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Public Key

npub1820k96h86306z49k2f92eal40myuu28az5j6tmyy73wwpk5kukws4lzysf

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsr48mzatnaghap2jm9yj4v7l6hajww9r732fd9ajz0gh8qm2twt8gpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0ds9n8f9n

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Last Notes

2026-05-18 15:40:11 UTC

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Learned helplessness is, alas, not a new thing -- people with privilege (or who thought they have privilege) have been failing to do basic things forever. I'm thinking of my 90 year old stepdad who couldn't cook or do household chores (including bill-paying) to save his life or, alas, 90s-era me who didn't do dishes or laundry. (I've fixed that, at least)
It's been "those damn kids" for all of recorded history.

2026-05-18 15:16:47 UTC

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A selfishness epidemic, a learned helplessness epidemic, and a self-delusion epidemic. Ones we seem to be making systemically worse which is kind of infuriating.

2026-05-06 19:11:31 UTC

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Absolutely! A decade and a half of not using AIX is definitely something to celebrate. :)

2026-05-06 18:30:18 UTC

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That's the interesting thing about being a greyhair in this industry. You've used enough different things to know they're all kinda crap and any kind of emotional buy-in to a piece of software isn't worth it because they all kinda suck in the end.
Plus, y'know, no matter how annoying switching might be, at least you're not using AIX so it could be worse.

2026-04-28 20:27:39 UTC

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“you may beat the rap but you can’t beat the ride” is a saying for a reason. Even if he beats this, and he almost undoubtedly will, it’s going to hurt and that kind of unavoidable pain is the whole point of these nonsense indictments.

2026-04-16 20:10:06 UTC

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Oh, I'm not saying ignore it. If it does what it says on the tin, or anything near it, then it should be easy enough to verify any reports it makes.
Mostly I don't think the panic some people have indulged in is warranted. It's possibly a tool to automatically find a class of problems we haven't had tooling for in the past. We'll run it, find the problems, and fix them. Temporarily annoying but not catastrophic.

2026-04-16 19:43:07 UTC

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My assumption with Mythos is, if it really does anything (which it might), that it's not really any different from any of the other automated security scanning tools that have been released over the years. There's always a wave of panic as a previously-unplumbed well of bugs is plumbed, then those are all patched, and everyone moves on with somewhat less bad software.

2026-04-03 14:02:00 UTC

The big AI push in-house is going about as well as I expected (I got a gentle warning about not AI-ing and nearly spilled the beans on retirement) and is about as reliable as I expected.
All the stuff everyone's going on about mostly point towards "we have historically really sucked at writing tools", which is no surprise because we're Google -- we are *horrible* at writing tools. Apps? Sure, we do those. Services, even. But tools that you can script? Absolutely not.

2026-03-30 15:16:42 UTC

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The standard with cubic dice, FWIW, is that opposite sides always add up to 7. So 1 and 6, 2 and 5, and 3 and 4 are opposed.

2026-03-04 19:46:28 UTC

Your semi-occasional reminder that AI-generated output (text, image, and code) is, IN THE US AT LEAST, not copyrightable.
https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB10922#:~:text=Granting%20that%20human%20authors%20may,applying%20to%20register%20their%20copyright.
So if you vibe-code/vibe-write/vibe-draw something, that something is at best not copyrightable by you. (You can hold copyright to the *prompt*, but not the output) That also means you can't put it under any kind of license, because that requires ownership.

2026-02-25 20:22:16 UTC

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I am also really curious how many people have aggressively violated various privacy laws by feeding stuff into various LLMs for "summary" and "analysis".
Frankly it should be a much larger compliance nightmare than it is. (Or, I suppose, it *is* a ginormous compliance nightmare and just right now everyone's thinking it isn't. Incorrectly)

2026-02-12 21:15:26 UTC

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Also I will remind you that the companies manufacturing tetraethyl lead *knew* it was horribly neurotoxic for a variety of reasons, including the fact that their own employees were getting disabled or killed, and they just kept on producing it *without changing any manufacturing processes* until forced.
Just in case you were wondering if maybe companies have learned to be even minimally careful about... anything, really.

