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Rob Williamson

@eswag@dju.social
mastodon 4.2.17
  • Open on dju.social

I program #SpringBoot web services and have now managed to avoid managing people. I used to program dev tools & before that, program mobile phones.

Once ran the same early Windows 8 build instance on both a hypervisor and native boot.

Old enough to remember #Symbian #C++.

I really like painting miniature figures like those produced for #warhammer, but am not so keen on #GamesWorkshop.

#OnePageRules is my current #TableTop #Wargaming jam.

Involved in some kind of computer bullshit.

641 Followers
2302 Following
50 Posts
Joined November 10, 2022
pronouns:
He/him/his
signal:
https://signal.me/#eu/ARg2t0MST3fYiaDBgZdFmc5YtEWcI3ZDrqL9CGPEBxCOVjBGvgRK2IDj3A27nqv0
interest:
biology because it's cool
interest:
economics for the same reason a man being chased by a lion is interested in zoology
Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 3mo ago
Replying to
@regehr@mastodon.social @aburka@hachyderm.io @SnoopJ@hachyderm.io @dan@discuss.systems @dev@discuss.systems "Plant the tomatoes on whose land, Nick? Whose land?" PS: Land ownership is a concept with some interesting looking challenges from Georgist economics. I like the notion of abolishing it and supporting ownership-like land use by renting land from everyone else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism
en.wikipedia.org
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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 5mo ago
Replying to
@sabrina@fedi01.unicornsparkle.club @Landa@graz.social @futurebird@sauropods.win @cabel@social.panic.com We tried that last time. The Luddites have a very bad press because the industrialists controlled most of the presses. Not to say the Luddites were universally good foresighted people, but as far as I can tell (which is an amateurish mishmash of tidbits from mostly forgotten sources, treat with skepticism), they also weren't mindless technophobes either. They had, to use a dreadful contemporary phrase, "legitimate concerns".
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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 5mo ago
Replying to
@nazgul It's early Monday. It took me 3 tries to see what was wrong with that picture. Going for coffee now...
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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 5mo ago
Replying to
@pwloftus@pwl.farted.net @hellomiakoda@pdx.social @Guillotine_Jones@beige.party @maxleibman@beige.party Well *that's* going in the log...
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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 5mo ago
Replying to
@hllizi@hespere.de @Landa@graz.social @futurebird@sauropods.win @cabel@social.panic.com I remember reading Tom Paine's Rights of Man during Brexit, & chuckling despairingly when he claimed that (paraphrased badly), just as all city dwellers pitch in to help with the harvest, so no person will vote against their own interests. I read that at a time when British crops were rotting in the fields because no bugger wanted to pick them, a year or so after a vote to prevent the poor sods who did want to pick them from being welcomed into the country.
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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 6mo ago
Replying to
@maxleibman Dat spheroid is OBLATE!
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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 6mo ago
Replying to
@Ashedryden@xoxo.zone Single point of failure means it can only fail once, right? How bad can it be? 😱💀
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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 5mo ago
Replying to
@lzg That's fair. I don't think valid criticism of generative models comes from misattributing blame. I see these categories of criticism as important and valid: Motivation - the firms behind models are looking to replace ppl and concentrate power for themselves Effectiveness - the models aren't that good for replacing people Ethics - the models are being pushed out without safeguards or accountability Hypocrisy - the legal framework that sustains these corporations cares about IP; they don't
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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 5mo ago
Replying to
@GossiTheDog Then in 2026, everything changed. Jk, but maybe debacles like https://archive.ph/T3LU6 will keep piling up to the point that people will stop giving slot machines running on remote graphics cards the keys to their personal kingdoms. Please?
archive.ph
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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 5mo ago
Replying to
@ater@flipping.rocks @ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org Roko's Basilisk has nothing on Musk's Thieving Git.
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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 5mo ago
Replying to
@hllizi@hespere.de @Landa@graz.social @futurebird@sauropods.win @cabel@social.panic.com I think there were more steam and other explosions than one would want, but I take your point. The machines also enabled mass production of high quality weapons, so anyone who looked like they might not want to deconstruct their local industries and send all their wealth to the owners of UK sweatshops would soon find their capitals being randomly deconstructed by mass produced explosive shells. Models enable the deconstruction of common experience?
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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 5mo ago
Replying to
@david_chisnall@infosec.exchange This is why I like biology. Last I checked, the evolutionary explanation for sexual reproduction was that constantly reshuffling our genetic code minimizes the likelihood of a disease or parasite developing a universal hack. It also explains why some people are flattened by an infection while others don't even know they had it. There's a bdelloid rotifer which is just a population of clones. When something figures out an exploit, it's done for.
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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 5mo ago
Replying to
@aral @winterwolves @brouhaha Hang on, but Nazis were a real entity, they were even a government and arguably a culture, but I presume Wolfenstein & similar are permitted?
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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 5mo ago
Replying to
@billbennett We're so smort.
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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 5mo ago
Replying to
@MarkHoltom Same. My grandfather was a captain of an anti-tank unit that came across Belsen. He did tell me a little before he died. They could smell it miles before they saw it. The bastards running it had all fled. By the time they got there, it was populated only by people that famine had turned into rake thin scarecrows and corpses. That's about as far as he got, description-wise.
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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 6mo ago

