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Ben Matthews

@ benjhm @sopuli.xyz

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Joined
2 yr. ago
  • New here on lemmy, will add more info later ...
  • Also on mdon: @benjhm@scicomm.xyz
  • Try my interactive climate / futures model: SWIM

  • Why I am moving away from Scala

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  • This article feels to me really out of date. Scala3 was launched nearly five years ago, The tooling and lib-support was indeed dodgy back then but works very smoothly now. Scala3 also broke Scala2 macros, and some people whose business-model was selling support for clever libraries built on those macros made a lot of fuss (bad publicity). Meanwhile Scala3 has new more robust macros which work fine.

    I develop in scala an interactive climate-scenario model web-app . It's running the model in your browser (500 years x 250 countries x many gases, sectors, feedbacks etc. - so it's complex)... The scala code compiles to js (or wasm) -which is what runs this web app - but the same code also compiles with scala-native to run fast batch- calculations or tests. It also compiles to the jvm app like my older java code, but I rarely use this now.

    Scala3 code looks more like python than java - minimal brackets, and much nicer to read and higher level than rust.As for tools I just use Zed editor with Metals for LS, Mill for build, and other libs from the lihaoyi ecosystem, no web 'frameworks'. Scala is both robust and flexible. In general - if the code compiles, typically it runs correctly first time, if not the very-intelligent compiler identifies precisely what to fix where (very different from so-called 'AI'). So instead of reams of junk 'tests', it's usually just enough to check whether my climate system plots look and behave as expected - higher level thinking.

    As for Kotlin it was effectively a russian-led (at the time) fork of Scala, staying closer to Java - so less flexible, but they did much more systematic marketing - and I suspect some of that deliberately pushed blog posts knocking Scala.What Scala lacks is promotion, so those following fashions of this hype-driven world won't find it.For those who use it, it's a great language, to do complex stuff that scales robustly.

  • The Sovereign Tech Fund invests in Scala

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  • Good, makes sense, as Scala is 'made in Europe' (mainly swiss and polish teams), and makes very robust software. Only it’s under-hyped. Here you can try my interactive climate-system web-model written in latest Scala, which compiles three ways - to the web-app you see, to native code for fast calculations, and to a jvm desktop app (with 25 years history, originally java).

  • Chemtrails Aren’t Real. So Why Are Politicians Passing Laws About Them? Banning chemtrails is “like banning unicorns or banning Bigfoot,” says one weather expert

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  • Yes. Persistent contrails - i.e. aviation-induced cirrus clouds which spread in supersaturated air layers - are indeed bad for the climate, but often their effect is ignored as hard to quantify, while the simpler small effect of short-lived contrails is conveniently cited instead.Also, while all high clouds have a warming effect by reflecting infra-red radiation back to earth, there can also be a cooling effect due to reflecting solar radiation, which is greater when the angle of the sun is low. So the net effect is warming in the middle of the day and at night, but cooling in morning and evening.

  • Super-Emitter of the most Damaging Greenhouse Gas found in Germany

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  • SF6 emissions are bad news, but thanks for reporting it. Wondering whether Solvay HQ in belgium had any role in covering this up ?I recall using SF6 30 years ago to study ocean gas fluxes, but only microlitres, as we knew about it’s crazy high GWP even then.

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    Religion Holds Steady in America

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  • Why all the downvotes? Is something misleading in this study by Pew (i'm not american, maybe lacking context...?), or is it just a case of we'd prefer a different result ?

  • Europe has it's own open-source software license! I started using it, and I want to spread the word

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  • I hope you are right but fear that in practice (has this ever been tested?) you might not be.See for example this discussion ( note especially comments by 'MadHatter' )

  • Europe’s plan to fund Ukraine is being blocked by one company — Euroclear

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  • Maybe Euroclear is not the only reason - rather a convenient excuse for De Wever to waste time - as his seat of power is Antwerp with a huge chemical industry partly fueled by Russian gas, and his party is right-wing nationalist and maybe more sympathetic to the Putin-Trump vision than they dare to admit (as not in line with sentiment in the country as a whole).

