@deprogrammaticaipsum@mas.to"We can argue over the specific time at which empathy in software design entered the software engineering body of knowledge. Barry Boehm’s 1999 paper “Escaping the Software Tar Pit” introduces the modified golden rule to software engineering:
> Do unto others as you would have them do unto you — if you were like them."
@Techmeme@techhub.socialMeta adds AI video editing tools to the Edits app and Meta AI, letting users edit up to 10 seconds of a video with 50 preset prompts, free for a "limited time" (Emma Roth/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/685581/meta-video-editing-ai-pre…
@berlinbuzzwords@floss.socialKyle Liu is the Head of Engineering at Mercari, a second-hand e-commerce marketplace based in Japan. His team has been using Elastic Search for retrieval and DNN Learning to Rank for ranking for a long time. At #bbuzz, he will discuss how they re-architected their search system in response to developments in deep learning and LLM, and how they successfully convinced internal stakeholders to adopt new…
@cdarwin@c.imHere is what some existing medical research has to say about how to stay safe, one body part at a time.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-protect-yourself-during-protests/
@khalidabuhakmeh@mastodon.socialI just saw a post saying someone let their agent AI run for 19 hours to solve a problem.
Is that the expectation?
I’m going to predict a future scandal: A global consulting firm has been caught charging human hours for agentic AI elapsed time. If I were an unscrupulous consulting firm, I could charge customers 24 hours a day at ludicrously high prices to deliver what likely would have been an ill-advised and doomed project anyway.
@arXiv_quantph_bot@mastoxiv.pageExperimental observation of subabsorption
D. C. Gold, U. Saglam, S. Carpenter, A. Yadav, M. Beede, T. G. Walker, M. Saffman, D. D. Yavuz
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.09872
@jamesthebard@social.linux.pizzaGot `acme.sh` installed on all the Proxmox nodes and managed to get the certs issued and installed to the right location without too much hassle. All of the UIs now no longer anger the Firefox gods. Also all of the servers are updated and nothing is on fire. Time to relax and debate on what to eat for supper.
#homelab
@karlauerbach@sfba.socialMuch of what is going on under the present FFOTUS/maga-klan/white-christian-nationalist reign reminds me of a time in Florence, Italy in the late 1400s.
A nut named Girolamo Savonarola tried to impose a very regressive Christian policy onto Florence.
The people of Florence didn't like it and, in the end, gave Savonarola a rather hot time.
@NFL@darktundra.xyzWhat is Aaron Rodgers' jersey number with Steelers? Here's what Super Bowl-winning QB will wear this fall
https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/new…
@deprogrammaticaipsum@mas.to"And what has it got us? You can now order any product made by stroking a pocket glass and have it next day or even quicker. What are you doing with all that time that is freed up?
Certainly not leisure. The average hours worked per week in developed countries has certainly dropped since the industrial revolution but remained roughly constant since 1980. Tracking all that work in Jira has not led to doing less of it."
@arXiv_astrophEP_bot@mastoxiv.pageStudy of Venera Spacecraft Trajectories and Wider Implications
Adam Hibberd
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.09478 https://arxiv.org/pdf/25…
@chpietsch@fedifreu.deThis story of an ex-Googler is well worth reading. After some personal observations, @… asks interesting questions:
What is crypto mining if not a textbook Captain Planet villain scheme—to kill and raze and destroy for nothing but imaginary tokens proving that you did lots of killing and razing and …
@nemorosa@mastodon.nu#PennedPossibilities 694 — MC POV: Do you have siblings? If so, what are their names and ages?
MC: I have a brother, Alaidehal, but I couldn't tell you his age because we live where time is of no consequence. Time is your doing. Your curse. Not ours.
@davidaugust@mastodon.online6 time zones, ~340,000,000 people, ~3,800,000 square miles.
Only 1.2 million sworn law enforcement officers, and only 2.86 million US military personnel, including active duty, National Guard, and Reserves.
Martial law is likely not feasible nationwide. Simply cannot be accomplished even if all LEOs and soldiers were eager to try.
They want to accomplish what 80 years ago was tough (could have gone either way) only in a place with ~21 times the space and ~7 times the peo…
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.net
@davidshq@hachyderm.ioOne of the most important lessons I've learned in life / continue to learn / managed to forget is the importance of "stopping." It is so easy for life to become overwhelming with all the things I must do. Work, family, friends, volunteering, community, finances, chores, taking care of my health, the list goes on...
