Nostr notes by JP

you can't deny how useful they are!! ...

2026-06-07T14:29:05Z

you can't deny how useful they are!!

"So I told Mozilla it sounds like you're just feeding ...

2026-04-16T14:34:53Z

"So I told Mozilla it sounds like you're just feeding your users to the for-profit proprietary LLM companies and then his mascot Kit started crying"

David Graeber (RIP) lived a few decades longer in that timeline ...

2026-01-23T23:45:28Z

In reply to nevent1q…yzgv
_________________________

David Graeber (RIP) lived a few decades longer in that timeline and did a whole book about it

alternate history where Oops! All Berries started outselling ...

2026-01-23T23:40:54Z

alternate history where Oops! All Berries started outselling regular Captain Crunch during a particular period in 2006 that all >=21st century economic historians now refer as The Inflection Point

if you haven't been paying attention to contemporary ...

2026-01-17T18:49:45Z

if you haven't been paying attention to contemporary "anti communism" rhetoric, it's time to start. what kinds of people are saying this? what are their goals? who are they targeting with this language and the violence it threatens? to whom are they spreading this ideology and rhetoric; who all is susceptible to it?

some programmers are among of the most propagandized and ...

2026-01-12T16:18:19Z

some programmers are among of the most propagandized and subservient people on the planet right now.

we're living through a mass psychological engineering ...

2026-01-11T23:37:42Z

In reply to nevent1q…a5j7
_________________________

we're living through a mass psychological engineering campaign and the results have been, and will continue to be, horrifying https://azhdarchid.com/are-llms-useful

it's great to finally see a major outlet cover this, i felt ...

2026-01-07T05:22:19Z

In reply to nevent1q…tucq
_________________________

it's great to finally see a major outlet cover this, i felt crazy seeing the reality on the street every day in contrast to the AV industry's bullshit and outright lies.
we hear about Waymo so much bc they're the company deepest into "good PR mode", taking no chances, never going fast. they're banking goodwill & indoctrination for when they reach too-big-to-fail status and can start killing people. always push back on the "safer than humans" bullshit. it's a fabrication.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-01-06/are-autonomous-vehicles-safer-than-human-drivers-we-don-t-know-yet

When a marginalized person online expresses weariness with a ...

2026-01-04T18:20:46Z

When a marginalized person online expresses weariness with a particular bad behavior that's frequently directed at them, and you decide to reply to them, your A#1 priority is to not make their day worse. If you're not confident you can do that, you simply shouldn't reply. "Doing the bad behavior but 'jokingly'" being the most common but far from the only pattern here.
If you insist on doing so, you're gonna get blocked a lot! Please go back to netiquette kindergarten.

Nostr event nevent1qqsqdxs6kaq7le4h9xqd3cz0s982ryyymc6jfvu8dgqrv58029z6pcczypsaa5axvqu3fy29ghe6wzwml20hrke8sp22px935lxm2agln6k2xcy967q

2026-01-03T19:07:11Z

In reply to nevent1q…gm4g
_________________________

woody guthrie's 1943 new year resolutions are as relevant as ...

2025-12-28T17:23:31Z

woody guthrie's 1943 new year resolutions are as relevant as ever

imagine The Big One happens in SF, and every waymo on the street ...

2025-12-22T04:31:34Z

In reply to nevent1q…5396
_________________________

imagine The Big One happens in SF, and every waymo on the street instantly becomes a giant roadblock for emergency workers trying to put out fires and rescue and save the lives of seriously injured people all over the city. people will die - because these products aren't "safer than humans"; they can't do basic things even bottom-quartile human drivers can.
waymo corporate is betting they can PR their way past all that. our duty as citizens and humans is to make sure they can't.

and thus the interests of the pedophile rapist president, the ...

2025-12-18T05:24:56Z

and thus the interests of the pedophile rapist president, the warhawks, the neoliberals, the fossil fuel executives, the "defense" contractors, the anticommunists, the national security moms, the energy-hungry AI investors, the manifest destineers, the companies bent on preserving american car dependence, the "let's build drones and kill stuff with them" enthusiasts - all intersected, like a christmas miracle, to rain death on the people of Venezuela, in the name of the free market.

Nostr event nevent1qqs2k6w2uw3wxr7eeh09fp0msa290a380p0e4uheldl3z6qhu645wpczypsaa5axvqu3fy29ghe6wzwml20hrke8sp22px935lxm2agln6k2x64yu50

2025-12-17T01:18:35Z

In reply to nevent1q…lgq4
_________________________

very cool and positive interactions this would have with our ...

