Notices by Dave Rahardja (drahardja@sfba.social), page 7

I propose Dong’s Law, a pithy restatement of Goodhart’s Law:

“All benchmarks will be gamed.”

#DongsLaw

Evergreen. https://sfba.social/@skykiss/113870952650397590

At some point, type safety is indistinguishable from template metaprogramming.

#programming #programmingLanguages

“Apply stimulus and measure output” https://queer.dev/@furioursus/114274323555372699

Famously, nothing bad at all happened after Smoot-Hawley. https://mstdn.social/@knittingknots2/114277115494179941

@kaia Silicon Valley comp is mostly stock when you’re senior enough, so double the salary range for total comp.

@kaia Stifling a sinister laugh

This is good. Keep it going.

“Tesla sales and production slumped heavily in Q1 2025”

#cars #tesla #fuckElon #fuckTesla

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/04/tesla-sales-and-production-slumped-heavily-in-q1-2025/

They disappeared him and his wife.

I get that the FBI may be charging them with a crime, but why did the school have to scrub their profiles as though they never existed?

https://mastodon.social/@arstechnica/114253089922332249

This is an autochrome color photo, taken at the Paris Air Show on the 30th of September, 1909, only six years after the successful flight of the Wright Brothers. It has been cleaned up, but all the color is original to the photograph.

Restoration done by Babelcolour.

#photography #history #historyInColor #restoration #noAI

This post by photographer Jingna Zhang resonates with me.

#AI art is devoid of humanity, intention, and backstory. It’s a shallow remix of human works, designed to be consumed and discarded, grinding human creation down into a sandy paste, to be re-extruded into grotesque displays. It’s the opposite of what makes art so valuable.

#aiArt #art #plagiarism #artist

(alt text continues)

Hahaha, Mercury News (no link, fuck em) covered the Tesla Takedown protests today by asking for comments from…the president of Silicon Valley Association of Conservative Republicans, whose pearl of wisdom was that the “far-left” AOC will “destroy” the Democratic party. What the fuck.

What absolute, irrelevant, bothsides-ing horseshit. Fuuuuck you Mercury News, for forcing a protest story into the tired old “Democrats in Disarray” cliché. Glad I dropped my subscription years ago.

#TeslaTakedown #bothsides #sfba

One of the most impactful things that non-US people can do to protest what the US is doing is to NOT TRAVEL TO THE US. Have family meet you elsewhere. Change your vacation destination. Don’t attend conferences and conventions here (go virtual instead). Vote with your wallet and your feet: don’t bring your Euros, Yens, or Pesos here.

Passenger tallies don’t lie. Hotel occupancy numbers don’t lie. Conference attendee totals don’t lie. YOUR ABSENCE WILL BE COUNTED and you will be missed.

Your withholding of your presence and your money will motivate business owners to pressure the administration to change their tune.

https://onemileatatime.com/news/airline-demand-canada-united-states-collapses/

Hey kids, did you know that in 2011 there was this dude who went by the name “Shingy”, who was VP of Marketing at AOL, who somehow morphed his persona to become the company’s “Digital Prophet”. His job was apparently to be weird and outrageous? Spout gibberish and look like he’s high on stimulants? Or something?

Anyway, AOL was bought out by Verizon and merged with other dying companies to become Oath and they paid Shingy money til 2019.

A conversation sparked this weird memory in my brain and now you too will remember a piece of Weird Tech history.

#shingy #aol #wat

Laying off a ton of federal workers leaves government workers—and in turn, the US—vulnerable to foreign agents offering them jobs in return for access to confidential information.

Kudos to Reuters for doing the legwork on this story. They sent people to visit business addresses in Singapore, to verify that these were phantom companies.

#kakistocracy #fuckElon #badDOGE

“Exclusive: Secretive Chinese network tries to lure fired federal workers, research shows”

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/secretive-chinese-network-tries-lure-fired-federal-workers-research-shows-2025-03-25/

Transit announcements be like

#humor #memes #funny #funnyVideos

Cruelty. Utter cruelty. https://journa.host/@w7voa/114202739408207618

This art is incredible.

Source: https://www.patreon.com/simz

#art #illustration #digitalArt #noAI

Source: hxxps://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:dg4u5mw6sw6gjew5gex77vxf/post/3lkor7irt2k2k

#meme #memes #incels

I’m sincerely hoping that people who have conferences or conventions planned in the US in 2025 and beyond are seriously considering relocating their venues elsewhere, or going fully virtual, given the hostile environment in this country.

If I lived outside the US, I wouldn’t even consider traveling here at this time, because it would literally risk my health and freedom to do so. I have a feeling event attendance is going to drop to reflect that sentiment.