@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.

aral, (edited ) to climate
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

Greta Thunberg pulls out of event due to its links with the fossil fuel industry.¹

Meanwhile, tech folks who see nothing wrong with surveillance capitalists like Google, Facebook, etc., sponsoring privacy events:

“We’re absolutely perplexed… what does any of this mean?”

https://ar.al/2019/01/11/i-was-wrong-about-google-and-facebook-theres-nothing-wrong-with-them-so-say-we-all/

¹ https://web.archive.org/web/20230804132413/https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-66407059

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@aral Meanwhile, Facebook gets away with steering "independent" researchers away from its actual problems, all so they could get headlines like this: https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/07/did-facebook-fuel-political-polarization-during-the-2020-election-its-complicated/

kravietz, to poland
@kravietz@agora.echelon.pl avatar

"Hayun" opposition project reports that the pilots of two Mi helicopters crossed the border by genuine mistake and "were met by security services when they returned to the airport".

I find that hard to believe after a series of open threats and provocative statements from and Belarus towards Poland. At the same time, weirdest things happen during war, so it can't be excluded, and it would also explain Polish reserved reaction to the violation.

Source: https://t.me/Hajun_BY/7191

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@kravietz That's the general problem with threats: they dramatically raise the costs and risks of mistakes. If/when the next similar incident goes sideways, the responsibility should be firmly placed on the side that started issuing threats. In 2007, Putin issued a threat. In 2008, Russia invaded Georgia. The West broadly accepted the blatantly false excuse of Georgians "provoking" Russia. Russia keeps issuing threats. Time to take them seriously and prepare for war.

taylorlorenz, to random
@taylorlorenz@mastodon.social avatar

The only good content left on Twitter is Musk’s former employees debunking his bullsh*t

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@taylorlorenz "When a brand new, convoluted metric is suddenly trotted out, it tends to mean the opposite of what they're trying to claim."

This reminds me of the time Zuckerberg tried to redefine reach: https://circle.lt/post/20201111-grading-facebooks-homework/

"Instead of historic data and a way to track it in the future, all we got so far is a single snapshot of what it looks like right now, and even that snapshot still shows the same bias clear as day."

wikipedia, to random
@wikipedia@wikis.world avatar

This week marks 10 years since Edward 's global surveillance revelations started, including that the NSA's program was specifically targeting users.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-top-secret-program-online-data

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published a recap of the past decade discussing the things we learned, the privacy battles we all won, and what we're still fighting for:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/10-years-after-snowden-some-things-are-better-some-were-still-fighting

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@wikipedia There goes my recurring donation to WMF...
https://mastodon.social/@angdraug/106823081015459114

jerry, to random

7 months ago, twitter losing their execs responsible for trust and safety would have caused a massive influx of new signups. Over the past few days, they've lost two senior leaders in that area, and I think we've had less signups than on any random days. It's interesting how people adjust to the "new normal"

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@jerry To be fair, that's the exec who carried out Musk's order to apply "heavy visibility filtering" to @elonjet. I suspect personal legal risks around EU's upcoming review of 's compliance with had more to do with this departure than the recent de-moderarion of an anti-trans propaganda movie.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/twitter-account-following-elon-musks-private-jet-gets-shadow-banned

Pwnallthethings, to random
@Pwnallthethings@mastodon.social avatar

OpenAI's statement on "governance of superintelligence" is basically "in our humble opinion you should regulate AI, but not our company's AI which is good, but instead only imaginary evil AI that exists only in the nightmares you have after reading too many Sci-Fi books, and the regulatory framework you choose should be this laughably guaranteed-to-fail regulatory framework which we designed here on a napkin while laughing" https://openai.com/blog/governance-of-superintelligence

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@Pwnallthethings This is how you get https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

juddlegum, to random
@juddlegum@journa.host avatar

I don't know who needs to hear this but acting as the pr flaks for powerful politicians in exchange for being spoon-fed micro-scoops is not journalism

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@juddlegum The problem is badly exacerbated in tech where access journalism has become so ubiquitous that many tech workers are not even aware that actual journalism doesn't work this way.

ajsadauskas, to music
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

So who's your favourite band or artist? What's your favourite song or album?

I'm keen to hear both who you're currently listening to, as well as your all-time favourites and guilty pleasures.

What do you like about them? How did you get into their music? And significant stories or memories?

@music @music

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@ajsadauskas @music @music Current favorite: Irdorath https://irdorath-by.bandcamp.com/album/serca-raskolata-single https://youtu.be/E9F_v_WNUuA

All time classic: Kreator circa 1992, Tom Waits, Lavon Volski / Zet / Krambambula / N.R.M / Mroja https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavon_Volski

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@ajsadauskas @music @music My favorite version of my favorite Ukrainian song: https://youtu.be/ZztmQsSAqfo

goncalor, to fediverse

It seems Mastodon is now "serious enough" that people want to advertise here. Well... glad you won't.

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@goncalor There is a way: earned media.

Set up a presence on Fedi, make your product worth talking about, make content about it that is worth talking about, and don't try to bribe your way out of doing the work. This is the way.

agreenberg, to random

Twitter’s encrypted DM feature is technically flawed, opt-in, limited to 1-to-1 text-based messages, restricted to a small user base, and generally inferior in just about every way to encrypted apps like Signal and WhatsApp.

