@thomasapowell@fosstodon.org
@thomasapowell@fosstodon.org avatar

thomasapowell

@thomasapowell@fosstodon.org

Mostly sharing thoughts on #webdev, #softwareengineering, #retrogames and humanistic aspects of tech. Old tech guy, UCSD CSE Lecturer, Author, pint.com founder, and person behind ZingChart and ZingGrid. 🤓

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baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

Unless you have experience teaching or training a variety of web tech (HTML, JS, CSS, SVG, etc), you likely don't fully understand their relative learning difficulty

Basing your assessment of which is harder on your attempts to teach yourself is esp unreliable

It's hard for you to know if a tech is hard or if you were just unlucky in stumbling into a bad entry point. Getting into something with the wrong mental model means you have to first unlearn a bunch of crap before you can actually learn

thomasapowell,
@thomasapowell@fosstodon.org avatar

@baldur I’ve taught web dev at uni level for > 25yrs and I don’t know where to start here. This thread just hits me to my core. I’ll say a big challenge is pre existing beliefs, learner mindset, and frankly impatience. The influence of hustle style Web pundits has been a big challenge but now LLM ease is pure gas poured on a platform basics learning failures. Amazing passionate student bright spots always exist and that keeps me very motivated, but it is much harder now than ever.

atomicpoet, to random
@atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org avatar

The thing about physical media formats is that it doesn’t have to be “superior” for you to want it.

For example, I have a VHS and VCD collection. I know these are inferior formats compared to DVD or Blu-Ray.

But have you ever seen Blade Runner on VHS through a CRT? Have you ever seen Ghost in the Shell on VCD through a projector?

I have, and they’re amazing experiences I would not trade for anything.

thomasapowell,
@thomasapowell@fosstodon.org avatar

@atomicpoet same idea as why playing a Atari 2600 or original NES works better on a CRT. Interestingly that is the only way you can play Duck Hunt so you simply can’t even experience that game if you insist on modern. 😎

thomasapowell, to random
@thomasapowell@fosstodon.org avatar

Apparently even ScarJo can’t stop the fever dream of a techbro with billions he will just do it anyway !

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/scarlett-johansson-shocked-angered-openai-voice-rcna153180

atomicpoet, to random
@atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org avatar

Chinese fried chicken served with shrimp crackers.

I like this a lot more than KFC.

thomasapowell,
@thomasapowell@fosstodon.org avatar

@atomicpoet are you by chance in Richmond having an amazing 10 course Cantonese meal. It sure looks that way and I am jealous my friend. My version via my wife is in Rowland Heights LA which while good has nothing on BC. We visited a summer back and it was second only to Hong Kong. Enjoy every bite!

thomasapowell, to LEGO
@thomasapowell@fosstodon.org avatar

Not exactly a clean build of a Space 1999 Eagle. That’s what you get I guess for knock off Chinese still an icon of 1970s

thomasapowell, to ai
@thomasapowell@fosstodon.org avatar

Last year I told my team we have to get off because this train wreck would likely happen and I wasn’t ok with info leakage like that of our private and customer chat. Sadly as we are finding out it happened. We had picked and found it was fine as a replacement but the migration has been a slow effort. At least now it will accelerate.

thomasapowell,
@thomasapowell@fosstodon.org avatar

@StOnSoftware yep unfortunately that’s quite true but not a reason to keep with them going forward I’ll dub staying the sunk privacy fallacy 🤪 anyway Mattermost is good enough. We’d used Hipchat before Slack and MS Communicator before Hipchat so this is just another move for a long running firm.

ricmac, to random
@ricmac@mastodon.social avatar

A media podcast I listened to today said that “the web is old-fashioned”, as part of their analysis of the OpenAI and Google news this week. As if the web will turn into The Well, or something. But I am seeing the fediverse, standards-based web builders like Eleventy, and open newsletter platforms like Ghost and Buttondown (that both support the web), and I just don’t agree that the web is old-fashioned. Quite the opposite, it’s only just getting started (again)!

thomasapowell,
@thomasapowell@fosstodon.org avatar

@ricmac the web is always dead or dying per people who both post and read this hot take on …. the web. 🧐

hbuchel, to random
@hbuchel@hachyderm.io avatar

Is this a real thing people using Tailwind do because this made me actually lol at work
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/72826605/how-to-style-nested-elements-based-on-parent-class-using-tailwind-css

thomasapowell,
@thomasapowell@fosstodon.org avatar

@hbuchel @cferdinandi makes perfect sense according to “Argumentum I got lots
of followerum”

Same bullshit different millennia 😛

thomasapowell, to random
@thomasapowell@fosstodon.org avatar

Dystopian SciFi books need to be reclassified as Non-Fiction these days.

thomasapowell, (edited ) to LEGO
@thomasapowell@fosstodon.org avatar

So having #Covid does have the upside of free time at home to get to this #Atari 2600 #Lego build. The cartridges can go in, the joystick has movement as do the switches, and a fun seen flips up from the console if you slide it forward.

#retrogaming

thomasapowell, to ai
@thomasapowell@fosstodon.org avatar

A few things about in the cloud we probably should acknowledge. First spinning up a cell phone’s radio constantly is gonna kill battery life. Add to this the network latency and variability making the UX painfully inconsistent or even unworkable. Also privacy but whatevs right?

Hasn’t Humane, R1, Echo, Siri… taught us anything or we just gonna wave this off as easily solvable?

