ianmcgowan

5 ms·

1.
by ianmcgowan 11d ago
That's the horror..
2.
by ianmcgowan 26d ago
It is, apocryphally, a gotcha test for Gen-alpha. As is being able to return the correct change or make a phone call to a human being. Reminds me of the iRobot line: "Can you create a symphony?", "No. Can you?".
3.
by ianmcgowan 4mo ago
Now I'm watching this thread for the consultant hired by the film to show up and explain why each of those goofs was caused by the director explicitly asking for them...
4.
by ianmcgowan 6mo ago
It's fascinating the extent to which all the models rely on text - it's like they have severe (but not total) aphantasia: "We hypothesize that this phenomenon emerges predominantly from a misassumption about how these systems
5.
by ianmcgowan 6mo ago
Surely "Player Piano" is more relevant?
6.
by ianmcgowan 7mo ago
Or Roko's Basilisk
7.
by ianmcgowan 7mo ago
Probably the burning man essay, which is one of the best things I've ever read online. https://open.substack.com/pub/samkriss/p/numb-at-burning-man
8.
by ianmcgowan 8mo ago
A protest demonstrates a level of unhappiness with a group or policy. People may not believe what they see on the news, facebook, or youtube, but hopefully we have not reached a point where they refuse to believe what they see with their ow
9.
by ianmcgowan 9mo ago
Sounds like the plot of "Big Brother" by Cory Doctorow
10.
by ianmcgowan 10mo ago
Try "No agenda, no attenda" - see if a touch of levity helps.
11.
by ianmcgowan 11mo ago
Lovely essay, tone reminds me this book which has a similar vibe. https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/truck-on-rebuilding-a-worn-out...
12.
by ianmcgowan 1y ago
Kernighan!
13.
by ianmcgowan 1y ago
That's exactly what the Lizard overlords are doing! /s - wouldn't be surprised there's a few conspiracy theorists who believe this...
14.
by ianmcgowan 1y ago
Parent comment is working from The Gervais Principle[1] of office politics. There are companies where that's an accurate description of reality, unpleasant though it might be. [1] https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/1
15.
by ianmcgowan 1y ago
This is where defensively blocking off your calendar comes in!
16.
by ianmcgowan 1y ago
I don’t get why municipal investment isn’t more of a thing - why can’t cities and counties be their own PE, buy a small fire truck company and turn it into a non-profit? If they captured the surplus that’s going to the PE company surely cos
17.
by ianmcgowan 1y ago
A tangent - sounds like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Koli - a key plot component is a chatty Sony AI music player. A little YA, but a fun read..
18.
by ianmcgowan 1y ago
Popper and "the paradox of tolerance" to the rescue. You can, and should, tolerate anything but intolerance.
19.
by ianmcgowan 1y ago
A chromebox mounted behind the monitor did the trick for me. Haven't had an emergency wipe/reinstall in years. Also, a tablet with keyboard takes some of the pressure off having a "computer" and you can go with iOS or
20.
by ianmcgowan 1y ago
I moved from IC to manager to director. Meetings in general are a huge time suck, and by the end of my tenure, I was basically triple-booked for the entire day every day. Every evening was an exercise in deciding who to piss off. And the e
21.
by ianmcgowan 1y ago
In California, as a non-exempt employee (basically not a manager if you're at a big company), you'd have to be paid for that on-call time with those requirements. The key term is "restricted" and the 10 minute expectati
22.
by ianmcgowan 2y ago
I moved to "the city" in 1989 from England, and people were complaining then about yuppies and it wasn't the same as the good ol' days of the 60's. SF seems to be a lot more in-flux compared to other cities, so if y
23.
by ianmcgowan 2y ago
That doesn't explain why math is so amazingly effective at describing reality - all the pure mathematical results seem to eventually end up being useful at describing some new aspect of the world (to the chagrin of the pure mathematici
24.
by ianmcgowan 2y ago
I love the mental picture from Greg Egan's Diaspora of the truth mines, literally hacking the math like chunks of coal: "If ve ever wanted to be a miner in vis own right -- making and testing vis own conjectures at the coal face,
25.
by ianmcgowan 2y ago
A subsidiary of Lumon? Do you have to be severed to work in MDR?
26.
by ianmcgowan 2y ago
Let's hope they don't want to paint the bike shed!
27.
by ianmcgowan 2y ago
I always start with "SELECT COUNT( ) FROM ..." for this reason, and then go back and replace the COUNT( ) when I get a handle on the tables/filters/groups involved..
28.
by ianmcgowan 2y ago
Chesterton's point wasn't that the fence should never move (which is what you seem to be implying), but that it should only be moved (or technically removed) when you understand why it was initially put in place. I'm sympathe
29.
by ianmcgowan 2y ago
Yes! I do this when doing anything destructive ("rm -rf dir", "drop db", etc.) - i just stop and say out loud what environment I'm in, what the command I'm running is going to do and why I am doing it. This is
30.
by ianmcgowan 2y ago
Really puts the auto- in didact! Very curious to hear how this worked for you; it’s almost directly the opposite of the copilot approach. I learned assembler by typing in listings from magazines and hand dis-assembling and debugging on pape

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