Paul Ganssle @pganssle@qoto.org
Programmer working at Google. Python core developer and general FOSS contributor. I also post some parenting content.
Joined Nov 2019
This week is my son’s school’s first “lockdown drill”. I was hoping I might have more time to lobby against the idea of doing these things at all before then. 🙁
In the meantime, I’m just going to keep him home to do duck and cover drills instead. 😅
Relevant link: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/hgpbwzvm4gYsioPsh/against-active-shooter-drills
Paul Ganssle
boosted
If you've been on here a bit and you're liking the group of folks you're following, be sure to periodically export that list and save it somewhere safe.
Settings > Import and export > Data export
One of the (scary but rare) downsides of decentralization is that if the instance you're on goes down permanently for any reason, you'll lose your account. It's customary for the admin to give plenty of notice if that's going to happen, but better safe than sorry.
Paul Ganssle
boosted
@tekwizz123
These lists are unreliable and are usually the result of 3+ generations of "just import this guy's list trust me bro", and the reasons given are things like "the usual" or "no tos" or "anime profile picture" or "peers with an instance I don't like"
As an example, my single user instance are on both of these lists. Who knows why it's there. Good luck trying to get off of it.
By the way, if you are starting up your own fediverse server, it may be tempting to blindly copy someone else’s block list, but some corners of the fediverse have been a bit over eager with full instance bans, in my opinion, which tends to break the whole federation model (imagine if you couldn’t email anyone with a certain university’s email domain because your email provider disagrees with the university policies).
If an instance is putting a lot of irritating stuff in your server’s global timeline, it might be better to just mute them from the global timeline.
Paul Ganssle
boosted
here's a free tip for all the #TwitterMigration people:
mastodon ONLY has text search for your toots, and the toots of people you follow, nothing beyond that, so you MUST use hashtags for others to be able to find things you post. And don't be afraid to use them - unlike the hellsite, mastodon doesn't limit your reach in any way based on how many hashtags or links you use in your posts :)
oh, and there's an edit button too 
Something interesting I noticed on Mastodon vs Twitter after being on both for several years: posts get way more meaningful engagement here (per capita) than on Twitter.
I have an order of magnitude more followers on Twitter, but other than the occasional outlier, my posts here get similar numbers of likes, boosts and replies as they do over there.
It’s an interesting phenomenon, and I wonder if it will continue if more content is actually being generated on this side.
Paul Ganssle
boosted
New introduction, given we have lots of new folk.
I'm Naomi, formerly chair of the Python Software Foundation, Python coder, team lead, & author (Quick Python Book), recently retired.
Current interests: what makes communities work (or not work), learning classical guitar, and art (which is why I'm on mastodon.art :-) ).
Sometimes I close my eyes, make some scribbles, and then see what it turns into, which is how I came up with this lovely creature. Isn't she cute?.
Cartoon eye contact
Paul Ganssle
boosted
Anyone know any data journalists who hang out on mastodon?
So for all the people who I convinced to start using Signal because it works as an SMS replacement, sorry. 🙁
Wow, apparently Signal is going to stop supporting SMS soon. That really sucks. That was one of the killer features of Signal.
For Python users (particularly on Windows), the tzdata package is now up-to-date with version 2022.6 (2022f upstream): https://pypi.org/project/tzdata/
Considering that some of the changes go into effect /tomorrow/, it seems obvious that for a while people will be very confused about what time it is in Chihuahua (see also this article: https://codeofmatt.com/time-zone-chaos-inevitable-in-egypt/
Time for everyone to upgrade their tzdata to the latest version, particularly if your software needs to work properly in Mexico (which enacted permanent DST on short notice).
Someone should translate Matt Johnson-Pint’s article into Spanish: https://codeofmatt.com/on-the-timing-of-time-zone-changes/
I always associate this “one option in grey and one option in bright red” with dark patterns. Is the Red Cross trying to trick me into claiming a gift card for some reason? Or do UX designers today just not know how to design neutral interfaces?
Is it a bad sign when your fitness tracker says your heart rate is 0? #spooky
Paul Ganssle
boosted
[Full-time] Senior Software Engineer Wikibase Cloud (m/f/d) at Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. https://www.fossjobs.net/job/11079/senior-software-engineer-wikibase-cloud-mfd-at-wikimedia-deutschland-ev/ #jobs
Six of the sweetest words a parent can hear: “I don’t like Paw Patrol anymore.”
Paul Ganssle
boosted
https://harihareswara.net/posts/2021/if-you-give-a-speech-you-care-about-post-a-transcript/ If you give speeches that you're proud of, that you want people to think about & pass along so they can keep influencing people, you should get transcripts up ASAP.
Re-publicizing this post because friends are giving talks soon that I want to read!
Programmer working at Google. Python core developer and general FOSS contributor. I also post some parenting content.
Joined Nov 2019
