HarkMahlberg

HarkMahlberg, 2 months ago

Which is still weird.

Alexander Sawchuk, then an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the University of Southern California ... along with a graduate student and the SIPI lab manager, was hurriedly searching the lab for a good image to scan for a colleague's conference paper. ... Just then, somebody happened to walk in with a recent issue of Playboy. The engineers tore away the top third of the centerfold so they could wrap it around the drum of their Muirhead wirephoto scanner...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna

Everything about the story sounds like it was a rush job, a decision made on a whim, after exhausting their existing catalog of test images. And who bring a Playboy mag to their university's computer lab, and advertises their possession? They don't even say who it was, probably to protect them from any embarrassing professional consequences. To me, that's probably the strongest reason to retire it: it's unprofessional.

HarkMahlberg, 3 months ago

"We have Fandango at home."

Fandango At Home at home:

HarkMahlberg, 3 months ago

Yeah that's the guy. Hilarious to see he thinks his garbage biased opinion is worth any amount of money.

HarkMahlberg, 3 months ago

Days after Wilkinson was killed, Johnston’s lawyer told reporters that “obviously, no one expected this to happen”.

This fucking nonce's very existence is an insult to all mankind.

HarkMahlberg, 3 months ago

How the tables have turned.

Sony won the case against Universal that allowed people to record TV shows with their VCR. I wonder how they'd feel if I pointed OBS at their streams.

HarkMahlberg, 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago)

In times like this, especially when the original twitter post gets ratio'd to shit, it's important to evaluate where they're getting their numbers. I see they post a link to Rumble. I've never heard of this before, what is it?

Rumble
Rumble is a video platform where you can watch live and on-demand content from various categories, such as news, politics, gaming, sports, viral, power slap and finance. You can also discover new creators, join communities, and support your favorite channels on Rumble.

Um... I don't know what Power Slap is but ok, it's a youtube clone.

All Videos
ALEX JONES EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW! Elon Brought Him Back... What's Next?!
Pentagon PANIC, Trump "Happening", Obama FEAR push, Cyber PUSH, Focus, Pray!
"HE'S BACK!!" Musk RESTORES Alex Jones On X…
NEWSMAX2 LIVE on Rumble

Oh fuck me it's a right wing nutjob site. This post is fucking dogshit, trashing Wikipedia because it helps counter their propaganda. Fuck that noise.

Happily other people noticed this fucking nonsense:

So I have no idea what the Lunduke Journal is, so I spent a couple minutes googling it to find its run by a Qanon guy and they themselves say their "tech satire" so... Maybe not someone you should trust with facts.

He says elsewhere that it’s a “liberal cesspool” so you know where is problem really is.

HarkMahlberg, 6 months ago

Stuart Seldowitz served as acting director for South Asia at the National Security Council under former President Barack Obama and worked in various roles in the U.S. government across decades under multiple presidents, according to government webpages and a biography for a government relations firm he worked with.

HarkMahlberg, 6 months ago (edited 6 months ago)

Your 1-sentence answer to understanding Gamergate has less to do with any of the people involved or a timeline of events. Gamergate, more than anything else, was an opportunity. A springboard to indoctrinate people into far right politics by playing to people's fear of the Other, mistrust in media, and stoking anger at a perceived scandal.

If it never happened, if it wasn't video games, it would just as well be something else. It would be music or sports or anything that people are passionate about. Right wingers were running out of steam with the Tea Party, and Gamergate was in the right place at the right time.

EDIT: Some contemporary discussion on GG actually, prophetically, supports this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/2k0bpi/why_gamergate_is_a_rightwing_movement/

https://www.reddit.com/r/AgainstGamerGate/comments/2km45o/a_few_days_ago_i_said_that_gamergate_was_a_right/

As someone on another forum said, the GG movement is primed to be the next young Republican demographic, and all of the pieces have been put into place to subvert the Authoritarian revolt into a rabid conservative base. So next year when all of the GGers (who remain) go from moderate liberals to Tea Party advocates, you can say you were at ground zero.

https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/comments/l3fq6t/the_tea_party_and_gamergate_were_things_i_was/

That got me thinking about my Q/MAGA following father and how both being indoctrinated into Tea Party politics as a teenage boy on top of Evangelical Christianity as well as being sucked into Gamergate and Sargon of Akkad's whole "classical liberalism" grift for a while. I see a lot of that same outrage and ingroup-outgroup clashing being taken advantage of by Q and MAGA.

