@samueljohnson@mstdn.social avatar

samueljohnson

@samueljohnson@mstdn.social

Scientist, MBA, ex IT professional, Irish & European
Lived 30+ years on 4 continents, now back in Ireland.

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

BrideOfLinux, to random
@BrideOfLinux@mastodon.opencloud.lu avatar

Message to Elon:

samueljohnson,
@samueljohnson@mstdn.social avatar

@BrideOfLinux Probably a God fan.

marta, to random
@marta@oslo.town avatar

You speak Norwegian with a Polish accent. Your vowels strained like half-smiles you receive from your neighbors; your consonants rough like a Monday morning workout session at SATS. There’s no escaping from stereotypes your accent invokes.

https://thatmarta.wordpress.com/2024/05/10/on-language-and-boxing-up-a-rant/

samueljohnson,
@samueljohnson@mstdn.social avatar

@marta To write this elegantly in any language, let alone a non-mother tongue, is, as they say in this one:👌🔥. 👏

Was reminded of that time I hydroplaned on a tram rail on my scooter and hit my (helmeted) head on the kerb, then had to convince Dutch persons of sufficiently timely answers to questions about the day of the week, who was prime minister etc. That half-step for translation... Ouch. Mars and back.

A lovely piece that will resonate with all exiles, peripatetics & fellow travellers.

dajb, to random
@dajb@social.coop avatar

A post relating to my MSc in which can be safely ignored by anyone coming here for the Friday shitposts

https://dougbelshaw.com/blog/2024/05/10/tb871-four-perspectives-on-systems-thinking/

samueljohnson,
@samueljohnson@mstdn.social avatar

@dajb Mike Jackson's ideas were good and still valid but hardly rocket science; more process than systems thinking in the larger scheme of things (systems plural).

Take a look at the history of software version control systems and in particular the story of git and the genius of its author (& ideally the brilliance of the algorithm & it's application) for real (consequential, epic) thinking about systems.

Fred Brooks' Mythical Man Month is an enduring and canonical text of uncommon sense.

slothrop, to random
@slothrop@chaos.social avatar

I’m setting up a laptop for a non-techie relative, who lives in another city. I couldn’t find a remote admin solution that would work under Debian, at least not one that seemed reliable and trustworthy.

Here’s what I ended up doing:

I created a user for the relative on my instance, and opened a chat session with them titled “Tech assistance”.

The chat session has a URL, which I bookmarked in the Firefox bookmark bar.

samueljohnson,
@samueljohnson@mstdn.social avatar

@slothrop @ProfessorGumby Tailscale (no need to worry about about dynamic addresses) and NoMachine would likely give the best performance.

davidpnice, to random
@davidpnice@mastodon.online avatar

Trinity College Dublin (still no admission to non-college people) on the evening the protesters agreed to disband, having achieved their objectives: the college will shuck all ties to Israel. How different an outcome to the USA and elsewhere: no police unleashed, peaceful agreement. And tourists who missed seeing the Book of Kells saved their money - way too much to look at two pages - and might have gone to see the archeological treasures at the National Museum instead.

samueljohnson,
@samueljohnson@mstdn.social avatar

@davidpnice Way too much to look at two pages? The Book of Kells Experience as I think it's now called includes an audiovisual tour and a visit to the library (currently empty of books for renovations).

samueljohnson,
@samueljohnson@mstdn.social avatar

@davidpnice 💯

byteseu, to worldnews
@byteseu@pubeurope.com avatar

Elon Musk’s Bizarre Political Outbursts Have Turned Off Tesla’s Core Buyers, Data Shows https://www.byteseu.com/91055/

samueljohnson,
@samueljohnson@mstdn.social avatar

@noplasticshower @byteseu I was but became "Anything but Tesla". No regrets.

sjvn, to random
@sjvn@mastodon.social avatar

The Osborne 1 was my first "portable" computer. If I'd tried swinging it like this, my arm would have come off in five minutes. It weighed almost 25 pounds.

samueljohnson,
@samueljohnson@mstdn.social avatar

@sjvn Mine was a born again Osborne aka the Telcon Zorba http://www.zorba.z80.de. In the attic now.

Edent, (edited ) to random
@Edent@mastodon.social avatar

From an artist's point of view, is there any difference between you buying a donated CD from a charity shop and downloading pirated music from a torrent site?

Neither gives the artists, songwriters, producers, publishers, or distributors any money.

Neither reports to a charts authority to show popularity.

