@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

jamiemccarthy

@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social

Ruby on Rails engineer, vegan, enjoy D&D and relational databases, unhappy about fascism. Interests: procgen, nonzero-sum games, staying healthy. Formerly: Slashdot, ThinkGeek, The Holocaust History Project. Engineering account is over at https://ruby.social/@jamiemccarthy

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cfiesler, to random
@cfiesler@hci.social avatar

Authors, I continue to be unconcerned about ChatGPT taking your jobs.

I'm currently finishing up revising a novel, and out of curiosity I decided to see what kinds of suggestions and advice ChatGPT would give me for revising some scenes. In the little bit I tried, it offered a decent idea or two, but when it came to actual revision suggestions the writing is utter garbage.

Here's one example, and keep in mind that this is a middle grade novel. So for, like, twelve-years olds:

jamiemccarthy,
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

@cfiesler It can usually improve on this kind of slop with a little tweaking, fwiw

jamiemccarthy, to random
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

PFAS: “hold my beer”

From: @fuzzychef
https://m6n.io/@fuzzychef/112481545161302068

jamiemccarthy,
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

@fuzzychef

(They coated the aluminum cans with it, the PFAS is literally holding our beer)

jeffjarvis, to random
@jeffjarvis@mastodon.social avatar

For decades Brent Bozell's Parents Television Council has been the enemy of free speech in America. His son was just sentenced to prison for Jan. 6. Some parent.
Son of prominent conservative family sentenced to nearly 4 years for Jan. 6 https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/05/17/bozell-jan-6-sentence/

jamiemccarthy,
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

@jeffjarvis This convict is the grandson of L. Brent Bozell Jr., who ghost-wrote the extremely influential Goldwater biography, and who also was William F. Buckley Jr.’s brother-in-law

jeffjarvis, to random
@jeffjarvis@mastodon.social avatar

Germany now calls the United States the land of forbidden books. Think about that for ten seconds, please.

jamiemccarthy,
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

@jeffjarvis Also “Kulturkampf” hits a little differently

jwz, to random
@jwz@mastodon.social avatar

Honestly rooting for Kessler syndrome at this point.

jamiemccarthy,
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

@jwz https://web.archive.org/web/20190410081804/https://mccarthy.vg/post/168005943556/the-slowly-dawning-realization-that-were-one-of

Green_Footballs, to random
@Green_Footballs@mastodon.social avatar

Even before Musk, Twitter under Jack Dorsey was INCREDIBLY BAD at moderation. I could cite MANY examples of ridiculous moderation fails, just from my own email archives.

If you ever tried to use Twitter’s reporting tools to get them to moderate horrific racism, stalking, outright Nazis and worse, and only received an email saying they didn’t see anything wrong with it and would take no action, you know what I’m talking about.

jamiemccarthy,
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

@Green_Footballs I kept screenshots for years of my reporting outright obvious bigotry and literal Nazis, to little effect. The main thing that got an account to experience consequences was using one of a short list of racial slurs with the full word spelled out. But literal Nazis who wrote “J” instead of “Jew” just kept spreading literal Nazi propaganda, for years. So yes, moderation under Dorsey was already a joke

mcc, to random
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

I order some Products from the United States.

The cost is $88 CAD.

There's a fixed international shipping cost of $48 CAD. Frustrating, but that is what the shipper has, so okay.

A couple days later, I get an email from UPS asking to pay the import duty fee. The import fee is $51 CAD.

That is more than half the cost of the product itself. I'm overall paying more for shipping+import fees than for the product.

