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

the arguments there must be really funny

­>"no this fighter jet has a third 36-J engine"
­>"nuh-uh"
­>102856428-MITSUBA6-CL.pdf
­>"yuh-uh"

Periodic reminder for y'all kids, teens & 20-somethings 'growing up gifted’: find and do something you have a legit chance of failing at. Ideally, a few times. Practice failing.

If you coast through life because it's comparatively easy (you're gifted!! yay!) you will not have a useful mental context when failure inevitably happens, and that's Bad!

(There's a corollary in here about self-worth/esteem vs effort expended, but maybe I'll save that for a blog post.)

A common argument I come across when talking about ethics in AI is that it's just a tool, and like any tool it can be used for good or for evil. One familiar declaration is this one: "It's really no different from a hammer". I was compelled to make a poster to address these claims. Steal it, share it, print it and use it where you see fit.

https://axbom.com/hammer-ai/

#AiEthics #DigitalEthics

hey fedi, did you know that meow mrrp nya?

Seat reservations for Interrail on German trains

€4,90 2nd class, for as many trains as you want - if they connect - if you reserve with DB
€5,90 1st class, for as many trains as you want - if they connect - if you reserve with DB

€3,00 1st or 2nd class with ÖBB - but you pay *per train*

So if you're taking 1 ICE - book seats with ÖBB. If you're taking two or more and they connect, book with DB

#CrossBorderRail

Online Community Management Thread: that time that I put a Friends List in my browser game

So on my game you can buy a Monthly Memento for a tenner, which is a thing that does something special, different every month. Lately I've been preparing for a server move and that's involved going through lots of old code and being reminded of past mistakes, so lately the Monthly Mementos have been themed around having the player character ascend a set of stairs into the Problem Attic and pull out a randomly-chosen dusty old relic from the past.

I thought you might enjoy this descriptive text in which I talk about that one time we thought adding a Friends List was a grrrrreat idea.

-----

You spend a few minutes finding a flat bit of ground and unfolding and extending the legs and in general bollocking about trying not to get your fingers pinched by anything, until you have what's basically a tiny portable shelter made out of an old wooden door. But you know that's not where this ends, oh no; you twist the knob and dodge the ladder that rushes facehungrily downwards as you open the door. An observer would see you ascend the ladder and disappear into thin air; you see, in the non-space past the door, the dusty attic where Improbable Island keeps its old junk. You furtle around for a few minutes and emerge with...

A List of Friends
Oh haha, man, that was a feature. Back in the six months in which it looked like every game was destined to have a defined social graph, our eyes turned into dollar signs as we gibbered "I'll bloody 'ave some o' that!" and we fermented up our very own Friends List feature, which would let you know when your friends were online.

The problem was, people generally know who their friends are. There wasn't really any need to write software that collects names into a list and stamp each one with the word FRIEND; in fact, when you think about it, that's pretty fucking weird, isn't it? Normally you'd see a person, think "Oh it's my friend Jimmy Crumbles" and that's enough, you don't need to record that data anywhere, getting software involved doesn't really make much sense in most contexts. Plus, being friends with someone isn't necessarily a binary, there can be a whole bunch of wibbly squibbly soft nebulous stuff in between "Yes we're friends" and "No we're not friends." There's acquaintances, and people you work with, and people you see often and chat with but don't know their names, and people you enjoy in small doses, and all sorts of not-friends-but-not-not-friends in your life, including the vast category of "People with whom I enjoy playing this specific internet game."

Of course we didn't think too much about this, we were just adding social features because everybody else was doing it and making loads of money in the process, so we spent like three weeks writing a really nice Friends List feature and stuck it online and then took it offline again not even 12 hours later.

For a brief, glowing moment, Improbable Island had all the social weirdness of facebook, without the context in which one might be accustomed to facebook's various weirdnesses; the nebulous "Is this person my friend?" question wasn't allowed to have its answer evolve gradually and normally over time, it became a binary, yes or no, are you my friend or aren't you, you must answer right now and if I think you're my friend and you don't then what happens to us then, and what even is a friend in this context anyway, does anybody know and do any of us agree, and this is a browser game for Christ's sake people are going to treat their Friend Count the same way they'd treat any other stat. Why is that one lady going around Friending literally everyone on the whole site? Why is that one guy refusing every Friend Request? What's the story with those two people who were roleplaying with each other every day, surely they were friends, right? And now they're suddenly the bitterest of enemies? Is being my Improbable Friend the equivalent of maintaining prolonged eye contact? Does it mean that we nod at each other in the pub, or does it mean that you're going to come to my house and stay on my sofa for three weeks? Does this mean we're married now? Why is the guy who I did a brief scene with two years ago now acting like he's just bought us a tandem bicycle and matching waistcoats? Should this feel like I'm sitting down on the bench next to the lady I've RP'd with every night for the past week and rubbing up against her like a cat going "How are you today, fffrrrrrieennnd?"

