It's not often appreciated, but I have to say, how Mastodon internals work in terms of performance and scalability are top notch and sets the bar for other projects.
It's not the language that matters, the database is the bottleneck, and more importantly how you manage the data schema and structures!
This month is still on track to become by far the warmest June on record in the Netherlands. Current forecast average is 19.7⁰C. That's
1.5⁰C above any June before,
3.5⁰C above the already warmed 1991-2020 average, and
Warmer than all but a few months of July and August.
“Tech billionaires are buying up luxurious bunkers and hiring military security to survive a societal collapse they helped create, but like everything they do, it has unintended consequences.”
I'm not disabled, nor colorblind, nor impaired in any way when using a website.
Still, #accessibility helps me a lot. So much that I'll use web-apps and -sites with good accessibility far more than their alternatives with poor accessibility.
Simple things like tabbing, shortcuts, navigation: when I can use it just a little easier or faster, I'll use it more often.
Accessibility matters, even if you don't care the least about (temporary) impaired users (which is a horrible premise).
Would you be comfortable joining an instance that required you to provide your mobile phone number to send a code you enter during registration, knowing your # wouldn't be stored and only used to verify you are not a spammer? #askFedi#fediverse
@dansup this only fights spam accounts on large centralized instances.
And we don't want large, centralized instances.
We want to encourage many, small, federated instances. So IMO any effort to improve spam fighting, should go to tools and tech for fighting spam in a world with many, small, federated instances.
Spent the weekend cleaning and assembling this amazing Warre Top-Bar beehive CNC cut from one single sheet of ply with the help of the amazing @waag fab lab in Amsterdam. Using opensource designs from https://www.osbeehives.com/
@danbz In the Netherlands the "standardhive" is omnipresent: every beekeeper has material in and for that. Makes it very easy to share stuff, split and combine hives etc.
So I'm always fidgeting with my TBH.
My T3 is a 1984 transporter, 1.9 WBX from the German army. Made into a pop-top camper with fake westfalia (ASC).
Disregarding nuclear waste, or accidents, let's presume that's "solved". Then still, nuclear power is crap.
It's highly centralized, monopolized, with all the risks to continuation and effectiveness that come from it.
It's more expensive to run than wind and solar (but can run predictably and 24/7). And with costs for storage of waste and decommissioning, it's often more expensive than coal or gas even!
Uranium has to be mined. Like coal. But in problematic regions. Uranium is finite.
@bornach@stux@danny hell, conventional nuclear power isn't commercially viable surprisingly often.
Solar and wind are way cheaper. So much, that often nuclear plants throttle (which is slow, expensive and highly inefficient - they are designed to go 100% 24/7). That's just operating (mining, maintenance, etc) Funds for long term storage, decommissioning and building make it even more expensive, oft surpassing gas and coal.
@fabiscafe@stux yup. It uses and needs so much water that last summer the nuclear champ France, had to shut down a third of their generation because of droughts.
Both to save water, and because there simply wasn't enough river left to cool some plants.
Also, it produces just as much heat as any coal or some gas powered plants (it's all steam turbines). All going to waste, currently: warming up rivers, speeding up evaporation and thus drought.
@tcely@fabiscafe@stux "it depends". Like wind and solar, it's dependent on weather, though less. Like coal and nuclear it's slow to ramp up and down.
But often it's free. And it can be done with little impact on ecology. But with a lake, a lot of water will evaporate. You might also use the lake for irrigation. It's complicated. And case dependent.
Where can I bring or send my old - some broken - laptops for recycling?
I know there are shady "laptop recyclers" who'll gladly lift data from the drives and sell that or abuse that. So I'll want something that at least feels legit. If an org can refurbish them: all the better!
In or near east of the Netherlands (around Nijmegen). Or somewhere I can post them (for a reasonable price).
These are NOT patriots. They ARE domestic terrorists. True patriots wouldn’t have to hide their identities behind a mask. #PatriotFrontAreDomesticTerrorists
It baffles me how easy some people are to dismiss techniques and perspectives that are advocated by developers as "something for developers" and thus not for business or product management:
These are all concepts meant to improve delivering the right product and delivering the product right. Thinking it's merely developers doing their thing outside the realm or concern of product management is so detrimental to both.
@kerfuffle though, devil's advocate, I don't want "the business" or "project management" telling me how to do my job. I'll work TDD because that's how I work. Management has no say over how I work or what tools I use. They don't have a say in whether I use an RCS or what IDE or she'll I'm using either. So why would it be up to them to say I can do TDD?
The others, DDD, agile, scrum do need cooperation because they are a way to cooperate. But TDD?
@kerfuffle certainly. A part of TDD will require buy in and effort from other stakeholders. Indeed to "define the outcome that allows us to check this is 'done'". Especially when TDD is what some call BDD, where we test outside in.
But there will always be modules, classes, functions, boundaries, that have hardly impact on "the higher ups", for which I'll always write tests, rather than clumsily and manually testing their workings by clicking around.
@baldur that terminal decline only happens when other companies do sell cars in those markets. I.e. if it has a monopoly or not.
Google clearly has a monopoly, so this analogy is a bit skewed. Google can do whatever it wants, including ignoring large markets, and still maintain stellar growth.
@baldur it depends on the exact definition of monopoly. And -as noted originally- depends per market even. Google certainly has a pure Monopoly in all the things you mention within specific (geographical or niche) markets
@baldur I think we agree on how Google is dysfunctional, or ineffective.
My point, however, was to adress why it can afford to be that (and still make record profits).
The only logical reason is "monopoly" (or monopolies see above). This allows them to be wasteful. It's rather classical monopoly theory, I'm told. Clearly the market is failing here.
But we knew that already, seeing how EC and EU are fining this Big Tech over monopoly abuse with record amounts.
@baldur I hope (and hope to believe) you are right. In that Googles, or any FAANG monopoly will disintegrate soon ish.
I'm a bit sceptical if it won't simply be replaced by another monopolist. But here's for hoping.
One day soon we'll see thousands of niche online advertising agencies. Hundreds of search engines, each good at serving their particular niche. Thousands of dedicated maps, integrated via geo protocols. Each org running their own mail and communication servers. Dreams.
Earlier this week, #guppe announced that they were going to sunset the platform because they had become too popular, and didn't have enough funding to sustain itself.
But today they announced that due to a last minute surge on Open Collective, they are now able to cover server costs.
The platform lives another day. That said, they still don't yet have enough funding to cover labour costs.
If you'd like to make a contribution, here's the Open Collective page:
@atomicpoet@fediversenews sounds like, above all, we need more instances, rather than funding further growth of one that is apparently already too big.