2026-02-12 21:08:08 UTC

Well, OK, this bio leaves out one or two tiny, probably insignificant points. Like, for example, how this guy is arguably responsible for more deaths than any other human being in history. And also destroyed a good chunk of the ozone layer and caused a non-trivial portion of global warming.
Minor oversights, I'm sure. Anyone could miss those.
https://www.invent.org/inductees/thomas-midgley-jr

2026-01-30 15:11:21 UTC

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We could really use a loop line though, running along 128. That'd be heavy rail but whatever, that's fine. The RER works well for Paris, an equivalent should work fine for us here in Boston. Especially if it connects with Riverside (the end of the Green line) and Quincy (almost the end of the Braintree branch of the red line)

2026-01-30 15:09:02 UTC

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Boston could absolutely use this. I used to want the Green A to come back but I'm pretty sure the combined green line tunnels couldn't handle the extra traffic, so alas I am back on the "leave the A closed" train. Instead we should run *more* trains up and down the Pike -- it's commuter rail now, but mostly runs the way the A did and is frankly really underused and could support Red Line style service reasonably enough.

2026-01-30 15:06:17 UTC

This is an excellent finding, and a strong argument for combined increased public transit and congestion pricing for cities that have messy traffic. (the tldr is that the Manhattan congestion charge has reduced travel times for people who never go into Manhattan at all, since they shifted a bunch of people off the roads and onto the trains and subway)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-30/how-manhattan-s-congestion-toll-speeds-up-trips-in-the-suburbs

2026-01-28 19:14:52 UTC

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Datacenter questions:
1) How much water per day will the datacenter use from the municipal supply
2) How much electricity will it use, and how much is that relative to current usage
3) How loud will the datacenter be 250 meters from the perimeter of the property
4) Will there be any local power generation, and if so how much exhaust will it vent and in which direction will the exhaust go
5) How solvent is the company managing the datacenter

2026-01-13 20:15:38 UTC

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Hah! Is it Kessler Syndrome for a star if it's crashing its own planets into bits?

2025-12-30 15:31:07 UTC

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I don't even mind putting in the effort that frankly ought to be part of the standard maintenance cycle -- I want coffee that tastes good. I'm just not gonna spend money on this, Google has *more* than enough cash to handle this.
(What I *really* want is the regular coffee machine to produce good coffee, but that'd require both a proper cleaning and changing beans so... no. Someone else can tilt at that windmill)

2025-12-30 15:28:40 UTC

The morning's attempt to clean the office espresso machine has resulted in a somewhat less gross espresso machine and also espresso that is no better than it was before the cleaning. Which, tbh, is about what I expected given that there are exactly no supplies or tools for cleaning the machine (I had to bring in a socket set from home just to get the screens off) but I felt obligated to make the attempt.
Time to nudge the food service folks to actually clean the damn thing. Or buy supplies.

2025-12-15 19:40:32 UTC

All these techbro billionaires and CEOs pushing AI have forgotten the most important rule of being a pusher -- never, *ever* get high on your own supply.

2025-11-06 15:08:56 UTC

I know some folks aren't fans of reaction videos but there's a certain joy to be had in ones titled "First time watching The Rocky Horror Picture Show" where the top comment is "oh, you used to be Mormon. This is gonna be great!"
(Spoiler: yes)

2025-08-20 15:40:24 UTC

Every bit of this.
If an LLM can Do The Thing for you it's a sign that either The Thing has no actual value and shouldn't be done *or* that your tools an environment are flawed and you'd get more bang for your buck if you actually addressed that rather than papering over it with autogenerated fluff.
https://hachyderm.io/@thomasfuchs/115061660859355975

2025-08-09 21:16:36 UTC

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the endowment is somewhere past $50B right now, so this isn’t really anything to them. I also know exactly what’s going on, and you’ll see this happening more. FWIW this isn’t *new* stupid in the system.
Crypto is now an acceptable “alternative investment”, like many hedge fund offerings and such, and for reasons I have never understood (and I worked in finance for years) Conventional Wisdom was that orgs holding large pots of cash (like endowments or retirement funds)…

2025-07-21 14:32:53 UTC

The contempt that techbros and Silicon Valley have in general for non-"technical" employees is stunningly deep and utterly loathsome.
https://mas.to/@carnage4life/114891576743460496

2025-06-28 18:26:27 UTC

Facebook is always and forever skeevy. Don’t use it and yell at your reps to make this shit illegal. (Which, in the US, may not help, but d it anyway) With luck the EU will at least block it there. https://mamot.fr/@Khrys/114759427559566880

2025-06-10 14:41:55 UTC

"Again, never self-experiment with psychological hazards. It can take you years to unwind the damage."
https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2025/trusting-your-own-judgement-on-ai/

2025-06-06 11:13:39 UTC

The Onion is out there, once again, showing why it should be the paper of record rather than the NYT or WaPo.
https://theonion.com/rift-widens-between-elon-musk-anyone-who-ever-met-him/

2025-05-24 02:57:11 UTC

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The funny thing is the security on the Google form data is likely significantly stronger than anything they’d put together themselves.
Ok, not funny so much as sad, but…

2025-05-21 16:33:14 UTC

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I mean, I'm 100% good with purely educational/networking conferences where people get together and there are seminars and presentations and tutorials about existing stuff. It's when there's that huge push to get New Shiny Things, and a lot of them, released on a yearly cadence that everything just melts down.
I kinda miss the days when software releases were done when they were done (so, y'know, not games) rather than on a fixed calendar.

