“How may the compulsive programmer be distinguished from a merely dedicated, hard-working professional programmer? First, by the fact that the ordinary professional programmer addresses himself to the problem to be solved, whereas the compulsive programmer sees the problem mainly as an opportunity to interact with the computer. The ordinary computer programmer will usually discuss both his substantive and his technical programming problem with others. He will generally do lengthy preparatory work, such as writing and flow diagramming, before beginning work with the computer itself. His sessions with the computer may be comparatively short. He may even let others do the actual console work. He develops his program slowly and systematically. When something doesn't work, he may spend considerable time away from the computer, framing careful hypotheses to account for the malfunction and designing crucial experiments to test them. Again, he may leave the actual running of the computer to others. He is able, while waiting for results from the computer, to attend to other aspects of his work, such as documenting what he has already done. When he has finally composed the program he set out to produce, he is able to complete a sensible description of it and to turn his attention to other things. The professional regards programming as a means toward an end, not as an end in itself. His satisfaction comes from having solved a substantive problem, not from having bent a computer to his will.”
—Joseph Weizenbaum, Computer Power and Human Reason, 1976
I am addicted to rewriting these UIs in SwiftUI.
Next victim, the AnimationStateMachine.
The main driver was just killing the select/add/connect modal system, that feels like using VI on a UI - but while I was working on it, decided to tune up a little the UI.
When you tap on a wire, you get a popup to configure the transition, which you have to preselect in the original:
The original Godot, my version.
Kristi Noem thanked Donald Trump for her new role as
special envoy for the
“Shield of the Americas”
while acknowledging her ouster as Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary.
Noem said she looks forward to working with secretary of state Marco Rubio and defense secretary Pete Hegseth to
“dismantle cartels”
as part of the president’s initiative that he’ll announce on Saturday.
It’s May Day and while this might not be a General Strike action
Musicians and artists get 90% of proceeds today 💰 support them by clicking through the #BandcampFriday links on today’s @… podcast playlist while listening to this week’s episode
…
While Pentagon budgets have steadily increased over recent decades,
the arms industry has become more consolidated, more automated,
and less labor-intensive
— upending the idea that the warfare state is an effective economic development strategy for working people,
and strengthening the case for a state-led shift toward a civilian industrial base focused on green manufacturing
Steven High, a historian of labour and de-industrialization, knows a thing or two. Here he offers his take on Lewis, contextualizing the positions he's taken in a very (very, very) brief potted history of the NDP and a reflection on the party as it stands at the moment. Worth a couple of minutes.
https://
While working through another last rites slew, I was thinking that back in the day there were a number of developers who believed they should add a lot of packages to #Gentoo, in the name of giving users a choice. Like, they were projects whose sole purpose of existence seemed to be to find every piece of software that roughly fit a specific topic, get it to build and package it for Gentoo.
Of course, the long-term effect of that is that there's a lot of unmaintained, often broken packages. "The choice" doesn't really work. Sure, users have a lot of packages to choose from — but they have to actually figure out which of these packages are actually useful (if any).
A few years ago attempting to remove packages also faced some verbal opposition. You shouldn't remove unmaintained or outdated packages, because they still work. You shouldn't remove packages that sometimes fail to build, because some flag combinations still work. You shouldn't remove packages that don't build at all, because the user can visit Forums and find some workaround to make them build 🤦. Or they'll have an ebuild handy to start working on it. And anyway, you shouldn't be removing stuff at all, but fixing it instead.
Sometimes the arguments were straight dishonest too: people literally said we need more packages to lure new users in. Like, it didn't matter to them that the packages didn't really work and that the people trying to use them will get a nasty surprise. They wanted people to say "hey, Gentoo has this software we need, let's start using Gentoo".
Sadly couldn't join myself (wife wasn't feeling good and wanted me to stay home and help parent while she napped) but my SAR team participated in a great inter-agency training this past weekend.
It's always nice to practice alongside volunteers from other teams that we work with on real incidents and get to know each other without the pressure of a real emergency.
One note: I half feel like there should be a CW on this post for mentioning law enforcement in a positiv…
Gym listening while trying to combat the effects of sitting down too.much: meet the men who wrecked the office.
Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford: "And it went click" - Dawn of the Working Dead
Episode webpage: https://omny.fm/shows/cautionary-tales-with-tim-harford/and-it-went-click-dawn-of-the-working-dead
There’s life beyond VSCode… thought I’d share my dev setup:
• Main monitor: WezTerm¹ running in a three (sometimes four)-way split with Helix Editor² as my main editor, a terminal pane for general commands while working, and Yazi³ usually running in another for working with files/directories in a project.