2025-12-06T18:16:24Z

In reply to nevent1q…hcla
_________________________

very cool and positive interactions this would have with our political system for sure!

Nostr event nevent1qqsfasmwd5qh2ut2sgmx2lx3m98kxktwh9lnmxxddrcgju2rznhhxuczypsaa5axvqu3fy29ghe6wzwml20hrke8sp22px935lxm2agln6k2x3ztx4n

2025-11-29T04:05:44Z

https://www.theverge.com/news/831364/dell-windows-11-upgrade-numbers-earnings-call-q3-2025 no matter how badly you fuck up at your job you'll never fuck up so badly that half a billion people would choose to stick with the older, now-unsupported version of your product than take the free upgrade to the new version.
unless your job is being a product strategist, project manager, marketer, etc on Windows i guess.

same energy ...

2025-11-20T07:09:36Z

In reply to nevent1q…eege
_________________________

same energy

Nostr event nevent1qqsgjunwuqwqm44qtk08dfamf2ynajj9fu5vcqd7hcdh03qx65mcz2qzypsaa5axvqu3fy29ghe6wzwml20hrke8sp22px935lxm2agln6k2x664wua

2025-11-16T08:02:26Z

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-work-for-an-evil-company-but-outside-work-im-actually-a-really-good-person this is good satire and all but fedi actually has people who are in this position. general categories:
- you actively build things that murder or incarcerate people. quit now, or sabotage/whistleblow and accept the consequences.
- you do something not murder-related at a murdering/murder-enabling company. unionize and demand they stop murdering. if after sustained effort that fails, quit.
- you empty trash cans at such a company. your culpability is near-zero.

I don't think a SteamOS landslide is inevitable or even ...

2025-11-13T17:29:30Z

I don't think a SteamOS landslide is inevitable or even likely but I definitely think MS doesn't realize how much they're playing with fire making Win11, their flagship and historic unbreakable monopoly, the "turning a big dial taht says 'user hostility' on it and constantly looking back at shareholders for approval like a contestant on the price is right" OS.

guy really has been talking like his brains are dribbling out of ...

2025-11-10T22:54:45Z

In reply to nevent1q…9zuc
_________________________

guy really has been talking like his brains are dribbling out of his ears for 10+ years now

https://bolha.one/@cadusilva/115481273902006842 uhh, please be ...

2025-11-03T04:29:00Z

https://bolha.one/@cadusilva/115481273902006842 uhh, please be careful, if you DM someone a quote-postable post link mastodon 4.5 will notify the person whose post it is. seems like a potential major user safety risk.

and unfortunately if eg RMS had had more explicitly leftist anti ...

2025-10-26T16:47:08Z

In reply to nevent1q…ahwh
_________________________

and unfortunately if eg RMS had had more explicitly leftist anti capitalist goals the movement would not have played out as it did. it would not have been so broadly useful to capital. it antagonized a small number of monopolists and everyone in the movement missile-locked on that. the various statements from the past decade that open source "won" are in fact moments of total defeat.

yeah i think that post is profoundly wrong and politically ...

2025-10-26T16:40:51Z

In reply to nevent1q…5af2
_________________________

yeah i think that post is profoundly wrong and politically ignorant/naive in the same way the original founders of the free software movement were, and that moral-political blind spot is why we're now living in a world where every cluster bomb and surveillance system and wealth concentration system runs on "open" code.

Lots of decent "how to install Linux on a computer that ...

2025-10-14T22:43:45Z

Lots of decent "how to install Linux on a computer that Windows has given up on" tutorials but if you're a lifelong Windows user (ie not already a Linux user), a step that's really important to not skip is to try out a few different DEs and distros in a live USB environment to figure out which ones you most like the look and feel of, and which ones work well on your hardware (esp if you're on a laptop) - eg if your wifi or display have issues out of the box. Often fixable, but important to know.

hate that i know what all that means

2025-10-10T16:19:19Z

In reply to nevent1q…z8j7
_________________________

hate that i know what all that means

Greta Thunberg could have, by now, carved out a very comfortable ...

2025-10-07T19:14:10Z

Greta Thunberg could have, by now, carved out a very comfortable life for herself as a liberal grifter-celebrity offering platitudes about personal responsibility at Davos. Instead she connected the dots between ecocide, capital, and empire, aiming squarely at the heart of the beast. And now fresh out of captivity she downplays her own suffering to recenter the urgency of aid to the Palestinian people. No wonder she's hated by the fascist+lib coalition that rules this world.

personally i'm looking forward to proudly reciting an oath of ...

