@hrefna@hachyderm.io
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

hrefna

@hrefna@hachyderm.io

SRE at Google. Queer. Poly :potion_polyamory: Trans :verified_trans: :nonbinary_potion: Engineer. Ace :flag_ace: Member of AWU-CWA. #ActuallyAutistic :rainbowinfinity: #UnionStrong

Opinions my own. Does not suffer fools gladly.

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hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Being vague about specific harmful experiences with groups who you won't name and just advising people to "be cautious" is the opposite of helpful and further propagates the problems of the culture of silence around these topics. In this essay I will…

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

If everything else wasn't sufficient: After seeing what happened to tooters and my own previous experience with communities disappearing overnight, I'm extremely disinclined to move servers even if another one would be a better "fit" and especially if that server is not fairly significantly sized.

I've done the "my community might disappear tomorrow" dance for entirely too long (1990s) and I don't particularly want to invest the time or the energy into worrying about it any longer.

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Meeting from last week.

Manager: "Are you available for a conversation tomorrow? I know it will be very early for you."

Me: "…is it a capital-C Conversation?"

Manager: "…a what?"

Me: "Does it involve HR or is it about my performance in some way?"

Manager: "OH! No!!! I'm getting feedback about the recent reorg from various senior people and I'd like you involved, that's all."

Me: "whew. Okay. Had me concerned there for a second. Yes. I can be available early for that."

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

At least the first book of #EightySix (Asato Asato/安里アサト) is a masterclass in talking about the limits of being the privileged savior. The limits of your ability, of your experience, of your capability to empathize

Again and again it drives its point home:

That when you have privilege you cannot "give up that privilege." You always have it, and you cannot understand what those who do not have it go through

About how prejudice is systemic and genocidal, and how the system propagates itself

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

The first season of the #EightySix anime does this, but the book grinds the point in. Behind the anime aesthetic, the sci fi elements, and the cute imagery the story is not only deathly serious, but deathly serious to a purpose. The war, the racism, the genocide is all done with a real world analog and the book wants you to understand what it is doing.

The book repeatedly references All Quiet on the Western Front and it isn't just for show. This is an anti-war novel, underscored in triplicate.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Sometimes stories use the horrors of war. They don't flinch from it, but it isn't about that. That's the backdrop so that they can tell their story about hope or remembrance or friendship or love. So that they can pull you along with the tragedy and loss.

This story uses the light elements to make its point about racism, genocide, and war.

The anime does in some ways a better job of using those light elements to draw you along while not losing the point. The light novel is relentless.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

But, and this is a core theme that I think it is easy to miss (and something that Asato Asato called out): This isn't just "this is all doom and gloom." There are legitimate light moments, legitimate moments of fun, they humanize—effectively—the people.

They show that these are kids. They have light moments, they play, and yet they know (or learn) what this is.

Sometimes when stories use kids like this it feels cheap. In this case it feels purposeful.

It's a damning indictment of society

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Like so.

hrefna, to Genshin_Impact
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

I want the hide and go seek version of back ;_;

Not this Dead By Daylight nonsense.

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Oh good, one of my least favorite presentation patterns: "here's a video of a bunch of random people saying what $foo 'means' to them, usually using low-quality microphones and no sound editing to speak of."

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Converging on perfect, non-problematic language:

  1. Isn't possible.

  2. Erases a lot of identity in the margins.

  3. Will not fix oppression. Especially when your target audience are the group that uses that label.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

This doesn't mean that we don't work to fix our language, but it does mean that we need to be aware of the context a word or phrase exists in and the cultural intersections that go along with it.

We just aren't trying to move someone necessarily "away from an imperfect form" and "toward a perfect form that we decided on fifteen minutes ago." Instead there is a cultural gap, there is a matter of identity, and humanity (and all of nature) likes to defy categorization every chance it gets.

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

One of those things that's worth keeping in the back of your mind:

Things tend to change at the orders of magnitude.

What you need at 99% reliability is not the same thing you need at 99.9% reliability is not the same thing that you need at 99.99998% reliability.

