Notices by Stacey Campbell (stacey_campbell@aus.social)

@twrling Well, that was a depressing read. All the way down to the last para:

"The last remaining Los Angeles Times opinion section staffer announced in late February that she would take a buyout and leave the paper [...]"

The spouse cancelled her decades-old sub last year after the endorsement debacle.

Never thought I'd see the day when the United States is a coin flip away from allying with Russia and North Korea in an illegal invasion of another country.

Might be time for all ranks of all US services to re-familiarize themselves with the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the US Constitution, and the outcome of the Nuremberg trials.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/24/world/middleeast/us-un-russia-ukraine-war.html?unlocked_article_code=1.zk4.rhIw.DJwfVQeDMLMF&smid=url-share

#uspol #ukraine

@timrichards @skinnylatte It does a reasonable job for people living south of the Santa Monica Mountains, but it's woefully inadequate for the million plus LA residents who live in the San Fernando Valley, esp the central and western parts of the Valley.

There's talk of plans to improve things, but any completion date is going to be well after my expiration date.

This is the problem with being born and raised in Melbourne, it spoils you for public transport, and everywhere else is a let down.

https://laist.com/news/transportation/subway-or-monorail-for-the-sepulveda-pass-metro-and-local-residents-weigh-their-options

@glynmoody '“The only place where we give medicine away like this is the refugee camps, war zones, and the US,” Jørgensen said.'

Wow.

It might just be me, but I've found local TV news coverage of the LA fires to be mostly terrible. It's low on information and high on disaster porn/drama, and a fair bit of it has been wildly misleading. They cannot shake their bog standard reporting templates for this critical event.

- On-scene reporters asking people who are literally running around putting out spot fires at their house if they could stop for an interview.
- Picking through the ashes of houses and putting burnt photo albums and other destroyed personal items on camera.
- Certain helicopter reporters yelling mostly low information nonsense for half an hour.
- Obviously wholly unqualified opining on emergency response, and evacuations that has caused massive confusion (no, NBC4, all of LA isn't under a boil-water alert from the DWP).

There's an opportunity here for local TV news to be a useful asset for the community, and they're all too frequently blowing it.

#lafires #PalisadesFire #EatonFire

@w7voa Well dingbat Musk wasn't on a H-1B when he started working in California. He was on a J-1, and wasn't authorized to work.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/28/us/elon-musk-immigration-washington-post-cec/index.html

@skinnylatte "Yes" to Singapore breakfast choices!

@tek My 10 cents on this when I heard:

https://aus.social/@stacey_campbell/113306249308955264

@aral Shogan has published a strong rebuttal that WSJ arti...oh no, wait, she's doubled down, nvm.

https://aotus11.blogs.archives.gov/2024/10/30/a-message-from-the-archivist/

@timrichards "If a machine made bad decisions that had disastrous consequences, who would the responsibility fall on? It's a major question facing the banks."

Australian banks could try the Air Canada defence, their AI is "responsible for its own actions".

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20240222-air-canada-chatbot-misinformation-what-travellers-should-know

The Electoral College has massive built-in quantization error and often results in the winner being the 2nd place popular vote-getter.

It's impossible to think of a way to make this garbage voting system even wor...

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/20/us/politics/nebraska-trump-electoral-vote.html?unlocked_article_code=1.MU4.N6wJ.xa3q1h2HbF-k&smid=url-share

#uspol #trump

@ai6yr Nice safe yellow color, and labels that repel thieves. Not sure there's much more to do for aesthetics.

@MissingThePt Trumpy might want to create an account on Wikipedia and edit* the Historical rankings of presidents of the United States, 'cos currently it's ass-backwards according to him.** His presidency is dead last and Biden's around 14.

* - Page is semi-protected, I wonder why?
** - Citation needed of course.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_presidents_of_the_United_States

#uspol #trump

@liamvhogan To whoever posted this piece of art, I am eternally grateful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jbd0tYtm4s

@thomasfuchs I had no idea Kodak had that in their cameras back then. In 1999 I was spending a lot of time in a factory in Taiwan bringing up a consumer digital camera production line. I dimly recall all the models were using Kodak CCDs, none of them allowed users to install apps. 🙂

@thomasfuchs Kodak's film division could see the writing on the wall at this point.

@stevenbodzin @thomasfuchs I did click. You made the correct choice.

Open source projects have always had helpful/prickly/obnoxious/friendly contributors, but the end goal is usually the same; make the world a slightly better place by putting source code with some level of utility out there for everyone to use and possibly even enjoy.

That's why this #xz thing stings me, taking advantage of that framework to do a shitty thing.

@inthehands @futurebird @snacktraces Great advice.

Recently my son had CS coursework that involved converting a bowl-of-spaghetti logic diagram into a C++ program. Me, with 40 years of C experience, independently wrote my version of the program, he wrote his in C++. I asked him to send me his output and I sent him mine.

They didn't match, and sure enough I had messed up an AND gate.

@mwl @b0rk Same, but my goal is to sneak into retirement still oblivious.