@exa@mastodon.online
@exa@mastodon.online avatar

exa

@exa@mastodon.online

postdoc (programming languages, haskell, bioinformatics) https://github.com/exaexa

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pglpm, to privacy
@pglpm@emacs.ch avatar

Today I suddenly found these "who to follow" suggestions in between posts (for privacy I covered icons and account names). Never seen "suggestions" before. Is Mastodon becoming like Twitter or its ilk? Particularly worrying is the "personalized suggestion" – then something is tracking what I do? Or am I misunderstanding something?

@louis

exa,
@exa@mastodon.online avatar

@pglpm @shaedrich @louis
There is no point in avoiding people from processing public information. (this is sometimes viewed as unpopular opinion, but basically it's a basic freedom of people to think about what they saw)

OTOH your followee/follower list isn't public so this opens a question on whether your server should use this advantage, kinda unfairly to others in fedi who could perhaps suggest better or so. (...also, are your nonpublic follows mixed into other folks' recommendations?)

exa,
@exa@mastodon.online avatar

@pglpm @shaedrich @louis
One more thought-- the sole "personalized recommendation" wording here is totally unfortunate, nowadays it sounds too much like "we just fed all your info into a 3rd party AI and this is what we got". Maybe a proper communication of what was actually done would help here simply by increasing the transparency.

Like: "these are publicly visible followers of your followers, sorted by the follow count"

or: "These people publicly used most similar hashtags in past 1 month"

vees, to random
@vees@epistolary.org avatar

Friends of Mastodon,

I follow a lot of folks. I make a lot of Mastodon lists. I add a lot of folks to a lot of lists.

If you're reading this I probably follow you.

Please let me know in the replies if you self-identify into any of the following lists so I can add you so that I see your posts in that particular category:

Artists
Baltimore/County
Co-workers
Dev/DevOps/InfoSec
Feds/Fed Adjacent
Flashlight collectors
Freemasons
Ham Radio/Maker
Homelab
Instance Owners
IRL (Met in meatspace)
Keyboard collectors
Knitting/Crafting
Maryland
Pennsylvania
Policy Wonks (Knowledge Fight)
Scouts
Teachers/Educators/Research
Virginia/DC

I'm also happy to add new categories if you think you are representative of one.

I'll probably boost this once a week or so just to refresh to my followers. Ignore this post if you don't care. Thanks!

exa,
@exa@mastodon.online avatar

@vees dev + research

mcc, to random
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

Me: It is the year 2024. Computer Science has reached the peak of its technological and cultural development. I would like to call the function std::min from a C++ program on Windows now please

Microsoft: No

exa,
@exa@mastodon.online avatar

@mcc
b b but
y would u windows?

exa,
@exa@mastodon.online avatar

@mcc

*terrified voice:"
nnnnyayayyyyaaaayayaaaaaaaayyyy

anyway yeah I feel the pain, last time I tried to RENAME FILES (preposterous) and spent like 3 hours trying to find actual arguments of CreateFileRenameCommandEx2 or whatever was the name of that.

stay strong.

exa,
@exa@mastodon.online avatar

@obot50549535 @mcc
also free exorcism practice

underlap, to random
@underlap@fosstodon.org avatar

In which a team reconstruct their putative proof that P != NP by leading GPT-4 through the language of their own reasoning, prompt by prompt:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/can-generative-ai-solve-computer-sciences-greatest-unsolved-problem/

exa,
@exa@mastodon.online avatar

@underlap
tbh I expect a proof of undecidable verifiability.

mattodon, to NoStupidQuestions
@mattodon@fosstodon.org avatar

Stupid How can you take a of an open dropdown menu in the (chromium, not sure firefox and others behave the same)? When I hit print screen the dropdown disappears 😅

exa,
@exa@mastodon.online avatar

@mattodon
scrot -d 5

xChaos, to random Czech
@xChaos@f.cz avatar

Včera celkem 35 km

exa,
@exa@mastodon.online avatar

@xChaos ale kde to jeeeeeee?

vrtxd, to linux

logos 🐧

🌞
📱 with https://dotpict.net/works/4954615
🗨️
🏴‍☠️ License: ( Attr. 4.0 Intl.) vrtxd
🗓️ Tue 6 Feb 2024

exa,
@exa@mastodon.online avatar

@vrtxd 🤔 freebsd

exa, to internet
@exa@mastodon.online avatar

history question: is there any technical reason why the usual domain names are written backwards?

