lennivelkant
@lennivelkant@discuss.tchncs.de
- Comment on On bugs... 2 days ago:
The only cats I’ve got are con-cats, unfortunately, but they do put things in a row.
I’d love to work more with animals - pythons, anacondas, pandas, cats… Alas, I am stuck with SQL and Power BI, for better or for worse.
- Comment on On bugs... 3 days ago:
Data Analyst: So what do you want to measure? What question do you want to answer?
Customer: Can you do a column chart, where I can see how many Orders we have?
Data Analyst: Column chart? What’s the Axis? Per day?
Customer: No, per month.
Data Analyst: Right, so new Orders per month?
Customer: No, how many we have in general, new and old.
Data Analyst: Do you mean the old ones still open at the start of the month?
Customer: That’s a good idea, yeah. Actually, can you add the ones we complete in that month too?
Data Analyst: The amount of completed orders? That would double-count them.*shared moment of confusion*
Customer: Don’t make it so complicated, I just want to see how many orders we had.
Data Analyst: Let me ask again, what question do you want to answer?
Customer: I want to know how much our teams are working.
Data Analyst: As in, how many orders they’re completing?
Customer: I also want to see if we need more people.
Data Analyst: Like, if they can’t complete all their orders? So basically, the rate of completed versus new ones?
Customer: Ooooh, good idea, can you put that rate as a line over our chart of new, old and completed orders?Customer: Oh, and the warranty returns too! They need to be processed as well, that’s also work.
Customer: Actually, we have this task tracking for who does which work for the order or warranty return.
Data Analyst: Shouldn’t we use that to track how much work the teams are doing?
Customer: Yes, put it in the chart too.
Epilogue: The Customer got a separate chart for the tasks - turns out I’m not charging by the chart, so you don’t need to cram as much as possible into a single chart. They also were persuaded to stick with “Old” and “New” to show the total workload, with the “Old” bars providing an indicator for how much stayed open and whether the backlog was growing.
- Comment on Quantum 1 week ago:
I’m in a superposition of knowledgeable and ignorant until you ask me something, in which case I produce either a good or a stupid answer, depending on various random factors such as whether I’m versed in the general topic, happen to know the specific subject of the question or just get lucky with guessing.
(This analogy breaks apart if you consider the possibility of giving a mediocre answer that’s neither accurate nor entirely stupid, which probably makes it the perfect self-defeating counterexample)
- Comment on Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court. 2 weeks ago:
As a thin veil of excuse, the DCRI incident involved what they considered military secrets rather than defamation charges. Still dumb to do that extrajudicially, of course.
- Comment on Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court. 2 weeks ago:
The article on the lawsuit is blocked, which is standard procedure for participants of an ongoing lawsuit: Talk to your lawyer about it, and nobody else, because anything you say without your lawyer’s counsel might jeopardise your legal position. Even if it’s just people editing that article, the foundation will want to protect itself until the matter is settled.
Don’t forget that non-profits, too, are beholden to laws. If they want to continue offering their services in India, they don’t really want to be charged for contempt on top of the other case.
- Comment on Bluesky Announces Series A to Grow Network of 13M+ Users - Bluesky 3 weeks ago:
People here prefer the federation of Mastodon
- Comment on Baidu CEO warns AI is just an inevitable bubble — 99% of AI companies are at risk of failing when the bubble bursts 3 weeks ago:
Shouldn’t, definitely. But for a while, it will keep running, because that’s how a lot of speculative investment works.
- Comment on hard to argue with 3 weeks ago:
Poor lady, victim of a fucked up religion enforcing sexist bullshit, became an bullshitter in turn. I feel sorry for her.
Doesn’t mean I excuse the crap she’s dumping out there, of course.
- Comment on Baidu CEO warns AI is just an inevitable bubble — 99% of AI companies are at risk of failing when the bubble bursts 3 weeks ago:
It can! For a while. Isn’t that the nature of speculation and speculative bubbles? Sure, they may pop some day, because we don’t know for sure what’s a bubble and what is a promising market disruption. But a bunch of people make a bunch of money until then, and that’s all that matters.
- Comment on Honey 3 weeks ago:
Misunderstandings happen, I don’t think any malice was intended
- Comment on Proud globohomo 3 weeks ago:
Those evil leftists always pushing… checks notes corporate culture!
