#techspeaks

[earthdcfended]

@techspeaks said: “Babygirl, you are awkward and do not understand social cues.”

"All I did was ask Dr Montague if he wanted a fresh brew." How was he to know that their longest standing colleague had a thing about committing to finishing his coffee. "I know he can be a bit of a grump, but Jesus. You could have warned me."

[stabasoccasionserves]

Imagine having media literacy and then immediately shooting yourself in the foot by calling nolan a bad director. A poor writer yes. But he's not a brilliant director? What will you do when the man you ideologically oppose makes insane earth shakingly beautiful cinema. Almost all criticism of nolan i agree with but i also believe his fan following makes it so that we never really appreciate just how good of a director and jugaad-friendly guy he is

[victusinveritas]

Thingamajig: It's always been here, well, ever since Bob built it, but it is surprisingly handy from time to time. DO NOT USE during a solar eclipse though.

Tech Babble

Gizmo: useless, or at least frivolous

Gadget: May perform one useful thing

Contraption: damn thing never works

Equipment: now yer talking

Device: probably Plot Relevant

Machine: craves Blood; powerful

THE Device: has an Agenda of its own

[mostlysignssomeportents]

To save the news, shatter ad-tech

I’m coming to the HowTheLightGetsIn festival in HAY-ON-WYE with my novel Red Team Blues:

Sun (May 28), 1130h: The AI Enigma

Mon (May 29), 12h: Danger and Desire at the Frontier

I’m at OXFORD’s Blackwell’s on May 29 at 7:30PM with Tim Harford.

Then it’s Nottingham, Manchester, London, Edinburgh, and Berlin!

Big Tech steals from news, but what it steals isn’t content. Talking about the news isn’t theft, and neither is linking to it, or excerpting it. But stealing money? That’s definitely theft.

Big Tech steals money from the news media. 51% of every ad-dollar is claimed by a tech intermediary, a middleman that squats on a chokepoint between advertisers and publishers. Two companies — Google and Meta — dominate this sector, and both of these companies are “full-stack” — which is cutesy techspeak for “vertical monopoly.”

Here’s what that means: when an advertiser wants to place an ad, it contracts with the “demand-side platform” (DSP) to seek out a chance to put an ad in front of a user based on nonconsensually gathered surveillance data about a potential customer.

The DSP contacts an ad-exchange — a marketplace where advertisers bid against each other to cram their ads into the eyeballs of a user based on surveillance data matches.

The ad-exchange receives a constant stream of chances to place ads. This stream is generated by the “supply-side platform” (SSP), a service that represents publishers who want to sell ads.

Meta/Facebook and Google both the “full stack” of ads: they represent buyers and sellers, and they operate the marketplace. When the sale closes, Googbook collects a commission from the advertiser, another from the publisher, and a fee for running the market. And of course, Google and Facebook are both publishers and advertisers.

This is like a stock exchange where one company operates the exchange, while serving as broker and underwriter for every stock bought or sold, while owning huge amounts of stock in many of the listed companies as well as owning the largest companies on the exchange outright.

It’s like a realtor representing the buyer and the seller, while buying and selling millions of homes for its own purposes, bidding against its buyers and also undercutting its sellers, in an opaque auction that only it can see.

It’s a single lawyer representing both parties in a divorce, while serving as judge in divorce court, while trying to match one of the divorcing parties on Tinder.

It’s incredibly dirty. These companies gobble up the majority of every ad dollar in commissions and other junk fees, and they say it’s because they’re just really danged good at buying and selling ads. Forgive me if I sound cynical, but I think it’s a lot more likely that they’re good at cheating.

We could try to make them stop cheating with a bunch of rules about how a company with this kind of gross conflict of interest should conduct itself. But enforcing those rules would be hard — merely detecting cheating would be hard. A simpler — and more effective — approach is to simply remove the conflict of interest.

