javi

javi, 3 days ago to random

I think we should be grateful to Google for creating their AI search thing to fill the ecological niche left empty by the death of Yahoo Answers

javi, 4 days ago to random

I'm losing my shit about the Windows AI spyware feature storing it's data in windows registry and dumping all the text that goes in you screen into a sql-lite database.

At first I thought it was a joke, holy fuck.

javi, 5 days ago (edited 5 days ago) to random

You probably have seen already all the caps about google AI recommending to put a bit of glue in your pizza sauce. You may have seen also how someone digged up that it comes from a reddit shitpost from ten years ago.

This case illustrate perfectly something I've been saying for a while: chatbots are basically a cosmetic upgrade over the good old "I'm feeling lucky" Google button.

Or more exactly: a new version of the button that needs 600 million $ in Nvidia gear every month and wastes half a liter of water every time you click it

javi, 6 days ago (edited 6 days ago) to random

What's more insane about the new windows built-in spyware (apart from the very basic fact that... Well, they have actually done it) is that... They are selling it as an AI feature?¿

As they have explained it, what it basically does is to store a screencap every few seconds in a folder that tents makes 10% of your disk where the fuck does ai is used there? What's next? Ai-powered mouse pointers?

javi, 7 days ago to random

So, openAi used Scarlet Johansson's voice even after she declined their request to do so. You know, Scarlett Johansson, the massively popular film star who once sued Disney.

But hey I'm sure they are going to remove our Tumblr posts from their training corpus once we request it, even if automattic sold them without any legal bound to do so. I'm sure they will.

javi, 8 days ago to random

Ok, now the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, clearly accusing him of war crimes and crimes against humanity, I hope that means it's time for the UK, US, Germany, etc to finally drop the support for the gazan genocide. I'm probably too naive, though.

javi, 9 days ago to random

Oh my god, I have wanted tumblr to add this filter to the notifications tab FOR YEARS. I mean the "only from people you follow" in the top right. I don't know how I didn't think about adding it to goblin since the very beginning, but it's done now, yay!

javi, 13 days ago to random

I've been a happy user of Nothing audio for years. I've had a pair of Nothing Ear(1), which I replaced with a Nothing Ear(2) when one of the earbuds broke, and then I even got their Nothing Phone (actually my current phone). It's, basically, the brand I've felt more loyalty towards for literal decades.

So when two days ago I stepped over one of the earphones and cracked the plastic shell, I was sure I was going to get a new pair.

Long story short, I've been just checking their site, looking for the name and price of their last model, and saw this:

And... fuck this shit. Fuck it with a flamming iron rod. You were making some awesome, high-quality and more or less cheap, earphones, you were doing so good, but you had to integrate this earth-burning snake oil on your product? fuck it. I won't pay for any fucking hardware integrated with that nightmare.

So long story short:

Any recommendation for some good bluetooth earphones? No apple products, but anything else I'm willing to consider.

javi, 16 days ago to random

Hey Sundar, here is a free piece of advice:

Announcing your record profits from the past Q will, likely, lead to "fewer layoffs" is not the morale boost you think it is.

javi, 16 days ago to random

If you think about it, justifying the Gaza genocide because of October 7th and the need to get rid of Hamas to prevent another one is fucked up even if you really believe Israel is trying to minimize civilian deaths.

There are two ways you can think of Hamas:

As a terror group. As such, those who have been active part in a terror strike should be detained and brought to trial. Executing every member of the organisation without trial is extremely fucked up.

As a foreign nation army who started a war against Israel. As such, Israel should avide to rules of war, and doing things like targeting enemies while not mobilised, like in their civilian homes, it's a hell of a war crime and extremely fucked up

So even if you bought into the propaganda, what Israel is doing is just beyond fucked up and indefensible.

javi, 17 days ago (edited 17 days ago) to random

Shit is going down HARD in Eurovision right now.We are hours from the beginning of the fest and in the last couple of hours:

The french artist stopped his song during the dress rehearsal today, gave a speech about peace, and left the stage

The Irish ones sent a press release asking the EBU to disqualify Israel for the comments their broadcaster had done about the Irish song

Both Ireland and Greece didn't show up to the festival flag parade that kickstarts the show.

Norway's artist who were going to be the spokesperson of the jury tonight announced she is declining to participate... An hour ago, about 8 hours before she would have to go live

RE: https://goblin.band/notes/9t5qbo5qfs3a8r19

javi, 17 days ago (edited 17 days ago) to random

Fuck, this may very well be the end of Eurovision as a cultural force in Europe.

What's going on:

The Dutch artist have been showing some mild unease at the Israel presence there this year during the past week. The Irish ones have been forced to change their looks because it included the words "ceasefire" and "freedom for Palestine" in ancient gaelic script.

