Simon Frankau

SRE manager on Google Compute Engine (only speak for me), ex-quant dev. Fan of maths, Haskell, Rust and retrocomputing. London, UK. CS PhD. Fuck cancer.

Available on Twitter while stocks last.

Public Key

npub1mgrnlfvsrv7agw6ryqvlhq8p4u6kd44paf3aj0gy2aehr2xmn00q98lct9

NIP-05 Address

sgf_at_mastodon.xyz@mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsd5pel5kgpk0w58dpjqx0msrs67dtx66s75c7e85z9wum34rdehhsu3yukp

Author Public Key

npub1mgrnlfvsrv7agw6ryqvlhq8p4u6kd44paf3aj0gy2aehr2xmn00q98lct9

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Last Notes

2024-07-10 22:48:18

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@npub1knz…c73p I've got to say, primon gas is 🤯.
I wasn't expecting a physics/number theory crossover!

2024-05-09 08:50:14

I'm surprisingly disappointed to find out that Stack Overflow wasn't taking a stand against lazy, truthy auto-generated LLM output in order to give humans better answers and prevent the proliferation of unhelpful noise on the internet, but was instead doing it in order to sell training data free of AI-generated content.

2024-05-06 08:07:25

Assembly. You need it to reverse copy protection, and once you're good at it every task looks like a nail for that hammer.
I've heard that some will use Matlab, though.

2024-04-09 08:59:24

Given Dune is big right now, think I'll take some parras i'tamul to fight the hi'ad-ark that lies within me.
(For American readers, I think acetaminophen already sounds like something out of Dune.)

2023-11-08 13:57:12

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@npub13le…6saf Hmm, if there's been significant changes on the power side, and particularly if it gets further if you hit reset a few times, I wonder if it's the power condition/reset lines - are they only supposed to trigger once everything's stabilised? Do they need to be debounced? I'll admit this is somewhat guesswork without knowing what the original HW did.

2023-11-08 11:34:38

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@npub13le…6saf When you say "next revision", do you have a link to the (fully working?) previous revision? I'm intrigued as to what's changed.

2023-10-28 09:50:22

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@npub178r…qekt Reply guy had a point that if you want to deprogram people who've gone down the rabbit hole, simply contradicting them with the truth isn't very effective.
OTOH, it doesn't have to be *your* job to deprogram them, and as a researcher it probably shouldn't be your job to do so.
Some people like B&W photography, some people like colour photography. It's dumb to demand people switch styles, and dumb to suggest everyone use low-saturation colour. Also, I'm crap at metaphor.

2023-10-19 18:05:27

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@npub19fc…ay3c What I find useful when I make a visible mistake I want to acknowledge is do an edit that leaves the original message intact, but adds a very explicit edit to acknowledge it,
[Edit: Something like this]
to stop people misunderstanding the final situation without reading a usually complex bunch of follow-ups.
Works for me, I guess it may not for you, but just thought I'd mention it.

2023-09-26 07:47:00

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@npub1kp0…5ugq Aw, did you get "triggered" by me simply suggesting non-inclusive language is thoughtless? You look really very offended by that.
You seem to have accidentally wandered into mainstream Fedi, and that must be very confusing to you. Don't worry, I'll block you and you won't have to see my scary posts again.
Still, 👍 to all that free speeching you're doing there, with the naughty words and stuff. I bet your mom's proud of that.

2023-09-25 06:59:11

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@npub1kps…ntnt A pattern I keep seeing on Fedi is unhelpful "You should do X" posts in response to problems that completely fail to take into account that different people have different needs.
Usually it's "you should run your own instance". Telling a black person to open themselves up to racist abuse and grow a thicker skin, though? That's a new one on me.
And telling a black person to use a "whitelist"? At best, very thoughtless.

2023-08-22 10:21:25

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@npub1trd…ussx It's a tough one. While I'm an advocate for growing the network, it can't be at the expense of destroying what's already here and good. I've seen (and disagree with :) "we can't risk destroying the old experience" and/or "growth *will* destroy the old experience", but I'm aware I'm guilty of glossing over how we avoid breaking things during growth.
I suspect the waves of arrivals can work to our advantage; *sustained* rapid growth makes it even harder to keep up.

2023-08-22 10:04:44

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@npub1trd…ussx My highly subjective impression is that the "CW everything" approach (which may not have ever been that popular, but was certainly visible from time to time) is dying off.
So my impression is "more selectively & more gently".

2023-08-22 08:11:08

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@npub1trd…ussx So, thanks for the question, 'cos it's forced me to think where my hope lies - I think non-Masto Fedi software gives the opportunity to adapt and create a network for a wider user base. The issues I see being a) most users still on Masto, because that's their admin's choice b) the need to remain Mastodon-compatible and related inertia c) fragmentation across the alternatives.

2023-08-22 08:03:05

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@npub1trd…ussx Technically, I think I mean a blur of a) and b), as other front-ends can only adapt core Mastodon behaviour so much. I think I don't mean c), since other clients have managed to introduce things like QRTs. (I understand Masto intends to, but there still seems to be no sense of urgency or higher-level adaptation to circumstances.)
Socially, I can't tell so much, but maybe it's adapted more than I expected - e.g. I haven't seen a CW-scold in a while now. That's good.

2023-08-19 21:51:43

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@npub1qmc…v6gx There's huge value in "done" vs. perfect. I may whinge a lot about the rough corners of Masto, but it's still better than something that never got done.
I'm trying to decide if Mastodon is interesting like a modernist new town, idealism that hasn't quite adapted to the reality of humans, and if so whether that makes it an interesting failure, or whether good opportunities really remain (hope the latter).
I'm slowly working through "Seeing Like A State" and looking for parallels...

2023-08-19 17:39:18

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@npub1qmc…v6gx I think "Mastodon tries to get this right" is really interesting, because every non-trivial technical decision I've seen be taken on Mastodon has chosen to do the easy thing over the correct thing!
To be fair, this pressure happens whenever tech gets big and complicated, so I'm intrigued as to whether the Mastodon design came before things got tricky, or was already in the "I guess this sounds good enough" local optimization phase?

2023-08-14 13:21:33

The UK government continues to want more interception capability on messaging: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-66304002
It makes me wonder who is managing to lobby the government so successfully that this is a good idea.
I don't understand the international politics involved, but at the Five Eyes level it's not clear to me why being an outlier would be good.
Maybe it's less spook-y orgs pushing, but then I wonder why the case isn't being made more publicly.
It just makes the UK look weirdly authoritarian.

2023-07-04 23:23:11

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@npub1jc0…sldg Systems tend to optimise for something. If it wasn't "good at waging wars", what do you reckon it was?
(I have no clue about the civil war.)

2023-05-18 05:48:42

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@npub178r…qekt The temptation to write a script to transfer the grades from a well-checked list must be strong. I assume the underlying HTML is screwed-up enough to make that more-or-less impossible (and it changes arbitrarily with each term/semester/whatever).

2023-05-17 05:59:00

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@npub178r…qekt I feel there should be Very Stupid Watergate, Ultra Stupid Watergate, Super Stupid Watergate...