Notices by bignose (bignose@sw-development-is.social)

@evan
> a great opportunity to measure how valuable copilot is.

I have detected no interest from management in finding an answer to that question; largely because the prevailing attitude is they *already know* it's valuable, just want the workers to fall in line and be hyper productive like Microsoft promised

My employer has purchased a Copilot license for everyone across all our application development teams.

And then gets weekly reports from Microsoft on *how much each person uses* Copilot.

From the beginning I've been “if you want to stop paying for my license, that's fine with me”. Thus far, they keep paying, and low-key shaming people into using it more.

@evan

Commercial entities can operate on the #Fediverse, provided everyone is free to completely mute them and defederate from them.

But: it's highly unlikely I'll be interested enough to follow any account operating transactionally with its audience, or in a marketing capacity, or fake engagement, etc. So, if there's a significant number like me, commercial activity will have a much more difficult time on the Fediverse than on centralised platforms; and IMO that's as it should be.

@evan

It seems clear to me that the embarrassment lands squarely on the tech media, who should be far better at communicating "#OpenOffice is not what you're looking for, use #LibreOffice @libreoffice instead". That's firmly within the tech media's job.

The job of @TheASF lies primarily in maintaining software. Let them maintain whatever software, for as long as people want it maintained.

@msbellows
> But you can't play chess without knowing what the pieces are, ie, knowledge.

I categorically disagree; this has been disproven by the 1980s chess-playing computers.

I think you would not find that computer has any knowledge of what the pieces in chess are. And yet, they can demonstrably play chess. Is that intelligence?

@evan

@evan
> intelligence and knowledge are intimately intertwined

Well that's a different proposition.

Two things can be distinct and also intertwined. Two distinct pieces of twine, for example.

As another example: The mind is distinct from the brain. Also, they are intimately intertwined.

Another: The atmosphere is distinct from the tree. Also, they are intimately intertwined.

If you're reading "yes" as "intelligence and knowledge are not intertwined", you asked the wrong question?

Thank you @corbet and all at @LWN for continuing the work of providing the excellent #LWN.

The "active defenses" against torrents of antisocial web scraping bots, has bad effects on users. They tend to be "if you don't allow JavaScript and cookies, you can't visit the site" even if the site itself works fine without.

I don't have a better defense to offer, but it's really closing off huge portions of the web that would otherwise be fine for secure browsers.

It sucks. Sorry, and thank you.

I'm sure there are "too short" and "too long" durations.

I think, though, that the maximum would depend a lot on what the political leader can do. What powers do they have? What checks are there on use of that power? What balancing institutions will effectively counteract abuse of power?

Different answers there, will lead to different maximum duration IMO.

@evan

A good French term is "saboteur" @evan

Qualified no. Because, even if I am in a secret society, I wouldn't be able to tell @evan anyway

The what?

@evan maybe edit the post, link to the logo so we can see it for the poll?

@evanprodromou

Earlier you correctly warned that your sample set likely is not representative of Threads users as a whole, though. So, extrapolation to the general is likely not valid.

As a counter example, @jwz found:
> Of the 655 accounts I used to follow on Instagram, […] exactly ZERO can be followed from Mastodon dot social. If there's something they have to turn on to make it happen, zero of them have done so.

https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/08/rumors-of-threads-dot-net-federation-have-been-greatly-exaggerated/

So, extrapolate from that, and it's *zero*.

@liztai

I thought it was pretty scattered and mediocre as art, too.

@zleap

Fortunately, that is a Frequently Asked Question that has been answered by @evan at https://evanp.me/pollfaq/

This Mozilla employee's post on Reddit speaks to the organisation's response to ad-tech surveillance.

Curious to know what @jwz thinks this tells us about the current state of play within that organisation, and how it informs our assessment of the organisation's role in the world.

https://libreddit.oxymagnesium.com/r/firefox/comments/1e43w7v/a_word_about_private_attribution_in_firefox/

No @liztai, Boeing has a history of harassing and mistreating whistleblowers of their grossly unsafe business.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/01/boeing-boeing/

@liztai

geez that boils me.

"You don't have to listen"? Yeah, I do, that's how hearing works. I have no power to stop your specific sounds coming in.

You, old uncle, on the other hand *do* have the power to simply mute your crappy device.

And because I can't change how human hearing works, I'm asking you to do the bare minimum of respect for other people around you, old man.

@todb

_Toward the Wiki Society_, Nathan J. Robinson
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/12/toward-the-wiki-society

@evan Just as @johannab said, it doesn't (for me) depend on how many people are in the meeting.

If it's not something I need to pay attention to then (a) it shouldn't really include me, but often that's not for me to decide, and (b) I'm multi tasking.

If it's something I need to pay attention to, I will.

Doesn't have anything to do with number of people in the meeting, AFAICT.