@drahardja@sfba.social cover
@drahardja@sfba.social avatar

drahardja

@drahardja@sfba.social

Software since 1998. Ex-Apple.

Black lives matter. Trans lives matter. LGBT+ rights are human rights. Healthcare, security, a decent income, and housing with dignity are human rights. Abortion is healthcare. Science is our best hope as a species. Kindness and empathy are the noblest of human traits.

I block assholes and bigots.

He/him.

My posts are searchable.

Profile photo credit: Krishna Manda

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. For a complete list of posts, browse on the original instance.

drahardja , to random
@drahardja@sfba.social avatar

Remember how we fixed a hole in the ozone layer 40 years ago?

StarLink: Hold my beer

“SpaceX's Starlink May Be Keeping the Ozone From Healing, Research Finds”

https://futurism.com/the-byte/spacex-starlink-ozone-healing

GottaLaff , to random
@GottaLaff@mastodon.social avatar

People want this??

Via Kyle Griffin:

In an interview with Mediaite, ex- Communications Director Alyssa Farah Griffin confirms Bill Barr's story that Trump threatened, at different times during his presidency, to execute his own staff and Americans.

"How do you rationalize that is a person fit in sound judgment to be president of the United States?"

drahardja ,
@drahardja@sfba.social avatar

@GottaLaff Yes, they do. Trump supporters don’t appear to have any value system other than having unlimited privilege above the out-groups. The more unaccountable their champion is, the more secure they feel in their privileged position.

drahardja , to random
@drahardja@sfba.social avatar

Good to remember.

drahardja , to random
@drahardja@sfba.social avatar

I’m astounded that shareholders voted to reinstate Musk’s $56B pay package.

I’m no CFO, but I think this pay package has to be made through the issuance of new TSLA stock—but without capital being infused in exchange. That means that values of existing shares of TSLA must be diluted. Since $56B is roughly 10% of Tesla’s current market cap of $580B, that means each share of TSLA must devalue by about 10% to balance the books. Right?

In other words, shareholders voted to devalue their own shares to transfer wealth to Musk.

Am I right? Someone with a finance major please check me.

drahardja , to random
@drahardja@sfba.social avatar

I watched the two videos from and have some thoughts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLf44BXd0SE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fsjw9Z4c-EQ

The new CarPlay design system inverts the relationship between carmaker and iPhone, and places the (mostly) in control of the entire dashboard including the primary instrument cluster behind the steering wheel. Instead of CarPlay receiving a rectangle into which it can render images, the car creates configurations that CarPlay then uses to insert their gauges, camera feeds, and controls. But CarPlay is ultimately in charge of nearly every pixel of the display (with the exception of telltale lights). Even the government-regulated displays like speedometer and fuel gauge are configured through iPhone, even though they are rendered by the car.

cont’d…

drahardja , to random
@drahardja@sfba.social avatar

The longer you look at Elon Musk, the worse he looks. Kinda like the Cybertruck, really.

“Elon Musk has unusual relationships with women at SpaceX, WSJ reports”

https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/12/24176705/spacex-elon-musk-gwynne-shotwell-sexual-relationships

futurebird , to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

So, uh, basically we destroyed the whole world because the people who were telling us how to save it were SO ANNOYING. I guess it sucks that we’re all gonna die before our times and suffer— but, hey at least we showed those nosey know-it-alls!

They can’t tell us what to do!

And, that right there is what you call: FREEDOMS.

USA USA USA

drahardja ,
@drahardja@sfba.social avatar

@futurebird The works well for climate denialism.

TonyStark , to random
@TonyStark@progressivecafe.social avatar

Far from being a victim of the legal system, this man has been coddled and protected like no other criminal defendant in history.

Trump Georgia election case halted for challenge to DA:
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/05/trump-georgia-election-case-halted-pending-outcome-of-challenge-to-da.html

drahardja ,
@drahardja@sfba.social avatar

@philip_cardella @ClintBarton @JamesRhodes @TonyStark I wouldn’t. He’s not going to honor his end of the bargain—he has never been trustworthy; why would he start now?

He’s a narcissist, and he’s addicted to the public attention. He’s never going to shut up. His cult will continue to fester.

Let him die in prison.

drahardja ,
@drahardja@sfba.social avatar

@philip_cardella @ClintBarton @JamesRhodes @TonyStark He’s not going to honor it. Why even offer it?

drahardja , to random
@drahardja@sfba.social avatar

If you use Bartender and haven’t received the update with the new code signing certificate, DISABLE UPDATES NOW.

If you updated to anything beyond version 5.0.52, TURN OFF PRIVACY PERMISSIONS TO THE APP and delete it.