Writing on EFF’s Deeplinks blog this week, I explain how the AMERICA Act — introduced by Senator Mike Lee, with bipartisan cosponsors from Elizabeth Warren to Ted Cruz (!) — can do just that:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-shatter-ad-tech

The AMERICA Act would require the largest ad-tech companies to sell off two of their three ad-tech divisions — they could be a buyer’s agent, a seller’s agent or a marketplace — but not all three (not even two!). This is in keeping with a well-established principle in antitrust law: “structural separation,” the idea that a company can be a platform owner, or a platform user, but not both.

In the heyday of structural separation, railroad companies were banned from running freight companies that competed with the firms that shipped freight on their rails. Likewise, banks were banned from owning companies that competed with the businesses they loaned money to. Basically, the rule said, “If you want to be the ref in this game, you can’t own one of the teams”:

https://www.eff.org/es/deeplinks/2021/02/what-att-breakup-teaches-us-about-big-tech-breakup

Structural separation acknowledges that some conflicts of interest are so consequential and so hard to police that they shouldn’t exist at all. A judge won’t hear a case if they know one of the litigants — and certainly not if they have a financial stake in the outcome of the case.

The ad-tech duopoly controls a massive slice of the ad market, and holds in its hands the destiny of much of the news and other media we enjoy and rely on. Under the AMERICA Act’s structural separation rule, the obvious, glaring conflicts of interest that dominate big ad-tech companies would be abolished.

The AMERICA Act also regulates smaller ad-tech platforms. Companies with $5–20b in turnover would have a duty to “act in the best interests of their customers, including by making the best execution for bids on ads,” and maintain transparent systems that are designed to facilitate third-party auditing. If a single company operated brokerages serving both buyers and sellers, it would need to create firewalls between both sides of the business, and would face stiff penalties for failures to uphold their customers’ interests.

EFF’s endorsement of the AMERICA Act is the first of four proposals we’re laying out in a series on saving news media from Big Tech. We introduced those proposals last week in a big “curtain raiser” post:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

Next week, we’ll publish our proposal for using privacy law to kill surveillance ads, replacing them with “context ads” that let publishers — not ad-tech — control the market.

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Hay-on-Wye, Oxford, Manchester, Nottingham, London, and Berlin!

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/25/structural-separation/#america-act

EFF's banner for the save news series; the word 'NEWS' appears in pixelated, gothic script in the style of a newspaper masthead. Beneath it in four entwined circles are logos for breaking up ad-tech, ending surveillance ads, opening app stores, and end-to-end delivery. All the icons except for 'break-up ad-tech' are greyed out.

Image: EFF https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-shatter-ad-tech

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[leanstooneside]

One picture is worth a thousand words

• HABITAT THE CODE

• CRIPPLES THE MIND

• TECHSPEAK] THE MASTER

• WAY THE SPEAKER

• COMPUTER; THE TERM

• COMMODORE] THE COMMODORE

• BOB THE DIVINE

• PLACE THE THUMB

• ROOM: THE COMPUTRONS

• SALESMAN THE BENEVOLENT

• NOTE: THE INSTRUCTION

• COMPATIBILITY THE JARGON

• COVER THE DEVICE

• CHAT; THE TERM

• STRESS THE SLEEVES

• TERM `THE POUND

• IN THE CONSTRUCTION

• 2692]SMASH THE STACK

• SHEEP? THE BASIS

• RUNNER; THE NOVEL

• ATTENTION. THE CLUE

• ITSELF THE LOGO

• WAYS THE FORTRAN

• ECHO THE LETTERS

• CLASSIC' THE C

[rebel-ezra]

a translation of the newspaper article that’s on my wall:

(a cutout from the dutch newspaper de volkskrant, article by mark moorman)

In Andor we see an adult, raw version of the Star Wars universe

In the surprisingly good fourth streaming series based on George Lucas' universe, the Empire is portrayed as a form of space fascism, including space-gestapo.

It long seemed that the battle in the fantasy and science fiction corner of the big streamers would be fought this year between House of the Dragon and The Rings of Power, two prequels of wildly popular brands, the flagship of HBO Max and Amazon Prime Video, respectively. In both cases, we were a bit cautious about the first episodes, but we felt that the series had reached the finish line reasonably well.

