@Rycaut@mastodon.social avatar

Rycaut

@Rycaut@mastodon.social

Entrepreneur & Product Manager - currently looking for new opportunities. Likely starting a Fediverse related business to host, manage and extend instances for businesses and organizations. Writer and GM

https://calendly.com/rycaut to schedule meetings with me

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

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Has anyone read any good math and science history nonfiction books recently? (pop nonfiction please) Are there any really good ones out?

Rycaut,
@Rycaut@mastodon.social avatar

@futurebird I am currently reading The Wizard and The Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World by Charles C. Mann which is about Norman Borlaug and William Vogt and the impact of their very different views and approaches on our views about the Environment. I am not finished with it yet but it’s very well written and deeply researched and a history about two hugely impactful scientists (more about science than math) may be longer than pop nonfiction

Rycaut, to random
@Rycaut@mastodon.social avatar

Does anyone have a site that lists software by categories (both open and closed source and for all sizes of businesses and personal use) that are from companies and organizations that are run by horrible people

(For example - nothing by anything Oracle now owns would make this list for me)

Think garner quandrant charts for various categories of software but where you can exclude sets of companies (and orgs)

Ideally people can share their exclusion lists and reasoning

Rycaut,
@Rycaut@mastodon.social avatar

Less political reasons than “not owned by a MAGA idiot” might be “do they offer support in every geography my company does business in” or “are their products localized for key languages my employees or customers epeak” or for dev tools/libraries does the license conform to my company’s standards and needs.

But I’ll take “here are good alternatives to Netsuite for a midsized company that doesn’t want to support Ellison”

Rycaut, to random
@Rycaut@mastodon.social avatar

One (of many) issues in the US. The county I live in here in California (Santa Clara - where San Jose is) has more than 1.8M people.

That’s more than the population of 13 states (its just a bit more than the population of Idaho)

North and South Dakota get four senators representing them. Combined they don’t have as many people as my county.

Santa Clara is just one of many counties in. California

Rycaut,
@Rycaut@mastodon.social avatar

@zigguratmonk that’s largely because the number of representatives is set based on the census of 1910 (via a law from 1913)and another in 1929 which capped the representatives at 435. If instead representatives were allocated to the states in a manner such that they all roughly represented the same number of people say about 600,000 (just a bit more than Wyoming) we would have around 600 Reps and CA would have 65 not 53. (Exact math would be 553 but rounding a bit plus adding territories and DC

Rycaut,
@Rycaut@mastodon.social avatar

@zigguratmonk one rep per 600,000 people is still kinda crazy but that wouldn’t be an impossible change (though redistricting every state to accommodate it would be ugly). Even better would be one rep per 300,000 or even 200,000 but that would be a massive change (it likely would allow for viable third parties and would start to lesson the impact of senators on the electoral college.

But I don’t know of a serious movement to repeal the 1913 & 1929 laws - but I do think it would help the US

Rycaut,
@Rycaut@mastodon.social avatar

@zigguratmonk wikipedia has a good summary https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives

Rycaut, to random
@Rycaut@mastodon.social avatar

I am actively voting for Biden and Harris. Not just against Trump. He has had far more successes than I expected - and far more than the media gives him credit for - and with four more years he and his VP (who as a Californian Jew married to an Indian daughter of immigrants I’m proud to vote for and support) is he and his administration or VP Harris perfect? No. But no one (in or out of politics) is perfect. But they are smart, savvy, experienced and surrounded by actual experts

skinnylatte, to BelieveInFilm
@skinnylatte@hachyderm.io avatar

Late last year, I ran a small project with a nonprofit in San Francisco. We gave out instant film cameras (color and black and white) to 5 people who were either unhoused or who lived nearby in one of the 'SROs'. We did a tiny, tiny exhibition.

I'm still working to figure out how to make this a more regular thing, and how to show their work, because they have such amazing stories to tell.

#BelieveInFilm #FilmPhotography #Photography #SanFrancisco #Tenderloin

Rycaut,
@Rycaut@mastodon.social avatar

@skinnylatte one thought - could you scan the images and then make them into short books (with the proceeds going hopefully to the photographers and perhaps a small amount to the nonprofit?). Perhaps via a service like mixbooks that helps people make personal photo books? (And prints them on demand)

Also being in SF and photography adjacent perhaps chat with the org PhotoWings (https://photowings.org) which is also SF based (I know the founder but haven’t seen her in years)

alcinnz, to random
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

This morning's link haul for discussing time:

https://zachholman.com/talk/utc-is-enough-for-everyone-right
https://www.wired.com/2012/06/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-time/
https://everything-everywhere.com/whats-the-deal-with-daylight-savings/
https://www.ipses.com/eng/in-depth-analysis/standard-of-time-definition/
https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/julian-gregorian-switch.html
https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/julian-calendar.html

Any more great links for discussing you wish to share?