Yesterday, someone from the Israel delegation staff joked about the dutch artist's father death (the Dutch song is dedicated to him) and there was "an incident" (undisclosed, but the rumor-mill says the Dutch guy may have punched the jokester it looks it was only a verbal confrontation)

Eurovision have disqualified the Netherlands from today's final.

The Dutch broadcaster association (those who pick who to send to EV) posted this a few hours ago:

There has been protest within the Finnish public broadcaster asking for Finland withdrawal

The head of the political party who is the junior partner in the government of Spain is also calling for our withdrawal.

The Israeli delegation seem to have spent the week literally harassing anyone they perceive as critical, with several complains about their behavior already being published.

The Israeli song is one of the favorites to win, and if they do, next year Eurovision would be organized by them. If that happen, there is no way several countries wouldn't just refuse to take part.

So yeah, there is a chance this may be it for the festival. Good job, Eurovision. Great fucking job.

javi, 17 days ago to random

Fuck it looks like the "threatening gesture" was to push down her camera so she stopped recording him. Kicking him out only for that is beyond absurd, so ...

RE: https://goblin.band/notes/9t5yadoem3vfltmw

javi, 17 days ago to random

A spanish journalist covering Eurovision got harassed by his Israeli colleagues after he shouted "Free Palestine!" during the Israel rehearsal, and that has prompted the Spanish national broadcaster to fill a complaint with the Eurovision organizers prompting them to ensure the safety of the press.

https://www.europapress.es/sociedad/noticia-periodista-espanol-denuncia-prensa-israeli-le-intimidado-eurovision-gritar-palestina-libre-20240510203844.html (spanish link, sorry, the only english media I've seen covering the issue is The Mirror and I won't degrade y'all by linking them)

Somehow I'm still at marvel that, for once, Spain has half a foot in the correct side of history instead of our usual happy prancing around the vilest shit possible.

javi, 24 days ago to random

BIRD RACE

javi, 26 days ago to random

I'm absolutely appalled by how the US university top brass have decided to cosplay the Vietnam war protests.

What they expect to happen by cracking down peaceful protest camps?

javi, 27 days ago (edited 27 days ago) to random

One: a Nazi promotes her own speech about The Great Replacement (core Nazi doctrine)

Two: Musk promotes the post and says the problem with [Nazi doctrine] is that it doesn't center enough in [Nazi historical doctrine]

Three: my ex-boss and automattic and Tumblr CEO jumps in to recommend Elon a book about [Nazi doctrine]

So yeah, my ex-boss seems to be full in the movement.

Now let me remind you about this thing called reality:

US population grew 0.4% last year

EU population grew 0.1% last year

World Population? +0.8%

None of those figures has gone under 0 in the last 50 years (and probably before, I just don't want to look for more data). The population collapse the are talking about is about WHITE population. If someone talks about population decline, they are a white supremacist.

Good fucking grief.

javi, 1 month ago to random

Look, USians, I don't want to step into your internal politics, but you see, 45 years ago, we spaniards had the occurrence to write in our constitution that the head of state (the king) has immunity from prosecution for anything they do while they are in the job, and now we have an ex-king with a Wikipedia page that includes a "alleged corruption" section 55 paragraphs long.

And it's only "alleged" because he can't be taken to court even with the piles of evidence that exist.

Just saying.

javi, 29 days ago to random

Our president (center-left in social issues, kind of economical liberal in economics) just announce he's not stepping down, after 5 days of meditating about it.

Now the right wing is furious with him because they feel he's dishonest and he should have actually stepped down for multiple reasons

The left is furious with him because he had ignore the smear campaign the right wing media has been running against every single left wing politician for a decade until now, and with this stunt he has made it all about him.

And look, the guy is a clown, and mostly a centrist which I disagree with in almost every single economic measure he has taken (or refused to take). But the reality is that if he had stepped down, we would have gone for general elections, and the chances of the right wing party teaming up with the actual fascist party to get to the government would have been extremely high.

So yeah, I'm relieved we are keeping our liberal clown president for another year, given how the alternative is having actual fascists as head of several ministries.

javi, 1 month ago to random

And you be clear of what I mean: there isn't any "non profit" reasons for a German company to stablish a non-profit entity in the US. Zero.

RE: https://journa.host/users/w7voa/statuses/112343524122689542

javi, 1 month ago to random

Btw, as a citizen of a country that as recent as... [checks notes] ... five months ago, expelled three US spies for trying to infiltrate some government agencies, I find hilarious that there is a moral panic over there about the Chinese government theoretically having the chance of using TikTok for spying matters.

javi, 1 month ago to random

Yeah , tell that to the children who, as we speak, are very much being killed by us-made bombs after being selected as targets by US-made software. Get the fuck off, murderer

javi, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago) to random

offf, this story about how Google made google search into a pile of seagull shit hits me hard:

https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/

Around the time of this story, I was living through a similar situation in my work life (on a much smaller scope, of course, WordPress.com first, Tumblr later).

