@blikkie@hachyderm.io
@blikkie@hachyderm.io avatar

blikkie

@blikkie@hachyderm.io

Dutchman in New York. Dad, nerd, Software Engineer in Test, rock climber, occasional chef. I can talk about biking around and liveable cities all day. Ex-JW Player. Currently moving around fake bikes and scooters at Lyft. Opinions are my own

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mekkaokereke, to random
@mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io avatar

Some of y'all are still confused as to why it seems that Silicon Valley billionaires are "turning to Trump." That's because you don't listen to Black people, you disrespect poor white people, and you ignore obvious statistics that have been staring you in the face for decades.

Silicon. Valley. Billionaires. Have. Always. Supported. Trump.

Not because they like the tax breaks. Because they are more likely to be racist, and racism is the greatest predictor of Trump support.

1/N

blikkie,
@blikkie@hachyderm.io avatar

@mekkaokereke also, if you look at Blind (I know, it's a toxic hell hole), there's a significant number of highly overpaid software engineers that's extremely racist

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

If you live in the UK or USA, you need to understand one thing about the coming election:

You need to vote defensively.

Neither of the main parties are appealing. But if you don't vote for the lesser evil you may end up helping a totalitarian horror get elected.

Hold your nose and goddamn vote, dammit. THEN go on protests. Because if you don't vote for the lesser evil, the victor will welcome your protests with bullets.

The prize for political purity this time round is a shallow grave.

blikkie,
@blikkie@hachyderm.io avatar

@cstross in a first past the post system, the primary is where you cast your ideologically pure vote (and or do your organizing to get better candidates next time)

fraying, to random
@fraying@xoxo.zone avatar

I have been planting peppers all day and I am finally ready to admit that I started too many peppers.

blikkie,
@blikkie@hachyderm.io avatar

@fraying @WhippoorwillSong uproot everything else. You're a hot pepper farmer now.

timbray, to random
@timbray@cosocial.ca avatar

TFW you write some semi-complicated code and then the unit test is pretty long and when it works the first time you run it you go and put print statements in the test to convince yourself it ran.

blikkie,
@blikkie@hachyderm.io avatar

@timbray generally I change the assertion rather than adding print statements. The best way to know a test goes what it should do is to make it fail

mekkaokereke, to random
@mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io avatar

I told y'all, cops don't do what you think they do.🤷🏿‍♂️

Black folk know this from lived experience. Some white folk only learn this when they go to report a theft or sexual assault and find out that the $11B/year NYPD are not equipped to handle that.

15K NYC bikes stolen a year!

https://www.404media.co/nypd-bike-lock-chain-kryptonite-columbia-university-protests/

1/n

blikkie,
@blikkie@hachyderm.io avatar

@mekkaokereke the lock on my cargo bike is slightly more heavy duty and I'm still paranoid about where I lock it up in NYC

mhoye, to random
@mhoye@mastodon.social avatar

Reading @mekkaokereke's ongoing thread about the importance of onboarding new teammates, thinking about the three different times I was sent to get an engineering onboarding program off the ground at my last job, with a budget of zero dollars and no outcomes that ever laddered up to anywhere.

blikkie,
@blikkie@hachyderm.io avatar

@jrconlin @CubeThoughts @mhoye @mekkaokereke the most important part of mentoring was "this is how you can get people to prioritize what you need in our organization" and "this is what people pay attention to during performance reviews, so let's talk about how we can enable you to spend time on things on the career ladder rather than the noise around it". I enjoy doing this a lot.

mekkaokereke, to random
@mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io avatar

Periodic reminder that space flight is cool, alt-right billionaires are not. You can get to space without fashy billionaires.

The same Tesla fans who are completely shocked that BYD sells more cars, will also be surprised to know that China has its own space station, and is ahead of the US in the race to a manned mission to Mars.

https://m.youtube.com/shorts/4h8sxpqpDFg

China also has Mars rovers.

