@janxdevil@sfba.social
@janxdevil@sfba.social avatar

janxdevil

@janxdevil@sfba.social

"Hey now. We devils can do a lot of damage in a classroom armed with nothing but the clothing God gave us. Sometimes all it takes is a carefully chosen pronoun or a noteworthy historical date and next thing you know it's blood and guts everywhere."

#nobridge

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janxdevil, to random
@janxdevil@sfba.social avatar

So my employers are hiring a lot. And now that I’m a manager, we need to find somebody to take over my coding responsibilities. You know, so I can spend most of time doing manager things instead of half of it, with the other half devoted to coding on something that needs a full time engineer leading it.

Are you, or is someone you know, a giant TCP/IP nerd like me, with a mastery of C++-14 and software architecture? If so, then send me a PM and I’ll hook you up with our recruiter. Employer is in Foster City, CA and we’re on a hybrid schedule 3-day in and 2-day at home.

erlend, to fediverse
@erlend@writing.exchange avatar

A simple <-> interop MVP I don’t see mentioned a lot is the ability to fully oEmbed an apub/atproto post on its opposite platform. This would allow for a kind of quote-posting across networks.

If that could somehow be combined with a WebMention to inform me that my apub post has been shared elsewhere and vice versa, we’d have significantly greater cross-border connectivity than the status quo.

A Bluesky dev has responded with interest:

https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto/discussions/1716#discussioncomment-7261438

janxdevil,
@janxdevil@sfba.social avatar

@erlend without account migration between ActivityPub and AtProto it’s not interop.

johnshirley2024, to random

[when autonomous vehicles are truly safe I will get one, as long as it's also non polluting]

Autonomous Vehicles Are Driving Blind

"After all, A.I. often makes surprising mistakes. This year, one of GM’s Cruise cars slammed into an articulated bus after incorrectly predicting its movement."
“The computer vision systems in these cars are extremely brittle. They will fail in ways that we simply don’t understand...”

FREE LINK https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/11/opinion/driverless-cars-san-francisco.html?unlocked_article_code=g3CRxcT3VF2XhJXp8KinoWwRuKvA03uaAuwXl4SC7BT60iGZowSHsuynyv7b0H2x2ug20PR4M4JVLBmsqWauD1LNhDJWrEp9NqO5FO9WFnSILAZQBhR4srXhVBau348oJelZo3rGzn_9m_rd9UPQ_tut3unswJ-TOhfnOdraHyYRNB1wrDnL1QtqLgVMwKQv1g8zQGcBV-blpp7fo8PcWGkN2_Lf-2Kx-VwTscqZcidchZEnRO2GSd0VD-EfxNsxL71507jAjHVBP-0fvoBVOnHCHksPNsEl5jZ-QcoQZOgCIGIMO36QPXFASq8PAPC5rzoMauK1T4IzakwKnhvF2YAMd3f220DI&smid=url-share

janxdevil,
@janxdevil@sfba.social avatar

@johnshirley2024 They’re more like jet airplanes than cars. Most people will ride on vehicles owned by fleet operators.

SecurityWriter, to random

My cat is great at catching spiders. There are however a few caveats:

  1. Spiders must be sufficiently enormous to be fun. Somewhere between “Oh lawd he coming” and Shelob.

  2. Spider catching only happens at night, and only in the bedroom.

  3. Cat will make a few chirping noises to alert us that a spider is being hunted.

  4. All spiders must be delivered as gifts onto the chest or face of one of us.

  5. Note I only said great at ‘catching’. Delivered spiders are very much alive and very fucking irate about the current state of affairs.

janxdevil,
@janxdevil@sfba.social avatar

@SecurityWriter Cat is bringing you food. Cat is very worried that if you don’t learn to hunt spiders and eat them yourself then you’ll starve and never survive in the wild.

johnshirley2024, to scifi

Science fiction/ fantasy legend Terry Bisson is now written up in The New Yorker. Why, after Big Ink ignored him all these years? Because of his "This Month in History" series in Locus. Terry Bisson is a friend of mine, an editor of mine, and a mentor of mine. Avoiding any paywall, you can read the article here: https://archive.ph/k0RRI

Terry now has colon cancer...

janxdevil,
@janxdevil@sfba.social avatar

@johnshirley2024 Aw fuck. I hate cancer. Especially colon cancer.

pluralistic, to random
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

What to do with the Democrats: They want to do it? Let's make them do it.

https://doctorow.medium.com/what-to-do-with-the-democrats-011c1dd677d6?sk=f448f0212fff5c3bfcd3797a94b43e3c

janxdevil,
@janxdevil@sfba.social avatar

@pluralistic If we could make them do it, then it wouldn’t matter whether they want to do it.

maxkennerly, to random
@maxkennerly@mstdn.social avatar

This article is a reminder that Tesla is no closer than any other company to automated driving (and indeed they might be farther behind), they're just far more aggressive in their marketing and deployment of unreliable beta tech.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2023/tesla-autopilot-crash-analysis/?itid=hp-top-table-main_p001_f001&utm_source=reddit.com

janxdevil,
@janxdevil@sfba.social avatar

@maxkennerly “might be”

Look, there is a lot we could discuss about how close the major robot taxi players are to proving the tech is suitable for use on public roads. And reasonable people with different perspectives may come to differing judgments about that.