Back in 2019, working on WordPress, I started finding myself, almost weekly, arguing against people who wanted to take the product we were working at and made it worse if that mean they could squeeze 0.1% more revenue from it

The 0.1% figure is not even a random number: I remember this speciffic A/B test on WordPress.com that was declared a success and shipped to 100% of the users because it increased the free-to-paid conversion by 0.1%. Soon after it was released, I found out that as a side effect, it increased the churn of free users by 20 something %,so I called for an urgent rollback and removal of the change. So I was promptly explained that we didn't care about free-users churn, because finance had calculated the average long-term value of the free users to be something like $2 per year, and the increase in conversion was bigger than what we could get from them.

Everything became about growth hacking. Everything became thinly-veiled dark patterns. In our private dev slack channels, we joked that since it was impossible to make it smaller or less conspicuous, the next thing the growth team was going to ask us to do was to make the 'free plan' button flee away from the mouse pointer when the user tried to click it. We kept making our product worse, we kept consciously crippling the cheaper versions so we could force people to move to the more expensive options.

Back then I was the lead of one of the two dev divisions working on WordPress.com, so my job was mainly to discuss what we were going to be doing, when and how. And I was getting drained by a constant state of fight against a constant wave of shit they wanted us to build. So much than by the end of 2020, the CEO quietly told me to follow the growth team plans and shut up or step down.

So I requested to move to tumblr, because I thought the pastures were greener over there. But it was all the same: Adding login walls to what we were pretending to be "the last bastion of the free internet", cramping in embarrasingly obvious money-making schemes disguised as features, and making them silently opt-out instead of opt-in so the less people the possible would deactivate them, having to fend off the pressure from the CEO to make everything algorithmic timelines because, you know, tiktok makes a lot of money and why aren't we, etc etc.

I found myself in a place where building something good that people enjoy using was no longer a priority, but tricking people into generating more money for the company was. And when I looked around me, I could see that happening everywhere else, not only in my company. Experiencing the start of the enshittification years from inside wasn't easy.

And, as in the article, the people who decided to turn the shit-metter up to 200%, have a name, in every case. And these people, no matter if they are called Sundar and Prabhakar or Matt and Mark, are destroying the internet. These people are milllionaires, or billionaries, and are destroying our shared, common spaces to squeeze some extra cash from us.

That's why the fediverse and its principles are important. Because that's how we take back internet from their dirty hands. That's how we make internet resilient against them. That's how we build the commons.

javi, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago) to random

@thisismissem :

Fun fact! A couple of months before being shown the door of Tumblr Staff, I tried to make the case of tumblr product direction changing dramatically to consider something I thought it was crucial.

Until that point, everytime we got a big wave of new users (because of Elon doing shit, Reddit's CEO doing shit, etc), Tumblr struggled to keep most of them around for more than a few hours. That tracked with the experience of the majority of automattic management, who couldn't manage to become regular tumblr users themselves. And the consensus was that we needed to change Tumblr to make it more appealing to non-tumblr users, so it could grow, and that could lead to be sustainable, etc.

The point I tried to make is that we didn't need to make tumblr pallatable for more people, but the opposite. Some informal polling, both done by myself and others, clearly pointed at something big we were ignoring. Tumblr does EXCEPTIONALLY well among two groups of people: Queer and neurodivergent folk.

Even looking internally, at who within automattic became a regular tumblr user and who tried but failed to stick around after the acquisition, the biggest prescriptor of someone being in the first group was being either neurodivergent or queer. If you were both, basically there was a 100% chance you were on tumblr daily already.

So I wrote a internal long memo sharing the polling data, digging up numbers of people who self-identify as queer in the US and people who has been diagnosed as neurodivergent, and tried to build the case that since they were the core of the tumblr userbase already, we shouldn't try to dilute whatever made tumblr attractive to them to try to appeal to a wider audience, but the opposite: We needed to dig in and become the neurodivergent queer site for real, and try to grow by bringing in people who may already feel like tumblr was a good home for them.

What I got with that internal post? A lot of likes from queer and neurodivergent staff members and a polite "thank you for your suggestion, we'll keep you in our thoughts and prayers" from management. The CEO and COO just kept insisting that they wanted to make tumblr the home for people who loved art, and ignoring one of the most succesful posts in the history of the platform is about a pineaple and a werewolf (if you know you know).

So yeah, I'm not surprised about that poll. At all.

RE: https://hachyderm.io/users/thisismissem/statuses/112249180947189456

javi, 1 month ago to random

Just a general reminder that when Automattic sold millions of 2012 teenage selfies from tumblr to OpenAI and Midjourney without asking for consent first, they were MASSIVELY violating GDPR too:

https://qbankdam.com/en/blog/seeing-the-whole-picture-how-gdpr-views-your-images-as-personal-data