@hrefna@hachyderm.io
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

hrefna

@hrefna@hachyderm.io

SRE at Google. Queer. Poly :potion_polyamory: Trans :verified_trans: :nonbinary_potion: Engineer. Ace :flag_ace: Member of AWU-CWA. #ActuallyAutistic :rainbowinfinity: #UnionStrong

Opinions my own. Does not suffer fools gladly.

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hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Oh good, one of my least favorite presentation patterns: "here's a video of a bunch of random people saying what $foo 'means' to them, usually using low-quality microphones and no sound editing to speak of."

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Converging on perfect, non-problematic language:

  1. Isn't possible.

  2. Erases a lot of identity in the margins.

  3. Will not fix oppression. Especially when your target audience are the group that uses that label.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

This doesn't mean that we don't work to fix our language, but it does mean that we need to be aware of the context a word or phrase exists in and the cultural intersections that go along with it.

We just aren't trying to move someone necessarily "away from an imperfect form" and "toward a perfect form that we decided on fifteen minutes ago." Instead there is a cultural gap, there is a matter of identity, and humanity (and all of nature) likes to defy categorization every chance it gets.

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

One of those things that's worth keeping in the back of your mind:

Things tend to change at the orders of magnitude.

What you need at 99% reliability is not the same thing you need at 99.9% reliability is not the same thing that you need at 99.99998% reliability.

So when you see people confidently assert that "let's just throw a neural network at it" you should immediately be asking "what is the cost of a failure."

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/05/on-self-driving-waymo-is-playing-chess-while-tesla-plays-checkers/

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Cis people sitting with each other and saying "protect trans kids" to each other and then undermining that in every interaction with a trans person or in any opportunity to actually support trans people is…

…well, it's definitely a thing.

hrefna, to rust
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

The #RustLang "Rust by Example" is absolutely brilliant. Mad props.

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

"But you will be using AI in…"

Possibly! I don't dispute that it may happen! I've seen a lot of thoughts in that direction for other technologies that never panned out, but I've also seen it go the other way.

Finding a use for the generative AI tools in the development process won't surprise me. Especially if the cost comes down.

What I balk at are replacement narratives or the idea that somehow it will invalidate human engineers.

Also: you should unionize to fight them trying.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

They will try. It being a terrible idea doesn't mean that they won't try. It ultimately being doomed to failure doesn't mean they won't try. They've been pushing this narrative for years, waiting for a moment when they could try to find a justification to cut our numbers or our pay.

So they will try.

Go unionize. That's your only way of resisting them trying.

But.

Our skills will still be valuable on the other side when they eventually figure out that this doesn't work.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

@datarama

They think that because it has already been done. The WGA being one example. In tech it's already happened as well: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-11/microsoft-agrees-to-union-contract-terms-governing-its-use-of-ai

Then there is the book Blood in the Machine.

@Jackiemauro

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

@datarama

If you want to fight back there are a handful of predominant methods, depending on which theory of power.

Unions are the most practical and the most in your day-to-day control. The others are things like political solutions, which both take time and tend to be out of your average person's hands in a way that unions are not.

Will they always work? Absolutely not. On the other hand: they already have today for this exact problem in the software industry.

@Jackiemauro

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

@datarama

The fundamental assertion that the value of the labor will drop to zero I think is a fundamental flaw.

Good luck to them with that theory of labor value. They've been pushing this idea since at least the late 1980s that the "next big thing" would "eliminate" the need for software engineers

Could this be it? Could this finally be it after forty years?

Maybe! But I'm not holding my breath, and in the meantime the question is "what actions can we take in this moment"

@Jackiemauro

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

@datarama

I don't have the power to make the US Congress functional, or the SCOTUS not terrible, or get the EU to move more quickly, so what are the concrete actions I can take?

Unions are a concrete step that many people have the ability to take and one that can help.

Think that there is no effective action and we're all doomed to a Malthusian ending?

Then how do you respond to that, because that is the one thing you can control: your response.

@Jackiemauro

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

"What happens to developers when AI can write code?"

I feel like I'm in a constant back-and-forth of "how-much-wood-could-a-woodchuck-chuck" every. single. time. this comes up.

Like… just…

No. Stop it.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

"we have this language that can express something precisely and even in some cases provably. We do need specialists who can think in terms of the problem, however, and deconstruct the ideas so that they can be worked on. Especially because you are never clear in your ideas."

