Former kernel hacker and Bell Labs/AT&T Researcher, currently making art and technology in Berlin.
This week in Jack’s Yak Barbershop: I want to publish this maths library I factored out of my personal tools, so I’ll write some examples using Quil to help people understand it. Hm, Quil is broken, I’ll fix that first. O no, the fix relies on some changes to how Processing publishes their software, let me go over there and chat with them…
The good news: Processing team was super helpful, Quil upgrades went well, and examples are turning out nicely, so all three will be better for the effort 😊
@xavier @aparrish @plexus Thanks for the kind words. The Clojure community is almost certainly the largest one doing commercial programming in Lisp these days. There’s great work happening in scheme and CL, but the communities are smaller. Friendliness is high among Clojure people and some scheme groups.
@anders ❤️🩹
@surprisetalk Yes?
@MartinClausen This is one of the examples for a Clojure library I will be releasing soon. The comments explain everything 😊
In 2025, Big Tech—just ten major companies—spent €49 million lobbying Brussels. That’s more than pharma, finance, and automotive combined.
Google funds all sixteen major European think tanks shaping EU policy. Not *some* of them. All of them. Amazon and Meta fund most of the rest.
This is no longer “poor old me, I need a bit of help,” this is full regulatory capture. With a view to becoming even more embedded into businesses and governments, and getting whatever favorable legislation passed or diluted to suit them.
https://corporateeurope.org/en/2025/10/big-tech-lobby-budgets-hit-record-levels
There are two problems in computer science:
1. We could do this better
2. We should not do this at all
@emenel I am using my own library for the Geometric Algebra part plus a Clojure library that I co-maintain called Quil for the canvas.
@tonyg It’s good clear prose!
The core of my frustration with #OpenScience practices:
We cannot have a true Open Science until we dispel the myth that papers contain usable descriptions of scientific processes.
This cannot happen until researchers are trained, using evidence-based pedagogy, to read scientific articles for USE, not citation, not argument support, but USE!!!
In my seminars, all learners leave convinced we need a documentation system grounded in usability, & that papers are NOT fit for purpose. >>
Morgens halb zehn in Deutschland.
"Protected Bike Lane" auf der Schlesischen Straße.
According to Valve, they managed to run pretty much all x86 games (so far) on their new ARM-based PCs thanks to this FOSS project:
https://github.com/FEX-Emu/FEX
This runs together with Proton to seamlessly transcode Windows x86 games for Steam OS on ARM. FOSS is THAT cool!
Well, everyone, you can now submit a comment to let the FCC know what you think about SpaceX asking for 1 million satellites for "AI datacenters" whatever the fuck that means.
https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-26-113A1.pdf
Comments due March 6.
I am having a very hard time believing this is really happening. Fuck you, SpaceX, and fuck you, FCC. This is not regulation, this is a fucking joke, that will destroy our ability to use satellites for centuries.
Are there any good places to find volunteering roles? I'd like to find something that makes my community / the world better, and I'm happy to volunteer my time and tech skills to do so.
Something fully / mostly remote would be best. I'm based in Glasgow, UK. Global roles okay too.
@plexus They’re all in contracts that I can’t really share publicly, but maybe I can write a sort of “average scope agreement” if I find time
@plexus I usually go the other way: instead of having carve outs for specific things, I have a very narrow and well defined scope for what the customer owns.
@khleedril Good feeling 😊
“Whatever pleasure we derive from the radio or however wireless and the radio may have added to human life, Marconi’s share was practically negligible.”
https://worrydream.com/refs/Flexner_1939_-_The_Usefulness_of_Useless_Knowledge.html