2025-05-21 16:03:57 UTC

As I'm seeing the thanks messages flow in my work email as things at I/O are presented, I have come to the not-original realization that these yearly developer presentation conferences are really kinda detrimental to good development practices.

2025-05-06 19:07:42 UTC

Watching the latest @npub1z7x…q5jf video and I so, so want us to lay in more tram infrastructure here in Boston. We used to have a lot, most of it has been ripped out, and frankly traffic would improve a whole hell of a lot if we laid in a bunch more tram tracks.
It doesn't help that we *do* actually have trams, except we manage to do them in nearly the worst way I can think of.
https://nebula.tv/videos/notjustbikes-the-absolute-best-transportation-for-cities
https://youtu.be/bNTg9EX7MLw

2025-04-30 19:25:48 UTC

If someone wanted to develop a little standalone computer-vision gadget that detected camera lenses and used that info to target IR laser diodes.... that would be OK tbh.
https://masto.deoan.org/@neurovagrant/114428210057917523

2025-04-25 19:26:19 UTC

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My husband's got one. I don't have one mostly out of sheer "I have too goddamn many subscriptions" grumpiness. The ads are tolerable, and it's the only video medium I get ads on so it's fine.

2025-04-25 19:16:20 UTC

Gotta say that YouTube is a lot more generally pleasant when I just run through my subscription and watch later lists and skip the regular feed.

2025-04-23 19:43:11 UTC

...the fan on my Airport Extreme (the core wifi node for my home network) just had its fan kick in for a minute. I didn't even know it *had* a fan.
I suspect I should start looking for a new set of wifi gadgetry, that can't be a good sign. (Though the small cloud of dust it spewed out when the fan engaged was definitely interesting to see)

2025-04-22 16:13:30 UTC

TIL: There's a shop specializing in mushrooms (for eating and decorating) in Somerville. This... doesn't in any way surprise me, and maybe I'll head over that way this weekend to check it out. (I need to hit Elmendorf Baking anyway and it's more or less nearby, relative to me at least)
https://www.the-mushroom-shop-somerville.com/
https://www.elmendorfbaking.com/

2025-04-16 17:02:34 UTC

JFC, *just* what I need -- a piece of software that is fundamentally incapable of computing the correct answer doing my taxes.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/15/chatgpt-for-taxes-openai-and-hr-block-have-a-plan-for-tax-pros.html?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

2025-04-04 16:17:16 UTC

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I got to that point in the video after I made the comment (which I deleted in embarrassment -- I *know* better than to comment before getting to the end, and yet...)

2025-04-01 15:37:01 UTC

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I am also good with Gemini collapsing though for obvious reasons I won't list why.

2025-04-01 15:29:57 UTC

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The AI trash heap is already a horrific mess. I am 100% in favor of making it demonstrably worse -- the less useful the results people get from ChatGPT the sooner it'll all collapse.

2025-04-01 14:50:24 UTC

I wonder if I could interest one of the domain registrars in donating a few dozen hundred domains temporarily to host generated websites to help poison the AI scrapers. If the disinfo/misinfo people are doing this (and they are) then the shitposting people *definitely* should start doing this.

2025-03-10 18:27:37 UTC

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...oh, god, you can only print from your HP printer with special HP ink on special BTLE enabled Smart Paper, and the ink only shows on the paper when you've paid the page viewing fee.

2025-03-10 18:22:09 UTC

This is, I assume, just a natural and inevitable progression for HP where they found it easier to just lock out *everyone's* ink cartridges. (It was a ChatGPT approved change request, I'm sure)
Next up -- there'll be a per-print session fee you have to pay to unlock the privilege of paying to print your stuff!
https://mastodon.social/@arstechnica/114139467671021911

2025-03-10 13:40:25 UTC

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I have occasionally wondered what kind of extra compression we could get if we pre-seeded compression dictionaries with domain-specific data. I assume someone has done some research on this but I've never actually gone to look.