I think I'm getting more resistant to disease as I get fitter. The last 3 times my wife and kids all got colds, I felt run down and tired for a couple of days, then felt OK again.

I was like, "any second, my nose is going to start running and I'll have a sore throat," but it didn't break out. I hope today is another one of those. I'm so tired I feel like a human skinsuit scarecrow thing held up by coffee and hope this morning, but no other physical symptoms, while my dearest ones all cough...

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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 6mo ago
Replying to
@martin How about this gag, "Define the Kessler effect." "When a shotgun and a railgun have a baby, and baby wants to play with your thing in orbit. And your thing in orbit becomes just like baby. And if any of it could be on fire, it would be on fire. Also, it's like that for centuries."
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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 6mo ago
Replying to
@martin Now I read my toot again, it doesn't read as a joke. In my head it was so obviously absurd that anyone would hire a nation state to take potshots at the sky - that was the humour.
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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 8mo ago
Replying to
@sarahtaber@mastodon.online Very nice video! This has started a binge for me. Subscribed.
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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 1mo ago

@pmjv @xChaos@f.cz @FeloniousPunk@beige.party

Nope, it's shorter. It's near enough identical for the point I'm making. Without empathy, psychopaths only fail to harm people by chance.

https://mindpsychiatrist.com/are-all-psychopaths-evil/

Failing to consider the impact of actions on others is not a trait anyone can reasonably want in someone wielding power. I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Are you seriously suggesting that discriminating against psychopaths in this instance is not fair and justified?

pmjv s klapkami na očích (@pmjv@snac.lab8.cz)
snac.lab8.cz

pmjv s klapkami na očích (@pmjv@snac.lab8.cz)

314 sledovaných, 171 sledujících · follow @p@hj.9fs.net for pornography #neverslop

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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 5mo ago
Replying to
@hllizi@hespere.de @Landa@graz.social @futurebird@sauropods.win @cabel@social.panic.com A note of encouragement is that reality continues to be real. It's taken a lot to drag the masses out of their cocoons of wealth, but it's happening. People in the US are seeing each other get shot in the face by government thugs, Brits working 2 jobs are sleeping rough. It's difficult to believe the bullshit on your phone when the rest of your body tells you you're cold, hungry and unsafe.
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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 5mo ago
Replying to
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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 3mo ago
Replying to
@sashag@anarres.family It is not native, that can never have been born, but with strange Elons, it can eternal lie. And fib. And bullshit. And violate people without their knowledge or consent. Because of strange Elon's illegal power plants, externalised costs (probably corporate manslaughter in UK law) and state regulatory capture. I'm no Lovecraft with prose. Then again, I'm also not a galloping racist eugenicist. Also, I don't have a cat, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't fuck up naming it that badly.
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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 1mo ago

@pmjv @xChaos@f.cz @FeloniousPunk@beige.party same!

pmjv s klapkami na očích (@pmjv@snac.lab8.cz)
snac.lab8.cz

pmjv s klapkami na očích (@pmjv@snac.lab8.cz)

314 sledovaných, 171 sledujících · follow @p@hj.9fs.net for pornography #neverslop