• Other monitor: Sublime Merge⁴ always running full-screen so I can immediately see exactly what I’ve changed (in real time) as I’m working.
Others (not shown): Br…
At a networking event🕸 at a conf a while ago, the person next to me said she's working on emission reduction for the production of "Salpetersäure"⚗️. (Nitric Acid)
I barely knew what that is, but I got interested📚. And, you know how it goes, soon afterwards I ended up sending FOIA🔎 requests about the production of a Vitamin💊 to Swiss🇨🇭 authorities & was asking myself how many Caprolactam factories there are in Europe, and why, on earth, they aren't covered by the E…
It’s been a very lucrative year for Steve Witkoff.
While he was jetting around the world from Miami and Moscow to Israel and Oman,
his fortune jumped 15% to $2.3 billion,
up from an estimated $2 billion
when he started working for the government.
That was largely thanks to his investments in crypto firm World Liberty Financial,
which his sons Zach and Alex cofounded with Trump’s sons Don Jr., Eric and Barron.
Forbes estimates that the Witkoffs pocket…
Been working on a blog post idea about how the 'old', real, more simple web is still around, usable, fuck the big corpo garbage web, and so on. Been seeing other great pieces on it, gathering ideas, wanna reference them, etc. Wanna collect all of them and say something intelligent about it but wow it's gonna take a while to collect it all and write it up 😂 But be assured, it's on its way eventually. Hopefully sooner than later. I want it to be almost like a brief, simple road…
I'm starting to sell some of my sealed Magic the Gathering Draft Boosters and Play Boosters boxes I've acquired over the years while working on Magic sets.
Starting with this one: https://www.ebay.ie/itm/147225537683
I mentioned previously that my son-in-law's sister and her husband are working on the new Cadillac #F1 team that will compete for the first time in 2026. The couple are both engineers who met over a decade ago while working for a racing team in Europe. That experience was why they were recruited and became one of a handful of rare Canadians working on the project team.
I'm not really a #Formula1 race fan but I am following this team because of the connection. They were recently at the auto show in Toronto where the race car was displayed. They shared a photo of them pointing to their names on the chassis, along with the names of the entire team. Track testing is now underway and it will be interesting to see how they stack up against the legendary manufacturers in this sport.
https://youtu.be/d7BDA7JGamk
While we are still working on some final program decisions, we are happy to announce, that a first batch of sessions for #bbuzz are online already: https://2026.berlinbuzzwords.de/sessions/
So my code seems to be working. Each night (in theory, while I am sleeping) a script will run pulling all the bookmarks from my local instance of Linkding and dropping them into a SQLite database...
And then another script runs to post a link here with a "bookmarks" hashtag.
There are some (potential) issues. Since I am posting one per day starting about last October, I may run out at some point, if I don't keep adding more bookmarks...
At a networking event🕸 at a conf a while ago, the person next to me said she's working on emission reduction for the production of "Salpetersäure"⚗️. (Nitric Acid)
I barely knew what that is, but I got interested📚. And, you know how it goes, soon afterwards I ended up sending FOIA🔎 requests about the production of a Vitamin💊 to Swiss🇨🇭 authorities & was asking myself how many Caprolactam factories there are in Europe, and why, on earth, they aren't covered by the E…
Update of the Fortinet VPN make the speed if Internet equivalent to an ADSL modem. Cool - now I can do a lot of Mastodon while working against the server 😃
Related, do you know if anyone is currently working on such a project? I haven't followed @… closely for a while, but I'm not aware of anything beyond the blog and I'm not aware of other groups doing similar work.
Tailoring AI-Driven Reading Scaffolds to the Distinct Needs of Neurodiverse Learners
Soufiane Jhilal, Eleonora Pasqua, Caterina Marchesi, Riccardo Corradi, Martina Galletti
https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.28370 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2603.28370 https://arxiv.org/html/2603.28370
arXiv:2603.28370v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Neurodiverse learners often require reading supports, yet increasing scaffold richness can sometimes overload attention and working memory rather than improve comprehension. Grounded in the Construction-Integration model and a contingent scaffolding perspective, we examine how structural versus semantic scaffolds shape comprehension and reading experience in a supervised inclusive context. Using an adapted reading interface, we compared four modalities: unmodified text, sentence-segmented text, segmented text with pictograms, and segmented text with pictograms plus keyword labels. In a within-subject pilot with 14 primary-school learners with special educational needs and disabilities, we measured reading comprehension using standardized questions and collected brief child- and therapist-reported experience measures alongside open-ended feedback. Results highlight heterogeneous responses as some learners showed patterns consistent with benefits from segmentation and pictograms, while others showed patterns consistent with increased coordination costs when visual scaffolds were introduced. Experience ratings showed limited differences between modalities, with some apparent effects linked to clinical complexity, particularly for perceived ease of understanding. Open-ended feedback of the learners frequently requested simpler wording and additional visual supports. These findings suggest that no single scaffold is universally optimal, reinforcing the need for calibrated, adjustable scaffolding and provide design implications for human-AI co-regulation in supervised inclusive reading contexts.