"Life is a very simple thing. We make it more complex." - Anonymous
"When we are making our life more complex, that is precisely the time when we are totally incapable of seeing what we are doing. The more complex our lives are, the more we need to be present to them and, surprisingly, this is exactly the time when we are most distracted. When we are distracted, we tend to have poor judgment and make more mistakes . . . usually adding to the confusion . . . and so it goes."
"....We usually respond by trying to become even more controlling and, eventually (or immediately!), this just makes things worse."
"It's time to stop, take stock, take some deep breaths, rest, listen to others, and regroup...We may miss something. We may even miss something we think is important. That's okay. We're more important."
"Taking time to stop may be just what I need to move ahead."
-- Anne Wilson Schaef, Meditations for People Who (May) Worry Too Much, Ballantine Books, 1996, entry for May 6th.
#life #quotes #health #productivity
@christydena@zirk.usQuestion: To you, what is the relationship between society and stories?
My aim is to discover more perspectives than what I'm familiar with.
Bonus: Include a description of a visualisation.
Example: recycle symbol between society & stories, mirror, time travel machine, etc.
Thank you! And let me know if you need more info!
@davej@dice.campWell, fuck. Had I known ahead of time, I’d have flown to Hawaii for the long weekend.
#scomo #auspol https://aus.social/@maude…
@vrandecic@mas.toGoogle Calendar: I found an event in my calendar for this Thursday, without a title or description, but a specific time (12:20-13:05). It is my private calendar, so I know I created it. So I am probably going to miss something this Thursday, but I don't know what.
What I found interesting is that when I asked Gemini it was able to tell me when I *created* that event, a piece of metadata that is not visible in the Google Calendar UX in any way.
@cdarwin@c.imIt’s exhilarating to hear Bernie Sanders speak to a crowd:
his zeal is reflected back in their faces,
his moral clarity is such a relief,
set against the cynicism and resignation of most of the Democratic party’s opposition to Trump and his administration.
Class war is as old as time, but it’s a peculiarity of this age that you rarely hear a politician name it.
“I do,” he tells me. “There is a class war going on. The people on top are waging that war.”
…
@azonenberg@ioc.exchangeGetting spam from companies like Newark or even smaller players like Win-Source is always weird to me.
Like, nothing you send me is going to change what parts I need for a design. And for a given part I'm going to pick from whatever distributor offers me the balance of (best price, shortest lead time, in stock, fastest shipping) that is appropriate for my needs.
Advertising changes nothing in that decision process.
@toxi@mastodon.thi.ng"Eventually, I stopped responding to my body. I was responding instead to a dashboard." — @…
This is a great point and very much translates to so many other parts of life/work where people stop listening to their "body" (or to their org/product/offering), outsourcing/numbing/dumbing down their decision making based on dashboards of col…
@castarco@hachyderm.iouspolitics, trump
I keep seeing smart people writing stuff like
> [the US] kept peace through strength balanced with restraint, and wielded influence through culture, values, and diplomacy
I understand that #Trump is terrible and some people feel tempted to idealize what they had before him, but we should be more discerning, or otherwise it becomes impossible to understand how this happened in the first place.
Let's start with some questions:
- peace where? and for who? was it true peace, or "Pax Romana"?
- are we going to take seriously that statement on "restraint"? after all the lies, internal witch hunting, sanctions, coups, wars, invasions, genocides, and last but not least, 2 unnecessary nuclear strikes on Japan?
Now, on "culture, values, and diplomacy". Sure. Why not. Not everything was going to be bad, right?
But the thing is, abusive husbands aren't bad all the time either. From time to time they know how to be sweet and seem to care: one present here, flowers the next day, a little bit of gaslighting, and fake apologies after that "accidental" slap.
Given enough time (if the wife is still alive), at some point the victim decides to leave, and then all hell breaks loose. Trump is the manifestation of that moment. He does not represent a change in #USA's nature, but a hidden side that was "always" there, just waiting to play its role.
