polotek

polotek, 1 day ago to random

We got solar on the house last year. It wasn't necessarily about saving money for me. It became important to me to take a concrete step towards combatting climate change.

But something else started to dawn on me too. The fact that I'm now generating my own power, from an essentially unlimited source, is a truly radical act. I've been thinking a lot about creating a society centered around abundance instead of scarcity. It's not just theoretical.
https://assemblag.es/@theluddite/112496059286904697

polotek, 1 day ago to random

Right. That part.
https://social.vivaldi.net/@jadonn/112497281365147200

polotek, 2 days ago to random

I'm still thinking about this conversation. I had some thoughtful exchanges about it yesterday. Today I'm having a different thought.

I feel like we spend a lot of time trying to take the things we like and make them free. And conversely we spend a lot of time taking the things we don't like and trying to force companies to pay us more money to do it.
https://social.polotek.net/@polotek/112480963476171110

polotek, 3 days ago to random

I started down this road because I asked about seeing a full activity log on my own server instance. And it turns out you just can't.

My goal is to make it easy to stand up two separate mastodon instances on my laptop. Then I can get them to talk to reach other and observe what is actually happening. I think that'll teach me a lot

https://social.polotek.net/@polotek/112453817656490883

polotek, 3 days ago to random

I've spent the last several days trying to get a local mastodon build running on my laptop. I've gotten pretty far, but I have yet to see an actual UI in my browser.

So far, I've been trying out various attempts to run it in docker. That should be easier than trying to get the various components set up myself. But for some reason it's not. Getting mastodon configured properly is pretty complex. Getting everything right "out of the box" feels pretty error prone.

polotek, 3 days ago to random

What's wild about this is that it sounds similar to the thing Microsoft just announced and is putting in all Windows computers.
https://mastodon.social/@zackwhittaker/112486102998856636

polotek, 4 days ago to random

I'm gonna use this tool where no ones in charge, I don't pay for anything, and there are no real restrictions on how it's used.

Things happen that I don't like

no one could've seen this coming.

https://toot-lab.reclaim.technology/@djsundog/112480508051075965

polotek, 4 days ago to random

Yeah I feel this. Too many people struggle with this binary. If you care about money at all, there's only a short leap in people's heads to the worst kind of exploitative behavior. And the only way to avoid that is to not care about money at all. So not caring about money becomes a moral character trait that people are supposed to actively seek and perform.
https://glasgow.social/@sue/112473252309499347

polotek, 6 days ago to random

Can anybody point me to a good deep dive on the mastodon database schema? Preferably with explanations where necessary? Yes I know how to go look at the mastodon docs and code. I’m doing that. I’m also looking for more of a guide to wrap my head around things.

polotek, 9 days ago to random

@mastohost if I'm an admin of an instance, is there a way I can see my full activity log?

polotek, 12 days ago to random

What does "community-led" mean in this context?
https://toot.cafe/@baldur/112428431536118693

polotek, 15 days ago to random

I don't think I'll ever understand the kind of person who says "you MUST fight with me about technology minutia. And if you choose not to, I will block you forever." Like it's such a weird combination of principles.

polotek, 16 days ago to random

Will you help us build the Torment Nexus?

Devs: What?! Absolutely not!

What if we paid you $1 million a year?

Devs: It's not about the money. My reputation is at stake!

You could tell people you had no choice.

Devs: I won't be responsible for building the Torment Nexus. It's evil!

Oh... well you know it won't look like a Torment Nexus until much later. Right now it's just a cool toy that makes up answers to silly questions.

Devs: Haha, this thing is cool. Wait, what were we talking about?

polotek, 23 days ago to random

Yesterday we had a great conversation about engineers and delivering estimates. I wanna talk about the other side of it too.

For managers and leaders. What do you expect out of engineers when it comes to estimates? How do you evaluate whether you're getting good estimates?

What do you do with the estimates you receive from engineers? How does it impact other work activities and timelines?

