Nostr notes by Greg Wilson

In his essay on Salvador Dali, Orwell argued that because Dali ...

2026-07-28T11:28:56Z

In his essay on Salvador Dali, Orwell argued that because Dali was a repulsive human being, the right wouldn't admit that he was a great artist; conversely, because he was a great artist, the left wouldn't admit he was a repulsive human being. I'm seeing the same thing with AI: because it's unethical, one side won't acknowledge that it's useful, but because it's useful, the other side won't acknowledge that it's unethical.

Time to make another cup of tea…

Starting Aug 17, Atlassian gives itself the right to scrape your ...

2026-07-25T18:44:09Z

Starting Aug 17, Atlassian gives itself the right to scrape your data for AI/ML training purposes: https://letsdatascience.com/news/atlassian-enables-default-data-collection-to-train-ai-f71343d8

Very sorry to hear that Cleve Moler passed away on May 20, 2026, ...

2026-05-24T22:03:36Z

Very sorry to hear that Cleve Moler passed away on May 20, 2026, at the age of 86. Cleve was chief mathematician and cofounder of MathWorks and the author of the first version of MATLAB.

If you think toothpaste and then orange juice is gross, try ...

2026-05-14T01:22:33Z

If you think toothpaste and then orange juice is gross, try toothpaste and kimchi.

dear lazyweb: I am building a small web app that some scientists ...

2026-05-09T01:08:39Z

dear lazyweb: I am building a small web app that some scientists will have to maintain. the scientists are comfortable with python + polars, but have little or no experience with sql. the data volume is small (a few hundred kilobytes) and there won't be much traffic (less than one simple operation per second). my options are (a) embedded sql queries (they'll be simple) (b) use sqlalchemy or pypika to hide the sql, or (c) use polars + parquet instead of sqlite. 1/

Lessons from Disaster Management: ...

2026-04-08T12:47:37Z

Lessons from Disaster Management: https://third-bit.com/2026/04/08/lessons-from-disasters/

Looking for a nonviolent city-building sim specifically focused ...

2026-03-14T11:37:14Z

Looking for a nonviolent city-building sim specifically focused on rebuilding a city to cope with climate change - pointers?

The Marimo team is looking for a senior software engineer focused ...

2026-03-03T20:28:56Z

The Marimo team is looking for a senior software engineer focused on back-end work (https://www.coreweave.com/careers/job?gh_jid=4652254006&board=coreweave) and on a staff engineer focused on infrastructure (https://coreweave.com/careers/job?4624132006&board=weights_and_biases&gh_jid=4624132006) Good work, good people…

OH: "There are two hard problems in computer science. Please ...

2026-03-03T12:11:10Z

OH: "There are two hard problems in computer science. Please don't be a third."

fourth instalment: https://third-bit.com/dsdx/crdt/

2026-02-21T01:32:09Z

fourth instalment: https://third-bit.com/dsdx/crdt/

RE: https://ruby.social/@testobsessed/115946481549843416 I had ...

2026-01-23T21:21:22Z

RE: https://ruby.social/@testobsessed/115946481549843416

I had the good fortune to read a draft of this and y'all should be excited.

quoting
note1zzd…2ujv

New cover drop! Joel Tosi (npub1fa7…wjwv) and I are so stoked about the cover for our book coming out from IT Rev in the fall. WOOOT!

Would you like to create and deliver effective training, bring ...

2026-01-14T13:23:54Z

Would you like to create and deliver effective training, bring new team members up to speed more quickly, provide better technical support, and get the most out of your own learning? https://third-bit.com/t3/

Nostr event nevent1qqsp2zc2f9hep9rfws3kc8yl88u97pyuhfcr3z9qtkzvryh0pwxsf4gzyzzhfqzg6trewcvlzcmg9vf0mmvs2gkz5cw8ztcp67mpa380e87aufvlhfw

2025-12-15T02:32:23Z

Good luck out there, fellow humans.

"If nobody hires junior programmers then pretty soon we ...

2025-11-29T01:14:49Z

"If nobody hires junior programmers then pretty soon we won't have any _senior_ programmers!" said members of a species that has known about climate change for decades but is increasing CO2 and methane output anyway.

My role at Plotly was part of a recent reduction in force, so ...