2025-03-09 20:01:38 UTC

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I’m working out the instructions but it’s not my instance so I’m a bit limited in how far things can change. At some point I may fire up a personal one, but that point is not today.
Luckily it doesn’t come out that bad, just the docs to do it are a mess.

2025-03-09 16:35:34 UTC

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luckily the instance here is pretty stock (and pulled via git), it’s just a matter of collecting up all the steps and adds between this antique and the current head. That’s… fun. Especially because I can’t tell whether it’s OK to do all the support stuff early or if just upgrading Ruby or something will break everything.

2025-03-09 16:08:03 UTC

Going through the mastodon upgrade notes and I’m reminded how much of a pain this stuff is and how poor my own upgrade notes were back in the days when I made them.
(Things seem to have gotten much better with recent releases, but there’s a distinct lack of “you can do this fine from base version X.Y” which would be nice to have tbh)

2025-03-03 21:25:06 UTC

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I always try to remember, when I see these numbers, that they're pre-corruption and graft, and the effective number is significantly smaller.

2025-03-02 17:03:01 UTC

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SEC declaring “fine, we’re done, if you’re gonna be a sucker it’s on you”

2025-02-23 22:31:57 UTC

Huh. Finished the Duolingo French course this afternoon. This feels… weird. Also it’s kind of surreal to accomplish something, even a trivial something, in these current nightmare times.

2025-02-13 19:34:03 UTC

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...I clearly remember a very amusing meeting with one of the owners of the JVM (well, the meeting was extremely grumpy but I was amused) about how they would, maybe, possibly, dedicate *one* opcode to something that could vaguely be used by dynamic languages. Maybe. If the stars aligned just right. I can't remember offhand what it was, aside from inadequate but funny.
( @npub19ua…53cv may remember? IIRC he was there too, but I may not RC, it was a long time ago)

2025-02-07 21:05:45 UTC

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It's right up there with cryptobros discovering over and over that yes, every kind of financial fraud anyone has ever conceived of since before the invention of money will happen over and over and no amount of Cleverness:tm: will do anything except make things worse if you think you've found a way to make it impossible.

2025-02-04 18:13:35 UTC

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The copium is strong with these people, as always.

2025-01-26 18:07:06 UTC

Just saw a YouTube video titled “Don’t make these three mistakes in C!” and I admit my first thought was “mistake 1: use C”

2025-01-16 04:33:57 UTC

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if they’re banned, why should they care? I can’t see a reason, and given the likely ego and pride involved I can absolutely see them looking forward to destroying a market they can’t participate in anymore.

2025-01-16 04:14:27 UTC

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it looks like they’re expecting tarrifs or sanctions (or are really tired of being yelled at about stuff) to come and this is a big fuck you to the US. Which, fair.

2025-01-15 05:56:41 UTC

Y’know, if you’re a large company and a full 5% of your employees are performing badly enough that they should be fired in one go… your company really sucks at management. Seriously, might as well get a big sign that says “we are bad at our jobs!” and hang it at the office.

2024-12-16 14:18:44 UTC

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English used to do this too -- "You" in English used to be the second person plural, with "thou" being the second person singular. When we lost "thou" we ended up making "you" either plural or singular. (I suspect "thou" isn't coming back, so y'all is just fine, though I remember being told "y'all" is singular and "all y'alls" is the plural form. Dunno, I'm from Connecticut. We don't do y'all, though we do toss glottal stops into the middle of words)

2024-11-23 16:41:17 UTC

This has varied between 15 and 32 hours so far. Pretty sure apple’s progress bar is a work of performance art.
https://comptroller.weatherishappening.network/media_attachments/files/113/533/260/542/111/162/original/c266a00477651acc.jpeg

2024-11-21 16:12:11 UTC

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After Artificial Super Intelligence is probably Artificial Super Intelligence Max, then Artificial Super Intelligence Max XD, and then Artificial Super Mega Intelligence Red 3D.

2024-11-15 20:26:06 UTC

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I hear SBF isn't doing much at the moment, so maybe he could do it.

2024-11-14 20:47:59 UTC

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"“THERE'S NO JUSTICE,” said Mort. “JUST US.”"
Because of course there's a Terry Pratchett quote for something like this.

2024-11-12 19:07:52 UTC

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Given I'm looking to be laid off rather than fired... yeah, I'll let this one go.

