nickloewen

Yes those are fair points!

At the same time, I think that when it comes to assessing whether the company is acting in good faith or not, it is important to consider not just what research they do or don’t do, but also which findings they choose to promote and which they choose to keep internal…

(Part of the fiasco with tobacco or climate is that those companies knew the risks associated with their products well enough, but didn’t publicize the findings that might cast them in a bad light in the same way that they publicized the findings that supported a “let’s wait and see” approach to policy. See for example https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-...)

With the caveat that I don’t know much about Facebook’s research projects… the question “If we wanted to ignore research, why would we create an industry-leading research program to understand these important issues in the first place?” sets alarm bells ringing for me—because I can imagine a cigarette company saying the same thing about the scientists they hired to argue that smoking isn’t so bad after all, or an oil company saying the same thing about the scientists they hired to argue that it’s too soon to act on climate change (especially since they’re “leading the charge” on renewable energy research).

(I’m influenced here by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway’s work in “Merchants of Doubt.”)

Yesterday I made a prototype of a very small dynamic webpage (less than 50 lines of code). I am the only person who will ever visit this page. PHP was the obvious tool to use—but I still found myself stopping to question that choice, in large part because of the contempt for PHP that I have seen online.

Incidentally, I am not a software developer—I’m an artist and art historian. I have no real need for hacker cred. And yet I still find myself trying to earn it by doing things the hard way.

Which is all to say: this post resonated with me, and I really appreciate the insight.

The article provides evidence to support the claim made in the headline, but there are important caveats included at the end:

> The death rate was between three and four times that of Denmark, and nearly 10 times those of Finland and Norway - suggesting Swedes died that didn’t need to.

> And Dr Bhatt does not think another, non-Nordic country such as Britain could have copied Sweden’s policies and got the same results.

> With about 23 people per square kilometre, Sweden has about a tenth of the population density of the UK, while about half of Swedish households comprise just one person - a major factor in local transmission.

I have a carefully designed HTML copy of this at https://nloewen.com/docs/lucas-spielberg-kasdan--raiders-of-...

The Post Millennial story on this is quite light on details.

Here’s another article with more: https://katu.com/news/local/oregon-legislature-passes-bill-t...

And here’s the text of the bill (PDF): https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2021R1/Downloads/Meas...

And here’s the Department of Education’s page on the Essential Skills Graduation Requirement: https://www.oregon.gov/ode/educator-resources/essentialskill...

Key points from my quick read:

This is about suspending mandatory testing prior to graduation. They did that last year due to virtual learning, and are extending the suspension longer while things get back to normal, and while they assess whether the approach to testing they have is suitable (and in line with what other states are doing). It is not (yet) gone forever, just for a couple years. And you still have to pass courses in all of those subject orders in order to graduate.

How to Design Programs (the 2nd edition)—<https://htdp.org>—is more recent and more approachable, but in some ways follows in the footsteps of SICP. It's a great place to start before digging in to SICP or one of the other "classics," but it's also a good choice even if you just want to read one book.

Because this argues against what I see as the consensus position, I had a quick look for a review from the “other side.” Here’s one: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04052021/dissecting-unset...

I haven’t looked closely at the claims made by either yet, but in my quick search I did note that this book is mostly being discussed by political pundits.

It’s important to reflect on the way that presentations of scientific expertise and (lack of) consensus can be manipulated in the public conversation... but in this case I would argue that the bulk of the misrepresentation of the science for political ends has been by “climate skeptics,” and the title of this book seems to continue that tradition. I found Naomi Oreskes’ and Erik M. Conway’s book “Merchants of Doubt” to be a good, approachable but scholarly history of this type of FUD. There is also a documentary based on the book, with the same title.

Yes, her work is really excellent. For anyone skimming, she is https://haraiva.itch.io/

This is excellent, thank you for sharing. I would love to hear which of these people have used, and found fun or useful.

I have been enjoying Bitsy games and poems recently and am excited to discover more projects in the same realm.

Here are some nice ones:

https://haraiva.itch.io/novena https://polclarissou.itch.io/moss-as-texture-as-space-foldin... https://ludonaut.itch.io/vestiges https://cephalopodunk.itch.io/radical-archaeologist https://haraiva.itch.io/topography

The other highlight from my quick skim is basiljs, which makes indesign scriptable through a Processing-like API. As an occasional book designer, that sounds like lots of fun!