Both have the same impact on secondary revenue like gig tickets & merchandise.

Vote now - and please show your workings.

samueljohnson,
@samueljohnson@mstdn.social avatar

@Edent No comparison. Pirate download is outright theft. The CD was paid for. Bit of a difference between no money and some money.

That said, what may legally be theft is sometimes justified. If you've paid for something already and are then denied access to it or forced to pay again for a different medium or the terms of sale were altered later without your consent.

samueljohnson, to random
@samueljohnson@mstdn.social avatar

Renewable energy pivot point reached. Pity we didn't start 30 years ago.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/08/renewable-energy-passes-30-of-worlds-electricity-supply

dajb, to random
@dajb@social.coop avatar

Revision time for my son and so taking the opportunity to introduce him to v3 of my daily planner https://dougbelshaw.com/blog/2020/06/23/not-everything-has-to-be-digital-my-analogue-daily-and-weekly-planners/

samueljohnson,
@samueljohnson@mstdn.social avatar

@dajb For analogue I like to use an A5 notebook with pre-punched stationery (both common in Japan) but could never find a suitable A5 punch to make printing my own stationery worthwhile. Memo to self: try AliExpress (haven't looked for one for years).

For digital nothing beats MLO (https://MyLifeOrganized.net). I don't need it as much now but pay for updates bc it's made by Ukrainians under fire. Long since the only Windows app I run (on Linux).

mikarv, to random
@mikarv@someone.elses.computer avatar

absolute chaos on a new unmoderated listserv this week as tens of people used the ‘thumbs up’ feature in outlook, which apparently now sends an email, causing an unstoppable torrent

samueljohnson,
@samueljohnson@mstdn.social avatar

@mikarv Reminds me, indirectly, of my favourite Outlook add-on which disappeared off the Internet (as far as I could tell).*

Colleague A: How can I discourage B from putting read receipts on emails?

Me: Try this, it lets you choose how many to send - 1, 10, 100, 1,000

Later: It worked! 😂

More fun than the reply-all storms.

*MS legal action perhaps

threecoloured, to random German
@threecoloured@skeptics.social avatar

Optimist: Das Glas ist 1/2 voll
Pessimist: Das Glas ist 1/2 leer
Excel: Das Glas ist der 1. Februar

samueljohnson,
@samueljohnson@mstdn.social avatar

@threecoloured Katastrophist: ein Mensch, der überhaupt kein Glas hat. (a "no glass at all""person)

BrideOfLinux, to random
@BrideOfLinux@mastodon.opencloud.lu avatar

It occurs to me that it might be possible for a civilization to be in decline for decades while its inhabitants think it's soaring to new heights.

samueljohnson,
@samueljohnson@mstdn.social avatar

@BrideOfLinux Who among us suffers this conceit? The more usual complaint is that the end is imminent

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/apr/17/everything-must-go-by-dorian-lynskey-review-apocalypse-now

I don't have enough time for this but suspect I might not be able to put it down if I picked it up. I wonder if there's a novel in which it was DNS. 😋

samueljohnson, to random
@samueljohnson@mstdn.social avatar

There's an old greeting card with an egg and a chicken in bed in which the egg, enjoying a cigarette, says "Well, I guess that answers that question."

There's now a book length answer

https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/may/05/which-came-first-chicken-egg-evolution-science-zoology

There is no greater story than the history of life.

dajb, to random
@dajb@social.coop avatar

“You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you’ll live in torment if you don’t trust enough.”

(Frank Crane)

samueljohnson,
@samueljohnson@mstdn.social avatar

@dajb Indeed.

Bruce Schneier would be my go to for a quote FWIW but this is sound. His book selection still on the to-read list (his own is great)

https://fivebooks.com/best-books/bruce-schneier-on-trust/

Back when British politics was saner the House of Lords called on him for advice.

trunksapp, to random
@trunksapp@mastodon.social avatar

Oh, I also buried a glassmorphism experiment for the app decor in the latest beta update.

Enjoy!

video/mp4

samueljohnson, (edited )
@samueljohnson@mstdn.social avatar

@trunksapp Any chance of a Tweetings-style timeline - one that gives a threaded view of posts by poster, with latest clickable to reveal others? (instead of having everything interleaved) Permits fast catch-up and not missing anything from key posters.

