@VoxDei@qoto.org
@VoxDei@qoto.org avatar

VoxDei

@VoxDei@qoto.org

Software Engineer, Trade Unionist, Gamer, Geek, Dad. Lives in Devon

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drandrewv2, to random
@drandrewv2@freeradical.zone avatar

Reader: I finished; I left the job.

Now I’ve got a week off to gather myself a bit, but I’ve been bat-signalled back to my native trade union: home with my fellow nerds, and among the shades of my literal ancestors… and at SUCH a time for union-building & intelligence!

VoxDei,
@VoxDei@qoto.org avatar

@drandrewv2 You're back to Prospect? Yay if so, I'm still a member, though no longer at an employer who recognises them.

VoxDei,
@VoxDei@qoto.org avatar

@drandrewv2 Glad to have you back then! And I'm techy rather than sciencey these days, but you know where I am if I can be useful. :-)

VoxDei, to random
@VoxDei@qoto.org avatar

@drandrewv2 I feel like this thread will be of interest to you... https://twitter.com/jimrobottom/status/1793727207732613549

pluralistic, to random
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

I have been a published writer since I was 17, and never in all those years have I encountered worse editorial suggestions than the automated ones generated by Microsoft Office365.

Makes Clippy look like EB White.

VoxDei,
@VoxDei@qoto.org avatar

@pluralistic But but but AI! Copilot! It's the Future of Everything! AI AI AI AI Buy our stuff pleeeeeeease!!!

garius, to random
@garius@mastodon.me.uk avatar

Rebranding myself as an eco-friendly alternative to ChatGPT.

Ask me a question and I'll mansplain an answer to you, while consuming much less water and energy.

VoxDei,
@VoxDei@qoto.org avatar

@garius You have to make sure you make half of it up though. Otherwise you're not doing it right.

drandrewv2, to random
@drandrewv2@freeradical.zone avatar

Sigh.

Deeper sigh.

Yes, buy better if you can. Waste less if you can. Buy less as a consequence.

But watch where you point your sanctimony.

Patrick Grant is gunning for the businesses taking advantage, but risks a ricochet onto people who really don’t have as much choice as some moralists imagine.

If you only have £20 to buy shoes, you have no choice but to buy something cheap, even if it’s almost disposable.

As usual, the ‘good’ choices are the preserve of wealth.
https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/article/2024/may/18/is-this-what-people-wear-now-sewing-bee-host-criticises-ms-jumpers-and-socks

VoxDei,
@VoxDei@qoto.org avatar

@drandrewv2 Terry Pratchett said this best.

"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and <i>would still have wet feet.</i>"

VoxDei,
@VoxDei@qoto.org avatar

@drandrewv2 Oh, someone beat me to it. Well, great minds!

drandrewv2, to random
@drandrewv2@freeradical.zone avatar

Unite (the union) is lobbying Labour to row back on pledge of no new North Sea oil & gas licenses…

Genuinely interested to hear what people think of this…

I trained in climate science, and now work for a union (formerly and soon to be back in an energy sector union), so I have very strong and possibly conflicting views on the subject!

Tell me your wildest thoughts on workers’ protections in the energy transition. You probably can’t shock me…
https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/may/17/union-urges-labour-not-to-ban-new-north-sea-licences-without-plan-for-jobs

VoxDei,
@VoxDei@qoto.org avatar

@drandrewv2 The bottom line is, it has to happen. The alternative is either unacceptable or it's a fatalistic "We're all screwed anyway so why should we sacrifice?"

That being the case, the people who we're asking to make the sacrifice (the oil and gas industry workers) deserve support from the rest of us. I don't know what shape that takes, but we definitely owe it to them.

drandrewv2, to random
@drandrewv2@freeradical.zone avatar

You. Absolute. Bastards.

If anyone knows of a crowdfunder to support this man’s legal challenge, I would like to contribute to it.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-69016539

VoxDei,
@VoxDei@qoto.org avatar

@Jethrotombs @drandrewv2 I was looking for that too, thank you! Was bizarre to me that the BBC mentioned his lawyers were crowdfunding but didn't provide a link.

VoxDei,
@VoxDei@qoto.org avatar

@drandrewv2 @Jethrotombs Yeah, I wondered if it might be that. Kind of felt like it was a relevant link to something mentioned in the story though and therefore reporting it was apolitical.

(I'm aware that the government doesn't think this way and therefore the BBC can't either. ;-) )

rbreich, to random
@rbreich@masto.ai avatar

4 years ago, an exec for a top PPE producer testified to Congress that in Jan 2020 (as fear of covid began to spread) his firm offered to ramp up production to make 1.7 million N95 masks available to the public per week.

The Trump admin said no.

VoxDei,
@VoxDei@qoto.org avatar

@rbreich I'm no Trump fan, but in this instance I'd offer up us in the UK as a counterexample. We said yes to everyone who was mates with a Tory MP offering to sell us PPE (and ignored those who weren't) and literally ended up with the guy who ran the health secretary's local pub getting a giant government contract. Billions of pounds spent on PPE that was unusable and simply burned.

