ftl ✅ @ftl@awoo.space

2017: Our literal *geopolitics* is being influenced by the whims of social media companies' machine learning recommendation algorithms.

Not just this; Twitter's "broadcast likes to followers as if they were retweets" 'feature' has also caused similar events.

https://mobile.twitter.com/cwarzel/status/935923422726578176

<<my uninformed theory: Twitter's 'what you might have missed' algorithm surfaced coulter's RT of the Britain First leader as the first thing he saw when he opened the ole twitter machine on his phone this AM.>>

Reminder: Whenever you go to apologize but then realize it isn’t something you should apologize for and you wonder what to say instead: SAY THANK YOU. Your apologetic instinct is to lower yourself to raise up someone else, and the raising is great but the lowering is unnecessary: Just give them the blessing. Say “thank you for waiting” instead of “sorry I’m late”. It works.

Mac tech coworker tests and verifies the root thing. Says unlocking the control panel thingy with root seems to somehow 'activate' the supposedly locked-out root account, like you can then do a full interactive login as root afterwards.

Is... is this a case of someone wrote 'if (account.activated = true)' rather than 'if (account.activated == true)' ?

It can't be that dumb surely

NEWT FROM ALIENS VOICE: but it could

Apple's fuck-up or not let's also remember that there are ways to do vulnerability disclosure responsibly and tweeting about it is not one of them

@natecull My brother spoke very clearly on this: "Why are we speaking to databases in sentences?"

It would be much better if we could speak to databases on some general-purpose AST, be that canonical s-exps or heck even json. Something with structure.

That we're having to encode rules to avoid "little bobby tables" security risks in every language is bonkers.

The right always brings up fake accusations -> the right crafts false accusations. It's a pattern. It's a heck yeah moment that WaPo did not fall for it and managed to fire back but the misinformation tactics described are chilling https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/a-woman-approached-the-post-with-dramatic--and-false--tale-about-roy-moore-sje-appears-to-be-part-of-undercover-sting-operation/2017/11/27/0c2e335a-cfb6-11e7-9d3a-bcbe2af58c3a_story.html

EVE Online Player Accidentally Becomes Certified Accountant http://thehardtimes.net/harddrive/eve-online-player-accidentally-becomes-certified-accountant/

Etsy after going public: "they are cutting anything that’s not essential to the business. This is a cautionary tale of capitalism"

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/25/business/etsy-josh-silverman.html

twitter.com/nothings/status/934891178591264768

<<Realized that even though I knew there's a new Animal Crossing game, I've still been reading every reference to "AC" as "Assassin's Creed".

Those were some weird tweets, y'all.>>

https://cybre.space/media/hKO_LFaECHbwZospAjA
http://kogla.tumblr.com/post/167883783436/feazelblahg-ayezaeyah-howdy-ive-never-seen

Christmas on Mastodon

https://computerfairi.es/media/3IUbD41UO433d1z7qH0

I'm guessing makefile and compile options.

https://twitter.com/ticiaverveer/status/934532192360910852

<<This sword is typical of those that would have been wielded by European knights in the 13th century. It was found in the river Witham, Lincolnshire. On one side there is an indecipherable inscription ‘+NDXOXCHWDRCHWDRCHDXORUN’, perhaps a religious invocation. (weighing 1.2 kg)>>

https://mastodon.social/media/3trhcrhpc2K7pU7KwSY

*taking back control intensifies* http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/22/news/economy/uk-france-biggest-economies-in-the-world/index.html

"We block them!" is the obvious response. Masto lets both #mastoadmins and users block/silence both individuals and instances. And that’s good for now. But what’s gonna happen when we’re big enough to get large scale attacks?

Should admins be automatically alerted if multiple folks on their instance start blocking a person? Or an instance? Or if, say, five different people on your instance blocked five different people from badactor.donuts? Hell, maybe you want to automatically defederate with badactor.donuts when that happens, and tell the admin so they can rescind the block when they get a chance to investigate.

This is hopefully a long way away from happening. But it feels like a thing we should start thinking about. How do we give people who are running an instance as a hobby the tool to quickly detect and deal with attacks?

(This probably also goes with my musings on "friend" instances potentially watching what each other block, and alerting their admin/autoblocking when enough friends are blocking the saame thing. It’s kind of the same idea on a lower level.)

Thesis: a web of trust based social network wouldn't have a reliable "global" follower / like / etc count -- it would only be the ones you've seen -- and this would be a feature.

Some of the most toxic behavior on Twitter comes from people trying to become "the most popular person in the room", which also leads to a lot of social messaging which isn't about being constructive, but differentiating yourself in a way that makes you look better than others.

😃 #Mastodon is getting a lot of new users right now, but, importantly, it's also getting new instances. Here are two comics focused instances for #under1000

https://comicspace.masto.host

https://comics.masto.host

I want to use Mastodon more, but I'm having trouble finding likeminded people. Hit me up if you like (or make!) narrative driven games/adventure games, or making YouTube vids/Twitch streams about them. Or if you just fancy a giggle. #gamedev #adventuregames #youtube #twitch #narrativedesign

"If you ignore the witness of teenage girls,
if you tell refugees "go back where you came from,"
if you close your doors to dirty field laborers,
if you would turn a child over to a tyrant:

Please don't put up a Nativity this year."
- Emmy Rettino Kegler