Remember, Bartender needs permission to record your screen to work. This can get bad. https://sfba.social/@drahardja/112561678013832666

drahardja , to random
@drahardja@sfba.social avatar

Please do not trust AI with your health.

Screenshot of a Gemini Advanced result stating that a mushroom in the user’s picture “appears to be of a white button mushroom”. Various comments say that is in fact a Destroying Angel mushroom. “Fun fact—when you die a day or two after eating this, they will be able to pour your liver out of your body at the autopsy.”
ALT
  • Reply
    • + ariadne, Npars01
    drahardja , to random
    @drahardja@sfba.social avatar

    Someone is selling a $15k Faraday cage for the #Cybertruck for “doomsday” EMP attacks. 🤣🤣🤣

    Literally a tinfoil hat for your douchepanzer.

    I guess they figure OTA software updates can wait while they’re protecting you from the zombie apocalypse.

    A fool and their money, etc.

    #tesla #ev #doomsday #apocalypse #conspiracy #tinfoilHat

    https://mosequipment.com/products/mission-darkness-cybercylent-emp-faraday-car-cover

    drahardja , to random
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    drahardja , to random
    @drahardja@sfba.social avatar

    It’s possible that instead of gaining $45B this year, Elon could lose $3B of profit to this lawsuit. Sounds great to me.

    “Tesla shareholder sues Musk for alleged $7.5 billion insider trading”

    https://www.reuters.com/legal/tesla-shareholder-sues-musk-alleged-75-billion-insider-trading-2024-06-01/

    Unpaywalled: https://archive.ph/eAUHH

    futurebird , (edited ) to random
    @futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

    These AI SEO spam operations have used lists of common searches to ensure that their pages come up first in searches in the “long fat tail” the kind of search where it used to be about 50/50 if you’d find a page addressing your needs. But, it used to be if you found something like “The top 15 smallest ants in the world” it wouldn’t be nonsense. It’d either exist and be the work of another person who cared OR you found nothing. Not so now! I can’t possibly over-stress how bad this is! 1/

    drahardja ,
    @drahardja@sfba.social avatar

    @futurebird Like someone said, you don’t have to burn down the Library of Alexandria to make it useless; you just have to stuff it full of plausible-sounding scrolls that actually contain nonsense.

    drahardja , to random
    @drahardja@sfba.social avatar

    So a German magazine decided to run an “interview” with Michael Schumacher, in which Schumacher’s “responses” were fabulations generated entirely by .

    The real Michael Schumacher sustained a brain injury in 2013 and has not recovered.

    The Schumacher family sued the magazine and won a settlement. But the fact that this story ran at all is beyond dumbfounding.

    https://www.thedrive.com/news/michael-schumachers-family-gets-settlement-after-fake-ai-interview

    mastodonmigration , (edited ) to random
    @mastodonmigration@mastodon.online avatar

    So now SpaceX, with no working spacesuit, and years behind on it's multi-billion dollar moon lander, is lobbying NASA to go to the Hubble Space Telescope.

    "A successful private mission could improve Hubble's ability to point at celestial objects and, by boosting its orbit, extend its life by years... however, an accident could leave the multibillion-dollar telescope broken — or, even more tragically, tethered to the dead bodies of the astronauts sent to repair it."

    https://www.npr.org/2024/05/16/1250250249/spacex-repair-hubble-space-telescope-nasa-foia

    drahardja ,
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    @mastodonmigration Rinse, repeat

    drahardja , to random
    @drahardja@sfba.social avatar

    Much as I dislike the theft of human labor that feeds many of the products we see today, I have to agree with @pluralistic that law is the wrong way to address the problem.

    To frame the issue concretely: think of whom copyright law has benefited in the past, and then explain how it would benefit the individual creator when it is applied to . (Hint: it won’t.)

    Copyright law is already abused and extended to an absurd degree today. It already overreaches. It impoverishes society by putting up barriers to creation and allowing toll-collectors to exist between citizen artists and their audience.

    Labor law is likely what we need to lean on. and protect creators in a way that copyright cannot. Inequality and unequal bargaining power that lead to exploitation of artists and workers is what we need to address head-on.

    Copyright will not save us.

    “AI "art" and uncanniness”

    https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/13/spooky-action-at-a-close-up/#invisible-hand

    drahardja OP ,
    @drahardja@sfba.social avatar

    @990000 I would go further to say that applying law to will take us further from the equitable future we want. If copyright is successfully applied to AI, what we will see after the dust settles is a handful of media behemoths that profit mightily from AI, without slowing down the damage that AI does to the value of creative human labor.