Needed to take opportunities, yes. But also to have a process that worked.

VoxDei, to statistics
@VoxDei@qoto.org avatar

Particularly egregious misuse of stats from the Guardian: "Although more than a third of the women in the study had been sexually inactive during the past month, fewer than half expressed dissatisfaction with their sex lives."

Sooo... 1/3 inactive, >1/3 dissatisfied. And yet the article is trying to suggest it's at the other end of the scale by framing it as "fewer than half" and behaving as if it's surprising?

#stats #statistics #guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/article/2024/may/13/i-often-say-the-journey-time-is-longer-how-to-make-sex-after-50-work-for-you

VoxDei, to spiders
@VoxDei@qoto.org avatar

Ooof. Never argue with an ant colony. Cleaning out a storage box in the garden. One corner has an ant colony in it, partially destroyed by my clearing. Also present: Two 3cm-ish false widow spiders, shiny black. Can't escape the box now the contents have been removed, sides are too smooth.

Left the job and went to have lunch, expecting to need to re-home the spiders. Figured they had plenty of ants to eat. On return, no sign of the smaller spider. The larger has had a disagreement with the ants. It has not ended at all well for the spider.

VoxDei, to uk
@VoxDei@qoto.org avatar

I have wanted to see this forever. This is outside Newton Abbot in Devon just before midnight. Doesn't look this dramatic to the naked eye, this is about a 3s exposure with a Google Pixel 7a.

The Aurora Borealis seen facing North-West from a hill outside Newton Abbot. There is a dark tree-lined skyline at the bottom of the image, the aurora fill the sky above. The aurora is red with brighter vertical lines in the centre and towards the top of the image, greenish towards the bottom.

VoxDei, to ai
@VoxDei@qoto.org avatar

What we have at the moment isn't AGI and therefore its capacity for genuine harm is (I believe) limited. However, the idea that we seem to be teaching these things to deceive by accident is concerning.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/may/10/is-ai-lying-to-me-scientists-warn-of-growing-capacity-for-deception?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

VoxDei, to ai
@VoxDei@qoto.org avatar

Argh... reviewing a colleague's python code, and he's used ChatGPT or Copilot or some other AI "helper" to write a bunch of the code. And it's just got a load of "Why the hell have you done this?" bits. Especially in the unit tests - it really doesn't know how to write pytest tests.

If you don't know what you're doing it looks halfway reasonable, and it kind-of-sort-of works, but... you'd never write that code if you were doing it yourself.

VoxDei, to uk
@VoxDei@qoto.org avatar

I find this utterly baffling. You're a non-dom and you're complaining that removing that status will mean you have to pay so much tax that you'll leave. Right, well...

  1. From what I've seen, the evidence that the super-rich actually do leave when taxes go up isn't there. So you might leave, but most of your fellows will pay more.

  2. If you aren't paying your tax at the moment, then your argument that you have value to the country is essentially trickle-down economics. You have money, therefore you will spend it or give it to others. Trickle down has been shown to be bullshit.

So. You will leave and take your very small contribution with you. Fine. Most of your friends won't, they will compensate for the loss of your (to you) pittance. If you don't want to pay your share like everyone else, then you are not a loss to this country when you leave. Piss off and don't let the door hit you on the way out.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/may/02/i-am-moving-tycoon-bassim-haidar-non-dom-tax-status-super-rich-exodus

GeePawHill, to random
@GeePawHill@mastodon.social avatar

Aperiodic reminder for anyone giving their first presentation:

You are the show.
Your story is what they came for.
Your slides are just props.

Do what you need to do, prop-wise, to feel comfortable, but remember the props are the third most important thing about your prezzie.

VoxDei,
@VoxDei@qoto.org avatar

@GeePawHill I (mostly) got past the fear of presenting when I realised that almost by definition I know more about what I'm giving the talk about than anyone else in the room, and the people that's not true of are mostly on my side.

I guess there are presentations where that's not the case, but I haven't had to give any of those and I figure if I do I'll still know enough about the subject to argue about it. ;-)

drandrewv2, to cfs
@drandrewv2@freeradical.zone avatar

So, here’s some personal and professional news… I’m going to be leaving my job pretty soon. 😬

It’s a bit of a wrench, because this job has been a big and exciting thing, for lots of reasons. But, you know, I have been having a shit of a time with the old and lately, and…

📢 🚨

If you can’t do the job and preserve your health, there will come a point when you just can’t do the job.

That’s not a choice.

It’s an inescapable law of nature.

VoxDei,
@VoxDei@qoto.org avatar

@drandrewv2 Sorry Jenny. That sucks. I hope you've got something interesting planned that you're able to do.

setebos, to internet
@setebos@mastodon.online avatar

i'm a teapot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper_Text_Coffee_Pot_Control_Protocol

VoxDei,
@VoxDei@qoto.org avatar

@setebos Have you seen https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7168 ? ;-)

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