irenes

@npub1r4h…u0jf we wish we had a recommendation, but we do tiling windows, so :/
we share your desire to not install an overarching desktop environment. you're not alone in that.

2024-04-18 18:49:32 GMT

- reply

@npub13le…6saf oh how gorgeous! yes, we'll take a look :)

2024-04-18 18:35:31 GMT

- reply

@npub13le…6saf oh very cool. we don't think we've seen generative plotter art that plays with the CMYK primaries like that before

2024-04-17 02:30:15 GMT

- reply

@npub1zdp…vqv8 and thank you for answering the many questions we had after the first one, lol

2024-04-09 00:17:18 GMT

- reply

@npub1463…00qn it's very neat

2024-04-08 18:50:18 GMT

- reply

@npub1809…nd7t ah, welp. our sympathies.

2024-04-03 23:31:38 GMT

- reply

@npub1pfe…e2dm we'll wait for the incident reports, but hmm

2024-04-01 20:31:40 GMT

- reply

given today's date we should clarify that this is not an April Fool's thing (you can see our full statement about not participating in April Fools from last night)

2024-04-01 20:29:08 GMT

hey does anyone remember who that retrocomputing youtuber was whose channel got spurious policy violations apparently related to a mass-reporting campaign after coming out as trans, a couple weeks ago?
we were wondering how that turned out and tried to find the video about it in our watch history, but it's gone, which doesn't sound good...
it was one of the more research-focused ones? where they'd dig up primary sources and stuff? we actually had no idea they were trans until that happened

2024-03-30 04:55:49 GMT

so, the github copy of the xz repo and all associated discussion history has been hidden, and possibly deleted, as a policy enforcement action
you know how we all spent this morning understanding the nuances of how the attacker went to great trouble to deploy the final trigger of the attack in a way that lets them avoid durable records of it?
next time they won't bother. github will do that part for them.

2024-03-20 19:17:44 GMT

- reply

@npub15ax…lqq5 @npub18lj…80hq more like cops would straight up kill him for leading protests, and face no consequences despite it being technically an abuse of power

2024-03-15 21:05:38 GMT

so the thing about passkeys is...
it's two different technologies. it's an abstraction layer that treats them as the same when they are really, REALLY not
one of them is the older thing, the one you should actually want, where you have a hardware token and you use that to log in to things
the other is the new thing where Apple or Google or Microsoft manage all your logins for you, so that if you are ever at odds with those companies you're locked out of your entire life at once. efficient.

2024-03-15 10:45:34 GMT

- reply

@npub1mdk…aptk hmm, did they specify the year

2024-03-12 22:20:48 GMT

- reply

@npub1r4h…u0jf @npub15zr…z62j some things we don't bother memorizing because we're only going to use them daily for like ten years or so, which isn't worth the effort
some things inexplicably stick in our head for thirty years and refuse to be displaced
go figure :D

2024-03-12 22:17:08 GMT

- reply

@npub1r4h…u0jf @npub15zr…z62j read-eval-print-loop is just a lot to type out if you're in the habit of saying it :D

2024-03-12 22:11:23 GMT

- reply

@npub1r4h…u0jf @npub15zr…z62j a read-eval-print loop. a command prompt where you type an expression or statement in the language, the interpreter evaluates or performs it, it prints out the result, and then you do it again.
sorry. a few decades ago we were into Lisp, so now we call everything that.

2024-03-12 22:00:29 GMT

- reply

@npub1r4h…u0jf @npub15zr…z62j yeah tbh we just pull up a repl for whatever language we're into this decade

2024-03-11 00:46:08 GMT

- reply

@npub18lj…80hq how do you keep coming up with all these conversation starters?
yes and no... it's so complicated. don't really know how to answer.

2024-03-07 20:40:58 GMT

- reply

@npub1zj4…fyjh oh, hey! that seems useful!

2024-03-06 06:46:01 GMT

- reply

@npub1nr8…rj65 we've been thinking heavily about this side of it. no firm conclusions yet, other than that we're fond of IPFS as a dissemination tool.

2024-03-05 23:52:54 GMT

- reply

@npub19dt…05k8 right, like, the really frustrating thing is that we like almost all of systemd's architectural decisions... and we do believe there need to be more people paying attention to overall ecosystem health stuff with Linux... but we don't like the clear hegemonic intent. BDFL is not an appropriate governance structure for something with this scope.

