KevinMarks

KevinMarks, 6 days ago to random

And Middlesbrough wonders why the Linthorpe Road bike lane isn't used much.

Bike lane is full of cones, roadsigns and a traffic light for the adjacent car lane

KevinMarks, 9 days ago to random

The irony of this is that "pushing water uphill" is far more viable than CCS - that's a good description of Pumped Hydropower, which is one fo the best energy storage options avilable at grid scale
https://mastodon.social/@CelloMomOnCars/112011573363426941

mcc, 10 days ago to random

A thing I hate hate hate (but always happens) is when a company distributes "Sample Code" for their API, and you open it up, and what they did was make a series of "Helpful" wrapper classes for the API then write code using the wrapper classes. Now suddenly it isn't sample code for the API, it's sample code for the helper classes. You can't just paste the sample code into your own project, unless you copy the helper classes into every project, in which case why aren't the helper classes the API?

The NYTimes is once again trashing the most promising mobility innovation of the 21st century (lemmy.ml)

cross-posted from: lemmy.ml/post/16133154...

mcc, 16 days ago to random

The problem with udm14* is that Google Calculator is legitimately one of my favorite pieces of software (the natural language unit conversion is so good), and I expect udm14 is going to kill Google Calculator because that's the point

Maybe I should just make my own js calculator with builtin unit conversion.

• See https://mastodon.online/ ; it's great, although since similar "give me the old version" flags on YouTube have sometimes stopped working without warning, I wonder how long it will last

KevinMarks, 16 days ago to random

The international consensus against Sunak's ridiculous traffic policies designed to kill people https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240517-vision-zero-how-europe-cut-the-number-of-people-dying-on-its-roads

jessamyn, 19 days ago to random

I serve an aging population who use technology but want it to do a few specific things:

• Big slow email - make it simple to do basic tasks (read, compose, attach, file) without clicking any tiny targets. Don't hide features.
• Simple home page. A great site called Internet Buttons used to help you do this.
  http://web.archive.org/web/20171212223232/http://www.internetbuttons.org/page/gallery/
• Streaming (only) networks. Many people I work with ditch cable but want to watch network TV/news. It's harder than it should be! They'd pay more for fewer options.

KevinMarks, 19 days ago to random

Now if I were choosing a voice for an AI program I would have based it on Orac, not Her https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCg43omcgZs

ricmac, 21 days ago to random

@stevenlevy has written his “This Changes Everything” for AI (referencing his Dec 1995 article about the Internet). Certainly the power of AI now is gob-smacking…and frightening. I have found AI very useful in various ways, from helping me debug stuff in my 11ty website to assisting me with research tasks. But over the past 6 months or so, I’ve also come to realize that the human parts of the web — and it’s inherent openness — are worth fighting for, and saving. https://www.wired.com/story/its-time-to-believe-the-ai-hype/

dangillmor, 22 days ago to random

Social media disappointments:

1. Journalists are still actively participating at exTwitter, thereby actively supporting Musk, who is helping extremists bring down democracy and, by extension, a free press.

2. Reddit got away with stomping its volunteer moderators and users, and its execs are cashing in on an IPO that in a more just world would have flopped.

3. Writers I respect decided to stick with Substack despite arrogant, extremist-friendly investors and leadership.

mick, 22 days ago to random

For the first time the #CoSocialCa Mastodon server has started to struggle just a little bit to keep up with the flow of the Fediverse.

We’ve usually been “push” heavy but we’ve started to see some spikes in “pull” queue latency. The worst of these spikes was today, where we fell behind by at least a couple minutes for most of the afternoon.

1/?

#MastoAdmin #CoSocialTechOps

A pair of graphs showing sidekiq queue latency and enqueued jobs. The queue latency peaked at around 6 minutes at roughly 6pm this afternoon, but was between 1-2 minutes most of the afternoon. The maximum number of messages in queue at any one time was 12000. The majority of the traffic is pull queue.

revk, 23 days ago (edited 23 days ago) to random

Latest bit of fun, but small, bit of C code...

iMessage (from which the screen shot comes) copes remarkably well with them.

When a specification casually says to remove accents to compare letters just A to Z, FFS. Ended up scanning the whole Unicode XML file to find A-Z type letters.

KevinMarks, 24 days ago to random

“As tech gets more complex, things seem to get more intuitive locally, but overall the arbitrariness keeps going up. The number of YouTube videos explaining arbitrary shit keeps going up.” https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2024/05/14/arbitrariness-costs/

baldur, 25 days ago to random

“The wrong way to do Web Components | Go Make Things” https://gomakethings.com/the-wrong-way-to-do-web-components/

mekkaokereke, 29 days ago to random

If you got upset at me for pointing out that more people died of Covid under Biden than Trump, in large part because Biden rolled back common sense restrictions that were in place under Trump...

Then you'll hate me pointing out that Trump introduced a 25% tariff on Chinese EVs, and Biden is upping that to 100% tariff.

https://insideevs.com/news/719283/chinese-ev-tariffs-biden-quadruple/

We can't allow the US to get off of fossil fuels... unless US billionaires win! 🤡

Fear the BYD Dolphin! (an EV car for $12K)
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/T3nfyO_UHjk

KevinMarks, 29 days ago to random

The aurora moved south enough that I could see it looking away from Middlesbrough

green/orange/magenta aurora with a star in the middle and tree branches in the foreground
green//magenta aurora with a stars sprinkled through it
diagonal magenta aurora with trees in the foreground, some city light and a small crescent moon near the horizon

KevinMarks, 29 days ago to random

Can everyone in Middlesbrough turn the lights and street lights off so I can see the aurora please?

skinnylatte, 29 days ago to VideoGames

it's weird how much of LA I feel I know just coz I played a lot of GTA V..

#VideoGames #LosAngeles #GTAV

ben, 30 days ago to random

I'm really excited about these updates to ShareOpenly, my tool that lets you add a "share to social media" button to your website that understands the fediverse, Bluesky, and more: https://werd.io/2024/some-shareopenly-updates

markmccaughrean, 1 month ago to random

You have people at your house for an evening & are eating when the phone rings. It’s your daughter who asks “what’s up?”

Answering:

“We have friends over & we are having fish for dinner”

would be fine, as both parts can be used to describe the present, but:

“We are having friends over & we have fish for dinner”

would be wrong, because both parts sound like they describe the future.

The English language is quite often idiotic 🙄

liaizon, 1 month ago to random

working on a tool thing to make labels for all our spices, cause I wanted an easy way to put text in a circle

KevinMarks, 1 month ago to random

This is brilliant in its own right, and also works as meta-commentary, as no LLM could get the scansion that tight and the rhymes that enjoyable: "well, actually"/polydactyly and plagiarise/Hbomberguys are markers of humanity https://mathstodon.xyz/@andrewt/112380073199982452

evacide, 1 month ago to random

Important fashion update: my silver bias-cut "space royalty" gown and silver star Hedy Lamarr headdress were a great success. On theme. Would wear again.