@raganwald@social.bau-ha.us
@raganwald@social.bau-ha.us avatar

raganwald

@raganwald@social.bau-ha.us

I am an author of bespoke works of prose. Every word—every single one—is literally written by hand, letter by letter.

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

raganwald, to random
@raganwald@social.bau-ha.us avatar

Of course AI will now determine who gets a job, and who does not: https://www.micro1.ai/

This is, frankly, the very best timeline for people like me who have read Philip K. Dick since the 1970s. To say that PKD’s drug-fuelled dark, depressed, and wildly creative imagination has prepared me for this very boring dystopia is an understatement.

⛑️ @jasongorman

raganwald, to random
@raganwald@social.bau-ha.us avatar

Shout out to @kepano for creating Obsidian.

  • Many objective things to like, but subjectively, this feels like one of those products that is a tight jewel, something with a very strong vision acting as its spine.

  • Clearly not designed by a product manager with a spreadsheet, TAMs, GTMs, and so forth. It has soul.

  • Reminds me of products like @davew's original MORE, Ashton-Tate's Framework, and other early indie products that created new categories for themselves.

https://obsidian.md/

raganwald, to random
@raganwald@social.bau-ha.us avatar

In 2016, I wrote:

"I am aboard a small, fast ship sailing into adventure. No matter how tempting, I will not leap into the sea and swim towards [a] sleek, modern, and leviathan-like aircraft carrier.

"I am fortunate enough to be doing exactly what I’ve always wanted to do with my career."

We found adventure, built trade routes, and constructed a harbour.

Today is my last day aboard the S.S. PagerDuty. It has been amazing, the people even more so. But I'm ready to seek adventure elsewhere:

mekkaokereke, to random
@mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io avatar

Rap beef is silly. People really die behind this nonsense.

People that say that they love rap beef, do love rappers... But in the same way that people that love dog fights, love dogs. Some people go to NASCAR races to see who the most skilled driver is, and to marvel at the engineering. Other people just go to watch the crashes. Their entertainment is watching you burn.

And like I've also said before, gangster rap is a performance by Black people for white people.🤷🏿‍♂️

https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109893482569845648

raganwald,
@raganwald@social.bau-ha.us avatar

@mekkaokereke

Miles Davis changed his style at least four times. In each case, there were critics and fans who complained he was turning his back on Jazz. Do I like all of his musical phases equally? Of course not. But isn’t that the point?

The great Admiral Grace Hopper popularized a quote from John A. Shedd: “ A ship in harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” And so it is with art: Art that remains in one successful style is safe, but that’s not what art is for.

raganwald, to random
@raganwald@social.bau-ha.us avatar

“Yikes,” he said, “fascists on the march. But what can I do?”

“Geef me mijn handtas!” snarled Danuta Danielsson. Then she showed him.

(Please don’t just chuckle and scroll on. If you haven’t read her full story, honour her as a complete human by taking a moment to understand who she was and what she went through: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Woman_with_the_Handbag).

jasongorman, to random
@jasongorman@mastodon.cloud avatar

Managers who've been left with a sour taste after taking on entry-level developers need to be aware that it's because they're not ripe yet. You need to nurture them. And I'm not talking weeks...

raganwald,
@raganwald@social.bau-ha.us avatar

@jasongorman

“I only hire senior developers. The trick is, I hire them earlier in their careers.”

timnitGebru, to random
@timnitGebru@dair-community.social avatar

Those criticizing riots by youth who experienced unimaginable horror remind me of those who posted about BLM "riots." Easy to criticize riots by traumatized refugees who underwent human trafficking, when you haven't gone through that.

So they should silently watch this monstrous regime raising $$ for genocidal wars, threatening them & their families & operating with impunity around the world?

Decades of peaceful protests warned authorities. Ban "festivals" by the Eritrean regime. Period.

raganwald,
@raganwald@social.bau-ha.us avatar

@timnitGebru

anderseknert, to random
@anderseknert@hachyderm.io avatar

Harry’s running a 40C degrees fever 🥵 But a new colander is a new colander, and spacemen aren’t really bothered by fever, are they?

raganwald,
@raganwald@social.bau-ha.us avatar

@anderseknert

Lovely. Enjoy your journey together.

baldur, (edited ) to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

“Critics keep talking as if it’s useless, but it isn’t. It’s cheap and, even though it has some flaws, is extraordinarily effective at some of its use cases.”

“So, what? Are we supposed to accept all the downsides of LLMs just because it’s occasionally useful?”

“LLMs? No I’m talking about asbestos.”

raganwald,
@raganwald@social.bau-ha.us avatar

@baldur

Yes, sometimes it takes a criminally long period of time to ban certain products, like asbestos, cigarettes ( not yet!), and weird things like this:

“Tetraethyllead, abbreviated TEL, is an organolead compound with the formula Pb₄. It is a fuel additive, first being mixed with gasoline beginning in the 1920s as a patented octane rating booster that allowed engine compression to be raised substantially. This in turn increased vehicle performance and fuel economy.”

pluralistic, to random
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

I am (perhaps shamefully) delighted by this kind of booze writing:

> The finish is a delightful mix of Cinnamon Twizzlers, burnt marshmallows, Werther’s chewy caramels, and red hots in apple cider, leaving behind a warmth akin to spicy citrus cinnamon and comforting apple pie.

https://www.bountyhunterwine.com/2023-garrison-brothers-cowboy-bourbon

raganwald,
@raganwald@social.bau-ha.us avatar

@graymiller @mrcompletely @pluralistic

For anyone who delights in this thread (as I do!) and isn’t familiar with the 80s BritCom “Rumpole of the Bailey,” there’s an excellent episode called “Rumpole and the Blind Tasting” which features the theft of sommelier-class wine and takes no prisoners with respect to its depiction of the marketing and culture around wine.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0691357/

raganwald,
@raganwald@social.bau-ha.us avatar

@JensHannemann @graymiller @mrcompletely @pluralistic

In weirdo-nerd fashion, I lucked into the show because Leo McKern had a major role in the 60s SpyFy TV show “The Prisoner.”

raganwald,
@raganwald@social.bau-ha.us avatar

@pluralistic @JensHannemann @graymiller @mrcompletely

Rumpole takes on a more thoughtful and deeper character when given time, space, and more complex human relationships to untangle. The novels deliver that in spades.

