Ambient Irony

WOULD YOU CARE FOR SOME TEA?

Tuesday, April 10

Hello Blog, How Are You?

Why yes, I did get suspended on Twitter. How did you know?

The mob got me. Was having a nice civil discussion blazing row over a California State Senate bill legislating Orwell's Ministry of Truth and I slipped up spoke my mind reported scientifically established fact and called one of the fascists retarded:

/images/Screenshot_20180410-034320.png?size=540x&q=95

/images/Screenshot_20180410-034330.png?size=540x&q=95

Two things to note: First, it's transparently obvious that I didn't break those rules. Second, those rules are retarded. Third, so is the goddamn California state senate:

TITLE 14.5. False Information Strategic Plans

3085.

(a) Any person who operates a social media Internet Web site with physical presence in California shall develop a strategic plan to verify news stories shared on its Internet Web site.

(b) The strategic plan shall include, but is not limited to, all of the following:

(1) A plan to mitigate the spread of false information through news stories.

(2) The utilization of fact-checkers to verify news stories.

(3) Providing outreach to social media users regarding news stories containing false information.

(4) Placing a warning on a news story containing false information.

(c) As used in this section, "social media” means an electronic service or account, or electronic content, including, but not limited to, videos, still photographs, blogs, video blogs, podcasts, instant and text messages, email, online services or accounts, or Internet Web site profiles or locations.

I don't know if I have ever seen a more blatant First Amendment violation, but these retards are perfectly fine with handing this power to the government even when Donald Trump - who is Literally Hitler - is in power.

Update: Twitter has now locked all my alternate accounts and won't even let me read tweets any more, though the message clearly says I can read tweets.

Update 2: I'm back, and I've saved a copy of all my tweets. Not that anyone would ever want them, but anyway...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:56 AM | Comments (16) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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1 Meh. It doesn't--at least the quoted section, anyway--say you actually have to do anything but develop a plan.
My plan, which was written by me, and is mine, is as follows:
1. I will ignore this blatant attack on the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. 2. Pay me if you want me to use fact checkers. 3. Pay me if you want me to provide "outreach". 4. I will ignore this blatant attack on the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, April 10 2018 05:20 AM (h8yX6)

2 Good but perhaps a little wordy.
mee.nu Strategic Plan According to California State Senate Bill 1424
1. Bite me.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, April 10 2018 09:42 AM (PiXy!)

3 "Retard" is absolutely an automated ban keyword. Guys have been banned for saying "retard the ignition timing."

Posted by: Mauser at Tuesday, April 10 2018 12:51 PM (h8yX6)

4 Reminds me of this.

The Numberphile YouTube channel posted a video on "derangements". It got marked as unsuitable for advertising. They requested a manual review. Immediately came back confirmed unsuitable for advertising. All it's about is a type of mathematical permutation.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, April 10 2018 01:53 PM (PiXy!)

5 I've saved all my comments several times. Diffing the files is enlightening. I can see where my comments have been unthreaded (The reference number disappears). Or when a retweet or something has been deleted. That's how I hit my 4000th tweet four times.

I kinda reneged on my pledge to give it up at 4000 though. but now I just post jokes, and memes I've made.

Posted by: Mauser at Thursday, April 12 2018 12:38 PM (h8yX6)

6 I gotta ask, man... why do you use Twitter as a vehicle for political discussions? It's -awful-. Seamus Young did a post recently that covered it pretty well - basically the way that it's set up maximizes the noise, incentivizes people to share the very worst arguments they don't agree with so that they can pose and strut as they knock them down. That's even before you get into the moderation being less than even-handed.

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Saturday, April 14 2018 08:58 AM (h8yX6)

7 These days I mostly go there for the porn. (Okay, not actual porn, but today I saw a Gantz cosplay worn by a Japanese woman with a figure that was unbelievable, especially for what one thinks of Asian figures.

Posted by: Mauser at Saturday, April 14 2018 11:57 AM (h8yX6)

8 Avatar - I've been using Twitter recently because I'm building a competing platform and want to get a feel for what people don't like.

The answer seems to be, they don't like Twitter.

Specific problems include the length limits, the poor conversation threading, the problems with blocking, the shadow bans, and the fact that the entire site is full of idiots.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, April 14 2018 08:40 PM (PiXy!)

9 That's a great article by Shamus. I particularly liked the way the comments promptly turned into a shooting war and falsified the premise.

(Yeah, I violated Rule One.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, April 14 2018 09:03 PM (PiXy!)

10 Other things I don't like, the flooding of my feed and notifications with things I have little interest in. (And it is not easy to turn off "these people you know liked this tweet by someone else you don't follow" they use to pad your notifications.)

When they added a count next to the replies, that made shadowbanning that much more obvious. And you can tell who has attracted too much attention from Twitter's bansturbators by how all their comments show up under the "click for more" link (Which is telling when it turns up as the first thing under a tweet).

