@sidb@mastodon.cloud avatar

sidb

@sidb@mastodon.cloud

Some personal thoughts broadcast for friends (he).

SF, space, travel, software, capybaras, queer, cycling, urbanism, antifa.

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sidb, to random
@sidb@mastodon.cloud avatar

I voted for someone who actually won! A progressive queer woman won this absurdly gerrymandered district. Which should not exist of course, just look at the sheer work that was put into skewing its borders block by block. #democracy?

https://ballotpedia.org/Texas_State_Senate_District_15

sidb,
@sidb@mastodon.cloud avatar

@ottaross Or even simpler: districts must be convex, or maybe 1 concavity max. Or non-shape methods, like ensuring even representation of various groups (basically taking the crack-and-pack logic used to make this district and reversing it). Or just maximizing geographic locality. Or just use nearest post office or something. But yeah, by any standard, this district is an abomination.

ottaross, (edited ) to Ottawa
@ottaross@mastodon.social avatar

Man, went to just a quick visit to buy a couple of things. Simple transaction - "I'd like some of those please." They were so rude! What a way to treat customers.

And then it turned out the price was 50% more than marked on their website, and they didn't care. "I dunno." Just more rudeness.

"Is there a manager around?"
"Nope."

So weird. What a turn off. Can't imagine patronizing them again.

sidb,
@sidb@mastodon.cloud avatar

@ottaross That sucks. Sorry that happened.

ottaross, to beer
@ottaross@mastodon.social avatar

I see a couple of Ottawa hits among the 2024 World Beer Cup winners:

Tooth & Nail Brewing has a saison-style beer called "Valor" that picked up a gold for that category.

Also local Flora Hall Brewing picked up a silver for their "English Ordinary Bitter." Notable in a contest with global participation.

I'm a fan of both of those styles, so hope to try them over the course of the summer if they keep making them. I frequent T&N but have yet to try Flora Hall's wares.

sidb,
@sidb@mastodon.cloud avatar

@ottaross Flora Hall is a fantastic neighborhood brewpub. Good beer, good food, good space and vibes. While it isn’t completely overpriced, I wouldn’t hate if it were cheaper—but that’s all of Ottawa these days. And they don’t have the selection of an Elgin Beer Project of course. But viewed as an independent real brewpub that doesn’t broadly distribute, it’s one of my faves.

Haven’t had their bitter though. I’ll have to check it out next time.

sidb,
@sidb@mastodon.cloud avatar

@ottaross I checked around, and a friend who has had the Flora Hall bitter says “exactly what you’d expect, high quality but not very interesting”. Which… yeah, checks out. Depends whether you’re in the mood for a good but “ordinary” beer.

ifnotnowboston, to random
@ifnotnowboston@mastodon.social avatar

Damn tootin'!

The American Prospect: Progressive Groups Form Counterweight to AIPAC’s Electoral Push
https://prospect.org/politics/2024-03-11-progressive-groups-counterweight-aipac/

sidb,
@sidb@mastodon.cloud avatar

@ifnotnowboston @aral I’d “sign” that except I know the real point isn’t to convince anyone of anything but actually just to harvest my contact info to ceaselessly spam me back into the stone age until I go live in a WiFi-free stone hut on a mountaintop. If there were a non-contact-info version that I trusted were “the one” and would actually get presented to someone who’d consider it though, sure.

ottaross, (edited ) to random
@ottaross@mastodon.social avatar

As many people who live the life can relate one accumulates lots of old projects resulting in obsolete components, copious circuit boards of sequential revisions, and gadgets that worked fine but failed to sustain further interest once built.

Cleaning out these troves is a painful path through: "I'll reuse this someday" versus "there's no way I'll ever use this again" and "maybe I can scavenge components off this."

sidb,
@sidb@mastodon.cloud avatar

@ottaross It always gets me when I find the remains of a project and struggle to even remember what it was or why I was doing it.

glassbottommeg, to random
@glassbottommeg@peoplemaking.games avatar

Please do vote if you're in the US. Literally every school board/director up for us had a book burning type running, some more subtle than others.

