Ben Matthews

Chongqing looks fun. Not only modern cities multi-level - Edinburgh old town also fun, old stone castle-like buildings, ±12 floors one side for 4 on the other, as it straddles an old volcano (does lack north-south transit).

Too true.
I still remember when java5 came out, many new features, great potential for a massive refactoring of my interactive climate model. Within that, I had an idea called “parallel worlds” for comparing scenarios, whereby for efficiency data was shared for parts of the system, and split across parts that varied as user adjusted parameters. So I pulled apart the whole codebase, and joined it back together again… - about two years later, by which time colleagues had given up interest.
[ story simplified to relate to point of OP - not only task in two years! ].
Now I develop a derivative climate system model in scala, but evidently it’s more interesting to develop some new complex part of the science code, than fix a graphical interface for beginners. But moods vary - some days lacking energy for refactoring, could be satisfied ticking off a few small tasks in a todo list. Yet after some time, brain craving for another big new complex idea…

spraying silver fog from planes to seed clouds comes to mind… (checkout geo-engineering)

Others summarised below, I just add that in chinese it’s 一带一路, terms broader than “belt” or “road” - 路 translates better as way as it can also cover sea-ways, railways etc. , 带 can also mean carry or zone, etc… So, it implies cooperation on infrastructure projects, but was not a great choice of name for global translation.
I support developing overland transport rather than flying, for climate reasons, however it’s obviously also about geopolitical deals - otherwise why would Italy be on the way from China to anywhere?

Sure need to consider that - but what bad policy could they get through QMV (>> simple majority but << consensus), that a lone more progressive m-state might otherwise block ?

Within EU there are proposals to move to QMV for most topics (spanish presidency still pushing this), problem is vetos block such reform. EU doesn’t have any power to invade (yet?). Regarding UN, most processes, like UNFCCC and even IPCC, operate by consensus - this dilutes many outcomes, it’s a pity. As for UN-SC, its record of helping is not great, just legitimizes old power, maybe should be abolished. I’d rather see a weighted GA vote (maybe excluding parties to a conflict).

In defence of the jack-of-all-trades, if everybody is a cog in the machine, nobody sees the overview of how the cogs could connect.
For what it’s worth, here’s an overview of some cogs made by a j-o-a-t, for whom software developer is just a sub-role, within understanding complex climate system.

EU needs to abandon unanimity in decision making - it’s not even the veto of one “country”, but of one party in one country. Same for UN. Pure consensus is not working.

Public services are important but only part of the story. Another part is the cost of housing - related to investment, economic policies, and demographics. Regarding the latter, european populations are not changing much (increase a little in west, decline a little in east), however households get smaller - especially there are more old people retaining large houses, which reduces space for the young. Unfortunately it’s much easier to blame this on migration, regardless of reality, that won’t fix anything but does help the far-right who first pushed that agenda.

Good. But priority for EU is integrate the West Balkans (waiting too long), Ukraine + Moldova.
In parallel reform processes:

• abolish national vetos (aka consensus) so no Orban-types can take the ship hostage.
• strengthen the EU parliament, over the council and commission
• accept concept of multi-tier participation (it’s reality anyway)

We need more debating each issue on each merits, rather than horse-trade mega-packages of transactional deals. In that respect, if Britain rejoins one component at a time, it’s better for everybody’s understanding of benefits and challenges.

Hi, thanks for the encouragement, delayed response due focusing on the code, and a related conference, and now trying to keep up with the COP. As it happens, the “ratchet” system of pledges created in Paris (COP21) is an iterative algorithm - start with wild guesses and gradually improve them by feedback - this made sense given the weaknesses of diplomacy, but it’s hard to summarise this mess with neat code in a compact model.

Well, for example if I could reply to a mastodon post from my lemmy account - the poster would see that there (not here - but could show up on my profile page), and might follow it, so it could gain followers. To write such a reply, I’d need to somehow view the original post while logged into lemmy. My comments here do federate to mastodon, and if somebody searched for related words (at least from the instance from which I followed my #lemmy account) they should find this. Your “virtual community” seems like a mastodon list (I have a dozen such topic lists, that system could be better, but is improving), indeed it would be helpful to consider that alongside a lemmy community for similar topic.

the Lemmy devs tell you to use Kbin or Mastodon or anything else

So to reply to Nutomic’s closing remark on github:

I dont see why Lemmy should also implement that.

Because - if I could post to Mdon or reply to a Mdon post from my Lemmy account, some Mdon users (more numerous) might think - hey that’s interesting, I’ll follow that guy, then see my other posts to Lemmy, click and open up the whole thread (yes that works), and so eventually come to contribute to Lemmy too.

I don’t find that - using Mastodon (4.2) I can see threaded discussion in Lemmy - each comment as a post - but have to start somewhere.

I succeed to follow my own Lemmy account from my Mastodon account, it works (initially seems empty, but new posts/replies show up later). From there I could potentially boost or reply. If somebody clicks on my comment in Mastodon, they’ll find the whole Lemmy thread. This should help (more numerous) Mastodon users to discover Lemmy.

I discovered Lemmy via links from Mastodon, and so found i prefer these threaded communities. Nevertheless individual “status” posts have a purpose too, we need both topic-focused and people-focused structures, these should overlap and connect better.
As my Mastodon account follows my Lemmy account, my posts/replies get into that system, more might be discovered if I included hashtags here. However I can’t do the reverse - follow a Mastodon account, or reply to or boost a post, from Lemmy. Communities might grow more if we could enable such interaction.

This principle works most but not all the time. I develop an interactive climate-system model that evolved with many small steps over 23 years. So it has many patchy fixes as climate policy structure changed, gases and sectors added etc. Then converted from java to scala module by module (out of ±50) , each step checking the plots looked as before. Result is it works, but parts are messy with legacy options and outdated code style. So sometimes it’s necessary to radically rethink the structure, take big bold steps before it works again, that’s hard. Scala strong type system, with hints from compiler (and “metals”) help make such refactoring easier.

Some of us will even remember when compilers ran on big central computers, and you might have to wait 15–30 minutes to find out if your code was syntactically correct (let alone if it worked.)

My father remembers when he wrote code printed on a set of punched cards, they traveled several hours on an evening train to a warehouse with a big government statistics computer (that was too busy during daytime), the result came back by train next morning. Syntax error? try again tomorrow…

I develop an interactive climate / future scenario model, now in scala, earlier in java, almost no dependencies. No visualisation frameworks - the diverse plots hand coded in scala (transpiles using scala.js, makes SVGs on demand). The science code from demography through economy emissions, bioegeochemistry, to climate - just scala, no interface to other languages / models, no “solver” tool. Data input just text files -easy to check. Some modules over 20 years old (except converted java -> scala), still work reliably. It’s efficient as all client-side, no IO/net between adjustments and results. Seems no big institute would employ me for such model dev because my experience doesn’t tick the boxes of all the current fashionable frameworks. But at least I can share a way to explore the future for ourselves … and yes it’s bleak but not so dire as many people here seem to assume, we still have choices.

I think it would only be a win if euro-comm does the same for WhatsApp, otherwise the fakes just get less transparent. And maybe this is all part of authoritarian countries cutting the world off from european ideas, see my other comments.