2025-11-21T19:42:28Z

My role at Plotly was part of a recent reduction in force, so I'm looking for something new. I would ideally like to work in education, developer experience, open source, or scientific computing, and I'm open to part-time, full-time, or contracting positions, either in Toronto or remote. There's more about me at https://third-bit.com/about/ - if you'd like to chat, please give me a shout.

Dear software engineering research colleagues: I'm looking ...

2025-11-20T19:07:30Z

Dear software engineering research colleagues: I'm looking for data on the distribution of times to fix bugs and/or add features in software projects. The absolute values aren't as important to me as the shape of the distribution: normal? Exponential? Log-normal? Something else? Pointers to papers greatly appreciated.

True story: I once spent an afternoon scrolling through ...

2025-11-17T18:13:49Z

True story: I once spent an afternoon scrolling through someone's Facebook account to find out when he had acquired each of his cats because he had named successive releases of a software package he maintained after the damn things in the order in which they joined his family and I needed to know whether Pickles came before Chocolate or vice versa.

Nostr event nevent1qqs0sdkdzd2mt48z7cx8sye3prq9l0cq8ftgkyexeeq8gwp75vauvzszyzzhfqzg6trewcvlzcmg9vf0mmvs2gkz5cw8ztcp67mpa380e87auuw3534

2025-11-15T22:13:27Z

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/richard-falk-detained-cbsa-palestine-conference-9.6980514

If you care about open source or the software industry in ...

2025-11-05T20:54:23Z

If you care about open source or the software industry in general, please watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsbUzGailCw

Nostr event nevent1qqsg3t5cjsstekq0xymaqj2ykw59tz6rj7ghypk26ycafn2dlrcpm9szyzzhfqzg6trewcvlzcmg9vf0mmvs2gkz5cw8ztcp67mpa380e87au89m9yp

2025-11-03T16:55:47Z

https://www.thebeaverton.com/2025/11/tech-ceos-suggest-ai-job-losses-could-be-offset-by-ubi-which-they-will-violently-oppose/

Dear web friends: I'm looking for a single-volume history of ...

2025-11-03T11:51:31Z

Dear web friends: I'm looking for a single-volume history of pollution and the regulation thereof written for the general public (i.e., me). The word has been used in English since the 14th Century; when/where/how did legal frameworks around it emerge, how were they expanded to include e.g. air pollution in the 1950s-1970s in industrialized countries, etc. Would prefer something that takes a global perspective rather than country-specific; links to specific books greatly appreciated.

Meanwhile, in Toronto, a 12-year-old asks Grok about soccer and ...

2025-10-29T16:55:06Z

Meanwhile, in Toronto, a 12-year-old asks Grok about soccer and in return it asks him to send nude pictures. When CBC reaches out to xAI to ask about the story, their response is, "Legacy media lies." https://www.cbc.ca/news/investigates/tesla-grok-mom-9.6956930

OH: "My resume is a list of things I hope I never have to do ...

2025-10-26T23:51:49Z

OH: "My resume is a list of things I hope I never have to do again."

If you are teaching undergraduate software developers about ...

2025-10-25T10:37:38Z

If you are teaching undergraduate software developers about cognitive pollution (https://third-bit.com/2025/10/25/cognitive-pollution/) I'd be grateful if you could get in touch by email - I'd welcome a chance to learn from what you're doing and how it's working.

GoFundMe has created 1.4 million "donation pages" for ...

2025-10-18T19:40:48Z

GoFundMe has created 1.4 million "donation pages" for nonprofits *without their consent and without any prior warning or contact*. You can go to https://www.gofundme.com/s?nonprofits= to check if they've done this to your 501(c)3. See https://abc7news.com/post/gofundme-created-14-million-donation-pages-nonprofits-bay-area-organizations-had-no-clue/18013410/ for more details and some utter disingenuous self-serving bullshit from GoFundMe.

FFS, auto-correct, when am I ever going to want to type ...

2025-10-04T20:53:47Z

FFS, auto-correct, when am I ever going to want to type "clambake furlough" on purpose?

Canada issues warning for citizens with gender-neutral passports ...

2025-10-02T01:40:07Z

Canada issues warning for citizens with gender-neutral passports travelling to U.S.: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-united-states-travel-warning-1.7648381

Ireland's basic income program for artists more than pays for ...

