@angdraug@mastodon.social
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

angdraug

@angdraug@mastodon.social

Technologist, activist, poet, community organizer. Debian, Semantic Web, Indymedia, OpenStack, big tech sellout, barley.cloud, circle.lt, жыве Беларусь, he/him.

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

timkmak, to random
@timkmak@journa.host avatar

Zelenskyy: the military had proposed an additional mobilization of 450,000 to 500,000 people.

He said he will not enact this plan until he gets more clarity on how people already mobilized will be rotated out.

The cost of additional mobilization will cost more than $13 billion, Zelenskyy said

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@retrohondajunki @timkmak An impossible standard to meet, considering how the Russian people are already claiming (and have been since 2014) that the very existence of a Ukrainian state is an attack on them.

Should have ended this sentence at "attack Russia."

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@retrohondajunki My grandmother volunteered in 1941 and joined the Red Army as a combat medic. She was enough of an outlier that her own sister held a grudge against her over this until she died of old age. I know because I heard them bicker about it a lot. Even after Nazis started rounding up Jews and burning villages, people didn't voluntarily enlist. The whole "Great Patriotic War" myth is a lie. If Russia is attacked, noone's gonna enlist voluntarily, except people who already did for money.

verge, to random
@verge@mastodon.social avatar

2023 in social media: the case for the fediverse https://www.theverge.com/23990974/social-media-2023-fediverse-mastodon-threads-activitypub?utm_content=buffer2ad32&utm_medium=social&utm_source=bufferapp.com&utm_campaign=buffer

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@verge There's balance, there's neutrality, and then there's this.

I get that billionaires butter your bread, but this piece could really do without pretending Dorsey, Musk, and Zuckerberg are building social platforms for any other purpose than making money off breeding fascists, or that their intentions with Fedi can ever be anything more that Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_journalism

Meanwhile, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg seems to earnestly believe that bringing Threads to the fediverse is a good idea, both for its product and for its business. “Not everyone wants to use one product,” he said to my colleague Alex Heath earlier this fall, “and I think making it so that they can use an alternative but can still interact with people on the network will make it so that that product also is more valuable.” Mark Zuckerberg! Said that! He understands that people want to feel like their social connections and content belong to them, not to a company that can disappear or pivot or change its ways. And let’s be real: if Meta can’t build and maintain the One True Social Network For Everybody, nobody can. It’s well past time to try something else.

angdraug, to Facebook
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

Very timely arrival of my copy of "Broken Code: Inside and the Fight to Expose its Harmful Secrets" by Jeff Horwitz.

Gargron, to threads
@Gargron@mastodon.social avatar

is testing federation for a few selected profiles. I'm now following @mosseri! It's one-way for now, but it's exciting. It's a step towards the interoperable social web that we've been advocating for 🙂

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@feditips @Gargron Still true: " has grown large enough to be fundamentally unable to control a broad range of abuse on its platform. Facebook’s profitability comes from externalizing the cost of consequences of that abuse to the entire world." https://circle.lt/post/20201117-breaking-up-facebook/

Stop helping * externalize its costs while corrupting and absorbing the few spaces still out of reach of the big tech.

mekkaokereke, to random
@mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io avatar

A Penn donor talked about rescinding a $100 million donation, because Penn is improving its DEI and he didn't like that.

After Magill fell into the GOP trap by flubbing that answer, the donor rescinded the donation pending a new president.

Right-wing framing is that the new president will be someone that is "Not anti-semitic." Left framing is that the new president will be "Someone that speaks with clarity on protecting Jewish students." Both slightly off.

The new prez will likely be anti-DEI

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@mekkaokereke Anecdotal: my best intern in the preceding 5 years was from Georgia Tech.

Gargron, to random
@Gargron@mastodon.social avatar

It’s hard not to say “AI” when everybody else does too, but technically calling it AI is buying into the marketing. There is no intelligence there, and it’s not going to become sentient. It’s just statistics, and the danger they pose is primarily through the false sense of skill or fitness for purpose that people ascribe to them.

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@Gargron This false sense of skill or fitness for purpose comes from its incomprehensibility. Not because it's complex, although it is that, too. More because it is not designed to be comprehended. Only to be consumed.

The danger of AI is not in that it's not intelligent, it is in that it's unintelligible.

danilo, to random
@danilo@hachyderm.io avatar

When I got to San Francisco in 2010, I really wanted to do it all

Build a startup, create change through technology.

But the more I learned of the culture, the less I wanted to succeed according to its rubric. The turning point for me was Airbnb

Around 2011, Airbnb was REALLY taking off. All the benefits of a software business, none of the drawbacks of a real estate business. The best of all worlds.

