Many Irenes

You are all dreams and we are happy to know you, as you are nice dreams. We are an asexual autistic trans-feminine plural system with a label collection.

We compromise with legibility only so far as to say the following: Technology Director at Internet Safety Labs; ex-Google information privacy expert. 🏳️‍⚧️🍁

Public Key

npub19dtu7tr7tvghw4l684gdtnrsslhgwkjyv06s2zcl4tzscvs2ru4qyp5xhd

NIP-05 Address

irenes_at_mastodon.social@mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqszk47093l9kyth2lar65x4e3cg0m58tfzx8ag9pv0643gvxg9p72spz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0wd68ytnsw43q0mdfpe

Publishing to

relay.mostr.pub

Author Public Key

npub19dtu7tr7tvghw4l684gdtnrsslhgwkjyv06s2zcl4tzscvs2ru4qyp5xhd

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Last Notes

2024-05-05 19:07:23

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@npub1y4h…t26u how cool!!!!

2024-04-27 00:24:44

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@npub1pfe…e2dm good

2024-04-27 00:19:29

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@npub1pfe…e2dm yeah it sure is

2024-04-27 00:07:38

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@npub1qw5…037m (it's worth noting that this was an art project, not an actual exploit. it's still pretty great though.)

2024-04-24 19:52:15

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@npub1r4h…u0jf we wish we had a recommendation, but we do tiling windows, so :/
we share your desire to not install an overarching desktop environment. you're not alone in that.

2024-04-24 02:23:00

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@npub1uw8…88kr oh wow, what a fascinating exercise. teaches really important skills.

2024-04-18 18:49:32

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@npub13le…6saf oh how gorgeous! yes, we'll take a look :)

2024-04-18 18:35:31

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@npub13le…6saf oh very cool. we don't think we've seen generative plotter art that plays with the CMYK primaries like that before

2024-04-17 02:30:15

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@npub1zdp…vqv8 and thank you for answering the many questions we had after the first one, lol

2024-04-11 19:23:44

oh
that's quite saddening :(
http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5587

2024-04-09 00:17:18

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@npub1463…00qn it's very neat

2024-04-08 18:50:18

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@npub1809…nd7t ah, welp. our sympathies.

2024-04-03 23:31:38

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@npub1pfe…e2dm we'll wait for the incident reports, but hmm

2024-04-02 04:09:00

"hate group" means something specific that, personally, we don't want to water down. so we won't call Autism Speaks a hate group. however, their mission statement lays bare their intent to harm the autistic community. they do not speak for us.
as an autistic adult we would greatly prefer that your donations instead go to the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. https://autisticadvocacy.org/

2024-04-01 20:31:40

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given today's date we should clarify that this is not an April Fool's thing (you can see our full statement about not participating in April Fools from last night)

2024-04-01 20:29:08

hey does anyone remember who that retrocomputing youtuber was whose channel got spurious policy violations apparently related to a mass-reporting campaign after coming out as trans, a couple weeks ago?
we were wondering how that turned out and tried to find the video about it in our watch history, but it's gone, which doesn't sound good...
it was one of the more research-focused ones? where they'd dig up primary sources and stuff? we actually had no idea they were trans until that happened

2024-03-30 04:55:49

so, the github copy of the xz repo and all associated discussion history has been hidden, and possibly deleted, as a policy enforcement action
you know how we all spent this morning understanding the nuances of how the attacker went to great trouble to deploy the final trigger of the attack in a way that lets them avoid durable records of it?
next time they won't bother. github will do that part for them.

2024-03-27 22:02:33

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@npub1su4…a0dw oh this is wonderful news

2024-03-27 20:11:38

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@npub1rv4…ft5j it's a really good thing voiceprint identification never became commonplace, generative speech models with style transfer really mess it up

2024-03-20 19:17:44

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@npub15ax…lqq5 @npub18lj…80hq more like cops would straight up kill him for leading protests, and face no consequences despite it being technically an abuse of power

2024-03-17 22:02:10

we think we just put our finger on something we've been struggling for a while to find words for
explaining complex ideas in the form of a video makes them highly accessible to audiences who are already motivated to engage with these ideas. that's great!
it also makes them extremely difficult to critically engage with, compared to most written media.

