Notices by Chris Wiegman (chris@mastodon.chriswiegman.com), page 2

This paper is a must read, especially for the "AI in education" crowd (who deserve a special place in the hall of mockery alongside the "blockchain in education" crowd):

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07856-5#peer-review

The harms perpetuated by people and edtech companies pushing AI into schools will need to be undone for years.

@revk I'll never forget an SQL optimisation moment near the start of my career.

There was a report whose query would run for well over 11 hours (this was in 1997 or so), and was usually interrupted by the DBMS being shutdown for the nightly backups.

One day, I took a closer look at the query, and realised two tables had been joined in the wrong order. Fixed that, and it completed in under 5 minutes.

I'm glad to see Sticker Mule took the mask off for all to see.

Many of us who have worked in developer relations and marketing have been avoiding them for _years_ because of its owners.

Folks finally ditching Sticker Mule after their latest email, I use Sticky Brand because they attempt to be environmentally conscious:

“The company is committed to minimizing its environmental impact through the use of eco-friendly inks and recyclable packaging, partnerships with environmental organizations, and running a "LEED" certified, green facility with 100% carbon-free and over 78% renewable energy.”

(Don’t know anything about their other political leanings.)

Two updates to this thread.

Update 1: In this thread I complain Mozilla does not provide specific technical details about this feature. It turns out there *is* a document with the technical details, on Github:

https://github.com/mozilla/explainers/tree/main/ppa-experiment

It also explains (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Origin_Trials) which sites are participating in the feature.

I am linking this document because I believe the first five words do more to discredit what Mozilla is doing here than anything I could say:

"Mozilla is working with Meta"

Anyway, I guess that's a lot of typing. The TLDR is:

- There is now a feature labeled "Privacy-preserving ad measurement" near the bottom of your Firefox Privacy settings. I recommend turning it off, or switching to a more privacy-conscious browser such as Google Chrome.

- I have filed two bugs on Firefox about this, which I am choosing not to link to dissuade brigading. If I have not been banned from the bug tracker by next week I will file another bug about the ChatGPT integration in nightly

- This event seems to tie in with other confusing developments around Mozilla as a company/"Foundation". I do not know enough about these issues to comment on them intelligently. I know only that Mozilla has, inexplicably for a nominal nonprofit, recently bought an advertising firm: https://mastodon.social/@jwz/112650295543215212

and that I have seen… let's say "criticism" of recent changes to the board makeup: https://www.spiceworks.com/tech/tech-general/news/mozilla-cpo-sues-company-over-disability-discrimination/

Damn. So close but so far away.

I think that I'm seeing a wave of anti-AI sentiment growing. News articles, social posts etc. Are you seeing this too?

One of the reasons I’m glad we moved to #Chicago: all the festivals we can walk to this summer. This place is just a few of them. There's always something going on and it is wonderful. https://chicagoevents.com/

LinkedIn isn't a good network but I still can't fathom why people would think it is a good idea to put “maga" in their profile by-line. I see it right next to their title or company more and more often.

On the one hand it is, at least for me, a flag telling me to avoid their org but on the other.... how can people be so incomprehensibly stupid?

A friend was just telling me about their new job at a tech company and how she was explained the hierarchy of the building. Each floor is a different role and looks down on the people in the floors below them. Like, the building and org is designed for this.It is, truly, the most dystopian shit I've heard in my 12 years in tech.

@freemo Yeah, this sounds like your first degree. There are three for normal masons (and all sorts of options after that). I confess I haven't been to a lodge meeting since 2011 though. I've kept paying dues as they do some good things in the area I was in but I've never joined another lodge since moving from that area.

@freemo Which degree? I've been a master mason since 2009 or so

Now Chicago is talking about building not 1, but 2 new stadiums for the Bears and the White Sox at over $1 billion each. The Bears current stadium was refurbished not long ago so a new one isn't needed and the White Sox's current stadium is from the 90s but the owner wants an entertainment district around it he can personally profit from so he's demanding the tax payers build him a new one.

What a joke.

Yes, the answer is yes.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/19/magnificent-7-profits-now-exceed-almost-every-country-in-the-world-should-we-be-worried.html

I gotta say. My Apple credit card really is making the visit to Ireland super easy post covid.

@m2m That's a very fair comment and something I'm trying to balance fixing with the fact that I'm in the US and, at 45, have another 22-25 years of work left before I can even consider retirement and have to make sure I can still find work throughout that time. For now removing WordPress is a start, but I'm really struggling with how to take that further and I'm not sure at the moment. That really bothers me. @silviamaggi

@silviamaggi @m2m I'll be looking forward to hearing how this all goes for y'all as I have been working on doing similar for myself.

@m2m A number of friends and I have turned to Signal because of this. The format itself is similar to iMessage/etc but the killer feature is that we set our room to expire after 24 hours. It’s amazing how freeing it is to know that most will read something and, 24 hours later, it's gone. Nothing to worry about anymore. I'm not sure it's the solution here but it has kept a group of us going for almost 4 years now and is really pretty great for that. @michal_zelazny @mykie @kel @silviamaggi