2024-02-27 04:49:12 GMT

- reply

@npub1pfe…e2dm @npub1zzq…nenz no, yeah, a generation earlier this was the depressing thing about science fiction literature culture :(

2024-02-27 04:13:04 GMT

- reply

@npub1pfe…e2dm @npub12tq…fcg9 no, yeah, it's the most fun part of follower count lol

2024-02-27 04:11:58 GMT

- reply

@npub1pfe…e2dm !!! what a fun thing to have done :D

2024-02-20 06:38:46 GMT

- reply

@npub1a8d…d7w3 *sigh* we really need to write something more thoughtful about this topic
but reading how you put it is quite cathartic

2024-02-15 23:18:38 GMT

it's quite frustrating to still be dealing with KOSA. we fully realize that the US Democratic party does not actually stand for anything and creating new, pervasive censorship of queer people is absolutely something the party is willing to trade for other stuff it wants. it's not any sort of surprise, it's just frustrating.

2024-02-14 19:01:21 GMT

public health officials don't WORK for the public, they work for the administration
notionally these are supposed to be similar, but, see, the problem arises because the administration is beholden to corporate interests............

2024-02-13 21:39:11 GMT

well it's about fucking time somebody with the authority to DO SOMETHING notices what's been happening
if you hadn't heard, there is apparently at least one company that's been using mobile tracking features to collect and sell data about who visits abortion clinics
https://www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/signed_near_letter_to_ftc_and_sec.pdf

2024-02-09 20:46:52 GMT

- reply

@npub1grx…uxfe oh! okay, fair enough then. good luck!

2024-02-09 18:15:18 GMT

- reply

@npub1grx…uxfe that breaker halfway down the left side is in the tripped state, you need to turn it off and on again (you can tell because it's not QUITE all the way to the right)
if that doesn't fix it, we'd be inclined to wait for the electrician because at that point you're in the domain of there being physical damage to the wiring somewhere, and you don't want to start a fire

2024-02-07 21:03:23 GMT

- reply

@npub14lm…5crk yeah we looked for a news article that summarized it well, but although we found many sources none looked particularly in-depth or technical. ah well. now you know

2024-02-07 20:52:01 GMT

- reply

@npub14lm…5crk our opinion is that it's not true, if that helps you sort through things.
there are plenty of cautionary tales out there though, it's just they all get forgotten immediately because nobody wants to change anything. there was that casino that got ransomware because of their fish tank thermostat.

2024-02-01 19:10:43 GMT

- reply

@npub198t…hasj from experience: we recommend talking about what motivates you to do it, the abstract principles and feelings, before you get into the specifics. motivations are a thing that children can relate to and be inspired by, even if they know nothing about the field you work in.

2024-01-29 23:29:37 GMT

- reply

@npub1lrv…tth9 dunno about major - keep in mind that the big ad blockers literally partner with Google - but yes, there are in fact people who do crowdsourced metadata for videos to make ad skipping work

2024-01-29 03:49:04 GMT

- reply

@npub1zdp…vqv8 we did once read a cool Donald Knuth paper (a computer scientist, not an anthropologist) which took a detailed look at algorithms found on ancient sources and compared them to how modern algorithms are written. depending on how much context exists for this tablet we definitely wouldn't discount the possibility of having a math person take a close look at it to figure out what it's doing.

2024-01-29 03:47:37 GMT

- reply

@npub1zdp…vqv8 ah! we wondered if it was going to be a Babylonian thing :)
could it have been conventional to round things off to 49 instead of to 0 for some reason?

2024-01-29 03:41:08 GMT

- reply

@npub1zdp…vqv8 not off the top of our head

2024-01-28 09:44:54 GMT

- reply

@npub18p3…03wh what really worries us is that we're also never more than a bad day away from SAYING something really embarrassing
and convincing half a dozen people it's true ><

2024-01-26 00:34:44 GMT

as context, the Boeing 757 ceased production in 2004, meaning that all existing ones have been in service for decades. mechanical problems with them are most likely the fault of whoever is supposed to be doing maintenance, which is likely the airline or one of its vendors.
there's an article going around today about a wheel falling off, which we agree is deeply disturbing. the article does not mention this context. we found our experience was improved by the knowledge so we wanted to share.

2024-01-24 23:58:21 GMT

- reply

@npub1zdp…vqv8 um, are they possibly doing time-domain processing? like building up an image by moving their heads around and noticing how their one pixel changes?

