cryptopian

3 gün öncediscuss

Something I really grew to hate over my time at various software firms were complex and flaky stacks with big test loops, and it's exactly this kind of reason why. Ideally, I have a problem, I want to put my head in the problem space and stay focused there until it's done. Every time a test suite takes five minutes to run, or I have to look up some obscure docs in my web browser, or I have to go somewhere else to rebuild a failing service, is an off-ramp to that flow state, and that's where I lose a whole hour to procrastination.

cryptopian

4 gün öncediscuss

I enjoy software more out of a love of maths than a love of technology. My favourite class of problems are the times I can boil a problem down to a simple equation without even touching a keyboard, and I seem to be one of the few people who enjoy algorithmic design. So for me, churning out a script using an LLM hits the same part of my brain as randomly inserting numbers into a sudoku until the app tells me I have the right answer.

cryptopian

5 gün öncediscuss

Let's say you managed this. Say you designed trains and safety protocols for coupling/decoupling at 100mph, completely reconfigure the signalling system, solve the inevitable accessibility issues for embarking the fast train... You still have 100 tonne vehicles that need conflict management between different finite sets of steel rails. And all of those other things would need physical reconfiguration as well.

cryptopian

6 gün öncediscuss

I find that when selling people on the idea of network upgrades, people find the solutions unintuitive because issues in one place are often caused by bottlenecks very far away. Half the North West and services as far as Scotland, Wales and East Anglia are stuffed because of a single mile of rail in central Manchester, so you have tell people in rural Derbyshire, "hey, Manchester needs more rail funding, it'll help you, promise". It will, but you have to know a bit about the whole network to understand why.

cryptopian

6 gün öncediscuss

I was discussing railways to somebody and noting how at-capacity the British network is. He was adamant that we just hadn't optimised the system enough and that more maths and more software was needed. I tried my best to explain that we had in fact done that, and that in the end, there's no getting around the bottleneck of moving 100 tonne vehicles along a finite set of steel rails.

cryptopian

12 gün öncediscuss

And like cookie clicker, once you're watching the number going up long term, it's hard for your mind to accept a point at which you have "enough".

cryptopian

12 gün öncediscuss

It's why I prefer not to get bogged down in litigation over what counts as social media. It's far more productive to look at the individual mechanisms that make web platforms bad for socialising.

cryptopian

12 gün öncediscuss

One of the most insidious aspects of social media is how the reward and discoverability mechanisms train users to become their own marketing department. It's most obvious on LinkedIn, where your presence is materially tied to career growth, but each platform does it in its own way.

cryptopian

23 gün öncediscuss

> So if they stumble into random niche subreddit because the algorithm suggested it or someone linked to it or it popped up in a search result, in two clicks they can be posting their own new posts or replies in that very niche community

I occasionally post on a regional cycling subreddit. It's the kind of sub where the average post gets maybe 5-10 comments and maybe 100 upvotes if it's popular, mostly people discussing commute routes, laughing about bad infrastructure, highlighting community events and so on. Sometimes a post makes it to the front page, and inevitably, this brings a lot of anger and direct, uninformed takes. It's usually because it's some dashcam of somebody doing something stupid, and that makes it very clickable.

cryptopian

25 gün öncediscuss

Most importantly, modern platforms are optimised to maximise your attention and engagement, and nothing's more engaging than fear, anger and superiority. Your comment sorting algorithms find that the statements most reacted to are the most outlandish and direct.

cryptopian

27 gün öncediscuss

This is quite a common linguistic phonomenon, where a word is rebracketed to form a new suffix, even if it doesn't make sense with the original etymology. See also -holic (alcoholic -> workaholic), -thon (marathon -> danceathon) or -gate (Watergate -> partygate). Termed a "libfix" from liberated affix

cryptopian

geçen aydiscuss

> But I actually think the majority of the backlash has nothing to do with stock valuations.

I think it exacerbates the points you make. "You mean, you want to take all the IP, immediately force the tech on us, maybe make my job redundant, and you want billions in funding for it!?"

cryptopian

geçen aydiscuss

Somebody already linked 1053, but https://xkcd.com/2501/ also applies. When you're wrapped in an information bubble, it's easy to forget that this could be new, exciting/important information to people outside the bubble.

cryptopian

geçen aydiscuss

I really enjoyed her talk "Making Difficult Things Easy"[1]. She's got a real talent for taking complex technical subjects, recognising the difficulties in understanding them, and explaining them back in a friendly way that doesn't mystify them. Almost the opposite of the modern IT industry.

[1] https://jvns.ca/blog/2023/10/06/new-talk--making-hard-things...

cryptopian

geçen aydiscuss

In software too, it feels like there's been a shift to a more individualistic "learn-on-the-job" attitude in companies. If you're not the kind of person who knows how to structure learning a new field, it's easy to end up with big gaps when you don't know what you're looking for.

cryptopian

geçen aydiscuss

Another reason is that these routes operate an airfare model where all tickets are for a specific seat on a specific service, with increasing prices as the seats sell out. It allows for more efficient train loading, with the downside that you can't turn up to the station and assume you can take the next train.

cryptopian

geçen aydiscuss

> AI is better at this than you

Software is better than me at crossword puzzles but that doesn't mean I'm going to optimise my time solving the weekly cryptic

cryptopian

2 ay öncediscuss

Given all the arguments above this post, I don't think there's a lot of value in trying to categorise any particular website as a yes/no to "is this social media". All that achieves is people trying to litigate whether a site fits a definition nobody can agree on.

Much more effective is trying to identify the mechanisms by which a communication platform breaks social interactions. Is the feed sorted by engagement or chronologically? Does the platform encourage you to chase metrics? Does the default feed include content you didn't subscribe to? Are comment threads difficult to trace through?

cryptopian

2 ay öncediscuss

For those who don't have the time to watch, the biggest point he hammers home: fossil fuels are a single use energy source; renewables keep producing energy.

So long as you've built the infrastructure and kept it maintained, the energy continues to come. With fossil fuels, you have to build turbines, then you have to remove it from the earth, then you have to ship it to said turbines, then you burn it and it's gone.

cryptopian

2 ay öncediscuss

It's a challenge, but remember that there is a lot of money in trying to convince people about the status quo. I'd keep in mind the kind of tactics that fossil fuel companies will be using to convince people otherwise:

- Using old data - the price of renewables and storage technology have fallen through the floor but bad actors are quite happy to use outdated numbers to convince you that they're not cheap

- Ignoring existing downsides - renewables have issues and we shouldn't forget that, but it's easy to forget what we're replacing. e.g. Lithium mines are environmentally unfriendly, but you dig it out of the ground and turn it into a battery once (and bonus - it's recyclable). Oil and gas must be continually dug out of the ground and burned

- But China... - I don't think most people realise quite how quickly the rest of the world is pushing on with renewables