Posts by dredmorbius@toot.cat
(DIR) Post #AW7uo9HWZRQoH9g69Q by dredmorbius@toot.cat
2023-05-28T21:23:33Z
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HN Front Page / Global Cities MentionsOne question I've had about HN is how well or poorly it represents non-US (or even non-Silicon Valley) viewpoints and issues.Pulling from the Gllobalization and World Cities Reasearch Network list, the top 50 global cities names appearing in HN front-page titles: 1 191 San Francisco 2 164 London 3 117 Boston 4 86 Seattle 5 60 Tokyo 6 58 Paris 7 56 Chicago 8 56 Hong Kong 9 55 New York City 10 50 Berlin 11 50 Phoenix 12 45 Rome 13 40 Detroit 14 36 Singapore 15 31 Vancouver 16 30 Los Angeles 17 27 Austin 18 23 Beijing 19 20 Dubai 20 19 Shenzhen 21 19 Toronto 22 17 Amsterdam 23 16 Copenhagen 24 16 Houston 25 16 Moscow 26 15 Atlanta 27 14 Barcelona 28 14 Denver 29 13 Baltimore 30 13 San Jose 31 13 Stockholm 32 12 San Diego 33 12 Sydney 34 11 Cairo 35 10 Munich 36 10 Wuhan 37 9 Helsinki 38 9 Miami 39 9 Mumbai 40 9 Philadelphia 41 9 Shanghai 42 9 Vienna 43 8 Montreal 44 7 Beirut 45 7 Dublin 46 7 Istanbul 47 6 Bangalore 48 6 Dallas 49 6 Kansas City 50 6 Minneapolis(Best viewed in original on toot.cat.)Note that some idiosyncracies affect this, e.g., "New York City" appears rarely, whilst "New York" may refer to the city, state, any of several newspapers, universities, etc. "New York" appears 315 times in titles (mostly as "New York Times").I've independently verified that, for example, "Ho Chi Minh City" doesn't appear, though "Ho Chi Minh" alone does:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15374051, on the 2017-9-30 front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2017-09-30So apply salt liberally.#HN #HackerNews #DataAnalysis #ShellScripting #GlobalCities #MediaAnalysis
(DIR) Post #AW7uoA6DWxysoNOaAK by dredmorbius@toot.cat
2023-05-28T21:28:11Z
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Searching for "New York" followed by one or more capitalised words ... and massaging the resulting data a bit, results in the following list of New York institutions and/or aspects which receive mention at HN: 96 New York Times 51 New York City 25 New York 5 New York State 4 New York Public Library 3 New York City Subway 2 New York Harbor 2 New York Subway 2 New York Times Magazine 1 New York Attorney General 1 New York Charity 1 New York City Campus 1 New York Fed 1 New York Libraries 1 New York Magazine 1 New York Police 1 New York Post 1 New York Region 1 New York SenateNote that the 3rd entry, "New York" is itself ambiguous, and can refer to the city, state, or metro region, amongst others.A handy reminder that language is itself ambiguous and provides a useful but not precise mechanism for transferring meaning or understanding (or sometimes ambiguity and confusion) between entities.#HN #HackerNews #DataAnalysis #ShellScripting #GlobalCities #MediaAnalysis
(DIR) Post #AWA17aFnV7v3TIRNmS by dredmorbius@toot.cat
2023-05-29T21:37:22Z
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According to the Hacker News front page, there are ...:313 things that suck.18 things that will fail.116 things that rock.157 things that are awesome.0 things that are bollocks.685 things that are great.75 things that are terrible.1 thing that is both terrible and amazing. And it is you.28 things that are horrible.22 things that are a list of some number of things.33 things that are a list of some number of reasons.0 hot takes.3,101 things that are how to's.6,434 things that are "hows" but not how to's.98 things that are how not to's.21 things that are silly.86 things that are clever.318 things that are smart, none of which are phones.58 things that are brilliant.147 things that are stupid.20 things that are terrifying.19 things that you must do.Edit: Hashtag surgery (whitespace in hashtags is a thing that sucks).#HackerNews #HackerNewsAnalytics #TooMuchFunWithGrep #Suck #Fail #Rock #Awesome #Bollocks
(DIR) Post #AWDx0nNyBQ9VsIWQb2 by dredmorbius@toot.cat
2023-05-31T19:42:18Z
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@strypey False.Though I might have phrased that with greater clarity.First, "appeal to authority" is one of several informal fallacies, that is, it doesn't automatically invalidate a statement, but it does suggest a weakness.Second, appeal to authority refers to power or position independent of epistemic characteristics. In its classic form it often referred to reliance on religious or political statements, or perhaps on overreliance of ancient sources (e.g., Aristotle, classically, in mediaeval and Renaissance Europe). There are heavy overtones of Papal infallability to it.Expertise is direct experience or knowledge of a subject, or general knowledge of a field. It is a measure of credibility for knowledge of which we cannot ourselves claim first-hand familiarity. Or, often, for which a first impression gives a false or misleading sense as compared to a deeper understanding.It is expertise and not authority we are relying on when we cite a reference work (dictionary, encyclopedia, desk reference, statistics, textbook, article), or when we call on expert witnesses in legal or other hearings. There's some confounding of this in common parlance as an expert is often referred to as an authority, but in most cases that authority derives from specific experience, reputation, and credibility rather than some conferred political or social power.