woo

@woo@fosstodon.org

Data physicist, information philosopher & network culture theorist.
Writes in Obsidian, computes in Clojure, using emacs with Cider. Less is more. Small pieces, loosely joined, for emergent complexity.
Agile software development with models, functions, graphs & flow. Not tech: https://mastodonapp.uk/@wootube

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

woo, to random

Hypothesis: Pythagoras invented the musical notes B and E because of his religious belief in the number seven, like Newton imagined there must be 2 blues in the light spectrum. They aren't "real". Africa and Asia stuck with the one truth faith, the number 5, until the West corrupted them. For light, the number is 3 but not the 3 Isaac chose.
We put far too much faith in people who were once right about something, particularly if they are probably more than one person.

woo,

@johnefrancis I made a noob error!
Pythagoras made up B and F, not B and E :-).
The Major pentatonic pattern is 2-2-3-2-3.
The minor Pentatonic pattern is
3-2-2-3-2.

woo,

It's taken me until now to appreciate the irony of my mistake. Like Pythagoras, I assumed the mathematical beauty would take the simplest form available. Reader, it did not. Why do our ears like this stuff?

ajsadauskas, to auspol
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

So despite climate change, Australia's federal government has just committed an extra $3.25 billion into building a toll road and a 20-lane freeway widening.

For those who wonder why Aussies think toll roads are a scam (https://aus.social/@LesserAbe@lemmy.world/112405373613706682), here's a great example of why.

"Pouring an extra $3.25 billion worth of federal funds into Melbourne’s North East Link is a good use of taxpayer money, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has insisted, despite the project’s cost doubling just a few months ago.

...

"The North East Link – which includes 6½ kilometres of tunnels – will stretch from Bulleen to Greensborough. It will widen the Eastern Freeway by up to 20 lanes.

"Allan revealed in December that the 10-kilometre toll road had more than doubled in cost since it was first announced.

"The toll road was initially budgeted at $10 billion and reassessed in 2019 at $15 billion. But the government revealed last year that the updated cost estimate was $26 billion."

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/federal-funding-to-boost-victorian-road-link-by-3-25-billion-20240509-p5ii7b.html

@fuck_cars

woo,

@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars We have one of those. Hardly anyone locally uses it because the tolls are too expensive. It's been all disadvantage to us, getting in between us and the places we actually want to go.

grimalkina, to random
@grimalkina@mastodon.social avatar

Realizing how many software engineering conversations pull probability estimates out of thin air is gonna radicalize me, a person who assumes that every probability estimate is OF COURSE based on empirical data and real statistics

woo,

@KFosterMarks @grimalkina @jenniferplusplus "The very best" for extraverts, in my experience, like agile software development. Personally, I can't think and talk at the same time and I'm sure I make more typos when anyone is watching me. If someone else is typing, I drift off and think about something else.

drewdevault, to random
@drewdevault@fosstodon.org avatar

Someone responsible for enforcing the code of conduct in a project reaches out to you to discuss your behavior.

Do you (1) listen to them in earnest, ask questions if things are unclear, and take the opportunity for introspection and improvement, or (2) interpret everything they said as a threat, immediately escalate it into an argument, and characterize the email as a harassment campaign targeted against you and endorsed by the employer of the conduct enforcement person?

🤦‍♂️

woo,

@drewdevault About 1.2? Is it a good code of conduct?

ned, to random
@ned@mstdn.ca avatar

"What is happening at Boeing is happening in every industry. A general trend toward financialisation & hedge fund culture that sees only numbers, not peoples lives or wellbeing. It's just that aviation has a way of making the corruption impossible to hide. It's the dead canary." - Ben King

woo,

@ned The 'enshitification' (of everything) is "late stage".

deborahh, to random
@deborahh@mstdn.ca avatar

These past 3 years, I've made some difficult choices. The hardest ones are always important choices between things that are both good -- or both bad.

But: when I clearly lay out what I value, the decision-making is easier.

I learned as a coach: when choices align with what matters to me I sleep well, I don't second-guess myself. (I used to be a worrier! It's astonishing, now that I think about it)

I invite you to name what makes your life great.
https://abiggergame.today/namewhatyoulove/
#lifecoach

woo,

@deborahh I gave a presentation a few years ago which forced me to think about what the word "value" means. I identified 4 or 5 different meanings and another came up in a question I was asked. What you 'value'(/prioritise) is decided by reference to what your fundamental 'values' are. It's a very bad word for communicating. Values are very often relative and we like to pretend they aren't.

mcc, to random
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

Chrome one year ago was basically everything I wanted out of a web browser, Chrome eight months ago was what I wanted out of a web browser but it's trying to spy on you unless you click many settings on every profile, Chrome four months ago worked for me but I didn't like the interface anymore, Chrome today I don't like the interface and also it seems to fairly frequently crash so I keep losing my arrangements of tabs.

woo,

@mcc Chromium?
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-projects/

grimalkina, to random
@grimalkina@mastodon.social avatar

We have measured something researchers call beliefs about "role-based communal affordances" in my lab or in other words: how much do software developers think that the job of being a software developer includes helping other people and improving their lives? And the answer is A LOT of professional developers think this is important and see this as part of their identity.

People's beliefs about the communal affordances of software work is an undermeasured, underappreciated important thing imo.

woo,

@grimalkina I'm not sure many software developers would know what "communal affordances" are. I didn't and I care far more about words than many professional developers I know.

ernie, to random
@ernie@writing.exchange avatar

Today’s @tedium considers the long shadow of firmware, a concept described in full by a guy who died just two years after sharing it with the world.

