@alexch@ruby.social
@alexch@ruby.social avatar

alexch

@alexch@ruby.social

Rubyist since 2006ish. Co-created Pivotal Tracker, Burlington Code Academy, and some other stuff. Occasional agile coach and/or coder and/or teacher. A dog's best friend. He/him.
I enjoy #coding #ruby #agile #xp
I hate #climate #doom & #politics but feel compelled to toot about em
I am #ActuallyAutistic and use an alt account for #autism and psych stuff, plus other special interests like #physics #linguistics
I use my #Vermont alt for #dog pix

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alexch, to random
@alexch@ruby.social avatar

coders were kinda like gods for a few decades, but now we’re more like Daedalus, imprisoned by the greedy and powerful King Minos inside the very labyrinth he paid us to invent and build

danilo, to random
@danilo@hachyderm.io avatar

the weirdest thing that has taken place in my life was reading valleywag throughout the aughts

with its excellent reportage of subjects the regular tech press wouldn’t touch

learning about how all these posturing tech guys were pretty sad and pathetic, and mostly winners of a random lottery

and now almost two decades later

these same pathetic guys are OBSCENELY powerful and wealthy

and still pathetic in ways the press remained reluctant to talk about!

alexch,
@alexch@ruby.social avatar

@danilo when "greed is good" became a non-ironic motto and people used research on dark patterns as a trailblaze and not a warning, the grief of seeing the bad guys win by following the instructions we specifically meant as cautionary warnings was christened as "fucking techbros"

cfiesler, to random
@cfiesler@hci.social avatar

I seriously don't understand how it's possible that I just see news story after news story that could have been made up by a group of undergrads I asked to imagine things that might obviously go wrong with generative AI. https://themarkup.org/news/2024/03/29/nycs-ai-chatbot-tells-businesses-to-break-the-law

alexch,
@alexch@ruby.social avatar

@cfiesler @mcc

To be fair, this particular story is hilarious.

Especially considering that Mayor Adams is exactly the type of shallow-thinker who keeps falling for zero-evidence pseudoscience tech-hype non-solutions. Blockchain! Bitcoin! Gun detectors! Broken windows! All patently obvious repeatedly-disproven horseshit, all ways to route payola to himself and his cronies. This isn’t a tech story, it’s a political corruption story.

planettimmy, to random
@planettimmy@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

Can someone tell me why everyone here hates Joe Lieberman? I read about the backing McCain thing, but I feel like there's some other stuff I'm missing

alexch,
@alexch@ruby.social avatar

@planettimmy

singlehandedly blocked Obama’s paltry effort to add a “public option” to the already watered-down and insurance-co-friendly ACA (Obamacare) at the behest of his donors from the Great State of Cigna (Connecticut).

Then when he was successfully primaried by a popular Democrat (Ned Lamont) he ran as an independent and kept his Senate seat with Republicans’ help.

He was the Joe Manchin of his day. A smug quisling “centrist” corpocratic asshole.

alexch,
@alexch@ruby.social avatar

@violetmadder @planettimmy

In my personal alternate-2000 fantasies, I like to think that President Gore would still have made his transformation from awkward wooden puppet into self-actualized unabashed nerdy enviro beardo while in office, but you’re probably right, he would have remained a slave to centrists (conservative prudes and corpocrats in liberal clothing) like his wife and his veep and things would still have gone dystopian, but maybe just not quite as rapidly

hosford42, to actuallyautistic
@hosford42@techhub.social avatar

Requirements to put in a job description to discourage or filter out autistic people:

  • Comfortable with ambiguity
  • Strong people skills
  • Good culture fit
  • Multitasking
  • A fast-paced dynamic environment
  • Bachelor's degree or better

I see these things and think you don't want my >30 years of programming and machine learning experience, or my problem-solving skills and comprehensive knowledge that had people mistaking me for one of the team's PhDs, or my solutions that have proven patent-worthy. Your loss.


