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This… this is absolutely hilarious

Not to mention the egregious privacy violations and danger this presents to people by consolidating this huge amount of data, but it’s simply not possible if you’ve worked with data at all.

I’ve worked in databases for the better part of 10 years in enterprise settings, to even think that you can just “hook up” 25 different databases systems and build this “master” dataset on Americans is hilariously short-sighted

“These systems don’t talk to each other” Yeah you realize the entirety of the American government is just a giant jenga tower that *sometimes* function coherently. Add 50 years of database technology and different administrations and it’s marvelous that anything gets done at all.

A project of that scale would require a cooperation across multiple government sectors, rethinking entire technology solutions, migration, storage, security (lol), and data transformation. Not to mention third party stuff, apis, and the physical manpower required to do this sort of knowledge work

Seriously it’s not like there’s a python script sitting on someone’s desktop that says

import * from government

I mean, do they care about any of that? Probably not, it’s all a big grift and they will say what they want to say. But I can rest easy a little bit knowing that this task is not physically possible. With a well coordinated plan and multiple years of work? *maaaaybe* With a gaggle of idiots that think people are 120 years old cashing social security checks? Absolutely not

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I’ve worked in databases professionally for a number of years for companies large and small so there’s a few… notes here that make this hilarious to me:

First, If you honestly think that there’s “one” database that handles all this information for the most powerful country in the history of the world… I feel sorry for you buddy

Second, there can be a whole host of reasons why some field labeled “death” can be false, a few off the top of my head:

“DEATH” just means death of the record, not the person

Old/outdated data

Are there entries of NULL anywhere?

Are there any duplicates?

Is this database following normalization rules?

Can you tie any of this data to actual payouts?

Is this table actually used for that purpose?

Is this a down-stream table that is for a different kind of processing/reporting?

Databases can be a mess to work with and context matters here. Of course, given his tweet about how “the government doesn’t use sql” I’m willing to bet he doesn’t know a lick of what he’s talking about here.

It just makes me so mad because… I do this exact kind of work for a living and I would not for the LIFE of me just prance around talking about how this data is bad without some sort of justication that it’s a) relevant to discussions and b) I’m at least fairly confident this is the case

I wouldn’t trust in any way, shape, or form

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Im really torn between the fact that my favorite set of all time Will be seeing the light of the day again ( lorwyn) and my gut feelings of how It Will be fucked up by the new superbland mediocre art style and the real world politic agenda ( not so) subtly pushed in late sets, in a CARD GAME. We want to see stories of faeries, kithkins, elves, goblins, Giants,merfolk and cinders in their beautiful fantasy setting, no trans they/them faeries that think they're kithkins

Two points:

1) When returning to a world, we’re very cognizant of the aesthetic of the world. We understand returning to Lorwyn requires embracing what made people love it the first time around. Obviously, there will be updates, as the game has evolved much since our first visit, but we’re very aware of the need to recapture the plane’s essence.

2) For far too long, fantasy, as a genre, was used as a way to reflect the worldview of those in power. It leaned into stereotype and reflected how the privileged wished the world was. Modern fantasy is more reflective of the actual world, which includes the wide variety of life experiences that exists.

Trans people, people of color, and women playing a larger role, are all part of modern fantasy because they’re all part of the actual world, and it’s important that our stories and world building be reflective of that.

“I want to return to a time where we could ignore the existence of certain elements because I was happy living in that ignorance” is not an excuse to deny real people and their real life experiences.

Entertainment is at its best when it lifts everyone up and isn’t used as yet another means to ignore certain people’s reality.

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some quick lotr studies :]

prints

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The poster for "The Two Towers" that I drew a long time ago

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Reading lord of the rings after being a big fan of the movies is interesting because there’s a few things that are left out (which I totally understand) but the people HAVE TO KNOW:

Gandalf is SASSY, once Frodo didn’t answer his door and Gandalf said “if you don’t open this I will blow this door through the hill it sits in”

The reason why the Sackville-Baggins were eyeballing bilbos house in the movie was because everyone in the shire thought he store a shitton of treasure from his adventures in there. They were going to inherit his house when he died but *for some reason* he just kept on living. He adopted Frodo and they were like “what the actual fuck”

Frodo keeps the ring in the shire for a long while and Gandalf pops in on occasion and is like “hey man, you don’t look older, that’s weird… okay bye now” and then leaves for 3 more years.

