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geraldew

@geraldew@fosstodon.org

mastodon 4.7.3

Data analyst and programmer: SQL (in my sleep), Pascal (in my head), Python (in development), VBA & MS Access (for my sins). Interested in mathematics and computing theory & FOSS.

312 Followers

1016 Following

26 Posts

Joined October 29, 2022

My writing at DEV:

https://dev.to/geraldew

My code at GitLab:

https://gitlab.com/geraldew

Might become a blog?:

https://geraldew.wordpress.com/

My tedious videos:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkx02uDDrYGalB8iIMxg16w

geraldew @geraldew@fosstodon.org

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@vampiress@eigenmagic.net In my work domain (I'm a data analyst, mostly by writing SQL) I am yet to see anything to suggest that LLMs can do the things I'm usually doing. Perhaps that's because what is "usual" for me comes from being asked to do things that no-one seems to have already done. So even though people assume that "data analysis" is about plugging data into existing tools, for me that is rarely the case - and this is why your description of using LLMs for prototyping also rings true for my coding.

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geraldew @geraldew@fosstodon.org

· 5mo ago

Boosted by @wafflesies@infosec.exchange

Replying to

@mmeier@social.mei-home.net @frederic@chaos.social That's curious, because that aspect doesn't seem to bug me. I'm the person who writes documentation of techniques I've derived and shares them with colleagues - none of whom ever seem to return the favour. However, they will happily video chat about or screen-share what they've done, so it's not the sharing part that puts them off. My guess is that commitment into stored text scares them, plus the risk of it being critiqued - and they know the LLM won't do that.

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geraldew @geraldew@fosstodon.org

· 2mo ago

Solid stuff as usual from @davidgerard@circumstances.run This episode is the best short explanation I've seen/heard/read of why supposed "reasoning models" don't really change what goes on with LLM chatbots. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp3DSOKarCo&list=UU9rJrMVgcXTfa8xuMnbhAEA - video https://pivottoai.libsyn.com/20260716-todays-stupid-prompt-injection-just-write-like-the-ai - podcast https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/07/16/todays-stupid-prompt-injection-just-write-like-the-ai/ - blog post In this case the example is how to maliciously exploit them but it also speaks to them still only being probabilistic pattern predictors.

Today’s stupid prompt injection: just write like the AI

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geraldew @geraldew@fosstodon.org

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@danirabbit@mastodon.online In 1986 I failed my one programming unit at university. I'd already been programming for a few years by then and have continued programming all through my subsequent IT support and data analysis career. I know the value of the programs I write because I use them myself every day. That failure, and of university in general, mainly taught me that passing courses is about conformity, not knowledge, skill, understanding or creativity.

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geraldew @geraldew@fosstodon.org

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@404mediaco and now counting down to when @davidgerard covers this on Pivot to AI. https://pivot-to-ai.com/

Pivot to AI

It can't be that stupid, you must be prompting it wrong

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geraldew @geraldew@fosstodon.org

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@NanoRaptor@bitbang.social I gave one maker of card solitaire computer games a description of the version that my mother taught to me in the 1960s. From there it seems to have spread to other game makers who nearly all label it as "Australian Solitaire". Years later, after noticing that "Australian" had become a thing, asking my mother where she got it from, she said my father had shown it to her. So we don't know how he came by it. So if you see it somewhere, yes it came via me.

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geraldew @geraldew@fosstodon.org

· 5mo ago

First trial install of Xubuntu 26.04 successfully done.

There was no need to change my standard method, so it remains as described in my articles - see https://dev.to/geraldew/running-linux-purely-on-a-usb-drive-3mfg

The steps were:
- Download ISO and make thumb drive
- Go to spare laptop and remove hard drive
- Boot thumb drive
- Plug in target USB SSD drive
- Run installer
- Shutdown remove thumb drive
- Boot on SSD
- Re-install GRUB as removable
- Reboot
- Install rEFInd

Thus making a portable full Linux system.
#Linux #Xubuntu

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geraldew @geraldew@fosstodon.org

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@veronica @_elena I also suspect those writers have no idea how many of us see that their content is on Substack and simply don't go there. Admittedly, I also have no idea how many of us are doing that - i.e. not reading them.

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geraldew @geraldew@fosstodon.org

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@Pkbwood@mastodon.online @aj@gts.sadauskas.id.au I feel I could channel many a Melburnian who will be unable to count how often they've beaten trams in Swanston Street by merely walking. Suffice to say, for us locals it's a ready form of mild amusement.

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geraldew @geraldew@fosstodon.org

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@ticho @cmconseils well it was the 1990s and I was in-house support so was an integral part of the whole IT setup.

But two classic user problems of that era:

someone who refused to use the Enter key for new lines and just held the Space bar until wrapping to the next line occurred;
someone who would take their hand off the mouse in order to click its button - unsurprisingly the mouse nearly always moved as they did that so the click missed its target.

Such fun in the early days.

