@travisfw@fosstodon.org
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

travisfw

@travisfw@fosstodon.org

In being human, we belong to humanity. I like to think about this from a first-person perspective, and I think you probably can relate.

If you happen to be a commercial entity (LOL) Original toots and attached content dual-licensed under CC BY-ND 4.0 OR CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Your choice.

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

travisfw, to random
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

a holism-oriented spreadsheet alternative.
spreadsheets are reductionist. columns and rows are for breaking down a system into attributes and instances. cool cool, but what about when you want to reintegrate all that data?
what about a graph-based spreadsheet? what if perspectives on the data were first class entities?

travisfw, to random
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

[Via Thud.] Job losses likely at VW as the people’s car brand becomes uncompetitive https://arstechnica.com/?p=1986745
Nooo I still want one of those cool retro electric hippie vans!!

travisfw, to random
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

We have lived in an age of synthetic drugs for less than 150 years, but that has been long enough for most of us to forget where they came from.
— Cassandra Leah Quave
The Plant Hunter

travisfw, to climate
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

On and jet engines, anyone anywhere talking about encouraging more efficient travel?

For decades, I have been keeping an eye out for aircraft designed to fly mostly low, within the range of ground effect. Close to the ground, lift is significantly greater and flight is much more efficient.

Over water, a pilot wouldn't have to worry about hitting trees and obstacles. An ocean-going aircraft utilizing ground effect could be twice as large and still more efficient than a jet.

J12t, to random
@J12t@social.coop avatar

Harvested some leeks from the backyard hydroponics system today. But I don’t know many recipes that use leeks, so I came across a chance find in the Silver Spoon (Italian cookbook) called simply Leeks and Ham, which turned out to be excellent.

I’d never come across so many tasty new recipes if I didn’t have so many kinds of veggies in my yard. It forces you out of the usual, and in this case into the unexpectedly very tasty! Would never happen when buying from the grocery store.

travisfw,
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

@J12t potato leek soup is one of my favorite foods

sml, to blender
@sml@chaos.social avatar

I've done a little thing again, inspired by one of @Kaiern​s recent renders. It started out with a random shape doodle and turned into something bigger.

A herdsman found this artifact in the Bolivian highlands. It appears to defy gravity, but otherwise it is inert. Spectroscopy analysis did not match any currently known material. However it emits a short modulated radio wave pulse every night that seems to be directed at Ross 248.

A different view at the camp, with a tent in the foreground, and most of the rest of the camp hidden in fog. The artifact shows long lines of glowing orange cracks from this side.
An upwards view at the artifact between two containers and hanging cables. The black surface reflects some of the floodlights.
A grey clay render of the Blender scene, with the wavy artifact floating above the various scattered camp objects. Patches of short grass cover the ground.

travisfw,
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

@sml I like the misty morning lighting. I thought it was over water, at first.

J12t, to ai
@J12t@social.coop avatar

The weirdest thing: as soon as the demand for high performance GPUs drops from , demand for high performance GPUs from explodes.

travisfw,
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

@J12t yep. I don't get why proof-of-work hasn't yet been based on an AI training algorithm. then the proverbial stone would have killed both birds.

stux, to random
@stux@mstdn.social avatar

I wonder..

How much more cryptocurrency exchanges do need to blow up, get hacked, get sued etc etc before serious regulations get in place

Ofc there are always bad apples but there should also be a limit

Enough is enough.. The finance sector wanted to take cryptocurrency so badly from us, now it's time they handle it with the care it needs

travisfw,
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

@stux what about the unbanked? It seems to me cryptocurrency had the most to give to the poor, in being nearly free to have a wallet, and no government skimming, and no fees for being poor.

arstechnica, to random
@arstechnica@mastodon.social avatar

Google Chrome will limit ad blockers starting June 2024

The "Manifest V3" rollout is back after letting tensions cool for a year.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/11/google-chrome-will-limit-ad-blockers-starting-june-2024/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

travisfw,
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

@dave31175 @snoopfrog good question about @Vivaldi!