2025-10-01T19:12:22Z

In reply to nevent1q…3tln
_________________________

personally i'm looking forward to proudly reciting an oath of citizenship to MegaChile

even the most statistically average human being on the planet is ...

2025-09-30T16:45:59Z

even the most statistically average human being on the planet is profoundly capable in so many ways and anyone telling you otherwise is acting to make the world worse.

"every human-to-human interaction is customer service" is ...

2025-09-20T01:34:50Z

"every human-to-human interaction is customer service" is incredibly socially corrosive and we must destroy the forces dragging us towards that

thank you for saying this. what i've seen in my years of ...

2025-09-18T16:52:55Z

In reply to nevent1q…gnjk
_________________________

thank you for saying this. what i've seen in my years of being a broken record about it is that people either genuinely care about it or consider it such a non-issue that they have an almost philosophical position against it, the whole "everything is ephemeral, this is all a sand painting", etc - which is fine so long as they don't sandbag the effort to allow people to *not* just be constantly abandoning everything they've said.

in the vein of "it's easier for [some] to imagine the end ...

2025-09-13T22:51:32Z

In reply to nevent1q…dq4k
_________________________

in the vein of "it's easier for [some] to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism", SV people can't imagine a world where their luck has run out, where they are despised and shunned and blamed for much of what sucks in the world. in their minds they are making a final massive grab for power that cannot fail. i think that's what the apocalyptic "AGI" talk etc is really about.

i think the mass-psychology of Silicon Valley may be in a far ...

2025-09-13T22:48:33Z

In reply to nevent1q…wj9e
_________________________

i think the mass-psychology of Silicon Valley may be in a far more precarious place right now than many realize. Trump hasn't offered them a clear path to total power as they were hoping, AI is an existential bet that feels increasingly like the wheels are falling off of, and they've burned through so much of their credibility with the rest of society. there's a sense that nobody knows what lies past the present moment.

Pretty disappointed that Mastodon went with "quoter's ...

2025-09-12T15:57:28Z

Pretty disappointed that Mastodon went with "quoter's text on top" for QTs rather than text on bottom. I think there's a good chance it will lead to a steady rise in dunk culture on Mastodon that will make the atmosphere here permanently nastier and more clout-farmy. I would love to know what the rationale there was, besides "that's the way it works on [other deeply toxic platforms that mastodon is attempting to position itself as a better alternative to]".

A lot of people who are on TV are uniting in fear and anger ...

2025-09-11T16:15:28Z

A lot of people who are on TV are uniting in fear and anger because one of their own, a guy who was on TV, got shot. We have been filling the streets to get these people to acknowledge the basic humanity and rights of people who are not on TV. To them, being on TV makes your life worth more. They want you to accept this premise. You must not.

"auto hide taskbar" has always felt really bad to me, ...

2025-09-11T01:03:58Z

"auto hide taskbar" has always felt really bad to me, like a non life threatening version of those retracting car door handles

[quickly solves the easiest 75% of an automation problem, ...

2025-09-02T15:05:43Z

[quickly solves the easiest 75% of an automation problem, realizes that the remaining distance to baseline human performance is a vast uncrossable chasm] oh. hmmm... AGI. i think we're gonna need AGI for this part. guys can you make AGI? i'm blocked on not having AGI. my company's product... i only get the billion dollars if you guys make AGI.
5-10 years? [inhales through teeth] that's not gonna work for me. can you guys make AGI sooner than that? ideally Q2 next year for, haha, contract reasons

"using an app": sounds passive, boring, vaguely like a ...

2025-08-27T20:43:28Z

"using an app": sounds passive, boring, vaguely like a bodily function
"visiting a website": you are an explorer in the infinite realms of human thought, there's no possible way to be uncool when visiting a website, honest

Don't be Fediverse HOA about people promoting their own work ...

2025-08-19T21:29:12Z

Don't be Fediverse HOA about people promoting their own work on here. Don't make people who are just trying to make a bit of money from their art, or get the word out about a talk they gave or a project they just released, etc feel unwelcome. Do the opposite, even.
If a person is actually an unscrupulous grifter then trust that they are due other social consequences that have little to do with something plenty of other people manage in a reasonable sociable way.

next Mastodon update will add a "reason for deletion" ...

