This is truly heartbreaking. I don't really remember my concerns, age 10, but I'm pretty sure surviving an armed assault was not one of them.
DevOps architect by day, avid reader by night. Listening to history, economics and D&D. CET Standard Tribe. M/he/him.
94 followers 193 following 335 posts
view profile on Bluesky
This is truly heartbreaking. I don't really remember my concerns, age 10, but I'm pretty sure surviving an armed assault was not one of them.
Darker read: maybe the endgame for jd is Ukraine's unconditional surrender, but he can't just come out and say it, so he uses this as a veiled metaphor.
A few years back I've decided to stop reading articles with clickbaity titles. No regrets.
Respectfully, no. I've lived behind the iron curtain long enough to know how easy it is for this power to be abused. Even with the best of intentions, sooner or later there's going to be the wrong person making use of it. Just imagine Trump with access to this kind of power.
This could have been the West, but we were busy building up nuclear arsenals instead.
#SNL gonna #SNL... the nods to the show's S3 storyline were hilarious.
At this point The Laundry Files feels practically solarpunk.
Assistant to the regional manager?
That certain megacorp would be much better served by adding actual live acting to the Gentleman Bastards and turning the whole thing into a TV series.
Once you're past the border and on a trusted network, connect to your home VPN and restore your data - overnight should be fine. Setting up the infrastructure for the above is widely documented, if you're non technical, ask a techie friend to help. You'd be safer for it.
Appropos of absolutely nothing happening at the US border at all, rules for travelling abroad with electronics: - pack freshly wiped phone and/or laptop - keep the rest of your data at home, accessible via a OpenVPN / Wireguard VPN - keep URL + password to said VPN in your head
"Recite the pledge of allegiance to continue."
Because whatever moral high ground the US was standing upon - real or imagined - it has now crumbled into dust. And I don't see it coming back in my lifetime.
I don't know what kind of benefits outweigh the US loss of allies, prestige and honour, let alone the sacrifice of a whole country. But it better be gods damned worth it. When US was attacked in 2001, a coalition of the willing stood with it. Now the best it can hope for is a cohort of the coerced.
The fact that it does not means that there is a benefit for this administration in withholding aid to Ukraine. And it's not rare earth minerals, as exploiting those effectively would require logistics and infrastructure in place that cannot realistically be there before Trump's end of term.
Why do I say this? Withholding military aid is one thing. Withholding critical intelligence is quite another. US would be able to effectively whittle down Russia's military capability just by uploading HIMARS target data to Ukraine, at no cost to itself.
THREAD: By now I am convinced that Trump's actual objective is nothing less than an Ukrainian capitulation to Russia. The actual deal - the one between Putin and Trump - was probably made long ago. We are now witnessing its aftermath. Ukraine has been sold out wholesale.
The legendary James Harrison - the man with the golden arm - has passed, after saving around two million lives through blood donation. His blood contained high levels of anti-D antibodies that have saved the lives of many younglings and he donated every two weeks from 18 to 81. Huge respect.
Something something suit wearing something respect Presidency something. Bloody hypocrites.
What's even sadder is that the fate of nations is being decided by two angry "businessmen" and their hurt feelings over one brave man's refusal to kowtow, kiss the little ring and sell out his country.
Honestly, “What Would Picard Do?” is usually the right answer. He was a truly good dude who also understood the hard realities of living in a political system. I also vote for Columbo.
Only if you inherit from it.
Homeopa-tea.
I know Cory's opinion on BSky, but maybe you'll change his mind? His voice would be more than welcome here.
Implementing GDPR is a PITA, but it's infinitely better than the alternative.
Interesting point: melon is probably relying on the same handful of young coders because they're not old enough to know better.
@juliusgoat.bsky.social
"Yes, I do speak like the writers on whose works ChatGPT was illegally trained on, so nice of you to notice." Maybe we should normalize the casual use of expletives instead, Samuel L. Jackson style. There's no way this motherfucking paragraph was generated by AI.
Voting in elections is literally the very least you can do, politically speaking. It speaks volumes that a significant part of the population can't be bothered to even to that. And I'm under no illusions that the ones that vote do so in an informed manner. The informed votes are probably a minority.
Too good not to share.
The people also want vengeance visited upon health insurance CEOs, apparently, yet vance made no mention of it in his speech. Curious.
