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political take 

i love liberals (/s) for the damage they made to society by convincing it that public transport can't work outside of cities

yes it can and it does or did before public transport was systematically deprived of financing and proper management

lol

Want vooruitgang is niet apolitiek. Vooruitgang voor de één is achteruitgang voor de ander. In dit geval: de vooruitgang in arbeidsproductiviteit en “goedkope arbeid” is een achteruitgang geweest voor arbeiders. En dat de machtsverhoudingen tegen vooruitgang zijn geënt. doorbraak.eu/middenklasse-corr

@jonny I remember reading something about a fedi instance that would spend most of its time with no federation, but would every so often "dock" with a random instance out there, federate for a little while, and then pick up and "leave" again.

If I remember right it was a mildly shitposty concept that never actually got implemented, but there is a charm to it.

You know what I dont even care about a browser fully implementing web standards. Whoever makes a browser that animates every website at like 5% speed with little guys running out into the internet to go bring back the pictures and stuff them into place, little goblins that push the page elements around to animate them, and you adblock by Mario stomping the tracking demons as they try and steal your clicks and stuff... I will use that browser no matter how completely busted it is

"I want you to imagine someone for me. Her name is Jessica and she is 17 years old...."

For years, "A Story About Jessica" (a computer security parable @SwiftOnSecurity wrote, published on their Tumblr in 2014) was pretty hard to find.

Per the CC BY license, I've now republished it so it's easier to discover and reference.

harihareswara.net/posts/2024/a

My comments in the post include pointers to relevant work by Mark Pilgrim, @sprblm , @luis_in_brief , @jacob , and @evacide .

activism meta 

The problem in activism that I find the most challenging is not how to convince people or make things better, but how to make sure that those improvements persist without needing a Dear Leader and how to avoid the usual cycles of improvement followed by inaction and regression

“Nike’s $25B blunder shows us the limits of “data-driven” | by Pavel Samsonov | Jul, 2024 | Medium”

spavel.medium.com/nikes-25b-bl

> For those of us who don’t think that’s what he meant to do, it bears reflecting on where he went wrong.

If you're active in an NGO, charity or civil society, ask for a copy of your organisation's bylaws and policies if they're not online already.

Bylaws should be easily interpreted by most literate people as a blueprint of how to run the organisation.

It's okay that some articles are open to interpretation as long as it is possible to appeal decisions to a tribunal process — but if things look intentionally cryptic or aren't being followed then find someone you trust to help with that.

I am on a bus. The bus has tables!!

When did this happen?!

"this game runs at 60 frames per second using a technique called 'lying'"

rambling about tech, culture, and other random shit 

Stepping outside of tech and academic research has shown me a very different view of culture, namely one that runs on Word, copy-and-paste, Google Drive, and everything that isn't git+{markdown,latex}+{vscode,sublime,*} sort of life.

That view has me more scared than ever about the negative impact of AI hype trains.

rambling about tech, culture, and other random shit 

Every kind of word processor has pretty much moved to more and more proprietary formats, more and more online-only and subscription-based, and thus correspondingly more towards a model in which your word processor is *the* gateway via which you can view your own work.

That kind of capture puts creative work directly in the sights of AI exploitation.

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rambling about tech, culture, and other random shit 

That's not to say that I necessarily think that Word or Google Docs or Zoho or whichever trains AI on everything you write. The legal implications of that alone are staggering to contemplate.

What I do mean is that creative work is more and more in someone else's database. If they're not training on your work now, how long until a slump quarter makes that look really attractive?

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Has anyone figured out a reasonable technical solution to thread splitting in federated forum/chat systems yet?

Today's video is all about shitposting! What's the difference between a shitpost and misinformation? What do researchers have to say about shitposting? Is shitposting just for fascists, or can the Left play, too? And finally, DID JD Vance fuck a couch? skepchick.org/2024/07/jd-vance

@jonny hot new idea: in order to pass your PhD, you need to write a Simple Wikipedia entry version of your thesis and run it by an actual layperson.

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