  • Bulgaria’s Coalition Govt Collapses Unexpectedly Under Protest Pressure

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  • When I look at polls it suggests little moved since last election, so Продължаваме Промяната & Демократична България are still far from leading an alternative government. Are those polls wrong ? Or is this another example of optimistic youth on streets in the capital, outnumbered by conservative old people in small towns (as elsewhere in europe)? How do they expect to change this ?

  • Europe has it's own open-source software license! I started using it, and I want to spread the word

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  • I'm still confused by this. Doesn't that imply that if a derivative SaaS is created in combination with a weaker ( less-copyleft ) license such as GPL, Apache or MIT, then the weaker licence wins, so the derivative source code no longer has to be published ? I'm not looking for a 'do whatever you like' licence, I'd prefer a copyleft approach like AGPL, but one that's easier to defend in europe.

  • Optimized for bamboozling (Charlie Stross)

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  • Some comments below the article are good. I like especially this one:

    One thing that seems to me to be shaking out of LLMs: if an LLM can do it well enough to pass muster, it probably didn’t need doing in the first place. Coming at it from a programming perspective: if an LLM can generate the required code, it shows that you could have better abstractions that describe your behavior with less code. If an LLM can generate a document, it’s a sign that the document isn’t necessary in the first place- it’s a bit of leftover make work that should be subsumed into a better process. And so on.

  • Europe has it's own open-source software license! I started using it, and I want to spread the word

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  • Glad you raise this topic.Can anybody elaborate on the practical difference between EUPL and AGPL ?Iirc, although these both cover software as a service, EUPL is more relaxed about conversion or combination with other 'compatible' licenses which don't include SaaS. So I'd be worried this keeps open a pathway for a bigger power to 'enshittify' my code.Another question - has anybody experience defending rights under EUPL ?

  • Israel to compete at Eurovision Song Contest in 2026, prompting several nations to withdraw

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  • The money to run EV comes from the voters (paying per sms etc), as well as tv advertising. So in this situation it seems likely that many individuals will also choose to boycott it, choosing not to watch and not to vote. That might lead to a financial penalty for EBU, but at the same time this will distort even further the 'results' of what what may be considered one of the largest (albeit very biased) global experiments in democracy, especially for teenagers. Maybe an alternative can emerge ?

  • Is Pixelfed sawing off the branch that the Fediverse is sitting on?

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  • It's well known that each person has to have a different account for each of those big-tech services. Whereas in the fediverse, the original idea was that one account can traverse multiple services. The problem as the OP explains, is that it may seem you are following your friend's account, whereas actually you might see just a small fraction of it, and not be aware that there is more.

  • We tested Europe’s luxurious new ‘business-class’ sleeper bus between Amsterdam and Zurich

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  • I recall China had comfortable sleeper buses back in the 1990s - when they had more gaps in their railway network. Tatami -style mats were enough, what's important is to lie flat. It can help sleep to feel a little movement, knowing you're going somewhere. But to succeed in europe they should integrate better with railway stations.

  • Is Pixelfed sawing off the branch that the Fediverse is sitting on?

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  • I think OP has a valid point - it's not about experienced users, but newcomers to the fediverse, who may think they are following an account, when actually they only see a small part of it - there could be some indication of what's missing.

  • Lightning detected on Mars by Nasa rover, scientists believe

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  • Seems dust devils make sparks fly.

  • EU keeps pushing for Trans-Caspian corridor despite mounting disillusionment

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  • I suppose to get more ships to the Caspian, they'd have to transport them in sections (from Europe or China) to assemble them in situ - some modular concept ?Side thought - has anybody considered refilling the caspian sea via some pipe from the black sea ?

  • Bill Gates is a horrible person.

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  • That's a rate of only 1.2% per year, was that your intention ?

  • The Algorithm That Detected a $610 Billion Fraud: How Machine Intelligence Exposed the AI Industry’s Circular Financing Scheme

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  • I wish you were right, but ponder the last point - do they really want returns ? For the oligarchy it’s just about maintaining power, arabs bought crazily expensive us fighter jets for years with zero 'returns', except political favours. In this case datacenters also support fossil demand expansion narratives. Has anybody done the math of the scale of those 'reserves', compared to the bubble ?