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mcc

@mcc@mastodon.social

glitch girl

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futurebird , to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

When people say things like "The right falls in line"
"The right worked hard to change the supreme court" etc.

I think the purpose is to inspire the surly youths to engage in electioneering with more joy & enthusiasm. But you're just legitimizing efforts that were often undemocratic.

It's like bootstrap theory but for the overton window. Just work harder and you can move it!

We will need to work hard, but I prefer pragmatism about the asymmetry of this game.

mcc ,
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

@futurebird One problem is "the right worked hard to change the supreme court" is not quite accurate. It would be more accurate to say "the right spent a lot of money to change the supreme court". If you frame it this way, it becomes more obvious that "we just have to do what they did" will not be an effective strategy

mcc , to random
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

Joe Biden just banned Tik Tok.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/24/biden-signs-israel-ukraine-tiktok-bill-into-law.html

If America can do this to Tik Tok, America can and will do it to whatever internet thing it is you like just as easily. Don't imagine China itself was the point of this. (The ban[s] cover ByteDance plus any company 20%+ owned within a country on this short list https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/4872#:~:text=metals%20and%20alloys.-,(2)Covered%20nation,-.%E2%80%94The%20term but given how easily this passed it seems a precedent is set for Congress to add whatever other company, organization or country it feels like to the list.)

mcc OP ,
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

The final law is basically two separate bans, either of which would potentially be sufficient to ban TikTok (H.R 815, Divisions H and I https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/815/text#toc-HA3ED19E8F4F24124B4029233F64B1549 ) Section I concerns foreign transfer of PII and could be unobjectionable and EU-like if it defined "Personal Data" more narrowly, but as-is it I expect could be construed to cover even normal operations of privacy-conscious online services. Section H, which names TikTok/ByteDance by name, is not privacy related and is wild in its scope

mcc OP ,
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

Of course, in all likelihood Tik Tok will not wind up being literally banned, so we won't yet get a full exploration of the new expansion of state powers here. But what will happen, and what the point of this bill is, is Tik Tok will get sold to American right-wingers, because that is who buys social networks in America. This will eventually result in influencing speech to favor the right, which was the reason Donald Trump originally proposed this ban, and the reason America is passing it now.

mcc OP ,
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

Meanwhile, since as written this bill does give the US government a power to directly ban apps from app stores for, as far as I'm aware(?), the first time, this has serious implications for anyone using Apple hardware. Apple created a situation where only software they approve can be installed on the iPhone; now this means only software the government approves can be installed on your iPhone. Previously this was the case if you lived in China; now it is the case in America.

(1) PROHIBITION OF FOREIGN ADVERSARY CONTROLLED APPLICATIONS.—It shall be unlawful for an entity to distribute, maintain, or update (or enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of) a foreign adversary controlled application by carrying out, within the land or maritime borders of the United States, any of the following: (A) Providing services to distribute, maintain, or update such foreign adversary controlled application (including any source code of such application) by means of a marketplace (including an online mobile application store) through which users within the land or maritime borders of the United States may access, maintain, or update such application. (B) Providing internet hosting services to enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of such foreign adversary controlled application for users within the land or maritime borders of the United States.
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    mcc , to random
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    Basically ideally everyone would stop using Twitter except Paul Graham and Marc Andressen and then there's be no one to screenshot Paul Graham and Marc Andressen posts and post them where I'd see them

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

    Sometimes a "wandering trader" come up to you in Minecraft and it's very annoying since he has llamas that make noise and can get in the way. Most players just kill him.

    It would be nice if Minecraft added a "goodbye" button that would cause him to leave. Or even a "go away button"

    All the murder is both funny and it does not sit well with me.

    mcc ,
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    @futurebird "I will buy a commemorative snowglobe if you will just go away"

    This could be paired with a mechanic where commemorative snowglobes cannot be recrafted or held and must be put somewhere, so eventually the player must create a Loathed Knickknack Table to store all the snowglobes they don't want but had to buy

    mcc , to random
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    systems are more resilient than conspiracies

    and they require no intention to operate

    only incentives

    mcc , to random
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    Character designs in Hades II are pretty good

    mcc , to random
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    Good YouTube thumbnail. No notes.

    mcc , to random
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    And now for what feels like the millionth time in my career with computers I type into google "useradd adduser difference"

    mcc , to random
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    What do you suppose it was like to be in the room when they finished recording "Baby Got Back". Do you think all present understood the significance of what they had created. Did they know they were about to change the world

    mcc , to random
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    You know "Discourse"? The forum software? There's a thing that really bugs me about it, which is when you're signing up for a Discourse forum it requires email but says "your email will NOT be disclosed except to the admins". And then right after doing this, it by default uses Gravatar to grab your avatar.

    So imagine there's some opsec reason you might not want to post under your real name on some forum. You create a pseudonym… and then there's your Gravatar, which in my case is my face.

    futurebird , to random
    @futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

    If you were worried about the juror who said she likes how Trump "speaks his mind" don't.

    She said she gets her news from "google" and listens to the breakfast club

    The breakfast club is a NYC radio show that lots of black people like. It's total fluff. Fun.