Others believe this is because #US citizens have been intentionally dumbed down by a combination of propaganda and a disfunctional education system, and I'm sure it's partly true... But let's see what many of their most brilliant and educated citizens are choosing to do with their lives today: https://sfstandard.com/2025/03/12/stanford-students-want-in-on-the-military-tech-gold-rush/
So, all I'm asking is: please drop the act. It was always a clusterfuck.
@karlauerbach@sfba.socialI think it is time to start organizing Peoples' Courts to try FFOTUS and his maga-klan.
Right now it is sufficient to define the general shape of the courts, their jurisdiction, the outline of procedures, and to enunciate the "natural law" standards to which the accused will be measured.
I generally hate the concept of "natural law", but in this case it is apt because that's what the maga-heads seem to like (see abominations such many cases from SCOTUS…
@ELLIOTTCABLE@functional.cafeI’m unreasonably fucking pissed.
An r/me_irlgbt moderator banned me, and is now accusing me of being an A.I. … … … because I use fucking emdashes and ellipses.
#typography #AI #nightmaretimeline
@pre@boing.world
A wish granting god baby, granting Conrad's wishes in service of the Rani, turns London into a misogynist utopia and The Doctor into a good husband and insurance worker.
Hard to say why misogynists are so keen on the American 50s. Perhaps because it was before blacks had the vote and women could do banking.
And if anyone doubts this ridiculous tale, their table stops working and their family might call the doubt police, so they soon learn not to. All very oppressive and subversive.
Ruby manages to doubt anyway. And all the disabled people who simply never enter into Conrad's mind. Nice touch that. Great scene in the tent city filled with the dispossessed. They don't seem to have actually done anything so far but maybe they'll get more useful in part two.
Conrad is on TV telling a story about a man named Doctor Who.
Giant dinosaur skeletons walk the city, stepping over sky scrapers, and a bone palace towers above the city. Because I guess Conrad wishes for it to be so in order to give the Rani somewhere to live.
The palace is beautiful and Gothic.
But doubt is seeping in. Rogue is back, on the TV in hell, telling the Doctor that tables don't work like that. So he investigates. Gets himself reported to the doubt police who take him and Belinda to the bone palace.
The Rani's split from Miss Flood gives the pair of them a good chemistry. Queen and her maid of honour. Seems like Mrs Flood is likely to be the Rani's downfall. She doesn't like being told to make a sandwich.
A lot of exposition going on, but they at least put a hat on it: "Isn't just exposition, I need you to doubt"
So that's the reason for the strange wishes: To make the doctor have doubts so severe that the reality collapses, and Rani can rescue Omega. Omega is the dude in a Mask from the first 3 doctors episode, who gave the timelords time travel and got trapped in the underworld in the process. Timelords forgot him and never mounted a rescue, but presumably Rani is now hoping he'll bring back Galifrey.
And with London collapsing into the underworld and the doctor falling from the sky, we get the episode break and have to wait until next week.
That's not a cliff hanger, that an already-falling-from-the-cliff hanger.
Poppy really is his daughter he's shouting as he falls. And you know what that means?
🤨🤔
Back in Space Babies, the worst episode of the Nchuti seasons, that space baby asked if he was her parents and he said he wished that he was their parents.
That wish has been granted somehow?
Is this space baby Susan's mother? They have very different skin tones, but that doesn't matter much in a regenerating species.
Never have found out much about The Doctor's child. When he traveled with his granddaughter everyone assumed he'd met his own kid, the grandchild's parent.
But that doesn't have to be true for a time traveler. Maybe he met the granddaughter before he met his own kid, and maybe his own kid was just wished into his family line 60 years later (or billions of years in his timeline I guess).
Pretty fun episode but not sure it makes much sense. Why doesn't the Rani just wish for Omega to be back instead of all this doubt and underworld bollocks?
Last one next week. Super long episode. Hope it's all cleared up. Good chance we'll meet Susan again I think. And maybe see Omega's mask once more.
@fortune@social.linux.pizzaThis is an especially good time for you vacationers who plan to fly, because
the Reagan administration, as part of the same policy under which it
recently sold Yellowstone National Park to Wayne Newton, has "deregulated"
the airline industry. What this means for you, the consumer, is that the
airlines are no longer required to follow any rules whatsoever. They can
show snuff movies. They can charge for oxygen. They can hire pilots right
out of Vend…
@axbom@axbom.me @blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.net#Blakes7 Series B, Episode 01 - Redemption
JENNA: Look, we've been on the Liberator for a long time. The computers have never turned against us before. Why now?
