@hrefna@hachyderm.io
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

hrefna

@hrefna@hachyderm.io

SRE at Google. Queer. Poly :potion_polyamory: Trans :verified_trans: :nonbinary_potion: Engineer. Ace :flag_ace: Member of AWU-CWA. #ActuallyAutistic :rainbowinfinity: #UnionStrong

Opinions my own. Does not suffer fools gladly.

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hrefna, to fediverse
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Part of my frustration with and one of the things I find baffling giving everything else in it: the lack of tools for backpressure.

Backpressure is fundamental in building reliable distributed systems (c.f., Notes on Distributed Systems for Young Bloods). From a C2S perspective I get why it wouldn't need to be specified, but from a S2S federated protocol perspective its absence is frustrating.

All that it says is to take care not to overwhelm others and a bit on rate limits

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

What could it say instead?

It could give handling considerations with 429s.

It could specify needing to have an abandonment time after which point you assume an actor is "dead."

RFC 6120 (XMPP), when talking about clients, has the following requirement

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

@julian It Depends™, but even just saying something like:

"A receiving server MAY return a 429 on a request. If this happens or if the server cannot be reached the sending server SHOULD retry with exponential backoff. They SHOULD have a period of time after which they will stop trying and SHOULD have a period of time after which they will consider the actor 'dead' and stop sending them messages."

Instead you get things like these:

For federated servers performing delivery to a third party server, delivery SHOULD be performed asynchronously, and SHOULD additionally retry delivery to recipients if it fails due to network error.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

@jenniferplusplus Yes. Yes. A million times yes.

There's no sync capability despite that we're basically building a distributed database where we are trying to have a sync'd state.

So if you fall off for a few hours what is expected to happen?

Everyone's favorite thing from C++: Unspecified.

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

It's something to look at an author's work and find that it has grown richer, deeper, and more meaningful to you as you get older despite the age you were introduced to it.

I need to reread The Last Unicorn.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

While I'm at it I also need to reread The Neverending Story, which is basically just occultism all the way down.

I enjoyed the movie (well, "enjoyed," the Swamp of Sadness and the Nothing are stuck in my mind for the rest of eternity), but the movie and its sequels kind of lose the meaning along the way.

That was not true of The Last Unicorn at all.

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

If you are a cis person and you have "trans rights are human rights" in your bio I am generally going to assume that you are not a safe person.

Similarly. If you put "Ally" in your bio I am going to assume you aren't one.

Not because it is bad to flag that "Trans rights are human rights," but because it is too easy: you are really only advertising who you are to followers and potential followers, and that is a very easy thing to do without having done the work.

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

I see the grifters who continue to lie about Nivenly and hachyderm will take any excuse to do more lying.

They've been corrected, they don't care.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

You don't have to like an organization or a server. You can block them, you can criticize them.

But. Don't. Lie.

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

If someone says "hey the word choice you use here is a problem" the best response is certainly not "it has multiple meanings, see definition (n) <link to dictionary>"

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

You may not agree with the assessment! You may be unwilling to change!

Irrespective of whether that is okay, that response is certainly not.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Better responses include, but are not limited to:

  • Blocking the person
  • Muting the person
  • Ignoring the person
  • Changing your language
  • Asking for clarifications
  • Asking friends in private to help you understand

So many better options!

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Nate Silver went full pundit and right-adjacent a long, long time ago.

His desire to participate in various topics far outstripped his actual ability as a mathematical modeler or his understanding of those topics. This shows in his models, in what he chooses to talk about, and later in how he chooses to talk about the topics regardless of if there is a model.

hrefna, to Java
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

It's fascinating to me looking at beginning language guides and thinking "what does this say about the culture of the language"

When I was delving into it was (with affection) "here's hello world and here's a dense academic paper on implementing event systems in OCaml 5!"

guides used to be centered on the assumption that you were a web programmer looking to do applets, even long after that assumption died.

generally seems to assume a background in programming w/ a CLI.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

I'll certainly have more observations as I dig more into The Rust Book and Rust by Example on , but it is interesting to me to see the baked in assumption that you are pretty comfortable with concepts like package management (I mean Rust By Example talks about creating a library before it talks about using a library and The Rust Book is similar, glossing over nuances here), CLI tools, and build tools.

