Notices by Matthew Lyon (mattly@hachyderm.io), page 4

Proofreading a book about the history of soccer/football and it appears that the original sport was essentially 17776 rules

That feeling when you read an analysis of the Google antitrust case and it opens with literal robber baron apologia—"massive consumer benefits", "brought literal light to the masses"—and you know that reading it to the end is going to be a fucking chore.

Weirdest, possibly greatest, Tim Walz fact.
https://mastodon.social/@kjhealy/112915624921601732

Fascinating report from 404 Media's Samantha Cole on a trove of leaked NVIDIA Slack messages and emails about how they're scraping millions of YouTube videos to train their own new foundation video generation model: https://www.404media.co/nvidia-ai-scraping-foundational-model-cosmos-project/

Posted a few of my own notes here: https://simonwillison.net/2024/Aug/5/nvidia-scraping-videos/

It's not surprising to learn that they're doing this - that's practically the industry standard right now - but is still really interesting to see internal details of what they're collecting and why

the democrats could tax the rich out of existence and win generations of dutiful voters but choose not to

If none of this sounds that onerous—after all, demonstrating that a system that’s fundamentally incapable of preemptive action isn’t capable of preemptive action is stupendously easy, and documentation plus basic security is what they should be doing anyway—remember that US tech is 50% true believers who are trying to prove that their personal best buddy Clippy is on the verge of personhood, and 50% grifters who are promising legal slavery of thinking individuals in their core marketing

The fediverse is a lot of work. And right now, it doesn't make anybody any money. In fact it costs a lot of money ab free labor.

Investing in the fediverse only makes sense if it *actually* gives us control of our own destiny.

I'm gonna repeat this a lot. Because it's going to take a while for people to unlearn what we usually do and instead create new dynamics.
https://social.polotek.net/@polotek/112480816034536846

@nasser (caption) JAAVVAAAAASCCCRRIIIIIIIIPPPPPPPPTTTT!!!!

Except for the #IamANazi type of instances which aren't the main issues I see here, there's a lot of terrible stuff in those large instances." And just defederate" isn't always the answer because many ppl who don't know how to create an instance or even what joining an instance means, are in those large instances. And there are many people in that category I want to hear from.

Now, you can lead that way after the fact, but that's simply not how you win elections. You win elections in America by fighting, dirty if you have to; and that's probably especially important when the other guy is an actual fucking nazi who will lie his ass off, attack anything, anyone to rile up his base, and doesn't know or care what's out of bounds.

You're not gonna beat this guy because he goes too far. That's what he's about. You needa throw bows. Speaking purely tactically re: US history

Notice how many of the concerns in that thread would either diminish or vanish if Mastodon simply provided reply controls.

I don’t think it’s particularly useful to follow the details of Trump’s ear in tedious detail. (Gun violence is bad, even if it was just a scratch.)

I do think it’s useful to remember — and to relentlessly point out evidence — that Trump is a congenital liar, a con man, and a ham who manipulates the press and people’s emotions.

It’s also useful to decry his break with the long-standing norm of the public receiving accurate medical information about candidates.

#uspol
https://www.threads.net/@meidastouch/post/C95-lxRyRMQ

I feel like the one of the lowest level human internet problems we haven’t solved is how to be around millions of people, many of whom vocally disapprove of at least some of our thoughts and actions, without letting our hyper-social status-sensitive primate brains either melt or devote themselves to arguing that all our positions are the right positions for everyone.

Like yes, some algos are bad, but we also just built structures we can’t quite handle and are perma-mad at each other about it.

@mattly ugh TyoeScript.

Your former employer has asked me about converting our little app over to TypeScript and just ugh.

I don't know if it makes more sense in a fresh code base (although I doubt it) but trying to convert and having bits of both is definitely worse than just JavaScript.

Several replies about saving and restoring state at some platform level, and yeah, sure, that’s one part of this idea and interesting — but what I’m talking about is at least as much “Leave things where I left them!” as it is about restoring past state.

Like…I leave a messy pile of papers on my desk, but it’s •my• mess. I want my computer to be at least as predictable as my paper pile.

The main reason why customers want CarPlay support is that automakers are universally terrible at software/UX, and it is impossible to get automakers to admit that.

https://9to5mac.com/2024/07/22/rivian-carplay-features-interview/

I just got a copyright claim against a video I posted on youtube 10 years ago.

The video is a film by Georges Melies that was shot in the 1890s.

Someone is attempting to claim copyright over a film that is 130 years old, who's director died 86 years ago.

Now 1) I don't give a shit about this clip on youtube. 2) The person who made this claim is clearly in the wrong. 3) I can't be the only one that they have targeted illegally. 4) Youtube is a problem.

Good job everyone still using Twitter because "I'm just a smol bean how else will I promote my work UwU 🥺👉👈"

It says something that the reaction from pretty much everyone I know on Vance's nomination was, "Oh, THAT fuckin guy."

These Prime Day deals are out of control