This is not an anti-USA take. Relax, patriot boy. I'm pointing out that space billionaires are a choice.

blikkie,
@blikkie@hachyderm.io avatar

@CelloMomOnCars @AdrianVolt @mekkaokereke @tess is off-putting to see how many barrels of oil the 2- and 3-wheelers offset compared to personal vehicles, yet personal vehicles already require the majority of lithium while they are only 14% of all personal vehicles sold

blikkie,
@blikkie@hachyderm.io avatar

@kilpatds @CelloMomOnCars @mekkaokereke @AdrianVolt @tess as a cyclist and a parent I just want common sense legislation like "a short person (let's say 20th percentile of adults) in the driver's seat should have a direct line of sight on a 3 foot child standing 3 feet in front of the vehicle"

annaleen, to random
@annaleen@wandering.shop avatar

I asked Gemini to show me pictures of "a really high quality mobile phone," suspecting that it would give me a picture of an Android device. But nope -- 3 pictures of iphones in varying states of AI chaos, a Blackberry, and what I think might be a vape?

blikkie,
@blikkie@hachyderm.io avatar

@annaleen asking for the best mobile phone definitely made it more skewed toward Android

fraying, to random
@fraying@xoxo.zone avatar

List of live action versions of animated things that don't suck:

  1. One Piece
  2. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off

That's all I got.

blikkie,
@blikkie@hachyderm.io avatar

@fraying the live action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop wasn't as good as the anime, but I did enjoy it.

mekkaokereke, to random
@mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io avatar

Happy #BlackHistoryMonth !

I'm still not up to Black History! I'm still working through white US history. Bear with me! Almost there!

Q: Why does it seem like everything has to be woke now? Even our scientists?! It never used to be that way! Why does it seem like these days, even higher education has to think about race, when it didn't before?

A: Higher education, including STEM, did think about race before. That history has just been hidden from you. Because racism.

#BlackMastodon

blikkie,
@blikkie@hachyderm.io avatar

@mekkaokereke New York doesn't have any HBCU, so Cheyney is the closest. I do live right by Medgar Evers college though

ScienceDesk, to science
@ScienceDesk@flipboard.social avatar

What happens when you add spider DNA to silkworms? Big Think explains.
https://flip.it/J49f.L
#Science #Biology #Spiders #DNA #Silkworms

blikkie,
@blikkie@hachyderm.io avatar

@cstross @titaniumbiscuit @ScienceDesk I don't know much about the silk moth life cycle, but could they maintain a smaller population just for breeding? (Assuming that the mutations to produce spider silk won't impact fertility)

timbray, to random
@timbray@cosocial.ca avatar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxVaP0-aFIE

blikkie,
@blikkie@hachyderm.io avatar

@timbray I appreciate the wariness, but I do think Google has been investing in the right areas so that they should be able to deliver on this with only a reasonable amount of effort, so I'm mildly optimistic.

lzg, to random
@lzg@mastodon.social avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    blikkie,
    @blikkie@hachyderm.io avatar

    @lzg every office needs one of those and a screaming room.

    molly0xfff, to random
    @molly0xfff@hachyderm.io avatar

    Just saw a really irritating anti-remote work chart crime from making the rounds on twitter, from an article claiming that "The most worrying finding in the latest survey -- especially in a workplace that is increasingly hybrid and remote -- is that employees who can do their work remotely have an eroding connection to the mission or purpose of the organization."

    https://www.gallup.com/workplace/509759/remote-workers-organizations-drifting-apart.aspx

    1/2

    blikkie,
    @blikkie@hachyderm.io avatar

    @molly0xfff that steep collapse in 2023 is almost definitely a response to the erosion in trust because companies took a roughshod approach to forcing RTO

    b0rk, (edited ) to random
    @b0rk@jvns.ca avatar

    has anyone seen a really good analysis of the problems with git's command line UI? Would love to read it. for example:

    • git checkout is dangerous and has too many different jobs (though git switch is trying to fix that!)
    • for a tool that's supposed to make changes easy to undo, you actually need to learn a LOT of ways to undo

    (not looking for git tutorials, explanations of git’s underlying model, or explanations of why you think git's UI is actually good, just an analysis of the problems)

    blikkie,
    @blikkie@hachyderm.io avatar

    @b0rk the fact that I need to refer back to Oh Shit Git regularly (and that it's a lifesaver for my teammates too) makes it clear that the problem is not just me/us

    b0rk, (edited ) to random
    @b0rk@jvns.ca avatar

    if you just stopped being scared of the command line in the last year or three — what helped you?

