barsoap
@barsoap@lemm.ee
- Comment on Pro-AI Subreddit Bans 'Uptick' of Users Who Suffer from AI Delusions 5 hours ago:
I feel bad for the schizos.
Don’t. We’re not the ones affected here and definitely, definitely, don’t have a monopoly on psychosis.
Personally, I’m completely unimpressed by the random nonsense LLMs spit out because it’s not my nonsense. There’s certainly people way deeper down the rabbit hole than me but they, too, have an infinite stream of as-of-yet-uninterpreted subconscious stuff knocking at their door so I don’t see why they would bother.
- Comment on public services of an entire german state switches from Microsoft to open source (Libreoffice, Linux, Nextcloud, Thunderbird) 7 hours ago:
I mean… my condolences and/or yay you get to be a honorary machinist?
- Comment on Microsoft announces new Windows changes in response to the EU's (DMA) Digital Markets Act for EEA users, including Edge not prompting users to set it as the default unless opened 8 hours ago:
Free, Libre, and Open Source Software
The FSFE has an overview over the various terms but tldr FLOSS is the one that has the least amount of neckbeards breathing down your neck because it a) includes both free software and open source and b) includes the “L” that clarifies that what’s meant is free as in speech, not free as in beer.
…and I guess it’s about software hygiene?
- Comment on Microsoft announces new Windows changes in response to the EU's (DMA) Digital Markets Act for EEA users, including Edge not prompting users to set it as the default unless opened 12 hours ago:
The EU is pumping a lot of money into FLOSS, often not even for administrative use (like, say, lemmy gets EU funding), but at far as adoption rate in administration is concerned well the Commission is one of the worst offenders. As in municipalities realising they can’t fully switch to LibreOffice because they need to apply for EU funds and the commission only accepts .docx. Parliament happily spending money on something and the executive getting around to getting its shit together are two different things.
OTOH it’s not all about Microsoft and the like, a lot of administrative software is special-purpose, written by private companies according to specs, paid for by public money. Making that kind of thing open source is a no-brainer. It’s also a way better use of money to improve and customise some open source ERP than to go to SAP and get a customised solution there.
And a lot of that has to do with lacking competency in administration – outside of police, specifically IT forensics, it’s usually quite dire. States have no issues figuring out whether a blueprint makes sense when they’re issuing building permits, road and railroad engineering, of course they can do that, but IT? Nope. Bring in the private consultants and private consultants are basically the marketing arm of big software companies.
- Comment on public services of an entire german state switches from Microsoft to open source (Libreoffice, Linux, Nextcloud, Thunderbird) 1 day ago:
Modulo everything, you need to have been a resident for at least five years to have any chance of getting security clearance. Also it would be “not a shredlet”.
- Comment on public services of an entire german state switches from Microsoft to open source (Libreoffice, Linux, Nextcloud, Thunderbird) 1 day ago:
Those boxes will be unicorns no matter what, though, also, they’re not necessarily part of the general IT infrastructure. Someone in catastrophe defence might be running fluid simulations using some god awful expensive windows-only software but chances are they can manage their own box, and if not, the ministry will still have IT staff who can deal with that kind of thing.
- Comment on public services of an entire german state switches from Microsoft to open source (Libreoffice, Linux, Nextcloud, Thunderbird) 1 day ago:
Blender got ported to Linux in 1998, to Windows in 1999. The modal interface and key command language is no accident, it literally is a 3d vi.
Linux is generally strong when it comes to 3d graphics workstations, it inherited IRIX’ market share, plenty of artists around, especially in the film industry, who’d go on a strike if you took away dragging windows with alt+LMB. Graphics, that is, CAD is dominated by Windows as CAD started out as 2d sketch software which ran on cheap DOS machines.
Houdini is also Unix-native and Blender’s only surviving competitor (considered by features, not industry inertia), Maya started out as cross-platform IRIX+Windows.
- Comment on public services of an entire german state switches from Microsoft to open source (Libreoffice, Linux, Nextcloud, Thunderbird) 1 day ago:
Best I can give you is dataport looking for nextcloud admins, it’s also listed as a component of dPhoenixSuite.
- Comment on public services of an entire german state switches from Microsoft to open source (Libreoffice, Linux, Nextcloud, Thunderbird) 1 day ago:
Dataport is kinda hit and miss when it comes to developing. It was created by taking the small IT departments of different ministries, agencies, etc, of multiple states, and putting them all under a common roof. They did that because they realised that standard state administration structures and IT weren’t really compatible but on the flipside, they also funded a whole new organisation with people accustomed to those very structures, and as dataport is still a public law corporation the internal administration – think payroll and everything – will still be done by career state bureaucrats.
It’s a different kind of dysfunction than you see in the private sector but dysfunction nonetheless. OTOH working directly with FLOSS upstream will help: It’s not that (sufficiently large) FLOSS projects don’t have their own bureaucracy, and the bureaucrats that be on dataport’s side will respect that.