So when you see people confidently assert that "let's just throw a neural network at it" you should immediately be asking "what is the cost of a failure."

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/05/on-self-driving-waymo-is-playing-chess-while-tesla-plays-checkers/

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Cis people sitting with each other and saying "protect trans kids" to each other and then undermining that in every interaction with a trans person or in any opportunity to actually support trans people is…

…well, it's definitely a thing.

hrefna, to rust
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

The #RustLang "Rust by Example" is absolutely brilliant. Mad props.

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

"But you will be using AI in…"

Possibly! I don't dispute that it may happen! I've seen a lot of thoughts in that direction for other technologies that never panned out, but I've also seen it go the other way.

Finding a use for the generative AI tools in the development process won't surprise me. Especially if the cost comes down.

What I balk at are replacement narratives or the idea that somehow it will invalidate human engineers.

Also: you should unionize to fight them trying.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

They will try. It being a terrible idea doesn't mean that they won't try. It ultimately being doomed to failure doesn't mean they won't try. They've been pushing this narrative for years, waiting for a moment when they could try to find a justification to cut our numbers or our pay.

So they will try.

Go unionize. That's your only way of resisting them trying.

But.

Our skills will still be valuable on the other side when they eventually figure out that this doesn't work.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

@datarama

They think that because it has already been done. The WGA being one example. In tech it's already happened as well: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-11/microsoft-agrees-to-union-contract-terms-governing-its-use-of-ai

Then there is the book Blood in the Machine.

@Jackiemauro

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

@datarama

If you want to fight back there are a handful of predominant methods, depending on which theory of power.

Unions are the most practical and the most in your day-to-day control. The others are things like political solutions, which both take time and tend to be out of your average person's hands in a way that unions are not.

Will they always work? Absolutely not. On the other hand: they already have today for this exact problem in the software industry.

@Jackiemauro

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

@datarama

The fundamental assertion that the value of the labor will drop to zero I think is a fundamental flaw.

Good luck to them with that theory of labor value. They've been pushing this idea since at least the late 1980s that the "next big thing" would "eliminate" the need for software engineers

Could this be it? Could this finally be it after forty years?

Maybe! But I'm not holding my breath, and in the meantime the question is "what actions can we take in this moment"

@Jackiemauro

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

@datarama

I don't have the power to make the US Congress functional, or the SCOTUS not terrible, or get the EU to move more quickly, so what are the concrete actions I can take?

Unions are a concrete step that many people have the ability to take and one that can help.

Think that there is no effective action and we're all doomed to a Malthusian ending?

Then how do you respond to that, because that is the one thing you can control: your response.

@Jackiemauro

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

"What happens to developers when AI can write code?"

I feel like I'm in a constant back-and-forth of "how-much-wood-could-a-woodchuck-chuck" every. single. time. this comes up.

Like… just…

No. Stop it.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

"we have this language that can express something precisely and even in some cases provably. We do need specialists who can think in terms of the problem, however, and deconstruct the ideas so that they can be worked on. Especially because you are never clear in your ideas."

"Okay, but what if we just had the execs say whatever [nonsense] ideas in English and software [that we can't understand or deconstruct] generated it, what then, huh?"

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

"Women would rather run into a bear in the woods than Lord Byron"

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

If you are a cis person and you have "trans rights are human rights" in your bio I am generally going to assume that you are not a safe person.

Similarly. If you put "Ally" in your bio I am going to assume you aren't one.

Not because it is bad to flag that "Trans rights are human rights," but because it is too easy: you are really only advertising who you are to followers and potential followers, and that is a very easy thing to do without having done the work.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

@Andrea

I was at a Native fundraiser awhile back and they had a very powerful land acknowledgement at the front, but part of what made it powerful was their statement about how "this can feel useless, sometimes, or like it is the only thing that it is done" and their reflection on "what it means to us to be doing this."

It wasn't colonizers doing it pro-forma for other colonizers.

@samuteki

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