Mastodon Feed: Posts

jscalzi@threads.net ("John Scalzi") wrote:

Gene Simmons can go fuck himself

RE: https://www.threads.com/@hollywoodreporter/post/DUqlyfTjpKY

kevinevans@hachyderm.io ("Kevin") wrote:

Oh hell yeah, my local gym is no longer putting national news on the TVs! It honestly was pretty awful when all eight TVs were on 24/7 news and was really a mood-killer when you're trying to de-stress and get a workout in.

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

Okay, I have a final-ish draft for my No Kings post. I'll post it at 3pm. (I'm giving myself a hard deadline)

I tried to keep my eyes on the organization itself, and not so much anyone participating in the marches because I don't want anyone to dig their heels into the sand. I want people to realize that branded activism doesn't have to define us. That we can change our minds.

But I also didn't want to mince words. Not that that's ever been a problem for me lol

Anyway, see you at 3PM EST

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
cyberpunklibrarian@masto.hackers.town ("Cyberpunk Librarian") wrote:

Ohhhhhh snap!

The signal is hot but the podcaster is not. Cyberpunk Librarian is back with episode 70 and Tales from the Dark Side. We’re gonna dive into the past and give you a talk that was the genesis of my Defcon 32 presentation. Let's talk about shadow libraries, shadow librarianship, and what the traditional library might learn from the underground.

https://cyberpunklibrarian.com/podcast/cyberpunk-librarian-episode-70-tales-from-the-dark-side/

Boosted by ratatui_rs@fosstodon.org ("Ratatui"):
orhun@fosstodon.org ("Orhun Parmaksız 👾") wrote:

Tetris in the terminal... but the blocks turn into sand? Damn what 🤯

🧩 **setrixtui** — A TUI puzzle game where falling blocks become sand

🎮 Clear lines by connecting one color from left edge to right edge

🦀 Written in Rust & built with @ratatui_rs

⭐ GitHub: https://github.com/Mjoyufull/Setrixtui

#rustlang #ratatui #tui #gamedev #terminal #puzzlegame #indiedev

Attachments:

• video: 3ed7daa89c195e98.mp4

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
chrisgeidner@journa.host ("Chris Geidner") wrote:

BREAKING: Judge blocks Hegseth effort to punish Sen. Kelly.

"This Court has all it needs to conclude that Defendants have trampled on Senator Kelly's First Amendment freedoms and threatened the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees."

Background: https://www.lawdork.com/p/breaking-kelly-sues-hegseth-over

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
ElbowsUpforDigitalSovereignty@thecanadian.social wrote:

Politicians are running away from X over the past year and we've posted some of the media coverage on our account. Our latest news post links to some high profile X exits, discusses the obvious reasons why it's happening, and wonders if elected officials and governments are running towards the right solution. We have to keep pushing the facts in front of this audience and steer them to the right path.

#MastoCanadaGOV #MastodonCanada #DigitalSovereignty
https://elbowsupdigital.ca/news/politicians-are-leaving-x/

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

"at a town hall meeting. Weiss told producers and staff they were free to leave if they didn’t like it.

Since then, at least six out of CBS Evening News’s twenty producers have accepted buyouts.

At that town hall meeting Weiss also named a bunch of new contributors — including the anti-aging influencer Peter Attia. In the latest tranche of Epstein Files, Attia appears over 1,700 times, including an email in which he tells Epstein that “p—y is, indeed, low carb.”

In a missive to the newsroom, Weiss declared that “We love America” should be a guiding principle for the relaunch of the CBS Evening News."

https://masto.ai/@rbreich/116058934507031995

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

"The anti-trust division is expected to play a critical role in assessing Netflix’s Warner Brothers Discovery’s deal to sell the Warner Bros. studio and HBO to Netflix, which Paramount is trying to stop by appealing straight to shareholders with its own bid. (CNN is owned by Warner Brothers Discovery.)"

https://flipboard.com/@cnn/politics-17jf08kfz/-/a-GZ6zI379QSOhaCdSNnGE5g%3Aa%3A132361178-%2F0

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
gottalaff.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy ("@GottaLaff") wrote:

2/ "Outrageous, Soviet-caliber falsehoods of Trump regime..are not “plausible denial” ..to push unpop policy or cover up dirty deeds..but vast empire of Big Lies—disprovable, abt everything from election results to econ stats—much more ambitious goal of undermining notion of objective reality."

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

this does not bode well for Republicans coming up for (re)election.

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

If you're a technologist in the US, I think it's worth sitting with the reality that the government's current abuses against the population are playing out almost every single *"if we allow databases of X, bad thing Y will be possible"* warning.

