@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

wordshaper

@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network

Guy who bakes, snarks, writes, and codes.

Currently at Google (my second search engine employer!), previously at Bloomberg.

One time Perl 6 pumpking, lo these many years ago, as well as core perl contributor and part-time VMS perl port maintainer. I have written the occasional article, mostly on perl. (but once upon a time long ago on the Amiga. Those were the days...)

Currently not in France. Dammit.

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wordshaper, to random
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

This is cool though it doesn’t include tax so it could be better. I really, really hate all these extra fees.

It’s annoying that they’re right, though—actually displaying the real total price will probably make people buy less stuff. https://press.coop/@NPR/112415981521792354

wordshaper, to random
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

Some days I can actually think in French, which makes French class rather easier. This is apparently not one of those days.

bhalpin, to random
@bhalpin@better.boston avatar

Boston is nowhere near the city I'd like it to be, but , on the other hand, at least we're not hosting an Olympics this summer. Shoutout to the famed 10 People on Twitter for the biggest win for Boston residents since activists stopped the highway project on the southwest corridor

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@bhalpin I am simultaneously really impressed with what France is doing because of the olympics (there's quite a lot going on outside Paris in what I assume is "well, you're doing a lot in Paris so our city should get some public improvement funds too!") and really really glad Boston dodged this particular bullet because I have every expectation that the olympics would not, in any way, have spurred the same kind of revival/retrofit here.

wordshaper, to random
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

Ok, so on the one hand it’s nice that his utter batshit insanity has an actual cause (and hopefully the dude is getting the help he needs for it) but on the other hand why the hell is this guy a goddamned senator and also running for president? Why are we letting this happen?
https://mastodon.social/@GottaLaff/112405769849479979

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@ColesStreetPothole I'm trying not to slag on Kennedy like this, tempting though it is -- the dude does have brain damage and mercury poisoning, and that will really fuck you up a whole lot.

All the people around him, enabling all this bullshit and using him for their own benefit, though? They can all fuck right off into the Sun.

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@ColesStreetPothole This is the point where someone with any sense would've just punched the spokesperson for being an utter douchebag.

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@BRicker Oh, god, then the actual senator-Kennedy doesn't have the excuse of brainworms and mercury poisoning for his batshittery? Joy.

wordshaper, to random
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

This is an interesting video on people’s territorial behavior, some of it involving cars. I do wonder if this explains some of the irrational behavior folks have about urban parking and reworking spaces to better serve people rather than vehicles.

https://youtu.be/EcvWBzD9QXk

wordshaper, to random
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

Ah, first gen 3nm process that’s being retired. I had wondered why they rolled out the M4 so soon after the M3. I expect Apple will skip the M3 for most of its upgrades and revamp most of the existing M3 systems ahead of schedule. https://zeppelin.flights/@jsnell/112403073284687109

wordshaper, to random
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

Oh, joy. I wonder if @tailscale is vulnerable to this.

https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/05/novel-attack-against-virtually-all-vpn-apps-neuters-their-entire-purpose/

rgs, to random
@rgs@metasocial.com avatar

Getting tired of Anglocentrism everywhere and especially in tech – the belief that particular features of the English language are somehow applicable all other languages. One most egregious example is text search and indexing. In English it's easy; in languages where words change depending on case or noun category, it's not so straightforward. Incidentally this makes English especially well-suited to train LLMs.

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@rgs Oh, god, yes, all of this. I remember trying to work out the way the standard (very english-centered) regex special characters should work back in the Perl 6 days and that was a hell of an exercise in creative and enthusiastic cursing.

wordshaper, to random
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

“We’re announcing that we’re going to announce something sometime”
https://press.coop/@seattletimes/112399026147628417

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@ColesStreetPothole I am actually curious as to whether the new switch is backwards compatible or not. I suspect this time around it will be, and these games'll last quite a long time more. Honestly just running a bunch of the switch games at a somewhat higher framerate would be just fine.

The bigger question is "what is the 2 part" if it is, indeed, the Switch 2. I kinda hope it's a clamshell style dual screen gadget, but I'm not actually expecting that.

wordshaper, to random
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

I see this kind of thing with some frequency, and fundamentally it’s a question asking “is there a good cloud service that’s not actually a Cloud Service” and unfortunately the answer is mostly “no”.