toXiv_bot_toot
RE: https://follow.ethanmarcotte.com/@beep/116212648699632674
This is very good. While I don't think the personal choices are available quite the way this makes it seem, a lot of the core sentiments I deeply agree with: Thinking, for ourselves, and working slowly to make what's new and good rather than what's cliche and expected, is very good, and we need to make that choice. A lot.
You’re working on a site. It’s not ready. You need a friendly “we’re getting there” page in front of everything while you keep building behind it without the overkill.
https://josvelasco.com/connect-the-blocks-someone-has-to/
🏆 Achievement Double Trouble unlocked:
Wearing sweatpants over pajama pants while working from home.
I saw an Explaining Computers video about the Peripad-506 trackpad, and while he cautioned that not all features were working outside of Windows, enough of it worked in Linux that I wanted to get it, as I need something gentle on the hand at the moment. I'm happy to report that it just works great in KDE. Maybe it is better supported now than when he tested it; gestures, 2- and 3-finger taps etc. work great, and I'm using it on a tablet that already has a trackpad, but they show up a…
Palantir CEO Alex Karp thinks his AI technology will lessen the power of “highly educated, often female voters, who vote mostly Democrat” while increasing the power of working-class men.
“This technology disrupts humanities-trained—largely Democratic—voters, and makes their economic power less. And increases the economic power of vocationally trained, working-class, often male, working-class voters,” Karp said in a CNBC interview Thursday.
“And so these disruptions are gonna disru…
🎩 A background historian compresses older conversation parts into structured summaries while the main agent keeps working — no pause, no interruption. The agent never summarizes its own history.
💾 Cross-session memory: architecture decisions, naming conventions & user preferences survive session restarts. New conversations start with everything the previous session learned.
Quantum Graph Theory by Example
Gian Luca Spitzer, Ion Nechita
https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.23651 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2603.23651 https://arxiv.org/html/2603.23651
arXiv:2603.23651v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Quantum graphs have been introduced by Duan, Severini, and Winter to describe the zero-error behaviour of quantum channels. Since then, quantum graph theory has become a field of study in its own right. A substantial source of difficulty in working with quantum graphs compared to classical graphs stems from the fact that they are no longer discrete objects. This makes it generally difficult to construct insightful, non-trivial examples. We present a collection of non-trivial quantum graphs that can be thought of in discrete terms, and that can be expressed in the diagrammatic formalism introduced by Musto, Reutter, and Verdon. The examples arise as the quantum graphs acted on by increasingly smaller classical matrix groups, and are parametrised by triples of matrices $(A, B, C)$. The parametrisation reveals a clean decomposition of quantum graph structure into classical and genuinely quantum components: $A$ and $C$ are described by a classical weighted graph called the strange graph, while $B$ provides a purely quantum contribution with no classical analogue. Based on this model, we give exact formulas or establish bounds for quantum graph parameters, such as the number of connected components, the chromatic number, the independence number, and the clique number. Our results provide the first large, parametric families of quantum graphs for which standard graph parameters can be computed analytically.
toXiv_bot_toot
The sensor came off yesterday while working on the shed. Installed a new one, after the hour setup reading was in the 50's so very low. Checked and was in the 90's. Figured it needed time to setup. Disabled bluetooth so it would stop alarming. I normally install them 8 to 9 hours before a sensor is due to be replaced so they have settled down. Ate supper, was bad we had tortellinis.
When I turned the bluetooth back on that night reading was in the 90's so figured OK its w…
The corruption of the Trump Administration remains so massive
while also being so obvious
that people just don’t know what to do.
If Kushner was merely shaking someone down for $5,000 using his government role, there’d be an outcry.
But do it for $5,000,000,000 and mostly there’s 🤷♂️
#TrumpCorruptionWatch
Went shopping.
One pack of lean ground beef (that used to serve four, now 2.5) went from $9 last week to $9.50 today. (Save-On Foods - Jimmy Pattinson Group)
That “pact” the grocery billionaires signed is working great.
I am sure Carney is seized with affordability for Canadians while he flies around the world promising secure oil for Europe.
Anyway, more cowbell.