2024-01-24 23:57:23 GMT

- reply

@npub1zdp…vqv8 oh
it says 3/3
you're not going to tell us
this is a legit mystery
oh NO! we need answers!

2024-01-16 23:44:23 GMT

when you see some business person saying that their customers "need to get used to" some new predatory practice
no. that's what THE COMPANY needs us to do. we are under no obligation to get used to anything.

2024-01-06 02:57:41 GMT

- reply

@npub1zdp…vqv8 we have never heard it. our first thought would be that it's something furries aspire to.

2024-01-02 00:09:55 GMT

oh NO
we just saw a TV ad for an old person health food
appealing to our love of videogames

2023-12-29 19:34:07 GMT

- reply

@npub1mdk…aptk in our experience, the first step is picking words that say precisely what you mean. the second is talking about them.

2023-12-22 23:32:53 GMT

- reply

@npub1cu9…6829 yes it's really quite something how even modern laptops still have the boxing glove hardware

2023-12-19 03:48:00 GMT

hm we have a longstanding debugging tactic of doing a web search for the error message we're seeing, in the hope of finding either something that's been written about it, or the source code that generated it
it works less and less lately

2023-12-16 22:35:50 GMT

- reply

@npub1mdk…aptk ah! for sure

2023-12-16 22:21:14 GMT

- reply

@npub1mdk…aptk and that is an excellent insight about the fediverse being useful for bootstrapping things

2023-12-16 22:21:01 GMT

- reply

@npub1mdk…aptk we're big fans of adversarial interoperability
we don't personally care to interoperate with Twitter in particular, but we agree that the premise is a good one, of telling companies fuck you we'll interoperate if we want

2023-12-15 03:29:43 GMT

- reply

@npub1gfd…7gg6 yes lol. same.

2023-12-10 08:40:02 GMT

- reply

@npub1y0e…mm9n @npub16nf…q6as it was all the predictable result of the totally irresponsible behavior not being stopped, yes. we prefer not to imagine unchangeable tides of history, we instead try to think about what could have prevented this in case there are insights to be had about how to prevent the next similar disaster.

2023-12-10 06:10:49 GMT

- reply

@npub16nf…q6as a couple years ago we had the thought, well, pretty soon it's not going to be possible to get web scrapes that don't have LLM output in them anymore. the copies of Common Crawl that exist now (2021ish) are the best that will ever exist.
as usual with our predictions these days, we'd rather have been wrong.

2023-12-08 20:11:24 GMT

- reply

it's really unreasonable how effective that sort of thing is :/

2023-12-08 20:11:06 GMT

- reply

at the risk of stating what must be painfully obvious from outside, when upper management makes a decision and doesn't tell individual contributors and line managers the reason for it, it's often because they're afraid the workers wouldn't approve of the reason
in the face of something apparently unreasonable, workers will find our own ways to justify it as long as there's any doubt

2023-12-08 20:09:33 GMT

- reply

second, there's a very strong tendency to treat business priorities that are handed down from management as if they're laws of nature
"okay, we can't do it with an opt-in help flow because management said no to that. they didn't explain their reasoning. so what CAN we do?"
that kind of thinking.

2023-12-08 20:08:17 GMT

- reply

so, what are these perspectives that people have specifically as a result of where they work
first and foremost, most people want to believe that the thing they're doing is good for the world. whether or not it is, most people see themselves as good people

2023-12-08 20:05:38 GMT

- reply

our example is about new-feature tours, but please notice how this also applies to ethical topics

2023-12-08 20:04:58 GMT

- reply

when you're in an organization whose mission is to build software, it's extremely likely that everyone you talk to about your work is part of the same organization
therefore, any views that you have as a result of being there, are going to get reinforced through all the back-and-forth. it's going to all seem much stronger, more real and important, than it really is, because everyone you check yourself against sees it the same way

2023-12-08 20:02:49 GMT

- reply

so like the bias we want to explicate here is a very specific one, and we've been prone to it too
it's the bias that tech workers tend to have, towards assuming that a problem for our employers is a problem for our users

2023-12-08 20:01:50 GMT

- reply

of course by design, these click-through flows get in people's way when we're trying to do work, so most people are annoyed by them. even the intended audience, people who are likely to have serious confusion that reduces their overall use of the software, are unlikely to understand that the popups are trying to be helpful, because it's an interruption and it's clutter.

