My mind has many nooks and crannies ... like an english muffin
Slicing the Sourdough
· ☕ 331  words music  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz

How many of you have a kitchen utility drawer? How many of you buy your bread pre-sliced, but have a breadknife you never use? How many of you keep it in the kitchen drawer?

Usually I write my own melodies, but this is written to the tune of Waltzing Matilda

Stupid, Ignorant, Brain Freeze or Troll?
· ☕ 292  words life  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
When reading stuff on the intertubes, it is sometimes difficult to determine whether a comment is stupid, ignorant, brain freeze or troll. You cannot see the other person and have no knowledge about their background. I would treat a lot of statements as simply trolls if I didn’t have the personal experience of an 18 year old American “honors” student ask me why people in Switzerland spoke German because their minds think in English.
Dust Bunnies
· ☕ 408  words music  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz

Inadvised use of percussive maintenance, but a good result from a sarcastic comment to someone who can actually change directions.

Procrastination
· ☕ 696  words life  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
I recently finished a 260 page analysis of some open source software projects at the request of someone in Switzerland (no one getting paid, this is open source software). That took about a month. It was followed by a week helping a guy in Italy resolve the performance problems of the software he maintains which had come dead last in the analysis. Then four days adding an feature to some software I have found myself as the maintainer at the request of someone else on the intertubes.
Do People Actually Want Solutions?
· ☕ 337  words politics life  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
It seems like a lot of people would have no meaning to life if they didn’t have someone to hate. Fortunately I hate everyone so a lot of targets would have to go away. From time to time friends in the international tax arena call and update me on the latest goings on. Usually it is fairly clear that most of the parties at the table are engaged in political posturing but do not actually seem to want to resolve the issues.
You Know You Have Been Living in France Too Long
· ☕ 935  words travel  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
I haven’t posted in awhile due to grandparent duties. This post has no serious content and is just a list of items from an acquaintance living in France. Some of these are familiar to me based on either spending a lot of business travel time in France or living in Belgium, which share some French proclivities. You may or may not be amused. Bonus points if you actually know what a Department is in France without looking it up.
What Constitutes 'Research on Humans'?
· ☕ 1259  words life  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
Suppose you are an ethical researcher so you needed informed consent before experimenting on people. Now suppose a group of people writing really complicated software read email suggestions for patches on the software and any emailed patch will go through several of review before it is accepted. Finally, suppose you decide to “research” whether you can get patches accepted that look like they are positive on their face, but in reality create security holes in the software.
More Deaths by Pens than by Guns?
· ☕ 326  words life politics  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
I’ve been hearing horror stories from friends in the medical field about COVID deniers even as they are gasping for breath. Many of these people (and their families) simultaneously deny the existence of COVID and insist that the doctors gave it to them to get more money. How did this happen? Because people told them lies. Children are taught the saying “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
Spherical Cow or Assume a Can Opener?
· ☕ 617  words life politics  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
I was told yesterday that business people don’t cheat or cut corners because if they did, investors would punish them and that if I had studied finance I would understand that. It was all I could do to avoid just responding with maniacal laughter. Last year I had an economics professor tell me that Google and Amazon are not profit maximizing companies because they do not operate the way that microeconomic theory says that they will.
ACLU - What Were You Thinking?
· ☕ 363  words privacy  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
The ACLU just updated its privacy statement on its webpage. Included in that statement was the following: “To enable us to provide the most relevant information on our activities, we may share your personal information with communications platforms, such as Facebook and Mother Jones, including to deliver our content to you or to identify other people who may enjoy our content.” “We may also share ACLU supporter information with organizations that display our advertisements or petitions to their subscribers.
Irregular Verbs/Noun
· ☕ 56  words life  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
Courtesy of Paul in a comment on Charlie Stross' blog. “I know the facts.” “You have opinions.” “He’s biased.” “They’ve been brainwashed.” Like everyone else, I occasionally need to be reminded of my own biases and preconceptions. As usual, feel free to disagree using this contact link. My world view is a hypothesis, not a belief.
You are Stepping on My Foot
· ☕ 425  words life  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
I’ve been read some of the excuses for bad behavior, most recently discussions about Richard Stallman being neurodivergent and therefore he did nothing wrong. In this context I and others thought to dig up this comment by someone calling themselves Hershele Ostropoler about sexual harassment at public gatherings in John Scalzi’s blog in 2012: “If you step on my foot, you need to get off my foot.” “If you step on my foot without meaning to, you need to get off my foot.
Lets Talk About Bitcoin
· ☕ 882  words politics technology  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
Bitcoin is another example of the gig economy - outsourcing business costs to someone else who may or may not recover their costs. In addition, there is the question of its impact on the environment. Let’s spend a minute thinking about what bitcoin really is. Bitcoin is a let’s pretend commodity, limited by contract to 21 million bitcoins. Simplifying greatly, bitcoins are supposed to be a way to exchange value and anonymously with the transaction guaranteed by cryptoanalysis.