Ok folks 682 of those amazing prize tickets left to go if you want the chance to support some great causes whilst having the opportunity to own a 1 of 2 edition of @neilhimself 🌟STARDUST🌟 Neil owns the other one! Link below!!
Remember to check my @raffall_app profile for the Coraline book too at only £5 per ticket
Yes, you are correct. These things you can't read offline. And most of the time, going the visual route (like imaging each screen and then OCR) to get a clear-text copy is ruinously time consuming and difficult.
Only if you can put the file on a device, and then read off-line, in airplane mode for example, with a FOSS reader, are you reasonably safe from tracking.
Even if you get a book DRM-free from Gutenberg or a shadow library, if you read it using a corporate reader like the Amazon app on a smartphone...I'd bet that Big Brother is watching.
@demerara@yo_bj@scissortail I keep coming back to this quote from the #book "100 Things We've Lost to the Internet" by Pamela Paul: "The United States remains the sole developed country without some kind of federal consumer #data protection law or agency."
Here's a video on YouTube making the case for why agile was an innovative methodology when it was first introduced 20 years ago.
However, he argues these days, daily scrums are a waste of time, and many organisations would be better off automating their reporting processes, giving teams more autonomy, and letting people get on with their work:
First, it's worth noting that many organisations that claim to be "agile" aren't, and many that claim to use agile processes don't.
Just as a refresher, here's the key values and principles from the agile manifesto: http://agilemanifesto.org/
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.
Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
Working software is the primary measure of progress.
Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential.
The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.
Your workplace isn't agile if your team is micromanaged from above; if you have a kanban board filled with planning, documentation, and reporting tasks; if your organisation is driven by processes and procedures; if you don't have autonomous cross-functional teams.
Yet in many "agile" organisations, I've noticed that the basic principles of agile are ignored, and what you have is micromanagement through scrums and kanban boards.
And especially outside software development teams, agile tends to just be a hollow buzzword. (I once met a manager at a conference who talked up how agile his business was, and didn't believe me when I said agile was originally a software development methodology — one he revealed he wasn't following the principles of.)
I’m fortunate that my boomer VP has taken the time to learn and internalize agile. If we ever lose our VP, I’ll probably leave the org because company culture (outside of my dept) is such that our next VP is likely to suck.
@ajsadauskas@technology
Funny video. He's apparently doing real CD and his stakeholders know every day what's going live. I don't know how he works in detail, but very likely it's pretty agile. It's just not by the (scrum) book.
The authors of the agile manifesto were very experienced software craftsfolk and "just" pudlished their common sense. As the guy in the vid does. If devs communicate anyway, e.g. if you have rotating pair programming, you probably don't need a daily ...
I'm putting together my Christmas list for family. It's that time of year again. So... Send me some reading recommendations! Give me links to YOUR books, guys. I'm going to bookmark this and save it for later, so I can purchase stuff throughout the year as well. I want to support everyone.
I hope everyone will check out the comments, too. Let's all support and love one another and help each other when and where we can.
@floofpaldi Love seeing everyone promoting their work! 😊❤️ Hope the family finds a new favorite among them!
My book isn't out (yet), I just have some short stories and research articles available on my BuyMeACoffee. If you do this again next year, I'll throw my work in then. I will recommend "The Starless Sea" by Erin Morgenstern. Haven't finished it yet but what I have read I've enjoyed.
At this point in history everyone is a bigot--depending on who you ask. You, dear reader, are a bigot. All I must do to confirm this is ask your enemy and he will tell me so.
I had to go out late last night and I turned on the car radio. Red Eye Radio was on the air. The hosts went on a several minute tirade saying anyone critical of the Israeli bombings and tactics was a genocidal bigot. So if you oppose slaughtering tens of thousands of people, you are now the bigot. It takes an Olympian amount of mental gymnastics for that logic to work.
The world has always been insane, but now the world has fallen off its nut. We don't have a media anymore. We have Pravda established by the power of noise-to-signal ratio. The real journalists get drowned out by the loud barking of the big dogs.
The U.S. Government wants this Gaza fiasco to continue. The U.S. has the power and influence to put a stop to this conflict in the middle east. The truth is that whoever owns the politicians wants endless conflict to continue.
It is very sad and annoying to see cultists on the left, right, center, and extremities toss around words like, "bigot", "racist", "anti-semite", to describe any criticism they don't like. It is the lowest form of yellow mendacity. The words are so often misused that they have lost all meaning in political discourse. At this point everyone is a bigot depending on who you ask. Now when you do encounter a real flesh and blood bigot, it is hard to find an apt word of description since everyone else is now a bigot, too. Just ask their enemies, and they will tell you so.
"As of Monday, Israeli forces have killed at least 18,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including 7,729 children. Israel’s siege has also injured 50,000 Palestinians and dismantled critical health systems in Gaza."
@TiffyBelle@bookstodon I thought it was fine - nothing super special, but I enjoyed it enough to move onto the second one.
Couple of twists - saw one of them coming and not the other. Book 2 looks as though it will go into the magic more than Book 1 did - which is the bit I'm interested in with most series. :)
"..our universities in Australia must be places where we have the courage to take up our responsibilities as ethical researchers and teachers: our classrooms must be spaces of historical truth-telling that seek to explain why and how this is happening and support students to express their truths, including through student activism."
"As educators and researchers, we pay our deep respect to Palestinian scholars, writers, artists, and activists, including Palestinians based in Australia. We commit to continuing to learn from long histories of Palestinian description, critique, and analysis. Our colleagues in Palestine have called on us again and again to take action, and so we must. Telling the truth in history – as we know from our experiences in this settler-colony of Australia – is an important act of resistance, and we commit to undertaking this task."
“As historians who study – amongst other things – settler-colonialism, genocide, apartheid, gendered and sexed violence, Jewish history, Palestinian history, Israeli history, and more, we say that this breathtaking and heartbreaking violence is unacceptable and must be opposed entirely. We know that the violence did not begin on October 7th, and is a result of long transnational histories of imperialism, colonialism, state violence, antisemitism, Islamophobia, and anti-Palestinian racism. The story does not begin on October 7th, and longer histories – involving European colonisation of Palestine, the mandate system and British rule, the 75 years since the establishment of the State of Israel, the 56 year occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, and the 16 year blockade on Gaza – must be held at the forefront of our minds. “
596 years ago today, Hanseatic cities of Northern Germany retained the services of the privateer captain Bartholomeus Voet, his nine ships and 300 men. With dire consequences for my hometown, Bergen - but also to great annoyance for themselves.
A thread:
The Hansa and the Nordic countries were the best of frenemies at this time. The Hansa traded extensively with the Nordics and often waged war as well, typically allying with one Nordic country against another...