*Expertise and credibility are not absolutes, and neither @vik nor I are claiming this. I've specifically indicated these *are fallible. You've specifically misrepresented our statements as claiming otherwise. Which, I might add, makes you an unreliable source.However as an initial prior for judging information it is a USEFUL guide. And in matters epistemic, utility has an extraordinary significance. We CANNOT be called upon to judge and assess each and every claim individually (regards the claim) and personally (regards persons). Instead we rely on standards, institutions, and practices of trust and presumed belief. We change our views as evidence changes, or as authorities previously viewed as credible come to be generally assessed as unreliable.In the context of the present discussion, Sabine Hossenfelder is providing a summary news piece in which she's discussing items of interest to a general science community. Specific expertise in physics and mathematics is a valid basis for general understanding, and we can further presume that Hossenfelder has a team assisting in that process (she alludes to this in multiple ways).What we're relying on her for then is:To filter through candidate stories to find those of greatest relevance and significance.To accurately summarize and present findings.Where she does so, to accurately express opinions on the overall findings or nature of the items.Which is to say: this is not scholarly or academic research itself, but a review of that research. Details of methodology and findings are going to be in the referenced documents.And the general expertise and credibility are specifically what is relevant for a scientific communicator / news presenter, in such a case.I noted above that the overhead of researching and rebutting every last claim is nonfeasible --- it's effectively a denial-of-serivce attack on our brains individually and on public knowledge generally. So is rebutting lazy, inaccurate, and if I may use the term, bullshit arguments or objections.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_lawMostly, though, it leads to extraordinarily tedious side tangents rather than a substantive discussion of the main topic at hand. There are times when it's reasonable to question sources. This ... really isn't one.#BullshitArgumentsWhichMustDie #BrandolinosLaw #Bullshit #AppealToAuthority #Expertise #Credibility #Trust #Epistemology #Knowledge #KnowingWhatWeKnow
(DIR) Post #AWE9I1TUFjbRwa5Fdw by dredmorbius@toot.cat
2023-05-31T21:57:12Z
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Hacker News Front Page Analytics ... what next?I'm thinking through where else to take this. I've had a few side discussions and commentary here and at HN. Part of this is coming up with questions, part with the tools to answer them.The initial question concerned places and regional references found on the HN front page. My initial analysis answered that (US states), and it was pretty easy to add cities (US and global) and countries to the list.I also wanted some overall summary statistics, for all time, by year, by period (I've done weekdays, I still need to get to months). There were some interesting comparisons --- vote and comment activity by page position, for example (there's an 844.4 point advantage for 1st over 30th place in votes, 340.3 in comments, for 2022, on average).I've broken out overall and average (per-story) votes and comments, which is interesting.There's top-site and top-user activity, and how that changes over time. I've done some work on this, I'm thinking of both other questions and how to represent this graphically.