Notices by Mike Taylor 🦕 (mike@sauropods.win)

This talk by @pluralistic is long (49m49s) but 100% worth your while. It explains exactly why the Internet of 2024 is so terrible, what factors prevented it from being like this until recently, and what levers we can and must pull to build something better. It's also hella entertaining.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EmstuO0Em8

@rmounce This kind of thing is why it's essential to have the TOR Browser installed. https://www.torproject.org/

"As one dispirited meteorologist wrote on X this week, “Murdering meteorologists won’t stop hurricanes.” She followed with: “I can’t believe I just had to type that”."
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/10/hurricane-milton-conspiracies-misinformation/680221/

More “artificial intelligence” idiocy

I asked ChatGPT a very simple question: A man needs to cross a river. He has a goat with him, which he needs to take across. The boat is big enough to carry the man and only one other object. How should he do it? Here is the "solution" it suggested: This is a classic river-crossing puzzle! The man needs to cross the river with a goat, but since the boat can only carry the man and one other object at a time, he must plan his…

http://svpow.com/2024/10/14/more-artificial-intelligence-idiocy/

"If you are a weatherperson, you’re a target. The same goes for journalists, election workers, scientists, doctors, and first responders. These jobs are different, but the thing they share is that they all must attend to and describe the world as it is. This makes them dangerous to people who cannot abide by the agonizing constraints of reality."
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/10/hurricane-milton-conspiracies-misinformation/680221/

Yahoo Finance says that Twitter's revenue has dropped by 84% since Elon Musk took over. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/twitters-revenue-collapses-84-tesla-171535190.html

84%! It's bringing less than one sixth of what it did pre-takeover!

That's one stable genius, right there.

One feature I would like to see on a mobile phone is physical switches to disable to microphone and camera, so that you're not dependent of the promises of software not to abuse them. (Yes, the camera is easy to do using a bit of tape; the mic is harder.)

@BeAware @KanaMauna "I get what you're saying, don't "hate football" as an activity that you enjoy doing. Just do something else and ignore football."

That's it exactly.

It always blows my mind when people are proud of themselves for now knowing stuff ("I could never get the hang of maths") or for not liking something ("I hate football"). I get that those things might be true about you, but if you're hanging your personality on this stuff, you might want to rethink.

@kevinmoerman Many congratulations!

When you shorten the URL, please please PLEASE ensure that the old URLs continue to work, and redirect to their new equivalents.

Thus spoke the prophet TBL back in 1998: https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI.html

@angelastella @toddztoonz @Binder @GustavinoBevilacqua Exactly. It genuinely horrifies how many websites and apps now literally will not take No for an answer, and leaves me vert uncomfortable about the mental state of the people who design those sites and apps.

@angelastella @toddztoonz @Binder @GustavinoBevilacqua … and the "No" button isn't "no", it's "Maybe Later".

@hallenbeck @spurs I am as shocked as you are.

@hildabast @PLOS It's amazing how completely none of this is in the news.

@robpike Related: I use bt.com once a month to pay my broadband bill. If you click the "remember login" button, it remembers for 28 days.

This means there is a 50% chance of it working once per non-leap year (when I login in March after a 28-day February, depending on whether it's earlier or later in the day).

My son sent me this, I have no idea where it's from but it's perfect.

@petersuber @OpenAlex I want this to succeed, but from my brief poking around it's nowhere near up to Google Scholar's standard. I search for "xenoposeidon" to find myself, clicked through to my author page at https://openalex.org/authors/a5069719980 and found I wrote 326 works (closer to 30), and have 10 affiliations (I have three). Obviously has me conflated with other Mike Taylors.

@dale Number one: fix the bug that means after a week or two it suddently starts using a ton of CPU and has to be shut down. It is BY FAR my biggest problem with Firefox.

Number two: stop talking about integrating "AI" features. NO-ONE WANTS THIS.

Amazon Prime's ad-powered enshittification reaches the UK. I got the email this morning.

I 100% will not be paying them the extra £3 a month ransom to avoid the adverts. The question is whether to cancel Prime completely; or keep it for the free deliveries, and just not watch the enshittified video.

@hildabast I see this on Mastodon!