2025-08-19T16:25:52Z

next Mastodon update will add a "reason for deletion" data field that people accessing a deleted post will be shown. choices include "I am ashamed I said this", "Post got too popular", "I thought of a better version of this joke", "I got yelled at", "I am just one of those people who deletes things", "Erased from history by the World Government", "NaN"

for non game programmers unfamiliar with what our corner of the ...

2025-08-10T15:17:35Z

In reply to nevent1q…u8u0
_________________________

for non game programmers unfamiliar with what our corner of the world is like: a majority of game dev projects have a large pile of binary files - that eg artists, designers, sound designers etc add to and change incrementally where branches and merging are usually of little value - alongside the actual code where conventional dvcs is more or less the ideal paradigm.
keeping GBs of art assets etc in the same git repo as your game code sucks real bad.

if you reply "git lfs" i can't promise someone ...

2025-08-10T15:12:26Z

In reply to nevent1q…emxf
_________________________

if you reply "git lfs" i can't promise someone won't piledrive you in the replies

most game devs i know use perforce for that which while not bad, ...

2025-08-10T15:11:34Z

In reply to nevent1q…9cdz
_________________________

most game devs i know use perforce for that which while not bad, seems like shouldn't be the only game in town.

wonder if "non-distributed version control for repositories ...

2025-08-10T15:09:08Z

wonder if "non-distributed version control for repositories of large binary files with space-efficient diffs" is something programmer(s) with the skillset to pull that off could be persuaded is worth their time

his current position of power within the industry aside, ...

2025-08-09T19:35:25Z

his current position of power within the industry aside, something about this coming from the creator of ZZT feels uniquely awful.

boo, default mastodon web ui doesn't show the alt text i ...

2025-08-02T15:51:35Z

In reply to nevent1q…886d
_________________________

boo, default mastodon web ui doesn't show the alt text i wrote for this.

Nostr event nevent1qqsv4xsygxqnaclflfcc0xys5erhz54d6ql4rlxvzp9ueemp49hyphgzypsaa5axvqu3fy29ghe6wzwml20hrke8sp22px935lxm2agln6k2x2accay

2025-08-02T15:41:54Z

https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/959/926/535/511/452/original/f26873d8c493cd88.mp3

shout out to the guy about a year ago who replied to me "boy ...

2025-07-29T15:45:05Z

shout out to the guy about a year ago who replied to me "boy are YOU going to feel dumb in a few years when 'knowledge graphs have solved the hallucination problem' in LLMs" and i asked him to point me to some research or working examples of that. he replied "it's not my job to educate you" and that was that. i bookmarked the exchange to check back on in a few years but a month or two later he deleted his account.

note how even the "AI" in Pac-Man is being elevated and ...

2025-07-29T05:25:26Z

In reply to nevent1q…tmmf
_________________________

note how even the "AI" in Pac-Man is being elevated and mystified here in a way that nobody in the industry really did at the time; the techniques it used were impressive and of interest but there was no mystification, because ultimately it was a very understandable set of techniques. the complexity of the current bullshit is meant to muddle, mislead and impress the gullible.

"most experts acknowledge", yet only one of the three big ...

2025-07-29T05:21:11Z

In reply to nevent1q…vkq7
_________________________

"most experts acknowledge", yet only one of the three big companies you reached out to was even marginally in accord with this, the one pouring billions into the dirt on it, who is currently in last place in the console space. hmm

https://archive.is/xjRGH a fraud is being perpetrated in this ...

2025-07-29T05:14:29Z

https://archive.is/xjRGH a fraud is being perpetrated in this industry.
it's important to say that plainly and not forget it, because the people perpetrating it currently have the credulous ear of the NYT and others.

"[the Biden admin's USAID] strongly recommended that the ...

2025-07-27T15:22:43Z

In reply to nevent1q…08jm
_________________________

"[the Biden admin's USAID] strongly recommended that the organization responsible for the report change the title to say “risk” of a famine instead ... when the report published without changes to the title, the Biden administration ordered the famine warning be deleted from FEWS NET’s website — the first such retraction in the organization’s 40-year relationship with the U.S. government." https://archive.is/TiokA
the denial of what's happening now has been an ongoing, fully bipartisan effort.

it's beyond sickening to see so many establishment libs ...

2025-07-27T14:45:34Z

In reply to nevent1q…pxgh
_________________________

it's beyond sickening to see so many establishment libs suddenly wake up to the horror that's been going unabated since October 2023, hundreds of thousands of innocent Palestinians murdered by the IDF armed by the US, and justify that contortion as "well before the left was crying wolf but now it's real". the stain of their prior support for this genocide will never wash off.

