PiotrW

I am, therefore I think

[PiotrW @piowie]

@komputerow Ten, co go prawie nie widać, a trzyma ręce na klawiaturze. Chyba, że to syn ministra sprowadzona do ozdoby..?

[🎸 Rock History 🎸 @historyrock_]

Happy 66th birthday to The Bangles singer and guitarist Susanna Hoffs!

Here’s Susanna Hoffs performing "Manic Monday" (2021)

[PiotrW @piowie]

@Ewa22400 @adik779 Nie, wolimy słuchać muzyki.

[Adrian Zimny @ad_zimny]

Trzeba chyba wyjaśnić o co chodzi z tą całą Grenlandią i Kanadą, bo od 2022 poziom zrozumienia światowych przywódców w naszym kraju nie wzrósł ani odrobinę i kiedy ktoś robi coś niezrozumiałego dla kochanych rodaków, to twierdzimy, że zwariował. Nie, Trump nie zwariował.

[Ryan Winchester @ryanwinchester]

why

[PiotrW @piowie]

@C8Luna @ryanwinchester Depends...
In most of the world would be 2024.0/11.0/20.0

[Sekcja Gimnastyczna @gimnastyczna]

Latający cyrk Monty Pythona.
Wszelkie podobieństwo do myśliwych w Polsce przypadkowe.

[The Intellectualist @highbrow_nobrow]

Reagan on demagogues pushing trade war:

“We should beware of the demagogues who are willing to declare a Trade war against our friends, weakening our economy, our national security, and the entire free world, all while cynically waving the American flag…

[PiotrW @piowie]

Do you remember when you joined X? I don't, either... But Twitter reminded me. #MyTwitterAnniversary #aXed

[PiotrW @piowie]

@media_ada @BartoszScheuer Przeżył już tyle z połową, to będzie zbędny wydatek

[The Knowledge Bank @xKnowledgeBANK]

A thread of 20 Survival Tips And Tricks You Might Not Have Known Before.

1. How to break a door

[Jeffrey Scholz @Jeyffre]

I read Google's paper about their quantum computer so you don't have to.

They claim to have ran a quantum computation in 5 minutes that would take a normal computer 10^25 years.

But what was that computation? Does it live up to the hype?

I will break it down.🧵

[MezΔlyth ✧ - A Series of Stories @mezalyth]

@VividVivka

[PiotrW @piowie]

@TheCrow7890 @304boy_ @Stookiemonk89 @allenanalysis @OzThaGrouch @SteveAReno444 Thankfully, it's an ambulatory procedure and it can be done even on Jan 20th, in the morning, and he can still make it for his inauguration.

[MG @_MG_]

The exploding Hezbollah pagers situation is an incredibly impressive supply chain attack by Israel (most likely). I am sure more details will come, but there are already some educated guesses to be made that narrow it down.

🧵1/n

[PiotrW @piowie]

@Bolo_Dnero @taraxrh @JacksonBucket They should definitely hurry, before they're Musked away

[PiotrW @piowie]

@ImplyGuy @davepl1968 Def not librarIES. Everything is in standard libraries. That have to be loaded to even start the _interpreter_ of your beloved Python

[Dave W Plummer @davepl1968]

"Maybe You Should Get Yourself Tested..."

I always knew I was different, especially from the other kids. I spent most of my childhood feeling like an outsider looking in. In school, I was either hyper-focused on a topic or completely disinterested. I struggled socially and usually didn’t “get” what others said or thought. In groups, I never knew when it was my turn to talk, and I took a lot of verbal – and sometimes worse – abuse for being different. It would be many years before I learned that millions of people were “similarly different.”

By adulthood, I would eventually catch up to my peers in most ways and find acceptance from a small group of close friends and, soon enough, a loving wife and family. I was still different, but by then, we all figured I was just “Dave.” Being Dave simply meant that I had some idiosyncrasies and needed a few accommodations.

I needed order and routine and got flustered by inconvenient changes. Sarcasm was hard for me: I took everything literally and often personally. I truly only had two interests: cars and computers. I had to cut the scratchy tags from my shirts and shower right after haircuts. I was uncomfortable with hugging people. I was never sure when it was my turn to talk; when it was, I never knew quite where to look when talking to people. I was great with stressful situations that I had the skill to solve but terrible with things outside my control.

Despite taking seven years off and on to finish high school, I did very well in college, where I could focus on subjects that I was good at. By the end, I was clever, persistent, and fortunate enough to make it from Saskatchewan to Microsoft, starting as a software engineer on MS-DOS in the early 90s. After my stint in MS-DOS, I moved to Windows, where I was privileged to work on several other memorable features. If you’ve ever used Task Manager, opened a Zip file, played Pinball, formatted a disk, or used the Start Menu, you’re using some of my code to this day.

A few years ago, my alma mater invited me back to deliver a lecture on my life and career. By now, I was self-aware enough to make a few oblique references in the lecture to having some telling characteristics, such as:

“There may be a whole spectrum
of reasons I am who I am.”

“I may not be on the spectrum,
but you can see it from here.”

“I could be on the spectrum, but if I am, it’s the nonvisible part of the spectrum!”

A trusted friend and mentor, the very person who had hired me at Microsoft, happened to see the lecture. His adult daughter had recently been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and that had sent him on a journey of self-education on all matters related to autism. He knew me well enough that he had begun to wonder if I had ASD as well. After seeing me refer to the autism spectrum in the lecture, he reached out and took me for lunch, where he explained his reasoning. He followed up with the kind of email that really makes you sit up and pay attention:

“Maybe you should get yourself tested.”

Taking his suggestion to heart, I contacted the autism center at the University of Washington, which, in turn, referred me to a top local neurologist who specializes in neurodevelopmental conditions. I learned it would involve twelve hours of intensive testing over several days: IQ tests, coordination assessments, personality inventories, etc.

As I told friends of this upcoming testing, I had been expecting to hear a chorus of “What, you? Autistic? That’s silly!”

Instead, to my substantial surprise, I was met with knowing looks accompanied by comments such as “Fascinating… Let us know what you find out!”

In the meantime, I did what I did most afternoons – I stopped by a local auto/machine shop to have a coffee with Jim, a close friend who owned the place. He was about seventy now, a Vietnam combat veteran, a lifelong resident of my small town, and an absolute genius when it came to any car made before 1975.

Jim had lost an eye to cancer just a few months back. It was a melanoma that he ultimately wouldn’t survive. He didn’t warn me, and one day, I just walked in to find him terminally ill and missing an eye. As with many highly emotional moments, I was stoic and measured in the moment… until I had a meltdown that night.

But on that day, when I told him I was being tested to see if I was a little bit autistic, he looked up from the carburetor he was working on, gave me a wry smile, and said, “Just a little, huh?” I guess sometimes you really are the last to know...

[To be continued, or find the rest in the sample here:
https://t.co/CO3wwurOmw ]