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geraldew @geraldew@fosstodon.org

· 8mo ago

Replying to

@fluidlogic @quinn maybe more of a mix than you might guess. I'm not active in any "retro" sense, but I did work for an 8-bit maker in the 1980s - as well as having the same gear personally. Which means I don't have a rosy nostalgia and instead remember how flaky the hardware was, how scant the documentation was, how few were our ways to get answers - etc. But what I am grateful for in retrospect, is how understandable those systems were. So much of what I learned then, still guides me.

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geraldew @geraldew@fosstodon.org

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@baldur@toot.cafe sorry to nitpick, but by "emphasise" did you perhaps mean "empathise"?

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geraldew @geraldew@fosstodon.org

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@xubuntu@floss.social excellent and many thanks. I used the Torrent to download (and then stayed online for an hour to assist with re-seeding). Can now start planning trial installs and testing of my account creation and setup scripts.

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geraldew @geraldew@fosstodon.org

· 5mo ago

Just a quick note. This account here on Fosstodon is my only Mastodon presence.

So if you see any others with the same account name those are not me.

Obviously if I move instance sometime then that might change but for now, this is it.

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geraldew @geraldew@fosstodon.org

· 5mo ago

As a little bit of a file system nerd (note: "little bit") I was intrigued to find this comment in an otherwise typically trolled thread.
- (re NTFS) .. "uses a built-in table ($UpCase) which maps between lowercase and uppercase letters, avoiding ... Unicode normalization. NTFS until Vista used different case mapping than after Vista. ... if you copy files from an older NTFS drive to a newly formatted drive, some of your files may be overwritten during the copying"
https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/phoronix/latest-phoronix-articles/1627799-the-ntfs-resurrection-has-occurred-for-linux-7-1/page4

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geraldew @geraldew@fosstodon.org

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@cmconseils that's something I don't miss about doing IT support work, making Windows ICO files with transparency. (context: avoiding redundancy in 1999 had me pivot into data analysis, which is what I still do for a living)

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geraldew @geraldew@fosstodon.org

· 10mo ago

Replying to

@jimbob @sleepy62 to be fair, that's because there are (at least) two distinct ideas of what "work" means. For those who define it as: "the stuff we do that correlates with us being paid" - then fake versus real is a non-issue. The archaic definition of actually producing something of value (or contributing to a process of same) is only used where the absence of doing that "work" is tangible. Most "leadership" and "management" roles only ever involve talking to people, about more talking.

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geraldew @geraldew@fosstodon.org

· 26mo ago

Today I very much enjoyed two excellent videos by Dylan Beattie @dylanbeattie@hachyderm.io
- From NUL to DEL: Why 7 Bit ASCII IS Actually Really Clever https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rJO3vptblU
- Code Pages and Kohuepts: The Chaos of 8 Bit Extended ASCII https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTA3DOL8AfE

From that, I've written my recollections and have done them as an extra comment note to my article "Grrr Character Encoding"
- article https://dev.to/geraldew/grrr-character-encoding-2lia
- comment https://dev.to/geraldew/comment/2hc6i

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geraldew @geraldew@fosstodon.org

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@Hyperlynx But this also touches on an existing very anti-information culture of broadcast television. For example, it is so rare for TV stations to openly declare which episode of which season of a programme they are broadcasting. Quite why this is so pervasive, I've never been able to figure out. In Australia, the ABC is as bad about this as the commercial channels, so it is clearly not just about "business" concerns. (But also: "don't get me started on theatre/opera ticket prices")

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geraldew @geraldew@fosstodon.org

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@Hyperlynx fair enough. Though even there, it's curious watching the TV businesses be notably reluctant to take up features that online viewing could enable. For unrelated reasons/experiences, I could write a book on how resistant organisational cultures are to change, so in that respect I don't find it surprising.

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geraldew @geraldew@fosstodon.org

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@simontatham from the mix of these things is why I have my own tool for handling hundreds (if not thousands) of SQL scripts that I've been tinkering with for over 20 years.

Which means I can add an extra item to the list:

having built a tool for doing some amount of the automation occurring in my work, gives me a head start each time a new need for automation becomes apparent.

I occasionally shock myself at how early that became true, seeing innovative components dated 2005 or so.

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geraldew @geraldew@fosstodon.org

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@Taneb @simontatham quite true but I can say I've had multiple "ran off the runway" cases where I coded a good solution and then had another instance crop up ten or fifteen years later. So now I still default to making something once I feel I understand the problem-solution pair - even though I definitely won't be doing the work in ten years time.

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geraldew @geraldew@fosstodon.org

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@realsimon@mastodon.green though I think this is a misleading question. As someone old enough to have been reading books since long before ebooks became a thing, the big change is that I now read more in small pieces online than I do in books, but I never read ebooks.

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geraldew @geraldew@fosstodon.org

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@cunobaros@mendeddrum.org @simontatham@hachyderm.io I've certainly come into teams where it is apparent that has been the operating mode for some years.

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geraldew @geraldew@fosstodon.org

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@charette@mstdn.ca gosh, I think I'd quite forgotten about that phase of my life. I guess the association faded after Turbo Pascal came out and became my default language. Not sure why, but this reminds of the period when I called # octothorpe - later changed to hash (but never ever "pound").

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