In my experience, the vast majority of waste in a software shop is time spent building things nobody wants on top of overly complex architectures that solve problems we don't have. Focus on that. Put solving your customer's actual (not imagined) problems first. 1/3

SCOOP: An internal DHS document obtained by 404 Media shows for the first time CBP used location data sourced from the online advertising industry to track phone locations. This surveillance can happen through all sorts of apps, such as video games, news apps, weather trackers, and dating apps.

I again fully agree here, but I would add that, people who tend to follow a process by the book are often juniors, who need a process, to start somewhere. Because they lack yet the experience (and the intuition that comes with it) to know when to ditch the process.

There's a link b/w this and @fasterandworse.com's observation that all software is now productivity software: because the industry killed its ability to frame problems, everyone is just copying each other's features forever. Bosses see something in Jira or Excel and want it in their own product.

Once, technology solved problems. People liked having problems solved, so they liked technology. Tech execs started to think of that sentiment as their due. So when they stopped solving problems, and people stopped liking them, they became outraged. "How dare you not love whatever we give you?"

I am a luddite and to me there is a lot of joy in technology. In technology that we deploy for all our wellbeing. Solar panels and vaccines, high-speed rail and wikipedia. But they joy stems from the feeling of being able to be part of humanity in an embedded, meaningful way. Not from buying shit.

1. Numerous transgender people in Kansas are reporting that the state has sent them a letter demanding the immediate surrender of drivers licenses. Those driving could be arrested, charged, and see privileges revoked. Subscribe to support our journalism. www.erininthemorning.com/p/kansas-sen...

United we stand, divided we fall. (2024) by @alfredtwu.com #Kansas

BREAKING: We're suing Kansas for a law that invalidates transgender people's updated driver's licenses and authorizes anyone to sue anyone they suspect of being trans for using the "wrong" bathroom.

▪️ Altmaier-Knick ▪️ Sigmar-Senke ▪️ Altmaier-Abbruch Immer wieder gut sich die Folge der Anstalt zur Energiewende in Erinnerung zu holen und nun zu überlegen, was unter Katherine Reiche passieren wird.

In my utopian vision of the future, instead of offloading all the pointless, annoying work tasks (like reports that none one will read and needlessly opaque forms) to robots, we restructure work and society so that the pointless tasks don't happen at all.

In 2020, Joseph Epstein, former editor of The American Scholar magazine, urged Dr. Jill Biden in an op-ed to drop her title. A Twitter discourse unfolded around the misogynistic substance and tone. This tweet by @kjellkamfjord.bsky.social made me add my Dr title. Happy to reconnect Kjell!

Lobby-Alarm! Die Änderungen am sogenannten Heizungsgesetz machen nur eine glücklich. Und das ist die Gas-Lobby. Wir fordern: Machen Sie endlich Politik für alle Menschen in unserem Land, Frau Reiche!

2/3 #Reiche stellt mit der Gesetzesänderung die Profite der Gas-Lobby über die Interessen der Bürger*innen! Heizen mit Erneuerbaren ist längst viel günstiger als mit dreckigem Öl oder Gas. So verhindert die Regierung eine langfristige Planungs- & Investitionsperspektive für alle!

1/3 Die Merz-Regierung präsentiert ein neues #Heizungsgesetz, das die Menschen in die Heizkostenfalle treibt, massiv den Klimaschutz angreift, die Abhängigkeit von klimaschädlichen Energieimporten zementiert und Unsicherheit bei einer ganzen Branche & beim Handwerk stiftet.

Das "Heizungsgesetz" in einem Post. #CDU #Lügner #Populisten Und ich frage mich, warum schaffen das Journalist*innen nicht?

Quote from Advait Paliwal, Brown dropout and co-creator of Einstein: “I think about horses. They used to pull carriages, but when cars came around, I'd argue horses became a lot more free... It would be weird if horses revolted and said ‘no, I want to pull carriages, this is my purpose in life.’”

Here's a great talk by @veritasium.bsky.social (at @perimeterinstitute.ca) about how learning really works and why using chatbots to help can backfire youtu.be/0xS68sl2D70

Food for thought: Intelligence is the declaration of the right to agency. Favorite quotes from @tante.cc essay: „When we assign the term “intelligence” to systems of automation or computerized systems we give these systems agency – that means the right to decide.“ 1/3

You can catch my full, open course on accessibility in visualization here: openvisualizationacademy.org/courses/acce...

I've been on a bit of a social media hiatus, but I've written a new post about something that's been on my mind a lot lately localghost.dev/blog/stop-ge...

