Sven Slootweg (soft-deprecated) @joepie91@pixie.town

MFW someone decides the best way to reunite someone's lost driver's license is to post the whole thing completely uncensored onto a local Facebook page instead of, you know, travelling to the address on the fucking card or mailing it to them.

I reiterate, completely uncensored.

As my mom says, success brings many (fake) friends.

The added context is gold 😂

If you don't have enough time to do both the documentation and the code polishing/testing in your project, the code work is the work that you should drop and leave to the community, not the documentation.

You *can* properly implement something that is documented, but you *can't* properly document something that is implemented unless you are the creator with full context of why it works the way it does.

Gastfahrt nach Hause oder wie ich es nenne: Swift on Rails

You are in 'detached HEAD' state. 💀

How do I keep not missing my stops, I get on tram, get distracted with ADHD, I remember I should look at what stop I need to get out, oh, this one!

Anyways, this poll was inspired by a research drive earlier in the week into text rendering systems, because if it wasn't bad enough already that text rendering is an endless source of hell problems, they also all seem to have totally random licenses. I'm developing a deep deep hatred for licenses, especially the GPL and LGPL. It goes well with my deep deep general hatred of copyright and patents.

Let’s talk about a problem - software cannot be trusted anymore. In the past, if I allowed an app to send me notifications, I’d get alerted for things I wanted to hear about. Now every app uses spurious notifications as a way to artificially boost their daily active user count. I am one by one having to shut off notifications on apps that used to be reliable products. I’ve disabled notifications on linkedin because it keeps sending me ads and random unnecessary alerts.

We fundamentally need a new type of option: the ability to grant software privileges that are completely phony. I need to be able to *pretend* to grant an app the ability to send me notifications, but then to have all those notifications sent into the void. Untrustworthy software should not be able to know what privileges I have granted it.

“Betalen voor een goede dienst vinden we uiteraard niet erg. Investeren in een platform waar we niet achter staan is uiteraard niet het signaal dat we willen afgeven. Los daarvan is het niet in lijn met onze waarden.“

#nluug #twitter #mastodon

https://nluug.nl/nieuws/nluug-stopt-met-x-voorheen-twitter/

The University of Pennsylvania is acting proud of Katalin Karikó now that she's won a Nobel. But they kicked her out of her research assistant professor job when she insisted on doing the work that won her that prize:

"She recalls spending one Christmas and New Year’s Eve conducting experiments and writing grant applications. But many other scientists were turning away from the field, and her bosses at UPenn felt mRNA had shown itself to be impractical and she was wasting her time. They issued an ultimatum: if she wanted to continue working with mRNA she would lose her prestigious faculty position, and face a substantial pay cut.

”It was particularly horrible as that same week, I had just been diagnosed with cancer,” said Karikó. “I was facing two operations, and my husband, who had gone back to Hungary to pick up his green card, had got stranded there because of some visa issue, meaning he couldn’t come back for six months. I was really struggling, and then they told me this."

"While undergoing surgery, Karikó assessed her options. She decided to stay, accept the humiliation of being demoted, and continue to doggedly pursue the problem. This led to a chance meeting which would both change the course of her career, and that of science."

Elsewhere she recalled:

“I thought of going somewhere else, or doing something else. I also thought maybe I’m not good enough, not smart enough."

She's now an adjunct in UPenn's neurosurgery department. Will they fast-track her for tenure now that she has a Nobel, or just live with the shame?

Both quotes here come from interesting stories. The first is from here:

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mrna-coronavirus-vaccine-pfizer-biontech

The second is from here:

https://billypenn.com/2020/12/29/university-pennsylvania-covid-vaccine-mrna-kariko-demoted-biontech-pfizer/

Curiosity question: What is a piece of software that you really like, and what makes it better (for you) than the alternatives you've tried? ​

(Any category of software is welcome, and so is any rationale - please do not argue with people in the replies!)

The vaccine reduces the odds of long covid by at most 50% and long covid incidence according to research is anywhere between 10 and 40 so no if you are vaccinated you still have to mask because if you aren't you're going around disabling people and I fail to see how that leads to equity

If you're a self avowed leftist and mad at me for daring to suggest you may be doing something bad, maybe sit with that for a while and figure out where that's coming from

And yes, masks do work to protect yourself (and in doing so others), the science on this has been quite clear for years now. Cloth and surgical masks only protect others, but N95 and especially better (N99/P100/FFP3) respirators (which are usually reusable) protect the wearer extremely well

Citation: this UK hospital reduced hospital acquired covid infections in staff by 100% (ie entirely) by switching to FFP3 respirators https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/29/cambridge-hospitals-mask-upgrade-appears-to-eliminate-covid-19-risk-to-staff