I especially like listening to the novels as audiobooks, read by Leo McKern himself. When hurtling down the 401, nothing like revisiting the Penge Bungalow Murders and meeting the irrepressible She Who Must Be Obeyed for the first time:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumpole_and_the_Penge_Bungalow_Murders

anderseknert, to random
@anderseknert@hachyderm.io avatar

sending their lawyers on feels like the last chapter of what was once a great open source company. Oh well, the claims look baseless, and like pretty much any move Hahicorp made this past year, this will only hurt themselves.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/opentofuorg_opentofu-project-was-recently-made-aware-activity-7182147077496344576-jsDQ

raganwald,
@raganwald@social.bau-ha.us avatar

@anderseknert

First they ignore you.

Then they laugh at you.

Then they abandon their customers to fight you in courtrooms because “rent-seeking” rather than “serving the market.”

Then it’s not so much that you win, it’s more that they have completely hollowed out their core, and collapse under the weight of all the things they built instead of a better product.

pat, to random
@pat@hachyderm.io avatar

So we've got DHH regurgitating (and promoting) transphobic talking points this week, with a history of parroting harmful racist rubbish in the past.

Will we see any Rails Core team members speaking out against this? Any sponsors of RailsWorld? Any founding/board members of the Rails Foundation?

Or is it cowardly silence (or worse, agreement), just like in the past?

raganwald,
@raganwald@social.bau-ha.us avatar

@pat

“Look, I drive a car made by a Nazi, but that’s because I like the car, I pretend that don’t pay any attention to the man who made it. I can do that, because I’m not personally harmed by the return of fascism and white supremacy. Yay me.

Oh yeah, I’m a tech bro who uses Rails. See above, but for toxic workplaces and transphobia.”

raganwald, to random
@raganwald@social.bau-ha.us avatar

"It's cheaper to buy the default search box everywhere in the world than it is to make a product that is so good that even if we tried another search engine, we'd still prefer Google."

— @pluralistic, "Too big to care:" https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/

raganwald,
@raganwald@social.bau-ha.us avatar

@pluralistic

Conjecture: A similar effect happens when companies cut back on their engineering/product development and focus on sales-led growth and product expansion through acquisitions.

It isn't "cheaper," but it is more comfortable to grow through sales and acquisitions for leaders who aren't intrinsically "product people." And thus, product companies degrade into portfolios of acquisitions pushed by a sales force.

raganwald, to random
@raganwald@social.bau-ha.us avatar

"Generative AI replaces programmers in exactly the same way that Full Self-Driving replaces drivers."

(cont.)

raganwald,
@raganwald@social.bau-ha.us avatar

Programming, like driving, is a highly fault-intolerant activity. Humans need to remain vigilant and alert at all times for blatant "hallucinations," as well as subtle defects in the finished code.

(cont.)

raganwald,
@raganwald@social.bau-ha.us avatar

Trying to "pull an Amazon" and make programmers use generative AI to create code under impossible deadline pressure, while constantly surveilling them to make sure they're staying on focus and on task is not going to work.

The faster programmers go, the less oversight they'll provide, gambling that nothing critical will slip through on their watch.

Result: Really, really shitty and insecure code.

(cont.)

raganwald,
@raganwald@social.bau-ha.us avatar

This only works in fault-tolerant applications, like social media bots, or making pretend-books that Google will index.

Programming is not fault-tolerant. Ask yourself this:

Would you drive a car where its code was written by programmers in a boiler room prompting an LLM for 18 hours a day?

I didn't think so.

(end.)

p.s. There were no fatalities in the pictured car fire.

raganwald, to random
@raganwald@social.bau-ha.us avatar

"Strategy is when you have a bunch of important meetings where you talk about stuff you'd like to do in theory, which you then completely ignore so you can react quickly and do whatever random people ask you to do every day."

—MunchieMom on Reddit

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

Just saw somebody on a mailing list describe “AI” sceptics as performative contrarians and I guess they mean people like me. 🤷‍♂️

raganwald,
@raganwald@social.bau-ha.us avatar

@baldur

“Performative” is such a great word for those seeking to dismiss an argument without actually considering its merits.

It’s the old “Appeal to Motive” fallacy: Even if you are performatively expressing skepticism, how does that in any way invalidate your arguments?

grmpyprogrammer, to random
@grmpyprogrammer@phpc.social avatar

I’ve been playing in the same tabletop dice-and-cards baseball game league since 1997. It pre-dates my marriage? What are some non-programming, non-video-game hobbies you’ve been doing for 10+ years? #grumpyhobbies

raganwald,
@raganwald@social.bau-ha.us avatar

@grmpyprogrammer

Cyclist for life.

image/jpeg

raganwald,
@raganwald@social.bau-ha.us avatar

@andrewfeeney @grmpyprogrammer

That was a trail called “Doctor Quads” in Toronto's Don Valley. It was notorious for its North Shore style wooden stunts, several of which had moderate fall potential.

Here’s a crappy GoPro video I took riding the trickiest sequence:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5Fkn0eMIww

raganwald, to random
@raganwald@social.bau-ha.us avatar

Sleep deprivation and stress are the twin pillars of doing more while accomplishing less.

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