Mastodon Feed: Posts

Reblogged by jeffsonstein ("Jeff Sonstein"):
gparenti@mstdn.social ("Gail Parenti") wrote:

Attachments:

• A view up a wide set of stone stairs toward the remains of an Ancient Greek temple, with columns in evidence. An orange cat stands at the top of the stairs, looking out into the distance. It is a clear bright day and the sky is very blue. (remote)

jeffsonstein ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

one lesson this seems to point towards is to be careful about your training inputs, to filter out paranoid phantasies and such… just dumping huge inputs without care apparently results in weird outputs.

jeffsonstein ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

this is friggin’ hilarious https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily/id1200361736#episodeGuid=e1338f6a-33ca-4584-9468-c9a7421293f0

jeffsonstein ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

“He’s Energized Nigeria’s Young Voters. Will They Turn Out for Him?

The race is wide open in the presidential election in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation and a struggling economic powerhouse. Youth looking to evict the old guard are cheering on Peter Obi, a surprise third-party candidate.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/18/world/africa/nigeria-election-youth-obi.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

jeffsonstein ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

COVID & it’s effects were particularly deadly in America’s prisons:

“Altogether, at least 6,182 people died in American prisons in 2020, compared with 4,240 the previous year, even as the country’s prison population declined to about 1.3 million from more than 1.4 million.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/19/us/covid-prison-deaths.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Reblogged by jeffsonstein ("Jeff Sonstein"):
mastodonmigration@mastodon.online ("Mastodon Migration") wrote:

Attachments:

• The Exodus picks up steam. New user count chart showing stead increase in new users with the average now around 1000 new users per hour. 142,555 in the last week. (remote)

jeffsonstein ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

NASA astronomy picture of the day: “the Pleiades is shown here in infrared light where the surrounding dust outshines the stars”

Attachments:

• d8c86023816ffc2b.jpeg

jeffsonstein ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

LATimes:

“Los Angeles bishop shot dead in Hacienda Heights
A Los Angeles County bishop known as a "peacemaker" was found dead of a gunshot wound in Hacienda Heights on Saturday…

David O'Connell, who served as a priest and bishop in L.A. County for nearly half a century, was found dead in the 1500 block of Janlu Avenue in Hacienda Heights around 1 p.m., according to sheriff's officials and a statement from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Few other details were immediately released”

Reblogged by teller ("Siim Teller"):
prometheus@dice.camp ("Avery Prometheus Rosen") wrote:

Attachments:

• Closeup of the backsplash of a sink in an office bathroom with two very similar spigots emerging from it. One spigot has a blue post-it note labeled "Not Soap" over it, and the other has a yellow note labeled "Soap". (remote)
• The same backsplash as the other image from an angle that reveals 4 more pairs of spigots receding into the background, all bearing the same pair of color-coded post-its. (remote)

teller ("Siim Teller") wrote:

This is interesting - AI created country-as-a-supervillain. Estonia’s has hints of our medieval times but the art work on the costume is not very specific. I have to say some of them look really good. As someone said in the comments - waiting for this to come out as a game. https://youtu.be/T_2c-WEYHkU

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

Without help, without Apple, without Mozilla, we saw that a better world would be made by doing science rather than guessing. And so we built Origin Trials, and we managed the Blink Launch Process to be risk and evidence-based. We put developer feedback at the center.

And we held that standard against an almighty wall of whataboutism and gaslighting, even when it hurt our own people.

I have regrets, and yes, anger. Apple must not be let off the hook. True browser choice or GTFO.

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

I'm proud that in the face of absolute recalcitrance, we kept our quality bar, only shipped what was defensible, and did the hard work to make catch-up for trailing-edge browsers (Safari) easy and fast.

We didn't need to be that generous. We didn't need to make the lives of our engineers that much harder for the greater good.

We did it anyway.