2024-03-17 06:43:19

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@npub1g5t…xw4h awwww! cool!

2024-03-15 23:26:04

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@npub1dyt…q8lq oh whoa. we'd never seen it before, that's amazing

2024-03-15 21:05:38

so the thing about passkeys is...
it's two different technologies. it's an abstraction layer that treats them as the same when they are really, REALLY not
one of them is the older thing, the one you should actually want, where you have a hardware token and you use that to log in to things
the other is the new thing where Apple or Google or Microsoft manage all your logins for you, so that if you are ever at odds with those companies you're locked out of your entire life at once. efficient.

2024-03-15 10:45:34

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@npub1mdk…aptk hmm, did they specify the year

2024-03-12 22:20:48

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@npub1r4h…u0jf @npub15zr…z62j some things we don't bother memorizing because we're only going to use them daily for like ten years or so, which isn't worth the effort
some things inexplicably stick in our head for thirty years and refuse to be displaced
go figure :D

2024-03-12 22:17:08

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@npub1r4h…u0jf @npub15zr…z62j read-eval-print-loop is just a lot to type out if you're in the habit of saying it :D

2024-03-12 22:11:23

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@npub1r4h…u0jf @npub15zr…z62j a read-eval-print loop. a command prompt where you type an expression or statement in the language, the interpreter evaluates or performs it, it prints out the result, and then you do it again.
sorry. a few decades ago we were into Lisp, so now we call everything that.

2024-03-12 22:00:29

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@npub1r4h…u0jf @npub15zr…z62j yeah tbh we just pull up a repl for whatever language we're into this decade

2024-03-11 00:46:08

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@npub18lj…80hq how do you keep coming up with all these conversation starters?
yes and no... it's so complicated. don't really know how to answer.

2024-03-10 22:06:42

*sigh* we remember saying, near the start of the pandemic, that we found it startling and upsetting that society apparently chose to forget the 1918 flu and not learn any lessons from it
and that we all have an obligation to not let this one be forgotten in the same way, so that there can actually be progress
we stand by that. unfortunately, it has become clear just how that mass denial operates.

2024-03-07 20:40:58

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@npub1zj4…fyjh oh, hey! that seems useful!

2024-03-06 06:46:01

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@npub1nr8…rj65 we've been thinking heavily about this side of it. no firm conclusions yet, other than that we're fond of IPFS as a dissemination tool.

2024-03-06 01:16:48

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@npub18ct…5u29 @npub1l3g…vu48 @npub19dt…05k8 yeah... with Gnome, like, we don't use the desktop environment because it's just way too tightly integrated for our taste, but we do have some sympathy because a lot of what it takes to offer a pleasant UX is a unified design language that cuts across contexts

2024-03-05 23:52:54

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@npub19dt…05k8 right, like, the really frustrating thing is that we like almost all of systemd's architectural decisions... and we do believe there need to be more people paying attention to overall ecosystem health stuff with Linux... but we don't like the clear hegemonic intent. BDFL is not an appropriate governance structure for something with this scope.

2024-03-03 21:19:26

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@npub1c57…awu5 absolutely correct though :/

2024-02-28 18:03:49

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@npub1l3g…vu48 well, report back on how it works! :)

2024-02-27 04:49:12

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@npub1pfe…e2dm @npub1zzq…nenz no, yeah, a generation earlier this was the depressing thing about science fiction literature culture :(

2024-02-27 04:13:04

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@npub1pfe…e2dm @npub12tq…fcg9 no, yeah, it's the most fun part of follower count lol

2024-02-27 04:11:58

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@npub1pfe…e2dm !!! what a fun thing to have done :D

2024-02-20 06:38:46

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@npub1a8d…d7w3 *sigh* we really need to write something more thoughtful about this topic
but reading how you put it is quite cathartic

2024-02-18 23:56:50

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@npub1zdp…vqv8 no, yeah. we're personally in both the "catgirls have four ears" and the "centaurs have two livers" clubs, but even having to think about it is... well, there's no going back

2024-02-16 23:59:26

it's only cyberpunk if it's punk
otherwise it's just sparkling dystopia

2024-02-15 23:18:38

it's quite frustrating to still be dealing with KOSA. we fully realize that the US Democratic party does not actually stand for anything and creating new, pervasive censorship of queer people is absolutely something the party is willing to trade for other stuff it wants. it's not any sort of surprise, it's just frustrating.

