@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

kechpaja

@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com

Conlanging/Linguistics/Polyglotism/Linux/Sometimes music

Dual US/FI citizen who doesn't really do gender. Trans as in transhumanist, transatlantic and transfluvial.

I'm "kechpaja" pretty much anywhere you see that username.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

When we used to make mouse trap cars in school I had a friend who loved to set up a chain of traps so when you set off the first one they each set another of in a satisfying sequence of snaps.

No idea what made me remember that… anyway seems like the Georgia case is going well, don’t you agree?

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@futurebird https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVAhhVrpkwM

foone, to random
@foone@digipres.club avatar

The worst thing about being a programmer) developer in a galaxy far, far away is having to program in jabbascript

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@foone I'm surprised you don't see this joke every single day.

GottaLaff, (edited ) to Georgia
@GottaLaff@mastodon.social avatar

💥
🔥
THREAD 🧵
1/…
Former Donald attorney has pleaded in the election subversion case, one day before her trial was set to start.

Prosecutors are recommending a sentence of six years probation. Powell will also be required to testify at future trials and write an apology letter to the citizens of Georgia.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/19/politics/sidney-powell-fulton-county-georgia-2020-election-subversion

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@GottaLaff I'm not a huge fan of punishment in general, but comparatively it seems like election meddling should be a more serious crime than things like drug possession that people get years in jail for.

(Yes, she's getting off easy for agreeing to testify, but still.)

briankrebs, (edited ) to random

The Fake Browser Update Scam Gets a Big Makeover

One of the oldest malware tricks in the book — hacked websites claiming visitors need to update their Web browser before they can view any content — has roared back to life in the past few months. New research shows the attackers behind one such scheme have developed an ingenious way of keeping their malware from being taken down by security experts or law enforcement: By hosting the malicious files on a decentralized, anonymous cryptocurrency blockchain.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2023/10/the-fake-browser-update-scam-gets-a-makeover/

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@briankrebs Y'know, if fewer web services actively blocked older browsers, people might not be nearly as well trained to fall for things like this.

evan, (edited ) to random
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

Which of these items belonging to a romantic partner is it OK to borrow and use? Choose all that apply.

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@evan This is one of those questions where it all depends on permission.

futurebird, (edited ) to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

The toothbrushing app that was supposed to help me not miss brushing my teeth is demoralizing me. I go well over 2 mi. I use a timer so I spend the exact same time on each area. I do circular and vertical stokes and avoid horizontal. Still get less than 100 percent and told I didn’t brush some areas enough. 🥲

Am I being weird about this? Maybe. Am I sincerely demoralized? Absolutely. “Truthbrush” is the brand. I kinda want to email them but They’ll probably think I’m crazy.

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@futurebird You're not crazy, you're just discovering the reason why my sole non-Linux device has only 27 apps on it (including the unremovable defaults and basic things like email).

Seriously though: your dentist will tell you if something is truly wrong, and asking other people how they brush their teeth can sometimes be useful. But an app like that is just going to try and make you spend more time in the app, and probably steal your data in the process.

aldroid, to random
@aldroid@mastodon.social avatar

i keep pressing ctrl-b but i still can't control bees

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@aldroid Oh, tmux is interpreting it as a modifier prefix. You have to press it twice to send it to the program running in the current window.

Neverfadingwood, to random
@Neverfadingwood@lingo.lol avatar

What's the English name for the things you wear in hospital when you have no underwear? Because in Polish they're called "Pampers".

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@Neverfadingwood A gown?

I've never had an overnight hospital stay, though.

krazykitty, (edited ) to random
@krazykitty@mamot.fr avatar

It's buried in a followers-only conversation I had in French, but from what I've been reading, a chat of about 25 queries with an LLM consumes half a liter of water (in cooling) [1] and produces as much CO2eq as driving a car over [edit: math fix] 350m [2]. That's a lot?

