SANDY TOKSVIG: yes, the windows NT kernel was first introduced to the public in 1993. it is still used to this day! windows 11 states that its kernel version is NT ten point oh.
ALAN DAVIES: and uh, what's the NT for?
SANDY: new technology. it replaced the previous--
DAVID MITCHELL: new technology? the new technology kernel?
SANDY: yes, and the filesystem, NTFS, is the--
DAVID: new technology file system. and - to be clear - this is from nineteen ninety three?
ALAN: yes, but you have to consider that it was new at the time.
DAVID: oh, i have to consider... everything was new at the time! that's what "new" means! i-- when i was born, i was new! but they don't call me "new david", do they? because - by definition - things stop being new after a point!
AMERICAN CELEBRITY GUEST: ok, but, like... you know, like, with the... the other one was like, the old one, right? so they--
DAVID: but you must understand that anything that has ever been replaced by anything ever could be described as "the old one", right? it's a completely useless name! "hello, my name is new man, my father is old man, because i'm new and he's not and we don't need to specify any further details!" it's madness!
AMERICAN: yeah, but [laughs]
DAVID: so what happens when they replace the new technology kernel, then? do we get the new new technology?
ROB BRYDON: i think it would be, they rename the new technology to old technology, and the replacement gets called new technology. so the NT kernel is now the OT kernel, and--
ALAN: i bought a new fridge last month.
SANDY: moving on!
❝
I was sitting in front of him telling him that the internet, a computer, technology, all these supposedly authoritative things … were wrong. And that I, one person, was right. He basically •couldn’t• believe me.
❞
https://miniver.blogspot.com/2024/07/ai-students-and-epistemic-crisis.html
Fifteen uncoupled simple pendulums of monotonically increasing lengths dance together to produce visual traveling waves, standing waves, beating, and random motion.
Credit: Harvard Natural Sciences Lecture Demonstrations
Source and further reading: https://sciencedemonstrations.fas.harvard.edu/presentations/pendulum-waves
Ursula Le Guin: “A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and the capacity for joy in doing it. It is useless work that darkens the heart. The delight of the nursing mother, of the scholar, of the successful hunter, of the good cook, of the skilful maker, of anyone doing needed work and doing it well, - this durable joy is perhaps the deepest source of human affection and of sociality as a whole.”
modern programming is like,
"if you're using bongo.rs to parse http headers, you will need to also install bepis to get buffered read support. but please note that bepis switched to using sasquatch for parallel tokenization as of version 0.0.67, so you will need the bongo-sasquatch extension crate as well."
old-time programming is like,
"i made a typo in this function in 1993. theo de raadt got so angry he punched a wall when he saw it. for ABI compatibility reasons, we shan't fix the typo."
[ stolen from a colleague ]
I am not inherently against "AI" tools.
I just want the techbros making them to understand "consent".
As it stands now, something like GitHub Copilot is the single largest attack on open source, and the biggest case of copyright and license infringement in history. Copilot is designed to remove any and all license restrictions from open source code, so it can be reused by proprietary developers without having to respect licensing terms.
Like I always say - if Copilot is not copyright and license infringement, why doesn't Microsoft train it on its own proprietary code?
Exactly.
If you are a web-dev, you need to read this, so should your boss (and then he should put you on a 56K modem)
I've suspected for years that kids can pick up some pretty advanced math at a far younger age than they're typically allowed to. Now that I've spent a couple of years teaching my own kids math, and they're both comfortable with things like Cantor's Diagonal Argument (they adored the story of Hilbert's Hotel!) I'm even more certain this is true.
The way most people learn math now seems almost cruel to me. It's as if we were refusing to allow kids to read any fun stories until they had done a requisite amount of drilling on spelling and punctuation first. And if we did that, how many of those kids would wind up enjoying reading and writing?
Restrictions are not the same thing as obligations. Copyleft licenses are not more "restrictive" than permissive licenses, but they do have more obligations. Permissive licenses have obligations, too, such as the inclusion of a copyright notice.
Copyleft is not "restrictive"; it does not discriminate against any field of use, and if it did it would not qualify as free software nor as open source.
The Verge article on the best printer in 2024 is just completely brilliant in so many ways.
And also kinda sad.
I finalized my epaper calendar! 🤩
Calendar events are pulled from @homeassistant the device itself is running @esphome. It automatically shows as many entries as can be fitted on the screen, same day entries get grouped together.
Optionally a random quote can be displayed on the bottom or alternatively the next event of the day. The device is battery powered and uses deep sleep to extend the battery life.
If you want to build your own: https://github.com/paviro/ESPHome-ePaper-Calendar
I am super grateful for boosts!
Nine years today, I actually can't believe it's been so long already.
Thank you Terry Pratchett for your solidly, relatably flawed characters.
Thank you Terry Pratchett for making me laugh every single time no matter how many rereads.
Thank you Terry Pratchett for writing strong women.
Thank you Terry Pratchett for my inability to ever pronounce "pun" correctly.
Thank you Terry Pratchett for teaching me what sort of human I wanted to grow up to be.
Thank you Terry Pratchett for The Hedgehog Song.
Thank you Terry Pratchett for everything, you are very much missed.
"A man is not dead while his name is still spoken"
JFC, people in tech are really out there saying that language models will be better at therapy, financial advice, and career advice than trained people.
WTF is wrong with you people? Do you really have no clue about what other people’s jobs actually involve?
Language models can’t even do maths how are they supposed to get good at financial advice?
And therapy? Just… 😑
What’s wrong with people in tech?
"The Nordic states are letting go of values and infrastructure resources that are dear to the welfare state – from shared access to public resources to democratic values and universal access to communication and electricity – while intensifying digitalization and dependencies on Silicon Valley companies."
The public values of openness, affordability of connection and universal access to infrastructure are under threat by Big Tech.
“How green are Europe’s railways?”
It's obvious that if I take a trip by train, rather than by car or plane, it is the green choice.
But modal share for rail is marginal, and decisions made by politicians and the industry are preventing the step change we need - due to the climate crisis
New post 👇
https://jonworth.eu/how-green-are-europes-railways/
Why @obsidian is 100% user-supported and not backed by VC investors
Look, you don't *have* to read @molly0xfff's defenestration of Chris Dixon, but honestly, life is short and nice things are few and far between; particularly in tech:
https://www.citationneeded.news/review-read-write-own-by-chris-dixon/