@futurebird Over on Facebook there's a group devoted to "liminal spaces", and the group seems divided between people who are freaked out by them and people who find them comforting. I think some of the comfort of liminality, when it exists, comes from the lack of stress, that feeling that you're in a place where nothing is expected of you and nobody cares that you're there, so you don't have to perform.
I think we're focused on the wrong thing when we look at what tech works for a company like Amazon or Facebook or Netflix.
We should be looking at what tech works when you *don't* have a small army of staff engineers optimizing it. I want to know what I can scale *without* paying someone a half million dollar salary to do it.
There should be more case studies on things that don't have a billion-dollar company propping them up, humming along quietly on a cheap-ass VPS somewhere.
A rare off-topic post, but this one's important. To all of you that lived through this in the 80s and 90s, the end is finally in sight. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/hiv-cure-cell-test-dna-b2515169.html
Behold the pyramid scheme known as cryptocurrency mining. Man allegedly consumed $3.5 million of computing resources from Amazon and Microsoft to generate $1 million worth of digital coin.
The real crime here is all the energy consumed.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/nebraska-man-indicted-multi-million-dollar-cryptojacking-scheme
It's like every overpaid C-level executive on the planet feels like they have to pretend that #GenerativeAI is actually helping their company, because otherwise they'll get snubbed at the country club or something...
#YouTube videos being so often Sponsored is I'm sure good for the creators, but also it's kind of awful.
Yeah, I now realize that Factor and HelloFresh and earbuds and sex toys exist, thanks.
Posted about some of the things I left out of yesterday's short story.
The Cutting-Room Floor https://ceoln.wordpress.com/2024/04/14/the-cutting-room-floor/
#writing #editing #fiction #microfiction #shortStories #amwriting #amediting
I realize that this is what I get for using #Windows , but why is it suddenly putting news about the NBA on my laptop's login screen? I haven't the tiniest shred of interest in the NBA.
Posted a very short story!
What Separates Us https://ceoln.wordpress.com/2024/04/13/what-separates-us/
I've never had a discussion about education with a working scientist who was not painfully aware of the lack of the teaching of *how* science is done at most schools, and in many college-level courses. The fact is, that to do this well would require extensive retraining of teachers; I also don't think it is compatible with the current goal of basic education in most countries, which is to raise standardised test scores.
"What is apparent from the surveys is that a better explanation of the nature of science—that it is revised as new data surface—would have a strong positive effect on public trust. Because scientists are so aware of this feature, it is often taken for granted that the public understands this too."
I swear, in the long term the most useful part of my tech education—which includes a master's degree in computer science from 1990—has turned out to be reading comp.risks religiously since the late 80s and watching every new grift and scam and dark design pattern and type of malware on the internet emerge in realtime.
I hate that in this century everyone needs the paranoia and skill set of a 90s network security administrator.
I get much quiet satisfaction from putting a dozen newly-arrived bottles of #wine into the rack.
Photos from the archives https://ceoln.wordpress.com/2024/04/11/photos-from-the-archives/
A consciousness somehow associated with matter.
Posting about culture, philosophy, politics, AI Art Tools, NaNoWriMo, Software Development occasionally, the relationship of consciousness to matter.
Degrees in Philosophy and Computer Science, once had a US TS/SCI(redacted) clearance, radical-for-the-US politics, ex-Libertarian, zen-buddhist-pantheist-atheist.
Google employee, but I do not speak for Google in any way.
If your profile tells me nothing about you, it's less likely I'll follow you (back).
Header: abstract smoky patterns
pfp: Adorable weird piglet / delirium cultist... thing. In a hoodie.