AVON: That's what I was trying to find out when you sent for me. There's something else I'd like to try. [Burbles and gargles in two tones from Zen]
@cdarwin@c.imKeep the pressure on the very few republicans who know none of this is okay
https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lr3xaxp7m22l
@pbloem@sigmoid.socialEverybody complaining about getting hammered with #AI traffic seems to think that these are crawlers scraping for training data.
How likely is it that this is a complete misconception and this is all inference time?
Most public companies give their cralwers and RAG agents different user agent strings. But what about security services trawling through their data?
@NFL@darktundra.xyzSteelers' long wait for Aaron Rodgers is over, but offense far from finished product https://www.nfl.com/news/steelers-long-wait-for-aaron-rodgers-is-over-but-offense-far-from-finished-product
@crell@phpc.socialFriends from English-speaking countries that say "zed" instead of "zee":
What is the last verse of the alphabet song?
The US version ends "now I know my A B Cs, next time won't you sing with me." Which therefore rhymes with "zee".
But it wouldn't rhyme with "zed". So what do you say instead? Or does it just not rhyme as well?
@aardrian@toot.cafeWordPress may be run by… that guy, but it still has a massive user base. They all need better accessibility documentation.
@… wants to improve it, but needs sponsors:
https://
@hey@social.nowicki.ioAliExpress is a UX nightmare. They send notifications for everything,order status, promos, God knows what else, on every channel in the same time. Whatsapp, push, email. Ffs I'll remove my account soon after I get the package and never come back.
@MamasPinkyToe@mastodon.worldA Batjob. That's what Batman calls a blowjob. A Catjob is what Catwoman calls it when Batman returns the favor.
Batman: Say, do you know how long we've been together?
Catman: A long, long time. Thousands of Batjobs. Five or six Catjobs. A long time.
@brentsleeper@sfba.social“i need everyone in the white house press pool to ask karoline leavitt if the president thinks joe biden is a clone or a robot. he can’t be both! we need to know which one he thinks it is.” https://bsky.app/profile/socialistdogmom.bsky.social/post/3lqj7isldfs2y…
@salrandolph@zirk.usWhat is practice?
Practice is like a keel—deep contact with the self helps you not be blown around by every wind. Attentively returning to yourself for a period of time every day can be like coming home.
https://salrandolph.substack.com/p/ways-of-seeing-practice…
@nelson@tech.lgbtCalamus 16 Who is now reading this?
A funny little poem, omitted in later editions. On the surface it's a challenge to the reader and a chance for Whitman to establish himself as self-aware. Claiming his own flaws.
But the text drips with some latent queer meaning
as if I do not secretly love strangers!
(O tenderly, a long time, and never avow it ;)
A secret love that you can never avow? Hello! At least it's tenderly and a long time.
This seems as good a time as any to link Whitman's Boys, a good recent piece considering Whitman as a queer man and what that means to us in current times. It's a nice overview of some queer theory and is even-handed.
@arXiv_eessAS_bot@mastoxiv.pageReducing Object Hallucination in Large Audio-Language Models via Audio-Aware Decoding
Tzu-wen Hsu, Ke-Han Lu, Cheng-Han Chiang, Hung-yi Lee
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.07233
@arXiv_csCR_bot@mastoxiv.pageThis https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.18858 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csCR_…
@jamie@boothcomputing.social
@shriramk@mastodon.socialMy mind boggled the first time I was walked around some major Canadian city and came across a Hudson's Bay Company store. It'd be like walking around Kolkota and running into an East India Company store—not just the same name but also the same company.
@kosmoplan@social.linux.pizzaBad thing about Lamine's brilliance is... he plays for Barcelona. Good thing is... this time, such a player is Spanish.
I wonder what's to come in the next World Cup when we get there with Lamine, Pedri, Nico, etc etc. I must admit I'm looking forward to it...
@akosma@mastodon.online"For more than half a century, Argentina has tried as hard as it could to push intellectuals out of the country, committing a slow institutionalized suicide. This almost imperceptible rotting process is at the root of the decadence of what was considered one of the richest and most advanced countries at the beginning of the 20th century."
Watching the US repeating this pattern in real time is unbearable yet completely predictable.