- Comment on Honey 3 weeks ago:
I think the point was that some numbskulls try to pull a “checkmate vegans” claiming that. You probably know the type, obnoxiously trying to butt in on vegan discussions and go “but if you’re fine with breastfeeding, you’re not really vegan”, misunderstanding (or misconstruing) the motivations in the same vein as mentioned before.
- Comment on Google asks 9th Circuit for emergency stay, says Epic ruling ‘is dangerous’ 4 weeks ago:
Cyberpunk, but without the cyber and the punk
- Comment on German politician calls for Greta Thunberg to be banned from attending pro-Palestinian protests 4 weeks ago:
Not fringe, no.
Definitely cringe tho.
- Comment on You'll have to use pto time to drown, but make sure it's approved first 1 month ago:
I believe it’s a parody of the people that will gab any nonsense to rail against taxes.
Besides, from the income of putting prisoners to work obviously.
- Comment on "Would U.S. tech workers join a union?" survey average: 67% likely 1 month ago:
That’s the other option, of course: If your employees are happy, they don’t need to form a union to press complaints.
- Comment on Jazz hands 1 month ago:
It would be Musical Roulette essentially
- Comment on "Would U.S. tech workers join a union?" survey average: 67% likely 1 month ago:
Maybe they just forgot to brainwash them with anti-union propaganda
- Comment on Horse archers ruin every game they are in. 1 month ago:
Skirmishers as in “Light Cavalry”, designed to catch closing archery and ride them down? I’m not big on RTS (I suck at multitasking), but I’m always fascinated by gamified implementations of historical dynamics.
I don’t suppose they also support “recruit auxiliary specialists” as option?
- Comment on Horse archers ruin every game they are in. 1 month ago:
Announcing the new “Royal Stables” DLC: “Marauders & Massacres” is sure to spice up your medieval farm simulation!
- Comment on Horse archers ruin every game they are in. 1 month ago:
They were also rare. To effectively pull off horse archery, you needed good horses, good riders that also happened to be good archers (both of which weren’t trivial on their own, let alone combined) and good coordination. Bows are more effective the closer you are, so to get the most out of your arrows, you’ll want to close in, but then you also need to wheel off again without your riders getting in each other’s way, so you needed to drill maneuvers for that.
So you either need to have a sufficiently large body of soldiers with the leisure to train both archery and riding instead of working the fields, or you needed a society that treats them as basic skills anyway and only needed training in the military application. Nomadic peoples like the Scythians or Mongols often had the former, so they were notable sources of dangerous mounted archery, particularly where the raising and support of a professional army wasn’t feasible. Rome had the Equites Sagitarii, but they were part of the distinct social class we would call Knights, so not your rank-and-file soldier (and those were already more professional than later levy- or retinue-based militaries).
So if we were concerned about accuracy*, these units should be expensive and require good management to make the most of them, but be very dangerous too. The point about open / closed terrain certainly fits as well.
What’s a bit more foggy is how games usually handle bow effectiveness at range, but that’s its own topic.
*I do care about accuracy, but not at any cost - games need to be fun too, and that’s worth sacrificing some accuracy for.
- Comment on OceanGate’s ill-fated Titan sub relied on a hand-typed Excel spreadsheet 1 month ago:
For the right jobs, it’s a good tool.
This isn’t the right job.
- Comment on OceanGate’s ill-fated Titan sub relied on a hand-typed Excel spreadsheet 1 month ago:
Sounds like they did the lookups by hand actually
- Comment on OceanGate’s ill-fated Titan sub relied on a hand-typed Excel spreadsheet 1 month ago:
cries in data analyst
Did you know our company is over a thousand years old, possibly even two? Recent dives into our digital archives have unearthed invoice records dated to the year 1021, though we’re also investigating the validity of one dated to 215.
Whoever decided to make dates a manual entry text field without validation should be forced to write SQL by hand, without syntax highlighting, autocompletion, syntax checks, reference or looking up stuff, querying a database with no schema or data dictionary.
- Comment on Oxygen 1 month ago:
Well, First Of All, With God, All Things Are Possible, So Jot That Down
- Comment on This Android Malware Has Infected Over 11 Million Devices 1 month ago:
Well, it’s “This”, not This, so I’d say it’s fine.