Regarding maintenance: Aside from hardware upgrades because they make sense (power consumption) or you want new features (latest addition: Graphics tablets to allow citizens to sign stuff without having to print things), there’s a constant churn in software requirements as new orders come in on what to do and how to do it. Just because you wrote perfect software doesn’t mean that parliament stops passing laws.
As far as usability is concerned: Dataport will also have to train people, and they actually have the funds to do usability studies and such. Much will also depend on the different agencies they’re working for, can’t fix an agency’s workflows for them, and that goes beyond mere IT. I guess a public-law consultancy does make sense but having a ministry for administrative affairs reeks of Sir Humphrey. I guess you could hide it by making it a subsidiary of the court of auditors.
- Comment on public services of an entire german state switches from Microsoft to open source (Libreoffice, Linux, Nextcloud, Thunderbird) 1 day ago:
No idea where that number is from but at the start it’s just going to be getting rid of MS Office and Exchange, switch to FLOSS telephony, not getting rid of Windows. Licensing costs for 30k seats are certainly higher but you have to offset that with not getting any support from MS any more. Dataport will need a couple of in-house developers to resolve issues and work with upstream. Actual development, not tier 1 support and translating administrative instructions into templates.
Also for the state it’s not really about the money, but sovereignty. 188k are also peanuts in 18bn worth of state budget, that’s yearly maintenance for what 30km of state roads. Given that we currently don’t have any potholes we can afford it.
- Comment on A fake Facebook event disguised as a math problem has been one of its top posts for 6 months 2 days ago:
- Comment on A fake Facebook event disguised as a math problem has been one of its top posts for 6 months 2 days ago:
I never understood how people couldn’t understand basic PEMDAS/BEDMAS/Whatever-the-fuck-your-country-calls-it.
There’s no “whatever-the-fuck-your-country-calls-it”, the US is the only country using it, and only up to high school. At least I’m not seeing any papers coming out of the US relying on it so at some point they’re dropping it and do what everyone else is doing: Write equations such that you don’t need a left-to-right rule to disambiguate things. Also, using multiplication by juxtaposition (2a + 4a^2^).
- Comment on A fake Facebook event disguised as a math problem has been one of its top posts for 6 months 2 days ago:
It’s ambiguous which one of these is correct. Hence the best method we have for “correct” is left to right.
The solution accepted anywhere but in the US school system is “Bloody use parenthesis, then”, as well as “Why is there more than one division in this formula why didn’t you re-arrange everything to be less confusing” up to “50 Hertz, in base units, are 50s^-1^”.
- Comment on Germany Is Using AI to Erase Pro-Palestinian Speech 2 days ago:
You might have missed in your study of law and the news that what passed is not a law, but merely a resolution. It’s the equivalent of a press release.
- Comment on A fake Facebook event disguised as a math problem has been one of its top posts for 6 months 3 days ago:
Nothing. And that’s why people don’t write equations like that: You either see
4 6 + --- 2
or
6 + 4 ------- 2
If you wrote
6 + 4 / 2in a paper you’d get reviewers complaining that it’s ambiguous, if you want it to be on one line write(6+4) / 2or6 + (4/2)or6 + ⁴⁄₂or even0.5 (6 + 2)Working mathematicians never came up with PEMDAS, which disambiguates it without parenthesis, US teachers did. Noone else does it that way because it does not, in the slightest, aid readability. - Comment on A fake Facebook event disguised as a math problem has been one of its top posts for 6 months 3 days ago:
Those two things are memorisation tasks. Maths is not about memorisation.
You are not supposed to remember that the area of a triangle is
a * h / 2, you’re supposed to understand why it’s the case. You’re supposed to be able to show that any triangle that can possibly exist is half the area of the rectangle it’s stuck in: Start with the trivial case (right-angled triangle), then move on to more complicated cases. If you’ve understood that once, there is no reason to remember anything because you can derive the formula at a moment’s notice.All maths can be understood and derived like that. The names of the colours, their ordering, the names of the planets and how they’re ordered, they’re arbitrary, they have no rhyme or reason, they need to be memorised if you want to recall them. Maths doesn’t, instead it dies when you apply memorisation.
Ein Anfänger (der) Gitarre Hat Elan. There, that’s the Guitar strings in German. Why do I know that? Because my music theory knowledge sucks. I can’t apply it, music is all vibes to me but I still need a way to match the strings to what the tuner is displaying. You should never learn music theory from me, just as you shouldn’t learn maths from a teacher who can’t prove
a * h / 2, or thinks it’s unimportant whether you can prove it. - Comment on A fake Facebook event disguised as a math problem has been one of its top posts for 6 months 3 days ago:
x/0 is the set {+inf,-inf}, fite me IRL.
- Comment on A fake Facebook event disguised as a math problem has been one of its top posts for 6 months 3 days ago:
Learning the actual algebraic laws, instead of an order of operations to mechanically replicate. PEMDAS might get you through a standardised test but does not convey any understanding, it’s like knowing that you need to press a button to call the elevator but not understand what elevators are for.
- Comment on A fake Facebook event disguised as a math problem has been one of its top posts for 6 months 3 days ago:
Why? Because a bunch of dead Greeks say so!
