Sven Slootweg (soft-deprecated) @joepie91@pixie.town

(This toot prompted by me investigating whether anyone else has figured out yet how to do modular mutations in a graph API, and predictably discovering that nobody cares because that's not seen as useful in a corporate setting - guess I'll be solving the problem myself again...)

So here's a good example of how conventional 'best practices' in software development implicitly optimize for corporate usage rather than community projects: https://www.apollographql.com/blog/graphql/basics/designing-graphql-mutations/

"Don’t be afraid of super specific mutations that correspond exactly to an update that your UI can make. Specific mutations that correspond to semantic user actions are more powerful than general mutations. This is because specific mutations are easier for a UI developer to write, they can be optimized by a backend developer, and only providing a specific subset of mutations makes it much harder for an attacker to exploit your API."

This makes sense - *if* you're developing corporate software, where you control the entire stack! But if you're building a community project, then this design approach actively makes it harder for third parties to adapt and experiment with your thing, and ultimately centralizes control over how the software works, which is the opposite of what you want.

By itself, this is of course a relatively small thing - but implicit "corporate optimizations" like this are *everywhere* in software development, both in how tools are designed and in what people believe to be 'best practices', and they add up - and that puts grassroots projects at a serious disadvantage.

@maia jaywalking

@jd (And yes, I know that Cloudflare is trying to present themselves as some kind of neutral party protecting the integrity of the internet. They are lying, as they have been doing for years.)

@jd FYI, these are fascist "slippery slope" talking points. Cloudflare has a long history of banning things they don't like, the only new thing here is that this time it's a community which literally tries to drive people to suicide that's getting booted off, instead of eg. sex workers.

The whole premise of "this could lead to more censorship" is literally just the same alt-right bullshit as it has been every time before, that's completely ignorant to the reality that marginalized folks have *already* been getting thrown out everywhere for years, and there is no slippery slope here at all.

Please don't repeat or spread this propaganda.

@th It looks weirdly short...

@alexispurslane This is also still an active area of research, by the way, judging from a quick search for 'autism crispr'. Probably time to start thinking about how to sabotage that research most effectively...

@alexispurslane And to see what the next step of this process is, you only have to scroll down to the article's comment section, specifically the article by a "parent"

@StroomAfwaarts I suspect they'll go for the trans gene first, but yeah, that's pretty much where this would be headed next.

CW'ed repost of https://mastodon.lol/@alexispurslane/108986248558881508:

---

"A team of scientists in Texas used CRISPR to edit out genes associated with autism traits in mice and observed clear results: The animals stopped digging obsessively, their erratic jumping around the cages slowed to a halt and they became more calm."

This sounds like a fucking lobotmy. They're just editing out all the behaviors except placid "normal" ones.

The article also refers to autism as a "developmental disorder" that autistic people "suffer from."

https://www.newsweek.com/scientists-edit-autism-genes-traits-texas-crispr-research-mice-997948

#autism