When I moved here I assumed I could buy stuff from USA cheap because of NAFTA :(

jamiemccarthy,
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

@mcc Yeah, I’ve gone through something similar. I can almost hear the meetings for the UPS phone and website dev, where the product manager explains in business-speak that the team’s KPI for the quarter is to get more customers to give up in frustration

GottaLaff, to random
@GottaLaff@mastodon.social avatar

👇🏼
Via Kyle Griffin:

President just announced his 49th round of nominees for federal judicial positions — bringing the total number of announced federal judicial nominees to 240.

jamiemccarthy, (edited )
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

@GottaLaff @kwheaton Slightly more ordinary, decent, serious thinkers in important positions of authority than obediently vicious partisans is a tragedy, not an achievement

jamiemccarthy, to random
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

Perfect confidence scam. It’s called a con because the scammer works to make the victim gain his confidence. Once the victim is trying to prove their trustiworthiness to a stranger, they lose

I’m trying to picture the use story tickets for this feature. Did the project manager see any tickets like: “as a con artist, I want to trigger this push at a time of my choosing”

From: @Edent
https://mastodon.social/@Edent/112372412442888807

ZachWeinersmith, to comics
@ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social avatar

Full comic here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/sit-down

jamiemccarthy,
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

@ZachWeinersmith In 1999 Thomas Friedman published his Golden Arches Theory that no two countries that both have McDonald’s will go to war. This was immediately disproven.

CartyBoston, to random
@CartyBoston@mastodon.roundpond.net avatar

It's 1979, I have heard of #unix but my university has no machine to run it. Prof says "Moravian College (across town) has a PDP-11 that runs unix, go check it out."

There was no email, students did not have telephones, I just walked into their computer center. They were so thrilled someone was interested they encouraged me to stay and learn.

Oh my God what have we done?

jamiemccarthy,
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

@CartyBoston It’s 1979 and I am a child in elementary school. My parents drop me off at the campus computer building. I walk into the room across the hall from the PDP-10 and spend all day writing a LIFE program in BASIC and sending the output to the 132-column printer. I wait in line for my print job next to bemused college students and a disused card punch machine. No one asks whether I belong

Green_Footballs, to random
@Green_Footballs@mastodon.social avatar

Realizing that everything about modern conservatism was a complete fucking lie was the shock to the system it took to wake me up from my post-9/11 dumbass stupor.

jamiemccarthy,
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

@Green_Footballs What was it for you, that made you realize that?

mcc, to random
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

Hey. Question.

What the fuck is this?

Is my phone doing this? If so, how long has it been doing it? Also, why wasn't I informed? Also, why can't I find a setting to turn it off?

jamiemccarthy,
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

@glyph @mcc @moirearty Are… any people able to detect it?

jamiemccarthy,
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

@glyph @moirearty @mcc If people are claiming they can detect the IR flashes, it seems unlikely they're self-diagnosing correctly, and also it's easy to test

jamiemccarthy,
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

@glyph @moirearty @mcc Interesting. Found this article about rhodopsin detecting certain IR wavelengths, so TIL: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/photons-double-up-to-help-us-see-beyond-the-visible-light-spectrum/

daringfireball, to random
@daringfireball@mastodon.social avatar

★ Face the Critic: Ian Betteridge Edition
https://daringfireball.net/2024/04/face_the_critic_ian_betteridge_edition

jamiemccarthy,
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

@daringfireball In what sense do you think people can be informed about Facebook tracking? It’s an impossibly Byzantine, ruthlessly comprehensive, globe-spanning spy network that has never existed in the history of the world or even in the feverish fantasies of Stasi directors. You need a Master’s to understand how it could exist. “We will cement your every thought and glance into a secret forever-log that was created before you were born and will persist decades after you depart this earth”

mcc, to random
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

If I have the opportunity to upgrade my website from google recaptcha v2 to google recaptcha v3 should I take it

jamiemccarthy,
@jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

@mcc Probably yeah.