Performative privacy protections were never enough; we have to make them structural (in law), actionable (right-of-action for individuals), and national. Nothing else will do.

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
lolgop@journa.host wrote:

She wrote a global history of concentration camps. Now she has a warning for her own country.

In a better world, Andrea Pitzer would be delivering this warning on 60 Minutes.

But you need to listen to how we can stop these systematic atrocities being committed in our name on Next Comes What.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-do-you-call-warehouses-full-of-humans/id1779885475?i=1000749464532

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
adfichter@infosec.exchange ("Adfichter") wrote:

The war waged by the tech authoritarian oligarchy against the media has reached a new level:

#Palantir is suing us. Us, the Republik Magazin.

A small Swiss media company, funded by readers, founded in 2018 and free of advertising. I am not aware of any other media company globally that Palantir is currently targeting so aggressively.

What is this about? Together with my wonderful colleagues at the WAV research collective Jenny Steiner, Lorenz Naegeli, Marguerite Meyer, and Balz Oertli, we published a two-part series on Palantir's activities in Switzerland on December 8 and 9.

Using an extensive corpus of documents – which we obtained thanks to the Freedom of Information Act – we were able to trace a sales campaign over a period of seven years. Palantir tried to get in with many federal authorities – and was rejected everywhere.

And we also found out that the Swiss Army Staff evaluated the software and came to the conclusion that the army should refrain from using Palantir products.

Among other risks, they feared that data would be passed on to the US authorities.

Palantir is not just any company. ICE uses its products to hunt down migrants in the US. The Israeli army IDF uses the software in its Gaza offensive. The British health authority NHS has made itself dependent on the products for data analysis during the pandemic. And CEO #AlexKarp displays inhuman and aggressive rhetoric towards Europe, while the company itself advertises the “optimization of the kill chain.”

These are all facts, repeatedly verified and published by renowned media outlets. Our research relating to Switzerland and Zurich is based on this.

In addition to analyzing documents, we also spoke to various sources – including Palantir executives here in Zurich. The quotes used were presented to them and approved. Of course, we always adhered to the high standards of journalistic work. We conducted a thorough fact check before publication.

But the company doesn't want us to write the truth.

After the US company owned by right-wing tech billionaire #PeterThiel dedicated an absurd blog post to us, claiming some misinformation (such as that they had not participated in official tenders with the federal administration, a point we never claimed. On the contrary: we spoke from the outset of attempts to establish contact, sales talks, informal meetings, business as usual), after the Global Director of Privacy & Civil Liberties (PCL) Engineering and contact person for Swiss media Courtney Bowman launched personal attacks against us in LinkedIn comments between Christmas and New Year (“partisan fear-mongering”), Palantir's Swiss lawyers demanded a counterstatement on December 29.

We rejected this in its entirety.

In January, they demanded the same thing again. We rejected it again.

And now we see each other in court.

But why all this?

Our research on the Swiss army report caused a huge international media response. The Guardian and the Austrian newspaper Der Standard reported on the Swiss army's rejection. Numerous financial portals and stock market magazines picked up our news (which could have consequences for the overvalued stock market company Palantir).

And Chaos Computer Club spokesperson Constanze Kurz presented our research to a huge audience at the renowned IT conference Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg at the end of December.

All of this is making Palantir nervous.

We have now submitted a comprehensive defense brief. We can substantiate all of our findings with several documents and publicly available media reports.

We trust in the rule of law and freedom of the press in this country.

In keeping with yesterday's event “Zurich, little Big Tech City” at the Gessneralle, where we first announced this news exclusively to the audience on site:

World politics will soon be negotiated in Zurich: freedom of the press, the facts about ICE, Trump, Israel, Karp, tech authoritarianism.

The truth.

All this at the Zurich Commercial Court.

We will not be intimidated. And we will keep you informed.

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

Would you read a browser-engine oriented analysis of why traditional CSS-in-JS systems (e.g., Styled Components) are hellishly slow, and why extracting systems and Constructable Stylesheets scale better?

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
DoctorDeathray@retro.social ("Doctor Deathray") wrote:

Ok, I've been in my feelings for a day-and-a-half, but it's time to look for work after this layoff!

My latest roles include Sr. Analyst for HR Analytics (Power BI based reporting) and Chair of the Pride Alliance BRG (an LGBTQ+ Inclusion Business Resource Group/Employee Resource Group).

Prior to this, I have experience as the "Problem Solver" for Physical Music Products and freelance Audio Engineer/Technician work.

