@davidr@hachyderm.io avatar

davidr

@davidr@hachyderm.io

Heinlein is problematic for a lot of reasons, but I've always been inspired by this:

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

he/him

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

inherentlee, to random

roundup time: <last bird you saw>! at/on the <place you saw it>

go!

davidr,
@davidr@hachyderm.io avatar

@inherentlee House finch perched on top of of storm window, buttfeathers towards me and screaming into the yard.

danderson, to random
@danderson@hachyderm.io avatar

Google just emailed me to let me know that "Album Archive" is going away and my data will be deleted in a month.

Album Archive is apparently the dumping ground for images that were in other products Google has already killed, such as Google+ and Hangouts.

They're killing the place where images from killed products went. It's just beyond parody, incredible.

davidr,
@davidr@hachyderm.io avatar

@danderson I got this same email and I'm like...I have something in Albums? If so, it was done against my will.

dansup, (edited ) to fediverse
@dansup@mastodon.social avatar

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?

davidr,
@davidr@hachyderm.io avatar

@dansup How would I "know" this?

I see these claims on websites all the time "we'll never XYZ your ABC". How are they verified?

vaurora, to random
@vaurora@wandering.shop avatar

Is anyone else noticing that software just... doesn't work right anymore? Every single booking system I've tried to use in the last week has had a serious revenue-affecting bug (airline, cab reservation, temporary rental, doctor appointment). Two of them were time zone bugs, one was a form field validation bug on a required field, the last was "you can't get an assigned seat unless you call us"

davidr,
@davidr@hachyderm.io avatar

@danjac @vaurora It's the lack of care that's the main issue. If the CEO were required to use the system, it would work. Eat your own dog food.

loops, to ADHD

I found myself looking through apps again, thinking maybe there's something to one of the plethora of apps designed "for" folks with ADHD? They look like they were made by the same people that told me I "just" need a diary.

I've used. So many apps. It doesn't matter the interface, or the cutesy idiom - eventually, I stop checking. I put all my tasks in, neatly organise and categorise them, then I go off to do something else - great intentions and all that 😅

Any friends out there who know of anything that helps to solve real ADHD challenges? Some of mine that come to mind specifically when trying to plan tasks / do things:

  • I forget to check the app / todo list
  • I forget I'm supposed to check
  • More tasks go in than get ticked off, which is demotivating
  • Reminders at inoppertune times (focused on something else, not feeling the thing) get summarily dismissed never to be seen again

@actuallyadhd

davidr,
@davidr@hachyderm.io avatar

@loops @actuallyadhd The only thing that works for me is to keep it fresh.

The nervous system loves novelty. Any system will eventually fade. When that begins, start a new system.

There is no system that will work. The system that works is to keep changing systems.

davidr,
@davidr@hachyderm.io avatar

@loops @actuallyadhd The unfinished tasks in System N are what keeped me chained to N for too long. But when I finally switch to System N+1 one of the best parts is letting go of those tasks. They are just emotional baggage at that point.

gregeganSF, (edited ) to random
@gregeganSF@mathstodon.xyz avatar

On Tw*tter, Mike Lawler linked to a nice Physics Today article that points out that the planet whose average distance to Earth over any long period of time is the shortest is Mercury, not Venus.

I agree with their conclusions … but I wonder if there is an error in the specific formula they give for the average distance as an elliptic integral.

If we specialise to the case where one orbit is a unit circle and the other has radius r, Mathematica gives a somewhat different formula than theirs (actually two different formulas, for r>1 and r<1, blue and gold in the plot), which give close results to the Physics Today formula (green in the plot), but not exactly the same.

Numerical integration seems to confirm the formulas Mathematica gives.

Have I made some dumb mistake in the way I’ve set up the problem, or is the formula in the article wrong?

