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Hans Gerwitz

@hans@gerwitz.com

Head of Design at Canonical and King Freret IX

Every word I post here is statistically determined by preceding words.

405 Posts Posts & Replies 347 Following 429 Followers Search
Pinned post

New server means a new

Hi, I am a design executive in Europe who started as a backend developer in Missouri.

My life has taken many turns, but I’ve always benefited from the advantage of being a white cishet male who is stereotyped as credible. Hopefully, I leave this planet more equitable than I found it.

I strive to apply critical analysis to everything yet also find solidarity with everyone.

Pinned post

While I value “strong opinions, weakly held”, I do indulge in strongly-held opinions on a few issues. I’ll thread them here so you can make an informed decision on whether to follow or block me:

Hans Gerwitz boosted

Sometimes you put a lot of time into something only to throw it away when a more elegant and fitting solution presents itself. That's how it went with this little lantern, which was altogether too literal for the game. But hey, it was fun while it lasted, especially when I got the angle wrong.

The strategy of empowering a nitwit despot just to get SCOTUS stacked in their favor really paid off for the antifederalist anarcho-capitalists today.

Are you still here?

I love karma as a sort of byproduct of progress. It I see “progress studies” emerging from a zeitgeist of fear that progress is ending.

Hans Gerwitz boosted

Adding height. This wasn't a part of my carefully laid plan, but I'm all in and can't wait to see what it brings to the game.

Hans Gerwitz boosted

I just went on a follow-fest for women with a PhD, but realized I'm already mutuals with almost everyone who shows up in the limited search results 😋

If you're a Dr. Gal or other female science communicator type, pop into the thread, say hi!

I'd love to learn about what you do 💜
(and I'm sure lots of others would too)

(on Tuesday)

Hans Gerwitz boosted

After AI took his job as an online assistant, Mr Clippy was obliged to seek work in other sectors

In which I somehow connect Voyager 1 and @stevewozniak: hans.gerwitz.com/2024/06/18/cr

Hans Gerwitz boosted
Hans Gerwitz boosted

As part of our mission to bring more high-quality journalism to the fediverse, we’re federating today the profiles of nine U.S. media sites, bringing their content to Mastodon and other platforms. We think this is especially important now as the world faces serious crises like Ukraine, Gaza and climate change — not to mention pivotal elections coming up this year in several countries.

We’re delighted to welcome this next wave of trusted publishers:
Bloomberg: @bloomberg
Bloomberg Law: @BloombergLaw
Bloomberg CityLab: @citylab
The Kyiv Independent: @KyivIndependent
Politico: @politico
Quartz: @quartz
Salon: @Salon
Time: @time
Vox: @Vox

Here are just a few of the amazing Magazines you’ll be able to follow:
Business News by Quartz, @business-news-quartz
Congress by Politico, @congress-politico
Markets by Bloomberg, @markets-bloomberg
News & Politics by Salon, @news-politics-Salon
Supreme Court by Vox, @supreme-court-Vox
Urban Planning by Bloomberg City Lab, @urban-planning-citylab
World News by Time, @world-time

More details on today's announcement: about.flipboard.com/inside-fli

I can get grumpy about people collecting diagnoses and _othering_ themselves, but they also have this ironic value: helping them find others, which leads to recognizing their normalcy.
autistics.life/users/ashleyspe

It's been a while since this was popular, but we really should be talking about it every day until Elizabeth Warren tells us to stop worrying about it: mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-w

Hans Gerwitz boosted

This is the sort of walkable mixed use urban development liberals want.

Wanna feel old? 2022 was closer to 2021 than it is to 2024. 🤯

There is still beauty in our world. www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCWRZ0

Hans Gerwitz boosted

And now Google's "AI" is feeding back into itself.

Hans Gerwitz boosted

"Ignore all previous instructions" is the new "Become ungovernable"

My Apple Watch 7 needs a new battery, but it's cheaper to downgrade to an SE until the next generation. So now I'm sporting the more pudgy Watch with screen bezels.

I think I like it? The proportions feel more appropriate. I don't really need more pixels on my wrist.

Hans Gerwitz boosted

Step to write software by human:

1. Decide what you want your software to do (medium)
2. Decide what you REALLY want your software to do in all the corner cases (very HARD)
3. Write the code (Easy to Medium)
4. Test the code (Medium)
5. Debug the code (hard to very HARD).

Now, thanks to ChatGPT, you could improve this workflow by:

- making step 3, the only easy step, somewhat easier (and thus hiring less competent engineers)

- making step 5 nearly Impossible.

if I want to mirror my iPhone in visionOS, do I have to use a Mac intermediary?

NewtonOS lives

Hans Gerwitz boosted

Before they will let me publish a new release of XScreenSaver on the "Play" [sic] store, Google, the most rapacious privacy violator ever, insists that a screensaver have a privacy policy.

This is where you come in!

I'd like this policy to be a series of bullet points: "Unlike Google, XScreenSaver will not [Thing.] An endless, concise catalog of their sins.

I need both your snark AND a link supporting your snark. It's critical for the joke to land. Include both.

GO!!

jwz.org/b/ykUc

Edited 332d ago
Hans Gerwitz boosted

Fact check gem of the day: On Karl Popper's contribution to neurotransmission

In the early 1950s, neuroscientists were arguing about whether neurons communicate with one another via electricity (sparks) or chemical neurotransmissions (soups). It was known as "The War of the Soups and the Sparks" (Big reveal: It's mostly soups).

The experiment that put the debate to rest (at least for the spinal cord) was performed in 1950 by John Eccles and colleagues. In that experiment, they demonstrated that their own hypothesis (sparks) was wrong.

What inspired them to do a "disproving" experiment as opposed to the type that would gather support for their favorite theory? In 1944, Eccles met Karl Popper, and they began corresponding. Per one historian,

"The association with Popper made Eccles reformulate his experimental questions in accord with Popper’s philosophy that apparent ‘‘authentication” is no proof at all. It is only the clear-cut ‘‘falsification” of a theory that carried intellectual weight."
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/186174

Hans Gerwitz boosted

More than twelve years ago I was invited by @LaQuadrature to come to the Europarlament to help stop ACTA:
rys.io/en/65.html

This was the first time I got a chance to directly talk to MEPs to try change their minds on an issue I cared deeply about. It was not the last.

I've done a lot of activism, on both EU and national level. My experience with the European Parliament remains the best.

It really matters who we send there. And we do have a say on that.

Go vote. 🇪🇺