I know it's boring off year stuff but holy shit those types can do damage en masse.

sidb,
@sidb@mastodon.cloud avatar

@glassbottommeg @annaleen In Houston, we don’t have any school board elections. Texas just took away local control of our schools on a pretense but really for being in a blue city. Time to purge anything “woke”—the book burning types are in full control and we don’t get a say.

I’ll vote, out of habit I guess. There’s still city council, for what local power Texas hasn’t appropriated yet. But in so many ways, this is not a real democracy.

mekkaokereke, to random
@mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io avatar

🤯 I got a good reminder of different lived experiences this weekend. I met someone that also lived many years in Houston TX, but has never heard gunshots at night. Not once.

This is amazing to me. I do believe that the person was 100% telling the truth. They had no reason to lie. But I was stunned. Still am.

Houston had 429 murders last year. The city is only ~3X the population of San Francisco, but ~10x more murder-y. And Houston is the road rage capital of the USA.

sidb,
@sidb@mastodon.cloud avatar

@mekkaokereke @anildash I live in Houston and have never heard gun shots—except for that one time when I was awoken by a mass shooting a block away, ending in a suicide-by-cop situation. I went back to sleep thinking, nah, that can’t really be an extended gunfight, you’ve watched too many movies, it has to be construction.

marcoarment, to random
@marcoarment@mastodon.social avatar

I had a fun idea for a Minecraft project that required me to freeform-draw a sign with a white background.

As far as I know, the only way to do this is to frame a map of an area that looks like your intended "drawing" from above.

This is how far I've gotten so far with the white background. By the way, I'll need two of these side-by-side, since the design is rectangular…

sidb,
@sidb@mastodon.cloud avatar

@marcoarment What percentage of a map pixel has to be wool blocks for it to turn white? Surely not 100%. A majority? The magic block in the evenly divisible x-y coordinate? Might be worth playing around with.

theropologist, to random
@theropologist@beige.party avatar

Remember when Sony came out with the Discman and they were like hey remember all the things you love about the Walkman? Well now you can have all of that but with CDs! Yeah, all shiny like cyber rainbows from the future, and now you can take em with you! And we know what you're thinking, but relax, we've got you covered. This baby's got anti-skip technology, so you can go skateboarding, ride a bus, stand in a stiff wind—no problem! You just can't clip it to your belt. And it's too wide to fit in your pocket so don't even try. That would void the warranty anyway. And don't even think about trying to wedge it in your waistband. The way you kids are these days with your baggy jeans, there's no way that's gonna work. But don't even sweat it, you can just hold it! No of course it doesn't fit comfortably in your hand, it has to be larger than a CD, but don't worry about it! Everyone's gonna think you look really cool just holding onto it, wherever you go, preferably completely level and horizontal, taking one hand completely out of commission until you can find a place to safely set it down. Just hold onto it, kid. It's not that hard. People are gonna respect you for it. You might lose your balance occasionally, but just learn to roll toward your free hand. You can do it, champ. Just think of it like one of your stupid skateboard tricks. You're gonna look so cool.

sidb,
@sidb@mastodon.cloud avatar

@RamenCatholic @theropologist It eventually got good… but it took years. I had a much later Discman with, I forget, 120 sec anti-skip or something, and it really worked fine. But yeah, 3 sec was never gonna cut it.

In hindsight, it is sort of crazy that any of that ever worked at all though.

drahardja, to random
@drahardja@sfba.social avatar

If our species actually valued curiosity, we would be launching a new Voyager-style deep space exploration craft once every 10–20 years.

sidb,
@sidb@mastodon.cloud avatar

@drahardja I think New Horizons pretty much counts. But it took far longer than 10-20 years, and I’m not aware of another one planned any time soon.

What would be really neat for deep space would be a ready-to-launch interceptor for the next Oumuamua interstellar object that passes through. Let the light years come to us! (And after its primary mission, it’d be headed out to deep space anyways, so as long as it stayed powered and pointed, we’d get a deep space probe as a bonus.)

RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

What’s the worst date you’ve ever been on? You know I want details, spill the tea!

sidb,
@sidb@mastodon.cloud avatar

@RickiTarr @lisamelton Personally: a guy who bought my drink and said “don’t worry, Papa Koch is paying”. NOPE!