@actuallyautistic
@neurodivergence

alexch,
@alexch@ruby.social avatar

@hosford42 @actuallyautistic @neurodivergence

listing job requirements is itself a way to filter out autistic people who take things literally! NT hiring culture expects applicants to, if not lie outright, to at least exaggerate their credentials, and in any case all job requirements should be seen as soft suggestions and can easily be waived if you make a personal impression on an individual insider or interviewer

atomicpoet, to random

Today’s movie is A Mother’s Instinct (a.k.a., Her Own Justice) (2015) starring Josie Bissett, Spencer Drever, and Sarah Grey.

Here’s the description:

When a woman’s son goes missing and the prime suspect is released due to lack of evidence, she and her teenage daughter decide to play vigilante.

This looks like a tale of a pair of WASP-y blonde women against the town’s local emo boy. This looks both cheesy and trashy, and I’m here for every moment of it!

That’s to say that I’m not expecting high art here. Just a made-for-television movie about the dangers of creepy teenagers and the moms who seek revenge against them.

If Josie Bissett looks familiar for you, it was because she starred in Melrose Place. She’s also been in a lot of silly made-for-TV Hallmark movies. I hope she chews lots of scenery in this film.

iMDB rates this a 4.8 while this movie got no attention on Rotten Tomatoes.

Join me as I comment on what is likely to be a terrible movie!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxJRRA7hjKE

alexch,
@alexch@ruby.social avatar

@atomicpoet @HauntedOwlbear I could see the lack of twist coming from a mile away: specifically, from the title. In modern American mythology, "A Mother’s Instinct" is always correct. "Trust your gut" is an infallible moral guide; don't bother to check the facts; fear creates reality; any risk justifies all cruelty. It's worse than "the ends justify the means" -- the vibes justify the ends. It's the banality of evil. And I know you know all this already, so thanks for letting me rant. 😉

alexch, to DOOM
@alexch@ruby.social avatar


Note: we are no longer on the top-side red curve. We are on the left-side red curve. Which will soon surmount the top-side curve, again.

Note 2: the North Atlantic is warmer than the rest of the world's oceans (for now). We are getting the predicted calamitous effects a few decades earlier than the rest of the planet. See article for more details and calamities.

https://www.vox.com/climate/2024/2/28/24085691/atlantic-ocean-warming-climate-change-hurricanes-coral-reefs-bleaching

deivudesu, to random
@deivudesu@mastodon.social avatar

"Escape" what, The Guardian… fucking escape WHAT!?

I am getting so tired of reading supposedly sane media report on the never-ending string of war crimes committed by the Israeli army, like they are some mere misunderstandings…

alexch,
@alexch@ruby.social avatar

@deivudesu passive voice, active propaganda 😥

so who did what to whom, and why? journalism shmournalism, the only "W" facts in that hed are where and when🤬

jbzfn, to llm
@jbzfn@mastodon.social avatar

☠️Hallucination is Inevitable: An Innate Limitation of Large Language Models
— arxiv.org

"By employing results from learning theory, we show that LLMs cannot learn all of the computable functions and will therefore always hallucinate. Since the formal world is a part of the real world which is much more complicated, hallucinations are also inevitable for real world LLMs"

https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.11817

alexch,
@alexch@ruby.social avatar

@markhughes in this context, hallucination is a perfectly cromulent term; nobody is confused by it into thinking is sentient, and a lot of people are educated by its crisp analogy to a similar human phenomenon

words have meaning only in context, all words are metaphors, etc.

would you complain that "save file" is creating a false image of a computer intentionally, heroically rescuing a poor folder full of loose leaf pages from a burning file cabinet? probably not; good metaphors are good

alexch,
@alexch@ruby.social avatar

@markhughes In fact, Mark, it's a technical academic term invented by clever AI researchers, not marketeers, and if anything it goes against the hype by poetically calling out a major deficiency in the tech. I'm not going to keep bickering with you here, but I hope you consider my point before continuing to scold intelligent people online for using words to communicate clearly with each other. Have a fun day!

alexch, to random
@alexch@ruby.social avatar

*Higgamus, hoggamus, *
Mary of Nazareth
Said, "As the virginal
Mother of God,

I'm just as good doing
Parthenogenesis
As a stingray, amoeba,
Or gasteropod."