    This person isn't interested in politics. "google" ?

    And I think that's fine. Not everyone has the disease that I have (and maybe you too.) In a trial they explain everything. The case is good so this kind of juror is good.

    mcc ,
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    @futurebird quietly I actually think Google News is the best way to get news on the whole internet. I have been using it since 2004.

    But it's not clear that's what this person meant I guess.

    mcc ,
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    @futurebird Yes, it is just an overview of different current news stories on different sources. All it displays is headlines and pull photos. But it groups links together "by story", so for any one news item you get to see what each different paper's take on it is, and it floats stories that lots of sources are talking about closer to the top. It is like getting an average of everybody's biases at once. Or a histogram I guess.

    mcc ,
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    @futurebird I like it because it is like a counterweight to me reading news that fits my ideological biases. "Okay, but here's what the news looks to everyone ELSE." Even when the mainline position is wrong I know how it's wrong.

    The change they made in 2017 I don't like is that they started making the news feed customized to you and your preferences. But to me the whole point was it wasn't about me :)

    mcc ,
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    @futurebird You are probably right.

    mcc ,
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    @futurebird Yeah, it's decent! I tried it for a bit but then went back to Google's version.

    mcc , to random
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar
    mcc , to random
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    Looking into how to set up a bluesky server.

    Noticed this bit here, in the documentation. That's an interesting way to spell "cannot"

    "The PDS, in many ways, fulfills a simple role: it hosts your account and gives you the ability to log in, it holds the signing keys for your data, and it keeps your data online and highly available. Unlike a Mastodon instance, it [begin emphasis] does not need to [end emphasis] function as a full-fledged social media service. We wanted to make atproto data hosting—like web hosting—into a fairly simple commoditized service. "
    ALT
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    campuscodi , to random
    @campuscodi@mastodon.social avatar

    Gentoo has banned AI-generated code

    https://www.mail-archive.com/gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org/msg99042.html

    mcc ,
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    @campuscodi This should be standard for every open source project. If it came from an LLM, you don't know whether it's regurgitated a non-trivial portion of someone else's copyrighted code. And that means you don't know if you have the right to open source it.

    LLM code is mystery meat.

    mcc , to random
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    Strange science facts: In nuclear power, functional nuclear fission reactors were constructed as early as 1942, yet nuclear fusion remains elusive and can only be achieved for short periods. In jazz, on the other hand, jazz fusion was invented in the early 70s, and jazz fission remains purely theoretical even today

    mcc , to random
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    Watching a History Matters video

    History Matters: So the problem started in the 1800s when Britain arbitrarily drew a border

    Me: Ugggh, seen it

    Watching one of the more recent, South America related videos

    History Matters: So the problem started in the 1600s when the Pope arbitrarily drew a border

    Me: Whoa!!!

    mcc , to random
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    HOLY FUCK I HAVE JUST DISCOVERED THAT THE PHONE APP IN ANDROID 13 VIBRATES WHEN AN OUTGOING CALL CONNECTS

    AN OUTGOING CALL

    THERE IS NO WAY TO TURN THIS OFF EXCEPT TO DISABLE ALL VIBRATION ON YOUR PHONE

    SO YOU MAKE A PHONE CALL, YOU PUT IT UP TO YOUR EAR, AND THEN THIS THING THAT YOU'VE PUT UP TO THE SIDE OF YOUR FACE VIBRATES INTENSELY. IT IS THE MOST DEEPLY UNPLEASANT, UNNECESSARY THING. I ALREADY KNEW I WAS MAKING A FUCKING PHONE CALL I PRESSED THE BUTTON

    mcc OP ,
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    Please excuse the capital letters I am just SO FUCKING SICK of how Google is so deadset on taking what used to be a basically fine phone OS and finding constant new ways to punish me for using it. This has been going on for so many years now

    mcc , to random
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    The Tesla community has begun to fracture into reformist and hardliner factions, instigated by disagreements on the question of whether Autopilot is capable of hitting a curb

    https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1c2q6ep/mod_of_rteslamotors_and_rteslalounge_declares_war/

    mcc , to random
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    When I think about the security of a computer system, I have a specific scale I rate it on:

    1. The US government can crack it OR the government of China can crack it (equivalent)
    2. The government of Israel can crack it
    3. My friend Kristin could crack it
    4. The government of Russia can crack it
    5. A nation-state not listed above can crack it
    6. A well-qualified single infosec professional could crack it
    7. I could crack it
    mcc OP ,
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    Notes:

    • Kristin is very nice. She is also the reason I have tap-to-pay disabled on all my credit cards.
    • I would possibly swap the order of 3 and 4 depending on what the thing being cracked is.
    • There are levels of security below 7, but if a system is 7 or below I don't use it so it doesn't matter.
    • It's possible my tierlist is out of date and there are some countries that by now deserve to be moved above Russia. Germany? Turkey?
    mcc OP ,
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    @dangillmor Serious answer: You call your credit card company and say "please disable tap-to-pay on my credit card". This is a thing they can and will do on request

    mcc , to random
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    A "Xennial" is a microgeneration referring to the subset of Millennials who are foxgirls that like Linux

    mcc , to random
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    It's amazing how much difference a six minute average time to catch a bus vs a sixteen minute average time to catch a bus makes to outright loving vs hating a public transit system

    futurebird , to random
    @futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

    What do you call it when someone gets obsessed with isopods due to online content?