Except…

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@Selena @glyph @danilo This. Every time you want to blame the regulators, remember what happened when Biden administration tried to hire @wiczipedia. Or how much flak Lina Khan is getting for trying to actually do her job at FTC.

angdraug, to random
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

Exerpt from "Broken Code" book by Jeff Horwitz:
https://www.wsj.com/tech/instagram-facebook-teens-harassment-safety-5d991be1

“There’s a grading-your-own-homework problem,” said Zvika Krieger, a former director of responsible innovation at Meta who worked with the Well-Being Team. “Meta defines what constitutes harmful content, so it shapes the discussion of how successful it is at dealing with it.”

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

This echoes my November 2020 step-by-step deconstruction of Facebook's grading of their own homework:
https://circle.lt/post/20201111-grading-facebooks-homework/
“our AI systems proactively identify 90% of hate speech we remove [relative to just the hate speech we remove — consisting in large part of what cis white men report as hate speech against them by underprivileged minorities — and not including the hate speech we refuse to remove nor the hate speech we don’t even see].”

wikifunctions, to random

Introducing Wikifunctions: first Wikimedia project to launch in a decade creates new forms of knowledge

https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2023/12/05/introducing-wikifunctions-first-wikimedia-project-to-launch-in-a-decade-creates-new-forms-of-knowledge/

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@wikifunctions This is your choice of social platforms to promote on your shiny new website?

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@legoktm @wikifunctions I pay my donations to WMF, not specifically to the Wikifunctions team. Accordingly, I direct my ire, as you put it, at the entire WMF, which as a whole isn't large enough an organization to treat individual teams within it as distinct entities with their own social media policies. It is doubly disappointing that people at WMF who are active on Fedi don't have enough say in the matter, either because their voices are too few and too low, or because WMF is too hierarchical.

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@legoktm @wikifunctions Valid point, thank you for reminding me of this. I generally avoid harrassing people about maintaining Xitter presence. In this case I decided to speak up because I hold influential organizations to a higher standard. And just to be clear, this is not about promoting Mastodon or Fedi, it is about not being complicit in things like this: https://mastodon.social/@JoshuaHolland/111558230192672279

angdraug, to Facebook
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

Important thread that sadly isn't mirrored at @jasonkint:
https://nitter.net/jason_kint/status/1727600435304059207

always hides bad news behind Friday afternoons and other news cycle dead zones. For this to merit the Thanksgiving weekend placement, it had to be truly horrible.

And it is just that: truly horrible. The unsealed sections are filled with quotes from employees and execs discussing how to misrepresent the facts about causing mental health issues and self-harm in children.

angdraug, to random
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

Jury finds right-wing extremist guilty on charges that fit the definition of terrorism (use of intentional violence and fear to achieve political or ideological aims): "a 43-year-old carpenter who immersed himself in conspiracy theories spread online by right-wing extremists, admitted that he hit Paul Pelosi on the head “full force” with a hammer during his bungled attempt to take Nancy Pelosi hostage at their San Francisco home in October 2022." is .
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/11/16/paul-pelosi-nancy-david-depape-trial/

TonyStark, to random
@TonyStark@progressivecafe.social avatar

If the code of conduct is so meaningless that it allows a situation where a justice receives a $260,000 truck as a gift from a billionaire with business before the court, that's obviously not something that will restore credibility.

If the justices cannot put a meaningful code of conduct in place for themselves, then Congress should.

But we’ll obviously need a different Congess to do that.

The Supreme Court’s new ethics code is an unenforceable joke-
https://www.vox.com/scotus/2023/11/14/23960027/supreme-court-new-ethics-code-clarence-thomas-unenforceable

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@TonyStark Many problems, one solution: vote. If you feel that you can do more: donate, volunteer, run.

fulelo, to random
@fulelo@journa.host avatar

- mother: 'I'm not able to hug my children'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67316559

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@fulelo With all respect to doctors operating in warzones, ICRC is not on my list of trusted sources. Stealing children and sending them for indocrination is genocide. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/20/belarus-red-cross-says-it-is-involved-in-transfer-of-children-out-of-ukraine

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@osma "We take this very seriously." Heard that one before. Don't recall it ever being followed by earnest introspection and change.