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-did-an-aquarium-stingray-get-pregnant-without-a-mate/

(apologies to my Uncle Ted who rhymed up an original decades before I added stingrays to the mix today)

fj, to random
@fj@mastodon.social avatar

~100 more Starlink v1 satellites will be burning up in the upper atmosphere in the next 6 months, bringing up the total number of de-orbited Starlink satellites to ~500 out of 6000 launched
https://api.starlink.com/public-files/Commitment%20to%20Space%20Sustainability.pdf

De-orbiting satellites by burning them up did work when the volume of satellites was small, but already 10% of aerosol particules in the stratosphere contain aluminum/other metals.
The problem is only going to get worse with the launch of megaconstellations https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2313374120

alexch,
@alexch@ruby.social avatar

@fj via @fj
already 10% of aerosol particles in the stratosphere contain conductive metals

seems we are rapidly building a Faraday cage for our planet, suppressing our protective magnetic field, because we don't have enough problems down here already

"So far, models of spacecraft reentry have focused on understanding the hazard presented by objects that survive to the surface rather than on the fate of the metals that vaporize."

https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2313374120

alexch, to random
@alexch@ruby.social avatar

“This will be a big problem IMO. Interesting to see what Elon does about this.”

Tesla fan on Reddit predicts Cybertruck rusting issue… 4 years ago.

That poor, smart, deceived, deluded, high-IQ fool. Honestly there but for the grace of — i dunno, maybe a childhood fascination with circus scams and con artists? a hypertuned bullshit detector? a science-plus-humanities education that taught me to always check the facts and the feelings? — go I

https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/e0qkgg/cybertruck_will_rust_in_salt_air_and_show/

LeftistLawyer, to philosophy
@LeftistLawyer@kolektiva.social avatar

A little similarity observation :

I'm a very kinda lawyer in a very rightist kinda region.

In meeting with clients over the years, I note that they often like to talk about politics. I'm not entirely sure why. Some, perhaps do so to "feel out" whether I'm their type of attorney. Some maybe think lawyers have some deeper political insight due to their connection to the law. I don't know. I just know it happens with great regularity.

And being a leftist in an extremely rightist world, you can imagine my discomfort.

Fortunately, I've found a strategy that seems to allow me to bond with clients no matter how rightwhackadoodle they seem. Are you ready for it?

/1

alexch,
@alexch@ruby.social avatar

@LeftistLawyer fyi this third post isn't threading right with the second post; you may want to delete it and re-reply to the 2/3 not the 1/3

also pls add 3/3 to the 3rd,

I was befuddled since all I saw were the top slice and the bottom slice with no sandwich meat between them

Jyoti, to acab
@Jyoti@mas.to avatar

I'm gonna keep posting this as it keeps annoying bootlickers.

alexch,
@alexch@ruby.social avatar

@Jyoti obviously this is financially ludicrous if the goal is to help the most people for the least cost

which means that the actual goal is something else

it's apparently worth $150M+ to the mayor to
(a) give overtime kickbacks to his cop buddies
(b) make it look like he's punching scumbags to impress rich donors and/or angry voters

any other value-add items he's getting for his money?

> "It's about correcting behavior," Kemper said. "Stopping fare evaders sets the tone of law and order."

alexch,
@alexch@ruby.social avatar

@Jyoti https://hellgatenyc.com/the-nypd-spent-150-million-to-catch-farebeaters-who-cost-the-mta-104000

> NYPD Chief of Transit Michael Kemper told Gothamist that the negligible change in major crime rates belies the much more significant change of "tone" throughout the subway system. "It's about correcting behavior," Kemper said. "Stopping fare evaders sets the tone of law and order." A 151 million dollar vibe shift, if you will.

