tragiccommons

@tragiccommons@infosec.exchange

Retired from Google. Now I work on computer science projects. I sometimes hang out on https://meet.jit.si/AliceAndBob when I'm at my desk.

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

tragiccommons, to random

Manipulation of Google Scholar is a nice example of Goodhart's law: https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.04607

tragiccommons, to random

In case you don't think ORCID is important, there are 217 people listed in DBLP with the exact name "Wei Zhang". That's in computer science alone. https://dblp.org/pid/10/4661.html

tragiccommons, to random

I've been reading a lot about the state of scientific publishing. Some people seem to think it's in trouble, but I see signs of health from the various innovations people are trying. Some interesting examples include the use of openreview.net to open up reviews and give credit to reviewers, and the decision by eLife to stop issuing rejections, but open up the process instead. There is an interesting critique of the eLife decision by @MarkHanson located here: https://mahansonresearch.weebly.com/blog/do-we-really-need-journals

It's a weird time for me to be working on a new journal publishing platform, but maybe it's the right time. I've always been bugged by the economics of journal publishing, and that's what got me started working on it. Maybe I should shift my focus to the social process of publishing. The death of hasn't helped, and I don't think LinkedIn and on the fediverse have filled the need yet.

dangillmor, (edited ) to random
@dangillmor@mastodon.social avatar

In a few months, when my Apple TV+ annual subscription expires, I'll subscribe to zero streaming services.

Their incessant price hikes turned me into a once-in-a-while user, subscribing for a month only to catch up on specific stuff.

Also, Amazon's me-too greed -- making ad-free Prime Video a higher-cost option -- persuades me to drop Prime itself after ~15 years.

I'm estimating annual savings of at least $600, albeit with some added annoyance in keeping track of what's on where, and when.

tragiccommons,

@dangillmor I also cancelled my prime membership tonight.

tragiccommons, to random

I've lived in 8 states in the US. There's a reason why I moved back to California. It's called weather.

lcamtuf, (edited ) to random

I spent more than 25 years in tech. If you asked me for advice today, I’d open with a warning: don’t let a corporate job, no matter how great, become your whole identity.

My view isn’t rooted in resentment or anti-capitalism. I am immensely grateful for my career, I’ve always taken pride in my work, and I strived to do it well. My point is different: losing an argument in the office shouldn’t feel like an attack on your entire self.

The allure of getting lost in work comes in part from the mythos of Big Tech: the idea that we’re changing the world every day, even if it the bulk of corporate life is just grind. The grind is important but it has no end; in ten years, nobody will remember or care about the all-nighters we put in to refactor some code, flesh out a policy, or nail an OKR.

It doesn’t help that many tech companies recruit fresh out of college and ask people to move hundreds or thousands of miles. This severs our social connections and forces us to rebuild them around the workplace. When doing so, it can be difficult to draw clear lines.

I’m not arguing for nihilism or mediocrity. But by the end of the day, your corporate employer is not your family. The pastel-colored interiors, the board games, the lounge chairs conceal an uncomfortable truth: the company will not hesitate to fire you if you bring the wrong “whole self” to work, if they lose interest in your project, or if they need to send a specific message in the quarterly report. You might have a caring manager or wonderful colleagues, but your work identity is just a row in someone else's spreadsheet.

My advice is simple. Be ambitious, but find ways to disconnect every now and then. Save some of that true passion for hobbies, family, and friends.

Edit: also posted at https://lcamtuf.substack.com/p/on-corporate-life

tragiccommons,

@lcamtuf It's really hard for some people to retire because we often define ourselves in terms of our careers. When people retire, they risk severing their connection to the social networks they have built through their career. I always tried to maintain connections outside of my current employer. Ultimately our satisfaction depends most on the people we enjoy interacting with, and not the company that we happen to work at.

tragiccommons, to random

You haven't fully matured as a man until you own a can of liquid wrench, a sledgehammer, and ,_________

coreyspowell, to fediverse
@coreyspowell@mastodon.social avatar

The difference in engagement here vs the ex-bird site is staggering.

I did an experiment. My last post was shared 12 times over there (where I allegedly have 85k followers). A nearly identical post was shared 361 times here (where I have fewer than 6k followers). Amazing.

tragiccommons,

@coreyspowell This is pure anecdata. I'd be convinced by actual statistics, but my experience is that it is impossible to find your twitter friends here.

tragiccommons, to random

@jerry The announcement said to opt into search by going to "Settings => Public Profile" but in the web interface it's "Preferences => Public Profile"

tragiccommons, to random

I always use this guy's name when I am writing software tests.

tragiccommons,

(perhaps this joke is too obscure)

GossiTheDog, to random
@GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    tragiccommons,

    @GossiTheDog In the meantime, Google is annoying the hell out of me by constantly trying to get me to opt into generative AI answers.