But in the meantime, something beautiful was growing at Disney Plus. Star Wars: Andor is already the fourth streaming series based on George Lucas' Star Wars universe, which has been slowly being expanded since the 1977 primal film (now known as Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope). From the quartet, The Mandalorian was a successful nostalgia trip and we can add The Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi as few notable footnotes.

But Star Wars: Andor (in itself a prequel to Rogue One (2016), which again anticipated the primal film) has a completely different stakes from the first episodes. A commitment that slowly grew (the twelfth and final episode appeared at the end of November) into an impressive epic about the circumstances in which someone is forced to make choices of principle. The route Cassian Andor (the great Diego Luna) travels, from a free-range man standing up for himself alone to the upcoming leader of a rebel army (as we know from Rogue One), turns out to be a universal story that feels relevant beyond genre boundaries. When does the fight for justice really become one's own struggle, what needs to be done for that? Add to that a great visual ambition, with constantly changing landscapes and a spectacular prison planet in the final episodes, and Andor feels like one of the best series of the year.

The battle between light and darkness in the Star Wars- universe always stuck a bit at the 'all ages'- level, with the good guys being played by the handsome actors, who competed against clumsy aliens and soldiers wrapped in plastic. But in Andor, creator Tony Gilroy (also one of the writers of Rogue One) goes full for a mature, even raw version of the Star Wars universe, portraying the Empire much more as a form of space fascism, including a nasty secret police, a kind of space-gestapo.

With top actors such as Diego Luna, Stellan Skarsgård and Fiona Shaw, it helps that the script is level, especially compared to the illustrious crooked sentences, full of inimitable 'techspeak', to which George Lucas once subjected his actors. A second season of twelve episodes is in the works, with the battle between rebels and the Empire having fascinating figures on both sides. Who would have thought that the battle between Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones would eventually be won by Star Wars?

still thinking about andor and what a good fucking show it was. it really changed lives

[techouspeaks]

Hey Sorry for my lack of activity lately.

Lately, I just haven’t been much in a review mood. There’s nothing I really wanna go over in terms of reviewing and while I have drafts of some reviews yet to be finished, I haven’t been in the mood to finish them.

My anxiety has been through the roof that it’s even effecting me physically, so what I’ve been doing is more so focus on just anything I feel like doing, which is mostly my art and personal story writing. I’ve even dabbled in some roleplay.

So bare with me. Eventually, I will do some reviews. I was even thinking about doing a full review of Gravedale High for Halloween, which was the 80s answer to Monster High. Other than that and some stuff I have to say about Healin’ Good Precure, which I find pretty good so far, reviews are gonna be few and far between. 

As far as tumbling in general, I always reblog on my @karmamiakat account which is mostly reblogging stuff with occasionally some art pieces here and there. You can message me there if you are a follower of mine on there.

Find my RP twitter at Butterflyviper where I RP my Hazbin OCs Will and Liling and my art twitter SamiTech8. If you don’t have twitter you can find me at Techounopenki on Deviantart. I’m more active on that account in terms of my art than anything.

[utterly-incompetech-blog]

I WANNA BELIEVE!

[earthdcfended]

"i'm tryin' to decide if i should mark you down as good or very good condition on this fuckin' ebay ad." looks at howie. "never mind, i just remembered why i'm sellin' ya. good'll do." (I CANNOT)

"Rae! Come on!" He's looking over the eBay ad. "I just told you I was going to spend Friday night doing some maintenance on the Vlinx. Get your mind out of the gutter."

[good-realtor-bad-realtor-dynamic]

Living+ and That Gleam in Kendall's eye

Succession 4x6. Why does almost every new episode this season end with me feeling both sick to my stomach and buzzed to all hell? My hands are still trembling.

I have so much to say!

About Kendall and Roman watching their dead father insult them on videos played on loop whether real or edited, Shiv finally confronting her brothers like I always wanted her to instead of bottling up her hurt over their betrayal, the cheapening of the siblings' hug as everything "real" becomes repackaged as a negotiating tactic, ...