@ian@phpc.socialPresenting on osquery (h/t @… for why I know what I know) in a couple hours at @dodaus! I've attended (at the previous venue) a couple of years of this event, but this is my first time on stage here. Should be a lotta fun.
@niqdanger@social.linux.pizzaThat sewing machine part from Canada? It was reshipped, and hopefully will arrive this time. Who knows what process it will go through, or what I will have to do to get it. If the gub-mint imposes a tax, do I pay it on pickup or what? All this to get a sewing machine from 1953 sewing again. Yeesh. I other sewing news, the 1937 Featherweight is working. I removed the old busted (and hardwired) pedal, and got a replacement cord/pedal. I just need to finish the cleaning / lube job and then gif…
@arXiv_csMA_bot@mastoxiv.pageTime to Talk: LLM Agents for Asynchronous Group Communication in Mafia Games
Niv Eckhaus, Uri Berger, Gabriel Stanovsky
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.05309 ht…
@deprogrammaticaipsum@mas.to"Quite simply, if you have not read this book yet, read it. If you have a colleague who has yet to read it, get them a copy. If someone asks you what one book to read about software engineering, it is this one. It is not Code Complete, Second Edition, nor is it Clean Code, nor any other book that claims to teach you how to get software right the first time around (you will not)."
https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/michael-feathers/
@thesaigoneer@social.linux.pizzaTo paraphrase Barry Scwartz: The Paradox of Choice – Why More Is Less
With the continuous glitz of KDE, Hyprland, dwm, Slackware and Gentoo as daily drivers it's the time of year to start winding down.
Also because I've been revisiting Steve Anelay's videos (OldTechBloke, sorely missed) I'll spend a month on the Mate desktop, starting this Saturday.
But what to run it on? Help me make a choice, appreciated 😎
@vibhurishi@social.linux.pizzaWhere have the trees gone ?
I have been traveling on the Delhi - Dehradun highway since college. For the last decade I have been driving on that road.
New roads are coming up. Faster travel time.
Earlier the road sides had trees. They provide shade in the extreme summers. Now there is nothing but a paved road. You cannot even get off it as it's a highway if you wanted to stop.
I am wondering what is the impact of this ? Already the heat is increasing year on ye…
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialLet's say you find a really cool forum online that has lots of good advice on it. It's even got a very active community that's happy to answer questions very quickly, and the community seems to have a wealth of knowledge about all sorts of subjects.
You end up visiting this community often, and trusting the advice you get to answer all sorts of everyday questions you might have, which before you might have found answers to using a web search (of course web search is now full of SEI spam and other crap so it's become nearly useless).
Then one day, you ask an innocuous question about medicine, and from this community you get the full homeopathy treatment as your answer. Like, somewhat believable on the face of it, includes lots of citations to reasonable-seeming articles, except that if you know even a tiny bit about chemistry and biology (which thankfully you do), you know that the homoeopathy answers are completely bogus and horribly dangerous (since they offer non-treatments for real diseases). Your opinion of this entire forum suddenly changes. "Oh my God, if they've been homeopathy believers all this time, what other myths have they fed me as facts?"
You stop using the forum for anything, and go back to slogging through SEI crap to answer your everyday questions, because one you realize that this forum is a community that's fundamentally untrustworthy, you realize that the value of getting advice from it on any subject is negative: you knew enough to spot the dangerous homeopathy answer, but you know there might be other such myths that you don't know enough to avoid, and any community willing to go all-in on one myth has shown itself to be capable of going all in on any number of other myths.
...
This has been a parable about large language models.
#AI #LLM
@andres4ny@social.ridetrans.itwoo! #FuckAndrewCuomo
@al3x@hachyderm.ioI cannot figure out how to use Github Copilot in @… @… on demand.
Is it a way to make it work like code assist? Basically trigger it with a shortcut.
I don’t want it turned on all the time spewing text right in front of what I write.
@gedankenstuecke@scholar.social«At this point, things are so ridiculous that I feel like I'm huffing paint fumes every time I read Techmeme. If you're a member of the media reading this, I implore you to look more critically on what's going on, to learn about the industries in question and begin asking yourselves why you continually and blandly write up whatever it is they say.»
