George Budd @Gbudd@qoto.org
Father, Fiancé, Volunteer EMT, (conflicted) Veteran, Computer Geek, Perpetual Student. Command line kind of guy (he/him) Very amateur woodworker, crude sketcher, proud nerd, liberal, wished I knew more math and science.
I’m willing to be wrong, certainty often means that I don’t actually understand the problem
Joined Nov 2022
George Budd
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the last of today's nerd dump: look at this incredible illustration of the complexity involved in sending photos via cable across the Atlantic in 1926! I believe this is an illustration of the Bartlane Cable Picture Transmission System which translated images into variations of five-hole punches onto Baudot telegraphic tape and then transmitted, reversing the process at the other end using a teletype machine. #othernetworks
George Budd
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Mars Helicopter Ingenuity was a 30-day technology demonstration mission to test powered, controlled flight on another world.
Ingenuity completed its tech demo phase after the 3rd flight on April 25, 2021. After another 2 flights, it transitioned to a new operations demonstration phase.
Almost 3 years later, Ingenuity has completed 72 flights and is still going strong in support of the overall mission.
Overachiever much?
👏
https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/#Flight-Log
#Ingenuity #Mars
8/n
George Budd
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Swedish mathematician Niels Fabian Helge von Koch was born #OTD in 1870.
He established results in number theory, including one that relates the Riemann hypothesis to the asymptotic distribution of prime numbers. But he is probably best known for what we call the "Koch Curve" – one of the first examples of a fractal.
@freemo Practically there’s no difference who I vote for in NJ so I could always write someone in.
On the other hand, it’s arguable that that strategy in the aggregate gave us Bush 2 and Trump. Gore and Hillary Clinton should have just earned the majority outright but while it’s impossible to know what would have happened but I’d say that those two losses produced some pretty awful consequences.
@freemo It’s possible, but since the Bull Moose party in 1912 it doesn’t look like a third party has gotten a significant share of the vote and the Whigs appear to have disappeared in 1860 or so.
I’m seeing Kennedy, Stein, and West as third party candidates (with apologies to any I’m missing), I can’t say I’m affirmatively enthused about any of them. None of them are likely to crack 5% unless something dramatically changes.
In a normal year, where there were just two candidates that I didn’t like I’d be more inclined to vote third party (and I have in the past). For me (and speaking only for me) Biden / Trump is a choice between bad and catastrophic. My personal judgment is that I’d prefer bad over catastrophic but everyone gets to make that choice for themselves.
None of that is to tell anyone else what to do or how to vote, it’s just my thought process.
@freemo I agree that it’s a shared delusion (as are many things that make a society, like money for example). It’s definitely a system that keeps the two parties in power and that’s why they fight things like ranked choice voting.
@freemo That would be fine if we did ranked choice voting but today my meaningful choices are going to be between Biden and Trump. For me that’s not a close call, I’ll vote for Biden any day over Trump (with all respect to your first hand and well earned loathing of Biden).
I would really like ranked choice voting to take off so we could meaningfully vote for third-party candidates as our first choice but we’re not there yet
@freemo That’s not unreasonable in a vacuum. It’s certainly true that I wish I had somehow done something concrete to somehow meaningfully create a different alternative but at the moment what I’m capable of doing is voting for what I believe to be the less awful alternative. (I do spend a fair bit of time trying to improve my local world but it’s more about EMS than creating political change)
@freemo I totally understand the choice you’re trying to get people to make. I wish there were a candidate I’d like to win but there’s definitely a candidate I particularly want to lose (I think Obama was the only presidential candidate that I affirmatively wanted to win rather than voting for someone because I wanted the other candidate to lose )
George Budd
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@daveliepmann I don't think spreadsheets could be invented today. "It's too complicated. Users won't understand. Who would buy this?" Instead of lifting peopled up towards general computing, we have dumbed computers down to cater for 7 second attention spans. We have A/B tested our way into stupidity.
@cpoliticditto@mas.to Accurate but painful (on the Bills side, glad to see desantis crushed)
George Budd
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After making my morning coffee I thought I’d experiment with a vacuum-insulated cup and some 100°C water… I’m betting it’ll go for a pretty long time!
George Budd
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So how do you make water at the South Pole?
It might seem simple since there are seven million cubic miles of frozen freshwater all around us, but the reality is a bit more interesting.
George Budd
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This past week we performed some annual maintenance on the rodwell. Over time, the ~160 foot hole from the surface to the reservoir begins to close up and needs to be re-melted. We do this by slowly lowering a 400 pound cone of naval brass heated to 250 F back down the hole.
George Budd
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David Mills, a true Internet pioneer, passed away on January 17, 2024. Probably best known for having led the development and maintenance of #NTP for decades, he was also involved in great deal of early Internet protocol development.
https://elists.isoc.org/pipermail/internet-history/2024-January/009265.html
George Budd
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The nature of emergency medicine means I can walk out of a room where someone was just pronounced dead after we did CPR on him for an hour and immediately have someone start yelling at me to get them a turkey sandwich.
George Budd
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After reading all about Stirling engines, I bought myself a miniature desktop model that can be powered by my cup of tea!
George Budd
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Atlassian have been studying the experience of their employees and that of other companies as they work remotely. They feel they still have things to learn but they have released their study.
#wfh #RemoteWork
In brief, they have found so far:
~ 92% of Atlassians say our distributed work policy allows them to do their best work.
~ Representation of women has doubled in certain geographies
~ 91% say it’s an important reason why they stay at Atlassian
https://www.atlassian.com/blog/distributed-work/distributed-work-report
George Budd
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async await async await async await async await
in the function, the mighty function, the child thread sleeps tonight 🎵
George Budd
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I love this, h/t @codinghorror
> Nobody wants developers to reinvent the wheel (again), but reading about how a wheel works is a poor substitute for the experience of driving around on a few wheels of your own creation.
https://blog.codinghorror.com/when-understanding-means-rewriting/
Father, Fiancé, Volunteer EMT, (conflicted) Veteran, Computer Geek, Perpetual Student. Command line kind of guy (he/him) Very amateur woodworker, crude sketcher, proud nerd, liberal, wished I knew more math and science.
I’m willing to be wrong, certainty often means that I don’t actually understand the problem
Joined Nov 2022
