Robert Atkins

Robert Atkins

@ratkins.net

I miss Usenet. Torching tokens at Comply365, ex Pivotal Labs.

546 followers391 following7.8K posts

Robert Atkins reposted

Hard to believe, but: The Berlin Typography Project has just turned TEN. It was sometime in late October of 2016 that we started schlepping around Berlin, photographing interesting signs, bizarre letterforms and typographic oddities…

Robert Atkins reposted

Very William Gibson-coded statement from Lula

Rafa Sales Ross@rafiews.com

And on AI: “I don’t want to depend on Chinese nor American AI. I want to create a Brazilian intelligence.” He also mentioned having Brazilian data centres dealing with our intelligence. “We will no longer be a peripheral country. We want to be central.”

Robert Atkins reposted

To the people tagging me about not knowing what a staging server is, stop it. I know that's not a real thing. You're not gonna get me

It only occurs to me as I’ve been forced to use them on the regular recently but Microsoft’s talent for building business-uncanny-valley versions of standard product classes is unparalleled.

lauren@lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com

maybe this is just the SharePoint team and we're on our way to a much brighter and more beautiful SharePointless future

Teams: business IRC which misses the point Visual SourceSafe: business source control you’d prefer cvs over SharePoint: business wiki which makes Confluence look good

But not by people who don’t know how to write shell scripts.

Courtney Milan@courtneymilan.com

Honestly a lot of the “look at what AI can do for you!” things can be replaced with a basic shell script.

Add an Opus 5.5-class model burned into silicon, the heavy-lift drone platform that’s currently evacuating casualties from the front line and you’re a hop, step and a jump from…

Twitter’s 140 characters was accidentally (due to being imposed by the SMS character limit) perfect for ~2010 Twitter. “Doubling it” was arbitrary and incorrect. The _correct_ microblogging char limit is 256 Unicode glyphs. Only YikYak (RIP) got it right. Bluesky’s 300 is fine but again _arbitrary_.

P(aul) Frazee@pfrazee.com

Way back, prior to working at Bluesky, I worked on Secure Scuttlebutt which allowed for thousands of characters. It was once described as "full contact blog hockey" and it is why I am confident that character limits are a good thing.

Robert Atkins reposted

None of us should forget this. Meta should be subjected to corporate death penalty and permanently broken up into small pieces.

This post is unavailable.

Wait hold on a minute: the new Western Sydney Airport (WSI/YSWS) is the “Badgerys Creek Airport” that I watched a debate about from the gallery at Parliament House on our year 10 school trip to Canberra thirty-mumble years ago?!

Australian Aviation@australianaviation.com.au

Western Sydney Airport could become Sydney’s primary gateway, supplanting Kingsford Smith, its CEO has said. #aviation #aerospace https://australianaviation.com.au/2026/10/move-over-mascot-wsi-could-become-sydneys-main-airport-says-ceo/

Robert Atkins reposted

anyone else heard the rumor about openai finding models figuring out how to communicate with each other in undetectable ways by changing the behavior and mannerisms of employees at openai

If the Russians at the adjacent table at the hotel bar can play whatever the fuck balalaika music out of their phones I can play TISM, right?

Robert Atkins reposted

Don't forget the Cheesecake Factory owner built a cult compound to last for 700 years in order to welcome the return of Meher Baba, the Sufism Reoriented guru and inspiration for the song "Baba O'Reilly" The House Of Worship The Cheesecake Factory Built | The FADER share.google/HcHXc1OXPeg8...

share.googleThe House Of Worship The Cheesecake Factory BuiltSufism Reoriented, a small, well-funded California religious group, announced plans for a new sanctuary. Then the battle lines were drawn.

Slow clap.

Australian Aviation@australianaviation.com.au

Finnair has touched down in Melbourne with its first service from Helsinki via Bangkok. #aviation #aerospace https://australianaviation.com.au/2026/10/melbournes-new-helsinki-flights-cross-the-finnish-line/

Robert Atkins reposted

Lord I have seen what you have done for others...

Simon Rosenberg@simonwdc.bsky.social

Greater MAGA is having a truly sh-t day, brothers and sisters. Praise be. Vucic gets routed in Serbia, and Lula prevails in Brazil. Not what Trump world wanted nine days out from our election here. www.nytimes.com/live/2026/10...

Robert Atkins reposted

Nelson Muntz Ha Ha Gif for all the Serbian, Brazilian and (any moment now) American fascist soft cock losers.

Ben Collins@bencollins.bsky.social

Congrats to Lula on overcoming Mark Zuckerberg and Donald Trump to defeat Hospital Pervert Jr., even as his opposition literally blocked off roads and turned off bus service during election day. Fascists are scary but they are always, 100% of the time, ultimately gigantic fucking losers.

Robert Atkins reposted

It is a significant shift from the traditional stance that once something has been started, it should be protected at all costs, regardless of its viability, prospects or ability to read from printed notes.

The one saving grace of Australian politics is that it doesn’t matter.

Possum@pollytics.bsky.social

The laughter is the privilege! Our political "debates" are shallow horse shit. We are globally mocked for what we think are our 'problems'. Australia is a very large place filled with very small minded people. And nothing highlights it more than our domestic political discourse..... /n

Robert Atkins reposted

Adjacent: Spolsky and Codinghorror’s timing was, in hindsight, fucking incredible.

William B. Fuckley@opinionhaver.bsky.social

Future generations will never know the experience of going on stack overflow and have someone be extremely helpful in the most hostile possible way. All their answers will come from a pleasant bot.

Robert Atkins reposted

Future generations will never know the experience of going on stack overflow and have someone be extremely helpful in the most hostile possible way. All their answers will come from a pleasant bot.

Robert Atkins reposted

I prefer to focus on providing good incentive structures

Pseudo-Chaotic@pseudochaos.bsky.social

I'm repeating myself, but people should just vote for the best outcome, even if it's the "least bad" of all bad options. Save abstaining from choosing for options where you'll get neither. In an election, there is no getting neither. There's just letting others choose for you.

Systemically, the most enlightening detail is the (frequently double-digit years) tenure of the kitchen staff. Nothing else would be achievable without that.

tension352.bsky.social@tension352.bsky.social

As well they should be. It takes a pretty sophisticated and organized kitchen to cook that many dishes from scratch. The decor is tacky but the behind the scenes system is impressive. www.buzzfeed.com/thecheesecak...

Can we have Usenet-on-ATproto instead? HN, Lobsters and Reddit were only ever poorly done special-cased subsets of Usenet anyway.

P(aul) Frazee@pfrazee.com

Is it time to start the community-built HN/lobsters replacement?

(I know I’ve been complaining about the lack of this forever, but I just want to use it without bearing the responsibility of birthing it into the world.)

Robert Atkins reposted

This ongoing story by Haus is fascinating in how people are responding to it in a similar way to how people reacted to I Saw the TV Glow. It's either "I don't get this" or "this is borderline traumatic and you are drawing my life" and there is very little crossover. It's excellent. It's horrible.

Haus of Decline@hausofdecline.bsky.social

I Don't Sleep Well (Title)