@robpike@hachyderm.io
@robpike@hachyderm.io avatar

robpike

@robpike@hachyderm.io

Long career as a dilettante at Bell Labs Research and Google, mostly building weird stuff no one uses, but occasionally getting it right, such as with UTF-8 and Go.

Also: tootfinder

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mattblaze, to random
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

Speaking of bad ideas, WTF Adobe? https://9to5mac.com/2024/06/06/change-to-adobe-terms-amp-conditions/

The Adobe Creative Suite absolutely owns significant portions of professional creative production workflow, some aspects of which have essentially no good quality or interoperable competition. So a lot of people are locked in. "Just don't use Adobe products" isn't an option for many of the people affected by these insanely grabby new terms.

robpike,
@robpike@hachyderm.io avatar

@mattblaze We will sell (actually rent) you this hammer; in return we get to live rent-free in any house you build with it.

danderson, to random
@danderson@hachyderm.io avatar

> Note: anonymous scopes are not considered scopes.

Once again begging people inventing DSLs to just grab a lisp. Guile is embeddable and everything!

robpike,
@robpike@hachyderm.io avatar

@danderson Many programmers coming from JavaScript, for instance, have no real understanding of what scope even is. And it's ironic to cite LISP here. I know it's all fixed now, but in the early days LISP scope was... unusual. McCarthy later said the behavior people depended on was just a bug.

detreville, to random
@detreville@discuss.systems avatar

I’m named after my grandfather, John Mobley Daniel, who served as Attorney General of the State of South Carolina, 1924–1950, and who would not allow dancing or card-playing in his home.

robpike,
@robpike@hachyderm.io avatar

@detreville Wow, he aged fast for man of 26, especially one who didn't play cards or dance. A hard life for a hard worker, I guess.

adrianco, to random
@adrianco@mastodon.social avatar

I’m going to be trying to cut two 4” diameter holes through a 7” thick concrete wall (with steel rebar inside) this week. I’ve been buying lots of stuff to prepare

robpike,
@robpike@hachyderm.io avatar

@adrianco Real men use hand tools. 💪⚒️

robpike,
@robpike@hachyderm.io avatar

@adrianco @timbray As long as it's loud enough to annoy the neighbors, you'll get credit.

ElleGray, to random
@ElleGray@mstdn.social avatar

oh god it's 6pm on Sunday once again

robpike,
@robpike@hachyderm.io avatar

@ElleGray We have the attribution: @reneefrench instantly recognized that this is by Alison Friend https://alisonfriend.com/

robpike,
@robpike@hachyderm.io avatar

@ElleGray The title is, "Ernest has been on his walk."

robpike, to random
@robpike@hachyderm.io avatar

Also, today's good code is likely tomorrow's bad code.

https://mastodon.social/@dabeaz/112507379669620422

robpike, to random
@robpike@hachyderm.io avatar

I don't understand what the fuss is all about. It said NON-TOXIC glue. Lighten up, people.

But also don't eat rocks, OK?

mattblaze, to photography
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

nerditry:
I make mostly (but not exclusively) B&W images (at least for my fine art work). Is it worth using a dedicated monochrome sensor?

Most digital cameras are designed to record color, using a special mask in front of the sensor called a "Bayer filter". This allows color information to be derived from the raw sensor output, which otherwise would just record brightness. But the Bayer filter can also reduce effective resolution of the image a bit.

So what's the tradeoff?

robpike,
@robpike@hachyderm.io avatar

@mattblaze @promovicz @reinoudk It was more of a dark greeny yellow, Wratten . I hung one around in my neck during my large format days.
https://www.rubbermonkey.com.au/Kodak-3-x-3-No-90-Dark-Gray-Amber-Wratten-2-Optical-Gel-Filter

robpike, to random
@robpike@hachyderm.io avatar

My occasional reminder that I once used a ROM burner that, upon power-up, announced on its bright red LED display: "RELF-TEST PASSED".

davidho, to random
@davidho@mastodon.world avatar

This Google spinoff aims to remove 500 tonnes of CO₂ per year from the atmosphere, which is a time machine that takes us back less than a second each year. 🙃

https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2024/05/google-spinout-lands-in-oregon-to-suck-carbon-out-of-the-air-fight-climate-change.html

robpike,
@robpike@hachyderm.io avatar

@davidho It's the weird thing about carbon capture. If you actually do the math, it's utterly pointless.

