| Name | Marco von Ballmoos |
|---|---|
| Member since | |
| [hidden] | |
| Home page | https://earthli.com/users/marco |
| Description |
The (only) developer at earthli.com. |
| 3736 | Articles |
|---|---|
| 113 | Comments |
Published on in Philosophy, Sociology, & Culture
A very good friend is riding in Utah right now.[1] They’ve gotten a lot of snow—70" in a few days—and the sun is finally out again. He’s been doing some “farming”, where you pick a clean field of powder and you lay down a track, using as little of the snow as you can. You go back up. You lay down another track, just like the first, but shifted. You’re making furrows; you’re farming the field.
I was telling other friends about this recently, when skiing in Klosters/Davos, I was explaining... [More]
Published on in Programming
The relatively short post My Washing Machine Refreshed My Thinking on Software Effort Estimation by Chris Horsley (Cosive) is kind of interesting, in that it’s a cautionary tale about being overconfident about your estimates. As the title suggests, his was a real-world task where he’d assumed that a tenth iteration would go just as smoothly. He draws some good conclusions but for what I think might be the wrong reasons.
“[…] while 90% of the project will be the same, there’s going to be one critical difference between... [More]”
Published on in Fun
For its 50th anniversary, Saturday Night Live released its first episode, in full. It was initially aired in 1975. It was quite interesting to contrast the form and style with the SNL that we know today and that has been established for a couple of decades.
The biggest difference is that SNL started out with much shorter skits. They got to the point, delivered the punchline and…basta. They had a lot more skits; the host delivered several monologues; there were two musical guests and they... [More]
Published on in Notes
Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
This was a sane and sober discussion of what is actually happening in the U.S. empire. Katie Halper and Aaron Maté have a long discussion with Brian Berletic about what USAID actually does, with its arms like the NED.
Extended episode: Former Marine DEBUNKS USAID Rumors by Useful Idiots (YouTube)
Former U.S. Marine Brian Berletic, who focuses on geopolitics in Eurasia and hosts the informative Youtube show The New Atlas, joins Useful Idiots this week as Elon Musk and the Trump administration are gutting USAID and attempting to move it under the control of Marco... [More]
Published on in Finance & Economy
First up is a one-minute video by Slavoj Žižek about how capitalism is a lie.
Slavoj Žižek Explains How Capitalism Tricks Us (YouTube)
“Each of us is now a small capitalist. Let’s say you have €5,000. You can freely decide how to invest them: buy health care, go to a nice holiday, pay special studium. […] What is actually a new form of anxiety—permanent stress—is sold to you as a new form of freedom.”
Next up is a great interview by Ben Norton with Michael Hudson. The discussion is much more wide-ranging than the title of the video... [More]
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
Chris Hedges has some of the most interesting, and unique, interviews you can find. I’d never heard of Farah before but she was a great interview.
Arab Regimes and the Betrayal of Palestine (w/ Farah El-Sharif) | The Chris Hedges Report by The Chris Hedges YouTube Channel (YouTube)
The first 15 minutes were an absolute tour-de-force of history and erudition by Farah El-Sharif. She is extremely well-spoken and brilliant, works at Stanford, and “served as Stanford’s Abbasi Program’s Associate Director from 2021-2023”.
Check out the people in this video:
People mentioned in this video − including Muhammad
Farah was being interviewed, OK. Muhammad has no picture 😹. And I... [More]
Published on in Philosophy, Sociology, & Culture
The comic Resident Philosopher for AI Ethics by Corey Mohler (Existential Comics) explains how the ideas of a philosopher who died over a century ago are not only applicable today, but are vital to understand if we want to come out the other side intact.
Resident Philosopher for AI Ethics
“Your entire business model is to take control of the free exchange of information, and manipulate it for your personal gain!
“See this chart? The red portion is what you created. The blue portion is what you built off pre-existing open source technology, science and stolen... [More]”
Published on in Technology & Engineering
In a discussion, a friend had sent a list of naughty technologies that included “dotnet frame twerk”, “dotnet whore” and “azure debauchery operations” and we were musing on how LLMs were supposed to be good at coming up with names.