(Graphical representation is a question for other aspects as well ... what I've created so far is great for people who like reading 100s of pages of tables, less for those who prefer a visual representation.)What I've done less of, and am trying to think of ways to surface interesting elements rather than be strictly query/question driven, is to find patterns and trends in the data itself, most especially in the title text. There are challenges: HN doesn't provide much to work with (titles are restricted to 80 characters, generally), and there is of course ambiguity, though I'd posted a set of interesting/amusing items (see: https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/110454128168815763).I've been playing with some simple ngram code (awk associative arrays of 2..5 elements ... mind-bogglingly easy to create and often surprisingly insightful).I've relied on some external lists of entities (states, cities, countries, etc.) which are useful. I'd done an earlier analysis based on the Foreign Policy Top 100 Global Thinkers list, assessing salience level of various online sources, in 2015 (see: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3hp41w/tracking_the_conversation_fp_global_100_thinkers/). I can re-use that list, though I'd like to find a few others --- top startups / companies / people. Also perhaps major stories and terms from the past two decades. (I've done some searches based on my own recollection, e.g., MeToo, BLM, George Floyd, and the like with some success).And I'd like to do a deeper parse of the source HTML to grab both HN threads and source URLs. I've found the html-xml-utils package useful, need to check that's installed locally (OK, seems it is) and wrap my head around it again (the tools are ... idiosyncratic). Oh, and homebrew lists package executables in /usr/local/opt//bin/, which is good to know. Yay!(Yes, I'm aware there are other tools. I'm a simple basher.)#HackerNews #HackerNewsAnalytics
(DIR) Post #AWMhlv9LHgzoilliYS by dredmorbius@toot.cat
2023-06-03T04:51:34Z
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A: They're members of the aluminati.#DadJokes #CursesFoiledAgain #ThereIsNoTinfoilCabal
(DIR) Post #AWRUZfyZXxXmZWMU8e by dredmorbius@toot.cat
2023-06-07T08:19:45Z
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Kakhovka Dam explosion, flooding, and nuclear power plant video 'splainerThe blancolirio channel on YouTube has an excellent explainer and analysis of the as well as the impacts on the Zaproizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP) upstream of the dam.Flooding isn't the problem there, but maintaining a supply of cooling water for the plant is. Note that ZNPP which is in cold shutdown so is NOT operating is not presently a major risk. Though it does remain in Russian control.https://yewtu.be/watch?v=oKUMijNtAHIBlancolirio is a commercial airline pilot who ran an excellent series on an earlier dam incident covering the Oroville Reservoir in northern California following major damage to its spillway in 2017, and subsequent repairs and refurbishment. Very high signal/noise, strongly recommended.#Ukraine #KakhovkaDam #blancolirio #dams #DamFailure #video
(DIR) Post #AWfkTLubsxa13S6xdo by dredmorbius@toot.cat
2023-06-12T22:29:09Z
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So ... I've just logged in to Reddit for what appears to be the first time in five months, to set my small stable of subreddits dark.(Few of those are in fact active, but hey...)#Reddit #RedditBlackout
(DIR) Post #AWfkTOGf7wPMMQRbI8 by dredmorbius@toot.cat
2023-06-12T22:39:24Z
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And I'll also note that amongst my reasons for not using Reddit much at all:The tools suck. Mod, posting, discussion, all of it. I've written about this for years. And at some point even my dim brain has come to realise that sites / services which haven't changed glaring deficiencies in all likelihood never will. (Hello, Google+, Ello, Diaspora*, ...)The most active sub, /r/dredmorbius (and yeah, that's what my avatar here represents, something ... I really should change) ... has itself been both all-but-inactive and highly Reddit-critical for 5+ years now.The discussions ... just aren't useful. Some subs are good for generating suggestions / surfacing content, but I've generally got much better ways of doing that now. Mostly traditional research methods: reading books, tracking down bibliographies and citations, that sort of thing.Uninformed / manipulative / abusive chatter ... #AintNobodyGotTimeForThat (This from someone who's online presence dates to Usenet pre-Morris Worm.)#Reddit #RedditBlackout #OnlineDiscussion #TheHuntForClue #Clue #SignalNoise
(DIR) Post #AWfkTddtxouU2qQs64 by dredmorbius@toot.cat
2023-06-13T03:46:53Z
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@mdhughes The problem with the "I don't care how awful the tools are" approach is that bad tools drive out good mods and contributors.It is frustrating to try to moderate on Reddit, and the striking mods have been raising this issue with Reddit for well over a decade. There's been little visible progress.The result is that good mods go inactive or quit. You're left with either un-moderated or under-moderates subs (several of my own would fit that description), or with mods seeking that status who have either personal or pecuniary interests in the position.Bad mods mean that good contributors find both that they have less productive engagement, and less recognition.It's a death spiral.I'd walked from Reddit myself about five years ago, with very occasional, and increasingly reluctant, exceptions.Treat your volunteer labour force(s) with respect and integrity, or they'll turn on you.#reddit #RedditStrike #RedditBlackout #Moderators #Moderation