Nostr event nevent1qqspmj99dlxpmlmk2nc0zf5kvd72ax8q09v7wzusze358zqxe8nz7fszypsaa5axvqu3fy29ghe6wzwml20hrke8sp22px935lxm2agln6k2xhqz9el

2025-07-25T19:13:33Z

In reply to nevent1q…252p
_________________________

https://www.theverge.com/news/713125/google-url-shortener-links-shutdown-deadline the idea that you would break a link on a webpage because it wasn't getting any traffic is so anathema to the bedrock idea of the web as a conduit of information rather than... a conduit of capital, apparently - ad companies have taken human history as a hostage.

line graph covering 2001 to the present where the Y axis is ...

2025-07-25T17:42:42Z

line graph covering 2001 to the present where the Y axis is "how much is Google like a library"

when reactionaries talk about the network state, the patchwork, ...

2025-07-19T15:29:01Z

when reactionaries talk about the network state, the patchwork, freedom cities, etc they're talking about rich-guy-accountability-free zones and what that means in practice is things like epstein's island, dark places where the light of human rights and labor power and democracy does not reach. that is their ideal society. they'd be fine with a world divided into epsteins and epstein victims.

"imagine if half of what i, your teacher, told you was flat ...

2025-07-17T22:44:38Z

In reply to nevent1q…sexe
_________________________

"imagine if half of what i, your teacher, told you was flat out wrong and would set you on a miserable path to finding out exactly how it is, but everything i said was with utter oblivious confidence. and if you asked me for clarification or came to me with your findings, i'd have the same equal chance of being wrong. and imagine if my overall competence was approximately a pure statistical average. would you be okay with that? would your future employers be okay with that?"

israel is a rogue state committing indiscriminate murder of ...

2025-07-17T17:16:26Z

israel is a rogue state committing indiscriminate murder of innocents every day, only possible via the full support of american empire

extremely uncool how this office win11 workstation's ...

2025-07-11T00:30:05Z

extremely uncool how this office win11 workstation's "update and shut down" behavior isn't actually update and shut down, but rather "update and then reboot and just sit on the login screen, burning power all weekend if you did it on a friday". infuriating how flagrantly this OS ignores / violates user consent. will never willingly put this on a machine i own.

Tech people must resolve to treat Palantir employees in their ...

2025-06-09T20:57:28Z

Tech people must resolve to treat Palantir employees in their spaces - conferences, meetups, hackathons, etc - identically to how they would treat the masked gun-brandishing irregular-uniformed gestapo out there right now arresting every latina mother and child they feel like.
Palantir are the computer job counterparts of those thugs and one wouldn't exist without the other, and they should experience 100% identical social consequences.

digging around in my 2K Marin-era (2008-ish) archives and came ...

2025-06-09T06:46:52Z

digging around in my 2K Marin-era (2008-ish) archives and came across this outstanding error message, props to whatever IT(?) person decided to phrase a simple seat license conflict as "Human Combat Required":

when the social-economic maelstrom that is the current LLM hype ...

2025-06-02T15:17:16Z

when the social-economic maelstrom that is the current LLM hype wave fizzles or collapses there's going to be so much "how could so many smart people be so wrong?" and it's imperative you do not accept their framing of themselves as "smart people" - they are, in judgment and values and intellect, deeply compromised from living inside a machine that harms humanity for profit.

if your "beautiful, elegant, futuristic" huge ring-shaped ...

2025-05-19T05:54:10Z

if your "beautiful, elegant, futuristic" huge ring-shaped HQ requires a truly colossal fuck-ugly parking garage that dwarfs it, it's not actually a very beautiful elegant futuristic HQ now is it

incapacitating despair at how many people wake up every day to do ...

2025-05-16T13:56:49Z

incapacitating despair at how many people wake up every day to do lucrative jobs that make the world unambiguously worse

somewhere a guy is waking up, putting on the title theme from ...

2025-05-13T21:44:41Z

somewhere a guy is waking up, putting on the title theme from "Rocky", logging on to his infosec dot exchange fedi account and posting stuff like "a good chunk of the far left are pro-trump"

think about the army of people all around this deeply mediocre ...

