Mark Watson

@markwatson
69 Followers
164 Following
44 Posts

Tech entrepreneur. CTO ComplyAdvantage. Previously CTO WorldRemit, VP Eng Causata, Founder/CTO/CEO Volantis & Skipjaq. Not the comedian. Opinions my own.

Professional interests include #cloudnative, #linux, #VR, #ApacheKafka, #observability, #SoftwareDevelopment & #EngineeringManagement.

Non-work stuff: #politics and #history; reading #scifi; #lufc (help!); and #gaming, including #ttrpgs, #boardgames, #warhammer and #warhammer40k (in all cases, these days, mostly reading, not playing)

#fedi22

BirdThinghttps://twitter.com/markwatson
LinkThinghttps://www.linkedin.com/in/markwatson/
Show threadMark WatsonMar 24, 2024
@Paul still one of my favourite management books
Mark WatsonAug 6, 2023
Graham SleightAug 6, 2023
Motion to equip every summer home in Maine with a nicely-bound copy of Shirley Jackson’s The Summer People
Show threadMark WatsonAug 1, 2023
@scd the island
Show threadMark WatsonJul 29, 2023
@hosama to be clear, I meant it was better in that at least someone is using it and there is a network there. You're right about that resulting in a firehose of crap though
Show threadMark WatsonJul 29, 2023
@hosama bluesky - like most social networks it's a waste of time without a network. I look maybe once every 10 days. Threads is better but a) you can't trust zuck and b) instagram while creating critical mass also skews it if instagram "isn't your regular crowd". Ironically I think Mastodon is better for migrating users because - while not perfect - it had to try harder, earlier.
Mark WatsonJul 6, 2023
Show threadJeff JarvisJul 6, 2023
Now it's true that Threads gets users to critical mass immediately thanks to Instagram & FB. The *real* lesson there is not that their power wins but that portability of one's own social graph is vital and we must insist on it.
Mark WatsonJul 6, 2023
Had a look at Threads. It's bombarding you with posts from people you don't follow, with no other opportunity to curate other than to mute them (or maybe I'm missing something). Similar to For You on birdsite but with no other option. No thanks (assuming I'm right).
Mark WatsonJul 2, 2023
Adam BienkovJul 2, 2023
So after giving $3 million to his wife's already wealthy US College, in order to buy them a state-of-the-art computing lab named after him, Rishi Sunak gives a £10 raffle prize to his local state primary still struggling to replace 15-year-old computers https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/rishi-sunak-gives-10-wine-30367843
​Rishi Sunak gives £10 wine to local school after $3million US college donation

The mega-rich PM who is worth more than half a billion pounds picked the cheapest wine from the House of Commons shop to donate to Leyburn Primary School in his constituency

mirror
Mark WatsonApr 19, 2023
Jerry 🦙💝🦙Apr 12, 2023
This is an early version of an emacs keyboard setup
Mark WatsonMar 2, 2023
Christopher MimsMar 1, 2023

Turns out the existence of an "alpha" wolf is a myth.

It was based on old/bad experiments, conducted when unrelated wolves were thrown together in captivity.

In actual wild wolves, packs are just families. There's no dominant alpha battling for the top spot -- and in the rare cases there is, it's an alpha *female* wolf.

Insert obvious implications for the use of this term in human societies.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-the-alpha-wolf-idea-a-myth/

Is the Alpha Wolf Idea a Myth?

The idea that wolf packs are led by a merciless dictator, or alpha wolf, comes from old studies of captive wolves. In the wild, wolf packs are simply families

Scientific American