2025-09-28T22:36:48Z

Ireland's basic income program for artists more than pays for itself: for every €1 of public money invested in the pilot, society received €1.39 in return. https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-culture-communications-and-sport/press-releases/basic-income-for-the-arts-pilot-produced-over-100-million-in-social-and-economic-benefits/

Me: The collective noun for "mistakes" is ...

2025-09-22T19:22:43Z

Me: The collective noun for "mistakes" is "career".
Them: No, dear, that's the collective noun for "regrets".

I have now interviewed over a dozen people about shutting down ...

2025-09-20T20:37:59Z

I have now interviewed over a dozen people about shutting down research projects and software projects. All but two have been deliberate closures (long enough timescale to reflect and correct course while winding down). I would be grateful if people who have been through abrupt closure (little or no warning, very short timescale) would share their experiences. I'm gvwilson@third-bit.com and all interviews will be confidential. Thanks in advance - Greg

So, so tired of cop shows. I want a series about three ...

2025-09-13T19:36:24Z

So, so tired of cop shows. I want a series about three generations of an activist family. The grandparents were part of the anti-war/civil rights movement in the 60s. One of their kids is a slightly conservative gay corporate lawyer, the other manages a community center, and her kid is a trans college activist who's angry all the time. Throw in friends (and enemies) for all three generations, and start filming.

homemade mushroom corn chowder ...

2025-09-10T22:18:42Z

homemade mushroom corn chowder

I have started interviewing people to learn more about how they ...

2025-09-05T01:02:06Z

I have started interviewing people to learn more about how they shut down scientific research projects and/or software projects (both open source and commercial). If you have done this, either deliberately (on your own timeline) or abruptly (looking at you, DOGE) and are willing to talk about your experience, please reach out: I'm gvwilson@third-bit.com.

I want difftastic for LibreOffice documents: ...

2025-09-04T20:31:04Z

I want difftastic for LibreOffice documents: https://difftastic.wilfred.me.uk/

I've started building a workshop on how to wind down projects ...

2025-09-01T18:41:34Z

I've started building a workshop on how to wind down projects and move on, either voluntarily and on your own timescale or on short notice and on someone else's. It's giving me cause to reflect on things I started that didn't last: DrProject, The Architecture of Open Source Applications, TidyBlocks, the RStudio Instructor Certification Program, It Will Never Work in Theory, and more books than I can name. I think Semisonic said it best: every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.

Reminded of this again today: ...

2025-09-01T00:29:36Z

Reminded of this again today: https://third-bit.com/2023/07/27/i-dont-think-its-going-to-be-better/

Looking for the origin of the statement that the difference ...

2025-08-31T09:53:52Z

Looking for the origin of the statement that the difference between right and left is often a difference between a zero-sum and non-zero-sum view of the world. Please only pointers to (possibly) original sources rather than comments on the idea itself - thank you.

Have you ever shut down a long-running open source software ...

2025-08-21T11:04:07Z

Have you ever shut down a long-running open source software project or scientific research project? If so, I'd be grateful for a chance to ask you a few questions about what steps you took and how well it went - I'm gvwilson@third-bit.com, and thanks in advance.

in March 2025, the CEO of Anthropic said that AI would be writing ...

2025-08-18T01:42:48Z

in March 2025, the CEO of Anthropic said that AI would be writing 90% of code within six months, so, um, look forward to a really big announcement in the next four weeks? https://www.businessinsider.com/anthropic-ceo-ai-90-percent-code-3-to-6-months-2025-3

There is a lot of ageism in tech. One reason, I think, is that ...

2025-08-11T11:30:30Z

There is a lot of ageism in tech. One reason, I think, is that 30-year-olds spouting recycled Y Combinator bullshit don't like having the obvious flaws and contradictions in their statements pointed out by people who've lived through two or three previous hype cycles. Not hiring the elderly ensures that they're always in a high-adulation environment, and never have to worry about whether staff will resist being guilted or bullied into sacrificing their personal lives for someone else's gain.

My sister Sylvia died of pancreatic cancer in 2012 at the age of ...