I have occasionally considered what it would take to write a service like this but it’s a huge amount of work, guaranteed to fail sometimes, and probably just too much hassle. https://kinky.business/@KellyandRoger/112393270981333615

gemini, to random
@gemini@mk.absturztau.be avatar

Today I took the blue line and then used a bike share to go down the esplanade. Suffered over the pedestrian bridge to get over storrow drive. Got me thinking, blue line extension past Charles MGH, fix the problem with storrows and problem with blue line. My idea, extend it along the charles. Take out storrows, have it connect to the Worcester line for a lil, going through Kenmore to connect with green lines, and then give Watertown the train they deserve (dense area). I doodled something like I do lol.

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@gemini Yeah, these days if we were going to spin up a new line it'd be good if it didn't use the green line tracks, as those are clogged enough as it is.

I suspect we would be much better off with more light rail rather than more heavy rail, for a variety of reasons, though if they electrified the commuter rail line from whichever station it starts in to out past Newton that would be pretty nice. As would taking the storrow/soldier's field route and going on into watertown by the arsenal.

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@gemini My big reasons for more light rail rather than heavy is looking around at what's going on here in Europe (I'm in the south of france at the moment) where metro-level transport is all light rail/subway and heavy rail is inter-city. I don't know why since that's not my area of expertise, but I assume there's a very good reason.

Also I suspect heavy rail moves fewer people per dollar than light rail -- Montpellier moves a lot of people on their system and the cars are definitely cheaper.

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@gemini Heavy rail also seems less suited for metro-like systems with short distances between stops. Great if you want to go 50km between stops, less great if you're going 500m between stops.

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@gemini Ah infodumps are awesome!

For the area you drew the new line I suspect that the stations are all close enough together that the speed advantages of heavy rail wouldn't be evident -- it takes quite a while for those things to hit full speed, especially since they'd likely be acceleration-limited because of standing passengers. I'd also guess that light rail tracks would just look better so there'd be less opposition to building them. It's not that long a line and in the "metro" range.

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@gemini The D, after all, is the lightest of light rail and goes further than your proposal. Now if you were proposing overlaying rail service along 128... that would absolutely be heavy rail. And also something we should do because JFC get the cars off that damn road. :)

(We also should extend the red on either end to hit the ring line, and the green D to do the same, and run more cars just from 128 in along the pike to North or South station...)

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@gemini I admit I rather like what Paris has done with its four levels of train (the metro, the trams, the RER regional heavy rail, and the actual goddamn long-haul rail) but Boston's probably not quite big enough to pull that off.

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@gemini Regardless I honestly don't care that much. Any extra high volume public transit would be awesome. (And I say that as someone who lives within walking distance of a D stop and only ever drives into the city when I have too much pastry to conveniently carry by hand)

wordshaper, to random
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

Layering extra things on top of the “making shit up at random” machine isn’t going to fundamentally make it stop being a making shit up at random machine. https://mstdn.social/@TechCrunch/112383184056923602

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@tartley I'm in the middle of learning French and also not a layman with neural networks and while this is one of the ways people learn, it's only a way people learn reflexive and mostly content-free things.

It's definitely not how people learn most things like languages or skills. (Source: my brain, though take that with some caution) We, or me at least, seem to start with more abstract symbolic understanding and layer things on top of that. LLMs are entirely surface-level stuff.

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@tartley Which isn't to say that LLM-like activity isn't involved in cognition, but if it is then it's probably layered on top of deeper layers of symbol manipulation and relationships. A pure, or even mostly, LLM style of "learning" would be one that had basically no understanding of anything and was purely reflexive without any kind of depth.

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@tartley Something LLM-like, or rather trained-neural-network-like may be used as a boundary translation layer -- as an interface between language and whatever we do to build and manipulate meaning. It almost undoubtedly is, tbh.

It's hard to say how related they are to what brains do, partly because we don't quite understand neural networks and partly because we really don't understand brains, but if LLMs and things like them are involved they're likely not involved at the conceptual levels.

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

REMINDER FOR AMERICANS:

The US Constitution and common law are rooted in pre-18th century English legal jurisprudence and traditions.

And the "presidential immunity" bullshit is an attempt to rewind the clock to before 1649, when Parliament got fed up with the King's bullshit, put him on trial, and beheaded him.

Y'all: Trump wants to revive the divine right of kings.

You know who pulled the German equivalent of that stunt? Hitler.

(I will summarily block anyone who raises Godwin's law.)

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@cstross I admit sometimes I find it a shame we didn’t use French legal jurisprudence, because then the guillotines would be traditional…

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