Mastodawn

I was listening to a podcast interview with @andrewnez and, TIL:

The package management for the programming language R, used mainly in science, has no version pinning and will just remove packages in the event of compatibility problems. As was noted, this would be a problem if science ever concerned itself with reproducibility.

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-changelog-software-development-open-source/id341623264?i=1000735450711

The world of open source metadata (Interview)

Podcast Episode · The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source · 05/11/2025 · 1h 44m

Apple Podcasts

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gwire 1d ago

My instinct would be to communicate these weaknesses at the earliest opportunity, and talk about the transformation before it’s in place.

But highlighting problems just produces fresh opportunity for blame.

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gwire 1d ago

How this manifests in the public sector is unfortunate. Incoming governments get about a year of leeway before they’re obliged to own the failures of extant systems. Making effective changes to existing systems usually takes more than a year. So there’s always a pressure for the quick fix.

gwire 1d ago

British culture is always so quick to identify “IT failures” in systemic problems, but when un-automated and unscalable human administrative processes produce errors under increased demand, we have no equivalent words.

gwire 1d ago

I don't know if it's as a result the 26.1 update, but the resolution of the macOS Apple Maps view of London seems to have been significantly upgraded recently.

gwire 1d ago

I watched some of New York mayoral race coverage in the last couple of weeks, and it was odd how similar some of the Cuomo campaign was to the Zac Goldsmith campaign for London mayor in 2016. e.g. trying to imply associations between muslim candidate Sadiq Khan and islamic terrorism.

gwire 1d ago

Who could have predicted that having a masked domestic-military force which routinely refuses to identify itself, would have downsides.

https://www.wired.com/story/fbi-warns-of-criminals-posing-as-ice-urges-agents-to-id-themselves/

FBI Warns of Criminals Posing as ICE, Urges Agents to ID Themselves

In a bulletin to law enforcement agencies, the FBI said criminal impersonators are exploiting ICE’s image and urged nationwide coordination to distinguish real operations from fakes.

WIRED

gwire 1d ago

Amazing.

> US Army Tells Soldiers to Go to German Food Bank, Then Deletes It

https://www.404media.co/army-tells-soldiers-to-go-to-german-food-bank-then-deletes-it/

US Army Tells Soldiers to Go to German Food Bank, Then Deletes It

The initial 'Shutdown Guidance' for the US Army Garrison Bavaria included instructions to go to German food banks.

404 Media

gwire 1d ago

I just noticed that theguardian.com is preferring to send image/jxl if it's in the Accept header (which it is in Safari). I don't think I'd noticed it on a mainstream site before?

Apparently this has been supported by fastly for more than a year now.

https://www.fastly.com/blog/level-up-your-images-jpeg-xl-now-supported-by-image-optimizer

Level up your images: JPEG XL now supported by Image Optimizer | Fastly

Learn more about how Fastly's Image Optimizer works with JPEG XL to significantly reduce image size without losing data or impacting performance.

gwire 1d ago

> The system, which launched more than a year ago, rewards soldiers who achieve strikes with points that can be exchanged to buy more weapons in an “Amazon-for-war” online store called Brave1

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/03/ukrainian-computer-game-style-drone-attack-system-goes-viral

Ukrainian computer game-style drone attack system goes ‘viral’

System rewards soldiers who achieve strikes with points that can be used to buy more weapons in an online store

The Guardian

Location	Europe
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