kit ✅ 🍵🍂 @wlonk@mastodon.transneptune.net

@Gargron more than 100 days of lockdown in Kashmir.

What are you doing with a computer connected to the internet that you wish was easier?

My cases:
* publishing my notes
* running a game server and a forum
* running a mastodon instance
* sharing code I've written
* making plans with my friends

4. I can't help but wonder: Cui bono?

Started training a bot that tries to analyze and identify hate-speech on Twitter.

A few things became quite apparent after only a few days:

1. There are huge networks of (seemingly) fake accounts that like and retweet each other's posts. Someone is operating this at a _massive_ scale.

2. Reporting and banning fake accounts seems futile. You're fighting a hydra that spawns new accounts quicker than one can report them.

3. I'm feeling sick to my stomach just browsing through the logs.

I commissioned a designer friend to make me something cursed.

Also you can have it as a t-shirt if you want: https://www.redbubble.com/people/sixohsix6/works/42260693-ok-boomer-but-its-a-social-media-network-2

friendly reminder that discord constantly hits /api/v6/science every time you do basically anything in discord with the details of what you did, which is an honestly creepy amount of data collection, and if you're using the browser version of discord you can disable that by pasting the following rule into your ublock:

||discordapp.com/api/v6/science$important,1p

Stopping git naming the first branch "master":

reducto$ git config --global init.templateDir ~/.config/git/template
reducto$ mkdir -p ~/.config/git/template
reducto$ echo "ref: refs/heads/main" > ~/.config/git/template/HEAD
reducto$ mkdir newRepo
reducto$ cd newRepo/
reducto$ git init
Reinitialized existing Git repository in /home/kurt/newRepo/.git/
reducto$ git status
On branch main

No commits yet

nothing to commit (create/copy files and use "git add" to track)

From https://twitter.com/_Gaeel_/status/1184740771548803077

RT @noisejockey@twitter.com
Scott Jaeger of Industrial Music Electronics posted this, and it’s the most oddly inspiring things I’ve seen in a while.

"Microsoft-owned GitHub will renew a $200,000 contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, despite concerns about the Trump administration’s policies, according to a leaked email." https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/9/20906213/github-ice-microsoft-software-email-contract-immigration-nonprofit-donation

In this spookiest of seasons, do you want to do something #magical? Make something brand new come into existence, filled with #art & #game materials!

Back Homunculus Assembly Line to be a part of the magic, & retoot & share! Hurry, time is short! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/briecs/homunculus-assembly-line

"Meaningful consent" implies more than a clause in the user agreement that says "we can update this at any time." It requires engagement with the userbase at large - and thus guarantees conflict, and compromise.

Maybe Apple would still have disabled this framework. Maybe not. What I do know, with high confidence, is that they didn't ask anyone outside the company if it was okay to do so, or explain what it would mean.

The latest Safari update permanently disables the framework uBlock Origin (and, incidentally, 1Password version 6 and lower) relies on. There will no longer be a uBlock version for Safari.

A while ago, someone on Twitter raised the point that users are rightfully gunshy about software updates because developers often use them to make unilateral and unwelcome changes. The question "did your users meaningfully consent to this change" goes unasked, let alone unanswered.

I want better.

Mass arrests of indigenous elders and protectors in Waimanalo on Oahu island, livestream from save_our_sherwoods on instagram right now, media is dead silent.

RT @ed_hawkins@twitter.com
Anyone with experience in OCR or AI/ML looking for a challenge to solve which would help climate science?

We have thousands of pages of historical weather observations which need numerical values extracting efficiently & accurately so we can better understand extreme weather.

The realization: the perfect audience for any advertising company is a person who’s impulsive, angry, frightened and tired. The cyclic relationships between what you see and how you feel and react means that any machine learning effort aimed at improving business outcomes for an advertising company will unavoidably optimize itself towards creating an audience that’s impulsive, angry, frightened and tired. The incentives don’t permit any other outcome, whatever the people working there say.