Idly reflecting a bit this morning, and realizing that one of the key insights that I bring to a consulting engagement is the in-depth observation "you could write a computer program to do this"
A lot of companies looking for expert technical consulting are stuck in a tool analysis paralysis, thrashing around between different open source options or different product offerings, struggling to write extensive "implementation" plans that map whatever the latest hype is onto the correct pile of nouns haphazardly stacked on top of one another. What DevOps tool? What agentic IDE? What cloud orchestrator? What cloud-focused Linux distro?
@matt Right. "write a computer program" in contrast to "stack up a pile of brand identifiers and stickers on the back of a laptop until emergent behavior in their interactions gradually coalesces into a solution"
@matt What many fail to reflect upon is whether the amount of effort to *learn* how to use the existing solution may exceed the amount of effort required to *write* a solution. The assumption is always that learning is free, but coding is expensive.
« Il ne faut pas laisser passer cette idéologie anti flics », s’est ému le ministre de l’Intérieur après ces faits qui se sont déroulés lors d’une fête étudiante.
hey, cool. for those who use fastplay, anchor radio's in search results. now no one has a reason not to tune into my show in 20 minutes... right? hello? anyone?
@madamada ArcaneChat already supports markdown, name completion is not there yet, that will come if we implement @ mentions at some point, like on #Telegram
I've been thinking a lot about my AI coding and why I don't particularly enjoy it. I miss the feeling of "flow" from coding by hand; with agentic coding it's more like you're fielding a bunch of Slack messages at once – it can be exhausting.
The analogy I keep coming back to is videogame minmaxxing. If you hyper-optimize a game you can "win" but it might be less fun.
BTW, like you, I've concluded that I don't actually find the ethical/environmental/etc. arguments against genAI that persuasive. I *wanted* them to be persuasive, so I could fully align with what I thought was the right tribe (yes, I admit it).
So now I have conversations with an LLM with no shame. But I still haven't seriously tried agentic coding yet. Not sure I want to, but I figure the pressure to do so will keep increasing.
@matt Yep, that was my journey. I wanted to care because it felt like something worth caring about, and I tend to identify with the kinds of people who care. But I was just never that convinced.
Your mileage will definitely vary depending on the team (tribe? 😆) you hang out with. At my work people are constantly building and sharing little AI tools so it's just way easier to pick up and be productive.
At my little bootstrapped company, the two junior developers are already using Claude Code regularly, and my non-technical cofounder (the CEO) is quite bullish about AI in general. So I would be swimming upstream if I continued to hold a hard-line anti-AI position.
@matt Environments where people are *mandated* to do it are totally counterproductive IMO. At Salesforce part of the reason I held out was exactly that – I was stubborn and tired of being proselytized all the time.
At my current gig we are not mandated at all, and I still have colleagues barely using these tools. Your experience with juniors matches mine, though – they are way more "AI-native."
For example, if you're speedrunning Mario 3, about ~10 minutes in you have to pass three "hands" that each have a 50% chance of destroying your run. So each run, you basically have a 7/8 chance that you're going to have to start from scratch.
I've seen some Minecraft speedrunners practice the same 8 seconds of gameplay over and over again for hours. It might be impressive, but it certainly didn't seem like they were having fun.
OTOH I've been having fun helping my wife with her side projects. I vibe coded a Stardew Valley SQLite database so she can ask it questions like "what's more profitable: starfruit wine or grape jelly?" This is something I never would have done before because it's just too tedious. For her (a non-coder) it's absolutely revolutionary, especially because Claude can translate her English queries into SQL. (Using the SQLite MCP, it turns out, is way more reliable than having Claude read the wiki.)
Clare and I went on an impromptu tour of London infrastructure today after unexpectedly ending up at Dishoom Canary Wharf due to a power cut at the Kensington branch.
A ten-minute walk from Canary Wharf took us to the Temple Of Storms (officially the Isle Of Dogs Pumping Station), a grade II* listed building constructed in 1988. While I’m not generally into postmodern architecture, it’s refreshing to see a modern industrial building that isn’t just a metal and concrete box.
This was my first ever in-person view of the Millennium Dome (or O2 arena, as we’re meant to call it now). I was in my late teens when it first opened and I wanted to see it at the time, but my London-born parents have sworn never to return to the city as its post-Thatcher progressiveness offends their conservatism.
A few hours later we went inside to find it’s basically a fairly standard shopping centre with a rather tatty-looking umbrella on top.
