absamma

absamma, 11 months ago (edited 11 months ago) to reddit

So there you have it. Twitter under Elon is the inspiration for Reddit's new business vision. That explains so much of what we're seeing. #reddit

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/reddit-blackout-protest-private-ceo-elon-musk-huffman-rcna89700

absamma, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago) to climate

I had no idea Antarctic sea ice has failed to form this year (to the extent that it is expected to form for this time of the year; it's still forming, just MUCH less than expected) despite being in the dead of winter. Seriously people, it's 5 sigma below normal sea ice there! Wtf are we doing?! #climate #ClimateCatastrophe

absamma, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago) to BurningMan

Those who've decided to remain at Burning man to keep the party going despite their predicament are a perfect analogy of our world today in this #ClimateCatastrophe #burningman

Addendum: tragically, a death has happened at the event. This is no longer funny.

absamma, 11 months ago to fediverse

The Reddit drama is morphing into a confrontation that can only be described as Black mirror-esque in nature. Dissenters in subreddits gone dark are being approached by the company to conspire in toppling their top moderators to restore their subreddits, and people are finally realising that even if they delete their account, Reddit's t&c gives them complete and irrevocable ownership of their content. They will never delete that valuable content. Reddit is dead. Glory to the #fediverse #reddit

absamma, 8 months ago to privacy

Guys, your cars are collecting data on your sexual activity. You all consented to this and more (or as some people like to say, you got EULA roofied). How is this even a thing?? How will our sexual activity help improve the performance of the car or the car maker's services? Doesn't matter if it's a Nissan or a Tesla. Tesla employees are literally turning your camera recordings into internal company intranet memes! This timeline keeps getting worse and worse. #privacy #surveillance #capitalism

absamma, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago) to random

To put #Fukushima into context, the concentration of tritium in your drinking water is way more than in the water they're discharging into the ocean. The issue has been so politicised it's ridiculous.

Conversely, the Japanese government has not really done any meaningful consultations with its citizens hence the angst. See more context in this thread🧵: https://fedibird.com/

absamma, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago) to random

It's sad to admit but Nelson Mandela's dream of a rainbow 🌈 nation died with him. Xenophobia is now the order of the day. South Africans are already romanticising the good old days of apartheid which is insane! As Mandela's party loses support over extreme inequality, a xenophobic movement is slowly becoming another centre of power. I fear the worst for the future...

I guess Neill Blomkamp's District 9 warning has come to haunt us in our reality.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-66808346

absamma, 8 months ago to random

Here's the thing: the "original waterfall methodology paper" (which does not even use the word Waterfall) advocated for an iterative approach to software development. Unfortunately, nobody got past figure 2 of 10 and the DOD compounded the problem by turning the misconception into a standard. In other words, Agile is nothing new. It is a rediscovery borne out of not practicing RTFM. #agile #waterfall #softwaredevelopment

http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/waterfall.html

absamma, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago) to twitter

The contrast between the Voxmedia code conference interviews with Lina Yaccarino and Yoel Roth is funny as hell. Brilliant journalism, and it illustrates so well the kind of clowns currently running Twitter (I will not call it X 😤). I pity Linda. Elon didn't even see the need to inform her that he's thinking about putting all of Twitter behind a paywall. Product staff don't even report to her. She should be asking herself, what am I even doing here? #twitter

absamma, 10 months ago to random

When politics, business interests and tech clash. Between Meta, news media companies and the Canadian government, who's in the right in this whole revenue "sharing" fracas? The whole thing looks really murky from where I'm standing. Looks like a bunch of companies wanting to take a cut of profits at the expense of everyone else, including underpaid, underemployed journalists. #Canada #web #media #socialmedia #meta Cc @boris

absamma, 11 months ago (edited 11 months ago) to random

Wonderful birthday night out with my beautiful life partner at The Ivy, #Cheltenham.

absamma, 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago) to Notion

Some people see the idea of organising knowledge as a time sink with little to no benefit in terms of productivity (not to mention the fact that it can be a very demanding job). And yet, people still do it. Notion et al are thriving as a result. #notion #knowledge #knowledgegraph #productivity