🔥🔥🔥
https://www.wheresyoured.at/measures/
@fortune@social.linux.pizzaAfter his Ignoble Disgrace, Satan was being expelled from
Heaven. As he passed through the Gates, he paused a moment in thought,
and turned to God and said, "A new creature called Man, I hear, is soon
to be created."
"This is true," He replied.
"He will need laws," said the Demon slyly.
"What! You, his appointed Enemy for all Time! You ask for the
right to make his laws?"
"Oh, no!" Satan replied…
@nemorosa@mastodon.nu#WritersCoffeeClub 5/27. What is a ‘load-bearing’ part of your non-writerly life that makes writing possible for you?
I have a limited amount of energy and my family comes first, and then obligations that I have to take care of. Work is necessary, not optional.
The time I have left is my spare time. We all have that, an hour or two when we're free.
During that time,…
@adamhotep@infosec.exchangeI made a helper for Proximity (a word association game like #Semantle). It lets you poke around the database to see what's close to what:
https://github.com/adamhotep/userscrip
@geant@mstdn.social
@frankel@mastodon.topThis review is about Writing for Developers by Piotr Sarna and Cynthia Dunlop from Manning.
I started this blog as a hobby 17 years ago, in April 2008. At the time, I had no clue about technical writing.Since then, the landscape has changed a lot, to the point that companies hire for technical writer positions.
I was curious to compare what I learned by doing to the structured approach of a book. Here’s my review.
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.netSeries D, Episode 08 - Games
SOOLIN: Do you think they planned that explosion?
AVON: Not this time. This was just a happy accident. But now the Federation is aware of the potential of Feldon power systems. Orac?
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/408/5 B7B5
@arXiv_condmatmeshall_bot@mastoxiv.pageThis https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.12729 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@a…
@brentsleeper@sfba.social“it is a truth of this website that no matter what position you hold on any topic, one of the most terminally online people on earth whose full time job appears to be getting angry on the internet will appear to declare that you are a centrist” https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:3s5wt
@arXiv_econEM_bot@mastoxiv.pageGet me out of this hole: a profile likelihood approach to identifying and avoiding inferior local optima in choice models
Stephane Hess, David Bunch, Andrew Daly
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.02722
@deprogrammaticaipsum@mas.to"My vision of a world with computers is a world in which people have a lot more time to do what they like. Playing tennis, jogging… they’ll have plenty of time to go to the shore. I’d go to the library. I could do my work at home. I could have a computer at home and talk to my office. I could live up on top of a nice mountain in New Hampshire and smell pine trees and it would be the same as if I were here in the sub-sub-subbasement of the Pentagon."
– Grace Hopper
@arXiv_astrophEP_bot@mastoxiv.pageSorcha: Optimized Solar System Ephemeris Generation
Matthew J. Holman, Pedro H. Bernardinelli, Megan E. Schwamb, Mario Juri\'c, Drew Oldag, Maxine West, Kevin J. Napier, Stephanie R. Merritt, Grigori Fedorets, Samuel Cornwall, Jacob A. Kurlander, Siegfried Eggl, Jeremy Kubica, Kathleen Kiker, Joseph Murtagh, Shantanu P. Naidu, Colin Orion Chandler
@chris@mstdn.chrisalemany.caOOOHH!!!! 🚨
Just got an email from the BC Government! My FOI request that I submitted almost exactly two years ago in 2023 has finally completed!
Looks like there is ALOT of redacted/partial disclosures
I'm going to keep a lid on what this is all about other than to say, it's about trains and climate change! lol (which is convenient, given my earlier post this morning)
Time for some light reading!
(edit: Holy.... it's 1600 pages!!!)
#FOI #BCPoli #CanPoli #CdnPoli
@salrandolph@zirk.usWhenever her phone rang or her doorbell sounded, Dorothy Parker would say, “What fresh hell is this?” I’ve taken to repeating it under my breath every time I open my social media apps.
This may sound dark, but it reminds me that I can approach the onslaught of news and opinion with my own attitude: with humor and, above all, with curiosity.
@nemorosa@mastodon.nu#WritersCoffeeClub 5/27. What is a ‘load-bearing’ part of your non-writerly life that makes writing possible for you?
I have a limited amount of energy and my family comes first, and then obligations that I have to take care of. Work is necessary, not optional.
The time I have left is my spare time. We all have that, an hour or two when we're free.
