The first time I tried Twitter, I couldn't make any sense out of it, and I gave up after a few days. The second time, I added ~50 people to my feed and started following them. After some months, I realized that it was making me jittery, and I stopped. The third time, I cut my feed down to ~5 people (only 3 of whom post regularly). Now I check it once or twice a day (more if I'm bored). I read back until I get to tweets that I've seen before, and then I'm caught up. Maybe a year ago, I'm reading my feed, and after a while I realize that I'm...lost...disoriented...out of context. I'm seeing tweets from people that I don't follow. I'm seeing tweets from long ago. I'm finding myself dropped into the middle of threads I that never saw the start of. I have a nagging feeling that I'm missing things, so I keep reading. And it just keeps going: I never get caught up. Eventually, I start looking around, and I find that Twitter has switched me to "Top Tweets" (also called "Home"), which is some kind of algorithmic mash-up of my feed, and things linked to my feed, and things maybe sort-of like my feed, all presented in a pseudo-non-chronological order. Twitter tries to gloss this as tweets relevant to my interests, but its primary effect it to annoy me, and disorient me, and--crucially--to prevent me from engaging with Twitter in a directed and goal-oriented fashion. I can't just read what's new and get on with the day. Instead, I'm stuck in this endless scrolling morass of...twitter stuff... I crawl around in Twitter's configuration screens and eventually find where they've hidden the Top/Latest setting. I switch it back to Latest Tweets (my feed only, strict chronological order). I catch up on my feed and then I'm done. But the next time I look at Twitter, they've switched my feed back to Top Tweets, and I'm lost, and they also moved the setting somewhere new and I have to go hunt it down and switch it back again. Eventually, the setting migrates to the little star icon at the top right of the front page and stays there, but to this day Twitter periodically switch my feed to Top tweets and I have to switch it back. It seems obvious to me that this is all about increasing user time on the platform. Twitter really, really, really does not want me to just read what's new in a directed way and then get on with my day. They want to create a morass--a tarpit--that can put me into a fugue state and keep me forever scrolling down to read just one more tweet.
I was up in the White Mountains, in a hiking lodge, state park, national park, I don't recall. They have a roll--a memorial--of people who have died hiking in the area, going back to around 1900. The plaque explains that hiking isn't extremely dangerous, but you are in the wilderness, you are on a mountain, and things can happen, and we should all be mindful of this.
Some of the deaths are mishaps; some are bad weather, some are just people who happened to have a heart attack while they were on the mountain. But about once every 10 years, someone dies sledding down Mt. Washington on a cafeteria tray. (I am not making this up.)
My guess is that when someone dies this way, word gets around, and then no one tries it for a while. But after a decade has passed, there is a new generation who came along too late to get the memo, and one of them does try it, and then there is a new name on the memorial.
...and this end is called the Thagomizer, after the late Thag Simmons. -- Gary Lawson, The Far Side
I'm not proposing anything. I'm pointing out that the value of fiat currencies is undergirded by the taxing authority of the sovereign. It's not magic, it's not mysterious, and it's not faith (clap if you believe in fairies\b\b\b\b\b\b\b bitcoin\b\b\b\b\b\b\b dollars...)
The Great Leap Forward was an economic and social campaign by the Communist Party of China. The campaign was led by Chairman Mao Zedong and aimed to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy into a socialist society through rapid industrialization and collectivization. However, it is commonly considered to have caused the Great Chinese Famine.
Backyard furnaces were small steel blast furnaces used by the people of China during the Great Leap Forward (1958–62).[1][2] These were constructed in the backyards of the communes, and were done so to further fulfill the Great Leap Forward's ideology of the rapid industrialization of China.
However, most of the steel was impure and of poor quality and thus cracked easily. Not until 1959 did the Party realize that the only steel of any worth being produced was in the large-smelting plants. Even worse, the tending to Backyard Furnaces in the communes denied peasants the time and opportunity to produce food, effectively starving many and directly contributing to the Great Chinese Famine that struck the country only a year later.
Similar experience with both Pandora and Sirus XM. I gave up on Pandora pretty quickly. I held on to Sirus for some years, but found I wasn't using it. (My best use case for Sirius was driving, and I don't drive much anymore.)
I subscribe to Google music now, and I'm happy with it. It's cheap, the catalog has pretty much everything, and the channels are OK.
A "simple" proof of the Riemann Hypothesis seems unlikely.
This has been a marquee unsolved problem in Mathematics for over 150 years.
Any simple proof would have been found long ago.
Incurring technical debt is a business decision. And it may well be the right decision. For example, in a startup, time to market typically trumps software quality. And there are a lot of startups in the software field...
It causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell who does not have the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name.
I sing in a choir. We'll have some piece of sheet music, 3, 4, 6, maybe 8 pages. We start rehearsing it, and after a page or two the choir director says, now you've seen all the musical content in this piece. IOW, all the rest of the song is just repeats and rearrangements of what we've already sung.
So I learned this idea of "musical content". Now, when I hear current pop music, I think about it in those terms. What is the musical content of this song? And it's not two pages. It's not one page. Sometimes it's a line. Sometimes it's just a couple of bars. Sometimes it's barely a few notes.
This picture from the Miami Herald article shows a design with no redundancy. If any one of those diagonal elements fails, the whole thing comes down. And one did fail.
Slashdot Mirror
https://assets.amuniversal.com...