2024-02-14 19:01:21

public health officials don't WORK for the public, they work for the administration
notionally these are supposed to be similar, but, see, the problem arises because the administration is beholden to corporate interests............

2024-02-13 21:39:11

well it's about fucking time somebody with the authority to DO SOMETHING notices what's been happening
if you hadn't heard, there is apparently at least one company that's been using mobile tracking features to collect and sell data about who visits abortion clinics
https://www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/signed_near_letter_to_ftc_and_sec.pdf

2024-02-09 20:46:52

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@npub1grx…uxfe oh! okay, fair enough then. good luck!

2024-02-09 18:15:18

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@npub1grx…uxfe that breaker halfway down the left side is in the tripped state, you need to turn it off and on again (you can tell because it's not QUITE all the way to the right)
if that doesn't fix it, we'd be inclined to wait for the electrician because at that point you're in the domain of there being physical damage to the wiring somewhere, and you don't want to start a fire

2024-02-08 19:56:33

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@npub1wf4…94wn we have no inside information on this topic, so we're free to speculate
this is what it means to do such aggressive layoffs: features go away because there's no team for them anymore. institutional knowledge is lost. this is the choice management knew it was making.

2024-02-07 21:03:23

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@npub14lm…5crk yeah we looked for a news article that summarized it well, but although we found many sources none looked particularly in-depth or technical. ah well. now you know

2024-02-07 20:52:01

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@npub14lm…5crk our opinion is that it's not true, if that helps you sort through things.
there are plenty of cautionary tales out there though, it's just they all get forgotten immediately because nobody wants to change anything. there was that casino that got ransomware because of their fish tank thermostat.

2024-02-06 22:58:10

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@npub132h…f594 oh. good. the implication is that gender transition does NOT increase this specific risk. it's quite rare to know the mechanisms of this stuff in enough detail to have a good guess about that.

2024-02-06 19:19:46

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@npub1uw8…88kr ... this is a really good question, and we feel like we were once people who would have had a dozen answers to it off the top of our head. today we're at a place in life where it just all feels so incredibly silly and we don't actually LIKE any of those books, so, hmm...
Dragon's Egg, by Robert Forward, certainly had a unique species that deserves to be mentioned in this context. the writing felt pretty flat.

2024-02-03 20:52:26

is kink-at-pride discourse going around again?
we've only seen the barest hints but we think we'll just offer this meme on the subject as a prophylactic
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/869/520/737/333/956/original/66a7a7df7087566d.jpg

2024-02-01 19:10:43

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@npub198t…hasj from experience: we recommend talking about what motivates you to do it, the abstract principles and feelings, before you get into the specifics. motivations are a thing that children can relate to and be inspired by, even if they know nothing about the field you work in.

2024-01-29 23:29:37

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@npub1lrv…tth9 dunno about major - keep in mind that the big ad blockers literally partner with Google - but yes, there are in fact people who do crowdsourced metadata for videos to make ad skipping work

2024-01-29 21:28:45

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@npub1szf…ntg4 when we came to Canada, the official recommendation was that we get a library card as our first form of ID, to help bootstrap other IDs
why? because librarians are all about increasing access. so their policies explicitly allow you to use an emailed receipt from a hotel as proof of address.
holy SHIT can bureaucracies be inhumane sometimes... library bureaucracies, though, seem to have figured out how to stay human

2024-01-29 03:49:04

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@npub1zdp…vqv8 we did once read a cool Donald Knuth paper (a computer scientist, not an anthropologist) which took a detailed look at algorithms found on ancient sources and compared them to how modern algorithms are written. depending on how much context exists for this tablet we definitely wouldn't discount the possibility of having a math person take a close look at it to figure out what it's doing.