One thing is that you don’t actually have to have the recaptcha icon visible on your page. You can hide it, it’s documented, but it’s not well documented and you have to go looking for the approved way of hiding it.

mcc, to random
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    jamiemccarthy,
    @jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

    @mcc “Palestinian citizens of Israel have had the right to vote in Israeli elections since the first Israeli elections in 1949.”

    https://ecfr.eu/special/mapping_palestinian_politics/palestinian_citizens_of_israel/

    dangillmor, to random
    @dangillmor@mastodon.social avatar

    Blog post: Once again, NY Times amplifies right-wing trolling, omits vital context. It's journalistic malpractice, and it's the norm in Times political coverage.

    https://dangillmor.com/2024/04/17/again-ny-times-amplifies-right-wing-trolling-omits-vital-context/

    jamiemccarthy,
    @jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

    @dangillmor Since you recognize that it’s the norm, it’s time for you to acknowledge what that means

    waldoj, to random
    @waldoj@mastodon.social avatar

    I'm trying to pay my Virginia income taxes online, and they have disabled paste in any field of consequence. Paste in a password? Nope. Your bank's routing number? You're gonna have to hand-key that. Your bank account number? You better believe you're typing that in.

    If you wanted to force people to create crappy passwords and cause them to accidentally siphon money out of strangers' bank accounts, this is how you'd do it. And somebody went to extra effort to make it be like this!

    jamiemccarthy,
    @jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

    @csilverman @octothorpe @waldoj Broken by design. "Not supporting the Vibration API is a feature."

    https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/04/16/not-all-web-apis-are-good-apis

    Some folks disagree so much they make whole websites about it...

    https://ios404.com/#vibration

    craiggrannell, to random
    @craiggrannell@mastodon.social avatar

    It almost feels like Apple is trolling Riley at this point. I was unaware things were quite this bad. None of this is OK. But I can’t imagine Apple will make things right.

    From: @rileytestut
    https://mastodon.social/@rileytestut/112268412745806214

    jamiemccarthy,
    @jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

    @craiggrannell @rileytestut Looks like Apple made it right

    https://9to5mac.com/2024/04/15/heres-why-apple-removed-the-first-game-boy-emulator-from-the-app-store/

    gvwilson, (edited ) to random
    @gvwilson@mastodon.social avatar

    Starting to wonder if AI is like spreadsheets: for every programmer pointing out flaws and deficiencies, a double dozen people are using 'em to do something they find useful. 1/4

    Added: please see https://mastodon.social/@gvwilson/112265751571981599 for clarification.

    jamiemccarthy,
    @jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

    @gvwilson Yeah I have given up trying to educate people about the useful applications of what’s commonly called “AI”. I saw a Mastodon poll where 91% of lay people thought it was a scam. People will believe what they want to believe. Meanwhile smart engineers I work with have incorporated it into their daily work and find themselves more productive. The dogs bark but the caravan moves on

    eaton, to random
    @eaton@phire.place avatar

    So, if you're a MacOS user and you ever feel the need to get some raw stats about the photos you've taken and stored in your iCloud photo library, there's a (fairly) easy way to dig in.

    iPhoto's metadata lives in a giant sqlite database, and you can just… query it. Unless you've moved it, it lives at ~/Pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary/database/Photos.sqlite, and quite a bit of interesting stuff is in the ZEXTENDEDATTRIBUTES table.

    jamiemccarthy,
    @jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

    @lewiscowles1986 @eaton Apple sells user data? Which user data do they sell to whom?

    waldoj, to random
    @waldoj@mastodon.social avatar

    Just rolled the absolute hell out of my ankle while on my final trip loading up the car for a 12-hour dive with family so my plans have changed to lying in the ground and yelling which is going great

    jamiemccarthy,
    @jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social avatar

    @waldoj This is just how healthcare billing works. They know your insurance will only pay a few bucks for an office visit. And they also know the insurance company will let them mark up ordinary medical supplies 1000%.

    For a chronic issue of my own, I’d spent a decade trying out various $30 Amazon orthopedic devices, and then I saw a specialist whose office staff handed me something nearly identical and billed my insurance $200. I guess it’s a little better? I can’t really tell.

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