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★ Liked Ten Years Later, The Dark Knight” and Its Vision of Guilt Still Resonate

Ten years after its release, there is somehow too much and not enough left to say about Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight.

Of course, because there was just so many lenses this film can be seen through, so many interpretations for every scene playing out on the screen. So what’s this film about? Every thinking mind has his own answer.

And yet it’s hard to look at this movie, made at a time of violent divisiveness in the country over issues of surveillance, of complicity, of violence born of fear, and not see a snapshot of a society — not Gotham’s fictional one, but our own, real-life one — ready to plunge into the abyss of fragmentation, of self-serving chaos. Maybe that’s why Nolan’s film now feels so poignant. Today, it’s hard not to feel that humanity’s worst impulses have won, that those without conscience or shame were allowed to sow endless dissension, hatred, and cruelty, using our own sense of guilt against us.

Interesting way to catch tip modifications by waiters. However, I am always surprised that in this age of digital everything, where even currency has gone digital, we are still forced to depend on scam-prone manual tip checking.

This always used to drive me nuts when different people used different varients of flag (-r Or -R) for achieving same result.

is there some good reason why recursive cp takes -R whereas recursive scp takes -r?

It was until I decided I had to get more information on why and headed out to POSIX manual.

If the -r option was specified, the behavior is implementation-defined.

If the -R option was specified, the following steps shall be taken:

  • The dest_file shall be created with the same file type as source_file.

  • If source_file is a file of type FIFO, the file permission bits shall be the same as those of source_file, modified by the file creation mask of the user if the -p option was not specified. Otherwise, the permissions, owner ID, and group ID of dest_file are implementation-defined.

  • If this creation fails for any reason, cp shall write a diagnostic message to standard error, do nothing more with source_file, and go on to any remaining files.

  • If source_file is a file of type symbolic link, the pathname contained in dest_file shall be the same as the pathname contained in source_file.

  • If this fails for any reason, cp shall write a diagnostic message to standard error, do nothing more with source_file, and go on to any remaining files.

Since then, it is always -R that I (and most of the people I know) use — after all who likes the unknown behind behaviour defined by implementation”?

It’s fascinating to think to think that anybody can replicate Facebook, kill” them; but somebody with mass following can hit them where it hurts most - engagement. Take the engagement out and Facebook struggles for relevance.

Micro.threads Update. Refreshed user discover section to show more information for the recommended users. Can follow directly from the app, with option to open profile at Micro.blog.

Also refreshed the Explore section with background enhancement. Want to open this to all soon.

Though I agree with Sundar here, I think the sentiment is missing the core issue EU raises - rapid innovation, wide choice and falling prices” is for a market where Google isn’t competing - handsets. However it kills competition to it’s core services.

I have been following a daily evening routine these days to refresh my user recommendations. And I have started following so many new people whose updates I was missing out on. Pretty stoked, I think I have got a working system here!

Email indeed is the perfect, and oldest, decentralised social network for communication. You do not need a particular platform to be part of it. But that is also what makes it terrible. If you can’t control the inlet, it has to flood the house - bring it to stand still.

That’s the one reason that completely negates all the positives for the e-mail as communications platform. So many smarter people have tried making this a usable system. Alas. No success till now. Getting a decentralised platform up and taking it mainstream with its innate complexities is a huge ask, especially amidst the pull of the simplicity of silos. Just look at mastodon.social.

Simplicity matters. I struggled for days explaining to my dad why he need not have a www” in his e-mail address. And not have a @” while typing in the webaddress for Gmail. After a point, he stopped using e-mail, nudging me every now and then on why I wasn’t on Facebook where he could just @ me. Apparently, it’s a closed silo” is not a reason enough.

A nice post. Early this year, I too followed a similar path to take my web and social presence Indie - something that I control. The journal section on my website became the primary destination for microposts. I (selectively) route to Twitter via Micro.blog cross-posting feature. I receive and display all the interactions on the posts from different platforms using webmentions.

I make Hugo process and render such microposts differently. It’s custom now, and may follow any solution in future. But the intention would be my microposts would exist here.

This structure has also lent me the flexibility of the posting interface. My posts, social and long ones, originate from the app that’s convenient and relevant at the time of posting. Some originate at Micro.blog iOS app, some at quill, most replies and likes directly from Microsub clients (like this one from Monocle) and at times in text editor of my choice (iA Writer, Drafts). And that in itself is a huge benefit.

I like ring of social subdomain that Dan uses, especially for the reason that it can always act as the destination for my microposts, irrespective of what hosts them. I may explore that.

Interesting, thank you Ryan for sharing that. I for sure want to explore it more, just for the reason that it attempts to bring Microsub and regular feed readers together.

Thank you Aaron. I am confident the consistency of Aperture will consistently grow with more edge cases covered. On client, I did try all the apps, both on web (Together) and iOS (Indigenous). I found Monocle to be the most stable one. I do not think my primary concerns around posts display are addressed by any. But anyway I will use these apps a bit longer. I want to use this system, really!

★ Liked Shameless vs. shameful by Seth Godin

Shaming a person is a senseless shortcut. When we say to someone, you’re never going to amount to anything,” when we act like we want to lock them up and throw away the key, when we conflate the behavior with the human–we’ve hurt everyone. We’ve killed dreams, eliminated possibility and broken any chance for a connection.

Though I agree with Daniel’s sentiment, it’s part of the overall cycle of creation — inspiration, ideation, implementation, appreciation, recognition. It is not must for all creations to pass through this, but it’s significant if one does.

So, AirPods remain the wireless earphones of choice for many, primarily due to the ease of use, design and comfort. Bluetooth is a hated technology amongst staunch audiophiles, Apple just made it bearable by making the experience frictionless.

I really liked this comment from a hacker news thread1 on a post around how Microservices architecture failed a product’s dev team.

Everytime (sic) you touch something under a repo, it affects everyone. You are forced to use existing code or improve it, or you risk breaking code for everyone else. What does this solve? This solves the fundamental problem a lot of leetcode/hackerrank monkeys miss, programming is a Social activity it is not a go into a cave and come out with a perfect solution in a month activity. More interaction among developers means Engineers are forced to account for trade offs. Software Engineering in its entirety is all about trade offs, unlike theoretical Comp Science. Anyway, this helps because as Engineers we must respect and account for other Engineers decisions.

Working on a shared code is indeed a social activity. And this principle is something I just can’t stress enough when amongst my team. There is a misguided view of coders as lone warriors, sitting in the dark corner somewhere, beating at their keyboards and delivering working software day and night.

Reality can’t be farther in most work environments, especially enterprises. Every coder needs to be accountable, extra cautious with each line of code he or she commits to the repository. If not, it might lead to a sleepless night of debugging for the whole team.


  1. I do not endorse the tone, of course. It’s from hacker news forum after all. May be people get trained to shout once you are in forum.

★ Liked Throwing and Catching by Seth Godin

We spend most of our time in catching mode. In dealing with the incoming. Putting out fires. Going to meetings that were called by other people. Reacting to whoever is shouting the loudest.

But if we learn a lesson from jugglers, we realize that the hard part isn’t catching, it’s throwing. Learn to throw, to initiate, to do with care and you’ll need to spend far less time worrying about catching in the first place.