Notices by Smári McCarthy (smari@mastodon.social)

Hearing that the US has cut Ukraine off from intelligence sharing. The total impact of this is unclear, but undoubtedly awful. Intel cut off presumably includes info from US human assets in Russia, US reconnaissance satellites, and US signals intelligence, all of which are virtually impossible to replace with European equivalents. EU countries have their own assets which can still help, but the scale of this betrayal of Ukraine is hard to fully understand.

It occurred to me that many of the quality qualms aimed at Free/Open Source are a reflection of an assumption of inherent quality made in the early days of the free software movement that got lost in Eternal September, rather than any inherent flaw in the idea of open, participatory development.

"Whether it be morality, or a culture of quality, to consider an important value so obvious as to not need stating is to invite that value to be disregarded or forgotten."

https://smarimccarthy.is/posts/2025-01-23-quality-culture/

@rysiek @ldodds Arguably, we need fewer such lists -- coupled strongly with fewer occasions to make them.

New video: Why Your Computer is Slow - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQSKnfgldUw
Here's a short rant about software, hardware, and why computers are being slowed down largely because of a bad attitude that ...

For those of you who read scientific papers: do you have a low effort way of keeping track of which papers you've read? Ideally with references to the source or the PDF embedded? Even better; with note taking abilities? And runs on Linux and Android? Supporting tags and/or categories? And tracking date of reading? And indexed by DOI? And capable of exporting these data in a coherent way?
Or did I just describe a wiki?

There's a strong correlation between cities being rich and cities having good public transportation. Some might infer that being rich means they can afford to spend money on public transportation. But I contend it's the other way around: if public transport works, fewer people need to sink $6k-50k of their personal wealth into cars, and then feed them fuel, insurance and maintenance. All that money goes into local restaurants, arts, sports and culture instead. THAT is how you make a city rich.

@pettter nope! Might be interesting, although I tend to not like Evgeny's writing as much as I like him in person. Too much rage. That said, it's been years, and people tend to get milder.

I was reminded today of this essay of mine, and looking at it again, I still quite like it: https://smarimccarthy.is/posts/2022-02-18-cybernetics/

@ryo btw, corruption and freedom aren't mutually exclusive.

@ryo Nobody who wants to be taken seriously has talked of Ukraine as oppressive since Maidan. Corrupt, yes, but again, if you've paid any attention you'll know that there's been massive progress there. Still a long way to go, but I dare say it'd be going faster if they weren't being invaded. Nothing is as simple as your ridiculous worldview would have you believe.

If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend Timothy Snyder's briefing to the UN on "Russophobia". https://youtu.be/uBz9EeLeQ8w

@quinn @whvholst @rysiek weather forecast models had their last major sea change (groan) around 1996, and have since been largely stuck at 50% skill 3 days out. There is so much room for improvement.

Reminder: "serverless architecture" doesn't mean there isn't a server, it just means that you have zero control over it.

You may think it's convenient, but it's actually an abdication of power over your system/app/product to somebody who you're also paying too much money to.