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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 5mo ago
Replying to
@Landa@graz.social @futurebird@sauropods.win @cabel@social.panic.com I think the industrial revolution comparison is fair. The industrial revolution impoverished millions over generations, globally destroyed a class of artisan specialists, and most (India & China notably) have barely caught up to their relative standard of living before it. IMO, the IR gets an undeservedly good reputation because of the labour movement's victories in spreading the benefits of industry to the general population in the 20th century west.
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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 5mo ago
Replying to
@usluck@channels.im Hiro's engine - why didn't the Romans have an industrial revolution? I thought slaves was the answer, but the British Empire was as enthusiastic about slavery as the Roman Empire. Probably it was capitalism.
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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 5mo ago
Replying to
@hllizi@hespere.de @Landa@graz.social @futurebird@sauropods.win @cabel@social.panic.com I think we're seeing the supercharging of the old trick that Nye Bevan characterized so well: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9907942-how-can-wealth-persuade-poverty-to-use-its-political-freedom LLMs and associated slop ducts have persuaded people dying of covid to support the people whose recklessness got them infected. I'm not sure what people down the rabbit hole *wouldn't* vote for at this point. They're so hacked.
A quote by Aneurin Bevan
goodreads.com

A quote by Aneurin Bevan

How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the 20th century.

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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 1w ago

@aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place @oblomov@snowfan.it @mcc@mastodon.social

*Ballmer sidles up* it is real, it's just not what ppl think...

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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 1mo ago

@xChaos@f.cz @FeloniousPunk@beige.party

Not aware of the other 2 being detectable by brain scan. Psychopaths absolutely are.

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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 6mo ago
Replying to
@EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu Try a progressive europe-wide tax. Tax land ownership. That would boost the value of the Euro so you don't get inflation when you print Euros to pay for education, training and infrastructure projects. Yes, you can pay for a giant drone-centric military designed by the Ukrainians too... Oh, you can rewrite the copyright laws that the US wrote for you so that they got all the value from IP. Also, tax IP. You should not want your own Meta or Palantir. Those things are disasters.
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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 1mo ago

@pmjv @xChaos@f.cz @FeloniousPunk@beige.party

Not sure what you're getting at here. Unless you're suggesting that the traits shared include the incapacity for empathy, which I couldn't find in the article, I don't think you're addressing what I suggested.

I think the blind person drivers license discrimination is a better analogy.

Certainly some papers state that a brain scan is not diagnostic of psychopathy. That's valid too. If it doesn't work, I withdraw the suggestion.

pmjv s klapkami na očích (@pmjv@snac.lab8.cz)
snac.lab8.cz

pmjv s klapkami na očích (@pmjv@snac.lab8.cz)

314 sledovaných, 171 sledujících · follow @p@hj.9fs.net for pornography #neverslop

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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 5mo ago
Replying to
@peter@thepit.social Well maybe this solves the aging population crisis by reducing the life expectancy to 30. I assume we're going to have a laissez-faire attitude to this the same way we did with Covid. Ironically, it's almost as if a higher power is trying to save us by making transport difficult via 47's dementia war in the Strait of Hormuz. I'm sure we'll band together and power through this impediment to well and truly fuck ourselves. The human spirit is, after all, indomitable, as well as stupid.
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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 6d ago

Listening to an old James O'Brien episode from a few weeks ago asking why the massive reduction in inward migration to the UK doesn't please the anti-immigration far right. They don't believe that it's true, despite the data coming from the same places they quoted when the figures were higher.

My guess is that they don't believe it because they don't see their lives getting better.

The fash thesis is, "your life sucks because of immigrants". If your life still sucks, the "problem" persists.

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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 2mo ago

Senators Propose Age Verification for All Computer and Phone Operating Systems

https://ground.news/article/senators-propose-age-verification-for-all-computer-and-phone-operating-systems_b260ef?utm_source=mobile-app&utm_medium=newsroom-share

I read it as "Senators Propose Striplighting in my Anus"

Makes as much sense, as likely to happen. Poor old USA though. You literally have grumpy senile old farts proposing "down with this newfangled doohickey" and sponsored by bastards looking to install striplights or something.

Ground News

Senators Propose Age Verification for All Computer and Phone Operating Systems

Senators Andy Kim (D-NJ), Adam Schiff (D-CA), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), and John Barrasso (R-WY) introduced the bipartisan Digital Age Assurance Act to protect children online by requiring operating system providers to collect and share users’ ages exclusively with app developers so they can block kids from accessing age-inappropriate content. The bill prioritizes protecting kids’ privacy with a number of provisions preventing kids’ data from being sold or transferred and banning targeted advertise

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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 6mo ago
Replying to
@esoastronomy Anti satellite technology is a developing field. IIRC, China shot down one of their own satellites, maybe a decade ago. I wonder if we can commission their anti-satellite missile capabilities?
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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 6mo ago

@0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange

How very dare you! 89.43% still contains a 9.