2025-05-06T16:05:02Z

think about the army of people all around this deeply mediocre man who had to work night and day to make him seem impressive. think about what all those people could accomplish instead, individually and collectively, in a society that enabled them to self-actualize instead of having to earn a living as a brick in some pathetic asshole's pyramid.
that society is possible, and there are small things each of us can do every day to help bring it about.

even if you think it's fine to use LLMs for something like ...

2025-05-01T15:14:11Z

even if you think it's fine to use LLMs for something like coding it's critical you understand how widely the tech is being deployed in human-to-human cases where it's egregiously unfit for purpose, frequently in ways that are outright insulting and disrespectful.
if you find the backlash scary, regressive, or excessive you have not made sufficient effort to understand peoples' very real and legitimate anger, and that is a moral failure on your part.
https://pivot-to-ai.com/2025/05/01/seattle-worldcon-science-fiction-convention-vets-panelists-with-chatgpt/

the early stages of a programming education are to be celebrated ...

2025-04-25T21:14:55Z

In reply to nevent1q…ya68
_________________________

the early stages of a programming education are to be celebrated and valued, they are important moments of discovery and consciousness-building that reverberate over decades, even if their actual products are rudimentary. vibe coding sucks insofar as it treats this entire period - the very process of learning how to think - as unnecessary/undesirable, an annoyance to skip past, and by extension that the details and deep intentions of a codebase don't matter, are interchangeable.

i've never used "do not disturb" and realizing that ...

2025-04-22T20:39:32Z

In reply to nevent1q…hh7h
_________________________

i've never used "do not disturb" and realizing that once again i've subconsciously routed around a UI deficiency: my phone is set to vibrate 24/7, and there are no situations where i can't tolerate it vibrating. (ie if there's a situation where the decibel difference between a "ring" and a vibrate would mean me missing a call, i keep my phone close enough to me i can hear it vibrate. because i hate basically all phone ringing sounds and behaviors. for smartphones, vibrate *is* ring, to me.)

Nostr event nevent1qqs947cg5jqugq6hssudzy6s3xyttfz4wxktvkldmqvcq3tfd6tkmpgzypsaa5axvqu3fy29ghe6wzwml20hrke8sp22px935lxm2agln6k2xaq9jtv

2025-04-18T15:17:18Z

https://gameboat.org/2025/04/17/another-mildly-silly-article-about-ai-disinformation-but-at-least-this-one-gives-you-something-to-think-about "what the AI industry has done for us is create a person-shaped information actor who has read anything that can be read but has never read anything other than information available on the internet, actively holds itself out as an authority on everything, and will not stop talking everyone’s ear off about literally anything at literally any time."

"bitcoin is the ultimate freedom technology", which is ...

2025-04-13T15:13:17Z

"bitcoin is the ultimate freedom technology", which is why the most fervently pro bitcoin head of state is currently operating a zero-human-rights penal colony for illegally + unconstitutionally deported citizens of another country whose depraved corrupt empire he hopes to curry favor with, so that he can sink yet more of his nation's treasury into it and further enrich himself.

when a country creates a gestapo and multiple administrations let ...

2025-04-09T17:58:38Z

when a country creates a gestapo and multiple administrations let it continue existing (because they insist there is some actual legitimate, just use for it) it is inevitably going to start saying this kind of very overt nazi shit

the primary function of state violence is to protect capital ...

2025-04-02T15:15:12Z

the primary function of state violence is to protect capital

still one of the best ever illustrations of the dangers of using ...

2025-03-21T19:11:59Z

still one of the best ever illustrations of the dangers of using a computer program to turn less data into more data

cost-externalizing is one of the core verbs of capitalism, and ...

2025-03-19T06:20:23Z

cost-externalizing is one of the core verbs of capitalism, and the deepest truest reason that LLMs have excited capitalists so much is that they are, despite being garbage in so many other respects, extremely effective at externalizing costs. the dream, by the people who already own everything, of never having to pay for anything ever again. https://drewdevault.com/2025/03/17/2025-03-17-Stop-externalizing-your-costs-on-me.html

exposing yourself to traumatizing atrocity imagery doesn't ...

2025-03-18T12:53:34Z

exposing yourself to traumatizing atrocity imagery doesn't "make you more empathetic". it is not some duty you must do in penance for your relative comfort and anyone who claims that is trying to manipulate you. the biggest proponents of "bearing witness to suffering" are comfortable wealthy people who don't want the world to change. it's condescending and cynical to say that people have to see traumatizing images to develop empathy and take action.

New bot! [@vintage_lego](https://mastodon.social/@vintage_lego ) ...