The Greeks certainly didn’t come up with PEMDAS. US teachers too lazy to teach kids actual maths did. And that’s before taking into account that the Greeks didn’t come up with Algebra.
- Comment on do you think freewill truly exists? 4 days ago:
To a (modern) compatibilist, free will is the capacity to respond to the same stimulus with different reactions, i.e. it’s equivalent to the cybernetic concept of degrees of freedom. As such, answer:
“You can poke a ball-point pen and it’s going to do the same thing, over and over again: Extend and retract the lead. It is predictable because its internal complexity is below the threshold of chaos.” Then proceed to poke them in the arm to see how many reactions they have to that. Mentally prepare for a tickle fight.
- Comment on I am not a builder… but that does not seem right 5 days ago:
In other words they’re good at knocking on the wall.
- Comment on Geologists doubt Earth has the amount of copper needed to develop the entire world 5 days ago:
You’re trying to transmit power via magnetism so distance is an issue.
- Comment on Geologists doubt Earth has the amount of copper needed to develop the entire world 5 days ago:
Aluminium is actually a better conductor than copper when you judge it by mass, not volume. I think also by tensile strength.
In any case there’s a reason that large overland wires aren’t copper, but steel-cladded aluminium. Copper will always have its applications but so does gold and yet we’re not running out of gold to plate connections with.
In cases like windings requiring more volume is actually an issue, in the case of PCBs… no, despite Apple’s insistence, it’s actually fine to have a phone that’s 0.2mm thicker.
- Comment on faen 5 days ago:
For completeness sake there’s Low Saxon “Slunt”, note the n, meaning “rag” as well as “disorderly person”. Not related to German “Schlund”, gullet, that’d be Slunk. I can’t find any proper etymology but my guess would be that English lost the “n” at some point.
Funnier are words like Gröönhöker. That’s the same roots as “green” and “hooker” but it’s not what you think, it’s someone who can hook you up with the green stuff, a greengrocer. Or the perfectly cromulent toponym Quickborn meaning “lively spring”.
- Comment on Fediverse Social Media Guide 5 days ago:
Unlikely as many Germanic languages have it, with similar meanings. It’s a variant of “ja”, yes. Add a bit of laconicy and you can make “Well.” a sentence in itself.
- Comment on The New York Times Just Published Some Bizarre Race Science About Asian Women 6 days ago:
Gigaset produces in Germany.
- Comment on German court sends Volkswagen execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal 1 week ago:
Of course Germany won’t extradite we don’t extradite nationals to non-EU countries. It can even happen that we don’t extradite Americans to the US because they can demonstrate that they’re likely to face torture in the US, such as isolation cells.
- Comment on 1 week ago:
Autistic coders are only slightly more rare that autistic rail fans. There’s no shortage of you guys in the field.
what you are doing should have a clear connection with some goal, or be clearly a goal in itself, otherwise you’ll achieve nothing.
“Understanding the whole stack” would, necessarily, be the second kind of goal. And you’ll never get there as the field is evolving under your feet.
- Comment on 1 week ago:
Yes, then you have another problem - how do you choose what you want to do if you don’t yet understand the whole in any approximation.
How did you decide to write English using the Latin alphabet? You did not, I presume, study the whole ancestry of the alphabet back to Hieroglyphs to understand it in it’s entirety (did you know that ‘A’ is an upside-down ox head?), nor did you study alternative spellings, nor did you study linguistics to make sure that English, Modern English in particular, truly, is the best choice of language.
You were able to ignore all that, why are you not able to ignore things elsewhere?
And selective ignorance, btw, is a key skill to aquire as a coder. Encapsulation, abstraction, action at a distance being the root of all evil, all those are key principles to understand and skills to acquire. Why? Because you’re not as smart as you wish you were. Being good at ignoring things, being good at saying “if I build it like this, I can from now on ignore the details” is the only way to do anything of any complexity.
When figuring out what to pack for vacation, do you already tetris your shirts and pants? Nah, that comes later. Right now, worry about not forgetting your sunglasses, don’t worry, they’ll fit somehow.
There’s a barrier a person has to grind through with their teeth before they understand that they want to learn Haskell and what that is.
Nah. Just start somewhere. If you later on realise that your interests lie elsewhere, then switch, but don’t fret: If it was interesting enough to look at, how could it have been a waste of time.
- Comment on 1 week ago:
How the hell do you cross the gap between these and actual understanding? Other than the blind way of going up level after level, starting with a bipolar transistor, which doesn’t seem easy at all.
You don’t pretend that Haskell has anything to do with electrical engineering and then you’re golden. You do not need to understand the one to understand the other. You do not need to understand quantum mechanics to understand a transistor, either – I mean, sure, if you intend to develop process nodes then you better understand quantum mechanics, but if you plan on soldering transistors to make a radio? Who cares.
You choose some random interest and learn it and don’t look higher or deeper up the stack, you respect the abstraction boundaries, unless you actually have a good reason to cross them.