Flip (Philip) Kromer

The common theme is that if you have authenticated identities, a system using auditing and consequences for the identity better handles edge cases; and investing most heavily in auditing from the outset means that you truly understand the system before you implement lockout controls

For offensive post filtering, add a basic banlist, sure, but you’ll get better compliance with soft filters — a pop up “are you really sure this isn’t going to get you banned?”, downgrading visibility of questionable posts, etc. (I’m not saying trust & safety is easy, just identifying order of work)

In a community space you can put supplies behind an access controlled cabinet + vending system vs security camera, cash box and semi-regular inventory tracking. The latter is simpler and handles all the edge cases of supplies taken for personal use vs organizational use and is a better cultural fit.

Classic engineering mistake is to attack the hard problem of +preventing+ a Bad Thing when it’s typically easier and often better to +monitor and recover+ from a Bad Thing. Examples in thread…

Awful sign for the Vietnam Verterans memorial

Let’s see… a shambolic wreck bearing some traces of originally noble goals but overwhelmed by inexorable state level concerns, ineptly implemented with no care or understanding of the people it purportedly serves. Yes, this sign is a fitting memorial to the Vietnam War

Crackpots 2: Aliens, harvard, harvard aliens? 'Oumuamua? Planet 9? Dinosaurs?Can physicists be physics crackpots? Of course. Is Avi Loeb a crackpot? Maybe.Th... harvard & aliens & crackpots: a disambiguation of Avi Loeb

Thank you for the excuse to amp one of my favorite physics YouTubers: https://youtu.be/aY985qzn7oI

Me: what's new?
Niece (ten year old whose activist moms have near-zero sportsball interest): I joined a flag football league!
Me:
…
…
OK, I have *so* many questions…
How'd you choose that?
Niece: Well, it seemed like the best way to fight the patriarchy.
Me: I have so many fewer questions

Little free library at UMass Memorial

If you want to downsize your or the kids' book collection but despair of a place they'll be appreciated — see if there's a little free library at the hospital. This is 2/3 reduced from the first boxes about two weeks ago; for health reasons patrons cannot return books so it's hard to keep it stocked

Just moved to Wooster MA, miss Austin but love being near family. Once done unpacking I'm on the hook to help a nephew connect ChatGPT to https://snap.berkeley.edu/snap/snap.html as a text adventure engine, and skill up so my niece can copilot the CNC embroidery machine(!) at Technocopia maker space

"I subscribe to the belief that internet trends are defined by a ratio of laziness to social reward. Users will always do the laziest possible thing to achieve the maximum amount clout." — from @ryanbroderick.bsky.social on https://www.garbageday.email/

What's involved with that equipment wise?

twitter and reddit beginning down the paths of self-destruction in the name of preventing scraping and AI abuse demonstrates that the solution to that problem is not going to be a primarily technological one

It's still not clear to me why the highlight of my viewing week is an hour long PowerPoint on defense economics, https://youtu.be/EVqGEtPj0M0 but hilariously it's also still not clear to Perun either. 15 months in and I understand a great deal more about geopolitical and economic sausage making tho.

Makerspace health index, in priority order: regular classes with paid teachers, CoC & member hdbk, diverse board, dust clxn, volunteer coordination is job #1, bought-not-built machines, manuals, gurus trust but advise board, BYO supplies but all tools provided, guru office hours, Discourse msg board

But of course at age 11 anything is impressive. Even moreso that they want to hang around with Dad doing it, great work.

In 8th grade (two years behind the kid) I tried writing from scratch a solver for Mastermind game, a discouraging failure; year on I typed in code from Scientific American to draw fractals (ran overnight on an 8086), started adding/messing with it; quickly most of the code and all the pride was mine

Not a perfect crossover but for getting college age folks => expert engineers the most important things are 1. give a very small code base that does an interesting thing and have them change it to be more interesting to them; and 2. do everything possible to focus them on function and not technology

Curious what motivated that -- your suggestion or theirs? Why not just markdown or set up a carrd or hosted Wordpress and get communicating? In my education program I asked about the "learn Latin so you can speak French" canard and they slapped the taste out my mouth.

It's 2008 and I can hand-build a follow list of thoughtful startup folks. Look straight ahead, there's nothing but blue skies amirite Jimmy?