Notices by Ben Evans (kittylyst@mastodon.social)

@Gargron Thank you for everything - and hope your recovery from burnout is swift and painless. Look forward to hearing from you about your next thing, whatever it is & whenever it is.

This is incredible: Pre-writing an obituary for your enemy, who you pre-decease by nearly 5 years, and then having the outlet run the obit when the MF finally dies: https://www.statnews.com/2025/11/07/james-watson-remembrance-from-dna-pioneer-to-pariah/

@aral @riverbirchtree @joynewacc A small contrib from me - hope you hit the target soon!

Looks like there may well be a surge of users from Blacksky and the other "alternative" ATProto instances checking out the Fedi, or reactivating old accounts, given that they're now discovering that ATProto is a Potemkin Village of decentralization and that BSky still hold all the cards.

This time, can we please try not to act like assholes / the HOA while they find their feet.

#fediverse #Bluesky #activitypub #atproto

Hey friends, is there an African word that means "Togetherness and community, but not you icky queers"?

Asking for a friend. #software #queer #linux

The pro-migrant, pro-trans, pro-tax-the-rich eco socialist just took 85% of the vote for the leadership of the Green Party of England and Wales.

Chloe Kelly's penalty shot was harder than *any shot* in the Premier League in the last 3 years.

For the next time some transphobic shite wants to try the ol' "But biowogy" bilge. #lgbtq #queer # trans

@HauntedOwlbear In fairness, it's not the worst use of venture capital I've ever seen. It's only blatant influence-buying rather than any of the much, much worse things these folks could be funding.

If you want to know how the game is played:

A 41 year old of what seems to be adequate competency is worth £375m due to founding a tech company that places school leavers into apprenticeships. It has lost money every single year since it was founded 7 years ago & spends roughly £2 for each £1 of revenue it generates.

So far, it has placed less than 25k school leavers & has spent several thousand pounds net *per school leaver* to do so.

Who is this genius?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euan_Blair

@fesshole Fiver says OP is the kind of bellend who always parks in a disabled spot b/c "Every time I see someone parking in one of those they aren't can totally walk, so why shouldn't I?"

@mattl I think that Anubis is drawing on the rather older form of Proof-of-Work as spam prevention mechanism.

Now, there are reasons why that might well not work: https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rnc1/proofwork.pdf - but I don't think Anubis is trying to introduce a cryptocurrency by stealth.

I just realized: The Fedi actually has a decentralized #Software #Architecture and yet it's the for-all-practical-intents-and-purposes-centralized Bluesky that has got into bed with cryptocurrency.

LOL. LMFAO. /cc @davidgerard

I regret to inform you that Nick "Vidkun" Clegg is at it again - https://archive.is/koHVt #ukpol

A reminder that #abortion is *not* legal in Great Britain & requires "nod and an wink" consent from 2 doctors - https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/police-could-search-homes-and-seize-phones-after-sudden-pregnancy-loss - and that the Truss Cabinet had, for the first time since the 1970s, a majority of forced-birth advocates.

#UK folks may wish to write to their MP & suggest that Parliament do something about this state of affairs. I would be rather concerned with what an in-thrall-to-the-US Reform govt might do in 2029. Oh, and #ACAB of course.

Finally some good #AI news

I am very pleased to discover that the Spurious Correlations website has added #AI (i.e. made-up) explanations for the correlations - https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations #programming

@inthehands @rotnroll666 If you aren't already familiar with it, Project Valhalla is an OpenJDK project to take a second bite at some of those fundamental design decisions (e.g. split between primitives and reference types, generics, null-safety) by tackling them as a unified problem space and trying to reimagine them all at once.

Worth a deep dive on, IMO. It's been a long time in the making, but it could be the most profound change in Java's history.

@mattl Can you try again in a new, private window?

This is what I see:

@ntnsndr One pertinent example would be La Sagrada Família in #Barcelona - which has an extremely rich and highly relevant history.

@Hex 1. Get good at SQL 2. Find out how long backups are kept for 3. Decouple the data change from the code change 4. Push the data change first, and have it corrupt the new fields are needed (maybe by setting defaults or polluting other parts of the records). 5. Bundle the code change with unrelated changes, and keep having the other changes fail QA 6. Wait until the uncorrupted backups have been purged 7. Push code change.