During that time,…
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.netSeries C, Episode 13 - Terminal
SERVALAN: Oh, but they're not. The planet's evolution was massively accelerated. It developed through millions of years in a very short time. The creature you saw is not what Man developed from. It is what Man will become. I think I'm ready. [To Tarrant] Give the order. Please.
TARRANT: Take them up, Vila.
@kazys@mastodon.socialAnother week, another essay. This time, it's an essay for the Florilegium, my native plant gardening blog, a deep dive into the Japanese garden aesthetic in the United States, why it is not just lazy but harmful in so many ways and what alternative might we seek. Link in the comments.
@Caerfinon@mastodon.socialMy dog Huck 3rd week of recovery. He is doing very well and the new hip is working out very well. The first two weeks consumed pretty much all my available time and then some, but that's what you do for your Best Friend.
#SmallThings
@castarco@hachyderm.iotechno-political rant
Say what you want about using the right tool for each problem, but there are tools that suck no matter what.
I'm tired of people portraying legit technical criticism as "biased" and "religious", while at the same time they present themselves as tolerant and open-minded (spoiler: for the most part, they aren't).
Almost every day of my life I have to deal with the nasty consequences of ultra-dumb decisions made by the very same people who are obsessed with productivity and criticise all day long whoever pushes for any design that shows any minim amount of care and/or deep thought (mostly via strawmen arguments).
And, of course, unironically: this has a lot to do with capitalism, as many of our other social and economic problems.
They arrive, have a strike of super-productivity for a few weeks/months and then use that as a trampoline to raise through the ranks or abandon ship before having to face the consequences of their technical crimes.
Then others arrive and are obviously slower at that same job... so the uneducated observers start believing that these newcomers aren't as good as the class traitors who wrote the initial nasty code.
To make things worse, if any of these newcomers dare to speak openly about introducing good practices... this ends up creating a new mental association (in the minds of uneducated observers) between "good engineering" and "lack of productivity".
The ones trying to fix the mess are indeed slower, not because they try to do things the right way though, but because they have to waste vasts amounts of time fixing what is objectively broken besides doing the "visible" work.
Most of today's established "super-productive" ones, if they were starting today, would be probably "vibe coders", certainly not what we commonly understand as a programmer. Not because AI-coding is the future, but because they never cared about the trade at all. They were here only for the grift.
@tydalforce@mastodon.worldBummer. Mozilla, makers of Firefox, are shutting down their "Pocket" and "Fakespot" services.
I use Fakespot constantly, every time I go to buy something from Amazon (or another supported retailer). I'd pay to use it, but it's going away. Ugh...
@… @…
@andres4ny@social.ridetrans.itwoo! #FuckAndrewCuomo
@gedankenstuecke@scholar.social«At this point, things are so ridiculous that I feel like I'm huffing paint fumes every time I read Techmeme. If you're a member of the media reading this, I implore you to look more critically on what's going on, to learn about the industries in question and begin asking yourselves why you continually and blandly write up whatever it is they say.»
🔥🔥🔥
https://www.wheresyoured.at/measures/
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.netSeries C, Episode 13 - Terminal
SERVALAN: Oh, but they're not. The planet's evolution was massively accelerated. It developed through millions of years in a very short time. The creature you saw is not what Man developed from. It is what Man will become. I think I'm ready. [To Tarrant] Give the order. Please.
TARRANT: Take them up, Vila.
@spamless@mastodon.social @deprogrammaticaipsum@mas.to"The RDBMS field is so young, we can actually see it grow through the pages of computer magazines of the 1980s. BYTE Magazine had its first issue dedicated to databases in November 1981, and then another one in October 1984. Dr. Dobb’s Journal did not feature an article about databases until 1984 and did not have many more throughout the decade; actually most of them were authored by Gene Head, and talk about dBASE."
@geant@mstdn.socialWhat's coming up during #TNC25 - Part 2
Get a first look at the programme highlights in the carousel below 👇 From Community Hub sessions to beloved Lightning Talks—here’s what not to miss!
📌 Explore the full programme − https://t…
@castarco@hachyderm.ioRant about PHP
You know a technology is declining when the most basic questions about its most bizarre quirks are left completely unanswered for years.
#PHP is like that. Every day I have many of these questions. I look for them. No one asked them before, no one wrote about them before.
I'm baffled by the lack of curiosity and proactivity of its community.