The first time I tried Twitter, I couldn't make any sense out of it, and I gave up after a few days.
The second time, I added ~50 people to my feed and started following them. After some months, I realized that it was making me jittery, and I stopped.
The third time, I cut my feed down to ~5 people (only 3 of whom post regularly). Now I check it once or twice a day (more if I'm bored). I read back until I get to tweets that I've seen before, and then I'm caught up.
Maybe a year ago, I'm reading my feed, and after a while I realize that I'm...lost...disoriented...out of context. I'm seeing tweets from people that I don't follow. I'm seeing tweets from long ago. I'm finding myself dropped into the middle of threads I that never saw the start of. I have a nagging feeling that I'm missing things, so I keep reading. And it just keeps going: I never get caught up.
Eventually, I start looking around, and I find that Twitter has switched me to "Top Tweets" (also called "Home"), which is some kind of algorithmic mash-up of my feed, and things linked to my feed, and things maybe sort-of like my feed, all presented in a pseudo-non-chronological order.
Twitter tries to gloss this as tweets relevant to my interests, but its primary effect it to annoy me, and disorient me, and--crucially--to prevent me from engaging with Twitter in a directed and goal-oriented fashion. I can't just read what's new and get on with the day. Instead, I'm stuck in this endless scrolling morass of...twitter stuff...
I crawl around in Twitter's configuration screens and eventually find where they've hidden the Top/Latest setting. I switch it back to Latest Tweets (my feed only, strict chronological order). I catch up on my feed and then I'm done.
But the next time I look at Twitter, they've switched my feed back to Top Tweets, and I'm lost, and they also moved the setting somewhere new and I have to go hunt it down and switch it back again.
Eventually, the setting migrates to the little star icon at the top right of the front page and stays there, but to this day Twitter periodically switch my feed to Top tweets and I have to switch it back.
It seems obvious to me that this is all about increasing user time on the platform. Twitter really, really, really does not want me to just read what's new in a directed way and then get on with my day. They want to create a morass--a tarpit--that can put me into a fugue state and keep me forever scrolling down to read just one more tweet.
It looks like you're trying to fight a war.
Do you want to
- win hearts and minds
- drone strike
- lock and load!
- nuke 'em 'till they glow
I was up in the White Mountains, in a hiking lodge, state park, national park, I don't recall.
They have a roll--a memorial--of people who have died hiking in the area, going back to around 1900.
The plaque explains that hiking isn't extremely dangerous, but you are in the wilderness, you are on a mountain, and things can happen, and we should all be mindful of this.
Some of the deaths are mishaps; some are bad weather, some are just people who happened to have a heart attack while they were on the mountain. But about once every 10 years, someone dies sledding down Mt. Washington on a cafeteria tray. (I am not making this up.)
My guess is that when someone dies this way, word gets around, and then no one tries it for a while. But after a decade has passed, there is a new generation who came along too late to get the memo, and one of them does try it, and then there is a new name on the memorial.
-- Gary Lawson, The Far Side
I'm not proposing anything.
I'm pointing out that the value of fiat currencies is undergirded by the taxing authority of the sovereign.
It's not magic, it's not mysterious, and it's not faith (clap if you believe in fairies\b\b\b\b\b\b\b bitcoin\b\b\b\b\b\b\b dollars...)
One of the primary ways that fiat currency gets and retains value is by the government decree that you must pay your taxes in it.
Sounds like a Great Leap Forward for software
I'll bet this comes from the heart
Stallman is routinely and extensively criticized for saying things he hasn't said.
Similar experience with both Pandora and Sirus XM.
I gave up on Pandora pretty quickly.
I held on to Sirus for some years, but found I wasn't using it.
(My best use case for Sirius was driving, and I don't drive much anymore.)
I subscribe to Google music now, and I'm happy with it.
It's cheap, the catalog has pretty much everything, and the channels are OK.
A "simple" proof of the Riemann Hypothesis seems unlikely.
This has been a marquee unsolved problem in Mathematics for over 150 years.
Any simple proof would have been found long ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
FTFY
The hardware people are always talking about "male" and "female" connectors. (Ick!)
We need to change this.
Where do I submit a pull request?
Incurring technical debt is a business decision.
And it may well be the right decision.
For example, in a startup, time to market typically trumps software quality.
And there are a lot of startups in the software field...
It causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell who does not have the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name.
Can they edit in fungus resistance and save the banana?
I sing in a choir.
We'll have some piece of sheet music, 3, 4, 6, maybe 8 pages.
We start rehearsing it, and after a page or two the choir director says, now you've seen all the musical content in this piece.
IOW, all the rest of the song is just repeats and rearrangements of what we've already sung.
So I learned this idea of "musical content".
Now, when I hear current pop music, I think about it in those terms.
What is the musical content of this song?
And it's not two pages.
It's not one page.
Sometimes it's a line.
Sometimes it's just a couple of bars.
Sometimes it's barely a few notes.
There's really not much there.
Evidently, it was to break the UI.
Well done!
One Ring to rule them all,
One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
that has made the USA the most successful company in the history of the planet.
Cyrano something.
Cyrano...de Bergerac.
Yeah, that's guy.
the open-source CMS built on the PHP programming language
This picture from the Miami Herald article shows a design with no redundancy. If any one of those diagonal elements fails, the whole thing comes down.
And one did fail.
n/t
Me code pretty some day
A voice in the wilderness
http://world.std.com/~swmcd/st...