technodad

[technodad]

so international space station astronauts apparently dropped a tool bag during a spacewalk. and if you look outside when the ISS is in your region, you can see it with binoculars

The tool bag is now orbiting our planet just ahead of the ISS with a visual magnitude of around 6, according to EarthSky. That means it is slightly less bright than the ice giant Uranus, the seventh planet from the sun. As a result, the bag  —  officially known as a crew lock bag  —  is slightly too dim to be visible to the unaided eye, but skywatchers should be able to pick it up with binoculars.  To see it for yourself, first find out when you can find spot the space station over the next few months (NASA even has a new app to help you). The bag should be floating two to four minutes ahead of the station. As it descends rapidly, the bag is likely to disintegrate when it reaches an altitude of around 70 miles (113 kilometers) over Earth. 

she's fucking magnificent

[technodad]

Remember when tech workers dreamed of working for a big company for a few years, before striking out on their own to start their own company that would knock that tech giant over?

Then that dream shrank to: work for a giant for a few years, quit, do a fake startup, get acqui-hired by your old employer, as a complicated way of getting a bonus and a promotion.

Then the dream shrank further: work for a tech giant for your whole life, get free kombucha and massages on Wednesdays.

And now, the dream is over. All that’s left is: work for a tech giant until they fire your ass, like those 12,000 Googlers who got fired six months after a stock buyback that would have paid their salaries for the next 27 years.

We deserve better than this. We can get it.

-The proletarianization of tech workers: If there is hope, it is in the proles

[technodad]

I gave my soapbox speech about how weight loss is mostly bullshit to two different patients in a row yesterday and so help me I’m pretty sure one of these days someone is going to say “but SURELY you agree I’d be HEALTHIER if I lost weight!” bc you can see the disbelief in their eyes. And like. Sure, maybe! You might see some improvement in biomarkers like LDL and A1c, and your knees would probably feel better. But you would be amazed at how much more good you can do for yourself by focusing on things you can actually meaningfully change without resorting to making yourself miserable. Eat more fresh fruits and vegetables—it’s hard bc they’re more difficult to prepare and more expensive per calorie and go bad faster than other foods, but they’re what we evolved eating the most of so they’re what our bodies need the most of. And walk around more; sure, cardio is great for you, but if it sucks so bad you don’t do it, it isn’t doing shit for you. And we evolved to walk very very long distances, a little bit at a time, so our bodies respond actually very well to adding walks into our schedules, which is vastly easier than adding workouts that are frankly designed to be punishing when the definition of punishing is “makes you less likely to do it again in the future.”

You get one life. It is shorter than you can begin to imagine. Don’t waste it hating yourself because somebody is going to make money off that self-hatred. You deserve better than to be a cash cow for billionaires who pay aestheticians and dermatologists to make them (or at least their trophy wives) look thin and beautiful no matter what they actually do.

[technodad]

Cringe started as a verb describing a physical reaction, i.e.: "I cringe when I see [x]."

Modern slang has turned cringe into an adjective describing anything to which a person might have such a reaction.

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This shift in language is illustrative of a shift in culture.

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For a while there, in the early 2000s, there was this big sex positivity movement and we talked openly about kink and queer sexuality and creating a culture of consent that broke away from traditional conservative ideas of moral respectability.

And now we are in the midst of this giant purity culture backlash, this giant push for rigid conformity all over the internet. Anything that deviates from the norm even remotely is ridiculed.

And this cultural shift is perfectly encapsulated in this singular linguistic shift, this verb becoming a noun.

The Revenge of the Pearl Clutchers

That's what "cringing" is. It's pearl clutching.

When the pearl clutchers turned cringe into an adjective, they turned a reaction into an accusation. The pearl clutchers don't want to take responsibility for their own kneejerk emotions. They want to blame YOU.

They are saying, "My disgust isn't the fault of my own backwards prejudices. It is YOU who are inherently disgusting. My inability to cope with even the slightest deviation from norm is not the problem here. YOUR refusal to rigidly conform is the problem. I am not the one who is cringing. YOU are the one who is cringe."

Fuck 'em.

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Take the word back.

Cringe is not something people are.

It's something judgmental assholes do.

[technodad]

Hey. Why isn’t the moon landing a national holiday in the US. Isn’t that fucked up? Does anyone else think that’s absurd?

[technodad]

New Things to Beware on the Internet

On May 3rd, Google released 8 new top-level domains (TLDs) -- these are new values like .com, .org, .biz, domain names. These new TLDs were made available for public registration via any domain registrar on May 10th.

Usually, this should be a cool info, move on with your life and largely ignore it moment.

Except a couple of these new domain names are common file type extensions: ".zip" and ".mov".

This means typing out a file name could resolve into a link that takes you to one of these new URLs, whether it's in an email, on your tumblr blog post, a tweet, or in file explorer on your desktop.

What was previously plain text could now resolve as link and go to a malicious website where people are expecting to go to a file and therefore download malware without realizing it.

Folk monitoring these new domain registrations are already seeing some clearly malicious actors registering and setting this up. Some are squatting the domain names trying to point out what a bad idea this was. Some already trying to steal your login in credentials and personal info.