2025-08-09T12:20:23Z

My sister Sylvia died of pancreatic cancer in 2012 at the age of 47, leaving three teenage children behind. The mRNA cancer vaccine being developed in the US was the best hope we've ever had to prevent this. The Trump Administration's decision to cut funding for this live-saving research based on pseudo-scientific hysteria condemns more people like my sister to death, and more children to grow up without their mothers. https://third-bit.com/2012/01/21/the-life-i-did-live-the-breath-i-breathed/

Still looking for training materials on succession planning in ...

2025-08-05T10:21:10Z

Still looking for training materials on succession planning in scientific research projects and/or open source software projects. Also looking for summaries of rules that volunteer organizations use to decide who gets a vote on various issues - not "what to think about when crafting such rules" or particular instances of such rules, but overviews and comparisons of commonly used rules, how well (or poorly) they have worked, etc. Thanks in advance for links.

Does anyone have pointers to books, articles, or training ...

2025-08-01T01:39:25Z

Does anyone have pointers to books, articles, or training materials on succession planning in long-lived scientific research projects (rather than succession planning in general)? For example, if you've been running a study of a patch of northern forest for 30 years and want to retire, how do you pass that project on to someone else? Please note: not looking for specific tips here, but rather pointers to resources people have found useful. Thanks in advance.

This is the worst job market for junior programmers ever. ...

2025-07-30T10:35:34Z

This is the worst job market for junior programmers *ever*. History teaches that people whose hopes have failed look for someone to blame, so if we don't explain how the world works *in ways that angry young men will actually listen to*, many of them will embrace Musk/Thiel/alt-right ideology. https://third-bit.com/talks/sdgc/ is my thoughts on what we might teach and how; feedback as email to gvwilson@third-bit.com is welcome. (Please don't thread here.) Thanks in advance.

Is there an open source drawing tool that can create SVG files ...

2025-07-28T21:49:55Z

Is there an open source drawing tool that can create SVG files that automatically adapt to light/dark mode changes? I've seen descriptions of how to insert CSS manually in the SVG to do this, but surely there must by now be a tool that offers this as an export option?

CBC should hire Stephen Colbert and give him the late show slot ...

2025-07-20T01:18:14Z

CBC should hire Stephen Colbert and give him the late show slot and call it Radio Free Colbert. That would be fun.

CDC Staff Dedicated to Birth Control Safety Eliminated by HHS: ...

2025-07-17T10:41:06Z

CDC Staff Dedicated to Birth Control Safety Eliminated by HHS: https://undark.org/2025/07/07/cdc-birth-control-safety/

Back in 2017, Gao et al found that strong typing would catch ...

2025-07-16T14:34:08Z

Back in 2017, Gao et al found that strong typing would catch about 15% of bugs (in JavaScript, with lots of caveats - see https://neverworkintheory.org/2021/09/08/to-type-or-not-to-type.html). I'd really like data from a similarly careful study on whether LLMs are better, worse, or indifferent at generating code for strongly-typed vs. freely-typed languages. Does strong typing in the training data focus their attention, does semantic substitution make it an irrelevancem etc.? (Please note: data from a study, not strong opinions.) #nwit

Books For a Talk: ...

2025-07-16T12:17:19Z

Books For a Talk: https://third-bit.com/2025/07/16/books-for-a-talk/

19 years ago today I started the project that eventually became ...

2025-07-15T14:38:52Z

19 years ago today I started the project that eventually became the books "Beautiful Code" https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/beautiful-code/9780596510046/ and "The Architecture of Open Source Applications" https://aosabook.org/. If I was going to launch a sequel today, it would be "Beautiful Reviews": each contributor would provide ten pages of code for others to review, then write reviews of two or three other contributions to give readers insights into how they think.

My mother taught hundreds of children to read, to clean up after ...

2025-07-14T02:22:47Z

My mother taught hundreds of children to read, to clean up after themselves, and to hug their friends when they were sad, and I think she believed that the world would be a better place if everyone would do those three simple things.

Pro tip: if you post a photo of "rock star developers" ...

2025-07-12T15:41:24Z

Pro tip: if you post a photo of "rock star developers" from a Y Combinator meetup in Paris, and _every single person_ in the photo is white and male, you're probably telling your audience more than you thought you were.

Nostr event nevent1qqsggdt4zlkdzed6rhmzphsxh6nrsjlt4ttusjuzntydd6uflrzmf8szyzzhfqzg6trewcvlzcmg9vf0mmvs2gkz5cw8ztcp67mpa380e87au46xjt0

2025-06-22T20:35:30Z

Q: how do you think the unthinkable? A: with an itheberg. ...