HarkMahlberg, 7 months ago

And it shows. The number of major complaints about CS1 that were directly addressed in CS2 is staggering. Mixed use zoning, automatic cut and fill roads, smoother lane transitions, seasons, shit they hired the developer of popular mods (presumably to recreate their mods in the sequel at a foundational level).

https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/comments/qlaisn/macsergey_creator_of_intersection_marking_tool/

HarkMahlberg, 7 months ago

I think that's exaggerating. The instructions are actually fairly neutral and extremely informative, minus the obvious upsells on Microsoft software and services. It's clear that they ordered the list of install methods by lowest complexity and highest user-friendliness, specifically for people who have only ever known Windows. It's a good thing for Linux to give this audience a fallback option if something goes wrong with their install and they are unable to use it or fix it. If they get frustrated or brick their PC the first time they use Linux, they'll likely go back to Windows and never return.

They explain virtual machines, dual booting, the various pros and cons to different install methods, which methods are suitable for which purposes... I wish I had such a helpful article the first time I used Linux.

Now, my cynical read on this article is that it's a way for Microsoft to avoid the appearance of monopolizing the desktop market: "see regulators? we show people how they can leave our closed garden ecosystem!" But the text of the article is hardly one massive scare tactic.

HarkMahlberg, 8 months ago

High interest rates. They built up the entire industry on the concept that they would have access to cheap capital forever. Now they don't, so they're squeezing their userbases -- who they've already been squeezing even with low interest rates -- from absurdly greedy to Saturday morning cartoon villain.

That, and probably investment in commercial real estate, which of course tanked because of WFH, which is also why so many companies are forcing people back into the office.

HarkMahlberg, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago)

The bug is the feature. Firing 90% of the company doesn't just save you a ton of money, and doesn't just trim the fat or rot of a company. It removes any dissidents and skeptics who don't have total, unwavering, boot-licking loyalty. Even Musk fanboys were likely forced out just for questioning whether it was a good idea to fire 90% of them. The slightest hint of independent critical thinking is snuffed out by force, or leaves the company voluntarily when they see the writing on the wall, or they are merely unable to leave.

What else could that maneuver possibly produce except a small army of sycophants?

And then once you have those sycophants, it doesn't matter whether you make good or bad decisions, you will never ever be challenged on them. You don't have to worry about how your orders become reality or if you break any laws along the way, your gang of losers will make it happen and won't ask for a penny of overtime pay.

Hanlon's Razor is dead, at least as applied to Musk, because the malice and stupidity are one and the same.

EDIT: Consideration for H1B

HarkMahlberg, 8 months ago

It's actually fairly simple. If a user notices a post in their feed from an account they don't follow, they can simply click or tap on the three dot icon located in the upper right-hand corner of the specific post. This will open a drop-down menu.

However, if the post is an ad, this menu provides additional options. ... "Not interested in this ad," ... "Report ad" ... "Why this ad?"

You bet your ass that they are going to get rid of those options.

HarkMahlberg, 9 months ago

That's kind of the problem, they did fire their developers.

HarkMahlberg, 9 months ago

How am I not surprised this is how he would respond. This is the same guy who said "AdBlock is piracy," he doubles down on every shitty take he has.

HarkMahlberg, 9 months ago

The city’s entire five-officer police force and two sheriff’s deputies took “everything we have,” Meyer said, and it wasn’t clear how the newspaper staff would take the weekly publication to press Tuesday night.

The raid followed news stories about a restaurant owner who kicked reporters out of a meeting last week with U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner, and revelations about the restaurant owner’s lack of a driver’s license and conviction for drunken driving.

The search warrant, signed by Marion County District Court Magistrate Judge Laura Viar, appears to violate federal law that provides protections against searching and seizing materials from journalists. The law requires law enforcement to subpoena materials instead. Viar didn’t respond to a request to comment for this story or explain why she would authorize a potentially illegal raid.

It's all the hallmarks of shitty small town America. A police force literally smaller than a football team acting like a gang. Attacking independent journalism. Drunk driving, suspended/no license. And a Judge violating federal law. It's a perfect storm.

HarkMahlberg, 10 months ago

You know Mozilla's statement is actually pretty prescient. I haven't seen much discussion about this that didn't center around AdBlock or DRM or whatnot. But yeah, web development as a software discipline would be harmed by WEI too.

which as described would likely obstruct many existing uses of the Web such as assistive technologies, automatic testing, and archiving & search engine spiders. These depend on tools being able to receive content intended for humans, and then transform, test, index, and summarize that content for humans.

Like imagine if Google locked Inspect Element behind the site you're going to requiring the Human signature... Or the opposite!

HarkMahlberg, 11 months ago

/r/subreddit_simulator wasn't just an experiment, it was prophetic.