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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 3w ago

@MaddieM4@raphus.social

Ooo the motors and the pots and the capacititititators!

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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 1mo ago

@xChaos@f.cz @FeloniousPunk@beige.party

Fully agree. I can't think of a safe way to do it. It's just frustrating to know that psychopathic traits are detectable and are reliably disastrous when people with those traits acquire power.

It's easy to imagine people being disadvantaged by faked test results. "Computer says psycho" as a form of disenfranchisement.

With visual impairment, it's hard to hide and easy to understand and independently verify. Not true of psychopathy.

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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 3mo ago
Replying to
@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io @vampiress@eigenmagic.net It's helped me a little with code archeology. Given a codebase that was insufficiently described, with fading knowledge from its authors, an LLM did the donkey work of git blaming, reading commit messages, following documentation links & looking at GitHub PRs, to come up with a guess at *why* the logic does what it does, complete with checkable links. The most useful part of it was instances where it claimed it couldn't find a reason for the behaviour. I'm ambivalent.
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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 1mo ago

@pmjv @xChaos@f.cz @FeloniousPunk@beige.party

> the onlookers would probably classify that as psychopathic behavior

Not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about using the ability to determine without reasonable doubt and without any behaviour sample whether someone is a psychopath.

> i believe that all human traits can be utilized to some benefit,

Ok. I don't.

> we will always need people to make decisions nobody else does,

Maybe, but that doesn't suggest we should want those people to be cruel.

pmjv s klapkami na očích (@pmjv@snac.lab8.cz)
snac.lab8.cz

pmjv s klapkami na očích (@pmjv@snac.lab8.cz)

314 sledovaných, 171 sledujících · follow @p@hj.9fs.net for pornography #neverslop

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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 2w ago

@micr0@wetdry.world

Work BYOD device means I have little option. I recognise that 2 physically distinct devices would be the better thing to do, but given that the level of chaos my ADHD regularly provokes means I must set reminders to brush my teeth, see sunlight and drink water, I don't think I could reliably remember to carry both machines.

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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 3w ago

"Israel is where we go when it happens again."

It is such a powerful message of pain, tight with centuries of unjust oppression. It's compelling rhetoric, and it's a trauma response.

Because it's a trauma response, it's not rational. What if the next time it happens, it happens in Israel? Is there something that makes Israel magically immune to injustice?

I think that's part of the struggle some people have with calling out Israel's atrocities.

#Israel #Palestine #Genocide

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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 1w ago

@SecureOwl@infosec.exchange

CS

S

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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 5mo ago
Replying to
@mwl@io.mwl.io @mhoye@cosocial.ca While trying to keep my eyebrows from physically leaving my head, I imagined little speech bubbles as I read that article: "My business was deleted by the best premium model running on the finest of agents." "Screw you, Poindexter, I don't need to know what a context window is." "Claude's not stochastic, *you're* stochastic."
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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 8mo ago
Replying to

@streetartutopia

"What day/night will be the wildest party on your island?"

  • Maybe when the last of you abusive human cattle farmers is locked up by your peers?

Elmo, your peers are the "cattle" people you think you're better than because you can't tell the difference between net worth and human worth.

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 5mo ago
Replying to
@david_chisnall@infosec.exchange I haven't seen a good idea about how to achieve this with FOS software, however. People understandably take off-the-shelf components when there are ones available that work well. Forks die if other forks become more popular. I guess many states, each sponsoring their own FOSS distro, *might* approach the necessary diversity, but it would look like islands of monoculture, and each island would have the same vulnerability architecture.
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Open post
Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 6mo ago
Replying to
@randahl@mastodon.social When. And who's responsible when it happens?
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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social
· 1mo ago

@pmjv @xChaos@f.cz @FeloniousPunk@beige.party

I read the Solomon story as a gamble that the real mother would speak up, the ruse hopefully pre-arranged with whoever would have carried out such a brutal sentence, so the kid would never truly have been at risk. But maybe that's a naïve view.

Regarding the decision capability question, I want any moral decision that is made with limited oversight to be made by someone with a conscience. Are you suggesting we might need a heartless ruler sometimes?

pmjv s klapkami na očích (@pmjv@snac.lab8.cz)
snac.lab8.cz

pmjv s klapkami na očích (@pmjv@snac.lab8.cz)

314 sledovaných, 171 sledujících · follow @p@hj.9fs.net for pornography #neverslop

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