Show newer

@silvermoon82@tech.lgbt Unfortunate to see that it's getting framed in terms of "more profit" again, with well-being being an afterthought, but good to see that it's catching on at least.

@kdzwinel I know that there have been several studies, but I don't have the spoons right now to dig them up, unfortunately. I do recall most of them being internal studies by advertisers and publishers (who were trying to figure out whether there was actually a point to personalized ads)

Microsoft folks: we’re not evil.

Also Microsoft folks: …

(Hey @EU_Commission, mind forwarding this to @EC_Commissioner_Vestager for me? She doesn’t seem to be active here but something tells me this might interest her.)

#competition #antitrust #eu #microsoft #edge #bing #mozilla #firefox

re: debts, poverty is expensive 

To clarify, I am no longer in debt, and I'm doing okay now, at least financially (mentally is a different story - also partly because of poverty).

I'm just sharing this to show, with a first-hand example, just how much poor people get fucked over.

Show thread

debts, poverty is expensive 

About a decade ago, I was in poverty and, more importantly, deeply in debt. Here's an excerpt from just one of the many, *many* letters I got from debt collectors at the time.

The original debt was 750.25 EUR, racked up because I couldn't afford the (legally mandated!) private health insurance.

(Which, by the way, results in additionally getting fined by the government, but that's a whole separate story.)

After adding debt collection charges, the total came out to owing the health insurer 1971.46 EUR, almost three times(!) as much as the original debt.

Poverty is expensive. :boost_ok:

Next time someone complains about singular "they" I'll point them to this 17th century rant against singular "you"

@ianwalker (I do plan on working with polling companies at some point in the future for activism reasons, hence my interest in the oddities of the process!)

@ianwalker Ah yeah, if it got intermixed with other questions, then it wouldn't be such an issue. Curious how you decided on per-set randomization and not per-question randomization, though - was there a specific reason for that?

We have a new study out!

The short version is this: "Car Brain" - the cultural blind spot that makes people apply double standards when they think about driving - is real, measurable and pervasive.

Read on for more details... 1/14 @SwanseaUni@twitter.com @UWEBristol@twitter.com @EdNapierTRI@twitter.com

@ianwalker If I'm understanding correctly, everybody got either 5 driving questions or 5 non-driving questions, and the randomization between 'driving' and 'non-driving' was on a per-set basis and not a per-question basis?

That seems to me like it could skew the results - 5 driving questions would be obviously related, whereas 5 non-driving questions would not be, which could change the answering patterns of the "driving" respondents and might eg. make them respond more defensively.

(I'm not sure whether this would really affect the conclusion, though.)

grumbling, activism 

If you feel that radical folks are "too radical" and "scaring off others", but "you agree with them in principle", why aren't you volunteering to do the job of explaining this to liberals/centrists/etc.?

Why are you instead demanding that the radical folks moderate their speech, look friendly, and generally shut up about the incredibly taxing and frustrating experience of constantly getting the same milquetoast subtly-bigoted shit thrown at them masquerading as progressive politics?

Why are you expecting the people who are *already* bearing the brunt of abuse and doing most of the work for social change, to do *even more* work to look less scary and more appealing? Why aren't *you* the one doing that?

Just saw Servo is getting full time developers again in 2023! servo.org/blog/2023/01/16/serv

Servo is the "write a browser in Rust" project Mozilla started in 2012 (and which created the whole Rust language as part of the work) - they stopped working on it a few years ago

The new development looks like it's backed by Igalia - "a private, worker-owned, employee-run cooperative model consultancy focused on open source software" based in Spain: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igalia

More: people.igalia.com/mrego/servo/

I really don't understand why people think it/its is degrading. Why are you thinking of lesser things for it/its when the pronouns could represent towering mountains, harmonious sounds, powerful torrents and the limitless sky?

It /is/ dehumanizing, which is not a bad thing. I feel closer to the songbird and the volcano and the cassava plant and the stars. If your choice of thing to think about when you use it/its for me is degrading, then you have made the choice of thinking less of me because of it.

@rflrkn@chaos.social If nothing else, those are certainly very easy to modify... they've already done 75% of the work

If you are cis and are talking about transphobia, you must use a CW (or else you're an asshole).

Otherwise, I would like to please encourage the use of CWs for these topics in these trying times to avoid traumatising your trans siblings. Thank you.

Show thread

re: peertube github 

@scanlime IPFS proponents are extremely irritating. I've seen them derail more than one project by proposing completely hopeless IPFS-based implementations (without mentioning the poor availability characteristics, of course).

why on earth do academics care so much about students cheating with #ChatGPT and don't seem to mind the emergence of a new kind of platform economy that further abstracts labor in a series of services that just barely work enough to fool VCs, laundering liability for products through "of course the chatbot is imperfect," and a new set of chokepoints for tech companies to serve as obligate passage points for data harvesting? Some of them even seem excited for it magically solving the problems left by our dereliction of responsibility for maintaining our own infrastructure like informational synthesis, search, and discovery.

oh wait no that tracks.

All I'm gonna say is that everyone saying we need to do "prefigurative politics" to make some kind of "better world" but who refuses to even engage with the existence of children and teens? And somehow aren't questioning the existence of schools?

It'd be great if they'd either help those of us wanting to build healthier SDE/unschooling communities and make them accessible or shut up forever, lmao.

Show thread
Show older
Pixietown

Small server part of the pixie.town infrastructure. Registration is closed.