again - very stubborn about it, in a way that doesn't really benefit them or the free software movement in any practical sense. I really don't care a lot about whether the FSF approved the license of a program I use. It seems like a hubris to me.

I'm also not too exclusionary about using free software, if proprietary software is useful to me, I will use it (Games are a notable example). I'd much rather use free software alternatives, but if there are no alternatives or existing alternatives are significantly worse I'd rather use software that (in some cases hypothetically) restricts my freedom. Apply some pragmatism. It must be noted however that it's crucial to not coerce people into using proprietary software. Being able to choose to, or choose not to consensually give up parts of your freedom should be part of freedom itself.

GitHub

GitHub is proprietary and sucks in several ways, feature-wise. However, it's not primarily just a storage for your code, it's a social media platform. It's used to discover and collaborate on software. It's used by employers to discover people. I use GitHub for the same reason I use twitter and reddit. It's not so much about the features of the platform, it's about the (amount of) people that use it.

Using a more free alternative to GitHub is cool, self-hosting a git service is very cool, but I still see large advantages to using GitHub.

Cryptocurrency

As an advocate of digital decentralization and federation, I fully understand the appeal of decentralized currencies. Ideally, currencies would not be dependent on central entities. In practice however, there are several major issues:

  1. Many popular cryptocurrencies (like Bitcoin), contrary to popular belief, are not private/anonymous at all. Monero is the most well known exception to this (secure, private, and untraceable).
  2. Cryptocurrencies suck for the reason all currencies without inherent, non-speculative value (which are all currencies that are at all practial) suck. Investing in crypto (just like investing into stocks, property or anything else) is nothing but gambling.
  3. Even tho there is no central authority that can "infinitely print money" (which btw is an oversimplification of how governments interact with central banks), cryptocurrencies are a lot more unstable than fait currencies because significantly less people use them and even less people actually understand how they work.
  4. Many blockchains are very centralized, with some entities controlling large parts of the network's hash rate. As an individual miner, you are stongly disadvantaged since dedicated ASICs are exponentially better at mining crypto than CPUs and GPUs usually built into PCs. Monero attempts to combat this by utilizing an ASIC proof algorithm which prevents devices that specialize on mining Monero, but even the Monero blockchain has been shown to be highly centralized. Entities who have a lot of fiat (like governments, banks and large corporations) are able to heavily exercise control over blockchains by acquiring the devices used to increase hash rate. Because the "real world" economy is so unjust and imbalanced, crypto is going to be as well. It's inseparable.
  5. Proof of Work mining (which most currencies including Bitcoin and Monero use) is disastrous for the environment. To mine crypto, extreme amounts of energy and resources used to manufacture hardware are wasted.
  6. Proof of Stake mining (which e.g. Ethereum uses) just benefits those who already posses, which heavily reinforces points 2. and 4.

TL;DR I recommend against using crypto unless you have a good reason. For the most part, crypto is useful for illegal and half-legal transactions, e.g. excersizing free financial control as a minor (working and getting paid etc.), buying drugs or medicine (As a trans person I have contemplated DIY HRT in the past). If you need to use crypto, use Monero.