"Okay, but what if we just had the execs say whatever [nonsense] ideas in English and software [that we can't understand or deconstruct] generated it, what then, huh?"

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

"Women would rather run into a bear in the woods than Lord Byron"

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

While researching fairy stories I stumbled into the story of Childe Rowland—which involved a child of Guinevere, Merlin showing up, etc in this story of the fairylands—and was chatting with my partner about it and how Arthurian characters are basically "stock characters" of a certain era: they have certain traits and show up together in certain ways to tell whatever story.

My partner then sent me this from an intro to Perlesvaus.

is really just fanfic all the way down.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

My partner and I have talked for a while about this phenomena: there is no "canon" to Arthurian Literature. None. There is a huge body of work, but none of it can be considered canonical.

Lancelot comes about because someone (potentially Eleanor of Aquitaine) commissioned a writer to basically expand the story in a way that she would enjoy. Perlesvaus (The High Book of the Grail) is someone processing their trauma of war, and probably specifically from the Sack of Constantinople.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

When the Prophecies of Merlin got translated into Old Norse-Icelandic (Merlínússpá) they turned into poetry in the form of the sagas, modified the characters, and adapted it for the local audience

Later stories were written by (gay, bored) monks for entertainment. Other characters take either Irish heroes (e.g., Cú Chulainn) or their local equivalents and create a knight out of them (Gawain)

Modern readers often want to build a consistent corpus and timeline out of it, and you can't.

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

It goes without saying, but explicitly, if you show up on me saying something like this to say that "almost everyone at Google is incompetent down to the rank-and-file" I am just going to block you.

You aren't being even remotely rational in your approach and I question whether you are here in good faith.
https://hachyderm.io/@hrefna/112470793925252496

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

I find it worthwhile to go back now and again and look through analyses of why a piece of software succeeded or failed.

It's always particularly illuminating to look at three things:

  1. The role of leadership in the failure.
  2. How much leadership got paid regardless/what happened to leadership afterwards.
  3. What happened to the rank-and-file who actually build the software.

The story is always basically the same, with a few variations on the themes.

https://kotaku.com/how-biowares-anthem-went-wrong-1833731964

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

People will occasionally poke at Google's developers for something about one of Google's products and its like… I agree with you, as do most developers I know (not that I talk about specifics publicly in the moment).

You have to look above the team who is doing the work. They've probably already said their piece and were simply ignored.

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

People who know nothing about ecology hear about something that requires no work or understanding on their part but where they can "spread awareness online": "YES THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER."

Applies to more than just ecological activism, of course

Rather than saying "I'm not going to mow for a month!" take a while and actually learn what is in your yard. Don't just hop on arbitrary bandwagons with no understanding of what you are looking at

But learning is complex, "not mowing" is easy 1/

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

What can you do instead?

Learn about native plants, learn about noxious weeds, learn about water conservation in lawn building, look into strategies like xeriscaping. If you need a lawn then look into local grasses and legumes

Be prepared for this to take a long, long time/

You may have to water, you will have to do maintenance, but it will be better for the environment than just letting your lawn go with whatever invasives happen to be in your area

Not all substitutes are created equal 3/

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

If you need to keep a lawn for your HOA there may be nothing you can do about it, but again the solution is not "just let whatever grow" (if you would even be allowed to do that, many of them specify grasses).

The solution is learning the soil, learning the land, and learning the plants.

That is the way.

4/4

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

@joby I feel that saying in my bones.

I've been learning pasture management and it is a lot. As you say a lot of it is building a solid intuition about plants (and conquering "green blindness," but that goes along with developing that intuition).

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

If you are a cis person and you have "trans rights are human rights" in your bio I am generally going to assume that you are not a safe person.

Similarly. If you put "Ally" in your bio I am going to assume you aren't one.

Not because it is bad to flag that "Trans rights are human rights," but because it is too easy: you are really only advertising who you are to followers and potential followers, and that is a very easy thing to do without having done the work.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

@Andrea

I was at a Native fundraiser awhile back and they had a very powerful land acknowledgement at the front, but part of what made it powerful was their statement about how "this can feel useless, sometimes, or like it is the only thing that it is done" and their reflection on "what it means to us to be doing this."

It wasn't colonizers doing it pro-forma for other colonizers.

@samuteki

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