And all for just $8 a month. https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-encrypted-dm-signal-whatsapp/

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@jeff @agreenberg Why not , the federated and fully open source alternative?

timbray, to random
@timbray@cosocial.ca avatar

Hey, I noticed that Mastodon didn’t make nice previews for links to my blog, so I read up on the necessary & fixed it, and then obviously had to write a blog on the blog about fixing the blog. Which (if my tests are valid) should decorate this post a bit. If you don’t see this post, that means it broke and I had to delete the post until I fixed things.

If your links suffer from bad-preview syndrome this might be helpful. Otherwise not really of general interest.

https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2023/05/08/Blog-Preview

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@timbray Works in Tusky.

haley_exe, to random

@angdraug I think you're right, but amongst my friends, who are all well aware of what is happening and vote in every election we can, it does feel hopeless. In many states politicians are making voting harder every year, and even giving themselves power to cancel elections under terrifyingly broad laws (Harris Co. in TX). I see the slide toward authoritarianism, but without the $$ to buy a couple dozen Congresspeople, I don't know what else to do besides vote, speak up & hope.

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@haley_exe Vote, speak up & hope adds up to a lot, especially the last of the three. Belarusians are stuck with the same dictator for almost three decades, and we still have not lost hope:
https://circle.lt/post/20200814-lukashenkas-war-on-belarusians/

Every democratic breakthrough ever is an outcome of a long struggle that can look and feel like a failure all the way until it isn't. Don't expect a quick win, but hold on to that hope. The dawn will come, it always does.

jef, to random
@jef@mastodon.social avatar

San Francisco stores: We are closing because of crime! Unless you give us a huge tax break hint hint.
SF Mayor: We can't give you a tax break because we spent all our money on police. Would you like some extra police instead?
Stores: Well actually we may have been fibbing a little about the crime, which statistics show is in fact down. But we really could use that tax break.
Mayor: More police it is!

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@zakyfarms @jef Nope. https://popular.info/p/the-truth-about-shoplifting-in-san

"In 2020, shoplifting in San Francisco reached its lowest level since statistics began being collected 45 years ago."

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@zakyfarms @jef A follow-up from this year: https://popular.info/p/how-walgreens-manufactured-a-media

"The National Retail Federation (NRF), a trade group that represents retailers like Walgreens and has amplified the theft-wave narrative, has also found that shrink declined to 1.4% of total retail sales in 2021, from 1.6% in 2020. External theft, the NRF found, made up 0.5% of total retail sales in 2021."

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@zakyfarms @jef The kind of theft that is actually on the rise is called "wage theft." https://popular.info/p/a-tale-of-two-thefts

"the total wages stolen from workers due to minimum wage violations exceeds $15 billion each year"

rodhilton, to random
@rodhilton@mastodon.social avatar

The constant-threats-to-defederate thing is going to kill this place, seriously.

Defederating an instance is an extreme measure and it should only be taken in extreme circumstances.

Finding out I might stop getting posts from people I explicitly follow because they happen to be on an instance being defederated by mine all because a bunch of admins I don't know got in a spat over a user I don't follow is just about the most annoying value proposition imaginable.

https://federate.social/@mattblaze/110317006852580015

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@rodhilton To be fair, operating your own email domain that GMail wouldn't summarily blackhole or at least auto-label as spam requires PhD in SMTP and DNS. Not that I miss the times of open SMTP relays...

ubiquity75, to random

Honestly don’t need Yuval Noah Harari casually weighing in with authority on every fucking thing.

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@ubiquity75 TBH don't need him weighing in on any fucking thing. The man is an intellectual lightweight who made a career out of selling self-help pseudo-science under the guise of history.

TonyStark, to random
@TonyStark@progressivecafe.social avatar

Some of the things President Biden has done:
Aided Ukraine against Putin’s invasion
The CHIPS Act
The PACT Act
The Inflation Recovery Act (really a clean energy bill)
The infrastructure bill
A budget proposal to reduce the deficit

What Republicans promise:
Book banning
Persecution of marginalized people
Tax cuts for the wealthy
More gun violence
No rights for women
Destruction of public education
Authoritarianism

Easy call, old or not.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/joe-biden-is-old-get-over-it

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

@TonyStark My grandfather was forced into retirement to make room for a younger bureaucrat, for whom my grandfather's job was a one-year stepping stone towards a much bigger chair. My grandfather outlived that younger guy by almost a decade, and remained an active community organizer until his very last day.

Biden reminds me of my grandfather. Not only with his resilience, but most importantly his unyielding desire to be useful and do good.

angdraug, to random
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

I was born in USSR. There were no votes in USSR. I remember Perestroika. When I was just a teen, my parents were seriously discussing going off the grid to sit out the civil war if the 1991 KGB putsch against Gorbachev succeeded. Everybody was surprised when it failed. What followed was very confusing time, people had no idea how democracy is supposed to work, including the people who somehow made it work anyway, for a few years.

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

When my new country, Belarus, elected its first (and so far, the only) president in 1994, I wasn't old enough to vote. By the time I was, he has shut down the Constitutional Court, dismissed the Parliament, and put a loyalist in charge of the Elections Commission. I didn't get a chance to vote. I never had a chance to vote in my life.

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

I don't know how to describe what I feel when Americans tell me that their votes don't matter much, that American democracy isn't something worth saving, or that it already is beyond saving.

angdraug,
@angdraug@mastodon.social avatar

I saw my own country walk the path from a flawed democracy to authoritarianism. I saw the colonial superpower next door, Russia, walk the same path even faster and get all the way back to totalitarianism. Now I see my new country, the one where I still don't have a right to vote, set off down the same path. Don't tell me there is no further down, I've been down this road before, and believe me America is at its very beginning, and I don't think there is a bottom.

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