@abucci@anthony.buc.ci it’s not gonna end… It’s worth for some people, was predicted for the last few years and it’s only going to be used more and more.
Like phones, GPS and navigation, flags memories, quantum computers, telecommunications…
It’s even going to become the new “Gods” (citation needed).

I guess that’s going to transform completely the way we think. So what’s going to happen with people not likening it is, you know, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.

@abucci@anthony.buc.ci it’s really, really tricky.
If we dépend on a machine to automate a life saving procedure we may say it’s fine, but automating a suicide prevention line is controversial when it may actually help.

In medicine and science there is a lot of research, dark incentives and placebos in the name of progress… So, I don’t know what to think. I’ve been reading that book Bad blood, and basically is, until a huge fraud happens, the law gets updated to prevent another case, and it’s a never ending story…

👀 Another book to read this year

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25980423-the-internet-is-my-religion

#randomQuestionOfTheDay

How has the Internet changed your life? For better and for worse

@abucci@anthony.buc.ci in a personal case, in 2022 I explored client certificates, (I can’t recall who suggested that, it was you?).

I think it’s amazing for corporates and perhaps power users. Anyway, I think it’s too obscure for a normal employee who doesn’t understand what’s going on.

For something closer to the current Web experience I think Webauthn/Passkeys will be slightly simpler to use and to implement, due to the support of main OS and integrated security hardware in PCs and Phones. Or you can use a USB device which is closer to a “car key” being the physical aspect easier to understand than an abstract encryption technology IMO.

But as they say, why not both?

For some reason I couldn’t sleep tonight (I think that strong coffee ☕ at dinner was a bad idea)

Anyway, it was a nice opportunity to settle my ideas for this year. After a few days of vacations, I could define more easily what to aim for, what to work for. My references are the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Hierarchy of Hapiness as insights on things I might be overlooking. Like social relationships, relationship with money, belongings, impact with creativity, altruism, a learning path and so on.
My main realization (perhaps obvious but what can I say…) is that statistically I have about 30 years more of productive life. There is no rush, but at the same time I need those challenges to live a tasty present.

I’m grateful that this has been a pretty decent life, which is transforming into something new (damn mid-30s crisis). As they say, the best things are yet to come. Or at least, new challenges to overcome. And that’s the tasty part of life.

@abucci@anthony.buc.ci that’s a great idea. A friend of mine made an extension that killed random tabs, but I don’t recall the exact details.
I think killing the older tabs could be good enough, or randomly between tabs older than X days. Perhaps with the last 10 tabs, you would notice. IDK

What browser do you use? (Over here, Edge, Firefox, and Kiwi)

@prologic@twtxt.net that’s the answer. Now I try to close as many as I open, ha…

I think I moved to the extreme of “compulsive cleaning”, but, hey, it works…

Since the popularization of browsers with tabs in 1999, that has been a problem for intelectual people, I think.

I’m trying to live a digital minimalism (whatever that means, I’ve had long conversations about the definition), and having at most 5 tabs open has been challenging to me, but I try.
I’m looking forward to a soft limit of, let’s say, 7-10 tabs. If you get your screen full, you should receive a warning… More than 15-25 would be simply not allowed. It’s against the interest of browsers designers (use it more), but I think there should be some extension for it.

Now I have those endless text files with hundreds of links, more like a black hole than a Reading list. I say also, the habit of cleaning your lists is as good as making it bigger.

Other useful habits are, trying to write more than reading, avoid looking for new links until you read or delete previous ones, and not subscribing to a new mailing list until I unsuscribe another. It has been a similar pain than to buy new clothes.

@prologic@twtxt.net a game about finding Poker Texas hands with similar mechanics to Wordle (yellow is right suit or rank of the card, green is that you find the right card for each position)

#Pokle #180
⬜⬜🟨🟨⬜
⬜⬜🟩🟨⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
poklegame.com

Talking about analytics 🤣

“Don’t compare your progress with others”

@prologic@twtxt.net neat 👀!

@abucci@anthony.buc.ci hmm, I don’t think it’s the “simplest possible” but a mix between the complexity of HTTPS and the old-fashioned simplicity of Gopher.
I’d say the goals defined here https://gemini.circumlunar.space are well achieved with that spec.

Sadly the TLS part is difficult to achieve on some retro devices and I suppose that’s one of the reasons for Spartan.

@prologic@twtxt.net I thought you weren’t using Gemini nor Spartan, and I felt you didn’t like the idea of these toy protocols.
Just for curiosity, has that changed this year?

@justamoment@twtxt.net

I’m not a fan of it myself but having at least a minimal insight should be helpful, what do you think?

It’s been tricky for me. If I write for myself, I don’t need that content to be public, but if I share it, I expect something from the audience. A discussion or a conversation is neat. A thank you is also welcome.
I’ve found that having numbers makes me leave projects since only a few people are watching them. I don’t know… I switched from carrying about how many people are watching to “at least someone cares’.