2025-03-16T17:39:18Z

New bot! [@vintage_lego](https://mastodon.social/@vintage_lego ) posts a random page of LEGO assembly instructions, once a day at 10:30am PST, from an archive of over 1500 sets spanning 1958-2010. Follow if you were ages 4-99 any time during that period. 😀

If we really were living in the world that a very large number of ...

2025-03-13T19:55:25Z

If we really were living in the world that a very large number of tech people believe we are, companies wouldn't be having to sneak these features into tools we rely on under our noses, like hiding a pill in cat food. Enabling them would spread naturally and virally, like a videogame cheat code - something people seek out.
We are not living in that world.
And it doesn't matter how much tech execs have set our economy teetering on that delusion, the truth will assert itself eventually.

Claudia Sheinbaum has an 85% approval rating right now. i simply ...

2025-03-06T15:39:43Z

Claudia Sheinbaum has an 85% approval rating right now. i simply do not buy any argument that misogyny was the primary factor in Harris losing. anyone advancing that is either a dead ender or a wrecker.

i've never seen a single commit diff representing more ...

2025-02-28T15:01:41Z

i've never seen a single commit diff representing more incalculable brand damage than this. entirely self-inflicted, 25+ years of goodwill like it's a gold ring at a pawn shop. even in their wildest dreams of avarice - as if being one of millions of scummy data middlemen were a remotely lucrative enterprise in 2025 - this trade will never be worth it.
shame on everyone who made and executed this decision.

Nostr event nevent1qqsgygpgeh8a7dkx846wu6nqlddqlew75a3sg4qsz7qss9vkh6p7kvszypsaa5axvqu3fy29ghe6wzwml20hrke8sp22px935lxm2agln6k2xfdljzd

2025-02-22T17:31:36Z

one thing i wish every leader understood is how weak and ...

2025-02-14T19:19:40Z

one thing i wish every leader understood is how weak and incompetent and unworthy of respect it makes them look when they come into a situation with no context and start making snap judgements and ignoring advice from experienced workers and generally wrecking shit. you may claim you're being decisive or demonstrating your power or whatever but you're just a destroyer and everyone beneath you sees that plainly and despises you for it.

it's encouraging to see this particular form of ...

2025-02-14T16:15:36Z

In reply to nevent1q…pvqj
_________________________

it's encouraging to see this particular form of consideration, thank you:

when you look at the "our sponsors" page of an open ...

2025-01-26T17:35:38Z

when you look at the "our sponsors" page of an open source project and it's this

i think "it (the current thing you are plugging) does not do ...

2025-01-23T08:29:40Z

In reply to nevent1q…3jrl
_________________________

i think "it (the current thing you are plugging) does not do what you just claimed it does" is important to say, but i see it as but one table leg of the larger, more important political/ideological arguments around labor and capital (which is obviously what this is really all about). whereas ceding "it actually works" gives them unearned tactical rhetorical advantages - because they unfortunately control the media narrative. https://web.archive.org/web/20250107105052/https://cohost.org/vectorpoem/post/5421000-please-avoid-getting

LB: at this point VC has been such an enormous net negative for ...

2025-01-21T16:41:33Z

LB: at this point VC has been such an enormous net negative for humanity it's not "well, sure it's harmful now but we wouldn't have gotten [beneficial thing] without it" it's "this system should never have been built".

in my opinion it is presumptuous and narrow-minded and vaguely ...

2025-01-05T19:34:07Z

In reply to nevent1q…89am
_________________________

in my opinion it is presumptuous and narrow-minded and vaguely nihilistic to say that it's fine if everything written on the fediverse gets erased forever. we don't know what use what we say here will be to future humans, or even our future selves. given how deliberately destructively a huge % of twitter has been erased, directly and indirectly by its owner, it's clear that nothing inside a corporate walled garden should be expected to survive. it's up to us.

i think maybe a lot of people out there believe that something ...

2025-01-05T19:29:16Z

i think maybe a lot of people out there believe that something has to be Important to be worth saving. but the only reason we know much of anything about history and culture is that so many decidedly unimportant things managed to stick around, or people actively decided to save them despite there being no obvious benefit.
i think humanity loses something absolutely essential, the world becomes so much bleaker and our spirits poorer, if we don't do this.

"ad companies know you better than you know yourself" - ...

