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.”

I'm sure you know the humble #LEGO brick is part of a #system. But do you know how extensive that system is?

Here's a little lazy #weekend thread for your (and mine) enjoyment :-)

We start with a basic 2x4 red brick, the LEGO system brick. Margaret #Hamilton minifigure for scale.

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)

https://brr.fyi/posts/engineering-for-slow-internet

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?

The Verge article on the best printer in 2024 is just completely brilliant in so many ways.

And also kinda sad.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/2/24117976/best-printer-2024-home-use-office-use-labels-school-homework

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"

#GNUTerryPratchett #Discworld

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.

https://www.helsinki.fi/en/researchgroups/reimagining-public-values-in-algorithmic-futures/whats-new/dismantling-public-values-one-data-center-at-the-time

“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/

TIL that sudo, the unix command line utility, has a logo. And that logo is cursed.

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sudo_logo.png

Best take on Arc Search that I’ve read so far: https://werd.io/2024/stripping-the-web-of-its-humanity

Please choose from the two contemporary design styles for your wifi hardware: “rounded soft box with white light” or “satanic death cult blood sacrifice altar”