Notices by Dana Fried (tess@mastodon.social)

Love it when I write a new test, it fails, and then it prints out the reminder I built into the test library to add the thing I had mistakenly left out of my test.

A lot of people don't seem to understand that in many dialects of English there are distinct singular and plural second person pronouns *and you have to use the right one or you are being ungrammatical* just like in the vast majority of other languages that distinguish singular and plural pronouns.

"Y'all" isn't something you say to be folksy, it's something you say because you are addressing multiple people and that's how grammar works.

I find the film The Odyssey extremely relatable because I too would fight my way across the known world, experiencing trials and horrors over the course of many years, for the opportunity to reunite with Anne Hathaway.

Thing I learned from this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQW4W1_SJmc

Poverty is correlated with homelessness - *negatively*

The poorer an area is, the lower its homelessness rate; the wealthier an area is, the higher the homelessness rate.

I think we need to internalize that fact - rising median wages without commensurate increase in housing stock causes homelessness. So if you're relatively wealthy and you're against new housing, you - specifically - are the problem.

https://kotaku.com/world-of-warcraft-wow-corrupted-blood-withering-contagion-spreading-infection-2000712838

@tchambers ah, well, this way madness lies, I think.

Linux may win but only because the big tech companies that make OSs finally ate themselves.

If linux had started out with a primary goal of dominating rather than *all of the other things linux provides* it would never have gotten off the ground or it would have compromised its principles.

Same thing here. If the goal is "beat Meta" you can't. The only one who can beat Meta is Meta. But what we can do is provide alternatives.

@jaredwhite @tchambers addendum: I think you also have to consider avenues for abuse; if I can build a model of everything I've said I can build a model of everything *you've* said, which I can use to impersonate or harass you.

With online social stuff you have to always ask yourself WW4D? (What would 4chan do with this?)

I think this is one of the biggest places where social tech developers can be myopic, leading to platforms and tools that are too easy to weaponize.

3/2

@jaredwhite @tchambers they key here is that I've proposed a feature first (natural language search of my own archive), analyzed its feasibility and cost, considered externalities/consent/etc. and now I have a good idea of what it will cost; I can objectively evaluate whether it's worth pursuing.

That's how feature development - especially in something like social web - should work.

2/2

@jaredwhite @tchambers I thi k you can go a step further: you can ask if there's some new cool thing you could do, then ask if there's a technology that enables that, then see if it works and is worth the cost.

AI example: maybe I put all my posts in a local model so I can ask "hey did I ever post about X?" Now, not a need I have but someone might want to do that and maybe it's useful. At the same time it's privacy-respecting, because you're not scraping other people's posts.

1/2

@tchambers counterpoint: if we want a space for humans by humans, then perhaps it's fine to let that ship sail.

Or to put it a different way, *what exactly is on the ship we're missing*? What is the value being added? What is the technology being used for?

If you say, "there's work to do and if we don't do it someone else will [with AI]" - what is that work? Why is it valuable? What does it bring to the open web?

@tchambers

This is all very FOMO, cart-before-the-horse stuff, and we see this with every new technology.

"Get on the ___ train right now or you'll be left behind!"

The argument assumes ahead of time that the thing being provided is useful and valuable and will be a net (if not unadulterated) positive even absent concrete use cases.

You have to argue from the other side: we need X, Y makes it easier to achieve X, therefore we should use Y for X.

That's your real value prop.

@tchambers my best guess as to the reaction here:

bluesky sick today huh

I love social media

TDOV reminder:

Trans men and nonbinary people exist.

Have I done it?

Yeah once.

Will I ever do it again?

Fuck no I'm bringing the house every time.

Watching a streamer try to solo the gank fight just before the end of #EldenRing #ShadowOfTheErdtree and while it's certainly a valiant thing to attempt, I've always felt in my bones that the developers really wanted you to disrespect that particular fight.

@kims I started reading the article but then got nauseous and had to stop.

That entire text is a cognitohazard.

@kims what the...

Gods, The Onion only wishes...

@evan

So that's a completely different question.

If you're *applying* to be a volunteer maintainer *on an existing project you do not own*, then obviously, there will be expectations set by the existing community, which will be different for every single project.

For reference: I write primarily OSS software, but I do it professionally. So, naturally, my employer sets the expectations for my contribution.