Luigi intensifies

Star Trek: Lower Decks #1 arrives on November 13. You can order issue 1 or upcoming issues at TFAW. Or pick up individual digital editions at Amazon/comiXology.

Thanks to Amazon after buying vomiXology, their aggressive geoblocking and monopolistic position there’s almost no legal way to read digital comics in their original version from USA in my country.

And importing physical editions is off the table, I did in the past and it doubles the price and almost never arrive in perfect conditions.

There are guardrails in place to avoid providing the user illegal and hateful information to the en user and specially to avoid situations like that (well not all companies do, but you can expect Google to have it in place),

I wonder: 1- How did the LLM hallucinate so much to generate that answer out of the blues given the previous context. 2- Why did the guardrails failed blocking this such obvious undesired output.

This, when I decided to join Mastodon I was prompted to choose a server and had to research which one should join and understand how it works.

It is called UX friction and is well studied in sign up and checkout processes, the more steps the user has to perform the more likely it abandons it.

And disk serial numbers 😟

I have another one unlicked, I accept $750.000.

But the best part? It’s a $5000 work laptop, and my 6 year old Thinkpad (with Linux) runs laps around the thing any day of the week. Opening the file explorer takes, most of the time, 5+ seconds…

In my previous job I was doing Java development on e-commerce (Hybris, then renamed to SAP Commerce) and the laptop (a beefy thinkpad) took ages from powering on to being able to work, also Java compilation could take 30 min and just starting up the project on local another 5.

Had the opportunity to install Linux (the policy was that dual boot was required and don’t disturb IT with Linux issues) and oh boy, from turning on to being able to work was incredible fast. Compiling went from 30 to 5 min (with same Java official version from oracle in order to avoid any implementation discrepancies between openjdk and the oracle JDK in prod), and starting tje local server went from have enough time for preparing a coffee to seconds.

Unfortunately my current job only allows Windows and the policies are too strict.

Not too late but later than I should have:

• To seek professional mental health help
• To understand that Bisexuality really exists. Growing up and in my teens in media and pop culture it’s seemed that you either were gay or straight, no other option.

Wait what? Why?

I prefer paracetamol since ibuprofen can create secondary effects in the gastric system.

It’s only called champaign if it is the champagne region of France. Otherwise is a sparkling city.

I know the exit.

Q also joined for some tea.

Never heard of that. When attending a trade school there was never the necessity of a mnemotechnic to know in which direction turn the tool.

As other mentioned this kind of phrase is useless if you are in the opposite side of the thing you want to tighten/loose.

What I always heard is “la regla del destornillador” (the screwdriver rule), as a substitute for the right hand rule.

That’s compressed, and plain text compress very well.

For my master’s final project I downloaded the English Wikipedia and after unzipping it grew quite large. I don’t remember the total size, also it was 2018, it will be larger now.

This. Worked at a consulting firm doing e-commerce for a client. The client always pushed making changes on banners or promotional texts rather than fixing bugs.

There was an issue with the address validator in the checkout (why and how is irrelevant) and it was raised by the QAs, but we were told to fix it in the future, they didn’t see it as a priority, they preferred a checkout that worked most of the time an focus on adding a promo banner.

Now I work in a better place, working on product with stakeholders who don’t prioritise new things over fixing stuff, but we still need to fight to have time allocated for technical improvements that the benefits are not directly evident in the final product.

Cautionary Tales

We tell our children unsettling fairy tales to teach them valuable lessons, but these Cautionary Tales are for the education of the grown ups - and they are all true. Tim Harford (Financial Times, BBC, author of “The Data Detective”) brings you stories of awful human error, tragic catastrophes, and hilarious fiascos. They’ll delight you, scare you, but also make you wiser.

I think the description is better than what I can write.

cordless power tools

Each tool had their own battery, it discharged so fast and degraded even faster, and forget buying new batteries because the manufacturer decided to change the design again and either you’re stuck with a drill that only works for five minutes or buy a new one.

Now batteries last an eternity, and because each brand has their own ecosystem, as long as you buy tools from the same brand you can use the batteries you already have. And also the brands has no incentive to change the design and break the compatibility of the batteries, it would alienate the costumers who spent a lot of money on the tools and would go for another ecosystem.

You have my vote.