figbert

Or, put another way:

> I don't see how you can hate from outside of the club. You can't even get in!

I’ll add that we’re not DIYing this. Professionals are manufacturing and installing these at scale. Also, though I’m not sure how it works outside the US, the government doesn’t build the grid. Energy providers and utilities are also companies.

I contemplated implementing it on my site for a while but decided I didn’t want to add the JavaScript. Still find it a really cute concept.

On the other hand, their effectiveness appears to be less in question: the article above claims that Scotland Yard found hundreds of police officers to have been abusing their posts in various ways through use of the Palantir system. I am not a fan of corrupt cops, so I think this is good. Similar stories exist elsewhere, like a 68% reduction in 48-hour mortality at a Tampa hospital through deployment of Palantir's anti-sepsis monitoring tech.

Thus I arrive at the conclusion that this decision is ultimately a loss. Khan's legal standing appears to rely on them not investigating other potential suppliers—I'm not sure that there are any, and "develop these simple data systems in-house" is a bad option because if they could have they would. I suppose ultimately I don't think that Palantir's "bad vibes" among constituents should impact governments' desire to be effective in the programs they purport implement.

Still, time has passed and I have become more interested in GitHub alternatives (https://figbert.com/posts/ideating-tragit/). Will likely end up moving to Tangled. But first I need to add support over there for pushing over HTTPS...

  Location: Palo Alto, CA, USA
  Remote: Much prefer in-person but if compelling I can be flexible
  Willing to relocate: Yes, anywhere in the world
  Technologies: Software (Go, Swift, Gleam, Ruby, Python, WebDev, Deployment), Hardware (CAD, rapid prototyping, DfM, drafting, mechanical engineering), Systems Thinking
  Résumé/CV: https://figbert.com/files/cv.pdf
  Email: figbert [at] figbert [dot] com

coolest damn site on the net

I will note something that might be of use for the work in this particular article: https://hexdocs.pm/gleam_stdlib/gleam/dynamic/decode.html

Gleam Decoders are something I haven’t fully wrapped my head around, but are supposedly very powerful and do exactly what this article is focused on (parsing input data into Gleam types) in a more(?) idiomatic way.

I increasingly have come to believe that it is the screen itself that lies at the root of the ills of technology. It brings so much benefit—and so much convenience, from its flexibility—but it is in its fundamental glow-y rectangular nature that sucks us in, crushing our attention, posture, and so much else. Was incredibly fun to experiment with something radically different.

Excited to see where things go from here.