@vathpela@better.boston
@vathpela@better.boston avatar

vathpela

@vathpela@better.boston

Hooloovoo, kernel{, }hacker. Building better worlds. Opinions are messages from space. Facts approximate. Photos are square. he/they. 0.9x engineer 🚴 :mbta: Ban cars.

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YvanDaSilva, to random
@YvanDaSilva@hachyderm.io avatar

How many of you wanted to start a company just to try to do better than what you are experiencing?

vathpela,
@vathpela@better.boston avatar

@YvanDaSilva considered it many times, but in the end I know I don't want to be anyone's boss or run a company at all.

vathpela, to random
@vathpela@better.boston avatar

Any company doing anything with blockchain or ML which also claims to have climate goals is lying to you. It's just that simple.

AmiW, to art German
@AmiW@mastodon.online avatar

⚪ Mehr... Lieblingsfotos?
🟤 More... Favorite photos? ⛵
📷 by Artist: #KurtArrigo in Loc.: #SaintTropez France 🇨🇵 - Title: "Standing Tall" ("Hoch aufgerichtet") - #Art #Streetart #PhotoArt #Fotografie #Photography #Sailing #Boat #BnW #Yachting #Maritime #Artist ➡️ #APhotoLove 🌊

vathpela,
@vathpela@better.boston avatar

@AmiW I wish it were my photo :)

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

"The international diplomatic system is dangerously overloaded."

#EvanPoll #poll

vathpela,
@vathpela@better.boston avatar

@evan lol, no idea how I would even tell.

glyph, to random
@glyph@mastodon.social avatar

I saw someone ask the other day what the kernel panic screen looks like on Apple Silicon, and I realized that I wasn't sure I'd seen a panic at all on my M1; a far cry from my frequent acquaintance with the "You need to restart your computer" screen. Felt good, for a moment, about the improvements to reliability.

Today I achieved a kernel panic by accidentally appending to a BytesIO in Python unit test in a loop. (What this looks like is "full-screen magenta flash for one frame, then reboot.)

vathpela,
@vathpela@better.boston avatar

@hynek @glyph @jacob maintain compatibility for more than a month?

vathpela,
@vathpela@better.boston avatar

@nedbat thankfully not my issue any more, but I worked on a fairly major python project for ~13 years and the one thing I'm sure of is that keeping a project working in /current/ python for a long time is an effort of constant, pointless churn, and nobody involved in the language sees that as a problem at all.

vathpela, to random
@vathpela@better.boston avatar

Logitech adds ChatGPT to a mouse driver and somehow none of the articles about it are even critical of Windows' "bring your own driver" model.

vathpela, to random
@vathpela@better.boston avatar

I'm generally against capital punishment, and certainly not endorsing it here, but whoever it is that decided that all corporate training should involve all of these things, every time, should definitely see the inside of the Hague:

  • text that moves
  • text that fades in and out
  • find the spot you're supposed to click on or hover near to make the text dance in order to continue
  • video with someone talking in constant rate monotone while smooth jazz plays at the same volume
vwbusguy, to random
@vwbusguy@mastodon.online avatar

My first family computer was an Osborne One. Now, let me hear about yours.

vathpela,
@vathpela@better.boston avatar

@vwbusguy

peterbutler, to photography
@peterbutler@mas.to avatar

What are the best pictures of the solar eclipse that you’ve seen?

I’m weird about the whole thing (it’s a black circle 😐) but I haven’t seen much that has impressed me yet

The blood-red partial eclipse at the Washington Monument is my favorite approach so far. I suspect lots more images will come in over the next few days

https://www.cnet.com/pictures/relive-the-total-solar-eclipse-best-photos-so-far/

vathpela,
@vathpela@better.boston avatar

@peterbutler obviously tooting my own trunk here, but I think I did okay: https://metapixl.com/p/vathpela/683057465082130636

vathpela, to random
@vathpela@better.boston avatar

Just sayin'.

mcc, to random
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

Have you ever heard of "Linux"? It's the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

vathpela,
@vathpela@better.boston avatar

@mcc ... My mom, on the phone with a cold-call font salesperson, in like 1997.

mcdanlj, to random
@mcdanlj@social.makerforums.info avatar

The cloud cover maps for Monday look a lot like the path of totality maps. 😬

vathpela,
@vathpela@better.boston avatar

@mcdanlj I do think some of my photos from the mostly overcast 2017 eclipse are more interesting than the ones I got today, though I got some great stuff today.