If the problem is too much technology, the solution is not more technology.

robpike, to random
@robpike@hachyderm.io avatar

There was a gag a while back that the perfect caption to a New Yorker cartoon is almost always, "Christ, what an asshole!". https://www.newyorker.com/cartoons/bob-mankoff/your-universal-captions

Here's an upgrade: It's now my automatic response when I see any article about a tech bro and his timeless work.

Christ, what an asshole!

robpike, to random
@robpike@hachyderm.io avatar

It is a fascinating field of study for me. Why some staggeringly complex tasks can be done at 120fps but it still takes me 30 seconds to render the login page at my bank.

https://mastodon.social/@ZevEisenberg/112435500743889014

robpike,
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@twasink It's 30 seconds with an ad blocker.

robpike, to random
@robpike@hachyderm.io avatar

From https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Future_of_Jobs_2023.pdf, a sobering (for me at least) view of the computing industry and what it means for the future until 2027. AI tops it but where is the money supposed to come from? Also blockchain? Fintech is probably real but that's its own kind of depressing given what banking is like in the web world. Well at least software developers squeak in at .

Good news: they project slightly fewer lawyers.

Note: this is a list of most important jobs, not just computing jobs.

StephanieMoore, to random
@StephanieMoore@mastodon.online avatar

I hate the Wordles for which there a many variations around just one letter position. Crashed and burned today because I hadn’t guessed that one right letter in time. Truly just a guessing game.

robpike,
@robpike@hachyderm.io avatar

@StephanieMoore You are not alone.

robpike, to random
@robpike@hachyderm.io avatar

So happy I am no longer an Adobe customer.

https://cosocial.ca/@timbray/112379014175497807

robpike, to random
@robpike@hachyderm.io avatar

Looking for ideas. Apple offered me $500 for my old laptop, but when I sent it in they say, "Oh, a scratch. We'll give you $100." There's no way a perfectly functioning and upgraded M1 MacBook Air is worth only $100. So I got it back.

Now I'm looking for a good home for it. I don't want money, I want it to have a good life. Two conditions:

  1. It has to help make the world a better place.
  2. I'm not shipping it, so the transfer has to be local to Sydney.
robpike,
@robpike@hachyderm.io avatar

@Lyle Thanks, this looks like a great option.

robpike,
@robpike@hachyderm.io avatar

@servusdei In Australia Apple uses an outside company to do their recycling, although I haven't tested the in-store theory.

robpike,
@robpike@hachyderm.io avatar

@gabriel Happy story, good idea.

robpike,
@robpike@hachyderm.io avatar

@czakka @todd

Assuming you meant this sincerely, I will answer. Three reasons.

  1. I want to have fewer machines.
  2. I don't need or want an assistant, automated or otherwise.
  3. I engage with ML as little as possible.

You may feel differently.

robpike, to random
@robpike@hachyderm.io avatar

A nice talk by my ex-colleagues Eve Martin-Jones and Josie Anugerah about the misperceptions many have about dependency resolution. It's not nearly as simple a problem as the tool builders would have you believe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-niBbN-ufYo&list=PLbzoR-pLrL6p2qBhq7OHXDzCTfIZuzCma&index=9

ElleGray, to random
@ElleGray@mstdn.social avatar

every one of these flowers is currently performing a shakespearean death soliloquy

robpike,
@robpike@hachyderm.io avatar

@ElleGray That's the way a still life is supposed to look.

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