... Roman's spiralling grief and insecurity manifesting as he pushes people away and carelessly fires any woman who appears to question him and his place as Logan's son, Gerri noticing something off and giving him a reality check only for him to turn on her so viciously, ...

... the rekindling of Tom and Shiv's unconventional romance when they play "bitey", tease one another and she lets him in with Matsson, Tom's greatest strength being his honesty and his ability to show vulnerability in admitting that the money does matter to him but also calling her out in the process, ...

... Ken's event-planning fact-fudging number-cooking night of chaos and Hollywood mania, his businessbro techspeak jargon at an all-time high, Karl confronting him and trying to straighten him out with a dose of reality, only for Kendall in his Maverick-from-Top-Gun-inspired flight jacket to brush him off, unphased, ...

But I just have to talk about IT.

The gleam in Kendall's eyes.

Kendall's presentation was somehow more harrowing, more painful, more ridiculous and just all-round worse than L to the OG.

The sincerity with which he lays himself bare before the world — "big shoes, big big shoes, big big shoes" big nervous breakdown — the palpable second-hand embarrassment from watching him try to talk to an edited deepfaked video of his father to gain some kind of closure after death — the sickening nature of enterprises like Living+ which take advantage of people's fear of their own mortality and prey on the elderly — the horrifying realization that creeps up on you as you realize while watching this play out, that Ken is exploiting and commodifying his grief and confusion over his father's death, his vulnerability and fragility here functioning as manipulation, as a marketing tactic, whether he knows it or not — all as the world watching him (incredibly) applauds his stark raving mad proposal because nothing is ever sacred to these people.

It's the funniest and worst thing all at once.

And somehow — and this really says something about the state of the world — when these cringe billionaires hopped up on their own hype, hallucinations and delusions of grandeur, especially the ones in tech, make outlandish promises even a child would know better than to take seriously, the world feeds their egos, cheers their cults of personality and allows them to get away with anything because they're not insane! They're just eccentric visionaries, maybe even geniuses. It's genuinely frightening.

Hey, but at the very least, when Number 1 Boy walks into the ocean, an image that had my heart leap into my throat and fill with foreboding, he's floating up with his head facing the sky.

(When this new high inevitably fades, he will definitely sink, and I can't bear to watch it.)

And yeah, of course Lukas Matsson tweets disgusting Holocaust "jokes". Fuck him.

Oh, and was I the only one who thought I might have been watching behind-the-scenes footage or a special feature by accident when the episode first came on with Logan Roy against a green screen? I really though it was just Brian Cox for a second there and thought HBO had fucked up!

[heartsyhawk]

Hey there, so...when I was setting up my blog’s theme literally years ago I messed around with the code so I could have nested comments back. This was an incredibly stupid move and I finally have the drive to fix it, but I had copy pasted it into my html and now I don’t remember what part it is. I’m reading through my entire theme html and probably will find it but if anyone could point me in the right direction of what html might be causing that it would be nifty.

[hannahnusblog]

Language Genre of Tumblr

Seeing as how I am posting this on Tumblr, I find it fitting to study the language genre of Tumblr. All the screenshots I have are from the #todayontumblr hashtag. The #todayontumblr acts similarly to the explore page and gives a nice variety of different types of posts on Tumblr. As Tumblr acts as a sort of microblog, the techspeak can vary from individual to individual.

After looking through many posts and collecting screenshots of them, the language genre of Tumblr can be categorised based on the length of the post.

The use of proper punctuations and capitalisation, along with long paragraphs of text

The lack of proper punctuations and capitalisation, along with relatively short paragraphs of text

Abbreviations and short texts

Tumblr is very versatile in the type of posts one can post, thus there are large differences depending on the type of posts. The main type of posts found on Tumblr are microblogs, fanart, and memes. There is also fanfiction found on Tumblr, however, those tend to follow Standard English language conventions of storytelling. Those that write a microblog, tend to fall under category 1, while those that post art tend to fall under category 2. Finally, those that post memes tend to fall under category 3.