On device really is required here but AI gold rush time so let’s gooooo! 🤷

thomasapowell, to ai
@thomasapowell@fosstodon.org avatar

Worth a watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDUC-LqVrPU

jasongorman, to random
@jasongorman@mastodon.cloud avatar

Search for "Certified Scrum Master" on YouTube. "When I found out there was something called 'project management' and then I found out about 'Scrum' "

thomasapowell,
@thomasapowell@fosstodon.org avatar

@jasongorman were the videos like “Hey guys! Today I am gonna tell you how you too can get certified in just one day and land your six figure dream job leading teams of rockstar ninja devs building world changing hyper scale AI powered software for the block chained powered metaverse. But first remember to like and subscribe so I can put out more killer content for y’all and turbo charge your tech leadership!”

thomasapowell, to random
@thomasapowell@fosstodon.org avatar

Pithy #SoftwareEngineering thought

Full Team Devs >>> Full Stack Devs

thomasapowell, to random
@thomasapowell@fosstodon.org avatar

Well I finally broke my long term luck and am positive with

I did most of the right things over the years with masks and vaxxing but we are so loose now it was bound to happen esp being on campus and having massive lectures.

Sadly it isn’t some simple cold or flu I feel weird as hell. 😬 so shifting down to a lower gear in my life for a bit.

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

those devs and tech “influencers” who pioneered the technical work of putting “AI” shit in everything everywhere, and are—for the most part—the assholes who enabled our brave new “AI” world by actually figuring out how to make it run, are also going to be the people who get credit for criticising it after the bubble pops, aren’t they?

Everybody will latch onto their vague concerns and ignore the fact that they literally implemented the shit that got smeared everywhere, aren’t they?

thomasapowell,
@thomasapowell@fosstodon.org avatar

@baldur you are probably right and without a doubt that should be dubbed the Kara Swisher effect.

@parismarx

thomasapowell, to TeslaMotors
@thomasapowell@fosstodon.org avatar

I am well over ten and maybe even 20+ sightings now and it still makes me look, shake my head and wonder what type of person buys and drives this thing? When the tinting isn’t illegal level I always make sure to look. The trend is unbroken so far. Any guesses ?

thomasapowell, to ai
@thomasapowell@fosstodon.org avatar

A student shared this with me about their upcoming graduation ceremony. It's the sign of the times that of course we would use during graduation so it too can mispronounce names.

Sigh.

film_girl, to random
@film_girl@mastodon.social avatar

This is fantastic. If you’ve got the Rabbit apk launcher plz share with me christina at christina dot is. This is hilarious. https://www.androidauthority.com/rabbit-r1-is-an-android-app-3438805/

thomasapowell,
@thomasapowell@fosstodon.org avatar

@film_girl well this would totally fit with the automations being Playwright scripts doing some sort of budget zapier like actions. It’s “quality” all the way down!

thomasapowell, to shitposting
@thomasapowell@fosstodon.org avatar

So if I understand these wearable AIs approach I am supposed to carry a second super cheap phone that is specifically for AI around and that will help me not take out my primary smart phone?

Cool cool got it. One question.

Can I get a third phone with special software for to make phone of the second phone so I don’t have to take out the first phone to dunk on them?

brad_frost, to random
@brad_frost@mastodon.social avatar

Written almost 10 years ago, "Just" remains one of the most impactful posts I've written: https://bradfrost.com/blog/post/just/

“Just” is a dangerous word.

thomasapowell,
@thomasapowell@fosstodon.org avatar

@brad_frost I think it is part of my client trigger phase “Well why can't you just…<insert ridiculous ask way out of scope or with massive complexity>?”

I probably start having facial twitches esp if the thing is some vague statement about making something “pop" or "work better" or ... esp if coupled with “I'm not sure but I'll know it when I see it” as a response to any questions posed.

TL;DR - that post needed a CW on it for some of us :-)

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

How many companies adopted MongoDB because “it’s the future!” and are now stuck with it until insolvency or the heat-death of the universe, whichever comes first?

Be careful about making technical decisions based on bubble logic

thomasapowell,
@thomasapowell@fosstodon.org avatar

@baldur the snarkiest yet true version of that thought would be to remind everyone that MongoDB is webscale 🤣

https://youtu.be/b2F-DItXtZs?si=sk4ueBxiw4G4iCOt

thomasapowell, to Rabbits
@thomasapowell@fosstodon.org avatar

So the R1 folks thinks they can learn a UI and automate it no problem. Err people if you can do that for real and properly automate E2E testing you are rich right there no product required. This has never worked well screen recorders

Apparently leaked code says Rabbit is just using Playwright which is a gigaton of fail ready to happen. Enjoy everything breaking every single day. 🤦‍♂️

I guess they married Zapier + GenAI + Voice. It’s a mashup 2020s style y’all!

thomasapowell, to Japan
@thomasapowell@fosstodon.org avatar

I was in in Feb and I saw all these people doing a Lawson parking lot photo with Mr Fuji. I had no sense this was a thing nor why until later. At the time it made absolutely no sense to me as you could get so many better photos elsewhere. It wasn’t even a great contrast anyway. I mean a conbini + Fuji errr ok.
What next a 7-11 + Grand Canyon ?

Good on the town for putting a stop to this.

https://www.cnn.com/travel/japan-mount-fuji-view-barrier-tourists-intl-hnk/index.html

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