2024-01-29 03:47:37

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@npub1zdp…vqv8 ah! we wondered if it was going to be a Babylonian thing :)
could it have been conventional to round things off to 49 instead of to 0 for some reason?

2024-01-29 03:41:08

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@npub1zdp…vqv8 not off the top of our head

2024-01-28 09:44:54

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@npub18p3…03wh what really worries us is that we're also never more than a bad day away from SAYING something really embarrassing
and convincing half a dozen people it's true ><

2024-01-26 00:34:44

as context, the Boeing 757 ceased production in 2004, meaning that all existing ones have been in service for decades. mechanical problems with them are most likely the fault of whoever is supposed to be doing maintenance, which is likely the airline or one of its vendors.
there's an article going around today about a wheel falling off, which we agree is deeply disturbing. the article does not mention this context. we found our experience was improved by the knowledge so we wanted to share.

2024-01-24 23:58:21

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@npub1zdp…vqv8 um, are they possibly doing time-domain processing? like building up an image by moving their heads around and noticing how their one pixel changes?

2024-01-24 23:57:23

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@npub1zdp…vqv8 oh
it says 3/3
you're not going to tell us
this is a legit mystery
oh NO! we need answers!

2024-01-16 23:44:23

when you see some business person saying that their customers "need to get used to" some new predatory practice
no. that's what THE COMPANY needs us to do. we are under no obligation to get used to anything.

2024-01-06 03:00:05

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@npub1zdp…vqv8 haha, yeah we've never heard that one either
we do make up proverbs sometimes but we try to be honest they're ours....

2024-01-06 02:57:41

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@npub1zdp…vqv8 we have never heard it. our first thought would be that it's something furries aspire to.

2024-01-02 00:09:55

oh NO
we just saw a TV ad for an old person health food
appealing to our love of videogames

2024-01-01 03:43:00

it's worth taking the time now and then to notice that phenomenon where, when a new thing is invented, we all have to be taught to want it, and therefore to find our current things inadequate
every once in a while you can see a case where the process breaks down - people don't want the new thing - but companies still try to move ahead
https://arstechnica.com/?p=1993084

2023-12-29 19:34:07

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@npub1mdk…aptk in our experience, the first step is picking words that say precisely what you mean. the second is talking about them.

2023-12-23 07:22:24

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@npub1mm3…ft6j on the other hand, bittorrent always has it..........

2023-12-22 23:32:53

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@npub1cu9…6829 yes it's really quite something how even modern laptops still have the boxing glove hardware

2023-12-19 03:48:00

hm we have a longstanding debugging tactic of doing a web search for the error message we're seeing, in the hope of finding either something that's been written about it, or the source code that generated it
it works less and less lately

2023-12-18 21:54:02

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@npub1r4h…u0jf we keep meaning to learn our way around the whole testing-your-Faraday-bag thing

2023-12-18 21:19:01

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@npub1200…aqy2 yes, absolutely. we have no direct knowledge of this, but we also have no doubt of it. their bottom line is directly tied to how much of a pain in the ass they can be.

2023-12-16 22:54:58

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@npub1mdk…aptk damn right

2023-12-16 22:35:50

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@npub1mdk…aptk ah! for sure

2023-12-16 22:21:14

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@npub1mdk…aptk and that is an excellent insight about the fediverse being useful for bootstrapping things

2023-12-16 22:21:01

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@npub1mdk…aptk we're big fans of adversarial interoperability
we don't personally care to interoperate with Twitter in particular, but we agree that the premise is a good one, of telling companies fuck you we'll interoperate if we want

2023-12-15 03:29:43

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@npub1gfd…7gg6 yes lol. same.

2023-12-10 08:40:02

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@npub1y0e…mm9n @npub16nf…q6as it was all the predictable result of the totally irresponsible behavior not being stopped, yes. we prefer not to imagine unchangeable tides of history, we instead try to think about what could have prevented this in case there are insights to be had about how to prevent the next similar disaster.