2025-01-04T07:49:07Z

"ad companies know you better than you know yourself" - stop. respect yourself and humanity enough to not say things like this. to these companies you are nothing but a pile of statistical correlations and random scraps they've fished out of your trash cans; they don't "know you" any better than LLMs "know" anything. charlie brown did not in fact have hoes.

https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/26464 it could use a ...

2024-12-26T23:59:56Z

https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/26464 it could use a good long think through the user safety implications, but i support this feature request for the ability to submit alt text suggestions. it's a more constructive and i suspect more socially effective solution to getting alt text on more images than scolding people.

chalk another one up for "deleting random shit that is in the ...

2024-12-23T17:50:43Z

chalk another one up for "deleting random shit that is in the public interest because you feel like it"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmJI6qIqURA @npub1xzw…l6gs has ...

2024-12-21T21:07:36Z

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmJI6qIqURA Angela Collier (npub1xzw…l6gs) has really locked onto something important about how the performance of intelligence is integral to the social reproduction of "meritocracy" in tech capitalism - guys who have no business saying anything about physics being treated as these important luminaries who *could have* done a Smart Thing. And I agree that the only response is rejection, mockery, and plainly saying what this is really about.

i will never "buckle up" to read your thread. my life is ...

2024-12-16T14:49:42Z

i will never "buckle up" to read your thread. my life is in your hands. i will fly through your windshield and land 25 feet away, a bloody heap on the road

Doom is now 31 years old, and not a single member of its original ...

2024-12-11T01:36:15Z

Doom is now 31 years old, and not a single member of its original team remains at id Software. In a better world, it would be in the public domain.
As it is, the port released last August added a slapdash minimally-moderated mod upload feature that is an actively disrespectful and irresponsible presentation of its decades of community work - unequaled in game history - mislabeling every upload as "by" the rando who uploaded it.
Doom deserves better, and it will survive its current ownership.

here's mister Hope himself, explaining that we couldn't ...

2024-12-06T08:35:31Z

In reply to nevent1q…9qlv
_________________________

here's mister Hope himself, explaining that we couldn't have single payer healthcare because there are people employed by the machine that drinks blood and grinds the bones of millions in agony, forcing us to pay more than any other country in the world for some of the worst outcomes of any developed nation - what about those jobs, he protests, that make the world so clearly worse? this was 2006, and last month we saw where the road of despair he helped pave finally leads.

"witchspace" is just 10-100x cooler than ...

2024-12-06T03:42:59Z

"witchspace" is just 10-100x cooler than "hyperspace", i think we can all agree on that

Nostr event nevent1qqspljhrt98mej5ah4pp3qdycva4guxcqst4jrqmm7xen0z7ch9z30gzypsaa5axvqu3fy29ghe6wzwml20hrke8sp22px935lxm2agln6k2xl0dlqn

2024-12-05T19:15:34Z

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/medical-bills-trauma/ there is an unbelievably immense reservoir of anger, trauma, and despair that the US for-profit healthcare system created and bears full moral responsibility for. the people running it still don't understand that, and they have no idea what it will be like once the dam breaks.

this morning someone assassinated the CEO of United Healthcare ...

2024-12-04T20:54:08Z

this morning someone assassinated the CEO of United Healthcare and rode away on a bicycle.
i've long wondered what the longer term outcome of this kind of left wing political violence would be. if another killing like this happens, do CEOs retreat (further) into private security with large squads of bodyguards around them at all times? does any political change result, as happened after Shinzo Abe's assassination? how effectively can the mainstream media bury it?

Brian Eno with some absolutely beautiful thoughts on human ...

2024-12-04T19:25:07Z

Brian Eno with some absolutely beautiful thoughts on human creativity and AI: https://www.bostonreview.net/forum_response/ais-walking-dog/

14 years ago my marriage ended suddenly, and it was a traumatic ...

2024-11-30T20:59:45Z

In reply to nevent1q…7nhm
_________________________

14 years ago my marriage ended suddenly, and it was a traumatic blow to my self concept and overall mental health. i felt like my life was falling apart. i made it through only because i had friends, family, and a steady job. if i hadn't had even one of those, there's no telling how far down i might have spiralled. from that point on i understood how close i am, most of us are, to being unhoused and without support. that is a message we must carry to the rest of society all around us.

i think it would be a useful long term social project to make ...

2024-11-30T20:55:02Z

In reply to nevent1q…glm7
_________________________

i think it would be a useful long term social project to make "homeless people deserve to be homeless because they made Bad Choices" as socially unacceptable and hateful and backward a view as a racist or sexist one. i think that could be a cornerstone for building broader political consciousness.