@davecb This one is a metal door, although it's undoubtedly still hollow. But not our problem, the building property manager gets to deal with things (even if the department winds up paying for it, everything has to go through Facilities & Services).

They probably are going to have to put in […]

@whitequark "Oh, that USB stick that's barely stuck in to the wobbly port? That's the boot drive. We needed all the hard drive bays to get enough storage space."

@bitprophet "We need to build more schools." "Oh, you're running out of space for kids?" "No, R&D requires more first principals."

@gnomon @dalias Partly my reflex of citing sources is because I grew up in an Internet culture that was big on proper attribution of things you were riffing on, so the original poster could get some of the credit (and you didn't pass yourself off as cleverer than you actually were).

@dalias @gnomon It's possible that I'm making a usage mistake here and that giving the original poster more control is more important and more appreciated in practice than not dinging their notifications.

@dalias @gnomon I'll sometimes deliberately post using a link instead of a quote post because as I understand it, a link doesn't notify the original poster while a quote post does, basically dragging them into whatever new conversation I've started (and certainly forcing my remarks into their […]

As for why programmers should care about ethics, well, the famous Thomas More quote about the laws of England comes to mind¹.

¹ https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/A_Man_for_All_Seasons_%281966_film%29#Dialogue also http://www.geoffreylandis.com/Quotes/allseasons2.html

I've come to feel strongly that "does it work or not" is the wrong question to ask about today's large scale LLMs. The right question is "are you willing to use a deeply unethical tool", a tool built on abuse, lies, exploitation, and copyright violation (among other bad things about them). Given […]

Line 5 Crosstown track level is a long way down at all of the stations I've come through, some more than others (hi Avenue). People who regularly ride the Crosstown and take the stairs (possibly because they didn't realize this was a stairs-only exit) are going to get a lot of exercise. Even […]

I took Line 5 Crosstown today (again) from Oakwood to Avenue and then later back. This time there seemed to be cell service for much or all of the run. My rides bracketed 5pm so in the rush hour extended cone, and there were a reasonable number of people but it wasn't jammed. Everything worked […]

It is an irony of my WFH life that the coldest winter days inside are generally the warmest winter days outside. My computer room at home is small and fed by the HVAC in such a way that it's usually the warmest room in the place, so if the heat is running regularly it's plenty warm. But if the […]

My friends, as it is Superb Owl day, I would like to show a more recent picture of Baked Beans, taken back in January. He now has his adult plumage and is quite majestic, particularly since he's all sticky-uppy. He was being taken past the gorilla play room and […]

[Original post on mstdn.social]

@ennui.org Yeah, they're probably outside packagers who aren't testing their builds properly with mock/etc.

(What is extra fun is that I have some things that only build properly in mock and don't seem to do so outside it, for reasons I have never bothered digging into. Fortunately I don't have […]