stux, to random
@stux@mstdn.social avatar

Ha! Rick has done this multiple times before except it was successful :rickhey2:

gobble, gobble

travisfw,
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

@stux @afrangry so much better than yellow faces, and maybe even more expressive.

travisfw, to random
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

Can AI help tear down all the layers of bureourocracy, structural violence, classism, and everyday horror porvasive in our society, or will it make it all worse?
I think that's the real question about ethical AI. Truly ethical AI would make us change. Those who make and run it probably don't want that.

b0rk, to random
@b0rk@jvns.ca avatar

there's something weird about git branches that "a branch is just a reference to a commit" does not capture and I've been struggling with it for weeks

like in this diagram I think most people would say that there are 3 branches (corresponding to the 3 commits at the top of the diagram), though technically in git you could have 0, 3, or 100 branches here, and it's not labelled so you have no way to know how many branches there are

(please don't try to explain branches to me ty)

travisfw, (edited )
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

@b0rk sorry, what I said was very unclear. I just meant that the metaphor of a branch (a wood stick on a tree) doesn't extend to git. I tried to recreate your illustration with some colors.

You know the green circles are Git branches. I would call the blue and red lines branches. I kinda hate Linus for not bothering to give us a way to track what I would think is obviously a branch.

travisfw, to news
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

Seems relevant to what's going on in the world right now. Read this, then read the .
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-smart-people-do-foolish-things/

travisfw, (edited ) to Wikipedia
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

: changes. when linking to information on wikipedia, link to the most recent version (what you just looked at). Then readers will see the same thing you did.

Click "View history" in the upper right, then click the last revision (at the top of the list). This is the version everyone sees right now. Tomorrow it could be different. But if you share this link (which probably says at the top, "This is the current revision of this page") then people will see what you intended.

travisfw, to random
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

My review of Photo Ark Vanishing by Joel Sartore:
https://literal.club/travisfw/book/photo-ark-vanishing-agnp6

You don't really "finish" a book like this. It's a valuable resource I will keep on my shelf for as long as I have a shelf, and will come back to for conversations and reminders.

travisfw, to ai
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

We all need to get straight that identity and sentience are two VERY different things.

is a distinctly mammalian social function. It is embedded in our corporeal every-day instinct for interdependence. Computers can't and won't ever have a sense of self.

is impossible to define. It is the soul. It is the experience of being. You can't build it. You can't define it. You can't model it with math. Sentience is the loophole science can't close. Don't worry about it.

travisfw,
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

I just watched the new Mission Impossible and very much enjoyed it, and also very much appreciate the portrayal of the reality that you really can't trust digital communications, for the most part.

But they made all the usual errors wrt rogue AI.

travisfw,
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

I'm NOT saying there's nothing to fear from AI. There's a lot to fear. But you can't start by anthropomorphising software and talking about it like it's executing some kind of self-preservation function. Yes humanity COULD shoot ourselves in our collective foot by programming a computer to do that. But that's not rogue AI. That's smart humans doing stupid shit. (Smart people do the MOST stupid shit, btw. Compared with relatively less smart people, anyway.)

travisfw,
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

IE the mission impossible scenario could happen, but "the entity" would be smart people doing dumb shit, not sentient software going rogue.

If rogue AI were to evolve it would take the computational equivalent of hundreds of millions of years of evolution with literally no human-centric utility function, but merely survival in the real world being the selective factor.

mitch, to random
@mitch@posts.dumb.stuff.donaberger.xyz avatar

Some shit came in the mail.

travisfw,
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

@mitch i know that must represent a lot of work for you 👍🏻

yurnidiot, to random
@yurnidiot@mstdn.social avatar

high risk, low reward

tuxedo cat climbing on bathtub faucet trying to drink the water, loses footing but hangs on to faucet still trying to drink the water and eventually falls and climbs out

travisfw,
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

@yurnidiot i'm just worried about this kitteh licking Comet off their paws.

evan, (edited ) to random
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

"Discussions about the fediverse should happen on the fediverse."