@buster and @duetosymmetry; the conventions for Mathematica’s EllipticE function and the elliptic integral function in the article are different; Mathematica’s function expects an argument that is the square of the one used in the article.]

https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/Online/30593/Venus-is-not-Earth-s-closest-neighbor

davidr,
@davidr@hachyderm.io avatar

@gregeganSF Did you include orbital velocity (i.e. time spent at each radius) in that average?

davidr,
@davidr@hachyderm.io avatar

@darabos @gregeganSF If we are approximating as circles, then only the radius of each matters. If we aren't, orbital velocity matters.

davidr,
@davidr@hachyderm.io avatar

@darabos @gregeganSF In that case, the integral doesn't matter, only the radii.

davidr,
@davidr@hachyderm.io avatar

@gregeganSF @darabos Oh the distance between the planets. I thought we were talking about the distance of each to the sun.

jerry, to random

Lots of consternation today about newsmax joining newsie.social, with calls for news orgs to create their own fedi-instance rather that joining one like newsie (or journa). That might make sense for some news organizations, but I can imagine it would be challenging for some. The main issue I see is that journalists likely want to maintain a social media presence that doesn’t go away if they move to a new org, so I have to imagine instances like journa and newsie are attractive to individuals.
Not defending newsie having newsmax, but I think it’s unreasonable to say that sites like newsie that cater to journalists shouldn’t exist.

davidr,
@davidr@hachyderm.io avatar

@jerry If they are going to cater to journalists then why did they allow in newsmax?

chris_spackman, to random
@chris_spackman@twit.social avatar

Saw some posts saying vi and have poor user interfaces and are newbie hostile. That's probably true.

They also (basically) claim that users are imagining any improved productivity that they think they get from using vi / emacs. I'm not sure that is always true.

If you do a lot with text files, and you put the time into learning emacs, then I'm not sure that something like Kate or Kile is necessarily going to make you significantly more productive.

And, all the other things you can do

davidr,
@davidr@hachyderm.io avatar

@chris_spackman I like to point out that a curve has two portions. The ramp and the plateau.

For a that needs to onboard casual users, you want an easy ramp (and therefore almost certainly a low plateau).

For a you are going to spend a lifetime using, the ramp is irrelevant but the height of the plateau is paramount.

petersuber, to random
@petersuber@fediscience.org avatar

I'm corresponding with an prison inmate who tries to read and share as much science as he can. From his latest letter:

"If I let another inmate read my magazine I will be given a ticket [demerit] for bartering and trading. I have been giving away my magazines for free to everyone for 17 years after I read them. I get 200-300 magazines a year sci biz tech stuff. Now I have to trade in my magazines to get more magazines and they just throw them away and no one else gets to read them."

davidr,
@davidr@hachyderm.io avatar

@petersuber Can he donate them to the prison library?

timbray, to infosec
@timbray@cosocial.ca avatar

It dawns on me that many of you youngster developers out there probably don’t know about the Ken Thompson hack. If you’re one of them, reading this should make you shudder:
https://wiki.c2.com/?TheKenThompsonHack
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rdriley/487/papers/Thompson_1984_ReflectionsonTrustingTrust.pdf

davidr,
@davidr@hachyderm.io avatar

@timbray I think of this story everyone our local people let us install from source but not binaries.

(I don't tell them this story, since I want to get actual work done.)

inherentlee, to random

hey who decided art needs names and statements and stuff, I wanna apply to an island art show and they want an artist statement, an artist biography, titles for each piece, titles for the overall show, and a show description

I just want to make my birds, please

(wife and I have come up with the idea of giving the birds human names. the flicker might be Reginald.)

davidr,
@davidr@hachyderm.io avatar

@inherentlee Right? They asked me to make slides about my project and I made a face. So they said "don't you want to let people know about all the great work you've been doing?"

I can't think of anything I want less.

I'm happy to have them know, I'm loath to tell them.

davidr,
@davidr@hachyderm.io avatar

@inherentlee Exactly! I'd much rather someone discover that I'm awesome than be told (much less told by me).