(as in, not this way: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_domain_name_notation )

Or was that inherited from somewhere? (Where?)

exa,
@exa@mastodon.online avatar

@xChaos yap literally what was the historical reason to write not .cz.f/something/detail but f.cz./something/detail (note the extra dns dot and people likely comprehending the DNS autosearch domains better this way)... Actually e-mail and postal-style addresses in general (which, well, predate interwebs) explains it I guess.

blami, to Amd
@blami@mastodon.online avatar

Ok. Getting was really a good idea. I was finally able to try it out. That business thingy plays Skyrim buttersmooth on Ultra in Wine. None of my X1Cs nor X1 Nano can do that. And I can barely hear the fan! Also FreeBSD works kinda… fine (minus wifi) on it.

image/png

exa,
@exa@mastodon.online avatar

@blami which model? I got my ryzen thinkpad (e585) in 2018, not really needed any update so far

exa,
@exa@mastodon.online avatar

@blami oh wait the photo clearly shows T14s, whoops. Cc @pglpm

mattodon, to random
@mattodon@fosstodon.org avatar

The wish to model everything as a strict hierarchy may be powerful because of its simplicity, but in many cases it means fitting squares into a round holes. I wonder whether in some fields you get educated that this is the one way of doing things.

exa,
@exa@mastodon.online avatar

@mattodon hierarchy is a collapsed state of balance. And many fields have absolutely no interest in balance.

quintessence, to random
@quintessence@hachyderm.io avatar

Does anyone have documentaries they like to watch that are soothing?

I've been searching for some, but it might not surprise that searching for documentaries while grieving typically returns results about death or true crime or similar, rather that something that's Just Nice and Not Traumatic or Triggering to watch.

🤔

exa,
@exa@mastodon.online avatar

@quintessence youtube restoration videos :D

rwwh, to random
@rwwh@mastodon.social avatar

Science publishing question: is there a place where I can report papers that cite my papers but obviously never read them, because they attribute concepts to it that are absolutely unrelated?

exa,
@exa@mastodon.online avatar

@rwwh
(answer from an ideal world:)
journal editors

exa, to mastodon
@exa@mastodon.online avatar

implementation question: would it be possible to use the protocol for carrying issue tracking & discussion, e.g. to make version of or issue trackers?

I thought that technically these aren't that different from the usual discussion threads here, except maybe for some governance steps like deciding if the issue is closed etc... Perhaps someone already investigated?

exa,
@exa@mastodon.online avatar

And why -- there's plenty of software for having small self-hosted github-like repositories (e.g. or ) and for sending the code around, but self-hosting the discussion&tracking platforms still comes with quite a management cost (you need to drag&re-register all the users there, issue linking to other platforms ain't super good, there's centralization-based privacy issues...)

exa,
@exa@mastodon.online avatar

@ChrSt not really sure (eg this is still open https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/14116#note_210480669 )

exa,
@exa@mastodon.online avatar

@ChrSt uuh good, I somehow missed this, thanks!

exa,
@exa@mastodon.online avatar

@kik @ChrSt @forgejo that's cool thanks for the info!

exa,
@exa@mastodon.online avatar

@ChrSt @kik

+100000 points for collaborating by just the git-format-patch and git-am combo... perhaps just 2 fediverse/mastodon buttons + a little support from the platforms would do it. The rest (fixing patches, reviews, ....) might be just renderers.

Anyway thanks for thinking about this & hope it eventually takes off!

exa,
@exa@mastodon.online avatar

@foxy @forgefed @forgejo oh thats cool too, bookmarked, thanks!

adapalmer, to random
@adapalmer@wandering.shop avatar

When facing the "All we need is STEM!" approach to education, my usual response is:

Developing the vaccine was the STEM problem; distribution & getting shots in arms was the Social Science problem; getting people to trust it & combatting misinformation was the Humanities problem -- which did we fail?

exa,
@exa@mastodon.online avatar

@adapalmer A bit of STEM ready on the receiving side helps a lot with communicating the facts.

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