Should have my text fully linkified very soon!

Rycaut,
@Rycaut@mastodon.social avatar

@alcinnz very good article.

Speaking as a (reformed) founder of a calendar company (and former editor of some of the calendar related RFCs) this is a fantastic article. But it can get even harder and more complicated - imagine things like how do you ask a user what to do if they put in a start time and a duration vs a start and end time? If DST happens during an instance of the event? Or if they change the start time? Or the duration? Or the end time?

And look up temporal databases sometime

Rycaut, to random
@Rycaut@mastodon.social avatar

Random(ish) idea

Could Apple make an iPad like device that wasn’t a full device with all the features but instead only worked when paired with a second device?

Ie a touchscreen with battery, Bluetooth, a few ports and perhaps storage (and minimal compute to run the screen) that then pairs with a laptop or an iPhone or a VisionPro and works as a display and input device?

(Perhaps with either no camera or only a camera for FaceID and videoconferencing)

Rycaut,
@Rycaut@mastodon.social avatar

I’ve long thought that we might eventually see a screen less device that has compute, storage and radios which then pairs with a variety of other devices for full functionality (watch, VisionPro or what comes next after that, screens, controllers etc. it raises various lag and interference and security concerns but also could allow for staggered upgrades as well as entirely new form factors

Rycaut, to random
@Rycaut@mastodon.social avatar

my LinkedIn Account is old enough to drink in the US.

Which is a bit sad especially since it was so great a site and service in the past and has fallen so far, today it is bigger than ever yet also less useful, and their automation doesn't help.

(I was literally one of the first 1000 users of LinkedIn - but their automated systems don't make any particular note of that)

Rycaut, to random
@Rycaut@mastodon.social avatar

small feature I'd love gmail to allow - let me set what size email is "too big" to show the full message. Hint I'd set it really really big. I have fiber, Google presumably has really big data centers with really fast pipes. Surely they can manage to show the full message of say the email from a local bookstore chain showing all of their upcoming author signing events without me clicking to open the message in a new tab.

Its been one (of many) frustrations with gmail for many many years

mwichary, to random
@mwichary@mastodon.online avatar

Did Facebook Marketplace completely take over what Craigslist once did, or do they coexist? I have some furniture etc. I want to get rid of, but don’t particularly want to create a FB account for this.

Rycaut,
@Rycaut@mastodon.social avatar

@mwichary I rarely use Craigslist these days (in San Jose CA) but also mostly use a fb group for giving stuff away vs selling things (was a “buy nothing” group but rebranded as a “community gifting” - it’s fantastic and largely accurately limited to people in the same small geography). I’ve bought some things from FB marketplace but much more buying/selling from specific groups (collectibles not furniture). I may actually buy a chair from a fb marketplace listing but at an estate sale in person

zigguratmonk, to random
@zigguratmonk@mastodon.social avatar

At a Safeway and yikes, no wonder people complain about the price of groceries. Things is, i go plenty of places that aren't expensive like this. And smaller spots who should have less ability to negotiate. Makes me think they are overcharging.

Rycaut,
@Rycaut@mastodon.social avatar

@zigguratmonk Safeway plays all kinds of games with their prices. If you have their frequent customer card they often have very good deals and offers. But you have to pay attention (I shop there but only for certain things and take full advantage of their various offers when they are for things my family actually eats)

Rycaut, to random
@Rycaut@mastodon.social avatar

noting a trend on Facebook (and likely on other social media sites) - a ton of posts to random groups (with serious sounding names but unclear who runs them or why) with rehashed versions of memes from years ago which my friends now seem apt to reshare/post as if they are new(ish) stories. And in many cases they seem to be lightly edited from the original versions and the sources of the original meme are almost always obscured or not cited at all. Often paired with AI generated images

