R. A. Dehi @radehi@qoto.org
I read a lot. Sometimes I learn things. I like making things. I think reading and doing are complementary.
Joined Nov 2022
@allenholub Also you can reply to a post, the which will see people who follow you both. And you can boost your own reply, which will see anyone who follows you.
R. A. Dehi
boosted
Tonight, Artemis Orion will sail past the moon's orbit and then fall back towards the moon, getting as close as 100 km to the lunar surface. At 07:44 ET tomorrow morning, thrusters will be fired to further accelerate Orion and send it towards the DRO insertion point. 4 days later, the DRI burn will insert Orion into DRO proper.
https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/solar-system/#/sc_artemis_1?rate=0&time=2022-11-21T13:10:00.000+00:00
6/n
@J12t@social.coop @scottjenson @jeffjarvis Sure, pluggable algorithms have been most of what programming is about for 50 years now. Mastodon is full of pluggable algorithms.
@mmasnick Mastodon users are evangelists? When atheists get angry at theists, is rarely Zoroastrians they get angry at.
@enkiv2 Think your titles are maybe broken?
@scottjenson @jeffjarvis Might work. Which #Fediverse codebase looks most hackable?
@davew I think DigitalOcean has them for $4 a month?
R. A. Dehi
boosted
Experimenting with 3D modeling using mathematical functions to define a surface using Python in @Blender. A bit different than my usual go-to modeling tool @FreeCAD, but works really great! #3dprinting
R. A. Dehi
boosted
Touché.
The last thing I learned was TypeScript and the Playwright framework for automation and testing. I learned it because I found it a sound, useful, and innovative new technology.
In the past 27 years, I have seen lots of fancy whiz-bang technologies come and go. At the launch, during the early adoption phase of the technology it seems like, "THIS is IT! The next BIG THING. It's going to be super popular." Then, it runs into problems. and quietly fizzles out.
Use discernment.
@ownlifeful Certainly most new programming languages and tools have limited, if any, advantages over the existing alternatives, and often have fatal flaws. And both Perl and Java are still occasionally the best available alternative. In 95% or more cases, though, Python is a better replacement for Perl for me, and Kotlin looks like a similarly better replacement for Java to me, though the improvement looks to be larger. Python is 31 years old and Kotlin is 11 years old, so they probably won't fizzle out next year.
Rust, Zig, Nim, C#, Javascript, TypeScript, Go, Lua, Clojure, Elixir, Scala, Scheme, Haskell, etc., are sometimes better alternatives to Perl or Java, but none of them have the same nearly-across-the-board advantages over their respective languages that Python and Kotlin do.
And of course none of this is relevant if what you need to do is dive into an existing Perl or Java codebase to make a small change. I fixed a couple of critical bugs in a Perl codebase dating to the 90s last month; even though I hadn't touched the code in years, only took me a few minutes, and I expect it'll be good for several more years now.
@ownlifeful I felt bad about my post and deleted it slightly before your gracious response.
I was looking around to see what open-source alternatives to GPT-3 there are, and I came across something called "GPT-NeoX-20B". Apparently you need a pair of GPUs and 20 gigs of VRAM to run it?
R. A. Dehi
boosted
Responses to some frequent comments:
* I'm certainly not suggesting that algorithmic feeds should be imposed on everyone! Choice is great. I recognize that many, perhaps most current Mastodon users like chronological feeds.
* "Reverse chronological" is an algorithm, albeit a simple one. It's currently the only option. Chronological feeds are not normatively neutral. There is, unfortunately, no neutral way to design social media. https://mastodon.social/@randomwalker/109308664849924122
R. A. Dehi
boosted
@scottjenson @jeffjarvis Also if you're running your own instance you can afford to deploy staggering amounts of CPU power. Like, you could plausibly run GPT-NeoX-20B on your own dual-GPU rig to try to guess which Fediverse posts you'd be most interested in seeing.
The NSA can do this with Twitter, but you're not allowed to.
@scottjenson @jeffjarvis Also if you're running your own instance you can afford to deploy staggering amounts of CPU power. Like, you could plausibly run GPT-NeoX-20B on your own dual-GPU rig to try to guess which Fediverse posts you'd be most interested in seeing.
The NSA can do this with Twitter, but you're not allowed to.
R. A. Dehi
boosted
I was giving a computing ethics lecture about #FOSS and #antifeatures around 2014. Lots of folks there had never even heard of #FDroid. Maybe it's still not well-known?
F-Droid is a repository and platform for FOSS on Android. Their app can manage your other apps, much like you do with the Google Play Store.
When I need an Android app for something, I always check F-Droid first, just because the apps are trustworthy.
I'll reply with a few of my favorite apps on F-Droid... 🧵
R. A. Dehi
boosted
Greetings. I'm an armchair student of history (not just tech history), but given that I've been involved in the development of the Internet continuously since the early DOD ARPANET days (so, technically before there *was* an Internet) I'm watching the Twitter->Mastodon migration (and the nightmarish, shameful disintegration of Twitter itself) with considerable interest indeed. There is no historical precedent that I know of, and what's happening is even more remarkable given that it has been precipitated by a single chaotic individual in a matter of weeks.
The high speed with which I see social graphs rebuilding here is fascinating, and we can be sure that there are a bunch of PhD theses and books in the future that will attempt to explain all of this for future generations.
Sometimes when you're living through significant historical events it's not obvious except in retrospect, often many years later. What we're living through now with Twitter is clearly significant history, from technology, business, social, and other standpoints.
And even if Mastodon turns out ultimately to be a steppingstone on the way to other social media models able to scale far upward more easily, it is playing a crucial role now in providing a "lifeboat" for Twitter users who are unable to stomach what is happening to that firm with every passing day.
For all its many faults over the many years, we built the Internet to be resilient. And what we are seeing today is that not only has the technology met that goal from ARPANET onward, but thanks to the Internet's vast numbers of dedicated and caring users, even a monstrous train wreck like Elon's Twitter can't bring it (or us!) down.
Thank you all! -L
@lauren I haven't seen anything to contradict that point of view except the initial promises.
@bitsavers Hmm, I guess that kind of makes sense.
@lauren Seems to be about 2:1 in favor right now. I'm interested to hear how this interacts with the Twitter moderation policy council decisions.
I read a lot. Sometimes I learn things. I like making things. I think reading and doing are complementary.
Joined Nov 2022