- Comment on Academic writing 1 month ago:
I think this leaves out the “epistemological imperative”, which I understand as the compulsion to use this specific language for the sake of being scientifically accurate. Particularly when dealing with peers, who will all too readily hold you accountable for inaccuracies, being precise is important, possibly even necessary to avoid the scientific community’s habit of tearing into any error to prove their own proficiency by showing up your deficiency.
I can’t find my source any more, unfortunately, but I read an article once about how students are essentially scared to have their writing torn to shreds because they were too direct in their assertions. I recall that it related an anecdote about birds on a movie set that were supposed to all fly away at the sound of a gunshot. Except they tried to fly away beforehand, so the solution was to tie them to the branch and release that wire when they were supposed to fly. Then the birds tried anyway, didn’t get anywhere, ended up hanging upside down and falling unconscious. When they tried again (after restoring the birds to consciousness), they released the wire… but the birds had learned that trying to fly away was unpleasant, so they just sat there instead. Why bother, if you go nowhere?
In the same manner, academics who write too clearly will end up getting bad grades, have papers rejected, essentially be punished for it. They may learn that, by carefully coaching their assertions, assumptions or just about anything that could be conceived as a statement of facts in a multi-layered insulation of qualifying statements and vague circumscriptions to avoid saying something wrong and show the acknowledgement that, like science in general, the causation they’re ascribing this phenomenon to is at best an educated guess and, while we can narrow down things that are not true, we can never be certain that things we assume are true really are and won’t be refuted somewhere down the line, making them look like morons…
I lost track of the sentence. Anyway, if you make mistakes, you’ll get attacked. Most people don’t like being attacked. So if you’ve been attacked enough, eventually you’ll either give up or adopt strategies to avoid being attacked.
Being complex and obscure in your phrasing makes it harder to attack you. And if it’s hard to understand you, people might just skim the points and not bother with the attackable details anway. If you notice that people who write in a difficult style don’t get attacked as much or as badly, you’ll adopt that style too.
Eventually, your writing is read by students stepping to fill your shoes. They may not understand why you write this way, but they see that many successful academics do. They may also experience the same attacks and come to the same conclusion. Either way, your caution has inspired a new generation of academic writers who will continue that trend.
Finally you’ll end up with a body of scientific knowledge that only experts can still navigate. They know to skim past the vagueness, indirections and qualifications, mostly understand the terms and can take the time to pick apart the details if something strikes them as odd. The common rube doesn’t understand jack shit. Your research may further the understanding of a small group of people, possibly see some practical use, but the general public can’t directly make any use of it.
- Comment on rabioli 1 month ago:
I doubt many people actually pay that much for their meds.
They’ll go broke instead, eternally in debt, unable to save up enough or get a credit for, say, buying a house to save on horribly inflated rent prices, always living in fear of being fired and ending up homeless until they get arrested for not having a home to sleep in, sent to for-profit prisons at the expense of other taxpayers, possibly even put to work as a legal slave…
…but I can’t imagine the pharma company doesn’t actually get all of those 60k on average. Maybe 20k-40k - hardly enough to pay their shareholders, let alone their insurance subsidiaries’ employees for the soul-crushing job of listening to patients breaking down because the insurance won’t cover their child’s life-saving treatment for some reason rep, patient, doctor and executives all know is bullshit.
- Comment on Birds and the bees 1 month ago:
I think this is more of a raid than a genocide. The objective of the aggressor is to secure resources, not to exterminate the victim. And why would it? There’s no ideological conflict, it doesn’t need to claim land for its own tribe to live on, nor does it seek riches out of vanity. It just needs food, and to that end, it invades and robs the dwellings of its prey.
I don’t think it even cares about fighting the defenders. Would be kinda stupid to entirely annihilate its source of food too. Someone needs to survive to rebuild, breed and feed a new generation of food, after all. It just tears down the defenses, then absconds with its loot. Really, it’s more a form of exploitation, albeit cruel to modern sensibilities - robbing the young directly instead of the food used to nourish them as raids in human history would.
It doesn’t bomb the nests along with their contents, capture and abuse the inhabitants, then lay eggs in the ruins and accuse all who criticise its imperialism of being Antipernites.
- Comment on Neuroscience 2 months ago:
Given the heavy use of subject-specific jargon, I’d guess as much. I wouldn’t go to the length of looking up neuroscience terms just to roast neuroscientists, because that just seems like a poor happy chemical return on the mental energy investment, whatever the proper terms for that might be.