Bill, organizer of stuff

@wcbdata@vis.social
885 Followers
1.4K Following
16.9K Posts

Data, privacy, ethics, old houses, and food
And some other things
RN
Entropy repairman
Fendersmith

Nothing I post or do is licensed to Facebook/Meta or its assigns in any way for any purpose, including caching or storage.

Also, gravy.

PRONOUNShe/him/etc
BLOGhttps://datamachinist.dev
COFFEEMilk only
LOCATIONBoston-ish
Bill, organizer of stuff48m ago
Bruno Philipe1h ago
Maybe the singularity awoke at a computer lab in Silicon Valley, tried taking over the local computer network, fired up a bunch of GPUs to give it more power, and then PG&E couldn't keep up with its demand and unwittingly saved the world.
Bill, organizer of stuff4h ago
Max Leibman5h ago
Privacy isn’t about what I have to hide. Privacy is about others’ right to know. You aren’t any more entitled to the mundane details of my life than you are to my deepest, darkest secrets. https://infosec.exchange/@Em0nM4stodon/115753944609431208
Em :official_verified: (@Em0nM4stodon@infosec.exchange)

The argument shouldn't be: "I don't have anything to hide, so you can surveil me," Instead, it should be: "I don't have anything to hide, so you shouldn't surveil me." #Privacy #MassSurveillance #HumanRights

Infosec Exchange
Bill, organizer of stuff6h ago
Jeff Jarvis9h ago
This by Eugene Victor Walter in Dissent, 1956, truer yet today:
Bill, organizer of stuff6h ago
decryption7h ago

oh wow, anna's archive "backed up" Spotify! they downloded 256 million songs - roughly 300TB - so you could technically, make your own spotify at home! would easily fit in a 2RU server, hmmmmm

https://annas-archive.li/blog/backing-up-spotify.html

Backing up Spotify

We backed up Spotify (metadata and music files). It’s distributed in bulk torrents (~300TB). It’s the world’s first “preservation archive” for music which is fully open (meaning it can easily be mirrored by anyone with enough disk space), with 86 million music files, representing around 99.6% of listens.

Bill, organizer of stuff9h ago
Tim Bray11h ago
“What happened was, a faucet started dripping. And then I managed to route around the malignant machineries of late-stage capitalism. These days, that’s almost always a story worth telling.” https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2025/12/18/Humanist-Plumbing
Humanist Plumbing

ongoing by Tim Bray
Bill, organizer of stuff9h ago
Ryan10h ago

Doing shots* at the club**

*COVID/flu vaccinations
**Pharmacy

Bill, organizer of stuff9h ago
Okay, it's a silly thing and all off-the-shelf tech, but I like that I automated the holiday lights at @millforge . Makes me smile when they come on. 🚥💡💡💡💡🚥
Bill, organizer of stuff11h ago
/usr/people/flexion14h ago
The "UNIX v4 tape" running in simh PDP11 emu on IRIX:
Bill, organizer of stuff11h ago
Show threadBill, organizer of stuff11h ago
@mathewi
Become a moth. Fueled by the tears of moose. Drawn to the light. Not really aware of fire.
Bill, organizer of stuff12h ago
Show threadCat Hicks12h ago

- aptitude is not achievement! It's important to know that we can see lower levels of achievement associated with certain strategies at a certain point in time, but those same strategies will yield HIGHER achievement over time! There are many complex effects here, like protective effects from certain strategies that only come to light under challenge, or thresholds after which the longer-term strategies pay off more.

This is all part of the beautiful, incredibly complex science of achievement!