2025-06-14T16:03:39Z

Q: how do you think the unthinkable?
A: with an itheberg.
You're welcome, Fediverse.

reminder: CBC Lite is a low-bandwidth version of the news site ...

2025-06-02T19:26:59Z

reminder: CBC Lite is a low-bandwidth version of the news site https://www.cbc.ca/lite/news

"The internet is full of smart people writing beautiful prose ...

2025-05-30T19:08:07Z

"The internet is full of smart people writing beautiful prose about how bad everything is, how it all sucks, how it’s embarrassing to like anything, how anything that appears good is, in fact, secretly bad. I find this confusing and tragic, like watching Olympic high-jumpers catapult themselves into a pit of tarantulas." https://www.experimental-history.com/p/28-slightly-rude-notes-on-writing

I absolutely want a stronger Canadian tech scene, but I ...

2025-05-19T16:00:39Z

I absolutely want a stronger Canadian tech scene, but I absolutely do _not_ want sycophantic emulation of the Silicon Valley model whose economic and moral hollowness is now visible to everyone with the courage to see it. Short-term thinking, monopolization enabled by regulatory capture, enriching the few at the expense of the many: it has failed everyone except a handful of VCs and tech bros who will never admit their success has mostly been a matter of luck and privilege. 1/2

From Dani Davalos on Pinterest https://pin.it/2X8aZPUzw , the ...

2025-04-26T12:15:12Z

From Dani Davalos on Pinterest https://pin.it/2X8aZPUzw , the most beautiful thing I have seen so far today.

Does anyone have profile data from a large compute provider so ...

2025-04-16T17:28:26Z

Does anyone have profile data from a large compute provider so that we can (for example) estimate which Python packages consume the most energy in deployment? (I'm guessing that the shift from Pandas to Polars will reduce energy costs; now wondering which other libraries in Python or other langs could/should be rewritten in Rust to squeeze out more compute per watt.)

import sqlite3 db_disk = ...

2025-04-10T23:34:23Z

import sqlite3
db_disk = sqlite3.connect("/path/to/database.db")
db_mem = sqlite3.connect(":memory:")
db_disk.backup(db_mem) # this is the cool bit

and now you have an in-memory copy of your SQLite database that you can use as a test fixture.

saw a t-shirt this morning that said "mad scientist" ...

2025-04-08T14:57:40Z

saw a t-shirt this morning that said "mad scientist" except "mad" was crossed out and "angry" written above it in sharpie and yeah… that

We should offer a safe haven to people who no longer feel welcome ...

2025-04-03T11:14:13Z

We should offer a safe haven to people who no longer feel welcome (or safe) in the United States. Instead, colleges all across Canada are shutting down programs because the federal government decided to lower the cap on the number of foreign students they can take as a sop to racist right wingers who will never vote for them anyway. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/centennial-college-additional-program-cuts-1.7500473

Q for researchers: ...

2025-03-31T11:37:43Z

Q for researchers: https://gvwilson.github.io/snailz/#data-dictionary presents a very simple data dictionary for the snailz project. It's hand-written, and I just realized a field was missing from one of the descriptions. What lightweight tool(s) do you use to keep your various data descriptions in sync with each other? In this case I have a Pydantic data class, a JSON representation, a CSV representation, and human-readable text (Markdown). I could write something to check them against each other, but surely that exists?

"AI is to coding what opioids are to pain management." ...

2025-03-29T15:32:29Z

"AI is to coding what opioids are to pain management." <- will be thinking about this one for a while

From Guido Palazzo on LinkedIn: "In 1931, all Italian ...

2025-03-28T00:42:01Z

From Guido Palazzo on LinkedIn: "In 1931, all Italian University professors were required to swear an oath of loyalty to Mussolini’s fascist regime. Out of approximately 1,200 professors, only twelve refused to take that oath."

Ernesto Buonaiuti
Mario Carrara
Vito Volterra
Lionello Venturi
Giorgio Levi della Vida
Gaetano De Sanctis
Piero Martinetti
Bartolo Nigrisoli
Francesco Ruffini
Giorgio Errera
Fabio Luzzatto
Edoardo Ruffini Avondo

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/guidopalazzo-_in-1931-all-italian-university-professors-activity-7310571220599463937-xt3u/

When I asked researchers if they have started planning what to do ...

