“I wish ancient people preserved their writing and artifacts better” I write in electronic signals on a piece of hardware that can’t retain its efficacy for more than a few decades.
Time to laser-print my entire blog on titanium plates and bury them underground.
Tags:
#this but unironically #I want to do more with K-selection strategies but it’s hard to know where to start #and how to do it on anything resembling a budget #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #amnesia cw
i guess now that phones are a thing you dont need a watch but pre-phone everyone who didnt wear a watch was a fucking chump, and itrs STILL a good idea now cuz what if youre in a no-phone situation, or just dontr want to bring your phone, etc
i used to wear a watch all the time and i miss it
(i stopped cause the strap broke and kept needing to be replaced and I decided it wasn’t actually worth the effort to figure how to find someone who would sell me a non-shitty watch strap when I already was carrying a phone with me at all times. The watch itself is fine and I could totally go back to using it)
i remember the era before everyone had a phone though. People kept asking me the time.
I get compliments on my watch sometimes at work. The customers think it’s a by-electronics-standards antique, guessing that it’s from the 80′s. Actually I bought it at Walmart in like 2013 for $20, and they’re still readily available for not that much more [link].
I really like this design: it’s elegant, shiny, doesn’t depend on Velcro (which wears out a lot faster than clasps) like most of my childhood watches did. It runs slow by about one second every 2.5 days: roughly once a month I sync it with time.gov.
Even now that I have a phone I plan to replace this watch if/when it wears out, preferably with an identical one. I like being able to just glance at it rather than have to take my phone out, dumbwatches are permitted in many contexts (work, exam rooms) where general-purpose computers are not, and the battery lasts much, *much* longer than a phone or smartwatch battery. I’m not sure I’ve *ever* had to recharge this watch, and if I did it was only once.
Tags:
#reply via reblog #recs #in which Brin has a job #Brin owns *two* 2010’s computers now #and I’m not sure if this fits the spirit of the tag but it certainly fits the letter: #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers
Tumblr wouldn’t feel like much if it were not for the passionate community filling up our dashboards. You are the reason people turn to Tumblr for a laugh or for a little human connection. You are why Tumblr feels like a home for so many. You care about this place, and you let us know when something doesn’t feel right. Many of you have called on us to further reevaluate how we deal with hate speech, particularly hate speech from Nazis or other white supremacist groups. Today we’re letting you know that we heard you, and we are taking further action.
We’ve listened to your feedback and have reassessed how we can more effectively remove hateful content from Tumblr. In our own research, and from your helpful reports, we found that much of the existing hate speech stemmed from blogs that have actually already been terminated. While their original posts were deleted upon blog termination, the content of those posts still lived on in reblogs. Those reblogs rarely contained the kind of counter-speech that serves to keep hateful rhetoric in check, so we’re changing how we deal with them.
We identified nearly a thousand blogs that were previously suspended for blatantly violating our policies against hate speech. Most of them were Nazi-related blogs. Earlier this week, we began the process of removing all reblogs stemming from the original posts on those previously suspended blogs—that’s approximately 4.47M reblogs being removed from Tumblr.
Moving forward, we will evaluate all blogs suspended for hate speech, and consider mass reblog deletion when appropriate.
Consulting outside experts
We wouldn’t make a change like this without considering the impact to your freedom of expression. We do not want to silence those who are providing educational and necessary counter-arguments to hate speech. We reviewed our approach with a variety of outside groups and experts to make sure we have aligned with their recommended best practices.
There’s no silver bullet solution, AI, or algorithm that can perfectly target hate speech. That’s why we have a dedicated Trust & Safety team, and why we have an easy way for you to report any hate speech you do see.
If you see something on Tumblr that violates our Community Guidelines, please report it to our Trust & Safety team for review.
Lastly…
We are, and will always remain, steadfast believers in free speech. Tumblr is a place where you can be yourself and express your opinions. Hate speech is not conducive to that. When hate speech goes unchecked, it eventually silences the voices that add kindness and value to our society. That’s not the kind of Tumblr any of us want.
Thank you for speaking up. Please continue to help us make Tumblr the place you want it to be.