Gandalf actually gets most of his info by hunting down Gollum in the mountains and, after trying to get info out of him, he later threatens him with “the fire of fear”, whatever that means… holy shit wizard dad that’s dark

Before Frodo leaves the shire, Gandalf literally tells him to pick a random direction and start walking. After Frodo goes “what the fuck”, Gandalf says “yeah that’s a bad idea, go to Rivendell instead lol”

And all that juicy stuff is just in the FIRST CHAPTER, it’s such a good read

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So I’m a software developer and I can speak on this after (frankly way too much) googling.

There’s plenty of reasons to hate Apple, but they treat data privacy VERY seriously.

Siri is not just the voice assistant, it’s more of a catch-all for your phone figuring out what you want to look for any when. If your iPhone gives you app suggestions based on recent usage, that’s Siri. If it suggests a shortcut if it notices you leave work at a certain time, that’s Siri as well.

What Siri does under-the-hood to figure out stuff is a bit unknown. But apps can only communicate and talk to Siri in specific ways.

Let’s say I have a pizza restaurant and an app where you can order pizza from. My app can ask Siri “hey, when someone types in ‘pizza places near me’, can you show my app?”. That’s all the app can really give Siri (it’s called an “intent” on the technical side).

What is CAN’T do is allow the app to ask for any and all info if you haven’t given permission. There’s not a lot of info an app can GET from Siri that’s really useful, but it can grab some stuff that’s relevant to a specific task (getting location that you’ve booked for an Uber ride). Most of that info is user-initiated though.

So, an app can create an “intent” that says “this is how users order pizza” and then give that permission to Siri. Siri can then look at your usage and be like “hey, you order pizza every Monday and we’ve seen how you do it, we can do all the steps for you if you want”.

It sounds a little weird for your phone to “know” how you order pizza from the app. But it’s not looking at your app usage every time and just throwing shit in the air. A developer has to specifically code in the type of tasks that are common and integrate that.

Here’s the important bit, disabling Siri on your device globally in Settings>Siri and turning everything off should do it. An app can’t access Siri unless it’s been given EXPLICIT permission to do so. It’s called siriAuthorizationStatus in the code, meaning that an app can’t do anything with it unless the user gives permission.

You can turn this off on a per app basis, like the original screenshot shows. But (and someone correct me if I’m wrong), you should be able to disable to Siri entirely on the device and it will perform the same function.

I’m not sure what Siri collects even when it’s turned off (that’s impossible to know for sure), but functionally it should everything you want it to do.

All of this to say that their operating system is intentionally designed to have everything on a “need to know” basis. We can talk all day about how app design is crippling people’s brains into a dopamine infused depression and I would 100% with that. But privacy is something they treat seriously, and it shows.

I hope all of this helps someone!!!

FYI iPhone users!

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Across The Spiderverse + Trivia

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im just laying down but NOT for a nap guys i swear im getting comfy cozy but im NOT GOING TO FALL ASLEEP my ass is NOT laying my head to rest bro im just getting snug as a bug in a rug. FOR NO REASON. ill be awake the whole time bro i swear. me and my stuffed animals are just hanging out dude i PROMISE ill be awake im not sle

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I am currently inside a tumblr post

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"ai is making it so everyone can make art" Everyone can make art dipshit it came free with your fucking humanity

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last night i had a dream that i was playing minecraft and i noticed i had 77 blocks of cobblestone in one slot instead of it being capped at 64 and it was so jarring to me that it literally booted me out of the dream. like sure you can fly now and your childhood home is a pharmacy but 77 pieces of cobblestone? unthinkable. wake the fuck up.

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I'm really tired and out of it

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A news report from Australia's government broadcaster in the 70s, found in their archives simply labeled 'lesbians'

Captions added by for your reading pleasure

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Like... where is my Zelda version of Linked Universe? Please, Artists make this happen!!!!

*Edit- Since I got alot of likes I found this! Go check them out yall!

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almost worse than someone putting a single snide comment in a salient post you otherwise agree with: a post with good medical advice you know to be true where it slowly becomes clear that op also practises homeopathy or something