    I always return to this pithy guide by @emilymbender when thinking about this topic: we need to think of AI as automation, albeit one that is more effective at displacing a wide variety of human labor than ever. We can’t use copyright to stop automation; it will just enrich a different set of kingpins without stopping its effects.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK0md9tQ1KY

    drahardja , to random
    @drahardja@sfba.social avatar

    There are pink skies all over Europe right now!

    https://www.foto-webcam.eu/webcam/lucknerhaus/

    drahardja , to random
    @drahardja@sfba.social avatar

    A moderator of a FB group I frequent has fallen headlong into the “politeness” trap, insisting that participants observe “civility” and “manners” when they post.

    Many of you probably already recognize that is a trap. It is a tool used by aristocrats and the powerful to silence dissent, by protesting how the oppressed choose to cry, instead of dealing with why they cry. Southern slaveowners were probably the most polite bunch of folks you’ll ever know.

    Focus on what’s important: kindess, empathy, respect, tolerance. And tell politeness to go fuck itself.

    drahardja , to random
    @drahardja@sfba.social avatar

    Reminder to not work yourself to death for the sake of your employer.

    THEY ARE NOT LOYAL TO YOU.

    “Tesla Rewards Dedicated Worker Who Showered at Factory and Slept In His Car By Firing Him”

    #ev #cars #tesla #employment #workers

    https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-worker-showered-factory-slept-laid-off

    GottaLaff , to random
    @GottaLaff@mastodon.social avatar

    Via Ben Wikler:

    Absorb this graph—but note that the final year is 2018, the year of Trump’s tax cuts. That’s #Trump’s big goal, always has been: to rip off working people and hand huge bags of cash to the ultra-wealthy, like himself and his Mar-a-Lago buddies.

    Rutger Bregman:

    Stunning graph: the plummeting tax rates of the richest Americans. For the first time in history, billionaires have a lower effective tax rate than working-class Americans.

    drahardja ,
    @drahardja@sfba.social avatar

    @GottaLaff Don’t forget corporate stock buybacks, which accelerate cost increases to line the pocket of (wealthy) investors.

    lowqualityfacts , to random
    @lowqualityfacts@mstdn.social avatar

    DeSantis is the worst.

    drahardja ,
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    @lowqualityfacts Sorry, this is a high quality fact.

    drahardja , to random
    @drahardja@sfba.social avatar

    Nice response by to the self-entitled techbros who think they should be given slack for bad products.

    “Do Bad Reviews Kill Companies?”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QztFpzKsdeA

    drahardja , to random
    @drahardja@sfba.social avatar

    This is a fascinating glimpse into the beginning of the exploit, i.e. the social engineering.

    Some users (accomplices of the attacker?) used the dev mailing list to badger and harass the maintainer of the project who was on the verge of burnout, to pressure him to grant co-maintainer status to the attacker.

    Whether this was part of the attack or not, it’s a sad glimpse into the toxic pattern often found in open-source software, where users demand maintainers’ free labor, instead of helping them strike a healthy work-life balance.

    https://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2024/03/30/a-microcosm-of-the-interactions-in-open-source-projects/

    GottaLaff , to random
    @GottaLaff@mastodon.social avatar

    Half a million workers will get $20 minimum wage, starting today - NPR https://apple.news/Ax2EooNQkRWab_RdyL4_s5w

    drahardja ,
    @drahardja@sfba.social avatar

    @GottaLaff Except our dear governor shielded some of his donors from it.

    All a chain has to do to avoid the law is to “bake bread and sell it as a standalone item”. I’m not even joking.

    https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/02/28/how-panera-bread-ducked-californias-new-20-minimum-wage-law/

    drahardja , to random
    @drahardja@sfba.social avatar

    I absolutely love this post, and I agree with just about everything in it, except for one small thing—making mobile apps can also often be part of the dead-end “creator economy”.

    In today’s App Stores, there are, generally speaking, two broad kinds of apps: a. apps that deliver your actual content or services that live outside the app (Uber, newspapers, podcast players, airline booking), and b. apps that deliver value by the mere fact that it is installed (productivity apps, photo/video editors, games)†. While apps in category a. do funnel customers to platforms that you control, apps in category b. do not.

    Writing apps in category b. puts you in the “creator economy” world of dead-end jobs. You will be at the mercy of Apple or Google’s often-changing App Store rules, mysterious and pay-to-play discovery algorithms, frustrating review process, and constricted monetization options.