To be clear, this is all fine, it is just informing me who the target audience is.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

After a while with #OCaml my conclusion there is that:

OCaml really is a language for people who are fairly mathy and academic but who still want to get stuff done. The culture felt entirely focused around this question. So you get the dense academic paper not to scare you, but because they think you will be legitimately interested in it (albeit probably not right after hello world, but fairly soon).

OTOH there's a kind of ruthless efficiency: if you need to compromise you compromise.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Thinking about cultures of languages for a second:

My experience with people (not elixir, I have only limited experience with elixir and less with the community) is that you were looking at practical people with a hard problem to solve, some niche elements to that problem, and who didn't get hung up on niceties (like having strings cough).

There's a massive degree of enthusiasm for the model and everyone kind of glossed over the language because of the runtime and model.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

@crmsnbleyd I have some, and a little tiny tiny bit with Liquid Haskell.

The community around Haskell seems to divide based on whether you are on the engineering side or the academic side. The engineering side has put a bad taste in my mouth on several occasions.

I often feel like Haskell's worldview is very rigid (advocates would say this is a good thing and I don't disagree) and there's a latent feeling of "you must be this smart to ride this ride."

As opposed to OCaml's more… open hand.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

@crmsnbleyd That said my l ast exposure to the Haskell world in any real depth was maybe five years ago, so things may have changed since then! That's not a group I've kept up with actively.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

@edwintorok Awesome ^_^ This is all reflective of my experience learning it, which was about a year ago now, so glad to hear that it has been improving!

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Making LLMs sound more human while being a spicy version of Bob/Clippy is the opposite of what we should be doing, but here we are.

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Seriously, once you learn to look for this pattern you can't unsee it. It's everywhere.

A well-intentioned leftist gets sucked into some line of thinking that ends up with them now being anti-<whatever>. Sometimes organically, sometimes actively recruited in.

Either way, it is extremely challenging for people who are in the margins and especially in multiple margins.
https://hachyderm.io/@hrefna/112438693094147628

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

One thing to be mindful of when you are in activist or organizer spaces is areas where you don't think you have a bias, or may not have a bias, but would be a good target for someone to recruit you into a bias.

We see this all of the time with transphobia. Someone who is neutral or even vaguely positive gets recruited into it and then they are a Leftist Activist or whatever else who has enough influence to spread the anti-trans talking points.

Sometimes without even realizing it.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Do you realize how frequent it is to see someone who is otherwise well meaning and passionate about leftist causes start spreading anti-trans or anti sex work propaganda?

Or to see them start using language from right wing groups and to be influenced by their thinking without realizing it?

It's incredibly common.

hrefna, to trans
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

What the hell about this woman's background makes her suited to be an "independent investigator" of #trans issues?

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

There's literally nothing here that ties into any of the fields that are relevant. Her specialization is all in developmental and mental disabilities in high-support-need younger children.

"Independent" evidently means "so far out of her lane that she can't see her lane on this side of the horizon."

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Reed, Erin. Endocrine Society And American Academy Of Pediatrics Respond To Cass, Reject Bans. Erin in the Morning. 13 May 2024.

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/endocrine-society-and-american-academy

Similar sentiments were shared by Dr. Ben Hoffman, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, who responded to the Cass Review, “What we’re seeing more and more is that the politically infused public discourse is getting this wrong and it’s impacting the way that doctors care for their patients. Physicians must be able to practice medicine that is informed by their medical education, training, experience, and the available evidence, freely and without the threat of punishment. Instead, state legislatures have passed bills to ban and restrict gender-affirming care, which means that right now, for far too many families, their zip code determines their ability to seek the health care they need. Politicians have inserted themselves into the exam room, and this is dangerous for both physicians and for families.”

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