Continuing the Millennium theme, we passed one of the 1400 Millennium Beacons, looking a bit worse-for-wear a quarter of a century later (a figure that made us both feel very old). Several shelducks were feeding in the former dock in the background.
On the strangely-named Goodluck Hope peninsula we spotted this former Whale Oil Extraction building, and talked about how strange it is that the industrial-scale slaughter of whales was once an economical means of producing oil.
Throughout our walk we could see the London Cable Car. While a cable car might make sense for a mountainous city, it’s a ridiculous means of transport for somewhere as flat as London, and it’s almost entirely used by tourists. So of course we had to give it a go.
Near the highest point the cable car slowed down, and with today’s windy weather it started swaying alarmingly. The views across London were spectacular, but on the approach to the Greenwich peninsula it was very visible how the Millennium Dome had failed to encourage further regeneration of the surrounding former industrial area.
Day 2 of 7 of antibiotics... probably will be extended next week. So far, reactions are that I lose most of the feeling in my fingers, and it really, really wants me to sleep. I guess it could be much worse.
Oh no ... We have all this beer (more than 20 varieties), who will help us drink it ... Come join us for awesome music, delicious drinks and cool vibes (aka blinky Lights) during #bytenight2026bytenight.brussels/ #fosdem ps. We also have loads of soft drinks as well as club mate of course.... Bring your friends and your friends friends
Why do so many "download X with curl" guides not use sane options?
-L : follow redirects! PLEASE! -O: output to the filename specified by the server -J : for `-O`, trust the content header -f: fail fast without content body on a 4xx error
And for all that is holy, quote your URL content; not every shell is bash, friends
@matt eh, I don't care what standard tool people use in their guides, just that they're thoughtful about providing options to people who very well could be using that tool for the first time.
The Dutch version of the BBC (very simply put) has started consistently stating in every article about Trump that he has a history of lying and saying nonsense. It's really satisfying.
Does anyone have knowledge of an instance that is focused on Minnesota?
I have a friend who's mounting an outsider Senate run in MN, and I'd like to find her an instance that has a strong MN presence to help move her campaign.
She's a member of DSA, trans woman, with a history in public service.
DMs are fine as responses, as well as open answers.
What the hell is this then just from a group on TG? Channel message from Leander on Pc (Leander): Group, spam group, asdfjsdafhdsfadsfyuytrhdsgfcxvmvmvmvmvmvmvmvmvmmvmvvmmbwbwbwbwvwvwvwvnsbsmndbdnmdbdmnbffhfhfhfhfhfhfhfhfhfhjakakakak, 24 new messages, Muted, Rose: ok then, hbhbhbhbhbhhbhbhbhhbhbhbhhbhbhbhbhbhhbhbhhbhbhallhlhlhllhlhlhlhlhlhllsllslsldlsllsls.bhbhbhhbhbhbhhbhbhbhbhhbbhbhhbhbhbhbhbhhbhhbballllhhllhlhlhllhlhlhlhllhlhhlhlhlhlhllhlslslslslslsls.bhbhbhhbbhhbhbhbhhbhbhbhhbhbhhbhbhhbhbhbhhbbhbbhbhhbhbhbhbhbhbhbhhbhbhbhallhlhlhlhlhlhslslslslslslss.bhbhhbhbhbhbhhbhbhbhhbhbhhbhbhbhbhhbhbhbhbhhbbhbhhbhbhbhhbhbhbhhbhbhbhoomnmnmnmnmmnmnmnmnmnmmnmnm.bhhbhbhbhbhhbhboomnmmmnmnmnmnnmnmnmnm.bhbhhbhbhbhbhbhhbhbhbhbhbhbhhbhhbhbhhbhbhbhbhhbhbhbhbhhbhbhbhhbhbhbhbbbbhhboonmmnmnmnmnmmnmnmnmnm.chhchchchchhchchchchchhcick.hbhbhbhbhhbhbhhbhbhbhhbhbhbhhbhbhbhbhbhbhbhhbhboonmmnmnmmnmnmnmnmmnmn.drumhmhmhmhmmhhmhmhhmmhnmnmmnmnmnm..druhmhmhmmhmhmhmhmhmmhmhmhmnmnnnmnmnmmnmnmnmnmmnmn.rhhrhrhrhrhrhrhrrhrhrhrhrhhrhrhhrhrhrhrawfflflfllflflflfllflflflhlhllhlhlhlhllhlhhllhlhlh.rhhrhrhrhrhhrhrhrhhrhhrhrhrhrhhrhrhrhrhhrhrrhrhrhhrhrhhrhrhrhrhawfhllhlhlhlhlhlhllhlhlhlhllhlhlhlhl.rhhrhrhrhrhrhrhhrhrhhhrhrhrhrhhrhrhrhrhhrhrhrhrhhrhrhrhhrhrhrhrhrhhrhrhrhrhrhrhrhhrhrhawflfl!, Received today at 4:55 PM 4 of 40.