I'm open to any work in an inclusive environment, and I'm based in Chicago. Remote, Hybrid, or In-Person are all acceptable.

Thanks for reading, and I hope I can get #FediHired

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
balloob@fosstodon.org wrote:

Woohoo it is happening. WebSerial coming to @firefoxwebdevs ?!? 🎉🎉

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show%5Fbug.cgi?id=2010930

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

This thread took a turn lol but as I was writing it I remembered that I emailed Wikipedia asking for help with the block and never received a reply.

I was reading some very incorrect history about the Ponce Massacre with dubious sources and I, ask a Puerto Rican who knows the history, couldn't do anything about it.

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

I follow a lot of Wikipedians. They're great. Honestly one of my favorite internet communities.

But, of course, the American Wikipedia community is disproportionately white. And there isn't much curiosity as to why.

That is what irks me. If you're a part of a community that lacks diversity, it is your responsibility to ask why.

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

It'd be great to get in there and edit some of these pages, but my network is completely blocked from authoring Wikipedia entries.

Which, then makes me wonder, how Wikipedia's policy for blocking networks is effecting diversity. My neighborhood is mostly Puerto Rican and other Caribbean people. None of us are able to participate in the authoring of our own history because Wikipedia blocks us.

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

The Situationists were certainly inspired by Marxist philosophy, but no more than surrealist and Dadaism. Offical Culture and the spectacle are observations independent of Marxism.

But that description is less scary I suppose.

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

I sometimes wonder, in the past 3 or so years, if there was a mass effort to rewrite history on Wikipedia, and to make leftist theories scary to the lay.

Look at the intro paragraphs for "official culture" written in 2023 (left) vs today (right).

Could they shove the term "Marxist" in there more? Lmao.

[]3

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
garius@mastodon.me.uk ("John Bull") wrote:

Reminder that I am giving a talk on the battle between IBM and Compaq for the soul of the PC!

It's next week at the Computer Conservation Society. Tickets available for both in-person and online. #history #compaq #technology

https://www.computerconservationsociety.org/lectures/2025-26/20260219.htm

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
mhoye@cosocial.ca wrote:

In any case, I'm re-upping this in the hope that some of you find it useful: Maintenance terms and contribution terms for your projects.

https://github.com/mhoye/maintenance-terms/

The maintenance terms are, essentially, "provided as is means provided as is; your emergency is not my emergency". The contribution terms amount to "We will not accept large changes we haven't talked about first."

The real goal of this is social permission for maintainers, a sign to tap when they say "on my own time", or simply "no".

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

Don't love the computers more than you love people.

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

I was rereading Wirth's "A Plea for Lean Software". As I was reading, this evocative quote from Ellen Ullman came to mind.[2]

"We build our computers the way we build our cities -- over time, without a plan, on top of ruins."

Then I see people unleashing "petulant" "AI" on open source projects complete with a ranting blog post.[3][4]

It occurs to me that many of the practitioners of building computing systems want to skip the step of building anything on top of ruins and want to just go straight to laying ruins on top of ruins. Automating it so it is "efficient".

What a mess.

(Also, I assume github probably has the equivalent of sockpuppet accounts? Imagine defending the rights and feelings of a program used to harass an open source community.)

[1] https://cr.yp.to/bib/1995/wirth.pdf
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20210428114927/https://www.salon.com/1998/05/12/feature%5F321/
[3] https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/pull/31132
[4] https://crabby-rathbun.github.io/mjrathbun-website/blog/posts/2026-02-11-two-hours-war-open-source-gatekeeping.html

db@social.lol ("David Bushell ☕") wrote:

did I ever say what my plans were for bankrupt.dev because I honestly don't remember buying it

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

there are days I hate the snowplow for what it does to the entrance to our driveway

NfNitLoop ("Cody Casterline 🏳️‍🌈") wrote:

We were also briefly using "acceptance rate" as a metric, until I pointed out that I had been experimenting with AI agents, letting it code, trying to correct it with feedback like I'd give to a Jr. Developer... only to throw away the entire branch of work after I deemed it a dead-end time sink.

"Acceptance rate" doesn't mean the LOC actually ended up committed, or merged unmodified. Or survived contact with production environments. 😅

NfNitLoop ("Cody Casterline 🏳️‍🌈") wrote:

The post is mostly good, but it suggests tracking:
> What percentage of production defects trace back to AI-generated code versus human-written code?

Unfortunately, a problem with IDE-based AI suggestions is that, AFAIK, there is no way to trace which lines of code were written by the developer vs. suggested by an LLM.