(and now I've discovered your stamps and they are awesome. you see, the system works!)

niconiconi, to random

ADSL works over wet string? Now, what about "ADSL over a UNPLUGGED phone line"? During a building-wide copper to fiber upgrade, the phone company stupidly unplugged my phone line from the distribution box. the phone was completely dead, no voltage. But my ADSL modem could complete the handshake. Speed degraded to ~128 Kbps, but I could still read basic webpages or chat on IRC... Apparently the parasitic capacitance on the line was enough for the AC signal to jump across the gap. My best guess was that only the ground wire was lost, and the parasitic capacitance of the modem's isolation transformer could complete the circuit via the mains powerline.

davidr,
@davidr@hachyderm.io avatar

@niconiconi "The internet treats air gaps as damage and routes around it."

davidr, to ADHD
@davidr@hachyderm.io avatar

Pre-covid, I had a very structured life. Every day had a pattern. I knew at the time that I was storing critical data in those patterns, but I didn't know how much.

I have lost my earbuds more in the last 3 months than in all of pre-2020 combined.

I have no clue this time. Case is empty. No idea when I saw them last, but it must be over a week. Searched the whole house and car, plus all my pants and shirts pocke...no wait! Last week's pockets!

To the laundry!

davidr,
@davidr@hachyderm.io avatar

(Yes, they went through both washer and dryer. Incredibly, they are fine.)

Interesting that meds have not seemed to help with memory. I am more much more calm about potentially or actually forgetting about things, though.

davidr,
@davidr@hachyderm.io avatar

@hl @brohrer Yeah, Mrs R was reminding me of the same. We did buy one set directly from them and that went fine, but there were some sketchy red flags so we've moved to other places now.

davidr,
@davidr@hachyderm.io avatar

@brohrer mpow bh413a.

They've been great in every way, but for some reason mpow was kicked off Amazon. I don't know what this tells me about either company.

davidr, to random
@davidr@hachyderm.io avatar

I love the old in our . So when I needed a door stop, I made a scale of the door itself.

an old-style new wooden door stop (unpainted)
side view of both door and stop

davidr,
@davidr@hachyderm.io avatar

@dottorblaster @HeadPlug Oooo, I should make a tiny one for the doorstop!

And obviously a really giant one.

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

More Mod is a remarkable YouTube ant channel -- to my eternal frustration YouTube has automatic closed captions and automatic translation blocked.

The narrator seems very knowledgeable just by the sequence of videos he shows and each ant is identified both by latin name and local common name.

What is the point of auto-translate if not to make the 100k+ viewed Thai ant channel watchable in more places??

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4j-ySDY7I0

davidr,
@davidr@hachyderm.io avatar

@futurebird There are subtitling forums/communities out there. I wonder if they take requests.

Private
davidr,
@davidr@hachyderm.io avatar

@chai @actuallyautistic @actuallyautistics Desert Golf is perfect for this. Or a coloring app.

davidr, to random
@davidr@hachyderm.io avatar

17 just expressed interest. They say "a beginner one".

We have a skate park across the street.

What am I looking for in a beginner skateboard?

davidr, to random
@davidr@hachyderm.io avatar

I realize I'm getting a little obsessed with , but.

The kids (15-22) and I played a few tasks from the book this afternoon. I thought we'd have a little fun but ultimately be fairly uncreative.

One person ended up inside the washing machine.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • megavids
  • rosin
  • thenastyranch
  • GTA5RPClips
  • tester
  • InstantRegret
  • DreamBathrooms
  • ngwrru68w68
  • magazineikmin
  • everett
  • Youngstown
  • mdbf
  • slotface
  • kavyap
  • JUstTest
  • cisconetworking
  • khanakhh
  • normalnudes
  • osvaldo12
  • cubers
  • tacticalgear
  • Durango
  • ethstaker
  • modclub
  • anitta
  • provamag3
  • Leos
  • lostlight
  • All magazines
    •