The worst and most ironic part of this whole weird "Making a list of your friends" Thing is that even though nobody agrees on what adding someone to your friends list means, everybody knows that something baaaaaad is going on when you remove someone from it.

Did you ever spend throw something in the bin so hard that the bin fell over and the Thing rolled out and then you had to go over to the bin and set it upright and chuck the Thing in it again but then you change your mind and pick up the whole bin with the Thing inside and stuff it into one of those big thick black contractor bags and knot it shut and throw it out into the cold black night? Yeah. That.

of course there's a "powerpc page tables tutorial" on a mario kart wii forum

why wouldn't there be

even better, the first sentence: "I'm making this tutorial due to a recent uptick in conversation on Discord PPC-related servers about how to set these things up."

to think, if it was left in discord i wouldn't have found it from a google search for "powerpc sdr1"

Let's bring back personal sites, RSS feeds, web rings.
Let's make it all truly accessible.
Let's make it simple for other folks to join in.
And above all: let's make it a safe space!, kick out any nazi, racist, homophobe, transphobe, xenophobe, anti-sex-work and keep them out!
Free/simple/shared hosting will not have what it takes to run an instance of <fediverse tool>.
But we can make programs that publish to html + css + js, directly into their spaces.

Let's do an experiment! If you're *not* a professional or habitual programmer, I'd love to hear what you know about what happens between typing a web address like "example.com" into your web browser and actually seeing the page show up. Whatever level of abstraction and verbosity you're comfortable with.

Tech folks: absolutely no making fun of people for being wrong, okay? People are allowed to not know stuff!

Boosts appreciated, but only if you're interested in frivolity 💜

I’m fucking sick and tired of peopde attacking my server’s moderation/administreation. You have got to fucking understand that for many people, including black people and a bunch of other non-white people, but also queer people like me, don’t feel safe on fedi for a thousand fucking reason including past encounters or just general patterns of behavior

My server is proactive in limiting contact from servers that present _patterns_ of racist and other shitty behaviors and not just outbursts

You look away when your friends say some sus shit, or when interacting with this cute kawaii puppygirl that’s all good and all but also pals with pleroma nazis/akkoma homonationalists. We don’t. Do you get how it’s looking when you take their side and pile on r.l and other servers with similar policies?

Mistakes happen to everyone, when r.l made one they clarified and did the necessary. Not saying that fully excuses everything but come the fuck on, I’ve seen admins tripling down and melting down over being called out for way smaller "mistakes"

This isn’t team sports and nobody is entitled to federation, idk grow the fuck up or something

Blue LEDs on electronics have to be some of the brightest objects in the universe especially when they're in your room at night

Okay... I know I am a geek... but I have been going through SNCB sales documents and I find error after error. Copied Wikipedia text sure... Pictures from train spotters... sure honored i guess? But saying an i6a is an M4??

It saddens me that I put more work into reading it than the people who made it 😿

Look, like don't engage with me about this shit, because nobody is going to like what I have to say. Probably not even you.

But I will say this.

"Girlcock" is not "unfortunate branding". The celebration of girldick is important, special, and should be talked about. Just as girl pussy, boy pussy, and boy dick, and all the genital/gender spectrum should be celebrated and talked about.

Not all trans femmes want a pussy. Some of us have dicks and are good with them. I'm one of them. I owe it to the many girlcock-havers who celebrated their having a girlcock in this loud way on the Fedi to shape that perspective, and appreciate other bodies, and my own.

I'm not less of a woman for that. Some trans femmes want pussies (and if they do I hope they get it 💜). But if you believe that a very specific bottom surgery defines transness and/or womanhood, then you need to unfuck yourself.

If you're cis, and hearing about girlcock makes you uncomfortable, then you have some major issues with gender essentialism and transmisogyny.

I'll still fight for better sex education and for your bodies to be talked about loudly, and I'll still think your body is beautiful, but I just wanted to say fuck you for not giving me that same solidarity in return.

PSA: To avoid dooring or killing cyclists when you exit a vehicle, please consider adopting "the Dutch Reach," which is using your hand farthest from the door to open it. This forces you into a position that allows a better view of bicycles approaching from behind. And, of course, first look, *then* open door. Teach your kids, too. #cycling #safety #driving #cars #psa https://www.fraserhealth.ca/news/2021/Sep/do-the-dutch-reach-to-protect-cyclists-and-other-road-users