“Common arguments for open source include lower costs, interoperability and transparancy… they don't form one coherent narrative but choose whichever works best for each target group. You can use everything, just like ingredients in hot pot”—Rosalind Liu #fosdem
Hey, so, I know this might be a weird thing to ask for and certainly a "git gud" on my part to some extent, but if you ask a rhetorical question or just would like to vent, it would be nice to note this somewhere. Otherwise please be aware that not everyone might be able to "read" your intentions and that a person "lecturing you with unsolicited advice" is trying to help you in good faith because they thought you actually asked a question.
I am autistic. In my specific case (we're not a monolith) this means social behaviours are a thing I learn, not some vague self-explaining instinct I have out of nowhere. "Someone asking a question in my general direction means they want an answer from me and it is rude to not give one" is one of the first things I learned. However, "Someone asking a question in my general direction means they don't want any reaction at all aside maybe from 'that sucks' or a nod and if you reply you give unsolicited advice which is super rude" seems to be out there as well and just as common (and it feels like it's getting more common than the first one in recent years).
I have no way to tell which one you mean. I learned when it's a stranger it's helpful to ask "do you want advice or just vent" and this might work, but apparently even among friends it seems to be common and I can't tell how tired I am for being considered rude either for not answering an actual question or for answering a rhethorical one. (Not to mention extreme cases where people assume I'd be some person who would want to pick a fight, and "is looking for excuses" when I simply try to explain my reasoning like I do now.)
Oh nice. Now as long as you're running a version from today, you can go into the export mode and choose what we call 'Nokia wav' which is not exactly that, it's more square-sounding, but it's another option at least.
Documentation has been updated too, a nice bunch of tables with all the various hotkeys in, and damn there are a lot. Just seeing it all laid out like that surprised me. lol
It's a lot of fun to just fuck around with. I need to rewrite this little excerpt of one of Mozart's piano sonatas I was screwing with yesterday (#16 in C-major I think it was.) That was a nice little challenge.
I love hearing what people are doing with this thing. It's been a wish of mine to have a simple sketch tool when I'm stuck in a hotel room overnight, or on the train or something. This is exactly that.
Test. gonna paste output directly here, select just that, open a new project and let's see if we can send composer data across the interwebs without it being in a text file itself.
@nycki96 New hotkey in today's update, control shift O. Takes you right to the demos folder of stuff I made, had GPT make, and a couple ringtones from old Nokia devices just to show what it can do.
@nycki96 Niice! Speaking of hotkeys, how about a few for changing time signatures? Maybe like alt 1-8 to switch between 1/4, 2/4, 3/4, Etc until you get to 12/8 or somesuch? Course that'd be a whole lot more complicated, but it'd be neat to be able to do stuff like that.
@nycki96 partly because the way things work now, there are really no time signatures at all, you know? There's no metronome, only tempo, so you can do what you want, how you want pretty much.
@nycki96 MML is like that too really. It doesn't even have the concept of a bar, really, except for whole notes, and the fact that tempo is specified in quarter notes.
Tuta won't spy on me. True. But its web interface's inaccessibility to blind people does. I am currently using it for my service provider's newsletters only, because to select one e-mail from the interface and reading it, I need a sighted person to help me clicking with the mouse on it. So, if the sighted person talks about how much I spend on hosting provider, the problem isn't relevant; but if I exchange private, sensitive, health, SEXUAL information? As the web interface currently is, I can't even think of it. In 2024 it was nearly the best in accessibility, whose hands went on it?
GMX looks solid too except E2E Encryption. 65gb storage & 50mb of 📎. Grt. Tuta also needs to increase storage size from 1gb to 10gb atleast for free users.