    tragiccommons, to random

    ceases paper publication of journals. Welcome to 2023. https://www.acm.org/publications/ceasing-print

    scdollins, to generative
    @scdollins@genart.social avatar

    Squiggly snakes

    #generative #GenerativeArt #CreativeCoding #Processing #glsl #shaders

    Looping animation of multi-colored snakes with squiggly white and dark patterns traveling on a convoluted non-intersecting path wrapped around a tumbling black sphere

    tragiccommons,

    @scdollins I'm not a big fan for many applications of generative machine learning, but art seems like one of the most promising applications to me (hallucination is part of art). Of course some artists feel threatened by this, and there are interesting copyright issues about whether the training data is being used under fair use doctrine.

    tragiccommons, to random

    I replaced my 33 year old stereo receiver, and in the process I decided to reduce my stock of extra cables by about 50%. Don't worry though - I'm still prepared for any connectivity emergency.

    lauren, to random
    @lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org avatar

    I just was followed here by someone with the username "rwxrwxrwx@". Wondering if their nickname is 777? Triple-7? All access?

    tragiccommons,

    @lauren no sticky bits? What happens to their children?

    lauren, to random
    @lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org avatar

    My view is that other than for serious official research -- and I don't mean tourism rebranded as "research" -- the Titantic should be considered a mass grave site and protected from intrusions by international law.

    tragiccommons,

    @lauren For some reason it continues to attract rich people to that place as a grave site.

    tragiccommons, to random

    I wonder if it's possible to train a large language model to emit code with a backdoor in it. That would be wrong of course... 👿

    SteveBellovin, to random
    @SteveBellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org avatar

    The air quality in NYC is lovely right now…

    tragiccommons,

    @mattblaze @SteveBellovin from California: hold my beer

    petersuber, to random
    @petersuber@fediscience.org avatar

    "While the popular history of the internet valorises Silicon Valley coders…many of the original concepts for emerged from scientists focused on the accessibility of documents."
    https://aeon.co/essays/the-1970s-librarians-who-revolutionised-the-challenge-of-search

    tragiccommons,

    @petersuber it's an interesting topic. One important aspect of this is the hierarchical organization of documents, with title, section, subsection etc. Those mostly evolved as visual clues for how to read a document, and are much older than the 1970s. This hierarchical structure turns out to be important for search.

    mattblaze, to random
    @mattblaze@federate.social avatar

    Grrr.

    I really dislike ordering from Amazon (for this and other reasons), but they are just exceptionally bad lately.

    Ordered a bunch of stuff for a repair project where they were the only source that could get it to me today. One day shipping confirmed.

    Now, as the delivery deadline comes and goes, they tell me they're sorry, but they have no idea where the packages are and I should just wait a few days.

    Sigh. Fool me once, etc.

    tragiccommons,

    @mattblaze I recently dropped my prime membership when I realized that I don't use prime video, they ruined prime music, and I don't order stuff often enough to make the shipping a good deal.

    kathhayhoe, to random

    On Monday, I wrote an essay about climate and biodiversity for Scientific American. I tracked proportional engagement, calculated as (likes + shares + comments)/followers, over six social media platforms.

    The winner? MASTODON, by a landslide.

    Second place? INSTAGRAM. It's harder to share posts on IG, but lot of people like things there!

    The loser? FACEBOOK, also by a landslide.*

    • On Facebook, I've been shadow-banned since August 2018 when they listed clean energy and climate as "socially sensitive topics" so my page there stopped growing 6 years ago and now only about 1% of my followers there ever see my posts. It's actually too bad, because that's the platform where I reach the most conservative audiences through their connections to friends and family. So even though it's dead last, I still persist.
    tragiccommons,

    @kathhayhoe Facebook doesn't have "followers", and it was never intended for professional use. It's for friendships, not influence.

    lauren, to random
    @lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org avatar

    My 100% prediction for today: Tim Scott is not going to be the next president of the United States.

    tragiccommons,

    @lauren I won't dispute it, but I wonder how many said the same about Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton.

    vyr, to random

    reminder that Pleroma, Akkoma, Misskey, Calckey, Foundkey, and Friendica ship with capabilities and have for years. and those are just the instance server families i know about. this is not a new or novel feature outside Mastodon. if you want to block all Fedi instances that don't share vanilla Mastodon's search restrictions, you've got a lot of blocking to do.

    tragiccommons,

    @vyr It makes more sense to call it instead of . It only indexes content it has seen, which is a subset of the fediverse.

    jerry, to random

    I had to silence mastodon.social. That spam run was a lot.

    tragiccommons,

    @jerry This is a perfect example of why the mastodon and ActivityPub levers to control spam are insufficient. Adversarial computer science is always harder than people think at first.

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