2023-12-08 19:57:07 GMT

- reply

the product team almost certainly isn't thinking that they're going to get in people's faces and annoy everyone into using the new thing
they're probably thinking that the public will love this feature once they understand what it is, and because there are always complaints about being confused by UI changes, the way to fix that confusion is to explain what's new

2023-12-08 19:56:00 GMT

you know that thing where, any time commercial software has a new version it's eager for you to click through a bunch of crap talking about how proud the product team is of their work and won't you please click on the new button so the metrics will show people use it and the product manager can get promoted?
we think it makes a good example of how being in a corporate bubble kinda skews how even well-intentioned people think about stuff

2023-12-07 21:37:40 GMT

- reply

@npub1mdk…aptk @npub1qmc…v6gx there's also a possible effect - we have not seen data on this, so it's speculation - where people relax their precautions after having the shot, leading to higher infection rate...........

2023-12-07 01:08:31 GMT

- reply

you can read their letter at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LY2jViybLQPsgsm7hVo75V8aHNu5DUEZXB8vwc60YZo/edit
as far as we can tell this is only linked from news articles about the strike, not from the guild's public website, which is unfortunate but you can see it reported at, for example, https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2023/12/06/washington-post-journalists-strike-newspaper-labor/71830847007/

2023-12-07 00:35:33 GMT

as usual, when there's a strike, listen to what the workers are saying with regard to whether they want a boycott or not
the Washington Post workers are on strike tomorrow, December 7th, and they ARE calling for a boycott. they would like us all to avoid interacting with ANY WaPo content, new or old, tomorrow.

2023-12-05 23:47:47 GMT

- reply

@npub1v52…qu8a holy shit!!!! gorgeous!!!!

2023-12-05 04:57:03 GMT

there's this phenomenon, and we're as guilty of it as anyone, of focusing political discussion on things that are NEW
like we had a conversation earlier about the effect of modern machine learning techniques on surveillance, but a question could quite fairly arise: how can we justify opposing this stuff without opposing the old, boring surveillance too?

2023-11-28 00:24:12 GMT

- reply

@npub18p3…03wh "let us stand, and breathe together"

2023-10-26 03:56:49 GMT

- reply

@nprofile…0vty oh SWEET
apparently he was just waiting to be asked for the code! now we feel silly

2023-09-19 03:51:59 GMT

- reply

@npub1asa…n9sr @npub1psd…9sr7 oh that sounds amazing
not, like, well thought out, but amazing

2023-09-18 19:48:31 GMT

- reply

@npub1psd…9sr7 huh
it's an interesting new wrinkle on the thing where they make a skeleton of a species that doesn't have skeletons
in that apparently that looked wrong enough with a spider that they had to also paint the bones black

2023-08-22 20:44:38 GMT

- reply

@npub1mdk…aptk yes, we're saying they'd have done it if they thought it would go well. they surely know the old PR wisdom about only having one chance to make a first impression, so our guess is that they're holding off until they expect things have cooled down

2023-08-22 20:40:36 GMT

- reply

@npub1mdk…aptk to be fair, we do personally believe - though we see no way to test it - that, to the extent that it has flopped, it has largely done so because the community came together to reject it

2023-08-15 19:16:45 GMT

- reply

@npub1ynl…873s mm. people form parasocial relationships with software tools, and forget that there's humans behind them, to an even greater degree than they do with ie. TV shows and video games.
like, everyone forms their own relationship with the tool, and most people forget that they aren't the only one who has such a relationship.

2023-08-14 19:39:15 GMT

- reply

@npub1ezx…74mr @npub1qqz…t6ge for the record, we sympathize. we are generally quite good at sorting through memory stuff of this nature, but it is something we had to learn. it was not easy to learn.

2023-08-09 20:55:29 GMT

- reply

@npub1yl2…clyv @npub15q0…y232 @npub1rx7…acx3 oh that's so cool!

2023-08-08 01:29:13 GMT

- reply

@npub1fsp…pger @npub1hyk…3p33 as an ex-Google privacy person, we endorse this description of the company's business practices. it's fucking bullshit and they absolutely should not be playing every role in the ecosystem like they are.

2023-07-15 19:57:09 GMT

Happy Plural Pride Day!!!!!!!
❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

2023-07-10 21:21:07 GMT

hmm
so on Twitter, when there is breaking news about information security issues we used to be able to find the original claim, to investigate it, pretty easily by doing a text search
here on the fediverse there is intentionally no text search, and that's a good thing and we like that, but this news is very time sensitive and we need to investigate asap when things come out?
we guess the best approach is to ask our followers if they've seen it, and to link if so?