<3
>>Earlier this week, we began the process of removing all reblogs stemming from the original posts on those previously suspended blogs—that’s approximately 4.47M reblogs being removed from Tumblr.<<
So by the sound of it, if you’ve reblogged any debunkings or tangents or possibly even unrelated posts from a blog that *also* posted hate speech (by whatever standards they’re using for that), it’s getting thrown down the memory hole.
Hey guys, I wrote a Tumblr reblog once disagreeing with the idea that deleting an OP blog should delete all of its posts’ reblogs. Do you know what happened to my post? It fucking vanished [link]. It lives on because I personally ensured it.
Now is a good time to remind everyone that tumblr-utils [link] incremental backups do not delete old posts if the original gets deleted, and the Wayback Machine sure as hell does not delete them.
Hey, so, about tumblr-utils:
Last week its API key stopped working: trying to use outdated versions of tumblr-utils will now result in “HTTP Error 401: Unauthorized”. The *current* version of tumblr-utils, if I’m understanding this bug report correctly [link], works but is globally rate-limited: no more than 1,000 blogs per hour and no more than 5,000 blogs per day across all tumblr-utils users.
But there is a workaround: apply for an API key *yourself* [link], then go into the Python code and replace the API key with your own (don’t worry, you don’t need to speak Python: knowledge of plain English is enough to make it obvious which bit is the API key). I just did this and it seems to be working now. Note: you must be logged into a Tumblr account to request an API key.
—
(I’m going to put this in a reblog of this thread because it’s one of the most fitting threads available, given that this information really should be on Tumblr specifically (where the people most in need can see it and share it) and I swore I’d never make another Tumblr-hosted OP. (And you can see why!))
Tags:
#reply via reblog #oh look an update #The Great Tumblr Apocalypse #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #PSA #amnesia cw
how-about-a-nice-game-of-chess:
The average person has about one or two hours/night of REM sleep, and is awake for about 16 hours/day. So of all your experience, about 90% is awake, and 10% is in dreams.
But dreams tend to involve much stronger emotions than waking. In a typical waking day, you’ll go to the office, maybe hang out with friends, do a lot of boring stuff you’ve done before. In a typical dream, you’ll find true love, or get attacked by zombies, or discover a new continent. So much more than 10% of your interesting emotions, happiness, and unhappiness happens in dreams. Let’s kind of arbitrarily say it’s 50%.
You spend so much work trying to improve the quality of your waking life, and it’s so hard. But you put almost no work into improving the quality of your dreams. And improving the quality of dreams is much easier! A cooler room, a softer blanket, or a cup of tea before bed could all do it. That’s before you even get to all the complicated herbs and meditation techniques people have invented for the purpose. If, as a utilitarian, your goal is to maximize your positive and minimize your negative experiences – then if you’re concentrating on waking life, you’re barking up the wrong tree.
This suggests probably the most important and neglected effective altruist cause is giving people better dreams. It probably costs hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to Amnesty International to prevent one person from being tortured when awake, but far more people are tortured in nightmares, and those probably can be prevented for a few dollars each. The same is true of positive utilitarianism. It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to create new lives. But there are dozens of medications and supplements that can give people much more vivid dreams, and if we give those the the people whose dreams are most likely on net to be pleasant, we’re creating vast amounts of extra pleasurable experience.
If your dreams are generally good, take galantamine and melatonin to get more of them. If your dreams are generally bad, take scopolamine and clonidine to get less of them. This is by far the most effective life improvement advice you will ever get.
#to be clear this is a joke #but i am still trying to figure out exactly why
I think this is related to the distinction between the “experiencing self” and the “remembering self”? Most people remember their dreams pretty weakly (I generally don’t remember mine at all.) We generally seem to treat the “remembering self” as more real than the “experiencing self”. (Consider the use of “conscious sedation” in medicine.)
That just kicks the can down the road to “making dreams more *memorable* is one of the most important things we could possibly do”.
And before anyone is like “but most waking experiences are also not memorable”: maybe your *brain* doesn’t remember, but if you care to arrange it you can get an exoself that *does* [link]. As technology advances (data storage, wearable recorders, automated transcription, etc), this gets more practical every year.
