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8 votes
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How game design transformed Hillary for America's supporter engagement
2 votes -
‘The trauma for a man’: American male fury and fear rises in GOP in defense of Brett Kavanaugh
23 votes -
Amazon eliminates monthly bonuses and stock grants after minimum wage increase
25 votes -
The long shots
4 votes -
The new font that promises to boost your memory
19 votes -
A directory of direct links to delete your account from web services
14 votes -
CirnOS - a minimal OS made specifically for the Raspberry PI
10 votes -
Fake honey scandal widens to Australian-sourced brands
6 votes -
Request for more visible group names
I've been noticing that people aren't really looking at the group name that a post is sent to. Most notably there's a weekly ~anime post asking what everyone has been watching or reading. Just...
I've been noticing that people aren't really looking at the group name that a post is sent to. Most notably there's a weekly ~anime post asking what everyone has been watching or reading. Just about every time there's people that post responses that are off topic (not anime or manga).
Here's an example. At the moment half of the posts are not related to anime or manga. It shows that it is something that needs to be considered.
Maybe have a uniquely colored border on the top and sides with the group name in bold perhaps? Also having the same color as the background on posts on the home page?
40 votes -
Tesla's Model 3 is becoming one of America's best-selling sedans
15 votes -
Architect of Paris climate accord says Morrison government's emissions stance is 'anti-science'
4 votes -
Gender dysphoria may have genetic basis: Australian study
8 votes -
Worthwhile to post about a spammer targeting nonprofits?
I volunteer with several small nonprofits. A few weeks ago, one of them got a spam message from a "volunteer" offering to create a free website for the organization and disclosing a connection to...
I volunteer with several small nonprofits. A few weeks ago, one of them got a spam message from a "volunteer" offering to create a free website for the organization and disclosing a connection to DonorComplete. There was no unsubscribe link. I hit Google, which eventually led me to a thread on TechSoup where I commented with what I had found to that date under the same user name: http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/community/f/24/t/43439.aspx This & other results showed that the "free" website is linked to historically very expensive hosting (historically , ~ $20-$40/mo, now showing about $10/mo) for a static website with very limited support or options.
My research continued intermittently, but there appears to be a network of over 100 domains (active, expired, dormant and/or returning server errors) connected to spam efforts over roughly the last 6 years, questionable marketing tactics dating back to ~ 1998, 4 overlapping corporations with one man as a central figure, several throwaway email addresses and a couple that seem to be dedicated & longer running, a handful of apparently dedicated servers and several shared servers with many connected domains hosted. The messages target nonprofit organizations and churches, with 4 textual variations posted via email, mailing lists, and comments. The first archived comments I found targeted FOSS project mailing lists. Based on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, many small nonprofits used their service years ago, but it looks like the spammers' services have been largely abandoned over the last few years - probably why the new campaign started ~ June.
I've filed complaints with two of the registrars, and at least one of the recently active domains appears to be in non-hosted status. Would there be any interest in my posting a thread with the details of what I've found so far (spreadsheets and mind maps in progress)? Would anyone be interested in helping me present the data in a more easily digestible format a la r/dataisbeautiful? Or can anyone recommend an easier way to report the registrant tied to the spam? I'm not trying to start a witch hunt, but these people seem to have flown under the radar for a long time, and I know many small nonprofits aren't tech savvy enough to recognize the warning signs these folks present.
8 votes -
What does big data look like when cross-referenced?
Google knows a lot about its users. Facebook knows a lot about its users. FitBit knows a lot about its users. And so on. But what happens when these companies all sell their data sets to one...
Google knows a lot about its users. Facebook knows a lot about its users. FitBit knows a lot about its users. And so on.
But what happens when these companies all sell their data sets to one another? It'd be pretty trivial to link even anonymized users from set to set by looking for specific features. If I went for a run, Google tracked my location, FitBit tracked my heart rate, and Facebook tracked my status about my new best mile time, for example. Thus, Google can narrow down who I am in the other sets using pre-existing information that coincides with theirs. With enough overlap they can figure out exactly who I am fairly easily. Furthermore, each additional layer of data makes this discovery process from new data sets even easier, as it gives more opportunities to confirm or rule out concurrent info. So then when, say, Credit Karma, Comcast, and Amazon's data enter the fray, my online identity stops looking like an individual egg in each different basket but a whole lot of eggs in all in one. And they can do this across millions/billions of users--not just me!
I don't know for certain that this is a thing that happens, but... I have to assume it definitely is happening, right? How could it not? With how valuable data is and how loose protections are, this seems like a logical and potentially very lucrative step.
Right now, is there an aggregate version of "me" that exists in a data store somewhere that is a more comprehensive and accurate picture than my own self-image? After all, my memory and perception are imperfect and biased, but data stores aren't.
