@dantappan@better.boston avatar

dantappan

@dantappan@better.boston

Engineer, Songwriter, Musician, Photographer, Music Fan: I post music, photographs, & anything else I feel like posting

Aging nerd. I spent most of my career doing computer networking (mostly at Bolt Beranek & Newman, and Cisco).
Now doing whatever interest me, mostly: music & supporting the local (Boston/New England)music scene; hacking code and bits of hardware for my own purposes (Unix/Linux/MacOS/RPi/Arduino); and being a "gentleman farmer".

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

dantappan, to ai
@dantappan@better.boston avatar

Tim O'Reilly recapitulates in the context of @pluralistic
https://theconversation.com/to-understand-the-risks-posed-by-ai-follow-the-money-225872

lauren, to random
@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org avatar

Trump has now declared himself to be "Honest Don". Sounds like the name of a stereotypical used car salesman.

dantappan,
@dantappan@better.boston avatar

@lauren Setting himself up for ads featuring Godfather references

lauren, to random
@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org avatar

It's fascinating that the experience of using computer CLIs (Command Line Interfaces) has essentially changed not at all since the early days of interactive computing and timesharing. In fact, for those of us using Linux systems, the experience is pretty much identical to what it was on the earliest UNIX systems of the 1970s, and in fact we still commonly use the same commands, utilities, and other command line tools. So about half a century. That's either amazing or terrifying depending on your point of view. Or more likely, both.

dantappan,
@dantappan@better.boston avatar

@lauren @cstross @larsbrinkhoff @trouble

But since this thread started out talking about CLI syntax: ITS is particularly interesting/unfortunate/?? because it didn't really have a CLI - the default command line interface was the debugger

ZachWeinersmith, to random
@ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social avatar

Offhand thoughts on books:

So, there's this idea that kids want clear meaningful narrative, but... have you noticed kids get super into old myths that have at best murky, often nonsensical, "plots" ? Actually, now that I think about it, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, which is insanely popular, is pretty low on plot, high on mood. It's more like sketches, in the 19th century sense of it - little vignettes that don't have some kind of major arc or payoff.

dantappan,
@dantappan@better.boston avatar

@ZachWeinersmith None of the versions of Tam Lin than I've seen treat him as "a tiny man". Generally the Fae are regarded as human sized. Remember that at the climax (as it were) Janet pulls him off the horse that he is riding with rest of the Fairy Court.

dantappan,
@dantappan@better.boston avatar

@ZachWeinersmith Interesting, I hadn't seen that one.That seems to be 39I? In most versions, e.g. 39A, he gets off his "steed" and is not wee: https://tam-lin.org/versions/39A.html
I wonder if 39I was the singer assuming "fairy = small".

dantappan,
@dantappan@better.boston avatar

@ZachWeinersmith The imagery in some versions is interesting if he's tiny.
I'd forgotten that sometimes it's Margaret or Katherine - Tom got around :-)

jeffjarvis, to random
@jeffjarvis@mastodon.social avatar

Burning Man is a festival of narcissism: The privileged who have so much privilege they can give up privilege for a few days and call that self-reliance. It is the paradox of narcissism: self-obsession is not self-awareness.

Yes, it’s OK to laugh at wealthy Burning Man attendees mired in muck | Moira Donegan https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/06/burning-man-wealthy-attendees?CMP=share_btn_tw

dantappan,
@dantappan@better.boston avatar

@Brendanjones @jeffjarvis

I love the juxtaposition of the two paragraphs with the sentences:
"...no government organizes this. Burning Man is a refutation [.] that the State has a place in nature"
and
"festival organizers advised..."
The problem with "libertarians" is that they think of "government" as an other, not as people working together to organize society.

Green_Footballs, to random
@Green_Footballs@mastodon.social avatar

If you have an iPhone, go to the App Store and check out the App Privacy section for the Threads app. They want EVERYTHING - health info, financial info, purchases, search history, browser history, location, “sensitive info” (whatever that is). It’s unfuckingbelievable.

dantappan,
@dantappan@better.boston avatar

@Green_Footballs which is why I don't install any social media apps on my phone. If I have to access the site I use the browser.

dantappan, to random
@dantappan@better.boston avatar

It's surprising how many people seem to feel that the only problem with the bird site is that it wasn't controlled by the right billionaire.

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