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@osma "Even if"? Here's you boosting the report that provided the evidence you're looking for—to add to the quote that I linked earlier from the head of Belarus RC confirming that they were involed. And yes, that makes ICRC complicit. Can't restrict who can use your symbols and at the same time wash your hands of responsibility for the actions of the people you DID allow to use your name and your symbols.

georgetakei, to random

What does the road to the 2024 election look like? It's a winding path marked by redistricting battles that could reshape Congress. Get the scoop over at The Big Picture on what's happening now, a year out from this crucial election: https://thinkbigpicture.substack.com/p/2024-redistricting-house-majority-congress

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@georgetakei Especially important in light of what the presidential elections under Speaker Johnson would look like: https://mastodon.social/@angdraug/111302316343077376

kissane, to random
@kissane@mas.to avatar

If you want to destroy your brain with frothy SV technocapitalist rhetoric as well as the news this week, this would be a fantastic starting point. I’ve been staring at it for awhile and I’m just going to have to come back to it later.

https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@kissane Protective gear to shield your brain from this tumor mindset projectile bullshit: https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/why-cant-our-tech-billionaires-learn

malwaretech, (edited ) to random

I think this might actually be the first time in my life I've been more horrified by some of the left than the right. The Ukraine war came close-ish, with some factions of the left siding with Russia due to distrust of the US (which, fair enough), and then tankies apparently being confused as to whether Russia is still socialist or not. But all of that was balanced out by the right trying to undermine Ukraine funding in favor of the most stupid shit ever.

But this week a lot of leftists who support Palestine somehow stumbled past the point and went straight for glorifying one of the most horrific massacres in recent history, openly supporting Hamas, and even straight up calling for the elimination of Israel. I always thought the right had a monopoly on overt racism and unjust violence, but apparently if you substitute in words like "decolonization" you can get some of the left to go full Nazi too.

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@malwaretech @mariyadelano No, that ain't it. As a Belarusian American with some Ukrainian heritage, I've been dealing with tankie bullshit denials of Ukrainian and Belarusian genocide by Russia since 2014. They are not misinformed, they've been bending themselves into pretzels trying to follow the party line this entire time. They are not confused on whether Russia is still socialist, they just don't care, as long as Russia keeps giving them money, bot brigades, and air time on RT and Sputnik.

JessTheUnstill, to random

Intention Doesn't Matter. Impact Does.

It's impossible to distinguish between the trolls spreading offensive racist or sexist or transphobic or homophobic hate speech "for the lulz" who simply want attention and don't care who they hurt in the process vs the people who actually want other people to be harmed and killed. Many will CLAIM they were doing it "for the lulz" when you catch and unmask them, but the distinction is meaningless.

You don't need to determine "mens rea" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea). You don't have to fall for the "it's just a joke" or "it's locker room talk". Anyone who is in this culture knows where the hard red lines are that you shouldn't cross. And they chose to cross them anyways.

I don't actually care whether Dave Chappelle likes trans people or not when he writes and performs comedy specials that harm trans people. I don't actually care if someone "has Black friends" when they promote policies and politicians who harm Black people. I don't actually care if someone "would never ACTUALLY hurt a woman" when their words and actions imply that women should be hurt.

I'm tired of giving people the benefit of the doubt.
I'm tired of people "playing devil's advocate".
I'm tired of people claiming "it's just a joke, lighten up".
I'm tired of people hurting other people and then complaining when they experience consequences for harming people.

When you hurt someone else, you apologize, and you put in the work to stop hurting them in the future. If you refuse to apologize and you keep hurting people, then don't act surprised when the people you hurt don't want you around anymore.

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@JessTheUnstill Yes. My go-to reference when I'm told to "assume good intent" is this article by @annaleen
https://thebias.com/2017/09/26/how-good-intent-undermines-diversity-and-inclusion/

arstechnica, to random
@arstechnica@mastodon.social avatar

Planet collision explains star’s brightening, then dimming

Emissions in infrared shot up, then visible light dropped two years later.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/10/stars-strange-behavior-ascribed-to-giant-planet-smash-up/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@arstechnica Your bot just dumped 19 articles into my and every other follower's timeline in a single run. Please don't do that: I follow hundreds of accounts and I don't want any one of them to crowd out everyone else. Post articles one at a time as they show up on your site.

This is not Xitter. There is no ranked feed. Reposting your own content over and over is not the engagement hack you might think it is. All it will get you is followers like me walking away.

fulelo, to Ukraine
@fulelo@journa.host avatar

FT editorial board on
https://www.ft.com/content/fe392623-3c1e-4393-b80d-b4f400e7532e

'In a cost of living squeeze, it is easy for populist parties to insist spending should be funnelled to domestic priorities. But Kyiv’s supporters have a powerful message they should shout from the rooftops: the costs of supporting Ukraine’s fight are tiny compared with those of allowing Putin’s Russia to prevail.'

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@fulelo Max Boot in WaPo has some stark numbers: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/02/ukraine-aid-great-investment/

At the cost of 0.65% of the total US military budget and 0 (zero) US troops on the ground, severely crippled Russia's ability to wage war – Russia's, America's strongest adversary's for over half a century.

Furthermore, that same 0.65% is also holding China back from invading Taiwan.

For comparison, U.S. spent $8 trillion on Afghanistan and Iraq, where 7,000 Americans were killed and 50,000 were wounded.

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