I received this year a few comments and IM chats saying ‘thanks’ for the free content. That’s always a breath of fresh air for the creator. I think that depends on your expectations.

@justamoment@twtxt.net hmm…
Talking about Web sites, 20 years ago I used Web counters, then Google Analytics, FB Pixel, and many other indie stats systems. I think I had the Apache stats, then WordPress and such, but I wasn’t excited by stats dashboards TBH.
Now I think visits are vanity metrics, even for commercial sites, so I rely more on interactions, emails received, replies, and such.

On https://text.eapl.mx I have nothing. No comments section, and no analytics whatsoever. I received a message every 1-2 months, and I think I had a few replies on Gemini (it’s difficult to track, and I forgot to add the link in the article)

In my ‘personal’ podcast I have no stats, it’s a handmade Atom file.
For the remaining podcasts hosted on YouTube and Anchor, I have from 20 plays/views up to 9k for some specific topics (mostly design ones disguised as rants). And I think 120 subscribers.

I like this kind of clocks ⏰
https://poleclock.com

@prologic@twtxt.net as usual I’d start with definitions. What you understand by censorship due to your environment is different than my definition.

So I usually have a glossary in the organization. The basics, what, how and why are we going to moderate…

@prologic@twtxt.net I always wanted a few of these

AA batteries with USB plug

But now cost wise I have some traditional NiCd chargers and batteries for the few devices without rechargeable batteries at home. Like the Xbox controller. Works well enough.

@prologic@twtxt.net hey guys, I’m randomly joining the convo before breakfast.

The first thing I thought of was an invite system like lobste.rs… You cannot join randomly, but someone trusting you must invite you first.

I guess we discussed a few months ago the importance of moderation systems (people and tech), and having a ‘clear’ line of allowed content under the idea of “in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance.”

So it’s not easy, it requires a lot of resources and intent. What do you say?

Checking my notes, I find that there are as well a few strange traits in Spanish that foreigners could find counterintuitive, like having silent letters, sounds depending on the following vowel, and so…
#languagesAreWeird

Español vs Français

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org 🧐 wow… I didn’t know that!

Coming from Spanish which has only 5 vowels and almost every time a syllable is read the same, learning German or French with many different pronunciations for the same letters, or as you say different meanings depending on their context has been mindblowing 🤯

@axodys@octobloc.xyz yeah, it was one of the best movies I watched this year ✈️🧑‍✈️🎥🎬

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org 😆
I think I learnt more asking for a Kebap to some foreign who only knew German and his language, than in college. Being useful things, not gender of random words.

Again, it’s a balance between vocabulary and foundations and actual practice in the field.

Current status
Laying on bed, doing nothing.

Dog and I ‘dying’ of indigestion. (In fact, our dog visited the Vet, she received a lot of meds for the tummy)

#vacations #winterSeason

@abucci@anthony.buc.ci amazing links! 😀

And I got the paper, thanks for sharing! It’s about 200 pages. Wow, that’s a lot of knowledge.

It reminds me when I was learning piano. Yeah, I wanted to play the classics or the modern tunes, bu instead as my fingers where pathetic I had to practice with boring and monotone scores to build dexterity for my hands.

I think that’s something similar with programming, language learning and such. And again, college gives no time for that.
More anecdotal evidence: I was 3 months in German at college, at the 1st semester, really stressful due to the scholarship. I learned nothing.

@justamoment@twtxt.net yeah, the compromise between the essentials, or the foundation to build knowledge on top of it, is tricky.

And I also agree on teaching to do something realistic.
Currently I’m designing a course from scratch for C# and I’m constantly saying “don’t validate this yet”, don’t preoptimize this now… We’ve known for years all that real software needs, but at the same time we have to ‘lower’ the implementation to the current level.

@sl1200@twt.nfld.uk hola!
Como te va? Que tal has encontrado twtxt? Cualquier duda arróbame!

@prologic@twtxt.net @marado@tilde.pt congrats both! Every year is something worth to celebrate, IMO mariage ain’t easy, but it’s a nice compromise between love, growth and battles. I wish you many years more together.

@prologic@twtxt.net merry Christmas! 🤶🎄🎁😁

@movq@www.uninformativ.de hehe, I can relate 😅

@prologic@twtxt.net hey!
I’ve been a bit disconnected from here by a lot of preparatives, reunions with in-laws and eating as unhealthy as we could.

Today is the calm day here, so the usual, opening the remaining gifts, playing with those, wakening up late, and eating a bit more healthy.

Best wishes everyone!

@prologic@twtxt.net hehe, yeah!

There are a lot of books on the subject such as https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4983932-10-000-hours

Now I think 10,000 is saying something like “more time that you’d expect of intended practice, multiplied by talent”

An interesting discussion I heard in a podcast, was that the expertise level grows “logarithmically” (I think that’s the right word). Learning from 0 to, let’s say, 50% takes a year. 50-75% another year, and so. The last 95-99% takes decades of intense and purposeful practice.