This is what we're seeing only 12 days into the domains being available. Only 5 days being publicly available.

What can you do? For now, be very careful where you type in .zip or .mov, watch what website URLs you're on, don't enable automatic downloads, be very careful when visiting any site on these new domains, and do not type in file names without spaces or other interrupters.

I'm seeing security officers for companies talking about wholesale blocking .zip and .mov domains from within the company's internet, and that's probably wise.

Be cautious out there.

[technodad]

[technodad]

Happy Easter

[technodad]

Code of Federal Regulations on Gifts from Outside Sources

From Title 5, part 2635.201:

(b)(1): Every employee has a fundamental responsibility to the United States and its citizens to place loyalty to the Constitution, laws, and ethical principles above private gain. An employee's actions should promote the public's trust that this responsibility is being met. For this reason, employees should consider declining otherwise permissible gifts if they believe that a reasonable person with knowledge of the relevant facts would question the employee's integrity or impartiality as a result of accepting the gift.

(b)(2): An employee who is considering whether acceptance of a gift would lead a reasonable person with knowledge of the relevant facts to question his or her integrity or impartiality may consider, among other relevant factors, whether:

(i) The gift has a high market value;

(ii) The timing of the gift creates the appearance that the donor is seeking to influence an official action;

(iii) The gift was provided by a person who has interests that may be substantially affected by the performance or nonperformance of the employee's official duties; and

(iv) Acceptance of the gift would provide the donor with significantly disproportionate access.

#legal #government #ethics

[technodad]

[technodad]

America's healthcare motto: Why pay less to live longer?

#healthcare #economy

[technodad]

Geoff Greer did a great review of Internal Combustion (ICE) cars powered by gasoline. It's generally a balanced view about the advantages and shortcomings of ICE cars, though it doesn't say much about the need for frequent maintenance and the high cost of ownership.

The article nicely touches upon something that is rarely mentioned: How badly matched ICE engines are to the needs of a moving vehicle. Because ICE engines rely on a previous intake /compression cycle, they are unable to start turning from a stop. In current ICE car designs, many ironically use an electric motor to start the ICE engine every time you start moving, and even then. a heavy, complex, and inefficient transmission is needed to match the ICE engine output to the torque needs of the wheels.

It also omits some other things that bother my engineering sensibilities: There's a lot of parasitic weight driving the operating inefficiencies of ICE cars. For example, there is a complex lubrication mechanism to prevent the reciprocating engine from grinding itself to metal filings, instead of the simple sealed bearings used on electric motors.

Even more ironically for a heat engine: Though an ICE engine burns gasoline to produce heat to turn the engine, it generates so much heat that it has to carry a tank of water called a radiator to throw some of the heat away. It's no wonder ICE car owners are always upset about fuel prices.

Geoff's conclusion sums it up well:

But no matter how enjoyable a gas car is at its best, it’s just not compelling for daily use. Compared to the status quo a gas car is inconvenient, slow, noisy, smelly, and dangerous. I think a few enthusiasts and hipsters will enjoy tooling around in these things, and rich people might have one for special occasions (along with their horses and sailboats), but the vast majority of people are better served with a normal car.

#environment #electric vehicles

[technodad]

Mastodon has seen some ups and downs in activity in my experience, but Twitter activity has been steadily down. Metcalfe’s law is definitely in reverse on Twitter.

A certain percentage of the Twitter exodus were always bound to return. This is perfectly normal: new services always experience “scalloped” growth. That’s where an outside event — a positive narrative about the new service, or a catastrophe affecting the old one — drives a surge of new users.

Some of those users try the new service, decide it’s not worth it, and leave — but not all of them. Each event triggers a high tide of new signups, but the low tide that follows is still higher than the old level. Surge after surge, the number of users steadily builds, despite the normal ebb and flow.

Despite the completely predictable dropoff in users after the initial Twitter surge, journalists have published (equally predictable and decidedly premature) obituaries for Mastodon and the Fediverse with titles like “The Mastodon Bump Is Now a Slump” and “Elon Musk drove more than a million people to Mastodon — but many aren’t sticking around.”

As Mike Masnick points out, these stories aren’t just lazy, they are actively misleading, omitting the fact that the users who stayed on Mastodon’s shores after the tide went out are incredibly active:

[A]ctual usage of the fediverse continues to increase month by month, including through January, meaning that while some people signed up and never used it, those who are using it, are using it more and more.

Of Course Mastodon Lost Users: Scalloped growth is not evidence of a platform in decline.

[technodad]

Fighting to stay under a 3.

https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/

if you're worried about the website finding out where you live. dont worry. it already knows where you are just by you opening the page, this goes for every website btw. As always reblog for higher sample size

#light pollution #astronomy

[technodad]

US healthcare: Why pay less to live longer?

#healthcare

[technodad]

When you reach a certain age, the issue driving automation is not how much time you spend doing something, it's the time spent trying to remember or look up how to do it. Automate to reduce cognitive load, not just time reduction.

[technodad]

How to spot AI-generated text | MIT Technology Review

How to spot AI-generated text via MIT Technology Review

"God loves the noise just as much as he loves the signal" - every signals and systems professor ever

#ai #technology #internet