danhulton

danhulton, 23 days ago to random

The high-speed trains in Italy are definitely fast, and modern and spacious, too. But boy oh boy could they stand to be climate-controlled a little bit. We covered a lot of ground in not nearly as much time as I'd expect, but I am sweatin'.

danhulton, 1 month ago to random

Again, I'm no supporter of Biden's terrible policies on Gaza, but it'd be just so much harder to get anything approaching peace and justice with Trump in charge and making everything worse.

danhulton, 1 month ago to random

Re - last repost:

The disconnect with the kind of thinking that makes this comic funny comes from the idea that someone's vote for President is where their interaction with democracy and politics starts and ends. (1/3)

danhulton, 1 month ago to Starfield

I just realized that I put maybe 20-30 hours into #Starfield and NOTHING stands out as especially cool and worth remembering. Not the boring spaceflight, not the bland characters, not the bare-bones combat, none of it.

Meanwhile, the frustrations are still clear as day. The pointlessly limited inventory, the long-ass animations they were so in love with that they would not let you skip, the terrible UI that was fixed by modders within DAYS of release... All still fresh and infuriating.

danhulton, 4 months ago to random

It is endlessly frustrating to see people getting mad at "the left" like it's a monolith, when the only thing that ties "the left" together is progressive ideals in some fashion.

It's not a club with a boss or a state with cops who can punish racist or antisemitic lefties. It's a label applied to people, that's it.

If you're mad at "racist lefties", no you're not. You're mad at racists. That's what they are. The fact that they're progressive about homelessness doesn't even enter into it.

danhulton, 4 months ago to random

My timeline is split evenly between two camps:

• "I don't know why ANYONE would use an Apple Vision Pro. It's stupid and anyone who likes it is stupid."
• "Huh. This is actually pretty neat."

Look, I don't think the AVP is for me, probably, but if I had to pick a camp to hang out in, it sure wouldn't be the first one. It's an entirely optional tech gizmo; it's not worth villifying people over.

danhulton, 4 months ago to random

Oh god, my whole career. https://social.sdf.org/@mjgardner/111876202340871640

danhulton, 4 months ago to random

I wanna surface this to my main timeline because it's kinda important to say out loud from time to time:

Businesses do NOT "have to" focus exclusively on their return to shareholders. Not legally, not morally.

That is the misguided OPINION of a 1970 essay by Milton Friedman, and the fact that everyone seemed to just hop on board that opinion is a significant reason why we switched gears into hyper-hell-capitaliam since then.

Push back on this every time you see it.

danhulton, 4 months ago to random

One thing I have learned today, is that you shouldn't have a contentious toot blow up when you're going to be busy at work for many hours. I feel a bit like I'm necroposting to reply back so many hours after a lot of these conversations have petered out, but what am I going to do, NOT post on the internet?

danhulton, 4 months ago to random

This is fascinating. I've always felt this bit of "common knowledge" was completely at odds with the well-observed "You get what you measure" phenomenon. (Try to track programmer productivity by # of commits, everyone focuses on making 10x the number of tiny commits, productivity decreases instead.)

I am also curious how we got this sentiment ENTIRELY backwards for so long. https://indieweb.social/@dandean/111784409154249713

danhulton, 5 months ago to random

I haven't read even so much as a review yet, but this is an instant buy for me: https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324005872

Legit excited to sit down on boxing day and read all about some early industry-defining computer games and the man who played a key role in them.

danhulton, 5 months ago to ai

I strongly suspect that the decline of #search results because of terrible #ai generated sites is going to lead to a resurgence in the popularity of manually-curated directories, such as we had before search engines took off in the very early days of the web.

Adding content quickly and reliably will be an issue, but could be potentially solved by adding some "web of trust" layers on top.

Definitely something to think more about.

danhulton, 5 months ago to random

It should be illegal to pay ransoms. Period. Take the incentive away.

There are already companies that aren't getting their data back ever. There are already companies who have had their data leaked into the public. The current regime does not solve these problems.

(And not just a fine, that just effectively adds a tax to the ransom. Actual jail time for whomever authorizes the decision, and anyone in a position of authority who could have prevented it, but didn't.) https://cyberplace.social/@GossiTheDog/111608377234148525

danhulton, 5 months ago to random

Hey ADHD friends, it's your annual opportunity to get everything done for the year that you've been putting off because of lack of motivation!

THE END OF THE YEAR IS COMING! I HAVEN'T DONE EVEN A TENTH OF MY LIST!

AAAAAUGH https://techhub.social/

danhulton, 6 months ago to random

Nevermind, I take it back. The dude IS an asshole and it's not worth the extra follows.

Unfollow, block, and move on with life, I suppose.

danhulton, 6 months ago to random

You ever find yourself about to unfollow someone, but then you realize that you can "mine" their conversations and Follow the people who are arguing intelligently with them?

danhulton, 7 months ago to random

Boy, am I ever sick of the word "democratize."

danhulton, 7 months ago to random

Saw a prime example recently in my feed here of how not to make a compelling argument, and literally nobody in the comments realized how counterproductive it actually was.

Does nobody understand that you're never gonna bring anyone around by starting off calling them an asshole?

https://greaterdanorequalto.com/maybe-dont-call-someone-an-asshole/

danhulton, 7 months ago to random

God, 1000% this. And then to have them hold up "But we don't know how the human mind works, either!" as a shield is infuriating.

LLMs are doing exactly what they were predicted they would do and are exhibiting exactly the predicted failure modes. We understand them well enough. And sure, we may not know how the human mind works, but the output is entirely dissimilar! https://mastodon.social/@mhoye/111308058043936791

danhulton, 7 months ago to random

I'm "social responsibility." https://mastodon.social/@tess/111246712213281223

danhulton, 8 months ago to random

If you don't have Carrot Weather installed, I highly recommend it. Weather AND (occasional) news, delivered in that snarky tone I love!

danhulton, 9 months ago to Starfield

Honestly, I wish #Starfield and other open-world RPGs didn't have a main quest. It's never the best part of the game -- in fact, it's frequently the WORST part of the game. Just leave it out and let me bomb around the world doing side quests and building things and making friends and enemies.

That'd be 10x better than any "fetch the macguffins, save the universe" nonsense that every main quest tend to end up as.

danhulton, 10 months ago to random

This sucks, like, a lot. And to have it presented as a fair accomplit, without seeking any sort of community input, is frustrating.

I'll wait to see how they reply to the visceral responses they're getting, because they've had very reasonable follow-ups to significant issues in the past, but if this isn't resolved to my satisfaction, I'll have to stop my monthly contribution and move servers. https://hachyderm.io/@nivenly/110793389840249184

danhulton, 10 months ago to random

I'm not sure why I keep assuming the best and giving the benefit of the doubt to clearly rude people.

(Aside: what do we call subtweets on here? "Subpost" sounds so boring, and "subtoot", while fun, uses the best-left-in-the-past "toot" suffix, so that's probably a no go, too.)

danhulton, 10 months ago to random

You should see Barbie at your earliest convenience.