I thought about it, but I settled on trying to give up the act of "sharing things people said online that piss me off if the only reason I'm sharing it is because the thing they said pissed me off"

I hope you enjoy! Overall I think people are really motivated to improve on how they code review but often don't know how. We also released a free workbook for folks written by my two co-authors, one of whom is a trained clinical psychologist :) developer-success-lab.gitbook.io/code-review-...

New level of „AI babysitting“ unlocked.

"Is there technology the left is excited about?" is the kind of question you only ask if you're wildly naive about technology. mRNA vaccines. Heat pumps. Offshore wind. Urban mining. Sodium batteries. But god forbid we're not fawning over every new implementation of Making Computers Bad At Math.

As Brian puts it: "It fails to account for the fact that most of the dismissals of AI are not related to the technology, but AI’s political economy... Developed and sold by SV oligopolies, for the benefit of tech billionaires, with the intent of surveilling, deskilling, and eroding labor."

Money quote: "We found that most of the ‘benefit’ tends to relate to older, smaller and leaner forms of machine learning, what has been called ‘traditional AI’, while we also know that most of the new harm is likely stemming from consumer generative AI over-deployment."

So, @ketanjoshi.co who has been on the beat for a long time, actually looked into the story of if "AI" can "solve climate change". Conceptually as well as evidence based. Super worth reading and sharing around.

Critical thinking is a key component of learning, but this is not what's happening here. The technology fundamentally mismatches the epistemological demands it creates with the capabilities of its primary educational users. New piece: jeppestricker.substack.com/p/the-exhaus...

we need to talk about that Ring Super Bowl ad

I think about how I code and how I get a feel as I'm typing that things are not what I want and then I stop and think. It's a tactile thing, like writing with a pen makes me think better than typing. The outputs are the artefacts of the thinking and we are outsourcing the thinking to LLMs

The real stories emerge from how these interactions get written about. I’m so tired of people just thinking of writing as some annoying task to get out of the way.

"Das einzig wirklich relevante an der aktuellen Aufregung ist, was es über die Beobachterinnen und Beobachter aussagt." Da hat mir der @sukahiroaki.bsky.social mal wieder aus dem Herzen geschrieben 💥

Catharina Doria on Moltbook www.instagram.com/reel/DUjO1sv...

A post that states that everyone else is being super unreasonable in their positions is not starting a discussion in good faith so it’s not surprising if the discussion doesn’t proceed that way (and that applies to both Chris’s post and yours!)

This garbage is part of the reason why I've been saying that we can't just keep going with "AI doesn't work". It does work, it's just that "working" means the industrialization of text production along the model of fast fashion - cheap, rapid output that ruins everything but makes a profit

Mamdani: "I speak of Renee Good, whose final words to the man who murdered her were, 'I'm not mad at you.' I speak of Alex Pretti who died as he lived, caring for the stranger. ICE shot him bc he did something they could never fathom ... let us offer a new path: one of defiance through compassion."

Since I've been seeing a lot of "switch to Ecosia for search they are sustainable and European" hints lately your evaluation might soon change: Their boss explicitly wants not just to add "AI" to search but go all in on more "AI" tools. (German article linked)

What put it into perspective for me: - 1 million seconds is roughly 11.6 days - 1 billion seconds is roughly 31.7 years ALMOST THIRTY TWO YEARS. And that’s only one billion - so multiply that by 253 to get Bezos’ time equivalency. It’s so large it’s impossible to comprehend.

again we do not really do a good job of explaining how wealthy people like Jeff Bezos are his net worth is $253.2 billion. so he could take one million dollars, and just light it on fire and then do it again tomorrow and again the day after that and then do it every day for 693 years and 8 months

not a win. it's an opt-out because they are integrating AI into the browser instead of making features as plug ins that people can seek out in the extensions library

#USA @realalbundy.bsky.social

“The French government announced that it will stop using American video conferencing platforms such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom, and replace them with Visio, a French platform.”

DHS has shot 12 people during immigration enforcement operations since September:

A German soccer federation executive committee member says it's time to consider a World Cup boycott because of the actions of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Es muss eine andere Art von Diplomatie geben als völlige Charakterlosigkeit. www.politico.eu/article/frie...

One of the reasons general strikes haven't happened in decades in the U.S. is that sympathy strikes (Union A goes on strike in support of Union B's grievance) have been illegal under the Taft Hartley Act since 1947. But that doesn't really apply here since there's no employer being targetted.

This is why organizing that reaches for relationality is central, not secondary - it breaks the capitalist idea of us as atomized, individual consumers and compels us to act in solidarity with others. And, perhaps more than anything, it's a politics more rooted in cultivating belonging than ideology

This has meant: grounding in the long arc of struggle helping people avoid repeating mistakes; learning across generations; not getting either easily overconfident or easily jaded; sharpening existing movement infrastructure and networks especially around care, dynamics, and conflict resolution.