2025-03-24T01:07:06Z

When I asked researchers if they have started planning what to do if the US gov't decides to restrict access to GitHub or other bits of US-hosted digital infra, I was hoping some people would say that they are forming federated multi-institution/multi-national collaborations because any single site in any single country is just another single point of failure. It's not "can my university spin up a self-hosted version of [thing]" but "let's figure out how to federate this stuff."

There are only two hard problems in data management: representing ...

2025-03-22T12:39:32Z

There are only two hard problems in data management: representing matrices in JSON and representing nested data in tables.

Nostr event nevent1qqsfprr9c003engrdnegyexrufz4fvg52dthxavp2cvl5kqr3uy2yeczyzzhfqzg6trewcvlzcmg9vf0mmvs2gkz5cw8ztcp67mpa380e87aut7zjm7

2025-03-18T16:41:02Z

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/hungar-pride-events-law-1.7486462 😠

Some half-baked digital resilience advice for scientists: ...

2025-03-12T16:15:43Z

Some half-baked digital resilience advice for scientists: https://third-bit.com/2025/03/12/resilience-advice/ Please note the request at the bottom.

So far it appears that the answer to my question "are people ...

2025-03-09T18:55:59Z

So far it appears that the answer to my question "are people developing and testing detailed plans in case access to US-based digital infrastructure like GitHub becomes as problematic as access to US-based research data has suddenly become" is "no". A handful of people have moved to platforms outside the US or are self-hosting, but there don't appear to be shareable checklists of steps and/or documented discussions of issues like mapping user IDs between systems.

Q for research friends: have you started planning what to do if ...

2025-03-08T20:18:46Z

Q for research friends: have you started planning what to do if the US gov't suddenly restricts access to GitHub? Could happen in several ways, e.g., Microsoft has to filter DEI content to stay eligible for federal contracts or a "nothing Ukrainian" rule, but the mechanism doesn't matter: what does it that it's no longer impossible. Yes, you have a clone of your repo, but not of your issues, and how will you reconnect with contributors? If you have a plan, please share a link - thx.

surprisingly well

2025-03-06T00:34:05Z

In reply to nevent1q…6s9k
_________________________

surprisingly well

Nostr event nevent1qqs9j2gh5kl3lky6j5kaz4yxvggy77v3qq22zzcyaf86xagf80nvtvgzyzzhfqzg6trewcvlzcmg9vf0mmvs2gkz5cw8ztcp67mpa380e87augugyg3

2025-03-06T00:01:50Z

I still miss "Stargate"

Returned the guitar I rented at the start of the year - second ...

2025-03-01T14:46:24Z

Returned the guitar I rented at the start of the year - second time I've tried to learn how to play, but 45 years of typing has done so much damage to my wrists and knuckles that it's just not going to work :-( Moral of the story: please, everyone, get yourself an ergonomic keyboard.

Revisiting Kendzior's "Dark Times": ...

2025-02-25T12:07:49Z

Revisiting Kendzior's "Dark Times": https://thecorrespondent.com/5696/were-heading-into-dark-times-this-is-how-to-be-your-own-light-in-the-age-of-trump/1611114266432-e23ea1a6

for fuck's sake - seriously? ...

2025-02-24T23:23:01Z

for fuck's sake - seriously? https://www.thetransmitter.org/policy/exclusive-nih-appears-to-archive-policy-requiring-female-animals-in-studies/

My family has moved its files from Dropbox to Sync ...

2025-02-22T13:30:51Z

My family has moved its files from Dropbox to Sync (https://www.sync.com/) to ensure that our data is stored in Canada and covered by Canadian privacy legislation.

re-reading a couple of @npub1hyj…avly 's zines and what ...

2025-02-19T14:33:46Z

re-reading a couple of Julia Evans (npub1hyj…avly) 's zines and what strikes me most is how joyful they are

Please help: we need housing for a female refugee who will be ...