@abucci@anthony.buc.ci sounds like a really interesting research! By any chance is that paper publicly available?

Not wanting to criticize anything on your paper or your numbers, and based on a book I’m reading, Factfulness, I’d like to know an average and also the standard deviation or a distribution graph on time to learn to program from scratch. Usually the average hides the diversity on the sample.

I’ve also found that, at least here, Computer Science or (Management of) Information Tecnologies are not related to creating or architecturing software, but on understanding and maintaining current ones.

Which is not that bad, you cannot create something if you don’t know previous solutions or implementations… 🤔
Again, there is simply not enough time in 3-5 years of intense education to learn to ‘program’

@justamoment@twtxt.net as an university professor, I’ve found that classrooms are the worst place to learn to code, program or dev.

There is not enough time to personalize teaching, from the current knowledge every student has, up to the semester goals (usually standardized). People is stressed on learning a lot in a few months, throwing up everything into the exam, so usually that isn’t meaningful and internalized learning which programing requires in the long term.

What has worked for me was to record short videos with step by step explanations, so the students can watch and rewind at their pace, and then we have office hours to explain anything the student didn’t get.

Something like:

1. Watch how I do it
   
2. Try to repeat that
   
3. Try to do something different alone
   
4. You are by yourself now!

@justamoment@twtxt.net hehe, not really but it’s a great idea. I like the physics of bows, catapults, and the expansive effects of some weapons like shotguns.

In something more boring, I’m estimating dev times, and I needed to explain Standard deviations of time estimates, ha!

I’m writing a Game design proposal and I came to a topic I love

Accuracy vs Precision

@justamoment@twtxt.net Well, it’s a two-edged blade for me.
I knew of twtxt.net thanks to the twtxt spec (coming from Gemini). But I see how people could think “it’s not the original spec, shouldn’t be named twtxt”

@movq@www.uninformativ.de I’ve found A to be simpler (to me) unless I’m a monkey 🍌🐒 #kidding

#randomQuestionOfTheDay

Do you remove the tips of your bananas 🍌?

Why, why not?

@prologic@twtxt.net you once told me in #xu4dh4q

let’s remember that textual forms of communication sometimes don’t carry intent very well let alone emotion

I was grateful at that moment b/c I was personally engaged with someone I disagreed on their vision of the world and way to say things.

Perhaps you are being emotional to some random person (I don’t know if it’s a friend of yours) saying Yarn is a monopoly. Maybe is uninformed. Perhaps they doesn’t want to change. It could be their way to cope with their boring life. IDK.

Yeah, it’s frustrating when you do something with love, tender, spare time and it’s rejected or receives bad adjectives. I’ve been there with games.

I could only say, take it from who it comes from. It’s not easy when your head is hot, but a few days later it won’t be a big deal.

@prologic@twtxt.net you once told me in #xu4dh4q

let’s remember that textual forms of communication sometimes don’t carry intent very well let alone emotion

I was grateful at that moment b/c I was personally engaged with someone I disagreed on their vision of the world and way to say things.

Perhaps you are being emotional to some random person (I don’t know if it’s a friend of yours) saying Yarn is a monopoly. Maybe is uninformed. Perhaps they doesn’t want to change. It could be their way to cope with their boring life. IDK.

Yeah, it’s frustrating when you do something with love, tender, spare time and it’s rejected or receives bad adjectives. I’ve been there with games.

I could only say, take it from who it comes from.

@marado@tilde.pt well, I find that’s a problem of leaving that open. Using should vs must. Leaves that to different interpretations.

https://twtxt.readthedocs.io/en/latest/user/twtxtfile.html

A status should consist of up to 140 characters, longer status updates are technically possible but discouraged. twtxt will warn the user if a newly composed status update exceeds this limit, and it will also shorten incoming status updates by default.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de yeah, valid and worthy points. I personally agree on most.

Yarn.social at this moment is 3 things.

1. The convenience of the software, a web site, their front-end, the ‘invisible backend’, an incomplete mobile app. If I’d manage the twtxt file with any other software, for me at this moment I couldn’t have conversations with you.
   
2. The interoperability with older txtwt files. For instance I can read here my twtxt.txt hand made raw file to see if it works. Almost no one replies there but I know it works.
   
3. The community, the stupid discussions, the learning, the meaningful experiences, Gitea. People behind a simple text file and micobrogging protocol.
   

So yeah, as projects grow they start to be attached to a brand, they create organizations, institutions, knowledge bases, rituals, and intangible things we don’t feel attached to. There are a few anarchist people (as in skeptical of authority and seeking to abolish institutions) not wanting to follow rules, groups and such.

and very often it comes from people rather that tech or specs.

Could be something like
“I don’t like ~prologic and/or I don’t like yarn.social, I won’t use that because I like things by my way”
It’s stupid, I’ve felt that, and now I try to ignore it a bit, it’s bad for our health to listen every feedback, IMO 🤷‍♂️

@mckinley@twtxt.net 😆

No one using Yarn extensions, it seems