But the worst I know is a good friend. He met her online, she suggested a good restaurant she knew, he met her there. She said hi, now let’s go around back… to the dumpsters, where she proceeded to dumpster dive for their dinner. Like an idiot, he naively assumed they would be eating in the restaurant, not out of the dumpster behind it. (He left.)

malwaretech, to random

In hindsight, I think I made a mistake by avoiding calling out bad behavior from the left for so long. A long time ago someone convinced me that the only way to navigate a hyper-polarized US society was to pick a side and stick with them no matter what. But to be completely honest, I despise the brainless tribalism and think it counter productive. If your knee jerk response to any criticism of what you perceive to be the official position of your 'side' is "you just came out as <opposite side>, delete your account" then you have no business following me, and certainly no business being in my comment section.

sidb,
@sidb@mastodon.cloud avatar

@malwaretech I would love to even have a side. Instead I’ve just got D (globally center right, not really me) and R (obviously a hundred times worse). Of course I’ll criticize D—it’s the only tool I have to maybe maaaaybe drag them an inch left sometimes.

MetalSamurai, to random
@MetalSamurai@mas.to avatar

Apple plans to update iPhones in-store without opening the boxes
I see the use case for this, but the ability to remotely power up a switched off iPhone, flash some firmware and then switch it off again, all with no physical access, seems… uh, risky? I bet the Cellebrite people are keen to see how this works.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/10/15/apple-plans-to-update-iphones-in-store-without-opening-the-boxes

sidb,
@sidb@mastodon.cloud avatar

@MetalSamurai @lisamelton As long as it only works on devices that are in the “factory reset” wiped condition, that should allay a lot of concerns. Eve could still sell you a new corrupted phone I guess, but Eve could presumably also tamper with a box’s seals since she had physical possession before you bought it.

timbray, to LGBTQ
@timbray@cosocial.ca avatar

I, a straight person, have a question. I'm talking about homophobia in a draft blog piece, and what’s a good choice of word for the people that homophobes dislike and abuse? Has it got to the point where “queer” is respectful and appropriate? Is “LGBTQ” better? “Gender-diverse”? (I think I’m correct to think that “homophobe” has grown to include anti-trans and gender-related bigotries generally?) Who has written a really good essay on the subject? Thanks in advance.

sidb,
@sidb@mastodon.cloud avatar

@timbray I attend my university’s QGSA (queer graduate student association) socials—I think that term is non-controversial among us, for us. We have trans, ace, nonbinary, lesbian & gay, bi, and just generally not-down-with-being-called-straight people. I think of “queer” as a generic inclusive term.

But what others have said here also rings true—if I hear a straight person say “the queers”, it could be fine, but it could be fighting words. Some context is required to resolve it.

dancinyogi, (edited ) to random

Do you eat breakfast?

And by "breakfast", I mean the first meal of the day, and actual food (coffee, tea, and juice, don't count as food but smoothies do)

Please boost for a wider demographic! 🙏

sidb,
@sidb@mastodon.cloud avatar

@dancinyogi @lisamelton I do eat a first meal of the day. Not everyone’s day starts at some gross single-digit hour though.

chockenberry, to random
@chockenberry@mastodon.social avatar

I have a huge amount of respect for the team working on watchOS and all the improvements we've seen in the latest release. It's probably my favorite Apple platform.

So when the watchOS app I use the most has design regressions, I have to say something. I hope the feedback is constructive and helps guide the product in a way that makes it more useful for folks like me.

Here are a couple thousand words about timers:

https://furbo.org/2023/09/28/the-timer-in-watchos-10/

/cc @lorihc @douglemoine @taylorcarrigan

sidb,
@sidb@mastodon.cloud avatar

@chockenberry Maybe the answer is a third party timer app? And if a good one doesn’t already exist, perhaps this is the year for someone to make one.

mbonsma, to cycling
@mbonsma@mastodon.social avatar

My 3-year-old has been filling in the blanks in this book, following the "Taco sees a" template. On the first page he said "Taco sees a car", but on the second page he said "Taco sees a person". Cyclists are PEOPLE on bikes!