2024-11-12 18:29:53 UTC

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It is nice to think that cameras and communication can change the equation, yes. Given the number of atrocities taking place on camera and in public I have some doubts as to the efficacy of that as a solution though.

2024-11-12 18:21:26 UTC

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Maybe, but... previous fascist governments around the world have been equally incompetent. That didn't help.

2024-11-12 18:11:07 UTC

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Didn't end well for Mussolini, Hitler, or many other fascists or general autocrats, yes. The final collapse of these kinds of regimes (which can take decades, or centuries) doesn't particularly count as "being saved" for the many people hurt, killed, or tortured along the way.

2024-11-12 17:59:19 UTC

Two things that history shows us are:
1) You can count on authoritarian and fascist governments to be corrupt, venal, incompetent, and filled with laughably stupid people
2) You can't count on the fact that the government is corrupt, venal, incompetent, and filled with laughably stupid people to save you

2024-11-06 19:44:34 UTC

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The only way to have some influence is actually get involved with the local party. Voting's important for some things but doesn't have a huge effect on the party itself.

2024-11-06 17:46:44 UTC

I'm not saying that if I were president right now that I'd be telling the Ukrainians that all targeting restrictions have been lifted, except I would absolutely be doing that.

2024-11-06 13:26:39 UTC

If you're eligible for one, this would be an excellent day to get a US passport if you don't have one, *especially* if you aren't lily-white. Not that having one will save you from a mass-deportation round-up but it may make re-entering the country less hard.
Also make sure someone as white as possible has pics of it. Just in case.

2024-11-04 19:02:45 UTC

"he did not get the squirrel vaccinated for rabies because he didn't want it to get autism" is a real sentence I have actually read and now I think I need to walk into the sea.

2024-10-30 16:19:07 UTC

I am now trying to decide whether it's worth it to walk my mom (who's in her 80s and somewhat brain-injured) through letting me log in remotely to check the specs on their iMac or if I should just guess conservatively and be done with it.
I suspect "guess conservatively" is the better option".

2024-10-23 14:17:17 UTC

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Sure, go ahead

2024-10-23 14:09:31 UTC

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I suspect, in the most cynical way I can muster (which, tbh, is *fantastically* and enthusiastically cynical) this is why upper management loves them so much and thinks they're awesome for summarizing emails -- the overwhelming majority of C-suite/VP+ level communication is performative and essentially information-free.

2024-10-23 13:11:23 UTC

Turns out that LLM summaries are actually useful.
Not for *summarizing* text -- they're horrible for that. They're weighted statistical models and by their very nature they'll drop the least common or most unusual bits of things. Y'know, the parts of a message that are actually important.
No, where they're great is as a writing check. If an LLM summary of your work is accurate then indicates what you wrote doesn't really have much interesting information in it and maybe you should try harder.

2024-10-21 15:42:33 UTC

This thread is only half right -- the government can just print money too -- but it's still important. There are only two ways for there to be dollars in the economy. They can be borrowed (which creates them temporarily) or printed (which creates them permanently). Taxes essentially destroy dollars.
(This is only true for the layer of government which issues dollars, so the feds, and not for other layers)
https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/21/we-can-have-nice-things/#public-funds-not-taxpayer-dollars

2024-10-17 19:35:13 UTC

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My long-standing policy of never talking to anyone on the phone ever has, again, saved me from dealing with a scam!

2024-10-17 19:24:52 UTC

Well, that's a new phone scam to me -- a robocall telling me a MacBook purchase has been authorized at amazon and if I want to nope out I should call them.
I think... not.

2024-10-09 17:03:48 UTC

I had been waffling over whether I was going to do some experimental cake baking over the weekend (the recipe is tentatively named "It has been a hell of a day") but... yeah. Things are going to be done.
Might not be a bad idea to plan an in-office day next Wednesday for CAM-based googlers. Just sayin'.

2024-10-09 14:47:23 UTC

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It's looking like even self-hosted WP installs are going to be affected, if you're using wp.org's plugin directory/repository thing.

2024-10-09 14:26:51 UTC

This WP stuff would be hilarious to watch if it wasn't involving the software that powers ~40% of all websites.
You can always tell when rich white dudes are having a midlife crisis. Matt needs to get a goddamn hobby, something expensive and time consuming that is otherwise harmless. Molecular gastronomy or stratospheric bungee jumping maybe.
https://tldr.nettime.org/@tante/113277490070161595

2024-10-08 18:52:44 UTC

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I loved my Honda Fit, and the idea of an EV version makes me happy.