Whereas…okay, I haven’t yet had a chance to post the draft I’m thinking of here, but for now: the scariest part of lucid dreaming is the acute awareness that you’re operating with a malfunctioning memory compiler with *nothing* you can do to compensate for that. Everything around you–every bit of scrap paper, or keyboard, or microphone, or friend–is an illusion even more fragile than your current consciousness.
A sedated me is, if she can *possibly* manage it, wearing a microphone around her neck [link]. A dreaming me gets nothing: maybe an after-the-fact journal entry if she’s *lucky*.
{{I later posted the draft I was thinking of.}}
Tags:
#reply via reblog #amnesia cw #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #dreams #transhumanism #drugs cw?
it’s for science; what’s your age and do u know how to burn CDs?
Tags:
#26 #it’s been probably 8 years since the last time I did it but I expect I could pick it back up easily enough if for some reason I needed to #(and certainly I know what the verb ”to burn” means in this context which I suspect is a large part of what you’re asking) #but why *would* you need to we have smartphones now #(okay yes optical discs are likely the single best option for ordinary citizens who want #to leave a whole bunch of data to gather dust for decades and still be able to read it afterward) #((particularly if you burn multiple copies and access by feeding them all through ddrescue or whatever ddrescue has evolved into by then)) #(so yes future-me may very well have a reason to burn discs but that’s not where I’m at right now) #(and I do think smartphones (and the occasional USB stick) have taken over every niche for CDs *except* cheap decades-scale data storage) #tag rambles #surveys #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers
Wink Pulls Ultimate Dick Move By Forcing Users Into Mandatory Subscriptions
Another strong argument to avoid getting caught up in “smart devices”…
Please, please stop getting IoT devices.
Tags:
#fuck! cloud! dependence! #this is like my third fuck-cloud-dependence post this week but it’s still fucking true #(also‚ semi-relevant lifehack: if you want a smart TV get a old cheap laptop and an old cheap TV and wire them together) #(add a Bluetooth or remote-USB mouse and keyboard so you can operate the laptop from the couch) #(bear in mind that you’re not using the laptop’s monitor so #if you can find one that’s been discounted because of monitor problems all the better) #(hell maybe even use a desktop if you don’t care whether it fits in the DVD-player section of your entertainment-system shelving) #((in our case we actually had an old laptop with a broken monitor lying around already)) #((*knew* it would come in handy someday!)) #(this won’t protect you from Netflix ceasing support for your device† but I expect it’s a more robust setup overall #plus the upgrades are cheaper) #†as indeed Netflix did with our TV’s prosthetic brain a while back; we still use it for YouTube and #once the roof’s not falling apart anymore we’ll consider shelling out the ~$180 for a new(er) prosthetic brain #tag rambles #and arguably #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers
Tumblr wouldn’t feel like much if it were not for the passionate community filling up our dashboards. You are the reason people turn to Tumblr for a laugh or for a little human connection. You are why Tumblr feels like a home for so many. You care about this place, and you let us know when something doesn’t feel right. Many of you have called on us to further reevaluate how we deal with hate speech, particularly hate speech from Nazis or other white supremacist groups. Today we’re letting you know that we heard you, and we are taking further action.
We’ve listened to your feedback and have reassessed how we can more effectively remove hateful content from Tumblr. In our own research, and from your helpful reports, we found that much of the existing hate speech stemmed from blogs that have actually already been terminated. While their original posts were deleted upon blog termination, the content of those posts still lived on in reblogs. Those reblogs rarely contained the kind of counter-speech that serves to keep hateful rhetoric in check, so we’re changing how we deal with them.
We identified nearly a thousand blogs that were previously suspended for blatantly violating our policies against hate speech. Most of them were Nazi-related blogs. Earlier this week, we began the process of removing all reblogs stemming from the original posts on those previously suspended blogs—that’s approximately 4.47M reblogs being removed from Tumblr.
Moving forward, we will evaluate all blogs suspended for hate speech, and consider mass reblog deletion when appropriate.
