Nick has moved to Mathstodon @internic@qoto.org

I was a bit apprehensive about signing up to #Mastodon but I really shouldn't have worried. Compared to the Bluebird of Misery (or Xitter, because so many people are leaving) it's like a breath of fresh air to be surrounded by pleasant and positive people on here!

Reynisdrangar sea stacks off the southern coast of #Iceland at Vík í Mýrdal. Although the sea looks dark and foreboding, it's actually very clear water but the sand beneath is black.

@photography

Please read the ALT tag for more...

Will Big Journalism will take serious note of something Trump said on Fox "News" today, referring to the ABC News moderators' fact-checking of three (among dozens) of lies during the debate:

"They're a news organization. They have to be licensed to do it. They ought to take away their license for the way they did that."

Another lie, of course: The government doesn't license news organizations per se.

But ABC's airwave licenses are massively valuable.This is not an idle threat.

delighted

I think my favourite bash solution so far (h/t @philz42) is to use `trap DEBUG` to print the filename & line number every time PATH is modified

something like this:

function _trap_DEBUG() {
local cmd="${BASH_COMMAND}"
local line="${BASH_LINENO}"
local filename="${BASH_SOURCE[1]}"
if [[ "${cmd}" == *"PATH"* ]]; then
echo "${filename} line ${line}: '${cmd}'"
fi
}

trap '_trap_DEBUG' DEBUG
set -T

not sure if there's a zsh equivalent though

writing about PATH is so funny, it's like

1. just add “PATH=$PATH:/my/dir" to your shell config, no big deal
2. ok but uh also you need to worry about path ordering, maybe it has to be `PATH=/my/dir:$PATH` instead
3. oh also bash sometimes caches PATH lookups, so if that happens then you need to run `rehash`
4. oh yeah and also if there are spaces in your PATH, then you need to quote it every time you add to it, like `PATH=/my/dir:”$PATH”`
5. also sometimes commands are aliases or builtins

The solar corona is heated to millions of degrees, vastly hotter than the surface of the Sun. Astronomers suspect the magnetic fields that pierce the surface somehow trap energy and drive the increasing temperatures. Astronomers have observed the magnetic fields on the surface of the Sun for decades, and now, the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Maui has mapped out the coronal magnetic fields for the corona in unprecedented detail.

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1057450

For those that don't know, I help run a giant women in technology slack group (more than 10,000 members!)

It's not just open to software and computer folks, however much that's the main group.

If you're a woman in biotech, in industrial science, in manufacturing or engineering, any technical field or technical line of business, you're welcome to join. It's very big tent about 'tech' and 'woman' both.

HMU for an invite

Good. Senate leaders ask FTC to investigate AI content summaries as anti-competitive: The latest AI features found in Meta, Perplexity, Apple, Google and others are hitting artists, creators, news site and publishers while they’re down. Meanwhile Google and Meta, reporting record breaking billions of dollars per year in advertising revenue increase because of AI summaries keeping users on Facebook and Google sites without sending any traffic to original creators https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/10/senate-leaders-ask-ftc-to-investigate-ai-content-summaries-as-anti-competitive/

All right, I'm going to get an e-ink tablet, probably. I take paper notes constantly and I'd like to have them organised in one place and easily-searchable, instead of in a stack of notebooks on my office shelf. Even with the contents pages I make for each one, they're quite hard to navigate...

Anyone got any recommendations? I know ReMarkable advertise well, but I heard you can't search handwritten notes, which sort of sucks.

(Please note: yes, it has to be e-ink.)

(Boosts welcome.)

A truth about technological progress that I am coming to realize is almost universal is "that which empowers also enfeebles".

I'm thinking right now about the move from physical paper books to digital.

There's a huge "MIT used book sale" happening today. That kind of thing just doesn't happen in the digital book universe.

It COULD in a fair world, but yay unconstrained megacorp capitalism, it currently can't.

No reason Amazon couldn't set up a system where I could transfer my Kindle books to anyone for $0 or some fee if that's what I was going for. But this will never happen because from their perspective it would represent investment without return, and a diminishment of sales on new titles.

Stupid, myopic narrow minded thinking will kill us all.

"Never in its 50-plus years in existence has the regulator issued new rules for automakers requiring them to change their vehicle designs to better prevent pedestrian fatalities."

https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/10/24241047/nhtsa-rule-pedestrian-safety-fmvss-suv-truck-design

#transportation #cars #CarsRuinCities #RoadSafety

Taylor Swift endorses Kamala Harris. https://www.instagram.com/p/C_wtAOKOW1z/

The CNN reporter just referred to Trump as a “4chan post come to life.”

Updating my astro 101 lecture on satellites and holy crap... there are 1738 more active satellites in orbit today than 1 year ago, and 1690 of those are Starlinks.

62% of all active satellites are now Starlinks, up from 55% 1 year ago.

As long as Starlink doesn't make a single mistake in orbit, it's all fine, I guess. Which is cool, because SpaceX never makes engineering mistakes, like dumping hundreds of pounds of "fully demisable" space debris on other countries... whoopsie.

apparently you can just download a public google spreadsheet as a CSV with curl (just tried it and it works!): https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24255472/download-export-public-google-spreadsheet-as-tsv-from-command-line

What if Sun Microsystems released a Zune digital media player?

Oof, this is pretty brutal review of the Apple Intelligence™ betas: “In the preview I’m using, Apple Intelligence does an uncomfortable amount of making things up. This usually happens on low-stakes information such as summaries of alerts from apps — but it feels weird nonetheless to see fabrications and misinterpretations of your life appear on your lock screen, inbox and other core parts of your iPhone.”

[gift link] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/09/09/iphone-16-apple-intelligence-ai-event-2024/

Luckily, most Black men haven't been shot by police. But this being dragged out of a car, or put in cuffs, or threatened with death or violence or trumped up jail charges? That stuff happens to millions of Black drivers.

"Tyreek should have just been polite! I'm always polite! As a Black man we always have to be polite!" That's how I think. And it is a broken way of thinking.

And it's not really being polite, when there is the explicit threat of violence if you don't perform said politeness.

If you are a car-owning person, you want to go electric, and haven't gone electric yet: What's the biggest thing holding you back right now?
This is just for my own curiosity. Boost if you feel like it.

@rpardee as far as I've got and I've heard, less! It is really clear he cared deeply about being accessible. You *could* get into tons of math I'm sure but I think one would be able to soak up loads of interesting things without ever being interested in that. Also a YouTube series and course materials! https://github.com/rmcelreath/stat_rethinking_2024