#EvanPoll #poll

travisfw,
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

@evan any reason the fediverse is not the most convenient and appropriate place to have official public discussion of fediverse-centric topics should be discussed on the fediverse!

tksst, to Cats
@tksst@universeodon.com avatar

Beruru, Kururu, and Maruru, three from the Cat Navi Desk YouTube channel in Japan, showcase their skills of delicately tapping objects with their paws in a domino run filled with marbles and ping pong balls. 🐈🐈‍⬛🐈

👉 Watch: https://thekidshouldseethis.com/post/cats-and-domino-2

travisfw,
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

My grandma died last night. She loved animals, and volunteered to raise many orphaned wild animals to release back into the wild for 20+ years. Several cats lived their best lives with Grandma. In case you don't know cats well, I humbly ask you to look here at these examples of cats that are all clearly healthy and happy. For Grandma. ❤️‍🩹

TomF, to random
@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

Here's a picture. Quickly count how many players are on each of the two teams, then answer the poll in the following comment.

travisfw,
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

@TomF In grade school I remember getting tested by the nurse. The nurse herself skipped one or two saying there was nothing there. 🤦🏻
I tried to tell her I saw a number, but somehow it didn't occur to either of us that she might actually be somewhat color blind.

travisfw, (edited ) to random
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar


The only form of human action that holds out even the possibility of having social effects without being communicative.
The only way it is possible for one human being to do something which will have relatively predictable effects on the actions of a person about whom they understand nothing.
— David Graeber

travisfw,
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

Correct answer was Violence, according to Graeber. From The Utopia of Rules.

travisfw,
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

@isaactly_s yeah he was describing structural violence and how police are "bureaurcats with weapons".
Really great reference to vampires and werewolves, and Holmes vs 007 in that essay.

travisfw, to random
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

Sure, we're all playing the game.
At some number of hours, you get to the point where you can just turn to your side and talk about the rules, and change it up.

travisfw, to random
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

I think the hashtag I'm looking for might be .
I think I'm a little worried about how values are usually not explicit. In society. Not talking about business or software or any vertical (stop thinking like that for just a second, please).

travisfw, to random
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

Numbers do not indicate what matters, except in cases where you genuinely didn't already know.

travisfw, to random
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

You deserve to do a little work, take a step in the direction you feel like it's best to step, and feel good about it. Do that thing you'd feel good about yourself for doing. I trust your judgment.

jimmakes, to music
@jimmakes@fosstodon.org avatar

I don't know how people can stand to use spotify these days. Ads galore. .

travisfw,
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

@jimmakes I've been on Tidal.
Hardly Free in any sense of the word, but I can listen to music industry sellouts and exploitees like everyone else.

appassionato, to books
@appassionato@mastodon.social avatar

Tapestries of Life
Uncovering the Lifesaving Secrets of the Natural World

Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson explains how closely we are all connected with the natural world, highlighting our indelible link with nature's finely knit system and our everyday lives.

@bookstodon


travisfw,
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

@appassionato
on Open Library
https://openlibrary.org/works/OL25767455W/Tapestries_of_Life

J12t, to random
@J12t@social.coop avatar

Is there any dish worth cooking that doesn’t involve the chopping of vegetables for some ungodly amount of time??

Today’s edition: Hungarian Goulash.

travisfw,
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

@J12t got a food processor on your wish list?

b0rk, (edited ) to random
@b0rk@jvns.ca avatar

has anyone seen an explanation of nix flakes that explains the design goals of flakes & the fundamental problems they're trying to solve before diving into the syntax?

i'm looking for something like:

  • the goal of flakes is to let people define packages in an uncoordinated way without a central repository
  • the problem is coordinating dependencies: you could easily end up with an explosion where you end up installing 1000 versions of libc
  • the way flakes address that problem is ???
travisfw,
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

@b0rk I don't know a lot about systemd-nspawn, but sounds similar? Containers have always been annoying to me so I'm glad to see alternatives.

