Notices by Matt May (mattmay@mstdn.social)

There are some serious reasons why you still need to be on Meta platforms: it's your last link to family members, or your support system, or you live in a small town.

I wrote about how to stay on while limiting Meta's ability to surveil you or use your information against you.

tl;dr Boring users, who don't generate clicks or behavioral data, are unprofitable users.

https://buttondown.com/practicaltips/archive/how-to-grey-rock-meta/

I gotta say, nothing would destroy OpenAI faster than Elmo taking it over. If they wanted to work for him, he’d have bought them out to work at xAI, but all he’s managed to recruit are marginal edgelord types. The best talent will flee because they saw what he did with Twitter, Altman would return to garden-variety VC fuckery, and whoever’s left will turn GPT-5 into Grok. He might as well set that $100B on fire.

In other words, I’m all for it. *eats popcorn*

In less than 30 years this has gone from an average Onion article to a marked improvement on the White House's understanding of geopolitics

https://theonion.com/perky-canada-has-own-government-laws-1819563891/

Updated to reflect current practice

Total US stock market losses on Black Monday in 1987: ~$500 billion

$NVDA losses today: ~$500 billion

https://23.social/@thomasfricke/113901586461127473

Today I spoke with someone close to the US Digital Service, now DOGE, who said employees were required to describe their role/achievements/what’s remarkable about them; what they would cut if they were asked to reduce 30%; and their _opinion of DOGE_. Engineers were also given a Tesla/X-style snap coding challenge.

People are terrified about blowback, so this stuff will be trickling out. But folks who passed up on tech $ to work for the feds are now having their loyalty to 47/Elon questioned.

Ostentatious displays of wealth really do change over time. Today I saw a couple on a first date, and the guy was showing off the expiration date on his eggs.

@skinnylatte @roland I'm wishing for a Yemeni restaurant in Seattle. My wife studied Arabic there. Had scrambled eggs à la fireball in Sana'a back in 2008.

Will somebody please show Trump a proportional map of the world before we invade Greenland?

I wish this wasn't a serious request.

It's adorable how you all seem to think DoJ isn't going to change its position on breaking up Google by April.

@dalias I'd say it activated young, mostly white male voters, but only the ones who, you know, can read. I think Joe Rogan did more of the heavy lifting.

But all told, that still doesn't account for 7 million fewer voters showing up for Harris. That didn't come out of either the Twitter dingleberries or podcast listeners.

The worst part of this is that Elmo's influence on the election was probably nil, but since none of them understand correlation vs. causation/post hoc fallacy, he's going to have an outsized influence on GOP politics just by showing up and acting like a dick.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-musk-republicans-stuck-election-2024-1235173757/

Hi all, it's me, An Old. Quick election reminders:

- If you are in line before the polls officially close, STAY IN LINE. You are entitled to cast your vote.
- DO NOT TRUST calls/texts/posts/TikToks from now until Weds. Deepfakes will be rampant.

Classic scams:
"your voting location has moved"
"your group votes on Weds" <- old Jim Crow shit
"have your payment ready" <- poll taxes are illegal

Vote! No later than Tuesday, even by mail! Demand a provisional ballot if anything goes wrong!
#USPol

If you’re having a day where you feel like you’re bad at your job and maybe you’re just phoning it in, just think to yourself: at least I don’t work in the naming department at Microsoft.
https://mastodon.social/@arstechnica/113166497420667804

“This fffffffformer president” 😂 #Debate #USPol

More evidence that at the heart of most of the big cons of this era (crypto, AGI cheerleaders _and_ doomers), and some of the shorter ones (nudify apps, looksmaxxing, Jordan Peterson, bro-casters), are 2000s-era pickup artists.

PUAs are the pied pipers of the incel-industrial complex.
https://hachyderm.io/@molly0xfff/113092318125996522

@mathaetaes @mekkaokereke My wife's Fox News uncle brought this up matter-of-factly the other night at his wife's birthday dinner. This is day 3/3 together and the entire rest of the party cannot wait to get away from him.

Worst Scoxit ever. #SCOHUN #MastodonFC

@pluralistic e-label experiments are not a recent phenomenon. I worked at an online grocer in 1998, and brick-and-mortar stores were already experimenting with it. They were even looking at changing prices as you reached for an item. Looking at how keen you were to buy it, then making you negotiate for price by gesturing toward the item, or pulling away.

Once consumer-goods merchandisers crossed over from B&M to ecommerce, it was already game over.

Last week Grammarly laid off 23% of its workforce. Not because they’re losing money, but just because they want to pivot to AI. They even explicitly told their own laid-off employees that “this is not a cost-cutting exercise.”

It’s such an incredible fuck-you that it stands out from the others.

https://www.grammarly.com/blog/company-restructuring/