The sunin the 2024 North American eclipse. It's just a crescent on a field of black.

kwf, to random
@kwf@social.afront.org avatar

The fact that they make propane powered refrigerators has always bothered me.

vathpela,
@vathpela@better.boston avatar

@mattdm @kwf what's the thinking on this one?

vathpela,
@vathpela@better.boston avatar

@kwf @mattdm but like... Motors are okay?

mcc, to random
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

2008, me: I love the idea of cryptocurrency

BITCOIN: The word "cryptocurrency" now means "financial scams based on inefficient write-only ledgers"

2018, me: I love the idea of the metaverse

FACEBOOK: The word "metaverse" now means "proprietary 3D chat programs with no soul"

2022, me: I love the idea of procedurally generated content

OPENAI: From now on people will associate that only with big corporations plagiarizing small artists and turning their work into ugly content slurry

vathpela,
@vathpela@better.boston avatar

@glyph @mcc So the PlayStation thing was basically the way Cygus did compiler port sales. The Long and short of it is they'd do a gcc target for a given CPU and agree to not release it, then distribute it only to the customer, but still under the GPL, with the caveat that the contracts said they retained all the rights and could use the source code in other ports, and I think it may have also had a timeout. Then, \

vathpela,
@vathpela@better.boston avatar

@glyph @mcc Sony distributed it to game devlopers, who were under their own contracts and NDAs with Sony and received this compiler as a binary and with no right to distribute it. The contractors didn't receive it under the GPL, but Cygnus still had their own copy that would eventually be upstreamed.

This sort of thing has always been part of the business of making and selling GPLed software.

And also the dig at Red Hat above is still just plain not what actually happened.

vathpela,
@vathpela@better.boston avatar

@glyph @mcc so there are two parts here - 1) Cygnus owned the code they wrote (which wound up being a strikingly large amount of the compiler) until they contributed it back to the FSF, (though they did have a blanket agreement which did that), and ... \

vathpela,
@vathpela@better.boston avatar

@glyph @mcc 2) in terms of software licensing, as I understand it (and let's be sure: IANAL) if you work for a company and they for instance get a copy of Visual Studio and give it to you, Microsoft has given it to them under whatever license, but your employer has more or less just loaned it to you. You don't have that software licensed to you, your employer does. And that's something that can be established through non-employment contracts as well.

vathpela,
@vathpela@better.boston avatar

@mcc @glyph Well, I don't think lawyers or the courts see it that way, but again I am not a lawyer so I won't belabor that point any more. Maybe as @luis_in_brief, I hear he is a lawyer, just not your lawyer or my lawyer ;)

vathpela,
@vathpela@better.boston avatar

@mcc @glyph I think that's a fair conclusion. Also worth noting that there are other slightly different ways they could have done it that are even more confusing (and maybe they did, I wasn't ever in that part of the business). Like, what if they only ever gave the customers patches, and then rented them out a consultant who downloaded, patched, and compiled gcc for them? It's exactly the same in the end, but a largely different thing being handed over.

vathpela, to random
@vathpela@better.boston avatar

One thing we need to learn from xz is just how hard good code review is to do. It's breathtakingly difficult, and we pretend it isn't.

vathpela,
@vathpela@better.boston avatar

@jimfl it was the dot, right?

vwbusguy, to random
@vwbusguy@mastodon.online avatar

BSD and the internet were state sponsored software.

vathpela,
@vathpela@better.boston avatar

@vwbusguy I think the Internet was state sponsored hardware, primarily.

whitequark, to random
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

intel buying and selling altera once every few years like a cat that's not sure if he wants to go inside or outside

vathpela,
@vathpela@better.boston avatar

@ids1024 @whitequark well, they thought there was a big market for $20000 CPUs with a built-in FPGA for ¯(ツ)/¯.

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