6 votes -
The World is Ending
They know Of their inevitable demise Those less fortunate They despise The politics that are destroying their lives Inquisition, conquest It was all a political contest War torn, occupied...
They know
Of their inevitable demise
Those less fortunate
They despise
The politics that are destroying their lives
Inquisition, conquest
It was all a political contest
War torn, occupied
Exploited for all they had
Abandoned, left for dead
No political discourse, fragmented
Left to wither, to their demise
All at the whim of some rich guysThey are neck deep
The desires of the ivory tower
Are now the problems of those with no power
Mass consumption, transportation
All at the cost of their civilization
They scramble, they climb
The pleas for help are heard loud and wide
No answer
The problem is not mine
Engulfed, they weepA man in his chair
On a balcony, willfully blind
Overlooking all this despair
A storm builds on the horizon
It is close, provokes fear
Storms have come before
They have never gotten so near
Perhaps if he had listened
He shed a tear10 votes -
User flair for personal pronouns
I'm suggesting a user flair-type option for people to select and display their personal pronouns. This option would be accessed via a user's settings page. It would say something like "select your...
I'm suggesting a user flair-type option for people to select and display their personal pronouns.
This option would be accessed via a user's settings page. It would say something like "select your pronoun". The user would select their pronoun from a list. The selected pronoun would display discreetly beside their username wherever they post and comment.
The basic minimal version of this option would have three selections:
- him
- her
- them
We don't need to display the longer "he/him", "she/her", "they/them". Most English users know the subjective, objective, and possessive cases for these various pronouns; the important piece of information is the gender itself.
I've chosen pronouns instead of genders because there are many possible genders to include, but only three existing English third-person pronouns.
A slightly more advanced version might show four selections:
- him
- her
- them
- other
The even-more advanced version would include a text box for the user to enter a pronoun:
- him
- her
- them
- other (Please specify: ________)
The user could type something like "zhe" or "hir" in that text box, which would then be displayed beside their username instead of "him"/"her"/"them".
This option would be totally voluntary. Not every user should be required to provide this information, and not every user will want to provide this information. But for those users who want to inform people about their gender, or for those users who want to stop people making assumptions or prevent people having to ask questions about their gender, this would be a handy option.
24 votes -
~music Listening Club 15 - Songs in the Key of Life
It's week 15, and time for another classic record discussion: Songs in the Key of Life by Stevie Wonder! Songs in the Key of Life is the eighteenth album by American recording artist Stevie...
It's week 15, and time for another classic record discussion: Songs in the Key of Life by Stevie Wonder!
Songs in the Key of Life is the eighteenth album by American recording artist Stevie Wonder, released on September 28, 1976, by Motown Records, through its division Tamla Records. It was the culmination of his "classic period" albums. The album was recorded primarily at Crystal Sound studio in Hollywood, with some sessions recorded at the Record Plant in Hollywood, the Record Plant in Sausalito, and The Hit Factory in New York City. Final mixing was performed at Crystal Sound.
An ambitious double LP with a four-song bonus EP, Songs in the Key of Life became the best-selling and most critically acclaimed album of Wonder's career. In 2003, it was ranked number 57 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. In 2005, it was inducted into the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress, which deemed it "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
Here's the place to discuss your thoughts on the record, your history with it or the artist, and basically talk about whatever you want to that goes along with Songs in the Key of Life! Remember that this is intended to be a slow moving thing, feel free to take your time and comment at any point in the week!
If you'd like to stream or buy the album, it can be found on most platforms here.
Don't forget to nominate and vote for next week's obscure record in response to this comment!
15 votes -
'Last Jedi' hate tweets were "weaponized" by Russia, says study
10 votes -
Use of evolution to design molecules nets Nobel Prize in Chemistry for three scientists
8 votes -
The Grievance Studies Scandal: Five Academics Respond
6 votes -
Ubisoft's creative head talks the future of Assassin's Creed and Splinter Cell
4 votes -
Why don’t westerners eat off one plate?
14 votes -
Elon Musk’s ultimatum to Tesla: fight the SEC, or I quit
17 votes -
America isn’t ready for the lanternfly invasion
11 votes -
Toys R Us bankruptcy auction canceled, brand set for revival
12 votes -
The Internet Archive fixes nine million broken links on Wikipedia
16 votes -
Crazy World of Arthur Brown - Fire (1968)
7 votes -
The ideology of "Homaitism"
don't know exactly what to title this so that'll do. this is maybe a topic that could fit in ~talk but since it's something i came up with i'll put it here for now. move if necessary. i also don't...
don't know exactly what to title this so that'll do. this is maybe a topic that could fit in ~talk but since it's something i came up with i'll put it here for now. move if necessary. i also don't know if it will "work" in the sense that it'll generate a discussion, but we'll see. never know until you try.
