#wired article

[twobitsandanibble]

I feel like not enough people here saw this absolute banger of a line on brandon's reddit account

[my-personal-hellsite]

[atalltallman]

Oh my goodness, was that wired guy that upset Brandon Sanderson is just a guy?

[frog707]

error rates in software

If somebody asked me how many bugs there are in my Heart library, the honest answer would be that I don't know. Currently the library's GitHub issue tracker shows no open issues. The library is about 21000 lines of code (excluding blank/comment lines), and most of it has never been systematically tested. An optimistic estimate would be 1 bug per 100 lines of code, so about 200 bugs. (A more realistic estimate might be 400-500 bugs.)

How can I justify publishing a piece of software with hundreds of bugs? Well, mainly because I think it satisfies a need. I use it every day. And when I find a bug, I fix it promptly. I haven't encountered a bug in the library since January, and the bug in question was discovered by code inspection, not testing. To me, Heart seems like good, reliable software.

How is it possible for a library with hundreds of bugs to appear reliable? Well, I started writing Heart in 2017, and it hasn't changed much in the past year, so the commonly used codepaths have been heavily tested. While it's entirely possible for software to exhibit bugs that pass unnoticed by the user, it's likely most of the remaining bugs occur in unusual situations.

A user other than myself might use the Heart library differently, exercising code I rarely (or never) use. To them, Heart might not seem so reliable.

Now according to the article below (citing Wired magazine from 2012), a modern high-end car "has" about 10 million lines of code.

It's unclear whether all that software runs on the car itself, or if that number includes software used to design and test the car. During the 1990s, Microsoft applications sold to the public averaged about 5 defects per 1000 lines of code, which was remarkably good IMHO. I can't imagine the software quality of a Lexus is any better than that. So a modern car probably has at least 50000 software defects.

It's mind boggling.

Even if all that code is actually running on the car, it doesn't mean the car is unsafe or unreliable. The Wired article hints that most of that code is for entertainment, not safety or reliability. Still, there are certainly bugs in every large software system, and the more you deviate from the conditions under which the software was tested, the more likely you are to encounter them.

Are there safety-critical software bugs in every new car? You bet there are! Caveat emptor.

[atalltallman]

Vin literally headbutts a man so hard his head explodes

It's so funny to me that that Wired author said all of Brandon's characters are "overly good, optimistic, and only save people." when Kelsier literally murders people for sport

[kropotkindersurprise]

Escalating Insurgency: An Interview with the Spokesperson of the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB)

The decades-long insurgency in the Papuan provinces has been intensifying. The TPNPB has now become a significant security threat for Jakarta. In this interview from late January, Militant Wire speaks (again) to Sebby Sambom, the spokesperson of the TPNPB.

[intravenous-agnostic]

📸: Valerie Phillips

[smashorpass50plus]

B52 Flying Fortress. It’s gonna outlive us all anyway

[dostoyevsky-official]

Doomscrolling Is Slowly Eroding Your Mental Health June 2020

For years people have questioned the net benefits of platforms like Twitter and Facebook, and while some studies have found social media, when used responsibly, can have positive effects on mental health, it can also lead to anxiety and depression. Or, at the bare minimum, FOMO. And that’s just the result of looking at too many brunch photos or links to celebrity gossip. Add in a global pandemic and civil unrest—and the possibility that social media networks are incentivized to push trending topics into your feeds—and the problem intensifies. [...] The doom and gloom isn’t all the media’s fault, though. Mesfin Bekalu, a research scientist at the Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness at Harvard’s T. H. Chan School of Public Health, notes that while a lot of the news is bad, “as humans we have a ‘natural’ tendency to pay more attention to negative news.” This, along with social media algorithms, makes doomscrolling—and its impacts—almost inevitable. “Since the 1970s, we know of the ‘mean world syndrome’—the belief that the world is a more dangerous place to live in than it actually is—as a result of long-term exposure to violence-related content on television,” Bekalu says. “So, doomscrolling can lead to the same long-term effects on mental health unless we mount interventions that address users’ behaviors and guide the design of social media platforms in ways that improve mental health and well-being.” The effects of doomscrolling also vary depending on who’s doing it. [...] Many activists didn’t participate in doomscrolling simply because, they said, “I can’t see myself being killed over and over again in this tiny square on my phone.”

