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The thing about Twitter is that it really lacks a lot of the features you'd expect from a true Mastodon replacement.

For example, there's no way to edit your toots (which they, confusingly call "tweets"—let's face it, it's a bit of a silly name that's difficult to take seriously).

"Tweets" can't be covered by a content warning. There's no way to let the poster know you like their tweet without also sharing it, and no bookmark feature.

There's no way to set up your own instance, and you're basically stuck on a single instance of Twitter. That means there's no community moderators you can reach out to to quickly resolve issues. Also, you can't de-federate instances with a lot of problematic content.

It also doesn't Integrate with other fediverse platforms, and I couldn't find the option to turn the ads off.

Really, Twitter has made a good start, but it will need to add a lot of additional features before it gets to the point where it becomes a true Mastodon replacement for most users.

#twitter #mastodon #twittermigration

Oh, awesome. It's possible to issue commands to Amazon Alexa by using frequency ranges just outside human hearing

"Near-Ultrasound Inaudible Trojan (NUIT): Exploiting Your Speaker to Attack Your Microphone"

CVE-2023-33248

(PDF) usenix.org/system/files/sec23f

Apparently this page existed and I didn't know about it. The courses tab looks particularly helpful for any young professionals like me 😅
academictorrents.com/

having ADHD is great if you hate the idea of finishing 100% of a task but love the idea of finishing 2% of 50 tasks

On Monday, I wrote an essay about climate and biodiversity for Scientific American. I tracked proportional engagement, calculated as (likes + shares + comments)/followers, over six social media platforms.

The winner? MASTODON, by a landslide.

Second place? INSTAGRAM. It's harder to share posts on IG, but lot of people like things there!

The loser? FACEBOOK, also by a landslide.*

* On Facebook, I've been shadow-banned since August 2018 when they listed clean energy and climate as "socially sensitive topics" so my page there stopped growing 6 years ago and now only about 1% of my followers there ever see my posts if the mention climate. It's actually too bad, because that's the platform where I reach the most conservative audiences through their connections to friends and family. So even though it's dead last, I still persist.

** For example, I had a post on FB a few weeks ago that didn't mention climate or clean energy. Its engagement levels were 3.7% which would put it just below Instagram.

If it were up to me, wasm in the browser would be interpreted by default rather than JIT-compiled. JIT for JS and wasm, WebGL, and WebGPU should be permission-gated behind a “fingerprintable/dangerous performance features” permission.

Concerned that this name sounds scary and might dissuade users from enabling it? Good.

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As "smart interfaces" become more common, regression to the mean will be a serious problem.

For example, Google's swipe keyboard has trouble with rare words. I use a lot of technical terms. It seems like the swipe gesture model has no problem understanding what I mean, but then the language model kicks in and says, "'evolutionary'? Pfft, no way. They obviously meant 'employment'."

It's annoying having to fight with autocorrect, but I'm more concerned about the large scale effects. Will AI subtly nudge all of our communication and art to the average, making our culture more homogenous and bland?

in mysql they don’t say "byte" they say "tiny int" and i think that’s beautiful

Low key want to make an SSH over HTTP request thing.

Like, you open up an HTTP request and the server registers a TTY for it, then you keep the connection open and send data between the two ends.

So not only does the new Outlook preview only support Outlook & Gmail accounts (lol) but it also shows ads huh

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talking to a buddy about this hobby he picked up, and i asked if there are specific youtube channels he follows for information or whatever.

and he said that honestly what he's learning a lot from are Discord servers. and god it makes me uneasy that those are increasingly becoming our repositories of specialized information.

i miss web pages so fucking much, lxds.

due to cutbacks and the current market conditions 🤦‍♂️

THIS IS A REAL BIRD. Sooo pretty!

Violet-backed Starling

In the retro gaming community, we don't say goodbye; we say "emu later". And I think that's beautiful.

I cannot get this updated US risk map out of my mind.

In the last 6 months, half the US states have escalated anti-LGBTQ legislation to such a point that many—especially trans people—are in active danger. Florida has been designated a “don’t travel” state by Equality Florida. The NAACP also issued a no travel warning to FL for overlapping reasons, including the erasure of Black history.

This piece by Erin Reed details the information found in the maps: erininthemorning.com/p/may-ant

#lgbtqia

One of the fun bits of using as one of my main input methods is that I need to pronounce stuff weird sometimes to get it to understand me when similar sounding words are involved.

For example, I need to pronounce "git" like "jit" so it doesn't mistake it for "gift".

Honestly English isn't a great language for this use case. :P

Still need to find time to add code for dictating the NATO phonetic alphabet for more fine grained control.

Want to help us make web archiving easier and more accessible for all?
Webrecorder is hiring for a brand new Program Manager role:
webrecorder.net/jobs#program-m

PSA, if someone asks you for contact info (e.g. a phone number) of someone you know, the correct response is "I can't give that to you, but I can give them yours".

It's efficient and adds no round-trips, it's privacy friendly, it's non-awkward and it's social engineering resistant. It's a universally good rule.

And the corollary, of course: Don't ask someone for another person's contact info - ask them to pass on yours.

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Mauvestodon

Escape ship from centralized social media run by Mauve.