Finally, how does the ability to give confident estimates factor into how you evaluate your engineers?

polotek, 23 days ago to random

Here’s a big secret that people don’t want you to know. If nobody is able to give you clarity about the scope and scale of a request, sometimes that means you get to decide. It’s really cool when that happens. Don’t waste it.
https://soc.jrconlin.com/@jrconlin/112374476337793296

polotek, 24 days ago to random

Questions for software engineers about estimates. Feel free to answer any of these in any order.

Have you ever had an explicit conversation about how to estimate projects? How did you learn?

If you feel that you were never taught the skill in any real sense, what do you feel you're doing at work when you're asked for estimates? Are you making it up? Have you developed your own personal guidelines?

On average, how confident are you in your own estimates? How do you measure success?

polotek, 24 days ago to random

I gotta tell you folks. One thing we need to talk way more about is estimates. Engineers are getting way too comfortable with this notion that things are impossible to estimate. Good estimation is a skill. People do it all the time. Yes it can be tough. Yes you can still fail at it. But pretending it's not a reasonable expectation to ask of people making huge amounts of money makes us sound ridiculous.
https://mastodon.social/@bitmaker/112366918452706612

polotek, 24 days ago to random

I think we need to talk more explicitly about why we're settling on "safety" as the term we are pursuing. As a manager, I've been trying to reconcile that term with some of the real expectations and pressures of the workplace. I don't think we are doing enough to create clarity. And I worry instead that talking about "safety" is creating unrealistic expectations.
https://mastodon.social/@grimalkina/112349435602632842

polotek, 24 days ago to random

One thing I try to tell people all the time is that management is not magic. They're just humans. Like you. But somebody has to do that job. Just like somebody has to do yours. Yeah, it would be great if these things were well defined by competent and effective managers. That's just not something you can count on. Just like managers can't always count on having a team full of competent effective engineers.
https://hachyderm.io/@watters/112366757626396189

polotek, 25 days ago to random

I try not to be this person all the time. But occasionally I like to gently remind people that the causality is backwards. Google’s profits are soaring in part because they’re doing layoffs. That’s why they are doing layoffs. There are always 2 ways to increase profits. Make more revenue or decrease operating expenses. (Hint: paying employees is an operating expense) https://stefanbohacek.online/@stefan/112360560095763105

polotek, 25 days ago to random

The founders of two of the biggest crypto exchanges are now in prison. Lots of smaller ones as well. But crypto as a phenomenon is still going strong. With Bitcoin reaching all time highs again. It feels like something is deeply broken about this moment in time.

But I'm not naive. The more you learn, you come to realize and accept that things are pretty broken a lot of times throughout our history. So the better thing to ponder is what can we do in order to keep things from bubbling over?

polotek, 26 days ago to random

"Instead of regulating the development of AI models, the focus should be on regulating their applications, particularly those that pose high risks to public safety and security. Regulate the use of AI in high-risk areas such as healthcare, criminal justice, and critical infrastructure, where the potential for harm is greatest, would ensure accountability for harmful use, whilst allowing for the continued advancement of AI technology."
https://www.answer.ai/posts/2024-04-29-sb1047.html /via @simon

polotek, 28 days ago to random

I've been thinking about "personal software" a lot lately. My background is mostly in Multi-tenant SaaS software. You try to reach economies of scale by serving more and more users with the same single system.

Personal software is mean to be used by one person. Or at most a small group of people who share the same context. I think there are a lot of problems it he solved in that context. It's just difficult to support from an economic perspective.

polotek, 29 days ago to random

I mentioned before that I pay masto.host a little extra for search capabilities. I mostly use it to find my old posts for reference. I can do "from:me <query>". I can also do "to:me" to find replies people have sent to me.

I can do "from:someuser@other.social". And it will find any of their posts as well. I think this is limited to only posts on my instance? I'm not exactly sure.

However. I can't combine these. "to:me from:someuser@other.social" does not return what I expect.

polotek, 1 month ago to random

There are so many different solutions for python environments in this thread. Makes me feel at least a little bit better about the mess that is JavaScript build systems.
https://fedi.simonwillison.net/@simon/112326656094994947