But nobody in the industry seriously believes that Tesla is even close to being on the same level as the other major players. It’s not in question. They are way way way behind.

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

The US seems to be drifting towards a parliamentary system without calling it that. Two of the last five presidents (and quite possibly three) have faced removal by impeachment trials in the Senate. Going back a few more presidents, Nixon almost certainly would have had he not resigned. McCarthy just lost a vote of no confidence. I'd say that we should rewrite the Constitution to adopt such a system explicitly, but in today's political climate I'm really afraid of what else would happen to it…

janxdevil,
@janxdevil@sfba.social avatar

@SteveBellovin In a properly functioning parliamentary system there are usually more than two parties and the election results typically determine the coalition that must be formed into a government. That’s not even remotely how the US is operating right now, and it’s doubtful that it ever will.

janxdevil,
@janxdevil@sfba.social avatar

@SteveBellovin There is No Labels currently trying to do something similar in Presidential politics, but things like that are never going to lead to anything like a parliamentary process because of Duverger’s Law. Would need to amend the constitution to adopt some kind of proportional representation voting system.

janxdevil,
@janxdevil@sfba.social avatar

@SteveBellovin Still the case that House rules basically give even a narrow minority basically no power even to put the brakes on a majority, much less influence its direction, the trade wind blows very hard against third parties arising out of any factional group in the House, and especially not a centrist one. The Blue Dogs once almost looked like they might make a run at it, but it was never a serious possibility.

janxdevil,
@janxdevil@sfba.social avatar

@SteveBellovin Yes, and like a government shutdown, that situation is unsustainable. A majority inevitably forms because that’s the only way to pass anything from the House, and the majority always operates the same way: along coalitions that anticipate the next election.

janxdevil,
@janxdevil@sfba.social avatar

@SteveBellovin Well, in the US, politics can stay in crisis and on the brink of catastrophe for longer than one might hope to wait for the revolution to come.

janxdevil, to random
@janxdevil@sfba.social avatar

People coming into my feed with BlueSky invites remind me of the dipshits trying to sell booze at an acid rave.

clive, to random
@clive@saturation.social avatar

Trump recently posted that America's top general should be put to death ...

... and it barely registered in daily news media

This, as Brian Klaas -- a scholar of political violence -- is truly bad. It's obviously horrific to have a leading presidential candidate, and former president, so nakedly endorse violence against top government figures ...

... but what's worse is growing numb to that

Klaas' essay: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/09/trump-milley-execution-incitement-violence/675435/

janxdevil,
@janxdevil@sfba.social avatar

@clive We’re not numb. We’re trying not to cry out from the pain because that only provokes them to inflict more.

mattblaze, to random
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

TIL that gold bars are prominently stamped with traceable serial numbers.

In unrelated news, I will no longer be accepting gold bars as payment for bribes. I apologize for any inconvenience.

janxdevil,
@janxdevil@sfba.social avatar

@mattblaze I think you might achieve higher density using EUR notes.

thomasfuchs, to random
@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io avatar

Programming pro tip:

Forget about computers and really think long and hard about how your software affects people.

janxdevil,
@janxdevil@sfba.social avatar

@thomasfuchs My hobby project is a programming language. This is gonna get pretty esoteric really quickly.

pluralistic, to apple
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

has no cannier, more dedicated adversary than whose most innovative work is dreaming up new ways to sneakily sabotage repair while claiming to be a caring environmental steward, a lie that covers up the mountains of that Apple dooms our descendants to wade through.

--

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently

1/

janxdevil,
@janxdevil@sfba.social avatar

@pluralistic

My favorite story about is about how a former employer of mine figured out how to flip a NVRAM bit in the PC Card Wi-FI decide they were using in the internal design of a peripheral appliance they were selling at a high margin for a price that undercut most of the competition, to turn their $99 “silver” model into the functional equivalent of their $499 “gold” model. (Same hardware, same software, difference was just the secret NVRAM bit set at the factory, and the label applied to the case.)