anyways, i am a writer at heart and to put a long story short one of the more interesting concepts i have going on is the social/political ideology of "homaitism", an ideology which at is core opposes property entirely and seeks to establish shared ownership of everything in a society. in a more Wikipedian serse, i think this best describes the ideas at play here:
[Homaitism is] the general term applied to a collection of far-left political philosophies and ideologies which, broadly speaking, reject the ideas of property ownership and sometimes small government. Many Homaitist schools of thought advocate the establishment of a large social net, the socialization of the most important services in a society (such as those of fire, police, healthcare, and so on), and the formation of a government which serves most if not all of the needs of its people. Others resolve that this is incompatible with a Homaitist society and suggest a more communal organization to society, in which groups are formed voluntarily on the basis of need rather than through the establishment of a state authority.
i think it goes without saying that there are some significant flaws in this idea, which is primarily what i want to explore. my main questions here that i'd be interested to hear people's responses to about this, if there's anything to be said (which maybe there's not? dunno):
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what impression you get from that as an idea. far too utopian? far too many holes to be viable? impractical but not impossible? possible on a certain level? things like that.
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are there reservations or flaws you see beyond the obvious questions of whether this is utopian or in any way viable?
other comments about the general idea here are also welcome (especially if you think some of these ideas are dumb and contradictory and/or would not work together at all). if people don't think this is enough to go off of i'll try to post some of the more detailed writings/sketches i have which elaborate on it more.
3 votes -
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Brooks Koepka 'heartbroken' after tee shot exploded woman's eyeball, left her blinded
8 votes -
Humble RPG Book Bundle: Vampire: The Masquerade (revised edition)
4 votes -
The NY Times has an option in their store to pick out favorite recipes that have been posted on the site (and in the paper) and print them in a cookbook
5 votes -
Vice | Official trailer
6 votes -
The Coders Programming Themselves Out of a Job
21 votes -
How well-intentioned White families can perpetuate racism
20 votes -
Do you use gender-neutral pronouns? Which one do you prefer?
A series of gender neutral alternatives for the third person singular pronouns (he/she/it) have been proposed throughout the recent years (and maybe decades). I wonder the preferences of fellow...
A series of gender neutral alternatives for the third person singular pronouns (he/she/it) have been proposed throughout the recent years (and maybe decades). I wonder the preferences of fellow users here in that regard. So I'd be glad if you could answer the questions in the title, and maybe elaborate a bit on the reasons of your preference. I'm both interested in this generally, and it could be useful as a means to help me practice quantitative linguistic variation (obviously this would hardly be scientifically usable source of data for actual real research so I'm not asking this for that purposes). I'll add my preference as a comment.
31 votes -
Tower of Power - Soul With a Capital S (Jam In The Van)
3 votes -
Unleash the Archers - Awakening (2017)
10 votes -
What non-computer/programming/etc. projects are you working on this weekend?
Since there's already: https://tildes.net/~comp/5j5/what_computer_programming_etc_project_are_you_working_on_this_weekend
18 votes -
How do you deal with stress?
Basically the title. Looking online you see stuff like "get sleep!" "eat healthy!" but that's just like general health stuff and yeah unhealthiness is stressful but it doesn't really reduce stress...
Basically the title. Looking online you see stuff like "get sleep!" "eat healthy!" but that's just like general health stuff and yeah unhealthiness is stressful but it doesn't really reduce stress much.
So what do you guys do when you want to depressurize and relax a little bit? I haven't ever actually tried it but I hea want to try meditation, just need to set aside a chunk of time for it.
30 votes -
How the humble pocket calculator morphed into the smartphone
10 votes -
A prayer
A very short poem in 28 words, originally written on the fly for personal reasons, and shown to another audience. Revised for metrical harmony. O night and secret morning, come to me Invade this...
A very short poem in 28 words, originally written on the fly for personal reasons, and shown to another audience. Revised for metrical harmony.
O night and secret morning, come to me
Invade this body, use my strange desire
To reenact the birth of midday sun
Contained in cold, recurring, starless nights6 votes -
theaudiohomerecordingact - #010 'junglero' vinyl-selection by decipher (2018)
4 votes -
Arthur Ashkin’s optical tweezers: The Nobel Prize-winning technology that changed biology
5 votes -
Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian has $225 million in fresh funding to back health and elder tech startups
9 votes -
Special coverage: What is happening in Venezuela?
5 votes -
'Don't touch my Vespa!' Why Genoa is threatening to ban its icon of cool
7 votes -
Firefox Color V2 released
17 votes -
Anti-transgender legislation devastates trans children — even when it fails
9 votes -
The future of GOG: Mod support, Steam rivalry and problematic tweets
23 votes