    "pill bug pilled"

    mcc ,
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    @futurebird It turns out due to a miscalibration in the recommendations algorithm, our social media network has been for several years now systematically radicalizing the users to love isopods. We call it the pill bug pilled bug

    mcc , to random
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    Coming into the store Hi yes. Do you have, like… a different, secret linux, in the back maybe. One that works well

    mcc , to random
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    As you may remember from me talking about it once a week, the three things I most want out of a cell phone are

    1. RECTANGULAR screen with NO HOLES OR ROUNDED EDGES ON THE DISPLAY CANVAS

    2. Big bezel/bevel/whatever it's called so I can hold it without activating the touch screen

    3. Headphone jack

    I search and search and even for high prices I usually cannot get these things

    But the $35 carrier branded temp replacement phone I bought at the Wal-Mart by the airport?

    All three

    mcc , to random
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar
    • I am informed by several people that Signal for Android has a feature in Settings that lets you create a restorable backup file
    • I am informed I can use the tool "scrcpy" to control my Android phone remotely without a working screen
    • I get into the Signal for Android settings and activate the backup feature
    • What the fuck, Signal?
    mcc , to random
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    "My kink is older than your country"

    mcc , to random
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    The process of keeping trans people suppressed is a process of continually forgetting, so that trans people are continually new, and five years later are again new, and five years after that are again a new thing, and five years after that are again a new thing that just came out of nowhere all of a sudden

    mcc OP ,
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    "Well, I just don't think we should be exposing youth to this experimental medical procedure", they say of my medical regime, which has been performed in western countries in basically its current form since 1965, and before that is known to have been performed at the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft in the 1920s until the Nazis stopped it, and before that is attested in ambiguous accounts to have probably been performed in ancient Greece via unknown herbal analogues

    mcc , to random
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    I think one of my favorite things a piece of art can do is make me feel a strong emotion from an alien or at least plausibly unrealistic scenario. From this perspective not only is the video game "Super Mario Wonder" a work of great art but "Muncher Fields" may be its best level

    mcc , to random
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    Lately, a lot of people have been interested in the alternative operating system "Haiku". But remember, if you install Haiku but don't set a desktop pattern with a seasonal reference, then you're not actually running Haiku, in that case it's Senryū

    mcc , to random
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    Have you ever heard of "Linux"? It's the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

    mcc , to random
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    There's a trilogy by Alastair Reynolds with the slightly clunky name of "The Perfect Dreyfus Mysteries". The books are named Aurora Rising, Elysium Fire, and Machine Vendetta. Oddly, the Toronto public library has only the second two, not the first, in its ebook app.

    I think I've managed to convince myself this is because there's an unrelated book from a decade later named "Aurora Rising". I think some person or program convinced themselves they were the same book, so they didn't need both.

    Aurora Rising (2019), by Anne Koffman and Jay Kristoff, cover

    mcc OP ,
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    @sollat …huh.

    See follow-up.

    mcc , to random
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    So I somehow had the impression that Witchcraft was illegal in Canada, but I looked it up, and it turns out no, it is only pretending to do witchcraft which is illegal in Canada. So it appears witchcraft is legal but only as long as it's real, though you might have a difficult time in court if charged with fraudulent claims of witchcraft with proving magic is real

    EDIT: See correction below

    mcc , to random
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    Municipal summoning

    mcc , to random
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    quietly under breath but in text i hate unity i hate unity i hate unity i hate unity i hate unity i hate unity i hate unity i hate unity i hate unity i hate unity i hate unity i hate unity i hate unity i hate unity i hate unity i hate unity

    mcc OP ,
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    I wish to go back to doing Computer Science instead of Computer Magic. I would like "does my program work or not?" to be based on whether I have followed a proper series of rationally composed steps rather than the phase of the moon or whether or not my offerings of frog entrails are correctly aligned with the correct constellation

    mcc OP ,
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    ME: My project isn't working.

    UNITY: There's sample code.

    ME: Oh, right. Downloads Hey, I don't get it, the sample project works and mine doesn't, but we have all the same checkboxes checked. Why doesn't my project behave the same?

    UNITY: That one smells different

    ME: What?

    UNITY: Yeah I dunno it just smells different.

    mcc , to random
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    So was there a study over the last couple months showing evidence that the strength of dark energy is not consistently isotropic/homogeneous in space and time?

    And if this study happened… how reliable/definitive is it?

    I saw a popular press article that seemed to be saying this, but it was a popular press article and those mangle physics studies all the time.

    mcc OP ,
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    Okay finally a good, clear article on the "wait, is dark energy nonhomogenous?" data https://mastodon.social/@arstechnica/112213561750825358

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