    †Yes, some apps straddle the two categories, such as online-only, subscription-based games. https://mastodon.social/@Daojoan/112131082707559877

    drahardja OP ,
    @drahardja@sfba.social avatar

    “Relying on someone else's platform means that creators are subject to the ever-changing algorithms that dictate visibility and reach. The algorithms are designed to prioritize content that keeps users engaged and on the platform, rather than necessarily rewarding quality or creativity. Meaning that creators are constantly chasing the algorithm, trying to crack the code and optimize their content for maximum visibility, to the detriment of their message, their identity and their purpose. It's an exhausting and often futile endeavor, as the algorithms can change at any moment, leaving creators scrambling to adapt…

    drahardja , to random
    @drahardja@sfba.social avatar

    Here’s a clear example of how aggressive the image processing has become on newer iPhones. This is a comparison between the iPhone 15 Pro Max and the iPhone 11 Pro Max, taking photos of distant text at equal magnification. Note how the 15 Pro Max’s image pipeline has hallucinated all the details.

    Original video: https://www.facebook.com/watch?v=885196069752553

    Video of a person taking a picture of distant text on iPhone 15 Pro Max and iPhone 11 Pro Max. The newer iPhone renders the small text as gibberish, while the text is easily legible on the older iPhone.

    drahardja , to random
    @drahardja@sfba.social avatar

    How the mighty have fallen.

    I remember c|net as a standard-bearer of tech journalism back in the 1990s. Theirs was one of the few bookmarks I opened regularly to read about tech news.

    Red Ventures has destroyed its reputation, along with all their other properties’ like ZDNet (the other fantastic tech news site). RV’s decisive pivot to AI is likely fatal; they will accelerate the descent of all their outlets into a content swill mill fit only for your blocklist.

    is an accelerator.

    “Wikipedia No Longer Considers CNET a "Generally Reliable" Source After AI Scandal”

    https://futurism.com/wikipedia-cnet-unreliable-ai

    drahardja , to random
    @drahardja@sfba.social avatar

    Late to the party, but I’m starting to think that letting corporations launch thousands of satellites into low earth orbit is not a great idea.

    I know that companies that launch devices into orbit have to have a deorbit plan at their end of life (thanks FCC), but I wonder if plans for individual satellites scale to the thousands, or if this is sufficient to prevent the inevitable loose crap and debris clogging up LEO and risking creeping closer to the Kessler effect.

    I wonder if an insurance fund could be started to clean up future trash in LEO, and everyone who launches an orbiting body has to pay into it. And I wonder if such a rule would make these operations unprofitable—and if that were the case, then why are we letting them privatize their profit while the public foots the bill for their potential risk?

    drahardja , to random
    @drahardja@sfba.social avatar

    Just as we all knew all along, ’s move to charge exorbitant fees for API access was so they can cut lucrative deals to sell user-created material to train models.

    I was a redditor of about 15 years when I decided to delete everything I wrote and close my account because I foresaw this hostile repurposing of what is essentially a massive store of freely-accessible, context-rich community-generated content, made by people who didn’t necessarily want their content to be used for training without compensation.

    AI training is largely built on top of exploitation of labor for private gain. It’s legal in many cases, but it’s often unethical and immoral.

    “Reddit Signs AI Content Licensing Deal Ahead of IPO”

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-16/reddit-is-said-to-sign-ai-content-licensing-deal-ahead-of-ipo

    No-paywall version here: https://archive.ph/caW1Y

    drahardja , to random
    @drahardja@sfba.social avatar

    Cisco doing a to “shift its focus to “key priority areas,” such as artificial intelligence”.

    Getting the feeling that “shifting focus to ” is becoming a bullshit term used to rationalize literally everything.

    “Cisco to lay off thousands of employees”

    https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/14/business/cisco-to-lay-off-thousands/index.html

    GottaLaff , to random
    @GottaLaff@mastodon.social avatar

    Klasfeld:

    would need to post "a bond in an amount equal to the judgment" to delay enforcement.

    Between the civil fraud and E. Jean Carroll judgments, "the immediate question is whether Trump has the liquidity" to post those bonds.

    drahardja ,
    @drahardja@sfba.social avatar

    @mastodonmigration @GottaLaff Yeah, I think it’s possible that this may start toppling some dominos leading to banks calling in their debts and forcing Trump to default. $350M is not something he can fundraise from his supporters in short order.

    If Trump loses 2024 (which he’s looking like he will), this could his financial end. If he wins 2024, there’s a chance Russia will buy up all his bad debt to ensure that he remains their faithful puppet. It’s a small price to pay to own a superpower.

    GottaLaff , to random
    @GottaLaff@mastodon.social avatar

    He makes a good point.