This reminds me of the Milkcrate sessions: https://milkcrate.com.au/sessions.html

"Adventures In Homewares Featuring The Mortar And The Pestle" (2009) is quite lovely: https://milkcrate.com.au/sessions-details-032.html

It's true that there are differences of opinion among the many people participating in this conversation, and the reporting on it.

But to be fair, this article does say:

"But don’t get me wrong. We are not abandoning our communities to violence. We don’t want to just close police departments. We want to make them obsolete.

"We should redirect the billions that now go to police departments toward providing health care, housing, education and good jobs. If we did this, there would be less need for the police in the first place.

"We can build other ways of responding to harms in our society. Trained “community care workers” could do mental-health checks if someone needs help. Towns could use restorative-justice models instead of throwing people in prison."

I also recommend the cutebot. It's available from adafruit: https://www.adafruit.com/product/4575

The micro:bit itself is the ideal "physical thing that is controlled by your code" and it is indeed very fun. The cutebot is a great place to start but you might want to consider getting some other bits and pieces too. There are all kinds of breakout boards that will provide servo control, relays, etc, and any of those would multiply the fun you can have. Maybe browse some of the prebuilt kits to get some ideas.

The micro:bit also has a built-in radio. It can do Bluetooth Low Energy, but it can also do a micro:bit specific protocol that's easier to use and less memory hungry. So getting two micro:bits opens up a whole bunch more opportunities, too. Last weekend, for example, we turned the cutebot into a remote control car by using the accelerometer in the second microbit to create a wireless steering wheel.

Oh superb, thanks!

The micro:bit doesn't have enough buttons or pixels, but you can maybe go the other direction: the "meowbit" appears to be compatible with both MakeCode Arcade and micro:bit accessories—although maybe you have to use MicroPython instead of micro:bit MakeCode to do microcontroller stuff? It would definitely be cool to have something that is perfectly compatible with both.

Recently I've had great fun playing with MakeCode for the micro:bit, mostly programming this little robot: https://www.adafruit.com/product/4575

Also very fun is MakeCode Arcade, which makes it super easy create lo-fi sprite-based video games, which you can play in your browser or on a dedicated handheld console: https://arcade.makecode.com

Both work like Scratch, which is another great option. When I played with Scratch as a teenager, though, I remember being frustrated that it wasn't just designed to make programming easy, but also to "teach programming to kids"--which meant that it was easy to make games, but basically impossible to "take the training wheels off" and do more serious tasks, because there was no way to access the filesystem or the network or connect with any other software. That was almost ten years ago, so maybe this complaint is out of date--but it does get to what I like about the micro:bit, which is that it's super simple and fun to program, but still lets you make "real" things.

There have been a few paper-based storage projects... I would guess that you're thinking of "PaperBack"[0] or maybe "rainbow storage"?[1]

0: http://ollydbg.de/Paperbak/ 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_storage

This does look promising, thanks! There's clearly a wealth of information available on the web—the trick is just tracking it down...

Great tip, thanks! Macintosh C Programming by Example suggested the shareware "Inside Mac Desk Accessory," but I'm not sure if that's available anymore; this seems like a good alternative.

I've also noticed that the original documentation for OS 8 and 9 is still available on the web—http://mirror.informatimago.com/next/developer.apple.com/doc.... Do you know if there was there ever a web-based version of the earlier Inside Macintosh?

Coincidentally, I also started trying to learn C programming on System 6 yesterday.

So far the key resource for me has been "Macintosh C Programming by Example,"[0] which also uses THINK C. The disk that originally accompanied the book is available on Macintosh Garden.[1]

Scott Knight also has a nice intro to classic Mac development, using Pascal in the Macintosh Programmer's Workshop instead of THINK C.[2]

Then there's also the old Inside Macintosh books[3] and other how-to books[4][5], but I haven't looked at those yet.

[0]: https://vintageapple.org/macprogramming/pdf/Macintosh_C_Prog...

[1]: https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/macintosh-c-programming-exa...

[2]: https://knight.sc/software/2020/04/19/classic-macos-developm...

[3]: https://vintageapple.org/inside_o/

[4]: https://vintageapple.org/macprogramming/index_year.html

[5]: https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/learn-c-the-macintosh-0

The Post Office can’t tell you if the recipient opened your letter—just that they received it. (And I don’t think we would want the Post Office to know which letters you read and which you junk, either!)