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.03271

[2] https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.02001 – 19 kg CO2eq per day, 558 requests per hour, about 1.4g CO2eq [edit: math fix] per request, 1km by thermal car is about 100g CO2eq as per https://www.openco2.net/en/co2-converter

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@krazykitty Okay maybe Frank Herbert had the right idea about computers.

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@krazykitty That's still quite a bit if you're using it all day. Later ones may get more efficient though (I hope?).

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Listen I know we need a lot of variables in math. A single alphabet won’t due. So capital and lower case letters can be different variables. I can even roll with the idea that letters of the same case in different typefaces can be distinct— but, I still find the abusive use of C in Hoggs Mathematical Statistics a little extreme… we couldn’t get more distinct typefaces? How many students have cried because you did this, Hogg? (i otherwise love this textbook it’s so much fun) /math rant

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@futurebird @degreesOfFreedom @mina @mattflor @nev @adriano I used to use LaTeX directly for things, until I got fed up with it and wrote a simple compiler to transform a sort of bare bones markdown into LaTeX (and later HTML as well). That works for most of my use cases.

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

My students are so miserable from college admissions that when we were trying to guess why giving a good effort is called “giving the old college try” their guess was “it about how hard it is to get in to college”

… I thought it was about quals.

I tried to look it up and drown in baseball trivia.

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@futurebird I always assumed it was from the old days when, if you were rich enough to go to college, you could reasonably count on getting at least a "gentleman's C" in most things — so you just had to try, even if you didn't always succeed.

I have no idea if there's any truth to that though.

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

TIL American high schools cram all of world history into a one-year course and all of American history into another one-year course.

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@Alon It depends on the school, but my first high school at least definitely had an "American History" course (which was required) and a "World History" course (not required IIRC). I think there were a couple of other electives though. My second high school had more, but American History was still a requirement (and I had to take it again); that isn't as good of a reference point though.

futurebird, (edited ) to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

I'm glad that the Trump organization is being held to account for their years of lies but does anyone really think they would have ever got such proper scrutiny if not for Trump breaking the entire country?

We should hold all wealthy and unscrupulous organizations to account all of the time. Not doing so instructs them towards further willful ignorance of the law. Given the means they wield that last puts us all in danger.

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@futurebird It would be interesting to see what the ripple effects of this would be, if it were accomplished. It might be one of the quickest ways to achieve things like drug legalization, since rich people would realize that they too would benefit from liberalization of policies.

evan, (edited ) to random
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

How should fediverse moderation decisions be made?

kechpaja, (edited )
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@evan "Fediverse moderation", if applied to the entire network, is almost a meaningless concept. There seems to be a consensus of sorts under which most instances block instances that host illegal content and literal nazism, but even there there's quite a bit of variation in what is tolerated, and there's no single entity with the power to moderate the entire network.

On top of that, there is substantial overlap between those strategies. Even with clear, well-defined rules, there will always be some level of case by case decisionmaking.

That said, though, having clear and well-defined rules that are actually followed is something I personally find very important. There are some instances on here that I would discourage any newcomer from joining specifically because their owners have made rash moderation decisions that are unreasonable even under their stated rules.

sundogplanets, to random
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social avatar

My astro 101 exam is all done for tomorrow. Things I incorporated to try to make it difficult to cheat on (not impossible, it's always possible to cheat):
-super short time limit, but open book/notes
-they have to answer each question before going on to the next, no skipping around
-questions are as specific as possible to my lectures
-anything with a written component is worded in a way that (I think) will be hard to immediately google, and hopefully will also be hard for chatGPT to answer.

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@sundogplanets

> -they have to answer each question before going on to the next, no skipping around

FWIW, this is likely to be difficult for some students, since it's so much harder to know when to move on from a hard question without knowing how it compares to the other ones. On the other hand, though, I don't know how test-taking strategies have evolved since the pandemic, so maybe it will be less of an issue for modern students.

martijn, to random
@martijn@ieji.de avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    kechpaja,
    @kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

    @martijn What's wrong with being the United States of Europe?