2024-09-29 02:53:08 UTC

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I’m regularly appalled at how this is glossed over in the media coverage. Even if you support him, tolerating this level of cognitive dysfunction is such a bad idea.

2024-09-29 02:26:28 UTC

Given his age, poor diet, excessive weight, and tendency to rage, I do wonder if Trump is collecting micro-strokes during the campaign. https://mstdn.social/@knittingknots2/113218368908240379

2024-09-26 00:09:33 UTC

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hey, hey, none of that! As someone with a negative amount of organizational skills I am extremely fond of PMs.

2024-09-26 00:06:56 UTC

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I don’t think we need to reach as far as mediocre AI systems to replace the C-suite. Possibly for the level of SVPs under them but the C suite only needs Markov chain generators.

2024-09-25 23:47:18 UTC

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I’m not saying that your C-suite could be replaced with a slightly tweaked version of Eliza. Of course not. Mastodon is a text medium, I’m typing it.

2024-09-25 23:45:31 UTC

The biggest problem for firms with respect to AI is that the only people it *won’t* be used to replace are the people who actually could be replaced by AI. Or a 90s chatbot. Or a very small Perl script. https://mastodon.social/@Viss/113200805371490250

2024-09-21 09:17:45 UTC

This is so dead on it’s funny and also scary.
Big tech has no idea what to do when it crests the S curve and everyone running big tech firms are so detached from reality that there’s no way they can actually deal with that, as it means confronting reality, which requires skills they don’t have.
https://www.wheresyoured.at/subprimeai/

2024-09-19 23:47:41 UTC

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I would love a clear guide on how grind size (possibly also roast levels and ratios) affect flavor. Like, if I have a brew that’s too sour should I grind finer or coarser? Or if it’s too bitter do I want a lighter roast or…
Right now I kinda fiddle until it tastes good but having a guide that says “do X for more/less of Y” would be great

2024-09-18 18:19:30 UTC

Oh, huh. 50 basis points, that's quite a bit more than I'd expected.
https://www.npr.org/2024/09/18/nx-s1-5115909/federal-reserve-interest-rate-cut-inflation?utm_source=press.coop

2024-09-10 20:08:44 UTC

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Good grief. We're getting to the point where we don't need a collision to start the Kessler Syndrome, we're nearly there as it is just with actual satellites.

2024-09-09 19:45:46 UTC

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I admit I don't much care if it's automated douchebaggery or artisinal free range douchebaggery meticulously hand-crafted by the finest (if most regrettable) artisans -- if I could auto-detect the douchebaggery I'd happily do that and bin the post.

2024-09-09 19:33:43 UTC

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Wait, there is one thing, if someone trains a neural network to score internet posts on sealioning, racism, douchebaggery, and abusive asshole-ism and it requires newer hardware then I say roll it out! (I suspect not, though. Still, it'd be nice)

2024-09-09 19:27:27 UTC

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Maybe I'm being old and cynical or maybe we're in an age of retrenchment. If it's the latter then that's OK, modern hardware has a *stupid* amount of power we waste, and a generation or two of actually building some fundamentally less crappy foundational systems would be good.
Nothing wrong with a few rounds of optimization every once in a while. Seriously.

2024-09-09 19:24:59 UTC

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Yes, I know, "better graphics! Better games!" except seriously, dude, we have that *right* *now* on a goddamn Nintendo Switch and the only reason most games need an order of magnitude more powah is because they mostly suck from a purely technical standpoint.
(And yes, I know Nintendo is on track for something with more horsepower and it'll still be 10% of the current midrange and Nintendo will still make everyone else look like clowns)

2024-09-09 19:22:19 UTC

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Can't think of any other wearable for consumer use, though. (No thanks for the VR or AR or whatever. Maybe for non-consumer use, but consumer? Yeah, no)
I am quite looking forward to the AppleTV-sized mac mini but only because my mom's intel iMac needs replacing. Other than that the new machines are as good as the old ones and Moar Powah doesn't mean much.

2024-09-09 19:20:19 UTC

Now that we've had another Big Announcement I'm trying to think about what kind of things would *actually* be worth an upgrade.
For the watch, more battery life would do it. Faster charging too, though maybe what they announced today might be enough.
Blood Glucose or blood pressure monitoring would definitely be worth it.
For the phone... I think we've hit the limits of what's worth it. Maybe if one could dock and be an actual computer or something, they're nearly there.

2024-09-09 17:41:32 UTC

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...okay? I'm not sure how this makes their shot at the predatory and dead-sluggish hearing aid market worse?