They are not good at that. LLMs are neutered and useless.
Below is a screenshot of an exchange I had with Copilot, where I ask it to “list ten technology names that are salacious puns of Azure, C#, and .NET”. It responded that “[c]reating salacious puns isn’t... [More]”
Published on in Programming
The tweet ”Programming” by Andrej Karpathy (Twitter) is what some people are calling the future of programming—with the loudest claiming that it’s already here and that you’re all missing the boat if you’re not programming like this.
“There’s a new kind of coding I call “vibe coding”, where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists. It’s possible because the LLMs (e.g. Cursor Composer w Sonnet) are getting too good. Also I just talk to Composer with SuperWhisper so I... [More]”
Published on in Movies
This video is 136 minutes long and comprises 135 films. Thanks to YouTube user @BoPeep01 for their service is creating a list of all timestamps and films, which I’ve included below. If you click a timestamp, it jumps to the video at that location.
The Ultimate Film Studies Watchlist by The House of Tabula (YouTube)
Published on in Programming
This is a 40-minute discussion about the combining the latest technologies, like scroll-snapping, scroll-driven animations, anchoring, etc. to produce responsive, progressive, animated, modern, and very fast sites without any JavaScript at all.
Pure CSS Scroll Spy Table of contents − No JavaScript Required! by Kevin Powell & Adam Argyle (YouTube)
Adam uses it all to build carousels, which is fine for demos and proving the power of the technologies, but … I’m not a fan. While our two hosts mention that Netflix comprises only carousels, they don’t really discuss that Netflix is... [More]
Published on in Finance & Economy
The article Trump’s Hedge Fund Guy Is Now Overseeing the U.S. Treasury, IRS, OCC, U.S. Mint, FinCEN, F-SOC, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by Pam & Russ Martens (Wall Street on Parade) describes how, once again, the treasury secretary comes from the financial sector. Like so many other Democrat-adjacent sources these days, the article’s tone suggests that this is somehow more horrible because the “giant orange baby” nominated him, and Orange Man Bad.
“Scott Bessent: U.S. Treasury SecretaryWhat did Bessent do previously to qualify for this powerful position? He... [More]”
Published on in Finance & Economy
This 13½-minute video taught me quite a few things about tipping in the U.S. It got me thinking about how tipping works in Europe and Switzerland, too.
The Dark Truth About Tipping in America by Evan Edinger (YouTube)
Published on in Technology & Engineering
Although this eight-minute video’s title is a misnomer—NTP isn’t an obscure system, in that it is incredibly well-documented—it is still a reasonably informative and entertaining explainer.
The Obscure System That Syncs All The World’s Clocks by Half as Interesting (YouTube)
The system is called NTP—the Network Time Protocol—and comprises four tiers.
Published on in Programming
In November of 2024, Microsoft released a lot of videos about .NET to accompany the release of .NET 9. I watched/listened to a lot of these, with varying levels of attention paid. When something caught my attention, I took notes. These videos are roughly in the other than I watched them, although I reserved the right to shuffle them about a bit to improve grouping.
Published on in Movies
Read the explanation of method, madness, and spoilers.[1]
Published on in Notes
Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.
Published on in Finance & Economy
This is a six-minute video of Jonathan Pie going on a tear against the true criminals: the so-called ruling class that is making even people at the hearts of empires miserable.
The Corporate Con. by Jonathan Pie (YouTube)
“Most of our public services are now owned by private companies whose main purpose—and, in most cases, only purpose—is to make profit. They don’t work for you or the government or the council. They work for shareholders and nobody else. And it’s a pretty good system, if you own shares in that company.
... [More]”
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
I don’t even know what to transcribe because, whenever Chris Hedges speaks, it’s worth citing, and he speaks for nearly the entire 30 minutes, as Hill allows him to speak at length. This is an excellent distillation of the situation in the American Empire as it is, rooted in the historical context of both its own past, as well as similar contexts in the Roman Empire as well as in Italy and Germany in the first half of the 20th century.