The Indigenous People of North America have decided to go back to calling the Gulf of Mexico, “Chalchiuhtlicueyecatl”. It is what the Nahuatl People originally called it as it is the domain of the goddess Chalchiuhtlicue, who is assoc w/water bodies, including the Gulf of Mexico.
Yeah, we heard this one before... where oh where in history?
Every time I find myself *truly* despising a character on screen, I take a moment to appreciate the actors and their art, for having made such a compelling personage. Here’s to Alan Rickman, Imelda Staunton, Javier Bardem, Jeremy Sisto, to name just a few. Without you, there would be no heroes.
My commiserations, and may I introduce you to the wonderful world of noise cancelling headphones? Don't worry, they either grow out of it or they become Moby.
What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done to get the shot?
... unless you want to, you know, break things.
“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
"How convenient for you, to at last work with a species whose bodies are compatible with your bureaucracy." -- Becky Chambers, "the galaxy, and the ground within"
I swear, this is part of some weird cocoon / nesting instinct. Most, if not all adults, seem to block any memory of having done such a thing at that age, and are really surprised when the kids pick up the habit. Anyway, here's my collection of matchbox cutouts I used to trade with my peers, age 11.
Yes. They're called "teens". They should hatch any day now.
The government should be smaller.
Hey, not getting a divorce, just getting more agile in the dating market. Language. Humanity's greatest invention, and we're using it for this.
I've just started a "bot follower" list yesterday, it would actually be nice we could have lists of lists around, so that everyone could contribute in their own limited way.
Interesting read.
If that means wearing cowboy boots while deploying, I'm in.
As it happens, I quite like the letter X. I liked writing it as a child, I like seeing it in print. The xe/xyr pronouns in Becky Chambers Wayfarers series are adorable. And some of my favourite people on this planet have X in their name. So no, Elon can't have it. He's stil a nazi though.
The Welsh told the Saxons this hill was called "pen" (meaning "hill"). The Saxons added their word for hill, "tor," and called it Torpen (hill hill). Later the Norse added their world for hill. So it became Torpen Haugr (Hill Hill Hill). Now the English call it Torpenhow Hill (Hill Hill Hill Hill)
PSA.
Your attempt at distracting us from the brand new novel you're holding up have failed miserably. Good effort though. ... and congrats :)
Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn't there He wasn't there again today I wish, I wish he'd go away...
Je suis CatGPT! // hi elsie *scritches*!
Then it's time to start reading about Unbound DNS
The EU should demand that American Big Tech sell their assets to European companies. They can’t be trusted to not manipulate the data for propaganda reasons. Not doing so is a national security risk. Am I doing this right?
Did you pull the sword out of the stone wall? Was there a mysterious voice? WAS THERE A WIZARD? You brushed off rather quickly over that last part... ... Your Grace.
Resurfacing this old wisdom imparted by a sage internet denizen of yore, as we embark on this new Bluesky journey together:
But the team the leaders choose, now _that_ will speak volumes about their approach to leadership. Are they experts in their respective fields? Loyal followers? Flunkies? Family members? People they own favours to? Look to their team choices, and that will tell you everything you need to know. 3/3
Leadership: - Team leading and strategic choices? Hell, yes! - Tactical / day-to-day (micro)management? Not so much. And yet we act like they should have all the detailed answers, from foreign policy to economic and fiscal measure. No, mate, that's what their team is _for_. 2/3
What a lot of people don't realise is that leadership is never about just ONE guy. Not in the way you think. What a leader does is picking up their team, trusting them with a direction and a goal, and checking up regularly to see whether they're still aligned. 1/3
Why would we even attempt such a foolish endeavour?
On January 15, 2001, Wikipedia launched, creating a free, collaborative online encyclopedia. Founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, it revolutionized global access to information and remains one of the world’s most visited websites. #StayCurious #Skystorians #DiveIntoDiscovery
I hear Mars is pretty close and visible these coming days.
John Scalzi Charlie Stross Peter Watts
As you very rightly point out, the focus should be on helping the victims. But it's just as true that everyone who thought they knew him, from fans to real life acquaintances, has been trying to process and reconcile today's news with what they thought of the man. And I bet it's not easy.
The world needs more Murderbot.
My heart goes out to each and every one of them. And I apologise for that small degree in which my paying for his works empowered him to do these godawful things. This thread kind of gotten away from me. Let me know please if you want it deleted.
I feel duped, and somehow stained and marked for having read his books, for having liked his shows. I am ashamed of having breadhed the same air as him while attending a live show of his then wife, Amanda. But most of all, I feel deeply, deeply sorry for those women, those barely adult girls.
