@acdha@code4lib.social avatar

acdha

@acdha@code4lib.social

Software developer at a big library

(Note: if you followed @acdha this account is more related to my work interests and https://thepit.social/@acdha is more personal)

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

molly0xfff, to random
@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io avatar

so infuriating. open source maintainers have a hard enough time without random people shitting up their repos trying to score crypto tokens.

https://hachyderm.io/@web3isgreat@indieweb.social/112003997836479406

acdha,
@acdha@code4lib.social avatar

@ellie @molly0xfff I feel especially bad for the current maintainers because he hasn’t really worked on Homebrew in ages but he’s definitely giving the people who do a second job of dealing with misdirected blowback. This is reminding me of how cryptocurrency also cost the open source world public CI servers.

waldoj, to random
@waldoj@mastodon.social avatar

I'm trying to pay my Virginia income taxes online, and they have disabled paste in any field of consequence. Paste in a password? Nope. Your bank's routing number? You're gonna have to hand-key that. Your bank account number? You better believe you're typing that in.

If you wanted to force people to create crappy passwords and cause them to accidentally siphon money out of strangers' bank accounts, this is how you'd do it. And somebody went to extra effort to make it be like this!

acdha,
@acdha@code4lib.social avatar

@waldoj I’d actually report that. You can’t be the only one and there are other scenarios (restricted mobility, voice dictation in non-private spaces, etc.) where that’d be a concern, too.

acdha, to random
@acdha@code4lib.social avatar

A sad open source plea: “I am dying and unable to continue work on any projects here. I am seeking folks to take them over.”
https://github.com/alt-text-org/in-need-of-adoption

ben, to random
@ben@werd.social avatar

The lessons we're learning from XZ Utils aren't just applicable to open source projects. They're a warning to every team that builds software. https://werd.io/2024/backdoors-are-an-everyone-problem

acdha,
@acdha@code4lib.social avatar

@ben @bentomn the other scenario CIOs should be asking: if one of my employees had some kind of problem, would our response prevent or create a blackmail opportunity? Especially at the level of low-respect/pay jobs, similar to how telcos keep compromising customers when someone defeats SMS MFA by compromising low-level customer support people.

acdha, to random
@acdha@code4lib.social avatar

I don’t think many American tech companies are prepared for the rest of the world becoming competition, not just markets:

https://restofworld.org/2024/zoho-google-workspace-alternative-africa/

acdha, to random
@acdha@code4lib.social avatar

If you know an educator who works with or visually impaired kids, this LEGO Bricks Kit offer may be of interest:

https://www.aph.org/lego-braille-bricks-kit-request-form/

acdha, to random
@acdha@code4lib.social avatar

The combination of “publish or perish” and not paying enough for review seems unlikely to survive the LLM era:
https://pubpeer.com/publications/CAABBF887348FB2D1C0329E0A27BE6

acdha, to random
@acdha@code4lib.social avatar

This is great to see but also I am now wondering how long it’ll be until some ESR-type denounces Rust as communist and insists real men don’t make mistakes with strcpy. https://www.whitehouse.gov/oncd/briefing-room/2024/02/26/press-release-technical-report/

acdha, to random
@acdha@code4lib.social avatar

“It is striking to review the updated data on partisan gap death rates, as reflected by counties who voted Republican in the 2020 election. As you can see below from Ashley Wu, graphics editor at the New York Times, the curves are continuing to diverge … There was no divergence when vaccines were first administered (right panel below) but since that time the death rates continue to worsen in counties with 70%+ Republican voters compared with <30%.”

https://erictopol.substack.com/p/covid-4-years-on

acdha, to random
@acdha@code4lib.social avatar

Actual hardcore engineering:
https://blogs.nasa.gov/voyager/2024/04/22/nasas-voyager-1-resumes-sending-engineering-updates-to-earth/

acdha, to random
@acdha@code4lib.social avatar

The tech industry definitely needs to take power consumption more seriously:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2024/data-centers-internet-power-source-coal/?itid=sf_local_top-table_p001_f005

acdha, to random
@acdha@code4lib.social avatar

Looking at the activity of the people involved in merging the xz/lzma back door, I’m wondering when LLMs will be used to exhaust review capacity at scale. Any given codebase will have things which could be improved and it would probably be pretty effective to do these large diffs with many legit cosmetic changes to get a reviewer to both start skimming an individual pull request and start seeing the contributor as a solid maintenance developer.

https://github.com/JiaT75

https://salsa.debian.org/users/hjansen/activity

acdha, to random
@acdha@code4lib.social avatar

Nothing says “alpha male” like shooting your company in the foot because you can’t handle a woman disagreeing with you.