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

Having it play out on a loop over a decade, with only relatively weak policy responses (e.g., the Blink Launch Process, in which we make developers walk uphill in the snow, both ways, when Apple withholds engagement, per usual[1]), has not been great! In fact, it's demoralising. They say "create dilemmas, not problems" for your enemies, and Apple have done that for their enemy (the web) *par excellence*.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Z83L6xa1tw

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

The web we could have had is about people, at the end of the day. Apple inserted their people and their (belligerent) omniscience for every single user and developer need, while keeping their boot on our faces the whole time.

Folks with less steel in their veins -- the good people that the web depends on to learn what users need and carefully build good solutions -- have been the first casualties.

I'm livid about it. They deserved better.

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

It's a minor point in the grand scheme, but Apple gaslighting -- enabled by shockingly unfair platform terms on iOS -- has been a key contributor in the horrible experiences that many of the best web platform engineers I've known have experienced.

For them, and for them alone, I can say confidently that Cupertino's got what's coming to them.

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

Drafting a post on Safari 16.4 beta news, and the footnote I'm having to add about a *single tiny sub-feature* that Apple fucked the entire community around on for SEVERAL YEARS, is a microcosm of GALAXY-SCALE GASLIGHTING.

Recalling what they did w/ whataboutist "just asking questions" to prevent the best, kindest, most thoughtful, most thorough engineers from shipping *what they knew was right* will make my blood boil for decades to come.

Reblogged by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

Reblogged by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
mikeindustries@macaw.social ("Mike Davidson") wrote:

Gargron ("Eugen Rochko") wrote:

Post editing is now available for testing in our iOS app's TestFlight!

Reblogged by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
garry@mstdn.social ("Garry Knight") wrote:

Reblogged by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
mmasnick ("Mike Masnick ✅") wrote:

Attachments:

• How much does the pope make? Let’s start with the money. According to salary comparison site Comparably.com, the average Pope in the United States earns $46,077 per year, but this is inaccurate. The position of pope offers no salary. The idea is that you’re living as Christ lived, off the kindness of others. But over a few thousand years, those “others” have been very generous—the Vatican City State and the Catholic Church are worth an estimated $30 billion, and it’s essentially at your disposal. As the absolute monarch of a small nation, you can have anything you’d ever want or need just by asking for it. So the pay is low, but benefits are good.

Reblogged by jeffsonstein ("Jeff Sonstein"):
aburtch@triangletoot.party wrote:

Reblogged by jeffsonstein ("Jeff Sonstein"):
fionabradley@fediscience.org ("Fiona Bradley") wrote:

Reblogged by jeffsonstein ("Jeff Sonstein"):
emilymbender@dair-community.social ("Emily M. Bender (she/her)") wrote:

Attachments:

• Screencap from article in pervious post: "By Friday night, Microsoft had started restricting how long the chatbot could talk, saying in an announcement that overly long conversations with people could “confuse” the bot into speaking in “a style we didn’t intend.” Before this latest episode, our reporter interviewed Bing. Here’s what happened:" Highlighted in blue: "our reporter interviewed Bing" (remote)

cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen") wrote:

Obviously, libraries spring to mind, and I do make use of them myself... But depending where you live, they can be quite limited. But still, maybe I just need to talk about the wonders of libraries more and convince others to build up their library systems. :)

cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen") wrote:

(You can still have the companies promising instant answers, but they're useful for things that change frequently like, "What movie is playing in the theater? What's the latest political scandal? Who should I be mad at today?")

cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen") wrote:

It occurs to me that a lot of very valuable human knowledge, thought, and culture is actually of a "slow" nature (holds still for long periods and is replaced slowly (if ever)). For example, you don't need the latest index of all the web, to provide high quality information on physics, chemistry, philosophy, literature, culture etc.

Does that leave room for search and curation techniques outside of the tech companies promising instant answers? If it does, how do we deliver it to people?

Reblogged by technomancy@icosahedron.website ("tech? no! man, see..."):
Elucidating ("⛈️ Information ⛈️") wrote:

jeffsonstein ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

so very true

Attachments:

• d9af42001da248dc.png

Reblogged by jeffsonstein ("Jeff Sonstein"):
oatmeal ("The Oatmeal") wrote:

Attachments:

• f0221e142e1dac86.png