    Mitt Romney: “I will not be voting for former President Trump. I must admit that I find sexual assault to be a line I will not cross in the people I select to be my president.”

    drahardja ,
    @drahardja@sfba.social avatar

    @GottaLaff We can be as guilty of demonizing and caricaturizing people who belong to an out-group as anyone else. We need to resist that temptation.

    drahardja , to random
    @drahardja@sfba.social avatar

    I’m gonna guess this photo was taken in some tech company’s break room.

    Sign: Dear ice cube using staff, There are 2 (or more) ice cube trays in the freezer. They are in failover mode. When one is empty, you take from the other one and refill the one that's empty. This is how it works. Some people believe the ice cube trays are in load balance mode. You take from one, then the other until both are empty. This provide no fault tolerance as both trays will be empty at the same time and there will be no ice to serve to mission critical drinks such as Coke. Please remember - failover mode, not load balancing mode the next time you open the freezer door - The guy who is always refilling empty trays left in the freezer.
    ALT
  • Reply
    • + pluralistic
    rahmstorf , to random German
    @rahmstorf@fediscience.org avatar
    drahardja ,
    @drahardja@sfba.social avatar

    @rahmstorf These captchas are getting harder and harder

    drahardja , to random
    @drahardja@sfba.social avatar

    is gunking up the web, especially for lesser-represented languages. Spammers are creating garbage English language content using LLMs, then translating it into multiple languages at the same time, using Machine Translation, presumably to generate clickbait ad revenue in several languages at once.

    In English, such gunk accounts for some 9% of total sampled web content. But in languages with less representation on the Internet, the figures could be much higher. In Malay, it’s something like 26%, and in Swahili it’s nearly HALF of everything found on the web.

    Paper [pdf]: “A Shocking Amount of the Web is Machine Translated: Insights from Multi-Way Parallelism”

    https://arxiv.org/pdf/2401.05749.pdf

    lowqualityfacts , to random
    @lowqualityfacts@mstdn.social avatar

    I miss Freddie Mercury.
    https://patreon.com/lowqualityfacts

    drahardja ,
    @drahardja@sfba.social avatar

    @lowqualityfacts I heartily support anyone who successfully declares independence from the UK.

    drahardja , to random
    @drahardja@sfba.social avatar

    Today I learned that “sundown towns” with their daily siren blasts that remind non-white people to leave town STILL EXIST.

    This Nevada town stopped their daily sirens only LAST YEAR, and only because Nevada had passed a law that prohibits their use. Their Town Board Chairman even entertained both-siding the issue during a session. How many more of these towns still exist that carry on this explicitly racist practice?

    https://www.rgj.com/story/news/2023/10/09/minden-sun-down-siren-to-remain-silenced/71083858007/

    Unpaywalled link: https://archive.ph/TYXkU

    drahardja , to random
    @drahardja@sfba.social avatar

    WebMD’s parent company, Internet Brands, released a cringey and abusive internal video threatening their employees to . “We aren’t asking or negotiating at this point”, the CEO says. “Don’t mess with us”, the video reads at the end. The video features employees dancing and celebrating RTO (at gunpoint? or at least under threat of firing by HR?).

    I know corporate videos are all kinda crappy, but this one is…spouse-beating levels of terrible.

    https://www.vice.com/en/article/7kxqnx/dont-mess-with-us-webmd-parent-company-demands-return-to-office-in-bizarre-video

    drahardja OP ,
    @drahardja@sfba.social avatar

    Here’s the video, so you don’t have to click on a Xitter link.

    #returnToOffice #flexibleWork #remoteWork

    Internet Brands video featuring their CEO and awkwardly dancing employees, telling viewers “Don’t mess with us” and return to the office for work.

    drahardja OP ,
    @drahardja@sfba.social avatar

    Notice that nobody was masked in the video. WebMD is a medical information website. We’re in the midst of one of the biggest infection peaks.

    Everybody come back in to the office to work! No masks needed! What’s the worst that could happen?

    tzimmer_history , to random
    @tzimmer_history@mastodon.social avatar

    While it’s the obvious surface-level hypocrisy in Ackman’s behavior that is so stark and annoying, it’s the ruthlessly consistent commitment to the underlying worldview, to the reactionary political project of maintaining discriminatory hierarchies that is the real enemy of egalitarian democracy. 1/

    drahardja ,
    @drahardja@sfba.social avatar

    @tzimmer_history The quote by Frank Wilhoit (no, not that one) rings true once more:

    “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

    drahardja , to random
    @drahardja@sfba.social avatar

    @jargoggles @brennansv @yurnidiot But the US is the land of opportunity! If you stay honest and work hard, you too can live the American Dream!*

    • Not actually true
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