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Boosted by glyph ("Glyph"):
grimalkina ("Cat Hicks") wrote:

In my book I explore the mental traps in tech that keep us from trying to make positive change, and that even lead us to sabotage and punish others who are trying to make positive change.

Boosted by glyph ("Glyph"):
grimalkina ("Cat Hicks") wrote:

People like to mock this or claim that because I'm not cynical I'm not smart (seriously there's only one playbook here when you really think about it lol), but as a psychologist I genuinely feel I am not living out my ethics if I don't try to have a strengths based and compassionate pov on behavior

Boosted by glyph ("Glyph"):
grimalkina ("Cat Hicks") wrote:

There are two things that really bother me in tech commentary these days. First thing is the constant calling everyone else stupid, second is the saying because everyone else is stupid no positive change is possible

Boosted by glyph ("Glyph"):
nash@labyrinth.social wrote:

the llms can't talk about goblins anymore cause the goblins won their class action suit. it happened a few weeks ago, but human media doesn't usually report on stuff from goblin court

Boosted by glyph ("Glyph"):
catsalad@infosec.exchange ("Cat 🐈🥗 (D.Burch) :paw:⁠:paw:") wrote:

"Do you know today's date?"

Ⅰ May

dysfun@treehouse.systems ("gaytabase") wrote:

gulasch problemen nacht

dysfun@treehouse.systems ("gaytabase") wrote:

the rick roulade is the state of the art meme food. it stays in your digestive system for way longer than you'd think because it doesn't want to give you up

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
yetiinabox@todon.nl ("Will Tuladhar-Douglas") wrote:

There have been a few wonderful conjunct holidays this year, like Ramadan and Easter, but tomorrow for us is excellent indeed: Beltane/May Day and Buddha Pūrṇimā.

So here's the moon at dusk, viewed through our glorious ornamental cherry tree.

1/2

#Buddhist #fullmoon #Celtic #syndicalism #cherryblossoms

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
stone@goblin.camp ("☮️ & 🍺 on 🌏") wrote:

On May 4, 1886, workers in Chicago were striking and demonstrating peacefully for an 8-hour workday. Police had killed one striker and injured several others the previous day, and when the cops showed up and began to disperse the PEACEFUL demonstration, an unknown person threw a dynamite bomb towards the police. The explosion and ensuing gunfire resulted in the deaths of seven cops and four civilians, as well as dozens of injuries, most of them from the confused gunfire of the police.

Following this, eight activists—some present at the demonstration, some at others, and some at home playing cards—were arrested and charged. The presiding judge was openly hostile to the defendants, as were the court bailiffs and all the jurors eventually seated to hear the case. (Any potential jurors who were union members or sympathetic to socialism were dismissed.)

#postRecycler

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
mjd@mathstodon.xyz ("Mark Dominus") wrote:

A COMPUTER CANNOT FIND OUT

THEREFORE A COMPUTER MUST NEVER BE ALLOWED TO FUCK AROUND

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
meg@fediscience.org ("Megan ⚘") wrote:

A giant Steller sea lion nicknamed “Chonkers” has unexpectedly arrived at Pier 39 in Fisherman’s Wharf, drawing crowds as he lounges among the much smaller resident sea lions.

https://apnews.com/article/chonkers-giant-sea-lion-san-francisco-pier-b265382b50fbb07a0debb0db8b25d4b5

cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen") wrote:

Dessa is going to be performing with the Oregon Symphony in November! It seems a bit far out to be making plans, but I'm pretty sure I'd enjoy her performance:

https://www.orsymphony.org/productions/2627/dessa-with-the-oregon-symphony

dysfun@treehouse.systems ("gaytabase") wrote:

oh look it's time to do network programming. how wonderful.

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
kathimmel@mstdn.social ("kat donegan 🇵🇸✊") wrote:

on this international workers' day, please remember those whose labour goes largely unacknowledged, unappreciated & unpaid. here's to the carers & the cleaners & everyone else without whom the world would pretty much grind to a halt.
#iwd #internationalWorkersDay #huitHeures #1erMai #work #labour #art #illustration

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
arclight@oldbytes.space wrote:

@cstanhope Put everything in version control.
Unless you have a detailed understanding of what the code was originally intended to do and how it was to be used, you are in no position to judge the code as bad. It is merely inconvenient.
Popular refactoring strategies may not work especially for procedural or scientific code. "Best practice" that can't be applied in your specific case isn't best practice.
Many of the "bad" design decisions are likely because the code's requirements were never updated and the code was designed and built around long-gone limitations - in hardware, tooling, operating system, state of the art, local state of knowledge.
Document and archive the build process, especially compiler flags. Recovering those from a lost build environment is painful.
Focus on integral tests against whatever production, demo, or test cases exist.
Unit tests are a developer convenience; what you need for recovery and refactoring are acceptance tests.
Refactor for clarity not performance - if you don't have a performance problem, don't bother. If you haven't profiled the code, you don't know where bottlenecks are and you're just guessing and wasting effort.
Static analysis, linting, and code reformatters are your friends. Automatic API documentation tools are your friends but the bigger win is understanding the interface of each routine and the mutability of arguments and imports.
Use your platform or language's native packaging tools. Ship a standard installer not a box of loose parts. Define versioned releases and ship packages; users are often not developers so expecting them to understand git is not acceptable. A `curl | sudo` build/install process displays a critical lack of skill, care, awareness, and competence. Use of conda and containers (for non-server applications) are a red flag that an application has unmanageably complex dependencies and setup and usually indicates lazy design and poor understanding of the code and the deployment process.