    (no need to reply if you don’t remember, or if you’ve been using the command line comfortably for 15 years — this question isn’t for you :) )

    blikkie,
    @blikkie@hachyderm.io avatar

    @b0rk Gentoo was my first Linux distro and their (command line only, compile everything from scratch) installation doc was actually pretty good at explaining all the moving parts.

    blikkie,
    @blikkie@hachyderm.io avatar

    @b0rk actually, that was 20 years or so ago, but it was a well defined landmark so I figured it kinda counted as a memorable non-recent experience. If I were to do it again now I'd probably go with Arch, but I haven't tinkered seriously for years because of life and kids.

    annaleen, to random
    @annaleen@wandering.shop avatar

    Happy caturday from Infrared and Ultraviolet.

    blikkie,
    @blikkie@hachyderm.io avatar

    @annaleen @janellecshane of course infrared has the longer wave length.

    timbray, to random
    @timbray@cosocial.ca avatar

    Hey Google, it’s nice that my Android phone’s RCS messaging (modern version of SMS) is available in a browser tab - really it is, sending a text with a real keyboard, yay - but you don’t need to keep reminding me of this on both my phone and browser, in a warning tone - I know they’re connected, you offered me the option and I accepted it. It’s cool.

    blikkie,
    @blikkie@hachyderm.io avatar

    @timbray whenever I have that on messages burns through battery life on my phone like it's nobody's business, so I kinda appreciate the heads up

    emilygorcenski, to random

    ChatGPT's been publicly available for several months and despite its widespread ability and ease of use, we have not seen:

    • massive shifts in the disinformation space
    • meaningful changes in market dynamics from companies using it over companies who are not
    • at-scale changes in the workforce due to ChatGPT

    If these things were to happen, they probably would have happened by now.

    blikkie,
    @blikkie@hachyderm.io avatar

    @emilygorcenski we have GitHub copilot and it might (optimistically) make us 10-20% faster at churning out code (and makes it a lot easier to have 100% unit test coverage, so refactors are easier). Our backlog still grows faster than that.

    emilygorcenski, to random

    I recently finished the original Foundation Trilogy (I have not yet picked up the sequels or prequels), inspired partly by the show and partly to fill a gap in my scifi repertoire; it was after all called the greatest scifi series of all time.

    After reading them, I have to say that I am glad scifi has come such a long way, and the TV series adds much more depth and flavor to the universe Asimov created; namely by creating characters with personalities and diverse cultures that create tension

    blikkie,
    @blikkie@hachyderm.io avatar

    @emilygorcenski next month!?! I keep planning to cancel Apple TV+ real soon, but they keep releasing low key bangers. So far Silo was also much more compelling then I expected.

    mekkaokereke, to random
    @mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io avatar

    Happy #BlackHistoryMonth !

    I'm still not talking about Black history. I'm still talking about white US history.

    Q: Why do Black kids not do well in school? Is it because their dads are uninvolved and uncaring parents? Bill Cosby and Herschel Walker told me that, and they are good and wise men that we should listen to! It's Black dads' fault! Boo Black men!

    A: No. Black kids only do poorly in school in extremely racist countries.

    #BlackMastodon

    blikkie,
    @blikkie@hachyderm.io avatar

    @isaaccp @peladocollado @Lironah @mekkaokereke so far half the teachers my kids have had in NYC public school have been Black and all teachers they've had have been excellent.

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