It’s Time to Log Off Nov 2023

Scrolling through social media can feel like a nightmare these days. You’re reading about the horrors of the Israel-Hamas war, and then you’re reading about the horrors of the war between Ukraine and Russia. You’re learning about the latest devastating climate news. Democracy is under threat in America. It can feel like everything is falling apart. This, of course, can have a significant effect on your mental health. You start to feel overwhelmed. [...] Matthew Price, a professor of psychological science at the University of Vermont, says that stress is cumulative. [...] Price says ingesting a lot of negative news can cause anxiety and depression, at least for some period of time, but it’s especially likely to “exacerbate” anxiety, depression, and PTSD in people who have a history of experiencing those conditions. He says that people often doomscroll because there’s something bad going on and they want to find a way to fix the problem they’re reading about. “When we’re doomscrolling, we’re kind of looking for the resolution to the issue. Read some more posts. Read some more articles. If I get more information, then maybe I’ll understand the problem,” Price says, describing the doomscrolling cycle. [...] “It’s not about ‘this is a bad thing and this is a good thing.’ It’s about how you engage with it and how it fits in with the rest of what’s going on in your life,” Teachman [a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia] says. “How are you living the rest of your life, and what are the impacts on that?” [...] Price says that acting locally on issues you’re concerned about can help you maintain your mental health because otherwise things can feel too far away and too difficult to solve. Maybe you can’t end a war, but perhaps you can help some people in your community or get your community to do something that helps a bigger problem.

i find the defiance that it's not phones (a shorthand for everything they provide access to) eroding our children's attention spans puzzling. bad news isn't new, the press has always veered towards the sensational, people have always overfocused on the negative. but the technology of access and dissemination is brand new. this is a summary of a few research studies on doomscrolling and the emotional, psychological effects it has on adults. surely everyone reading this has experienced some it in some form. you don't think worse things are happening to undeveloped brains?

[twobitsandanibble]

not sure if this'll help out anyone else, but if you end up viewing that wired article on mobile, make sure you're on wifi, it used like 700mb of data on my plan

[noodledesk]

Wanting the “perfect build” or “personality,” anyway, is textbook girlified. Wanting to be seen doing it—well, even more so. You could say that platform-determined behavioral design, with its vectors of attentional capture leading to the illusion of monetary reward, is simply forced feminization. To wish to be perceived, desired, and rewarded for cultivating that desire is the default setting for participating in digital culture, making all of us “girls online” regardless of gender.

Everyone is a Girl Online, Alex Quicho

[aspd-culture]

Well, WIRED posting one of the only articles on why psychopathy is bs and personality disorders can't predict criminality was not on my 2023 Bingo Card.

But here we are. As someone who doesn't engage in criminal activity, but has ASPD, much appreciation to WIRED and the specific author of this article (I believe that would be Eleanor Cummins). This is a really great article; it doesn't pretend it knows more than it does, but it methodically goes after the term psychopathy and all the issues with the term, the purpose of it's invention, and the researchers who both use it and try to study it.

It's by no means an article just about ASPD, but we do pop up in here and they even make both meaningful mention and a link to source in-sentence about the way ASPD research ignores the history of trauma associated with it.

[sp0o0kylights]

hey its me from the "wheres the adopt a jock update, im dying" thing. im so sorry for it. i had know idea there even was a storm and it is 100% not ur job to keep us updated bc ur doing us favour by uploading content, im sorry i took that for granted.

im also sorry this apology came late, i felt to chicken to write one innitially, i dont know if i did end up sending u one, but ur reaction to my ask came up in my feed again and i really wanted to apologise once more.

I'm so sorry for those you lost in this horrid storm and I'm so proud of u for pushing through, everyone is and I hope u know that.

I know this apology doesn't make up for anything but I just wanted u to know that I took in what u responded, u were well in ur right to be pissed off, and I now know for future to type my messages in a kinder way so they don't get taken as a ride remark, I hope u know I didn't type what I said to be rude, not that it matters in anyway.

we're all looking out for u and wish u all the best, have a great day

It's all good fam--I honestly had a few of these messages between here and A03, some a lot ruder that yours, and yours just happened to be the first one I saw when I managed to get a few hours with proper access to Tumblr (Ie not on the craptastic app on my phone, which refuses to let me answer asks and crashes when I try lol.)

Thank you for apologizing, it does mean a lot, and it takes a lot of courage to do it.

It's a weird lesson to learn sometimes, that people who don't know you as well won't always know you're joking/your sense of humor, or may not mentally be in a space to fully comprehend it as a light prod instead of a "hey dude where's my content."

I think it's also a good reminder that fandom is a community first. I know there's a lot of discussion centered around how we're sliding into a more content mill like vibe vs that community, and that a lot of us are getting impacted by it a bit--I'll be the first to say I was more touchy even before the trees because I've had a lot more weird, demanding comments lately than I ever used to get. Not just in ST either--I'm seeing it on my older fics, in fandoms that are significantly smaller and typically very drama-less. While my policy normally is to delete and ignore, sometimes it builds (and then two trees almost kill you by collapsing your house and you start biting heads off after being stuck in a hotel with your family for two weeks.)

Anyway, thank you sincerely, for apologizing. It did not go unnoticed <3

[frog707]

How arcade games were created in 1978.

[hide-your-bugs-away]

CALL MY ROOM A ZOO BECAUSE THERE ARE A LOT OF ANIMALS IN HERE.

[mariluphoto]

If AI isn't regulated ASAP, things are going to get so, so, much worse. Please boycott ai generators like Lensa & Midjourney. Support real artist.

Full article here.