So your old process of checking the email server logs seems more analogous to Post Office tracking to me. Would it be possible to automate that?

I agree that the striped IBM logo can be read in that way, but it’s worth noting that it too was designed by Paul Rand—so evidently those readings weren’t entirely intentional. The IBM website reports that Rands’s aim was “to suggest ‘speed and dynamism.’”

https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/logo/logo_8.html

The copyright claim at the very end of the credits (about 28:38) says 1980.

Ah! The folder name is still human readable, just with a date out front: “2019 open education conference” for example.

Putting the year in the name is helpful because the year you did the thing may differ from from the created/last modified date. At the gallery, for example, these folders go back to the 1950s.

Even for more recent projects, I find myself adding to old folders from time to time (converting document formats etc), or not recognizing that a handful of files represent a coherent “project” until a year after I created the first one.

So it’s useful to be able to swap between sorting by file-system time and “actual” time. It prevents alphabetical sorting, but if I know enough of the name for alphabetical sorting to be useful I can usually just use a search.

Agreed re: Downloads, although it can take some time to get to it.

Edit: I also see others talking about having “archive” folders. The date system makes that mostly unnecessary.

Last summer I worked at an art gallery. It was my first time working on a shared file server and it was a mess—except for the exhibition files.

There was a main “exhibitions” folder. Inside of that was a folder for every show in the gallery’s history.

Each of these was named starting with the year of the show + another number indicating whether it was the first show of the year, or the second, etc.

There was a somewhat standard structure for what you would find inside of each of these (contracts, artists bios, press photos, etc), but it didn’t really matter because there were few enough files that it was easy to browse.

After a couple of weeks, I went home and organized my projects and documents according to the same pattern. I find things faster now.

The keys are this: (1) broad top-level categories (“exhibitions”) (2) dated folders (3) shallow structure inside dated folders (files in root or one folder deep)

This pattern makes it easy to know where to put things, and Easy to browse. Find the category you want, then the date range you want. Now you’re only have a few folder names to read. Browsing the files inside of there might take a little while if there’s a lot, but usually there won’t be. And you can relax because if the file exists, it’s gotta be in here.

(Or maybe one other place—sometimes files don’t make it out of “Downloads,” and sometimes I have to check both “Art” and “Design” before I find the project I’m looking for. But that’s ok, because dated folders makes that easy to do.)

Others will suggest giving up and relying on search. Search is great, but it only works for files you know (or remember!) exist. Build a simpLe browsable structure and you can find things you’ve forgotten about, or tell collaborators where to look for things they want.

I have recently been experimenting with the mac app "Buckets," which seems conceptually similar to YNAB. It costs $50, but offers a full free trial with no feature or time limits.

Downsides are the data import process, which can be complicated, and the lack of a mobile app.

https://www.budgetwithbuckets.com

You’re right about cheap laptops, but there are still (AFAICT) plenty or WiFi-only chromebooks, which is the big thing in education. Also tablets, kindles, nintendos...

I agree with the suggestion that using the cellular network is the way to go, I just think that turning that cellular data into WiFi will allow more devices to connect, and more freedom in how people choose to use their connection. So I would suggest portable cellular-to-WiFi routers rather than building the cellular connection into a laptop.

The choice to sat “WiFi” rather than “internet” made me pause too, but in this case I think it is appropriate. If you only have access to a cheap laptop or tablet, a wired or cellular connection on its own won’t help you get to the information you need. WiFi is now the lowest common denominator of internet access, and that’s worth recognizing.

My recollection from last time I looked at this was that the point of choosing the 6502 is that it was produced in such quantity that there's still plenty of old stock available. Meaning that trust could be reinforced by having the Americans and Russians go together to a second hand shop, where they buy a vintage machine off the shelf.

To cheat the system would then require you to not only manufacturing a fake machine, but also place it in the shop, and convince your foreign counterpart to buy and trust that particular machine. If they insist on buying several machines from random stores around the country, then it becomes increasingly unlikely that you're going to be able to get away with cheating.

The concern as I understand it is not that a journalist would just straight-up defend a conspiracy theory. Rather, the concern is that if you give any airtime to conspiracy theorists, even in the form of a debate, some viewers/readers will conclude that there must be some nugget of legitimacy in the conspiracy (why else would it be on the news?). Indeed, conspiracy theorists have relied on this to gain support, especially before they had the internet, when strategically baiting the media was the only way to get their bullshit noticed.