Mastodawn

A conceptual portable computer and communications system designed by Honeywell for Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968.

It has a lightpen (vs uninvented mouse) and a camera.

Sadly it didn't make it into the final cut of the movie!

Credit: Stanley Kubrick Archives. More here:
https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/gallery/the-making-of-2001-a-space-odyssey-stanley-kubrick

#RetroTech

meejah 6h ago

Gary Strydom's Tiny Car 13h ago

LLMs do not "democratize programming". A 4-year-old can learn to program. LLMs throw up stupid barriers by convincing you that you can't learn to program and you have to rely on whatever shit the bobot spits out. Every asshole that says that AI "democratizes" fucking anything is trying to scam you.

meejah 11h ago

Rob Landley 5d ago

Any time women make something lucrative, men push them out of the field. A 1983 MIT paper documented that purge in computer science: https://simson.net/ref/1983/barriers.pdf

See also https://mastodon.social/@Sheril/109545727584656667 for "beer brewer" becoming "witch", Julia Child giving way to Gordon Ramsey, Sarah Taber's great thread about "egg money", the origin of the word "spinster" and the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire...

Once there's money in it, douchebros terf out the founders then claim to have discovered what others invented.

meejah 11h ago

Nanoraptor 22h ago

more keyboards should have obtuse parts. things that aren't needed. switches that will never be touched.

num lock. static lock. try. try not. F15. unpipe and unpipe 2.

meejah 1d ago

S.Tori 1d ago

Am I supposed to introduce myself and #introduction ?..I confess I have never known how to use the social internet properly and the Fediverse confuses me a bit, but I feel strongly in the need to carve out alternative social spaces on the Internet. So excuse any social faux pas on my part. I am an educator and musician in New Zealand with a passion for writing complaint letters, bringing the social sciences into everything and dreaming of a world where we radically take care of each other.

meejah 1d ago

David Ho 1d ago

I don't think people fully appreciate how apocalyptic things are for US science. I haven't received any new funding since 2024, but I'm still ok since grants are typically for 3 years. This means next year I will be completely out of funding and will have to fire everyone in the lab. It's not great.

In my 25-year career, I’ve never NOT had funding. I typically have 4 to 8 grants, which you need if you’re running an observation science program and have a technician, students, and postdocs.

meejah 1d ago

Doug Cuff 1d ago

When you were a child, what was your parent's attitude toward sugar?

	No sugar in any form, even juice was forbidden
	Natural sugars were okay
	Sugar in coffee or tea was okay
	Sugar in home-baked treats were okay
	Sugar on cereal was okay, but no sugared cereals
	I could have sugar in any form
	My parents taught me how to mainline sugar

Poll ends at Apr 3 at 12:23pm.

meejah 1d ago

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Lori M Olson 1d ago

@meejah when I retired I dropped my JetBrains “everything” subscription, and committed to using emacs. I’m actually enjoying figuring out how to be a power emacs user again

meejah 2d ago

Show thread

Lori M Olson 2d ago

@meejah So how did that work out?

meejah 2d ago