(DIR) Post #AWfkUd3Xd6fGW1ti1w by dredmorbius@toot.cat
2023-06-13T06:38:32Z
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@mdhughes So, first, this is shifting the argument, and I just want to point that out.My initial point was why tools matter. Even those you cannot see yourself directly.Whether and/or how a site can recover, and/or what lessons are learned from Reddit, are additional questions. From my experience, site degradation tends to be a one-way trip, so to that extent, yes, it's unlikely that those who've left will return.On the other hand ... people aren't an absolutely fixed resource, there's fresh blood arriving all the time, and with work and respect reputations might get turned around.The other aspect is that of the sites vying to become the next centre of online discussion, understanding why admin / mod tools matter and what the consequences of underprovision are is also key, and we're getting a masterclass in that right now.There's a constant tension between small and vital, on the one hand, and large and commercial, on the other. I've watched online discussions rise and fall, and there are examples from earlier periods of groups (say, the Algonquin Round Table, a writers' group, or H.L. Mencken's American Mercury magazine), where clue resided for a time, then left. The one just sort of faded, the second became the worst sort of reactionary anti-semitic rag.For the television age, there's TLC ("The Learning Channel"), at one time a public-broadcasting / NASA partnership, or the History Channel, both of which degraded significantly from initial visions. It's an old story.
(DIR) Post #AWhNr7b2qvXsyaFEZ6 by dredmorbius@toot.cat
2023-06-15T00:24:35Z
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Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit blackoutsWith Google’s generally poor search results nowadays, appending “reddit” has long been the default way I search for almost anything (and no, I’m not ready to get my info from an AI chatbot, either). But given the sheer volume of subreddits that are currently unavailable — including some of the most-subscribed subreddits — clicking through many Reddit links in search results takes me to a message saying the subreddit is private. ...https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/13/23759942/google-reddit-subreddit-blackout-protestsSeems Google (and Bing ... by extension DDG) might want to consider whether they want to be working on Maggie's farm no more.#Reddit #RedditStrike #Google #WebSearch #InternetOfShit #KillingTheGooseThatLaysGoldenEggs #GoldenGoose #UnintendedConsequences #Sharecropping #Sharecroppers #Dylan
(DIR) Post #AWpblzwLfp9EIuBSuO by dredmorbius@toot.cat
2023-06-18T23:43:14Z
2 likes, 1 repeats
@stux If US and EU antitrust / competitiveness authorities cannot secure compliance from Facebook and Zuckerberg for existing and longstanding orders, what makes you think a rag-tag bunch of Fediverse admins will fare better?Facebook are manifestly bad-faith and untrustworthy actors. Preblock, now.Facebook is a repeat violator at the FTC. There was a consent decree that goes back close to a decade, which the FTC in 2019 found that they violated. The recent news suggests that they may have also been in violation of this latest consent order. And that is really prompting a step back and a close look at: What does it take to make sure that firms across the board are actually complying with the law? ... I think when you have companies that are repeatedly before a law-enforcement agency, you need to ask serious questions about whether these companies are recidivist and whether they have a challenge in abiding by existing laws.-- Lina Khan, Chair of the US Federal Trade Commission, interviewed by Kara Swischer,15 May 2023https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/05/on-with-kara-swisher-ftc-chair-lina-khan-on-ai-and-musk.htmlAt the very least, a precondition for any cooperation would be full compliance with existing antitrust actions, sanctions, consent orders, and the like, for a period at least as long as noncompliance (so, four years in the case of the 2019 order).#Facebook #Meta #MetaBlock #KaraSwisher #LinaKhan #USFTC #Antitrust #Monopoly #EmbraceExtendExtinguish #EternalSeptember #MarkZuckerberg #FuckZuck #FuckFacebook