Posted by: Mauser at Sunday, April 15 2018 05:11 AM (h8yX6)

11 Shadow banning is poison. It sounded clever to begin with, but it's used indiscriminately, so that in the end it's indistinguishable from the platform simply being broken.

I'm working on tweaks so that you can follow different people for different things, so that you can follow X for articles and Y for photos, but ignore their likes and shares. I'm not doing a smart algorithm, though.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, April 15 2018 04:21 PM (PiXy!)

12 and the fact that the entire site is full of idiots.

If you have a software solution for that one, you've got my vote for Emperor of Earth.

Posted by: mikeski at Sunday, April 15 2018 06:56 PM (h8yX6)

13 I will confess to turning their Banners to my own advantage last night on some idiot. I was kind of sick of his stupid argument on intervention in Syria ("Anyone who advocates for it should be drafted and put on the front lines to put their money where there mouth is." Is a very safe argument to make when an isolationist only has to stay home and do nothing to put HIS money where his mouth is.) When he finally devolved to calling me a retard, and kept deleting and then reposting his comments, I decided he needed a break. It actually worked. And I don't feel dirty about it in the slightest, because he was a F-ing socialist.

When some other dildo-that-breathes jumped in on the top of the conversation a day later, I turned the SJW's own weapons against him. He said he didn't want American Troops to die in Syria, so I said he was cool with thousands of Syrians dying at the hands of their own Government because they were Brown and not American. I just didn't give a shit, and didn't want to have to argue the case all over that it is REALLY worthwhile to NOT let the Soviets gain a warm water port in the Mediterranean after they puppetize Assad. (The first socialist didn't see any issue with that. And yet, he somehow thought he had a lock on Geopolitics....)

Posted by: Mauser at Monday, April 16 2018 03:55 AM (h8yX6)

14 "I'm working on tweaks so that you can follow different people for different things, so that you can follow X for articles and Y for photos, but ignore their likes and shares. I'm not doing a smart algorithm, though"
The feature I would probably like most from Facebook would be a way to ignore memes/reposts/shares.
I don't want to see all the recipe videos you post. I want to see your personal updates.

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, April 18 2018 01:14 AM (h8yX6)

15 Get Facebook Purity (forced to be renamed Fluff-Busting Purity) it can cut out all kinds of annoying FB features, force timelines to be chronological, and more, including using keywords to hide things.

Posted by: Mauser at Wednesday, April 18 2018 12:21 PM (h8yX6)

16 Rick C - Yep, when you follow someone in my app, you can pick whether to see original posts, comments, shares, or all of the above.

Well, the API supports that, haven't done the UI yet. The API even lets you say "show me when this guy posts a new video, but nothing else."

The API also supports saying "show me my timeline but only original content" regardless of what settings you have for your friends. And you can search within your timeline, though that might die if the site takes off because that requires a trick that is difficult to scale.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, April 18 2018 06:03 PM (PiXy!)

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Saturday, March 31

Twupdate

From an earlier post:

Also, I'm on my ~~19th~~ ~~20th~~ ~~21st~~ ~~22nd~~ ~~23rd~~ ~~24th~~ ~~25th~~ ~~26th~~ ~~27th~~ ~~28th~~ ~~29th~~ ~~30th~~ ~~31st~~ ~~32nd~~ ~~33rd~~ ~~34th~~ ~~35th~~ ~~36th~~ ~~37th~~ ~~38th~~ ~~39th~~ ~~40th~~ ~~41st~~ ~~42nd~~ ~~43rd~~ ~~44th~~ 45th suspension with Twitter right now.

~~The only reason it's not more is you can't get suspended when you're already suspended.~~ Pretty sure I got double-suspended at one point.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:18 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Monday, March 26

Steven Pinker Was Jordan B. Peterson Before It Was Cool

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:00 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Saturday, March 24

Where Was I?

At my day job we've done our San Francisco and New York launch events (and both went very well), and that just leaves London this week. This is the first weekend in a month when I haven't had to work.

I was doing something about a new social network, as I recall.

....

Nope, gone now. Well I'm sure if it was important I'll remember it.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:26 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Thursday, March 22

They Nuke Horses, Don't They?

ESTABLISHING SHOT OF HORSES GALLOPING INTO THE DISTANCE

CUT TO

Zuck, standing in front of barn door, enormous brass padlock in hands: We've shut the door, and now we're locking it.

Lock: KA-CHUNK.

Zuck: We've put top men on the problem.

SLOW ZOOM OUT SHOWING MILES AND MILES OF BARN AND THOUSANDS OF DOORS

Zuck: Top. Men.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:30 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Friday, March 09

Glitch In The Matrix

We had a server hiccup just now; something happened to the SSD and it got pinned at 100% utilisation for several minutes. I had to flush some things, stop a backup, and restart the database to get it back to normal.