Hopefully the beta version will ship soon. https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/inside-story-elon-musks-mass-firings-tesla-supercharger-staff-2024-05-15/

acdha, to random
@acdha@code4lib.social avatar

I see Meta’s AI ad bot is turning out even better than their pivot to video. Good thing they didn’t lay off the people who might have cleaned up the mess…
https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/28/24141585/meta-ai-advantage-plus-automated-ad-glitch-cpm

acdha, to random
@acdha@code4lib.social avatar

This is going to be routine pretty soon:
https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/education/k-12-schools/eric-eiswert-ai-audio-baltimore-county-YBJNJAS6OZEE5OQVF5LFOFYN6M/

acdha, to random
@acdha@code4lib.social avatar

I’d love a side by side test with the much-maligned Siri for this kind of table stakes stuff: ‘I asked for “Beyoncé’s new album,” and the device excitedly went and found me “Crazy in Love” — a lullaby version, from an artist called “Rockabye Baby!”’
https://www.theverge.com/24138746/rabbit-r1-hands-on-ai-gadget-chatgpt

acdha, to random
@acdha@code4lib.social avatar

“If the Chinese government wants data on Americans, they don’t need TikTok to get it. They don’t even need to steal it. The United States is a notorious outlier among developed nations for its lack of a national data-privacy law. This means that the Chinese can just buy from data brokers and other third-party aggregators much of the same information that they would get from having access to TikTok user data.”
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/five-observations-on-the-tiktok-bill-and-the-first-amendment

acdha, to random
@acdha@code4lib.social avatar

“Perhaps more than any other part of the tech industry, crypto relies on storytelling. This is because the underlying technology, as it exists today, doesn’t have much to offer the average person in their day-to-day life. Instead, entrepreneurs conjure visions of what the tech might look like tomorrow”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-05-02/crypto-is-anything-but-strong-right-now

acdha, to random
@acdha@code4lib.social avatar

“experience may even underlie one of the most consistent findings—and clichés—in navigation: that men tend to perform better than women. Turns out this gender gap is more a question of culture and experience than of innate ability.

Nordic countries, for example, where gender equality is greatest, show almost no gender difference in navigation. In contrast, men far outperform women in places where women face cultural restrictions on exploring their environment”

https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/society/2024/why-do-some-people-always-get-lost-but-others-dont

acdha, to random
@acdha@code4lib.social avatar

“The condition I’m suffering from is called “prosopometamorphopsia” (I know—I can barely pronounce it myself). Those who have it sometimes experience bizarre visual hallucinations when they look at someone’s face. It’s extremely rare—there have been only 75 cases ever reported, and I’m one of the unlucky ones.”
https://slate.com/life/2024/05/demon-face-syndrome-what-is-prosopometamorphopsia-rare-disease.html

acdha, to random
@acdha@code4lib.social avatar

Using ad companies’ analytics products is a rake in the grass:

“The breach involved unintended transmission of personal information to third-party vendors, including major tech companies Google, Microsoft Bing, and X (formerly Twitter), via installed online technologies on Kaiser’s websites and mobile apps.”
https://restoreprivacy.com/data-breach-at-kaiser-permanente-affects-13-4-million-people/

acdha, to random
@acdha@code4lib.social avatar

Interesting to contrast https://mastodon.social/@arstechnica/112479276509113651 with:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-01/google-trims-jobs-in-trust-and-safety-while-others-work-around-the-clock

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-17/openai-dissolves-key-safety-team-after-chief-scientist-ilya-sutskever-s-exit

https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/13/23638823/microsoft-ethics-society-team-responsible-ai-layoffs

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/18/facebook-parent-meta-breaks-up-its-responsible-ai-team.html

acdha, to random
@acdha@code4lib.social avatar

“Digging into the undocumented API calls, Barbour saw something he didn’t think was real: You needed only a registered email address to retrieve information, or change settings, on a connected water heater.”
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/how-i-upgraded-my-water-heater-and-discovered-how-bad-smart-home-security-can-be/

acdha, (edited ) to random
@acdha@code4lib.social avatar

If you depend on Google for your income, you need to have a plan B as soon as you can:
https://www.platformer.news/google-io-ai-search-sundar-pichai/

acdha, to random
@acdha@code4lib.social avatar

“Never a great sign when there's a link to an 11 page PDF of how to navigate your website. That's the ‘Learn how to navigate Broadcom Support’ link”
https://matduggan.com/the-worst-website-in-the-entire-world/

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • megavids
  • cubers
  • DreamBathrooms
  • InstantRegret
  • tacticalgear
  • magazineikmin
  • Youngstown
  • thenastyranch
  • mdbf
  • slotface
  • rosin
  • modclub
  • kavyap
  • ethstaker
  • JUstTest
  • osvaldo12
  • khanakhh
  • cisconetworking
  • Durango
  • everett
  • ngwrru68w68
  • Leos
  • normalnudes
  • GTA5RPClips
  • tester
  • provamag3
  • anitta
  • lostlight
  • All magazines
    •