The use of proper punctuation and capitalisation, along with long paragraphs of text

As you can see from the above screenshots, these follow more of a microblog style, where the users share their lives or their thoughts on certain topics. These tend to use proper sentences and punctuation, following the conventions and languages of a proper blog (such as Blogger or WordPress).

Another thing of note is the use of hashtags on Tumblr. Hashtags are how one finds various posts and thus for posts on Tumblr, the hashtags will usually follow what the post is about.

2. The lack of capitalisation and proper punctuations, usually in relatively shorter paragraphs

The captions found on the above screenshots are from fanart posts. As the main content is the fanart itself, the captions are simply there to complement the art. These can include using captions to explain the art process, or to update about their life briefly. These captions tend to not have proper capitalisation and punctuation and tend to follow conventions on a photo-sharing platform such as Instagram. Certain features such as the capitalisation of words to express positive heightened emotions and abbreviations are seen as well.

An exception is a final screenshot above from user bloodraven55. They chose to present the caption in a short microblog format, using proper capitalisation and punctuation. However, the use of bullet points is a unique feature of Tumblr compared to other social media websites. Tumblr is a microblogging website first and foremost, that gives users the freedom to structure their captions however they wish to.

3. Abbreviations and short texts in memes

Tumblr is also filled with memes. As seen in the first photo, the meme language is short and does not follow standard sentence structures of English, instead opting for short phrases such as "___ be like". The rest of the captions, they are short as the main focus is on the meme, which is usually presented in a photo or a GIF. These captions, they do not follow proper punctuation and capitalisation, and use abbreviations, such as "btw".

It can be noted that punctuation structures such as "!?" and "..." which are not seen commonly on other social media websites are quite prevalent here on Tumblr. Perhaps due to the microblogging nature of Tumblr, these captions are influenced by that aspect as well.

With the rise of so many social media websites and platforms, CMC is not just one simple channel of communication like in the past with IRC or BBSes. In the past, the only way to communicate with others over the Internet is through forums and texts in MUDs. However, with the rise of so many different types of platforms, CMC has become a group of channels. Different social media platforms has a difference audience and the type of messages portrayed can be received differently depending on the type of platform used.

For a platform like Tumblr, there is a lot of freedom in the type of posts. Unlike photo-sharing platforms like Instagram or Snapchat, short simple text-based platforms like Twitter, or messaging apps like Telegram and Whatsapp, Tumblr as a platform is more versatile in the type of posts one can post.

[leanstooneside]

At a round table there's no dispute about the place (ENTOURAGE)

it a simple unforeseen side effect; the term implies that the feature in question was carefully planned but its longterm consequences were not accurately or adequately predicted which is quite different from not having thought ahead at all

is not a programming language in which the subject matter is gone into in unnecessary

name is a [8637]scratch

mass unit of the system is taken to be a firkin

common] A feature that eventually causes lossage possibly because it is not adequate for a new situation

usage much closer to techspeak a mode is a special state

Hackers are actually more willing to use this term than `cyberspace' because it's not speculative we

filenames a common convention is that any filename

firkin is 1/4th of a barrel

food joint is not just a request for a large Coke

Typically it is a some kind of multi

bit of an 8bit character which is on in character

mL but only talk at about 300; he is frequently reduced to fragments of sentences

VMS operating system has a lot of tuning parameters that you can set with the SYSGEN utility and one of these is TIMEPROMPTWAIT

CS professor used to characterize the standard length of his lectures as a microcentury that is about 52.6 minutes

French `manger' or Italian `mangiare' to eat; perhaps influenced by English `mange' `mangy' adj. Refers to anything that is mangled or damaged usually

peculiar to hackers but hackers tend to fling them both around rather more freely than is countenanced

meme' is often misused to mean `meme

computer has 6 mobies meaning that the ratio of physical memory to address space is 6 without having to say specifically how much memory

it results from a deliberate and properly implemented feature a misfeature is not a bug

lexicon is an epidemiological vector

notation used to describe syntax and metalanguage is language

680[234]0 or VAX or most modern 32bit architectures it is 4294967296 8bit bytes

consensus is that this is the largest unit

mods' is used esp

term implies that the speaker thinks it is a [8459]Bohr

furlong is 1/8th of a mile

Windoze' with the implication that you can fall asleep waiting for it to do anything; the latter term is extremely common on Usenet