Yuck it up, assholesThey discuss the failures of so-called liberalism at... [More]
Published on in Sports
This video of the best moments in international table tennis in 2024 is nine minutes long and, if you’re a bit of a fan, it goes by in no time flat. Most of the segments are narrated in English and German.
Table Tennis Best Points Of 2024 by ttrio2016 (YouTube)
I learned that a behind-the-back shot is sometimes called a “Strawberry Shot”. I have no idea why. There’s also a “Snake Shot”, which is putting so much backspin on the shot from below the table that it winds its way back to your side of the table after briefly touching down on the other... [More]
Published on in Design
I recently turned on two-factor authentication for my relatively rarely but still occasionally used Google account.
In the screenshot below, at the very top of the page, Google sure makes it seem like I need to finally add that phone number that Google has been begging me for … for, gosh, it’s gotta be decades by now. Now, they’re not just begging me, but are outright lying to me that I will no longer be able to use my account unless I divulge my phone number.
Is a phone number required for two-step verification?
I don’t wanna add a phone... [More]
Published on in Design
There isn’t that much more to say than that it seems like a $4T company is incapable of making something as straightforward as music search work in anything approaching a comprehensible manner. The evidence is below.
I searched for the album Apple Cores by the James Brandon Lewis Trio. The top hit was Danny Elfman, for no discernible reason, followed by a smattering of completely random search results, like Greatest Love Story by LANCO, Sweet Child O’ Mine, a playlist called “Family Time”,... [More]
Published on in Philosophy, Sociology, & Culture
This is a ~45-minute video with a wide-ranging discussion what it says on the tin—mostly the importance of critical thinking.
Facts, fictions and critical thinking | The Future of Decision Making | Nobel Prize Dialogue Sydney by Nobel Prize (YouTube)
At about 30:00,
“Tim: I also think it’s about what we get cred for. And this is a lot further down the track, but people get cred at the moment for being sure, and [for] being declarative. And that’s good and certainly in activism that can be very, very important. And it can create good change but it’s mostly not at the moment. Mostly it’s causing tribalization. And... [More]”
Published on in Programming
This is a nearly 100-minute-long interview and discussion about programming-language design and evolution. It gets deep into the weeds on very specific and relatively advanced language features. While a feature may eventually feel quite simple to use, the considerations about how to design it and how to fit it into the landscape of the rest of the language can be very, very complex. There are a lot of moving parts to consider in a language, runtime, community, and ecosystem as established as... [More]
Published on in Miscellaneous
This explanation of an experience that this guy had is a bit overwrought but damn if his enthusiasm isn’t infectious.
Cabel Sasser, Panic − XOXO Festival (2024) by XOXO Festival (YouTube)
Skip forward to about 4:00 for the in-depth analysis of artist Wes Cook’s ouevre. Cabel Sasser is a bit of an acquired taste but his enthusiasm is infectious.
Look at this mural, though. It’s amazing. This was on a wall in the children’s seating area in a McDonald’s in Centralia, Washington. It was painted in 1980. Wes went on to do a lot of other work, mostly in theme... [More]
Published on in Design
Fielmann is a vendor of eyeglasses. Their stores are great! The people there are super-friendly and I’ve gotten nothing but great, well-fitted glasses from them. Their prices are absolutely fair and their customer service is top-notch.
However, their online presence is … not good.
Fielmann is also a repeat offender in terrible usability. I wrote about them in Fielmann: an online-store safari, where I described their nearly deliberately obtuse navigation.
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
Dwindling glaciersThe Umweltverantwortungsinitiative is best translated as “How do you say virtue-signaling in German?” Predictably, it failed. The following are some notes from conversations I had about the initiative with friends.
The referendum is basically Switzerland promising that it will be climate-neutral per citizen as a proportion of its population’s share of the world population.
I am basically for every country on the planet doing this thing but I also think that it has no chance of happening.
... [More]
Published on in Notes
Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.
Published on in Movies
Read the explanation of method, madness, and spoilers.[1]