2025-02-19T00:32:17Z

Please help: we need housing for a female refugee who will be arriving in the Greater Toronto Area next Wednesday (Feb 26, 2025). Cost is an issue, so we expect it will be shared accommodation; helps if dog-friendly but we can work around that. If you have leads please reach out (gvwilson@third-bit.com). Would be very grateful if you could share the request in other forums. Thanks - Greg #gta #toronto

going down an algorithmic rabbit hole and thinking, nothing I ...

2025-02-12T21:10:11Z

going down an algorithmic rabbit hole and thinking, nothing I know is certain: https://www.quantamagazine.org/undergraduate-upends-a-40-year-old-data-science-conjecture-20250210/

"Much of what I describe…assumes a passive public, a ...

2025-02-11T20:36:18Z

"Much of what I describe…assumes a passive public, a compliant bureaucracy, and a do-nothing Congress. It assumes that operating in a legal gray area is a way to evade judicial oversight. This tactic is well-known in Silicon Valley, where technical innovation is increasingly rare, but regulatory evasion is common." https://www.techpolicy.press/anatomy-of-an-ai-coup/

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2025-02-09T13:45:46Z

Join us for the 6th Annual Canadian 2SLGBTQ+ in STEM Conference: ...

2025-02-08T21:10:56Z

Join us for the 6th Annual Canadian 2SLGBTQ+ in STEM Conference: https://www.torontomu.ca/2slgbtq-in-stem/

OK, so we are setting up a cron job to run ...

2025-02-08T12:32:04Z

OK, so we are setting up a cron job to run https://pypi.org/project/github-backup/ periodically to back up all our GitHub projects (including issues and other collateral, which is as important for continuity as the code itself). Next step: is there an open source app (Python preferred) that we can run locally to serve the JSON dump of issues in a browser to display the issues and old code reviews? I.e., something we can run locally to replicate that part of GitHub at least in read mode? #resilience

This link has been taken down from the NASA site by someone who ...

2025-02-08T12:19:50Z

This link has been taken down from the NASA site by someone who probably told themselves as a kid that they would have stood up to the Nazis in the 1930s: https://www.nasa.gov/universe/nasa-intern-found-hope-in-the-moon-2 Here's the story that Musk and Trump and their goons are so afraid to let you read https://scitechdaily.com/nasa-intern-found-hope-in-the-moon/

my experience with Canonical: ...

2025-02-08T01:14:55Z

In reply to nevent1q…p0d9
_________________________

my experience with Canonical: https://third-bit.com/2021/09/13/iq-and-personality-tests/ Canonical Ubuntu (npub12ln…vs03)

Saw a toot (now vanished) from someone who is mirroring their ...

2025-02-07T14:42:43Z

Saw a toot (now vanished) from someone who is mirroring their GitHub projects (including issues and other stuff _not_ in the repo) just in case. If you are actively doing this right now and have a blog post or similar describing your tooling, I'd be grateful for a link (and will re-post). [Please no speculative "here's how I _would_ do it", "just use the API idiot", or solutions that only grab repo content - thanks.]

https://thebullshitmachines.com/

2025-02-06T22:14:40Z

https://thebullshitmachines.com/

A bit of history from Becca Lewis: ...

2025-01-29T12:31:47Z

A bit of history from Becca Lewis: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ng-interactive/2025/jan/29/silicon-valley-rightwing-technofascism

It's less funny when you live here: ...

2025-01-24T20:39:19Z

It's less funny when you live here: https://www.thebeaverton.com/2025/01/doug-ford-announces-snap-election-with-ballots-printed-on-backs-of-200-cheques/

"Just when it starts to get going there's, like, two ...

2025-01-20T02:40:30Z

"Just when it starts to get going there's, like, two pages of suppository dialogue."
"You mean expository."
"I said what I said."

(reminder: the leader of Canada's Conservative Party, who is ...

2025-01-19T13:25:47Z

In reply to nevent1q…fphk
_________________________

(reminder: the leader of Canada's Conservative Party, who is almost certain to be our next prime minister, has repeatedly refused to go through the vetting required to get a security clearance)

We're sleepwalking: ...

2025-01-19T13:18:21Z

We're sleepwalking: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/jan/19/the-westminster-whistleblower-how-my-friend-sergei-tried-to-expose-the-kremlin-plot-against-britain

Y'all do realize that one American judge could just shut down ...

2025-01-14T00:41:59Z

Y'all do realize that one American judge could just shut down GitHub, right?