I would really appreciate if the matrix would be correct. Proton has an apk for ProtonMail so no need for f-droid or other Stores. Additionally, I can see my contacts in the mobile apps. They are a direct competitor and these errors dont look good on you
one point is missing though: which one allow you to use your own mail client? It's not you... So do not trust a (statistic) marketing plot you didn't made yourself.
🎤 Talk: It's time to develop apps for Android cars👤 Speaker: Chris Simmonds, Sabine Hofschen and Gabriel Gautron📍 Event: droidcon Berlin 2025📅 Date: 24th...
We are excited to share that we are beginning work on a new onboarding experiment for #Mastodon: Default Server Recommendations.
Our intent for this experiment is to recommend the closest server geographically that is in the correct language during the sign-up flow. We will be running this experiment on our iOS and Android apps only to start.
(The reason we’re starting with the apps and not the web is because the necessary data to run this experiment is already provided through the app store. It is more complicated to do this right for the web, and we want to think carefully about how to do this in a way that respects privacy.)
The experiment will be designed to ensure that server admins remain in control: meaning they will have the power opt-in and opt-out as needed, or reduce the percentage of sign-ups flowing their way.
I’m actually pleased with that because we’ve already proven PP can’t win an election nor hold on to his own seat. He’s the best they’ve got but he’s not good enough to win an election.
I bet the people at ETI never even came close to imagining their Eloquence technology living on as an ancient 32-bit dll in the computer of almost every blind person 20+ year safter they stopped working on it.
This made me wonder what's the oldest (compiled) program still in wide use.
Microsoft's equation editor comes close I think, I remember them having to hire some security company to reverse-engineer that for them and fix a vulnerability.
@matt Some people say yes, some people say no (and that it's emulated). Each position is usually held with absolute conviction, with the inevitable result that nobody knows anything for certain. @TheQuinbox
@jscholes @matt It's pretty obvious what's going on if you look at the symbols (.tbd) file (available in the guts of the Xcode Mac OS SDK, and the disassembly o the actual DLL. Definitely a very different beast than the win32 dlls.
@miki I would expect it to be different from the Win32 DLLs even if emulated, because I don't think anybody thinks they're emulating Win32. A better comparison might be with the libs for Linux, but not sure. @matt @TheQuinbox
@jscholes @matt And in other news, it turns out Codex (on 5.2 xhigh) can now, with minimal prompting, find its way through Mac OS's system frameworks, and reverse-engineer the ECI implementation differences well enough to produce a working program that speaks to a wav file via Eloquence. The parameters are off, as is expected for an LLM with no audio capabilities which cannot hear its own output, but God is it impressive. The whole process took 20 minutes and fit in the five-hour usage limit on the $15 subscription. Pre LLMs, getting 90% there took me about two days of highly-focused work I think.
@matt Yup. And weird ones at that, definitely not transpiles of win32 DLLs as some claim. They have symbols for the unexported C++ functions and methods for one, which the win32 ones don't seem to, at least the copies I have. They also don't rely on the filesystem for library / settings discovery at all, instead having an undocumented eciSetIniContent function (which really doesn't like \r, that was half a day wasted). They also crash when you instantiate with eciNew, requiring you to use an undocumented eciNew2 (which the win32 dlls also have, but which nobody seems to be using and which isn't in the OSS headers). Also no audio support afaik, just wave buffers.
It is rather beautiful here in Oulu 🇫🇮, right now. Absolutely no filters needed at all 🤌 -20°C, wind chill -28°C.
This is one of our main cycling and walking routes (#8) and here we have a 5 km stretch with ZERO at-grade crossings with motor traffic. I repeat, it's physically impossible to meet any motor traffic here. So it is very peaceful, safe and comfortable to ride and walk completely uninterrupted. Just bliss.
Not everyone can afford a smartphone. Stop making it the primary, and sometimes the only, interface for day to day services. It's like when companies move their customer facing information onto Discord. It's shit. Fucking stop it.
The last week I've seen/been part of a few discussions regarding #Matrix on Mastodon and Lemmy. To help the world heal - let me offer this tiny suggestion:
If your views on Matrix come from pre-Element X client times, just scrap those and be open to the fact that things are different now.
I was there. I was burnt by having to support family members with encryption key issues. I had to abandon Dendrite as server software.
Since I switched to a dockerised Synapse and all (extended) family members now using Element X we've had absolutely zero issues. None. Zilch.
... and those family members range from 9 to 78 years of age. Matrix is our daily driver, on Android, iOS, macOS, Linux and Windows.
Matt Campbell
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