@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

A semi-regular reminder that streaming pays artists crap, and if there are tracks or albums you listen to frequently then you should buy what you can of them. Anything is good, honestly, since the artist cut from just one track sold on iTunes is more than a few thousand streams of the same track on any of the streaming services.

wordshaper, to random
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

We really ought to impose a federal tax on businesses that force people to commute into the office for jobs that can be WFH. Something we use to fund climate change mitigation projects to help offset the damage caused by the people forced to commute.

charliejane, to random
@charliejane@wandering.shop avatar

My latest newsletter is about the attempts to evict Bluestockings, and the new laws that require maximum cruelty towards unhoused people.

And I talk about why we want to judge unhoused people for their behavior, and how it's part of our American disease.

https://buttondown.email/charliejane/archive/the-real-reason-we-want-to-punish-the-unhoused/

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@charliejane If the folks in the SF government think what they're doing to the unhoused is in any way kind they should all be fired or tossed out of office for gross, delusional incompetence.

The most infuriating thing is we know what helps the unhoused and it's a lot cheaper (in the short term) and far cheaper (in the long term) except we won't do it because apparently fuck the people who are down on their luck or something.

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@KeithAmmann @charliejane @JuliusGoat Also let's not ever forget the classic American giant streak of racism. God forbid we give any of "those people" help in any way because... reasons. Which are mostly racism.

wordshaper, to random
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

The absolute fastest way to be utterly enraged with every single part of modern computing is to try and walk someone with a brain injury through one of their regular tasks after some random piece of software has pushed an update in the background.

wordshaper, to random
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Guess it’s time to start paying up for newsletters I occasionally read and have moved away from the Nazi Newsstand. Supporting folks doing the right thing is important.

wordshaper, to random
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All this whining over social security insolvency is stupid and infuriating. There’s a trivially easy solution—get rid of the cap on taxable income subject to SS withholding. It’s already over $168k, seriously it’s not like it would be a hardship for anyone who’s affected.

A bit old, but the SSA has noted this would completely cover the current gap plus backfill the shortfalls we’ve already accumulated.

https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/policybriefs/pb2009-01.html

wordshaper, to random
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

I’m waiting for some AI douchebro to announce they’ve just released their newest LLM, trained exclusively on public domain sources — the voynich manuscript, the necronomicon, and the Creative Commons release version of “Don’t Create the Torment Nexus”

wordshaper, to random
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

The most interesting news from CES 2024 so far is the fact that CES still exists.

wordshaper, to random
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

Any Ruby folks looking for work? A manager of mine who used to work at Google and has since moved on (who was, to be clear, the best boss I have had in my entire career and we still stay in touch 'cause they're awesome, seriously, you want to work for them) is hiring. Job's fully remote though I suspect that US/Canada based folks are probably best because tax laws are... yeah. A thing)

https://smrtr.io/fmcvW

Plus, bonus, the job title's hilarious. So great business cards! (Not that anyone does business cards, but still)

(Sadly I'll say "no current Googlers" since this is a non-google job and seriously let's not get me in trouble here)

wordshaper, to random
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

Been reading @GottaLaff's thread on the trump bench trial and as someone who was adjacent to the financial industry for years I gotta say the amount of casual fraud on display has been pretty impressive. As has the amount of self-proclaimed incompetence, but I suppose when you're facing down a whole bunch of really bad charges the last thing you should be worried about is your public reputation.

https://mastodon.social/@GottaLaff/111341218964329485

wordshaper, to random
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Just saw an ad for a Rolling Stones concert… sponsored by the AARP. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about that.

wordshaper, to random
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It's pretty clear that the big winners from the AI revolution are going to be those companies who manage to not destroy themselves before the AI revolution flames out.

wordshaper, to random
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Given this describes how I've experienced exercise (the effects of the mitochondria changes) pretty much forever, and doubly so since I started my blood pressure meds, I'm kinda hoping something comes out of this research to counteract it. That'd be lovely.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/01/09/1223077307/long-covid-exercise-post-exertional-malaise-mitochondria?utm_medium=JSONFeed&utm_campaign=news&utm_source=press.coop

wordshaper, to random
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

I am reminded that (Atlas Obscura)[https://www.atlasobscura.com] exists and am now tempted to only visit things (on its Paris list)[https://www.atlasobscura.com/things-to-do/paris-france] during my upcoming trip.

wordshaper, to random
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

Oh look, another UBI study found that UBI works. In this case they gave $500/month to the study group was successful (what a surprise) with average monthly income going up by 36% not counting the UBI payments. Plus all the other well known benefits of UBI.