𝔏𝔬𝔬𝔭𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔦𝔫 𝔗𝔥𝔬𝔲𝔤𝔥𝔱 — A.B. Samma's blog/notes on thought processing tech, knowledge and other things. https://abesamma.github.io/#Is%20the%20meta-task%20of%20knowledge%20organisation%20like%20a%20game%3F

absamma, 9 months ago to random

It's been more than a week since my wife and I watched #Oppenheimer at our local cinema and I still can't stop looking into it. Most importantly, the moral question of the bombings themselves. If indeed the bombings didn't influence the thinking of Japan's government as some new narratives suggest, then why did Emperor Hirohito mention it in his speech announcing Japan's surrender? Obviously it did play a role in conjunction with the USSR's war declaration.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Hirohito_surrender_broadcast

absamma, 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago) to uk

The managerial culture that allowed Nurse Letby to go on a killing spree for so long is not an exception. It is the norm; systemic to the NHS. I don't know what kind of reform is needed to root out this culture, but it hurts staff, minorities especially. If anyone tries to raise concerns for whatever reason, management dismisses them, bullies them into submission before packing them off to the GMC for a career disrupting tribunal. #nhs #healthcare #uk #medicine

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-66120934

absamma, 11 months ago to random

Make no mistake, cats domesticated us, not otherwise. They're the most useless creatures in our species' history yet we still keep them around (they only catch mice when they feel like it). What is that if not them domesticating us? #caturday

absamma, 8 months ago to Ukraine

You can't understand anything in this Starlink #Ukraine debacle when you read Elon's tweets (or are they X's, who knows). One minute he says they didn't deactivate Starlink then next he says he did it to ostensibly de-escalate something something. Absolutely laughable given that the Russians continue to pummel Ukrainian cities and citizens and this act literally sabotaged an act of defense. Like I said, libertarians like Elon and Paul Graham can be dangerously naïve.

absamma, 8 months ago to opensource

What's the closest thing to an open source Twitter space service out there AND allows for federation via ActivityPub? Anyone? @boris? #opensource #fediverse

absamma, 8 months ago to China

What's happening in #China wrt #deflation is pretty simple: people there were using the housing market as a replacement for banks assuming that prices will always continue to go up. They didn't, and now they're poorer, so they're holding on to their remaining cash. Hence deflation. How do you correct this when the property market makes up a third of China's wealth? Absolutely nuts! #economics

absamma, 7 months ago to Israel

People are moving South in Gaza and as a result, water is now flowing through to southern Gaza. Meanwhile, Fatah is being prepared to become the new authorities in Gaza (which is why they're cooperating so well with everyone else). This can all end sooner rather than later. The region will see a vast improvement once Hamas and its allies are removed. #Israel

absamma, 9 months ago to random

Hashicorp has shifted to the BSL license from MPL. Would love your take on these noncompete moves @boris

https://www.runtime.news/as-hashicorp-adopts-the-bsl-an-era-of-open-source-software-might-be-ending/

absamma, 7 months ago to Israel

European news outlets have been claiming a strike on a civilian convoy moving to South Gaza. Here's the video of the attack. No missile strike seen up close. It looks more like a roadside bomb, which is Hamas' speciality. They have every incentive to stop the convoy. They need those human shields. BBC Verify is really trying hard to pin this on the IDF (who weren't operating there at the time) but don't directly attribute it to IDF. They're hedging their hunch.

https://twitter.com/TheMossadIL/status/1713224556758880269?t=vDUI860DgzeYS9rUH7g3bA&s=19

#Israel

absamma, 8 months ago to science

I don't know why but we've really managed to instill an unhealthy fear of negative results in the sciences. Journals are to blame here too. Thankfully, some are noticing the error of that thinking. #science

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02876-z?utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=nature&utm_source=Twitter&s=09#Echobox=1694509194

absamma, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago) to random

Here's a scary thought: is #Trump the Mule from the Foundation novels? #Foundation #scifi 😂

absamma, 7 months ago to China

#China's empty real estate is the poster child of wasteful spending. Nothing else comes close I think. To quote China's bureau of statistics, they've got somewhere between 1-3 billion unoccupied houses/units that they'll never be able to sell and that even their entire population cannot fill. That's.... staggering. That's 5 trillion dollars of value thrown into a black hole. Something will have to give. The financial market abhors a vacuum this big.

absamma, 8 months ago to random

Sometimes I wonder if we're heading right into a Horizon Zero Dawn timeline given the chaos around the world right now. It sure feels like it. #horizonzerodawn