You will likely need to log back in.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:59 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Wednesday, February 28

Confiscated!

Google are the world's leading experts in search technology. pic.twitter.com/tny0wKNMOX
— Chibi Thomas Jefferson (@PixyMisa) February 27, 2018

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:51 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Saturday, February 24

Twitter, Free Speech Engine Of The Interweb

From an earlier post:

Also, I'm on my ~~19th~~ ~~20th~~ ~~21st~~ ~~22nd~~ ~~23rd~~ ~~24th~~ ~~25th~~ ~~26th~~ ~~27th~~ ~~28th~~ ~~29th~~ ~~30th~~ 31st suspension with Twitter right now.

The only reason it's not more is you can't get suspended when you're already suspended.

(Bumped.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:14 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Thursday, February 22

If I Were The Richest Man In The World

I'd probably do this too.

Happy to announce that Amazon Studios is adapting Iain M. Banks’ amazing Culture series — a huge personal favorite — as a TV series. Can’t wait! https://t.co/wgEmv65Pm3 pic.twitter.com/NhCGUyRt2L
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) February 21, 2018

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:49 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Wednesday, February 21

Xbox-on-a-Chip

Getting away from politics to happier subjects for a moment, AMD have released their desktop Ryzen APUs - that is, processors with embedded graphics. The first batch of Ryzen chips (like the R7 1700 I'm using now) had up to 8 cores but no graphics; these have only 4 cores but use the other half of the space to provide the best integrated graphics of any PC CPU ever.*

There are two models, the $99 R3 2200G, and the $169 R5 2400G. The R5 is up to 30% faster on multi-threaded workloads and up to 50% faster on graphics, but there's a big factor of "it depends". If you only have 4 active threads the R3 will perform within about 5% of the R5, and depending on the game you want to play, memory speed might be a more significant factor in frame rates than the APU itself.

The question really is, though, can I play games on this thing without having to buy a discrete graphics card which currently thanks to goddamn Blipcoin miners range upwards of eleventy billion dollars?

And the answer seems to be, hell yes.

You're not going to be playing at 4k 60Hz, but GTA5 is quite playable even on the $99 model, with stock cooler, slow memory, at 1080p and with quality settings mostly on high. Some other games need you to turn the quality or resolution settings down a little to retain good frame rates, but it's still running at an integer multiple of Intel's integrated graphics.

* The best integrated graphics ever belong to the Xbox One X, the chip for which is also made by AMD. Second place goes to Sony's Playstation 4 Pro, which uses a chip made by... AMD.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:53 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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1 I understand why they only look at games from a AAA/enthusiast viewpoint, because that's the audience, but I wish they'd deign to look at less-graphically-intensive games.
Minecraft, ever since they redid the graphical engine in 1.8, will do 80FPS on an i7-6770HQ (thet's the one with 128MB of what is effectively "L4" CPU cache/video memory) with a moderate load of mods. IOW "very playable". I would expect the Ryzen don't-call-them-APUs to blow Intel's iGPU out of the water.

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, February 22 2018 06:51 AM (h8yX6)

2 Its around 50% faster than the 6770HQ generally, and much cheaper. About 200% faster than Intel's mainstream iGPUs. Haven't seen a specific Minecraft benchmark though.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, February 22 2018 09:31 AM (PiXy!)

3 I've been seeing some interesting followup articles, discussing overclocking the CPU cores and the GPU cores, which has a noticeable-if-not-huge increase in FPS. What's more interesting is RAM speed and single vs dual-channel operation. RAM speed can give a pretty decent boost, but for gaming, making sure to use two DIMMs instead of one will provide pretty hefty boosts.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/raven-ridge-memory-scaling-benchmarks,5489.html

on the 2400G, Civ VI @720p DX12 medium settings goes from 1866 to 3200 memory @ CL14 boosts FPS from 22.6 to 33.9. But the same test with dual-channel RAM sees a boost from 42.9 to 57.6 FPS!
And these numbers are, as far as I can tell, without overclocking.
The nice thing was seeing the 2400g stable at 3200 with dual-channel single-rank memory, considering how much trouble the first-gen processors had with higher-speed memory.
Aside: My motherboard came out with a BIOS update to support Raven Ridge, and after applying it, I can run my memory at rated speeds again! I got a 16GB kit of ddr4-3000 that ran fine at 2933 on a Gigabyte motherboard, but would not be stable over 2133 on the Asrock mini-itx I replaced it with. With the newest bios, it runs at 2933 fine, and I can ALSO overclock the CPU to 3.95GHz on water, with temps that barely reach 70C with a Prime95 small FFT, and only around 1.37V. It might go faster but I'm not sure how much I want to push Vcore.
(Hilariously, the latest version of HWInfo64 seems to overreport my FSB speed as 108-110MHz, leading to reports of all-core speeds of 4300MHz.)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, February 28 2018 03:22 AM (h8yX6)

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