With integral acceptance tests, a repeatable automated build process, and goid version control, initial gross refactoring may now be possible. Avoid large-scale code churn but understand it might be necessary very occasionally - this is why linting and automatic formatting should be done prior to every commit along with testing.

Focus code evolutions; make one very specific modification at a time. Use work planning tools (kanban board, issue tracker, etc.) to strictly define and document change scope, purpose, and acceptance criteria. Importantly, document what's explicitly _not_ in scope. Write these work plans yourself - do not allow users or managers to plan your work. Resist scope creep; better to revert a half-completed targeted revision and rescope and replan the evolution than to uncontrollably widen scope into a change too large and difficult to test or review.

This is a long tedious thankless process and often needs to be treated as a labor of love.

If you have the time, practice code recovery on real applications. Practice and experience make refactoring and recovery easier and safer.

A huge goal of this work is to understand the code at a deep level amd be able to communicate and document that understanding. AI tools cheat you out of that understanding and experience and launder out the subtle cues and evidence of the code's design and intent. If anything they will make the code worse.

Code recovery and revitalization is tedious and painstaking but can be intensely rewarding especially for the depth of knowledge and skill you build and the redundant greenfield development you avoid. Sometimes a rewrite is necessary, often it's simply not worth it because it will cost more and be less dependable than the legacy code.

adele@social.pollux.casa ("Adële 🐁!") wrote:

#WTF it seems that some #AI know me Oo

Boosted by aredridel@kolektiva.social ("Mx. Aria Stewart"):
annika@xoxo.zone ("Annika Backstrom") wrote:

8 hours for sleep
8 hours for work
2 hours for getting the kids to school
2 hours for commuting
1 hour for cleaning the house
3 hours for what one will

Boosted by aredridel@kolektiva.social ("Mx. Aria Stewart"):
TheWarOnCars ("The War on Cars") wrote:

Happy Bike Month to all who observe.

https://www.lifeaftercars.com/

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

I bought an iPhone 18 Pro Max coming from a 14 Pro, and damn, the upgrade is felt, but the thing that sticks out the most are the speakers. When did Apple make the external speakers this good?

I can listen to podcasts in the shower now. Though I probably shouldn't want to do that.

Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
climagic ("Command Line Magic") wrote:

Copy Fail is a very serious root escalation vuln released on Wednesday that requires your attention. More details and the fix at https://copy.fail/ and be sure to reboot after you've patched.

Boosted by dysfun@treehouse.systems ("gaytabase"):
GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social ("Kevin Beaumont") wrote:

If you live in the England and rent it's worth reading up about the Renters' Rights Act.

It's a really good piece of legislation from UK gov, which means - amongst many other things - you can't legally be turfed out after a year, you have a right to a pet, Section 21 no fault evictions aren't lawful etc etc.

It's in law from today and is enforced too.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqjwqp72y7ro

db@social.lol ("David Bushell 🪿") wrote:

reading: NHS Goes To War Against Open Source

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/05/nhs-goes-to-war-against-open-source/

Sigh.

chipotle@mstdn.social ("Watts Martin") wrote:

Yesterday was one of those days that simultaneously felt incredibly exhausting and like I did nothing.

Boosted by kornel ("Kornel"):
Natanox@chaos.social ("Natanox 🇺🇦🇵🇸") wrote:

Why didn't I hear about this until now? :bernd:

I'm not crazy enough to install local #AI tools outside of a VM, but I don't blame anyone for trying them out either.
#Anthropic is just another untrustworthy US company though.

Given the stark difference between the websites of US garbage and European #MistralAI I'm curious if mistral-cli does something this bad (aside from slopping around)… 🧐

---

Anthropic secretly installs spyware when you install Claude Desktop
https://www.thatprivacyguy.com/blog/anthropic-spyware/

Boosted by kornel ("Kornel"):
Edent ("Terence Eden") wrote:

🆕 blog! “NHS Goes To War Against Open Source”

The NHS is preparing to close nearly all of its Open Source repositories.

Throughout my time working for the UK Government - in GDS, NHSX, i.AI, and others - I championed Open Source. I spoke to dozens of departments about it, wrote guidance still in use today, and briefed Ministers on why it was so…

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/05/nhs-goes-to-war-against-open-source/
⸻
#government #nhs #OpenSource #politics

Boosted by dysfun@treehouse.systems ("gaytabase"):
Nickiquote@mstdn.social wrote:

Remember that “supreme” means “covered in a cream sauce”.

A Supreme Court is a court, any court, which is covered in a cream sauce. The Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces? Dripping in delicious sauce, perhaps with some morel mushrooms and pancetta.

Boosted by pzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷"):
jack@xeno.glyphpress.com ("Jack Graham") wrote:

It's #Walpurgisnacht, beware!

On this night, Kash Patel's eyes leave his head. They merge with RFK Jr's voice, Hegseth's booze breath, Drumpf's micropeen, and Erika Kirk's pleather jeggings to form a single horrid creature that prowls this haunted night, drunkenly exposing itself to teenage girls and making unfounded claims about vaccines.

#monsters

pzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷") wrote:

Every time I yearn for a car microscope, I hesitate at the thought of the horrific eye injuries that afflict my fellow yussies.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/05/01/this-post-will-probably-make-the-infestation-worse/

pzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷") wrote:

The #1 term creationists don't understand but that they invoke all the time is "information."

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/05/01/i-have-to-roll-my-eyes-when-a-creationist-says-information/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSs5fzV3Ejw

ChrisWere@toot.wales ("Chris Were ⁂🐧🌱☕") wrote:

New Freebooters #PeerTube video. Where we mostly take a look at Drew ridiculous movie takes:

https://video.thepolarbear.co.uk/w/22ryKWwXywSYancqdM46px