Notices by Rod Hilton (rodhilton@mastodon.social)

This November, you have the power to make Elon Musk waste 180 million dollars.

Right now if you search for "country in Africa that starts with the letter K":

- DuckDuckGo will link to an alphabetical list of countries in Africa which includes Kenya.

- Google, as the first hit, links to a ChatGPT transcript where it claims that there are none, and summarizes to say the same.

This is because ChatGPT at some point ingested this popular joke:

"There are no countries in Africa that start with K."
"What about Kenya?"
"Kenya suck deez nuts?"

Google Search is over.

@Gargron ok https://news.google.com/search?q=boston%20cop%20slide&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen

I think I'd be questioning my life choices if I was part of a profession that people loathe so much that a video of someone getting horrifically bodied by a metal slide elicits absolutely zero sympathy just because the person in it is also a member of that profession.

@mattgriffin See, this is a problem...

This video has become a viral meme on Twitter/X, Bluesky, TikTok, and Threads. And folks on Mastodon have absolutely no idea it happened, I haven't seen it even mentioned.

Say what you will about this making Mastodon "better", it sure isn't the place to be if you want to know wtf your friends are talking about.

Anyway it's this: https://www.boston25news.com/news/local/boston-police-officer-hurt-tumbling-down-childrens-slide-video-incident-goes-viral/OLD3ZMRC7FHEJBLWZBRLMKJVP4/

lol cry more

#remotework

💯 Studios could have focused on producing film and TV to sell to tech companies like Netflix to fill their libraries.

Instead they decided to compete with Netflix and launch their own streaming services, and became unwitting tech companies.

Turns out running a tech company sucks.

NBC could have sold The Office syndication rights to Netflix for $500m and instead launched Peacock, a service nobody wants to use and needed $500m in subs just to break even.

https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2023-07-21/column-hollywood-sag-aftra-strike-strike-silicon-valleys-magical-thinking

@tchambers You'll get a subset of activity this way for sure, but I'm trying to point out you can get almost all of it in a virtually undetectable way just by standing up a quiet instance.

#GoogleIO revealed the two weirdest features as a pair.

1. Give a short summary and Google will draft an e-mail for you based on it. You can even click "elaborate" and it will make the e-mail longer.

2. When opening an e-mail, Gmail can summarize the entire thing for you so you don't have to read all of it.

Does everyone realize how fucking bizarre this is?

Both people in the conversation want to work with directness and brevity, and Google is doing textual steganography in the middle.

"ActivityPub is just like e-mail" well guess what, gmail silently dropping e-mails sent from another e-mail server because the admins disagree is the worst thing about it.

The notion of even trying to deal with it as a user is utterly absurd. I'm supposed to find an instance that DOESN'T defederate? That's posted on a server-by-server basis, there's no tool that's like "here's everyone I follow, find me an instance where I can continue following them all"

What a stupid thing.

The constant-threats-to-defederate thing is going to kill this place, seriously.

Defederating an instance is an extreme measure and it should only be taken in extreme circumstances.

Finding out I might stop getting posts from people I explicitly follow because they happen to be on an instance being defederated by mine all because a bunch of admins I don't know got in a spat over a user I don't follow is just about the most annoying value proposition imaginable.

https://federate.social/@mattblaze/110317006852580015

He talked about electric cars. I don't know anything about cars, so when people said he was a genius I figured he must be a genius.

Then he talked about rockets. I don't know anything about rockets, so when people said he was a genius I figured he must be a genius.

Now he talks about software. I happen to know a lot about software & Elon Musk is saying the stupidest shit I've ever heard anyone say, so when people say he's a genius I figure I should stay the hell away from his cars and rockets.

Stop begging this loser for free access to his shithole. Let Twitter die. https://independenttechresearch.org/letter-twitter-api-access-threatens-public-interest-research/