Rycaut,
@Rycaut@mastodon.social avatar

for example just minutes ago saw, yet again, a story about the Washington Post/Joshua Bell experiment - which summarized it (poorly) and never once noted that it was done in 2014. All alongside a seeming photo of him playing (but pretty sure it was AI generated as it showed him playing on a train, not at the station, and it wasn't an image from the original story (which is at https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/pearls-before-breakfast-can-one-of-the-nations-great-musicians-cut-through-the-fog-of-a-dc-rush-hour-lets-find-out/2014/09/23/8a6d46da-4331-11e4-b47c-f5889e061e5f_story.html)

nor does it talk about the follow up stories or the repeat of his performance

Rycaut,
@Rycaut@mastodon.social avatar

go read that article.

give yourself the time to read it. It isn't a few minute read. It is a lengthy, long article (1000's of words), to read the whole thing takes time. It isn't easily summarized in a few short sentences (though I keep seeing that more often than a link to the original article)

The comments on such social media posts are even more obnoxious (for example doubting that he used his $3.5M (in 2014) violin - when the article is very very clear that he did and why.

Rycaut, to comics
@Rycaut@mastodon.social avatar

So what comics, if any, are you looking forward to from tomorrow’s Free Comic Book Day? And are you going to your local comic book shop if they are doing anything for it? I’ll try to stop by but have some events happening tomorrow so might not make it right when my local shop opens.

If I make it looking forward to the new Doctor Who and a few things my son might like but at least per the lists I’ve seen not much else. But perhaps I’ve missed something.

emarktaylor, to random
@emarktaylor@thecanadian.social avatar

Rycaut,
@Rycaut@mastodon.social avatar

@emarktaylor and the specific link for more info is https://www.bklynlibrary.org/books-unbannedf. It isn't exactly their full library card - but it is access to a lot of free online resources including digital books.

(and since they launched this program in 2022 Boston Public Library, LA County Library, San Diego Public library and the Seattle Public Library have joined in their efforts as well)

ben, to random
@ben@werd.social avatar

Where's the Xerox PARC for social software?

Rycaut,
@Rycaut@mastodon.social avatar

@ben Yahoo! of the Peanut Butter memo years ago - Yahoo! Labs (and their famous/infamous open hackathons of the mid-2000's was an era full of missed opportunities - Yahoo!'s competitive advantage was (for the time) a nearly universal identity that tens of millions of people (if not hundreds of millions) used and trusted and seemed poised to help power all kinds of innovative and largely open apps and sites (remember Yahoo! Pipes? etc)

Rycaut,
@Rycaut@mastodon.social avatar

@ben and full disclosure while I didn't work for Yahoo! I was at many of those hackathons and knew a lot of the people at yahoo! including many in fairly senior roles. Its really a lost oppotunity with lots of really brilliant people who were there and building all kinds of cool things - many have since gone on to many other roles but I look back at the moment as very much the lost opportunity - at what could have been

gerowen, to privacy
@gerowen@mastodon.social avatar

If you use Dropbox you should probably change your password.

Headline: Hacked! Threat Actor Accessed Passwords and Phone Numbers

Snippet: A quick analysis revealed that a threat actor had broken in to access customer information such as emails, usernames, phone numbers and hashed passwords, as well as general account settings and certain authentication information (API keys, OAuth tokens, and multi-factor authentication).

https://www.bitdefender.com/blog/hotforsecurity/dropbox-hacked-threat-actor-accessed-phone-numbers-and-passwords/

Rycaut,
@Rycaut@mastodon.social avatar

@gerowen @sigh_d Dropbox Sign is the rebranded Hellosign product that Dropbox acquired in 2019. According this post on their site their infrastructure is largely isolated from the rest of Dropbox. (And as far as a I know the account for hellosign/dropbox sign to sign or request signatures - I’ve only used it in the past to sign things - is separate from my main Dropbox account and has different credentials.

See https://sign.dropbox.com/blog/a-recent-security-incident-involving-dropbox-sign

Still a massively bad breach

danhon, to random
@danhon@dan.mastohon.com avatar

wait, roblox is still losing a shit-ton of money?

I mean, not a surprise, but also a bit of a surprise?

Rycaut,
@Rycaut@mastodon.social avatar

@danhon if I’m reading it right and I just skimmed it looks like stock based comp might explain about 40% of their loss and how they account for revenue the other bit. I think because the average player seems to be playing for a longer time it actually has the ironic impact of reducing their revenues as they have to book the revenue from that player over a longer number of months.

(From 22 months to now 28 months I think)

Which feels like there is more to the story

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