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tomw, to random
@tomw@mastodon.social avatar

Do you need a database, or could you make do with 3,000 ~1KB json files filled with regexes?

(The database probably would have been easier but this is definitely cheaper to host.)

tomw,
@tomw@mastodon.social avatar

If anyone asks, I'm going to call this a "cached compressed key-value store"

tomw,
@tomw@mastodon.social avatar

Wait, maybe I can call my directory full of json files a "microservice"

tomw, to random
@tomw@mastodon.social avatar

Hi! You haven't replied to this thread for a few days so we're going to go ahead and close the issue. Please reach out if you have any problems in future.

tomw, (edited )
@tomw@mastodon.social avatar

Survey: How was your experience? Please rate from 1 to 10.

tomw,
@tomw@mastodon.social avatar

Reminder: You still have the chance to rate your experience. Your feedback is very important to us. Please click here to complete the survey:

https://mastodon.social/@tomw/112252909723044229

tomw, to random
@tomw@mastodon.social avatar

Mastodon has two types of people: people who really want replies to their posts and people who extremely do not.

(I am in the first category, reply away)

mikej,
@mikej@mastodon.online avatar

@tomw It is puzzling, but at least here there seems to be less (still non-zero, but less) emphasis on follower count determining who is allowed to reply. "How dare this person with 100 followers dare interact with me!"

tomw,
@tomw@mastodon.social avatar

@mikej Oh yeah, that was an awful Twitter-ism:

"I don't think that's right..."
"Well you have 5 followers lol"

tomw, to random
@tomw@mastodon.social avatar

Spare me from people who think the answer to "Google sucks now" is a paywalled search engine that gets most of its results from Google anyway

datarama,
@datarama@hachyderm.io avatar

@tomw ...and is run by AI true believers.

That said: Paying for search is not necessarily in itself a bad idea (like paying for email). It's better to be the customer than to be the product - or, as it were, the raw material for the product.

tomw,
@tomw@mastodon.social avatar

I heard "if you're not paying, you're the product!" so I'll pay some guy to call the Google API for me

I have to log in to do it but he pinky promises not to associate my searches with that account

tomw, to random
@tomw@mastodon.social avatar

Everyone just sort of casually agrees that "we live in times of crisis". This is seen as self-evidently true.

But I wonder: when were the times of non-crisis? Which was the most recent not-crisis year, exactly?

tokyo_0,
@tokyo_0@mas.to avatar

@tomw There was?

tomw,
@tomw@mastodon.social avatar

@tokyo_0 Well, the continuation of the 1997 one

tomw, to random
@tomw@mastodon.social avatar

Oh no. These two things I care about just came together in the worst way:

Israel is USING AI for military targeting.

If a glorified autocomplete thinks you are a militant, you literally get a bomb dropped on your house.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai-database-hamas-airstrikes

tomw, to random
@tomw@mastodon.social avatar

Saw my first ever Threads interaction on here and it was someone using a fedi account to reply to Joe Biden, who is on Threads apparently?

For all the discussion it's been a while and there's been no other sign of it.

tomw, to random
@tomw@mastodon.social avatar

xz is not a "trusting trust" attack, it is a "your build tools are too complex for you to understand all the input and output" attack.

And guess what: that's very relevant to web development...

tomw,
@tomw@mastodon.social avatar

People worry about backdoored compilers and undetectable exploits and then go and install 100MB of node modules that we assume someone out there is probably checking idk

tomw, to random
@tomw@mastodon.social avatar

Today's Google is to 1990s Google as today's Simpsons is to 1990s Simpsons

tomw, to random
@tomw@mastodon.social avatar

I'm starting to see more posts about "hey you know the cloud actually uses a lot of electricity" and concerns about things like storing photos forever.

But this is a drop in the ocean compared to what is about to happen with AI. The sheer amount of computing resources that generative AI takes makes storing some photos look like a joke. You're looking at worse resource use than cryptocurrency, alongside a higher chance that using it will actually catch on.

sirobsidian,
@sirobsidian@fosstodon.org avatar

@tomw If I remember correctly cryptocurrency is, albeit slowly, getting more and more economically friendly. i.e. Ethereum's move to proof of stake.

tomw,
@tomw@mastodon.social avatar

@sirobsidian It's a very mixed bag... and Bitcoin is stuck forever in the original model

tomw, to random
@tomw@mastodon.social avatar

The trouble with Bluesky's "labelling" moderation (everything is tagged and you choose what you don't like) is that it assumes moderation is entirely a problem of what I personally see.

This model cannot handle things that will have negative consequences for me, and for society generally, even if I remain unaware that they are happening. For example, incitement to harassment or violence, doxxing, presidents calling for coups...

It does nothing about posts that have real-world consequences.

tomw,
@tomw@mastodon.social avatar

It's a moderation model where someone could broadcast calls for mass murder of some group I am a member of, and my only recourse would be a switch for "don't see murder posts", while their (willing) audience continues to bask in the murder feed

tomw,
@tomw@mastodon.social avatar

(Yes that's taking it to an extreme but Facebook managed it at least once)

tomw, to random
@tomw@mastodon.social avatar

Real-life actions and situations that have, to the best of my knowledge, never appeared in a video game.

Replies are very welcomed if you have an example of one of these things happening in a game.

Sometimes there will be an example of an action being vaguely suggested as part of a bigger process (like "repair" or "clean") but it only counts if the specific action is performed step by step.

(I'll add to this over time maybe.)

tomw,
@tomw@mastodon.social avatar

Launching a crowdfunding campaign

tomw,
@tomw@mastodon.social avatar

Being a passenger on a long and uneventful train journey

tomw, to random
@tomw@mastodon.social avatar

Whatever you do, there's always a sheep that has done it better.

They're just out standing in their field.

tomw, to random
@tomw@mastodon.social avatar

Logging into a SaaS thing...

"We've updated your dashboard so it's easier than ever..."

deep sigh

Luckily it turns out they have just changed the fonts and colours. I am part relieved, part amused at the idea of putting up a "we have updated" dialog when that's all you changed.

tomw, to random
@tomw@mastodon.social avatar

Genuinely though, genuinely, the whole existence of and debate around Tailwind has made me feel less bad about writing stuff like <div style="padding-top: 1rem;">

Inline styles may be unfashionable but they are better than Tailwind.

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