#cdnpoli #canpoli #food #shopping
One of my VR Lighthouses died last month. These things are gyroscopically spinning 24 hours a day for, what, a decade now? Nearly.
No wonder. Mostly the industry seems to be settling on using head-mounted cameras rather than sweeping infra-red beams and receptors on the head anyway.
It is true that lighthouses give accurate positioning, but means I can't easily take the headset next door, say. Or to a party.
So inside-out, as they call it, is fine for the headset now and mostly okay for the hand-controllers.
But it offers no solution at all for the foot-trackers and hip-tracker that I need for puppetting the characters in the #vr #slimeVR #trackers
Probably the least helpful or logical dialogue I've seen on #MacOS in a while. Can or cannot? Green gheckmark for an error? And this is an Apple Keyboard with TouchID, so very recent.
Needless to say that this "keyboard identification" is all useless anyway because the keyboard is working just fine. After all, it is just a USB-keyboard.
Jared Kushner, one of the U.S. government’s chief negotiators in the Middle East, is trying to raise more money for his private equity firm from governments in the region.
Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, has spoken with potential investors in recent weeks about raising $5 billion or more for
"Affinity Partners", his investment firm,
Kushner’s fund-raising is expected to stretch on for the better part of this year.
The efforts show the blurring of the lin…
Proper #security nightmare time.
#LMDB is a database that's designed to operate on trusted input. Upstream has historically rejected all bug reports regarding problems with malformed input.
Py-LMDB project provides #Python bindings to LMDB that are normally built against bundled LMDB. Someone recently started mass-filing "untrusted input" vulnerabilities against py-lmdb, and py-lmdb started #slop - coding fixes to their bundled LMDB. Of course, nobody even bothered reporting most of these bugs upstream, and the one that I've seen reported was rejected as "don't do that".
Py-LMDB supports building against system LMDB, and #Gentoo was doing that so far. However, now we are facing a problem: system LMDB operates under the assumption that it is working on trusted input, while py-lmdb (and its bundled LMDB) operates under the assumption that it may be working with untrusted input. The guarantees no longer align.
If we continue to use system LMDB (and skip all the added slop tests that literally cause Python to crash), then Gentoo's py-lmdb package will now have different input expectations than upstream py-lmdb. And of course we can't just remove that crap because someone added exactly one package (TorchVision, i.e. part of the plagiarism machine suite) depending on it.
https://bugs.gentoo.org/971352
Very proud and excited to vote in the NDP leadership race today!!
This is not the first time I've voted in a Federal leadership race... more on that later but first, my choices! I considered only voting for two people, but I ended up filling in all 5 choices.
#1: Tanille Johnston @…
#2: Avi Lewis @…
#3: Heather McPherson
#4: Tony McQuail
#5: Rob Ashton
Why?
You might ask why I would publicize my choices. I don’t expect others to of course. It is a privilege and a right in Canada to exercise your democratic choice freely and privately, but I also think there is value in knowing how others voted.
#1 why Tanille? #electoralReform and proportional representation myself, I didn't just want to pick my top two. I wanted to make a statement on each of these candidates an influence each one.
To be blunt, Heather is #3 because she is the middle-of-the-road candidate. She is an excellent representative as MP and has gathered the support of other MPs including my own, but while I would be OK with her leadership, I would see her as a continuation of the status quo, and that is not what the NDP needs as a party, nor is it what Canada needs as a country.
We desperately need a vigorous and clear alternative to the Centre-but-mostly-Right Liberals, and the MAGA-wannabe Conservatives. The only way to do that is to catch the attention of Canadians and inspire them. I am not sure that Heather has the ability to do that, and if we continue with the same leadership crew in the NDP, I am not confident that the policy choices will be strong enough to inspire and attract Canadians.
That is why Tanille and Avi are far better options.
#4 Why Tony:
Tony is the real deal. Honestly, I would have loved to rank him higher. He represents the true life blood of rural, socially progressive, environmentally aware, Canadians. You should go check out his platform. I am so glad that he was able to participate fully in the race and we need his voice in the NDP.
#5 Why not Rob?
I have been an active member in my Union for more than 10 years. Unionism is The Way. Rob is representing a division within the union movement that claims that working people can't have jobs if the environment is put first. This is a lie.
We need union leaders that look to the future and speak honestly to people. We need union leaders who are genuinely progressive, not ready to do the bidding of corporate masters to the benefit of a few.
Working people need honesty, and when an industry is on decline, a clear path to new, excellent, union, jobs!
#CanPoli #CdnPoli #Liberal #CPC #Canada #Democracy #NDP
@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io