To cover their tracks, they designed the housing for the appliance so you couldn’t open it and get at the parts inside without destroying it. Eventually word got around that you could cut it open in a very specific way, then use the exposed internals to “upgrade” your PC Cards for free, but by then the parts were almost end of life, and the lost sales were negligible.

I think about that a lot when I hear stories about how automobile repair has turned into a racket.

feditips, (edited ) to random
@feditips@mstdn.social avatar

(Fediverse survey post, asking people to click on a web link to a Mastodon post and say what their app does with it.)

UPDATE: Aaaarrgghhhhhhh! 😱 I had a number of people asking me for clarification of the poll, so I edited option wording, but this caused it to reset the responses to zero. I am so sorry! 🥴

The latest figures before I messed this up were this:

About 75% of people clicking on a link to a Mastodon post saw it displayed a normal post, 25% saw it displayed in a browser window.

janxdevil,
@janxdevil@sfba.social avatar

@feditips There is also a preview of the page presented directly in the post with the link in it.

mekkaokereke, to random
@mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io avatar

🤔The News is a strange industry.

If every auto company owner stopped buying newspapers, the newspapers wouldn't even notice. That's only like, 1000 people. But if every auto company employee stopped buying newspapers, the industry would feel significant pain. That's over 2 million people.

And yet, UAW stories are framed from the perspective of owners, not employees? Tik-Tok and other social media coverage frames it from the perspective of employees.

And we wonder why paper sales are down.

janxdevil,
@janxdevil@sfba.social avatar

@mekkaokereke The advertising revenues dwarf the subscription and newsstand sales revenues. They could probably stay afloat by paying people to read the paper rather than charging them for it. But that would blow a gaping hole in the side of the whole theory they sell about how their business works to cover over how it works in actual practice.

khthoniaa, to random
@khthoniaa@pagan.plus avatar

A powerful critique:

janxdevil,
@janxdevil@sfba.social avatar

@khthoniaa post hoc ergo propter hoc.

Tweetfiction, to random

You know why the fascists win? Because they get the left to constantly fight amongst ourselves over purity tests. You're not socialist enough, or anarchist enough, or anti-racist enough or using the exact correct language when being a LGBTQ+ ally. It's why we lose, and why our spaces fall apart, why the real enemy runs rampant and destroys our world.

I'm so sick of seeing it, over and over again. Sigh...

janxdevil,
@janxdevil@sfba.social avatar

@Tweetfiction If only we could just eliminate the socialists, the anarchists, the anti-racists and the LGBTQ, then we’d finally be able to stop fighting with them about all these distractions and start winning again. Am I right?

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

“Can Large Language Models Reason?”

See Betteridge’s law

"On a dataset of programming challenges, GPT-4 solved 10 out of 10 problems that had been published before 2021 (GPT-4’s pre-training cutoff date) and zero out of 10 problems that had been published after 2021." https://aiguide.substack.com/p/can-large-language-models-reason

janxdevil,
@janxdevil@sfba.social avatar

@baldur I will believe that LLM’s can reason when somebody writes a theorem prover that uses one and it outperforms the ones we have today that don’t use them.

johnshirley2024, (edited ) to random

Used to be that if you didn't vote for Democrats you were creating a vacuum filled by conservatives. Now if you don't vote for Democrats, locally and nationally, you're permitting the takeover of fascists. The choice really is that stark now. I hear anarchist & Marxist friends saying, what about us? You can have anarchism or Marxism--locally. You can create communes and communities, and demonstrate locally how it works. A display of that alternative. Meanwhile vote against fascists.

janxdevil,
@janxdevil@sfba.social avatar

@johnshirley2024 Which presents a problem for those of us in places where all the candidates on every ballot are always Democrats, but some of them may or may not be happy to collaborate openly with fascists, while others are willing to do so quietly on the down-low in the back rooms while publicly denying it, and only a few are actually refusing to collaborate: the ones who never win.

janxdevil,
@janxdevil@sfba.social avatar

@johnshirley2024 Understood, and concur. Just expressing frustration that the problem is not as simple as just voting for whoever has a D next to their name, because it’s just not.

annaleen, to SanFrancisco
@annaleen@wandering.shop avatar

Question for anyone who is working on self-driving taxis here in ... What happens if someone barfs in the car? Is there some kind of barf recognition that tells the car to go back to the depot for cleaning?

janxdevil,
@janxdevil@sfba.social avatar

@annaleen We have interior cameras and rider support is watching. It’s early days still. At some point the monitoring will be less attentive. One imagines that vehicle will start showing up to calls and the customer will be unhappy at what they find inside because no humans were monitoring. The potential for horror seems non-zero.

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