Edited to fix autocorrection (clickable not clicks to let)

sjvn, to random
@sjvn@mastodon.social avatar

Not The Onion.

https://www.politico.eu/article/boris-johnson-turned-away-polling-station-voter-id-rules-uk-local-elections-elections-act/

samueljohnson,
@samueljohnson@mstdn.social avatar

@sjvn New York-born charlatans gotta do what they gotta do (on both sides of the Atlantic)

https://mastodon.scot/

itsfoss, (edited ) to linux
@itsfoss@mastodon.social avatar

Comment below 🙂

samueljohnson,
@samueljohnson@mstdn.social avatar

@itsfoss Updating both OS and ALL applications with a click, when you want not when Microsoft decides, was a welcome change from Windows - - with multiple applications updates and Windows insisting on updates at the most inconvenient times.

This never gets old and it can happen without using a single repository.

dajb, to geopolitics
@dajb@social.coop avatar

Next post on my MSc #SystemsThinking journey is a pretty basic one about the difference between #strategy and #systems https://dougbelshaw.com/blog/2024/05/01/tb871-different-uses-of-the-words-strategy-and-system/

samueljohnson,
@samueljohnson@mstdn.social avatar

@dajb In Business School you learn that something is strategic when the consequence of failure is existential. That's all. And by that standard most uses of the word are puffery.

samueljohnson,
@samueljohnson@mstdn.social avatar

@dajb Depends. As a someone w decades spent working for not for profits I learned a lot*, but the uses of knowledge by some is another story (Henry Mintzberg's Managers not MBAs is an indictment of HBS I would support). The word is overused so it's useful to have a criterion in any context.

*scenario planning could overlap w yr current interests and was the only part requiring actual thinking (try The Art of the Long View for an intro).

ChrisMayLA6, to random
@ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us avatar

Who in their right mind would now conclude any agreement with the London Govt?

Despite an agreement (from 2020) that the UK would accept returned asylum seekers, (now facilitated by legislation designating the UK a 'safe country') Ireland wants to repatriate some, only Rishi Sunak is refusing.

Quite apart from the morality & (in)humanity of the Tories migrant policies (which is bad enough), now he's also further trashing our reputation for keeping to agreements.

idiocy!

samueljohnson,
@samueljohnson@mstdn.social avatar

@ChrisMayLA6 Ireland was "persuaded" (UK has plenty of hostages) to apply UK immigration controls to the Common Travel Area in the past, including racist adjustments to keep former Imperial subjects at home where they belong.

During WW2 and through to 1953 the East West dimension of the CTA was suspended (NI citizens needed passports to enter GB).

We can put the clock back again, but nothing good will come of it.

davetroy, to random
@davetroy@toad.social avatar

📄NEW: If Donald Trump is elected, what will it mean for US and global security? The history behind his motivations runs deep and is tightly connected to Putin's nuclear ambitions and his KGB past. My latest, and maybe most important, piece in Washington Spectator.
https://washingtonspectator.org/wide-angle-nuclear-blackmail/

samueljohnson,
@samueljohnson@mstdn.social avatar

@davetroy I don't disagree, but reviewing his cognitive processes as if they had any coherence at all flatters him. He's a deeply disturbed and dangerous psychopath.

jackofalltrades, to climate
@jackofalltrades@mas.to avatar

It's very clear how desperate green tech advocates are to paint the current developments as a win for the climate. But by doing so they only reinforce the status quo.

https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/04/17/wind-energy-saw-record-growth-in-2023-which-countries-installed-the-most

#ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #climate #renewables #wind #solar #EnergyTransition

samueljohnson,
@samueljohnson@mstdn.social avatar

@osma @yianiris @jackofalltrades I'd be surprised if net solar and wind power production didn't comfortably exceed the total demand for power of EVs.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2024/02/renewables-energy-capacity-demand-growth/

https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/trending/s4xjoqrh005avqncsvkmkg2

Vehicle to Grid capabilities being developed and deployed now are going to have a large effect in the next 10 years and beyond.

cnrs, to random French
@cnrs@social.numerique.gouv.fr avatar

📰 France was among the countries that adopted the toughest policies during the Covid pandemic, and its people massively complied with the rules. CNRS scientists investigated the reasons behind this situation, and the lessons to be drawn from it.
https://news.cnrs.fr/articles/a-look-back-on-mass-surveillance-during-the-covid-crisis

samueljohnson,
@samueljohnson@mstdn.social avatar

@cnrs Fear of the virus and fear of the police?

Really? That's it? No social solidarity at all? Seriously?

Not the faintest disapproval of libertarians who thought their purported right to not wear masks and to expose others, including vulnerable people, to potentially life changing illness or death was all that mattered? 🤔

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