Notices by     n8   Doesn't follow you 🇺🇦 (n8@mastodon.social)

@luis_in_brief "The Candidate" ...? (Kinda depends on what counts as too political, to be sure; I just like it)

Math question (this one for real):

650 seats total: thus >= 326 for majority

411 seats are Labour (aka Labor, correctly, but we'll come back to that)
120 are Conservative

The news keeps saying "that's a majority of 174"

411 - 326 = 85
411 - 120 = 291

... where is this 174 number coming from?

#ProTip: the "g" in "Gist" is pronounced the same as the "g" in "GIF"

#YoureWelcome

I wonder what proportion of my old "ur1.ca" short URLs from the identi.ca/status.net days are still reachable...

(thought prompted by https://mastodon.social/@blogdiva/112317310847290794 )

#Boosts welcome on this!

I have a talk proposal I'm submitting a couple of places; it's been put on "please hold this in reserve for us" for one event. So I'm revisiting my research on the topic regularly to keep it up to date; if you have thoughts or recent work on the following, please share because I'd like to know:

If you have exported / takeout-ed your collection of posts from a social media network, what do you _do_ with the exported data set?

Especially if you need to search?

#Thanks!

@evan Ah; good clarification, thanks. Several things I read said that UAE had sponsored the resolution. I've never heard anything about how that works procedurally (now or previously), in drafting or in amendments, but if it was authored by UAE, it doesn't sound surprising that they would refuse/decline altering the wording that way, at least not to me.

@evan
I also definitely heard a longer news story last month about how Hamas (and the broader Israel/Palestinian conflict) is viewed differently between the governments and populations of the gulf region, which talked about those regional governments taking public stances that are more, say, absolutist than their policies are, which seems relevant in retrospect as well, but so far I haven't been able to locate it again 😕....

@evan Obviously the specific-wording complaints could be a cover; if a resolution condemning both parties was put forward, would the US and UK have voted for it? Dunno. But it does sound like the wording included condemnation of IDF, rather than just calling for a truce, so maybe that's a real red line?

Also you gotta suspect all the other SC members knew beforehand that the US would use its veto; the resolution wasn't a surprise. Probably the point was more to apply big pressure in public.

@evan There were some comments on news podcasts from Robert Wood about the US rationale; the council and the wording of the resolution not (1) condemning the Hamas attack and (2) not affirming Israel's right to defend itself. I found this print link in the news feeds: https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2023-12-08/un-chief-and-many-nations-demand-immediate-humanitarian-cease-fire-in-gaza-but-us-remains-opposed which seems to be the same comments, plus this about the UK abstaining: https://news.sky.com/story/israel-hamas-war-un-security-council-resolution-to-demand-ceasefire-in-gaza-fails-13025836

The latter implies that the resolution had details in it ("the proposal") which might be relevant. ?

@evan Well, that link is a press release (despite the hostname); one would not expect a press release to make attempts to present the set of differing viewpoints or to explore the background/rationale/contexts of parties who are in disagreement.

As a press release, it's actually not bad at all. But it's not reportage.

For all the complaining that people do online about headphone audio jacks disappearing from phones, I've yet to see a real informed assessment of how waterproof it's possible to make headphone jacks these days. Meaning both sides of the connector.

Like, we all know there was not a secret conspiracy involved; phone makers shifted all their effort to making phones that didn't die when they got wet. Same with the batteries. So start there if you want to make a case.

@clacke @petrichor @liw @idlestate

Hey folks; it would probably be best to remove Mike ( mlinksva ) from the replies here. I included his handle at the beginning in order to credit the source of the post as it crossed my path; I did not anticipate that it would become a multi-person thread. So, my fault, but he didn't ask to be @-ed. #Sorry 🙏

@liw @mlinksva Good points.

I have nowhere near to any solutions to offer, of course. Perhaps face-to-face consulting/assistance at the university/institution level would be highest impact, but that sounds quite difficult.

The other angle, of course, is that "software written for an academic reason" may also have to be tailored for being read by non-programmers, such as subject-matter experts. It's a lot clearer to follow linear code chunks in an appendix than something that's highly modular or optimized for OOPyness, and that might make a big difference when you need to show a finding to a community that doesn't have the time to learn a bunch of unfamiliar frameworks when they review what you've written.
/eof

e.g., probably 80% of the time I asked a FOSS-component-related question on a forum or mailing list, the first responses (or if not the first, extra loud ones) were people telling me my approach was wrong and/or I didn't actually need to do what I thought I wanted to. That being in reference to some application-driven development model / goal.

But research often requires poking at things that are oblique / not well-modeled / not-routine. All sorts of "that's not what this library is for" stuff.

Obviously I'm all for code-pub, but I think work needs to be done to normalize publishing the messy/incomplete/piecemeal nature of research software. If you're like me (sorry), you barely have time to get it running once, it looks spaghettirific, and you didn't get to plan it from day one with a requirements doc.

That makes folk reluctant to release; the reception from the software world is often critical (or it's feared to be).

https://fediscience.org/@petersuber/110918041321108927

(h/t to @mlinksva for the timelineboost)

@hergertme I literally have 80s Fiero GT searches open in other tabs as I read this...

Best I can do is promise to put posts behind cw's if I actually move back stateside & buy one.

@hergertme I'm assuming that by SRV you mean this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vauxhall_SRV

to which I have only to say HELLYES.

@evan I didn't understand this one.

It felt like it was trying to ask something more specific, but was phrased broadly to avoid skewing the results, but went so broad it kinda lost sight of the shore.

@evan I'm sure this sounds obvious, but the interface and controls for adding images to posts (in the clients I've used) are awkward and underpowered in comparison to an image-first app like Instagram. Tusky refers to them as "attachments" even, which frustrates me every time. Point being, I don't see any reason users ought to have to choose to be on a "pic network" vs a "word network" ... can't we steal the UIs from both and put them together?