    The USA has plenty of problems, but being a more tightly integrated federation isn't what's causing them. Plus, a lot them are already here in Europe either way.

    futurebird, to random
    @futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

    Thousands of students hit a wall at algebra and calculus because of this aspect of notation. The tendency of more basic courses and examples to omit ratio representation doesn’t help. I have a student who is very process focused (the procedures are safe! reliable) but I’m worried she thinks each of these is a totally different function.

    Does this mean that ratios never clicked for her?
    Or is this just about “experience” and with time you are confident that these are all the same beast?

    kechpaja,
    @kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

    @futurebird I've thought about this more in a programming languages context than a pedagogical or strictly mathematicaly one, but sometimes it's very tempting to do away with division and subtraction as notational operations, and instead just represent them as addition and multiplication of inverses. You could do it easily as a subset of familiar notation — just write x + -y and xy^-1.

    (I first internalized quite a bit of math as almost pure symbol manipulation, but I don't remember struggling with this at the time.)

    futurebird, (edited ) to random
    @futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

    Based on your religion & culture and how you grew up were you taught that if you had a “gift” (that is if you were good at art or science or dance or something) you have a responsibility to cultivate that gift and make things that help your community. That is do you feel that having talent means you MUST to work hard to give back? And this isn’t just a nice idea— it’s the difference between heaven and hell. Between honor and shame.

    kechpaja,
    @kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

    @futurebird "Is it a thing in my culture" is hard to answer for a variety of reasons, but I don't feel like I was raised with that idea, or that I internalized it.

    (I was taught that a work ethic in general was a necessary thing to have, but that's not what you asked.)

    futurebird, to random
    @futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

    Do you ever think about abandoned tech trees? Like how no one is working to design better drafting compasses or vellum? No one is perfecting vacuum tubes. No one is laser focused on methods to speed paint and accurate portrait by hand to send out for marriage proposals.

    Technological leaps make entire areas of research pointless— but

    What if just a bit further down the line on the old tech tree there was some bigger breakthrough we’ll never see? I think about this A LOT.

    kechpaja,
    @kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

    @futurebird you've presumably read this story, right?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken_(short_story)

    futurebird, (edited ) to random
    @futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

    When ants escape what do they do? Here are their top choices:

    1. Sadly linger on the lid of the formicarium hoping to be let back in.
    2. Menace the lid of other ant colonies.
    3. Menace the feeder roaches.

    That last one surprised me. One little ant wants to try to take on 8 dozen dubias all by herself. This would be like if you ran away from home, then hung around a beef ranch with a napkin tucked in to your collar and knife and fork in each hand licking your chops at the cows.

    kechpaja,
    @kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

    @futurebird Docile cows, or aggressive bulls?

    Alon, to random
    @Alon@mastodon.social avatar

    PS is leading in the exits :). https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/slovaks-choose-between-pro-russian-ex-pm-fico-pro-western-liberals-2023-09-29/

    But can someone explain to me how come of the top three parties in Slovakia - PS, SMER-SDS, Hlas - all three are nominally center-to-left? Did OL'aNO just crash and burn?

    kechpaja,
    @kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

    @Alon

    > PS is leading in the exits :)

    Stop trying to give me a heart attack!

    evan, to random
    @evan@cosocial.ca avatar

    Using unlicensed Harry Potter IP in your ads isn't explicitly trans allyship but it's a step in the right direction

    kechpaja,
    @kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

    @evan They're definitely leaning into the Harry Potter association in that ad, but it looks like buttered beer (note the -ed) at least is a real thing that predates the franchise: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/buttered_beer

    Neverfadingwood, to random
    @Neverfadingwood@lingo.lol avatar
    kechpaja,
    @kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

    @Neverfadingwood I'm pretty sure that's a portugander.

    jwildeboer, to Starlink
    @jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net avatar

    A mixture between fascinating and disturbing. Live animation of satellites in orbit. You can zoom in and check activated coverage too. https://satellitemap.space/?constellation=starlink

    kechpaja,
    @kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

    @jwildeboer Aren't they full of things that we might not want to be breathing, even in trace amounts?

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