Soon, every computing device, big and small, would have it.

https://tedium.co/2024/02/17/firmware-computer-bios-history/

woo,

@ernie @tedium This is timely. A few days ago I was thinking of a time, the 1980s, when marketing people were trying to shift "4th Generation languages" and the Japanese government started a new hype-wave of "5th Generation Computing". I didn't remember there having been a 4th generation. We assumed it would be highly parallel. The Inmos Transputer appeared.
Are we there yet? :-)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Generation_Computer_Systems
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inmos

woo,

@ernie @tedium To answer my own question, the hardware manufacturers are, inside the chips but software doesn't feel that much further forward to me, even after I took 20 years away from software development. Clojure has used Tony Hoare's CSP ideas from the occam language on the Transputer but progress appears to have been glacial, and may be melting.

KFosterMarks, to random
@KFosterMarks@mastodon.social avatar

I had a blast participating as a panelist for a Girls Who Code event yesterday. In answering a question about identifying transferable skills, and dialoguing with my fellow panelists, one of my deeply-held beliefs came up: Software practitioners are well-served and well-poised to learn the tenets of rhetoric and rhetorical situations. This knowledge and these skills are foundational to communicating effectively.

woo,

@KFosterMarks What are 'tenets of rhetoric' please? I interpret that as 'the beliefs of persuasive speech' and I cannot grok it.
If this is a test, have I passed or failed by asking for clarification? :-)

woo,

@KFosterMarks Thanks but it wasn't really the meaning of 'rhetoric' I was questioning, rather 'who/what are these tenets the values of, and what are they about?' If they are held by the rhetoritician, are they about rhetoric or about the idea they are promoting?

woo,

@KFosterMarks I see rhetoric as the performance of an argument by 'an actor/performer'. Rhetoric isn't a thing capable of having values. Are the tenets/values of the performer. Are they values about the argument being presented or about rhetoric itself or 'someone and something else'. Whose tenets, about what?

claresudbery, to random
@claresudbery@mastodon.social avatar

Imposter syndrome is something we often talk about, but what do we DO about it? I think our industry has a major problem in the way we make each other feel about our skills and experience. As a teacher, trainer and technical coach, I spend a lot of time trying to help people get over their insecurities and get them to a place where they can not only learn effectively, but enjoy learning (rather than feeling insecure about what they don't know). >>>

woo,

@claresudbery I thought this was good. She's one of the most competent makers I know of but she expected to be better
https://youtu.be/jFGhm8uirBc?si=Z7NnRxOARUD8KQMu

KFosterMarks, to random
@KFosterMarks@mastodon.social avatar

I spent a lot of time reading this weekend, and it got me thinking about epistemology, knowledge acquisition, mental models, and belief systems.

We constantly encounter, evaluate, and integrate new information into our mental models, whether consciously or subconsciously, but we don’t always take the time to re-examine our deeply- and long-held beliefs in the context of that new information.

woo,

@KFosterMarks I've been using Obsidian software to build graphs of connected ideas. It causes you to bump into older ideas and review the relationships between them.

thomasfuchs, to random
@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io avatar

You know what the coolest feature about the Web is?

(It's none of the things that have been added to it in the last 30 years.)

The coolest feature of the World Wide Web is that a fucking HTML page from like 1993 still renders perfectly fine today.

woo,

@thomasfuchs I'm currently scanning monochrome photographic prints from the 1940s and trying to guess if JPEG, PNG or PDF will last longest :-/.

woo,

@thomasfuchs Yeah but I thought that about sound files :-)

PNG is lossless but BIG.

woo,

@jbm @thomasfuchs I'm very old. Vinyl and CDs 'are my jam', as the hip cats say. I (my son actually) used MP3 then moved to FLAC on a Cowan player when FOSS picked it.

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

How often have you experienced imposter syndrome?

woo,

@JoeRess None of those. I used to, I got better at my job, I gained confidence. At the same time I became better at judging who the over-confident bluffers were. I think it's a good process but it's easy to over-shoot and be confident in areas where you don't have expertise - to become the bluffer.

fkamiah17, (edited ) to UKpolitics
@fkamiah17@toot.wales avatar

"Wasteman" is a much underused term.

And now I've got an edited version of this in my head:

Babylon Zoo - Spaceman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR9LBUN536w

woo,

@fkamiah17 Isn't it usually "wasterman", or is this about all the privatised shit in the rivers "an' all dem ting, ya get me?".

fkamiah17, to UKpolitics
@fkamiah17@toot.wales avatar

When grown up people who think they're "politically aware" judge the incoming government based on their (patronising) footwear 🙄

PS - Rayner posted that picture herself, thinking it was cool that she was wearing tartan DMs on a trip to Scotland.

woo,

@fkamiah17 She's English. Have you considered that her point of reference might be London street-culture and the ironic anti-imperialist and ant-fascist stance of the more intelligent punk rockers? I'm fairly sure punks would have wanted whatever best destroyed Tories. If the SNP want to do that, they need to put up candidates in England or work with Labour to maximise Conservative losses in Scotland, like LibDems and Greens.

grimalkina, to random
@grimalkina@mastodon.social avatar

Ugh I miss being online with social scientists and getting to have a community of practice. God there is no place for it anymore.

woo,

@grimalkina Being 'a place' was the problem. Home needs to be no place. Mastodon isn't quite there yet but de-centralisation is the right answer.

whitequark, to random
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

everyone knows what a motherboard is but has anyone ever seen a fatherboard?

woo,

@mcc @whitequark You are forgetting the fab-lab robots.

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