Joar Alexander Pablo von Arndt
My name is Joar von Arndt. I write about a variety of topics, from coverage of gnu Emacs web browsing, to graphic design and critiques of industrial policy. You can subscribe here. If you enjoy anything written here (or disagree with me) feel free to tell me about it.
Want to know more about me?1 Check out my about page.
My own personal favorites are the following:
On an American Suez
A major Anglo-Saxon power begins a war far away from home with the help of Israel and without the support of its allies. The main objective is the control of one of the world’s most important maritime trade routes, but the aggressor may have to back down — partly from the rising oil prices at home. This could either describe the 1956 Suez crisis, when Britain and France invaded Egypt over their nationalisation of the Suez canal, or the contemporary Israeli-American bombing campaign and blockade of Iran (“Operation Epic Fury”). Is the war in Iran then an American Suez?
Continue ReadingHardening up
We are at war. There is currently a constant struggle between countless opposing forces to overcome the other’s defences. But this fighting is not immediately noticeable in the world around us — it is going on in the abstract world of digital communications called cyberspace. As more and more of our activities are impacted by what goes on in this domain of warfare, it becomes more and more of a target. The recent developments in artificial intelligence (ai) — and more specifically large language model (llm) — capabilities have had large headline impacts on the field of cybersecurity. Regardless of if Anthriopic’s Mythos has the capability to autonomously gain access to complex digital systems, it is inevitable that some other model soon will. Frontier labs have all invested enormous resources into training these models for cybersecurity tasks. What will the consequences be of such automated systems, and how will they impact the fundamentals of cybersecurity?
Continue ReadingEmacs does not need LSP
Language-server-protocol (lsp) is standard to communicate information about a
current programming project to an editor integration, powered by a “language
server” for the specific programming language. Emacs has two major
implementations of this editor functionality: eglot (built-in) and lsp-mode.
Getting this set up is usually one of the first things that new users will want
to do, but in my experience one can get by for a surprisingly long time using
Emacs without needing to reach for eglot or lsp-mode. That is because many of
the functions that lsp-servers provide can be provided by Emacs through other
means.
Being Against LLMs is Against the Spirit of FLOSS
The debate surrounding llm-generated code is more intense than ever. There are some people who have recently tried to turn this debate into action as an attempt to stem the tide of llm contributions that are flooding maintainers. Most notably Vim “Classic” and my own adopted public git forge of Codeberg. This is a shame, since it flies against the spirit of Free (Libre) and Open Source Software (floss).
Continue ReadingDawn in 大安
Writing this, I have arrived at the island of Formosa, the adopted home of the Republic of China (中華民國) as well as the Taiwanese people. I intent to stay here during the fall term, as I complete part of my studies abroad.
Continue ReadingSecurity Studies for Individuals
Studying at the Swedish Defence University gives you an odd way of thinking, where everything can be modelled through the lenses of nuclear strategy, international relations (ir), and the tactics employed in various contemporary and historical conflicts. These are also not only subjects for the lecture hall and library, but for the lunch room and nights out on the town. Such topics are of course interesting for their own sake, but they also reveal something about how to deal with conflict more broadly — as one force diametrically opposed to the interests of the other.
Continue ReadingFootnotes:
A totally reasonable thing to want to do; I am a pretty interesting person after all.