Consulting outside experts
We wouldn’t make a change like this without considering the impact to your freedom of expression. We do not want to silence those who are providing educational and necessary counter-arguments to hate speech. We reviewed our approach with a variety of outside groups and experts to make sure we have aligned with their recommended best practices.
There’s no silver bullet solution, AI, or algorithm that can perfectly target hate speech. That’s why we have a dedicated Trust & Safety team, and why we have an easy way for you to report any hate speech you do see.
If you see something on Tumblr that violates our Community Guidelines, please report it to our Trust & Safety team for review.
Lastly…
We are, and will always remain, steadfast believers in free speech. Tumblr is a place where you can be yourself and express your opinions. Hate speech is not conducive to that. When hate speech goes unchecked, it eventually silences the voices that add kindness and value to our society. That’s not the kind of Tumblr any of us want.
Thank you for speaking up. Please continue to help us make Tumblr the place you want it to be.
<3
>>Earlier this week, we began the process of removing all reblogs stemming from the original posts on those previously suspended blogs—that’s approximately 4.47M reblogs being removed from Tumblr.<<
So by the sound of it, if you’ve reblogged any debunkings or tangents or possibly even unrelated posts from a blog that *also* posted hate speech (by whatever standards they’re using for that), it’s getting thrown down the memory hole.
Hey guys, I wrote a Tumblr reblog once disagreeing with the idea that deleting an OP blog should delete all of its posts’ reblogs. Do you know what happened to my post? It fucking vanished [link]. It lives on because I personally ensured it.
Now is a good time to remind everyone that tumblr-utils [link] incremental backups do not delete old posts if the original gets deleted, and the Wayback Machine sure as hell does not delete them.
Tags:
#AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA #amnesia cw #reply via reblog #The Great Tumblr Apocalypse #PSA #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #federated Tumblr clone when
whenever I’m faced with a seemingly insurmountable problem I’m always looking for the clever hack that can resolve it by a neat use of lateral thinking such that the solution is ingenious and yet much simpler than you would expect, and I don’t know where I picked up this habit because it has literally never worked, the solution always ends up being do a shit-ton of work and then do a shit-ton more work and then spend years polishing the mess until it doesn’t matter any more.
I don’t know where I picked up this habit
I know where I have: from preparing for math tests and programming interviews!
Huh, I have the *opposite* problem. I keep doing things in obvious-but-tedious ways and then later finding out that there was a clever way that would have solved it in thirty seconds. I’ve started deliberately trying to keep in mind “there might be an easier way of doing this, look around for one first before resorting to the long way”.
Hmm. Maybe this is actually a slightly different thing: you guys are over-applying *lateral thinking*, while I am under-applying *automation*.
Tags:
#reply via reblog #embarrassment squick? #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #proud citizen of The Future #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #is where this usually tends to come up
Tags:
#I gave multiple responses containing phrases like ”panicked paranoia” and ”doomsday prepper” #and my result admonishes me to ”try not to trust people so easily” #what the fuck #were you even listening #food mention #meme #(okay to be *completely* fair I do not *literally* own a spare container of gasoline) #(I would much rather use solar power for the apocalypse: #sure solar panels break occasionally but I’m pretty sure you’d go through them slower than you’d go through gasoline) #((also less fire and pollution hazard!)) #(but I feel that I fit the *spirit* of that answer) #((my result was oatmeal raisin btw)) #tag rambles #anxiety #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers
Stockpiling intensifies
In fairness, the problem in Katrina wasn’t the storm surge overtopping the levees. Everyone knew to be terrified of that (at least those of us living in New Orleans). And the hurricane passed, and the city hadn’t flooded, and we all exhaled.
And then the levee collapsed.
I keep hearing rumbles about the threat of solar EMPs and how “we should prepare”, but what am I, Jane Q. Citizen, actually supposed to *do* about it? Or is this purely a “talk to your politicians and try to convince *them* to do something about it, because they’re the only ones who can” thing?
(Argumate seems to think this is funny, but I *do* in fact own a Wikipedia dump and I highly recommend it [link]. Not sure it would survive an EMP, though.)
Tags:
#apocalypse cw #covid19 #reply via reblog #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #discourse cw? #illness mention
Brinens and Things - Tumblr Mirror 