2023-12-08 20:12:31

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we're not going into this to excuse anyone. what we're hoping is that by writing about it, we can help other tech workers to see when they're being a part of pushing something obnoxious on the public, and maybe just... remember that outside perspective a bit more

2023-12-08 20:11:24

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it's really unreasonable how effective that sort of thing is :/

2023-12-08 20:11:06

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at the risk of stating what must be painfully obvious from outside, when upper management makes a decision and doesn't tell individual contributors and line managers the reason for it, it's often because they're afraid the workers wouldn't approve of the reason
in the face of something apparently unreasonable, workers will find our own ways to justify it as long as there's any doubt

2023-12-08 20:09:33

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second, there's a very strong tendency to treat business priorities that are handed down from management as if they're laws of nature
"okay, we can't do it with an opt-in help flow because management said no to that. they didn't explain their reasoning. so what CAN we do?"
that kind of thinking.

2023-12-08 20:08:17

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so, what are these perspectives that people have specifically as a result of where they work
first and foremost, most people want to believe that the thing they're doing is good for the world. whether or not it is, most people see themselves as good people

2023-12-08 05:17:01

boooooo Sega! good luck to the workers
https://www.engadget.com/sega-faces-unfair-labor-practice-complaint-for-planned-mass-layoff-of-union-members-073046095.html

2023-12-07 21:37:40

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@npub1mdk…aptk @npub1qmc…v6gx there's also a possible effect - we have not seen data on this, so it's speculation - where people relax their precautions after having the shot, leading to higher infection rate...........

2023-12-07 01:08:51

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@npub1pfe…e2dm @npub1cac…8sqw thanks - it's a bit of a long explanation so we got lazy but we added it as a reply to the original toot

2023-12-07 01:08:31

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you can read their letter at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LY2jViybLQPsgsm7hVo75V8aHNu5DUEZXB8vwc60YZo/edit
as far as we can tell this is only linked from news articles about the strike, not from the guild's public website, which is unfortunate but you can see it reported at, for example, https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2023/12/06/washington-post-journalists-strike-newspaper-labor/71830847007/

2023-12-07 00:35:33

as usual, when there's a strike, listen to what the workers are saying with regard to whether they want a boycott or not
the Washington Post workers are on strike tomorrow, December 7th, and they ARE calling for a boycott. they would like us all to avoid interacting with ANY WaPo content, new or old, tomorrow.

2023-12-05 23:47:47

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@npub1v52…qu8a holy shit!!!! gorgeous!!!!

2023-12-05 04:57:03

there's this phenomenon, and we're as guilty of it as anyone, of focusing political discussion on things that are NEW
like we had a conversation earlier about the effect of modern machine learning techniques on surveillance, but a question could quite fairly arise: how can we justify opposing this stuff without opposing the old, boring surveillance too?

2023-11-29 21:32:27

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@npub19fc…ay3c we exist in everyone we've ever met, to greater or lesser degrees
our apparent unitary existence was always just an illusion, always temporary

2023-11-28 00:24:12

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@npub18p3…03wh "let us stand, and breathe together"

2023-11-25 21:45:56

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@npub1pfe…e2dm @npub1ua7…rrg3 @npub1upk…tcwy and then there's the subtle differences between the semantics of syscalls and the semantics of the libc wrappers around them...
anyway yeah there's definitely some explanation for this that wouldn't be too hard to find by reading all the sources. we're not sure we want to, it feels cooler as magic

2023-11-25 21:20:50

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@npub1pfe…e2dm @npub1ua7…rrg3 @npub1upk…tcwy the thing to keep in mind is that shells store it as a string on the userspace side of things, in addition to the kernel structures. the shell won't rewrite parameters to external commands, but cd is a shell builtin (necessarily so). that's likely part of the magic in why this works

2023-11-22 03:36:47

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@npub1lrv…tth9 for our followers: we don't like to proselytize but we do agree with this conclusion

2023-11-21 01:16:12

honestly we have to say, what the fuck, who decided to put an awareness week leading up to a day of remembrance
it's like having a politician show up to a funeral to give a speech about how much they allegedly care about the dead
talking over the family

2023-11-19 03:15:34

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@npub1y0e…mm9n ahhh! that's neat though.