18+ steven, to random
@steven@zeroes.ca avatar

Okay, so thinking about this more, search engines are actually a dramatically larger copyright violation than AI.

OpenAI doesn't actually store your content.

Google does.

18+ travisfw,
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

@steven uhm, I'd say AI stores a derivative of the content in the neural network. it isn't recognizable, or even directly readable in this form, but the derivative is retrievable as the generative output.

But search gives you the references, and you're even intended to follow them.

18+ travisfw,
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

@steven yeah copyright is silly. backing up your collection of purchased epubs is copying. even loading data from disk to ram is copying.

18+ travisfw,
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

@steven how do we do that? Personally, I try to tell people copyright should be nontransferrable. IE: publishers can't have any. They have to settle for revocable licenses. I dunno.

travisfw, to random
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

@brewsterkahle is up on day live cast
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1-VoCguHKU
https://www.aaronswartzday.org/

travisfw, to random
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

most of the unencrypted URLs I encounter are link redirects. email marketing is a big source of those. meetup.com and other such ticketing and sales systems seem not to have gotten their https together.

travisfw, to random
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

beginning "Eaten by the Internet" (meatspacepress)

"What might effective interventions look like? … we must get concrete about the harms posed by current infrastructural developments—and be just as concrete about alternatives.
… Only when we understand the role that it plays can we begin to ask what might serve us better; how can we ensure our infrastructures sustain us, rather than consume us?"
—Corinne Cath

travisfw, to random
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

Path through woods behind me

b0rk, (edited ) to random
@b0rk@jvns.ca avatar

i have this long term project I've been slowly thinking about for years to figure out how to help folks get more comfortable on the unix command line.

I have this sense that there are a lot of people who have been using the command line for 5-20 years but still don't really feel at home there

(not looking for advice, it's just something I'm thinking about)

some related posts:
https://jvns.ca/blog/2023/08/08/what-helps-people-get-comfortable-on-the-command-line-/
https://jvns.ca/blog/2022/04/12/a-list-of-new-ish--command-line-tools/

travisfw,
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

@b0rk meanwhile I've been considering for years how to upgrade the command line to a graphical user friendly environment

travisfw, to random
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

Wow. https://whimsical.club/ is the beauty and awesomeness of web1.0. But, right now! The back button even works. Try not opening tabs. It's amaz. Ing. So Ing. But even more amaz.

pluralistic, to random
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

Raaaaa

travisfw,
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

@DavBot @pluralistic At one time, skulls were a symbol of humility, gargoyles kept us safe from evil, and pumpkins were just orange food. I'm down for selectively reviving convenient historical norms.

travisfw, to random
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

Anyone else on the webinar right now? Looking forward to the data-centric technical discussion today.

evan, (edited ) to random
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

Do you believe in the right of self-determination for peoples?

travisfw,
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

@evan governments, corporations, religious organizations, and all other organizations should not be recognized as entities with discernible volition, and therefore can have no rights. individual people are the alpha and omega of humanity.

gutenberg_org, to books
@gutenberg_org@mastodon.social avatar

Happy birthday to Marie Skłodowska Curie, who was born on this day in 1867!

She is best known as the discoverer of the radioactive elements polonium and radium and as the 1st person to win 2 Nobel prizes. For scientists & the public, her radium was a key to a basic change in our understanding of matter and energy. Her work not only influenced the development of fundamental science but also ushered in a new era in medical research & treatment. via @aip

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/39174

#books #physics

Title cover of The Discovery of Radium by Marie Curie.

travisfw,
@travisfw@fosstodon.org avatar

@gutenberg_org I must contend with Curie here, that she, in her defense of basic science, truly understates its significance. I really believe we live in all of this universe, not just the tangible, large, and industrial. Where there is curiosity, there is utility. What is too tiny, extinct, distant, or obscure? I challenge all not to insult the significance of any moment of humanity. What else do you get?

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