I know it sounds like me piling up on people I don't know anything about, but I used to invest a lot of time programming in PHP. I went to conferences, I made some open source libraries for it, like a PHP kernel for Jupyter Notebooks, I even made a library to work with dataframes, tensors and matrices in PHP (although I lost this one because my laptop was stolen before I released... and I didn't had it in me to rewrite it again).
Then, the ones who I admired the most in that space, like Nikita Popov, started leaving it to work in more intellectually vibrant communities... and it shows.
I'm sure Nikita Popov would be much more gracious than me when talking about it. I can only speculate about his motivations, but at least I can tell you about mine: It was precisely about that same lack of curiosity and creativity that I mentioned before, it felt unbearably grey and sad.
@nemorosa@mastodon.nu#WordWeavers May 29
Have you ever doubted you'd finish a draft? If so, what kept you going?
All the time.
I finish what I start, I'm stubborn like that. Stupidly stubborn, one might say even. It is not a virtue, I can tell you.
@nemorosa@mastodon.nu#WordWeavers May 29
Have you ever doubted you'd finish a draft? If so, what kept you going?
All the time.
I finish what I start, I'm stubborn like that. Stupidly stubborn, one might say even. It is not a virtue, I can tell you.
@pre@boing.worldSo, we have a song-contest blighted by a genocidal unethical corporate sponsor, with the remnants of the wiped-out race threatening a revenge genocide of their own.
Unusually political with the allegory there then.
Great looking scene when the roof was blown open, thousands of people all being sucked off! Looked great, but what a body count?! And the Doctor and his Tardis both sucked off too! He's frozen.
"The Mavity Shell is still open." Lol. Still doing that then.
Susan is here! His granddaughter. Just in visions though, not actually really there. She looks older now. Sixty years on. She's like 80 years old now. "Find me" she says. Not this season though I suspect.
I liked him using the Confetti Cannon to fly though space. Peter Davidson used a cricket ball to bounce off a space ship when he was stranded in outer space. And Peter never froze.
Also a great prat-fall after landing, pointing and gasping and then just toppling.
Silly muppets-aliens song was fab.
Anti-gambling fraud laws prevent calling for help. Brilliant.
Expected that hair to be hiding a set of horns, not that she'd have cut them off.
The Doctor has ice in his heart now, more angry than we've seen Nchuti's Doctor. Trillions gonna die, Belinda dead, Tardis lost. Almost genocidal himself. Certainly vengeful. Timelord victorious.
Belinda is scared too: "If he's angry, this whole world is going to shake", but it ain't a world is it? It's a space station. Much easier to shake 😝
Explosion breaking through the Tardis doors near the end is quite a cliff hanger, but not even actually the end.
Because Mrs Flood is the Rani, finally! Every mystery character has had the fans hoping it's the Rani for years. Like it never being Lupus for the other Doctor: Doctor House. Finally it is Lupus, I mean the Rani.
Not sure I like this bi-generation again though. It's supposed to be rare, but now it feels like it's every time. Still, at least it keeps Miss Flood there as Rani's lackey.
Who actually was the Rani again?
She's from the first McCoy episode: she tries to build a time control device by gathering geniuses from time and blowing up a planet. Pretends to be Mel, the Doctor's companion at the time, to fool McCoy into hhelping. So interesting that her new regeneration looks a little like Belinda. 🤨🤔
I figured Mrs Flood was just Missy, the female Master. But then The Rani was always just a female version of The Master before Transsexual Regeneration was a thing anyway.
Well, just the double finale left then. Exciting.
#watching #tv #doctorWho #interstellarSongContest
@geant@mstdn.socialWhat's coming up during #TNC25 - Part 3
Get a first look at the programme highlights in the carousel below 👇
📌 Explore the full programme − https://tnc25.geant.org/programme/
…
@castarco@hachyderm.ioIf there's anything we could learn from yesterday's #SpainBlackout is that running software on the cloud that could run locally... is a terrible idea.
#LocalFirst software should be prioritised by companies and public administrations.
I don't think Spanish people will learn the lesson this time (I'm Spanish, so I know what I'm talking about from first hand experience).
I foresee some small groups will react, and start spreading the word, but it will take many other disasters like this one for people to finally understand.
#PowerOutage #Spain #Portugal