I did. I deeply regret it. But it feels like I had to go through with it and cauterize the wound. The absolutely shittiest part of today? I realised he was one of the people I was measuring others against. This idealised, soft spoken Brit, and a good friend of Terry, I mean, what's not to like?
The vibe when you find out that one of your heroes was a monster all along...
And one more from my Dutch colleagues: To measure is to know.
Not all metrics are KPIs, and not all KPIs are metrics. Be mindful of your KPI coverage. If you link KPIs to (financial) rewards, people **will** optimise for them.
Speaking for myself, I'd like to know what my work is going to be, what would the benefits look like (both financial and non-financial, e.g. work life balance), the colleagues and atmosphere, but also the company's mission statement and leadership. Because I'm old enough to know better.
Great letter in today's Guardian. What sort of free speech is prevented by factchecking, Zuck?
If they ever shoot a remake of "Das Boot", they should call it "Das ReBoot".
I sacrificed a ̶f̶a̶t̶t̶e̶n̶e̶d̶ ̶c̶a̶l̶f̶ meatball sandwich. Some assembly required.
You’ve been kidnapped. The characters from the last TV show you watched are trying to rescue you. Who is coming to save you?
Let me introduce you to my spirit animal. (Not my meme, but it almost made me spill my coffee the first time I saw it, you might say it's adopted.)
They're a tool, nothing more, nothing less. No magic under the hood, no matter what the marketing people say. You still have to understand and sometimes refine their suggestions. That said, I find it's always easier to improve a generated answer than to start from scratch.
It's December, so here are a collection of end of year digital housekeeping tasks you can do while chilling out for the holidays in order to improve your privacy and security for entering 2024 on a good footing. You don't have to do all of them, but they're stuff to consider!
LLM (it's not AI, c'mon) = (very powerful) autocomplete. Once you have that paradigm firmly lodged in your brain, everything starts making sense. The whole point of it is to best guess what comes next and suggest it to you, regardless of its usefulness or truth value. The rest is up to you.
It's one of my pet peeves TBH, and the curse of SysAdmin / DevOps / SRE folks everywhere. People get used to systems in a functional state and have little idea of the work involved to keep them that way. An "up and running" complex syststem is an everyday miracle we don't appreciate enough.
Happy <[celebration|observation|month|day]>! May <[deity|prohpet|religious_figure|sun_god|philosopher|"the universe"]> bring in your life! I sincerely hope your will succeed beyond your wildest dreams! Onwards to a and New Year!
Just before the Conclusions there's the section "Preparing for the organization as a future adversary". Very interesting (and insightful) read.
Not necessarily a bad thing, as BSky tries to appeal to Xiters with familiar features that pre-enshittification Twitter users enjoyed. But it still boils down to a matter of trust (of your data, to the platform).
The TL;DR of this whole thing is: while the AtProtocol was designed with federation in mind, and PDS servers are indeed a thing, BSky controls the relay servers, which are costly, resource-hungry and essential for the network. On top of that, the DM implementation is fully centralized.
"However, "credible exit" is a reasonable term to describe what Bluesky is aiming for. It is Bluesky's term, and I think Bluesky should embrace that term fully in all contexts and work that they can."
"To claim that Bluesky is decentralized or federated in its current form moves the goalposts of both of those terms, which I find unacceptable."
"However, I stand by my assertions that Bluesky is not meaningfully decentralized and that it is certainly not federated according to any technical definition of federation we have had in a decentralized social network context previously. "
"Bluesky is built by good people who care, and it is providing something that people desperately want and need. If you are looking for a Twitter replacement, you can find it in Bluesky today."
Seriously good technical analysis of the BlueSky platform and it's underlying AtProtocol; conclusions below.
... they're not wrong though, are they?
I know this is technically cheating, but...
After the Three Wise Men left, the Three Wiser Women arrived.
Being a non-native English speaker means you can start your mails with "y'all" and end them with "cheers"and nobody would mind.
Throwback Tuesday, because, man, I love this song. "But your new shoes are worn at the heels And your suntan does rapidly peel And your wise men don't know how it feels To be thick as a brick"
"Charred Lung" Smokey Flavour Guarantee!
To paraphrase a D&D buddy of mine, when it comes to it, 1. Bonus Action: Disengage 2. Action: Block seems to be the best combo. We should all take a level in Rogue after these elections.