So it's Giuliani's broken windows nonsense, back from the 90s
https://www.businessinsider.com/criticism-for-giulianis-broken-windows-theory-2014-12

CelloMomOnCars, to random
@CelloMomOnCars@mastodon.social avatar

San Francisco, Chinese New Year.
The streets are PACKED with people celebrating. A robotaxi muscles its way through, carrying no passenger.

So it's an empty robot car, taking up the space of a dozen people standing, barging through the crowd which is crowded.

And police are scratching their heads about how the car ended up torched.

https://sfstandard.com/2024/02/10/waymo-robotaxi-goes-up-in-flames-in-chinatown-after-crowd-attacks-vehicle/

alexch,
@alexch@ruby.social avatar

@CelloMomOnCars I was recently chatting on FB with a friend who regularly takes Waymos around SF. She says her experiences are great, and expects the tech to keep improving. I asked her to consider if it's already peaked since it can't predict human behavior, and instead humans would keep getting pushed out of public spaces by corporations, like with jaywalking laws. Thanks for giving me the perfect example!

And good on the partiers for gleefully neutralizing the threat to their safety and fun!

alexch, to journalism
@alexch@ruby.social avatar

just listened to a 12-minute spot on interviewing about Conservapedia

i heard a lot of words — doubt, rhetoric, conspiracy theory, alternative fact, agenda, anti-science, fundamentalism, etc — but two simple, important words were absent:

“propaganda” and “lie”

🤬

it was infuriating to hear those journalists dodge around those two simple words, 8 years on from 2016, even while explicitly describing the site as full of lies and propaganda

alexch, to tech
@alexch@ruby.social avatar

asking for a friend— can anyone hook me up with someone who knows about ( at a company)? she and some of her colleagues just got screwed out of a raise based on sales and workflow metrics they had no control over and they’re ready to revolt

alexch, to random
@alexch@ruby.social avatar

can we please get everyone in the world to stop using the terms “conservative / liberal” and instead use term that indicate what they actually stand for? my suggestion is “authoritarian / egalitarian”

i mean conservatives and liberals and progressives and moderates all want some things to change and some to change less, right?

the most inarguably conservative position is environmentalism and conservatives hate that; the most inarguably liberal is free trade and liberals hate that (or progs do)

atrupar, to random
@atrupar@journa.host avatar

New in PN: "The demise of Chevron will be as much of a shock to the system as getting rid of Roe was, if not more." https://www.publicnotice.co/p/scotus-chevron-precedent-overturned-explained

alexch,
@alexch@ruby.social avatar

@atrupar @OlDude82

Putin sure got a good return on his investment in his 2016 troll farms, huh? Why destroy America himself when he can get us to do it to ourselves? Wheeee…! 😅😭

(I’m specifically referring to the three SCOTUS trolls appointed by the useful idiot their propaganda nudged into office.)

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

So I see TED invited Bill Ackman and Bari Weiss?

alexch,
@alexch@ruby.social avatar

@thomasfuchs @danhon sorry, I meant the organizers, not the fascists they invited for false balance

alexch,
@alexch@ruby.social avatar

@thomasfuchs @danhon

definitely, but if we’re moving on from the “pithy quip” phase of the conversation, i think it’s more complicated than that — we are all cosplaying as nice people to a large extent, all men are beasts playing dressup, we all have ideological blind spots, etc — but that doesn’t excuse them smoothing the path for provably unrepentant monsters

alexch,
@alexch@ruby.social avatar

@thomasfuchs

but isn’t that a functional difference? appeasers have different motivations and behaviors than aggressors and therefore need to be dealt with differently

and dude, if you don’t think you’re a beast, then i don’t know what to say except i respectfully disagree back atcha 🙂

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