@mike@sauropods.win cover
@mike@sauropods.win avatar

mike

@[email protected]

By day I am a computer programmer with Index Data, where I have been happily and gainfully employed for 20 years.

By night, I am a vertebrate palaeontologist with the University of Bristol, specialising in sauropods: the biggest and best of all dinosaurs.

I am an advocate for open access, open data and open source, and also for open peer-review though I'm beginning to think pre-publication peer-review might be a mistake. I support #LFC.

Email: [email protected]
ORCiD: 0000-0002-1003-5675

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. View on remote instance

lowqualityfacts , to random
@lowqualityfacts@mstdn.social avatar

2024: OpenAI releases a free virtual assistant with a weirdly flirty voice.

2025: Millions of men become emotionally attached to the AI.

2026: OpenAI threatens to delete your virtual girlfriend if you don't pay a monthly subscription. You must also buy her digital flowers or she will hate you.

mike ,
@mike@sauropods.win avatar

@lowqualityfacts This is 100% going to happen.

arstechnica , to random
@arstechnica@mastodon.social avatar

You can now buy a flame-throwing robot dog for under $10,000

Thermonator, the first "flamethrower-wielding robot dog," is completely legal in 48 US states.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/04/you-can-now-buy-a-flame-throwing-robot-dog-for-under-10000/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

mike ,
@mike@sauropods.win avatar

@arstechnica Second Amendment, innit? The right of the people to bear flamethrowing robot dogs shall not be abridged.

lowqualityfacts , to random
@lowqualityfacts@mstdn.social avatar

Uncharacteristically high quality post:
Happy 10 years to this gorgeous girl. Thank you for spending the best decade of my life with me.

image/jpeg
image/jpeg
image/jpeg

mike ,
@mike@sauropods.win avatar

@lowqualityfacts Hey! I demand lower quality!

nixCraft , to random
@nixCraft@mastodon.social avatar

Preaching to a room full of devs

Please, start programming in Rust, man. Come on, it's such a good language! You have memory safety, high-level abstractions, and low-level performance. Come on, man, we NEED more people to use i-

the twitter JS mafia shoots me down

THE END.

mike ,
@mike@sauropods.win avatar

@nixCraft Hiya. I've not used Rust at all and know little about it, but it SEEMS to me that the list of plus-point you gave here is a description of . Are there clear advantages of Rust over Go?

ajsadauskas , (edited ) to Technology
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

My real worry with Google's voyage into enshittification (thanks to Cory Doctorow @pluralistic the term) is YouTube.

Through YT, for the past 15 years, the world has basically entrusted Google to be the custodian of pretty much our entire global video archive.

There's countless hours of archived footage — news reports, political speeches, historical events, documentaries, indie films, academic lectures, conference presentations, rare recordings, concert footage, obscure music — where the best or only copy is now held by Google through YouTube.

So what happens if maintaining that archival footage becomes unprofitable?

@technology

mike ,
@mike@sauropods.win avatar

@jeroen @ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology @fanf @brewsterkahle And THAT Is why commercial companies want to destroy archive.org

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • random
  • tech
  • kbinEarth
  • testing
  • interstellar
  • wanderlust
  • All magazines
    •