A page from a children's book that says "Taco sees a bike" with a drawing of a dog watching a person riding a bike

sidb,
@sidb@mastodon.cloud avatar

@mbonsma That scans. I don’t see cars as encased people; I see them as societal damage to be routed around, but with no valid considerations or feelings due. Just a weapon on the move. When I end up screaming at a murderous car, I’m loud enough the person inside will hear, but I’m still not thinking of a person. I couldn’t tell you the gender, race, or age of who was inside; I was just looking at the malignant bumper.

But when I see a cyclist or pedestrian, that’s a person.

glennf, to random
@glennf@twit.social avatar

I suspect Musk runs all his businesses on the “jimmy it with a pocket knife borrowed from an Uzbeki” basis. Makes you wonder how SpaceX has done as well as it has. https://daringfireball.net/linked/2023/09/11/musk-isaacson-servers

sidb,
@sidb@mastodon.cloud avatar

@glennf I heard he wanted to rush straight to Starship and tried to cancel Falcon Heavy—after already signing contracts with DoD for its use!—and Shotwell had to threaten to quit over it, as dicking over their largest customer at that point would have probably ended the company. But at Twitter, no one has such leverage.

dangillmor, to random
@dangillmor@mastodon.social avatar

Oklahoma State University's partnership with the right-wing propaganda outfit Prager"U" is disgraceful for the (real) university, and it tarnishes every new graduate. If I was hiring people, I'd regard an OSU degree as a red flag after this. https://kfor.com/news/local/osde-announces-partnership-with-prageru/

sidb,
@sidb@mastodon.cloud avatar

@dangillmor If I were in charge of accreditation, I’d think twice the next time OSU’s was up for renewal.

gruber, to random
@gruber@mastodon.social avatar

Assuming this is technically possible, it’s a great idea.

From: @sidb
https://mastodon.cloud/@sidb/110990404214818497

sidb,
@sidb@mastodon.cloud avatar

@eliasp @gruber The cable reports its own capabilities, at least for power delivery. You don’t want to test amps and have the test fail. For data, even it it doesn’t report you could still do a quick throughput test.

I don’t know how host chipsets implement USB negotiation though. If they try to handle it all internally, the OS may not have access? A hardware/OS engineer might know. (But the nice thing about Apple is they can control it all if they care to.)

glennf, to random
@glennf@twit.social avatar

@gruber An iPhone can transfer video over Wi-Fi at vastly higher rates than USB 2? Or am I missing something about that—Files or...?

sidb,
@sidb@mastodon.cloud avatar

@glennf @gruber A great feature for any Mac with ≥2 USB C ports would be built-in cable testing. You plug both ends of one cable to the Mac, and the OS automatically detects that, no UI needed, and pops up a dialog saying “this cable supports x mbps and x Watts power delivery”. That’s it, there is no step 3!

mbonsma, to random
@mbonsma@mastodon.social avatar

Today I saw one of those letter message boards in the countryside north of Toronto that said "RENT THIS SIGN". You have some cash and would like to stir the pot. What slogan do you put on there?

sidb,
@sidb@mastodon.cloud avatar

@mbonsma “This sign is visual pollution”. Houston doesn’t get a lot right, but outlawing new billboards 30 years ago was dead on. The number of grandfathered ones is dwindling, and now we just have to look at the endless freeway-side strip mall parking lots instead.

mekkaokereke, to random
@mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io avatar

Happy !

You know the drill by now. I don't like talking about Black history. Americans know Black history. I want to talk about white American history. In other words, racism, and the erasure of both positive achievements of, and injustices suffered by, non-white people. That's what people don't know.

Try this: Ask your white US friends what the statue of liberty celebrates.

Now ask your Black friends. Or French folk of any color.

sidb,
@sidb@mastodon.cloud avatar

@mekkaokereke @oceanwave My textbook lied about that. But I’m not in seventh grade any more and have learned better. It’s an engaged adult’s responsibility to overcome the limitations of their upbringing.

Sadly, that can be pretty hard, depending on the limitation. But blatant misinformation should be one of the easier ones, if the person isn’t being motivatedly awful for other reasons.

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