Nick Doty @npd@octodon.social

@gargron was Patreon losing a lot of money? It seems like this will dramatically increase their profit margin.

I don't like how it's being presented in a misleading way, but if it's the only way to maintain the system, then I might be willing to pay the extra percentage.

@propersquid @gargron also, if you give to several different creators on Patreon, Patreon will charge the patron the fee on every individual transaction, even though they pay processing fees on only one transaction a month. So they can charge patrons much much more, and claim that the fee is only 5%.

@cwebber I think the narrative example is great! It would also help me as a reader/reviewer to see examples of where this would be used today/tomorrow, i.e. not just the abstract car example, but a currently-implementable use case. Some standards folks write separate "explainer" docs, which can be very helpful.

P.S. Ruy Lopez (e4 .. Nf3) is the best opening for white, here's the paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.01815.pdf

AlphaZero is given the rules of chess and 4 hours playing itself in order to become the top-rated chess program in the world!?

📚 #reading _Naked Lunch_, by William S. Burroughs.

Closely reading the text, especially in the moments most stream of consciousness, most poetic and disturbing without a clear plot, reminds me of the challenge of meditation, of focusing and re-focusing just on the current moment or experience.

Mastodon does support blocking entire instances, but those blocks aren't subsequently visible in the UI and aren't included in the blocklist export:
https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/5855

Mastodon is also importing/exporting single-column .csv files (no metadata included, so the same format is used for blocklists and followlists), with each line as:
username@example.instance

Twitter exports and imports lists that consist in Twitter UIDs (long numeric strings), as .csv files (although there's only one column); Blocktogether supports the same. A little frustrating, since it requires an API call to turn a UID into a URL or screenname.

What format do Mastodon blocklists take? Just a list of accounts, or of whole instances too? Could we start work on a block format that works for Mastodon, Twitter and the Web in general? #harassment #abuse #standards

@chest_bot open chest

@rowan my first PR on smilodon:
https://github.com/rowanlupton/smilodon/pull/84
Hope it helps!

@ashwin I think I've typically been more concerned about the technical counter-argument -- why is obfuscation more effective than minimization?

But that itself might be political: one problem with the obfuscation approach is that it's typically harder for the surveillance subject to evaluate its efficacy. Partly for that reason, randomization of variables is typically not pursued in mitigating browser fingerprinting.

@aparrish I was really hoping that "pachyderms" would reappear in the sea of commas

Could we use ActivityPub for playing correspondence chess in public?

I can send moves to the other player, and CC the public, and others can comment on each move, fave and boost, reply with "?" for a bad move, and replay the game later with an appropriate client. A server in the know could render the current state of the game.

On building institutions and designing for community standards:
"While I agree that the outsize power of large social networking platforms can be harmful even as it seemed to disrupt old gatekeepers, I do want to create new institutions, institutions that reflect our values and involve widespread participation from often underserved groups."

http://bcc.npdoty.name/Re-Tear-down-the-new-institutions
/cc @cwebber @aaronpk

The "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act" directly takes from the poor and gives to the rich. (But the poor don't have that much to take from, so it also increases the deficit by an extra trillion dollars or two.)

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!