hermit

@[email protected]
15 Followers
471 Following
4.3K Posts

making zines, thinking, reading, trying to remember how to be a human. software sometimes, unfortunately.

most of my good posts are followers-only. feel free to request to follow, although i am often behind on the queue, and am trying to mostly have mutual follows at this point.

if you're on a instance with 10k+ users i probably have you muted fyi, move somewhere smaller if you want me to see your replies.

i'm happy for anyone to reply to any of my posts, even if we don't know each other/aren't mutuals.

lmk if you'd like me to CW something and i don't

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dm for signal or briar.

pronounsthey
Show threadhermit5d ago

@forestine yeah, i wasn't thinking quite carefully, it's not that verbs aren't used as mass nouns, but when they are, it's unusual to use the present participle version of the verb as a mass noun. we say "how much work do you have?" not "how much working do you have?"

i can't think of an example of a past participle being used as a mass noun, i'm curious if you have any?

i suppose "computation" could be sensible to turn into a mass noun, but given that it's already a count noun as well, it makes more sense to me to pick "compute" to be the mass noun rather than "computation" — i think it's not super common to turn a count noun into a mass noun, compared to the reverse.

i'm not a linguist, though, i'd be curious what actual linguists have to say about this.

i don't disagree that having a mass noun for computing resources abstracts and de-emphasizes those resources, but that's a function of people using a mass noun for this at all, not of the specific word people chose for that mass noun. i think "this project will need twice as much compute as they have now over the next year" sounds just as weird as "this project will need twice as much computation" or "this project will need twice as much computing".

Show threadhermit5d ago
@forestine like, this represents a real shift in the way people think about computers, where people buy access to an arbitrary amount of computing power, rather than buying discrete computers or often even access to discrete computers. i do not think there was previously any word for that concept, so people invented the word "compute" as a mass noun to represent it, which is how language works. the underlying shift in how people view resources here is possibly quite bad, but i don't see any reason to have beef with the linguistic aspect of it.
Show threadhermit5d ago
@forestine i think that's still being used as a mass noun, and is more accurate than "pay for computing", since the thing that they are buying is access to a certain amount of computer for a certain amount of time, and generally they pay for that regardless of whether they use that for computing or not.
Show threadhermit5d ago
@forestine "compute" is a mass noun, it sounds weird/wrong to use "computing" as a mass noun, since it's also a verb.
hermit6d ago
incredible that they invented a machine that gives you psychosis and the immediate response by corporate overlords is to try to force all their employees to use it
hermit6d ago
it's sort of horrible that they made a flashlight be a device that you can get sucked into
Show threadhermitMar 10
@QuietMisdreavus one option which may or may not appeal to you is popping open the speakers you have, figuring out what size of drivers they have in them, and buying a pair of drivers to replace the broken one. that's generally a pretty easy repair, as far as it goes.
Show threadhermitMar 7
@redmp I have been meaning to move from NixOS to Fedora Atomic for a while.
Show threadhermitMar 6
@jackdaw_ruiz only recorded time in history where god speaking to someone to tell them to start a holy was real & good
Show threadhermitMar 3
@mntmn @holo_memory how does the QCS6490 compare to ARM SOCs that are designed for laptop or mobile use? it's exciting to see y'all slowly bring up more and more powerful SOCs!