We won’t roll this out any further, of course. It’s America, we can’t do that — “those people” might get some benefit. (“Because racism” is, as always, a major driving force of the US’ campaign of self harm)

https://www.arlnow.com/2024/02/06/report-arlingtons-first-guaranteed-income-pilot-boosted-quality-of-life-for-poorest-residents/

wordshaper, to random
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

This is depressing. I've enjoyed AirBnBs in the past but at this point I'm pretty well convinced they should be either forbidden or very tightly (like 90 days out of the year) restricted.

From @TexasObserver https://www.texasobserver.org/short-term-rentals-airbnb-vrbo-neighborhoods/

wordshaper, to random
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

I would very frankly recommend anyone who takes a job at Google view it in an extremely mercenary way. Goods and services are being exchanged for money and that’s all that should be exchanged. They’re renting your time and expertise, not your enthusiasm, loyalty, or soul. https://flipboard.social/@TechDesk/112429837720509673

wordshaper, to random
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

Gotta say, there's nothing like an excellent earnings report to make you double-extra-enraged over recent (clearly 100% unnecessary) layoffs.

wordshaper, to random
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

Whenever I see someone has been censured for “their beliefs” without the specific beliefs being listed I always assume racism, sexism, fascism, homophobia, or transphobia. So far I have very rarely been wrong. Unfortunately. https://zirk.us/@nickbwalking/112432932655011050

wordshaper, to random
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

Wow, even more Google layoffs, this time in core infrastructure. I gotta admit I am, at this point, truly impressed with how breathtakingly arrogant and incompetent the upper levels of management are. I mean, this is some near world record levels of stupid — layoffs are a known bad idea, but perpetual rolling layoffs? Seriously?

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

Michael Gove failed to register hospitality he enjoyed with a Conservative donor whose company he had recommended for multimillion-pound personal protective equipment (PPE) contracts during the Covid pandemic:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/20/michael-gove-failed-to-register-hospitality-from-donor-whose-firm-he-referred-for-ppe-contracts

Shocked, SHOCKED, to see corruption happening in this government! (Sniggers up sleeve.)

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@cstross This is the thing that gives people who don't cheat the hardest time wrapping their heads around. It's never just one time, it's the one time you noticed.

grimalkina, to random
@grimalkina@mastodon.social avatar

deleted_by_author

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    wordshaper,
    @wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

    @grimalkina I have some issues with their assertion that flow state is inherently important, their definition of "cognitive load", their hypothesis about whether low cognitive load is good, the questions they ask to determine their input data, the interdependence between the questions they ask, the weighting of the question results, the varying of whether high is good or bad in the questions, the assumption that "feels match outcomes", the biases in their developer sample on multiple axes...

    wordshaper,
    @wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

    @grimalkina These three things they posit as important aren't well characterized in their descriptions or their questions, and what they do call out isn't clearly a good thing. Like for Cognitive Load, having a single deploy-to-prod button is very low load, so by their statements "good" except it's an awesome way to regularly break everything. Making things hard and require thought can be bad, sure. OTOH some things should take thought -- there are reasons pilots and surgeons have checklists.

    wordshaper,
    @wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

    @grimalkina And for "Flow State", I've worked with people who chased it. A good way to get flow state (and be happy about it) is to write code at 3AM, possibly with beer. 3AM coding isn't healthy work/life balance, and as someone who had to deal with the resulting flow state code it often resulted in significantly more work to clean up after than to write the code the un-flowed hard way. We even had A/B experiments for that, as the flow state code often had to be burned and rewritten.

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