đŸ Archived View for gemlog.blue âș users âș Sardonyx âș 1609456270.gmi captured on 2023-07-22 at 18:15:07. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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This post of mine has some replies, some links, and some opinion.
Iâll end with a link to one of my preferred pages, which Iâve taken the time to save to my bookmarks with the `add` command.
anonymoustreecko links to a little gem game called Vault Guard, provided by acdw.
Also, opening a TCP socket on Windows (back in the day) used to open up your dialer software. This wasn't uncommon on Linux too, maybe Macs. Software didn't do networking requests unless you asked -- because as soon as it tried it was going to either prompt you to go online, or you'd hear the click of a relay as it started to dial up.
I have to use zoom for school, which sucksá”. I'm counting my lucky stars that I don't have to use exam proctoring softwareá”, but using zoom still sucks all around.
zoom has officially graduated to breaking my devices
I hear you. It is terrifying how Zoom is used at school and at work. At school you also get exam proctoring software, at job interviews you get something similar, and at your actual job you get this shit.
(WWW) Bosses Panic-Buy Spy Software to Keep Tabs on Remote Workers
if you're a human and your eyes are processing this text right now - it's you!! You're the one! You don't win anything, but at least I'm not filling up your browser asking you to subscribe to my newsletter. Gosh, what a rude way to introduce yourself. It's like, hey, umm.. I've never been to your blog before, and I don't really care about your newsletter, or your lifestyle. I don't want you to email me every Tuesday just so I can be the first to know about new content. I just wanted to learn how to fold fitted sheets because my mama never taught me. Your blog was the first search result that wasn't a long video or an SEO'd to heck receptacle for ad space.. my hopes were crushed in twenty seconds, which is how long it took for the page to load, for the pop ups to be cleared, and for me to get to the bottom of the post. Thats right, the bottom, where you "offer" your "free ebook" full of simple home tips. All I need to do is provide my email address. Do you want a key to my house, too? You're asking so much of me. You don't even know me like that. I don't want you to, if I'm being fully honest. And I still dont know how to fold these damn sheets.
Btw if you are new and don't know if what to read, I will write a list of accounts I personally keep an eye on.
Live and kicking / happy to see more new accounts in gemlog!
Thanks for including me!
Even though the depth of content available on the internet has surely increased, it seems like the portal through which I view it has closed more and more until I'm only allowed a narrow crack.
As I've become more involved in Gemini, I'm coming here instead of the web to kill time, but there are still a few sites that drag me back to the web; Hacker News and The Guardian.
announcing gemini://guardian.shit.cx
Thatâs great! News ought to be a perfect fit for Gemini. Yet news sites are often among the most bloated on the web.
And I've also worked out my position on how it should be used: Should I provide an RSS/Atom feed to the articles? Nope, subscribe to the official RSS feeds. Should I format the links so that the page is subscribableâ”? Nope, subscribe to the official RSS feeds. How long should the articles be retained? 3 days, but may require further tuning. Should people link to articles hosted here? Nope, it won't be found in a few days, and I won't change the policy. I would prefer you to link to www.theguardian.com or archive.org instead. They have a better track-record for running a service than shit.cx. Will I allow robots to index the articles? Nope, the articles will likely be gone before anyone finds them.
This position is very sensible. It would be great to have an official Gemini mirror of The Guardian, but as they arenât providing one, itâs important to encourage readers to stick to the source.
I will add this mirror of The Grauniad to my rounds, like Geminews.
In particular, some such people don't care as much about the philosophy and values as they do about having 'trend-setter' status, and so need the space to become as popular as possible _even at the expense of the philosophy and values_. Communities that had formed in an attempt to provide an alternative space find themselves getting pushed back towards having the very sort of characteristics from which they were trying to find a refuge.
Geminispace vs. Beeblebroxians
Gemini shouldnât become some oddball version of the web, obviously. Yet this doesnât worry me. I take a lot of comfort in the stewardship of solderpunk. The spec is mostly frozen and it doesnât permit much sabotage of its ideals. What sort of malfeasance could âBeeblebroxiansâ get up to?
Remember dmoz.org, or other web directories? The Random Road Gemini Directory is like that, but for Gemini pages.
Sloum created a weather app, a recipe search engine, and has created othelllo (board game) and geminews.
Recent fun projects for geminispace
"Python already replaced Excel," said Matthew Hampson, deputy chief digital officer at Nomura, speaking at last Friday's Quant Conference in London. "You can already walk across the trading floor and see people writing Python code...it will become much more common in the next three to four years."
(WWW) News article about Python in finance
Excel is fragile. Views and logic are intermingled, making it very hard to troubleshoot errors. Also, models arenât put into source control, so you canât restore an old version. Massive spreadsheets with dozens of tabs frequently crash without warning, much to the dismay of underwriting analysts (like myself). During my three years in reinsurance, I witnessed a dire need for new tooling. And, from what I observed, it is clear that this tooling will be powered by Python.
(WWW) Ditching Excel for Python
Amy Peniston, insurance analyst, talks about the benefits of moving beyond Excel and Visual Basic to Python. As someone in a different industry who has fought a similar battle, allow me to say âFuck yeah!â In my experience, Excel is used so that upper management can fool themselves into believing they understand the details of the code. Theyâre never the ones debugging Excelâs quirks, yet they wonât permit Excel to be replaced with a better framework or language. According to a graybeard coworker, this struggle is ancient, and is the reason COBOL was created. Thereâs a depressing thought. Anyway, I am heartened by this trend. FOSS replacing proprietary software and using the right tool for the job: two things I hope to see more of in 2021.
Letâs now imagine how the reinsurance industry might evolve as a result of this step change in technology. First, the deals: I predict that reinsurance structures will become increasingly complex as our ability to price them increases. Rather than relying on approximations in Excel spreadsheets, Python-based models will be able to account for the nuance of complicated structural terms.
This gives me pause. Disclaimer: I know nothing of the (re)insurance industry. But I do know that financial dealings can easily be complex enough that they have unintended consequences. Weâre 12 years past the âcredit crunchâ or âglobal financial crisisâ or âgreat recessionâ so... have we failed to learn that complexity, while promising efficiency or profits, brings danger? I think the answer is *yes*. Those with shorter memories can look back to earlier this year for a small-scale example. Supply chains the world over were disrupted by the pandemic.
All of the overcapacity that has been squeezed out of our health care system; we now wish we had it. All of the redundancy in our food production that has been consolidated away; we want that, too. We need our old, local supply chainsânot the single global ones that are so fragile in this crisis. And we want our local restaurants and businesses to survive, not just the national chains.
(WWW) Bruce Schneier says we need to embrace inefficiency to save our economy
This kind of simplicity is one thing I hope to see more of in 2021. Now I am signing off. I plan to kick back, watch the classic _Trading Places_ and ring in the new year. See you in 2021!
31 December 2020 by Sardonyx
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