(DIR) Post #AWqxb2KQqTWMfxaSEy by dredmorbius@toot.cat
2023-06-19T07:56:12Z
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Mark Zuckerberg goes in for the kill as Elon Musk’s Twitter bleeds ad dollarsAt a gathering of Meta staff last week, Chris Cox, one of Mark Zuckerberg’s most trusted lieutenants, unveiled what he called “our response to Twitter”.The product chief showed off what has internally been codenamed “Project 92”, or in some iterations “Barcelona”: a prototype app that the Facebook-developer hopes will finally kill its rival.The app is expected to be called Threads and screenshots suggest it will feature a continuous scroll of text like Twitter with buttons similar to the Like and Retweet functions, according to technology news site The Verge. ...I'm presuming that this is the core initiative behind recently-disclosed NDA'd meetings of some Fediverse admins & devs and Facebook.Edit: Markup.#Facebook #Project92 #Barcelona #BarcelonaProject #Meta #MetaBlock #FediBlockMeta #FediPact #MarkZuckerberg #Zuckerberg
(DIR) Post #AWqxb3F9RatJVs7keG by dredmorbius@toot.cat
2023-06-19T08:02:49Z
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Previously at The Verge: "This is what Instagram’s upcoming Twitter competitor looks like"...The new standalone app will be based on Instagram and integrate with ActivityPub, the decentralized social media protocol. That will theoretically allow users of the new app to take their accounts and followers with them to other apps that support ActivityPub, including Mastodon. ...https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/8/23754304/instagram-meta-twitter-competitor-threads-activitypub#Facebook #Meta #MetaBlock #FediPact #Project92 #Zuckerberg #MarkZuckerberg
(DIR) Post #AWsKBywMnVhD22JRVA by dredmorbius@toot.cat
2023-06-20T06:31:50Z
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@vncntx FB have more than adequately proven unworthy of trust: https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/110567869250237510@aral
(DIR) Post #AWwwHsU4HV16Px6JQ8 by dredmorbius@toot.cat
2023-06-21T04:39:55Z
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@johnwehrle Or actively confuse the message.When I learned the notion of FUD back in the 1990s, I thought it was just a tech-world concept.Turns out to be rather broader and older than that.@luckytran
(DIR) Post #AWxVPfATAedxpZNiGO by dredmorbius@toot.cat
2023-06-22T19:07:28Z
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@jschrab "Written in blood."If you've ever wondered about the odor of natural gas (the gas is natural, the odor is not), what's a memorial to the 300 souls of the New London School in Texas, 1937.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_London_School_explosion@avajarvis @darkling
(DIR) Post #AXRWjZf3N1qWaqYZeK by dredmorbius@toot.cat
2023-07-06T23:09:48Z
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For those on instances supporting Markdown or HTML tags, a capability I'd not fully conned onto until just now:You can reference a Hashtag search link without invoking the #Hashtag itself, should you see need or choose to do so.Note that the first instance of "Hashtag" above was entered as a Markdown link, which look like:[Hashtag](https://toot.cat/tagged/hashtag)The second is the traditional:#Hashtag (I'm ... not entirely sure those examples will Render As Intended, though they're fenced code blocks as I'm entering them from toot.cat here which does support Markdown through #GlitchSoc, an alternative Mastodon server. I did preview them through a private share to myself first which looked OK...)I have fairly often linked directly to hashtag searches based on my own profile, e.g.:https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/tagged/hashtagWhich I'd entered above as:<https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/tagged/hashtag>Usually when directing people to those tags from non-Fediverse systems (e.g., on Hacker News).#Markdown #Hashtags #MastoTips
(DIR) Post #AXRWjbInGlEFgO9pEO by dredmorbius@toot.cat
2023-07-06T23:38:54Z
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@nonlinear As toot.cat renders my toot above, what appears is:Hashtag [toot.cat]That is, the linked text "Hashtag" followed by (orange, in my view) "[toot.cat]" indicating the domain that's been linked.This ... helps cut down on phishing potential.Note that links pretty much anywhere on the World Wide Web pose this same problem, and browsers have been going to greater and greater lengths to hide the actual linked URL from people, either in previews before clicking, or by abbreviating or entirely concealing the Navigation Bar after you've landed on the page.For someone whose browsing dates back to Mosaic and Netscape days, this is ... annoying.