Memetics is a popular topic for speculation

Saturn V rocket is a truly moby frob

generalized from `microcomputer' and is esp

Personal or humanscale that is capable of being maintained or comprehended

time is specified

adj. In backgammon doubles on the dice as in `moby sixes' `moby ones' etc. Compare this with [8805]bignum sense 3: double sixes are both bignums and moby sixes but moby ones are not bignums the use of `moby' to describe double ones is sarcastic

variables are so called because 1 they are variables in the metalanguage used to talk about programs etc; 2 they are variables whose values are often variables as in usages usages like the value of ffoobar is the sum

abbreviation of the full name [8735]Microsoft resembling the rather [8736]bogus way Windows 9x's VFAT filesystem truncates long file names to fit in the MSDOS 8+3 scheme the real filename is stored elsewhere

computer architect C. Gordon Bell designer of the PDP11 is said with some awe

effect of this command is to put vi

It has been common wisdom among hackers since the late 1980s that the mainframe architectural tradition is essentially dead outside of the tiny market

Doug's friends argue that of course a microLenat is bogus since it

domain server is getting lots

The largest available unit of something which is available in discrete increments

moby is classically

term is also used to refer to any kind of spam

[utterly-incompetech-blog]

Draw the squad

[briefnewschannel]

Revel's Bronx exit proves tech can't save cities

Revel’s Bronx exit proves tech can’t save cities

It’s been a long time since a company, let alone a woke tech firm, openly said that street crime had pushed it out of The Bronx. But that’s exactly what Revel, the blue-moped company, cited this month in announcing a “pause” in its service there. Don’t blame Revel, which is bizarrely honest for our techspeak times — it’s yet another sign that property crime is not victimless and the poor, as…

[earthfromanothersun]

Earth From Another Sun Daily Development Update: March 18th, 2021

Greetings! Anthony and Freeman here. We are here to deliver the freshest update on "what the Earth From Another Sun team worked on", for March 18th, 2021.

We are publishing these updates because we aim to be the most transparent dev team ever, and we are willing to share as much as possible so you can get an accurate picture of the development progress of Earth From Another Sun.

If there's anything else you'd like to know about the development progress, process, vision, or anything else, let us know! (here or on Discord.gg/EFAS)

Alright, here's today's dev update:

Working on a game loop diagram of the Sandbox Universe v2. (75%)

Added localization of the Sandbox Universe to the project.

Working on Encounters combat numerical design. Encounters are small-scale fights scattered across the galaxy, where you can defeat enemies and pick up average to rare quality loot.

Anthony is working on a script for a cool new Youtube video! Stay Tuned.

Added the customizable emblem feature to Sandbox Universe armadas.

Working on the UI of generic chance events. (20%)

Completed saving player armada inventory on the server.

Working on improving our MVC framework.

Working on making the Sandbox Universe fully DOTS-powered. Created documentation to note down specifics of its technical implementation.

Working on polishing up the Cloud Palaces city, focusing on interiors.

QA testing Alpha 48.

Added high performance Pem Jumper combat unit to the main branch of the project.

Increased populaton limit (the number of maximum units in a battle) of high performance units to 1000. More units will be transitioned into high performance gradually.

Working on improving the performance of high performance combat units. (Techspeak: working on a synchronization system for custom-managed transformAccessArray)

So that's it for today! See you tomorrow!

Earth From Another Sun has a grand vision, and that is to one day become the most addictive open-world game ever made, a world with an incredible amount of content for you to explore. As many players have said, the current version is already fun, but we know there's still a long way to go.

But we believe, if we work hard, day in, day out, and keep at it endlessly, then the impossible will become the possible, and the possible will become the realized.

Let's keep going.