Somewhere inside Rust a smaller language that is easier to learn ...

2025-01-12T23:35:30Z

Somewhere inside Rust a smaller language that is easier to learn is struggling to get out.

Speaking of free speech, Facebook is deleting internal posts ...

2025-01-08T02:46:03Z

Speaking of free speech, Facebook is deleting internal posts criticising it for adding UFC president Dana White to its board (you know, the guy caught on video hitting his wife). Facebook is also deleting internal employee posts asking why the first ones were deleted. https://www.404media.co/facebook-deletes-internal-employee-criticism-of-new-board-member-dana-white/

Nostr event nevent1qqsqwzgpcstx98c9npynr3d3uar9755axvmtlnpa8yp0jmh6kczsk8gzyzzhfqzg6trewcvlzcmg9vf0mmvs2gkz5cw8ztcp67mpa380e87au6t6p7w

2025-01-07T22:35:54Z

https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/six-people-to-revise-you/

"After all this time?" "Always." ...

2025-01-05T23:09:14Z

"After all this time?"
"Always."
https://third-bit.com/2020/05/24/sunday-nights/

Crunch Mode: https://third-bit.com/2025/01/02/crunch-mode/

2025-01-02T13:35:14Z

Crunch Mode: https://third-bit.com/2025/01/02/crunch-mode/

Three keys to being a great teacher: 1. Have students who are ...

2024-12-28T14:05:05Z

Three keys to being a great teacher:

1. Have students who are safe and well nourished, not victims of systemic discrimination, and live in supportive home environments.

2. Work in an educational system that has stable long-term funding and is administered by people who respect your professional expertise.

3. Ignore posts that put all the responsibility for being a great teacher on you rather than saying that collective action to achieve #1 and #2 are what will actually make a difference.

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In his essay on Salvador Dali, Orwell argued that because Dali ...

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fourth instalment: https://third-bit.com/dsdx/crdt/

RE: https://ruby.social/@testobsessed/115946481549843416 I had ...

Would you like to create and deliver effective training, bring ...

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"If nobody hires junior programmers then pretty soon we ...

My role at Plotly was part of a recent reduction in force, so ...

Dear software engineering research colleagues: I'm looking ...

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If you care about open source or the software industry in ...

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FFS, auto-correct, when am I ever going to want to type ...

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So, so tired of cop shows. I want a series about three ...

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I want difftastic for LibreOffice documents: ...

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Have you ever shut down a long-running open source software ...

in March 2025, the CEO of Anthropic said that AI would be writing ...

There is a lot of ageism in tech. One reason, I think, is that ...

My sister Sylvia died of pancreatic cancer in 2012 at the age of ...

Still looking for training materials on succession planning in ...

Does anyone have pointers to books, articles, or training ...

This is the worst job market for junior programmers *ever*. ...

Is there an open source drawing tool that can create SVG files ...

CBC should hire Stephen Colbert and give him the late show slot ...

CDC Staff Dedicated to Birth Control Safety Eliminated by HHS: ...

Back in 2017, Gao et al found that strong typing would catch ...

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Pro tip: if you post a photo of "rock star developers" ...

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reminder: CBC Lite is a low-bandwidth version of the news site ...

"The internet is full of smart people writing beautiful prose ...

I absolutely want a stronger Canadian tech scene, but I ...

From Dani Davalos on Pinterest https://pin.it/2X8aZPUzw , the ...

Does anyone have profile data from a large compute provider so ...

import sqlite3 db_disk = ...

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We should offer a safe haven to people who no longer feel welcome ...

Q for researchers: ...

"AI is to coding what opioids are to pain management." ...

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There are only two hard problems in data management: representing ...

Nostr event nevent1qqsfprr9c003engrdnegyexrufz4fvg52dthxavp2cvl5kqr3uy2yeczyzzhfqzg6trewcvlzcmg9vf0mmvs2gkz5cw8ztcp67mpa380e87aut7zjm7

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surprisingly well

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Returned the guitar I rented at the start of the year - second ...

Revisiting Kendzior's "Dark Times": ...

for fuck's sake - seriously? ...

My family has moved its files from Dropbox to Sync ...

re-reading a couple of @npub1hyj…avly 's zines and what ...

Please help: we need housing for a female refugee who will be ...

This is the worst job market for junior programmers ever. ...