Rowley @Rowley@qoto.org

Like many other technologists, I gave my time and expertise for free to #StackOverflow because the content was licensed CC-BY-SA - meaning that it was a public good. It brought me joy to help people figure out why their #ASR code wasn't working, or assist with a #CUDA bug.

Now that a deal has been struck with #OpenAI to scrape all the questions and answers in Stack Overflow, to train #GenerativeAI models, like #LLMs, without attribution to authors (as required under the CC-BY-SA license under which Stack Overflow content is licensed), to be sold back to us (the SA clause requires derivative works to be shared under the same license), I have issued a Data Deletion request to Stack Overflow to disassociate my username from my Stack Overflow username, and am closing my account, just like I did with Reddit, Inc.

https://policies.stackoverflow.co/data-request/

The data I helped create is going to be bundled in an #LLM and sold back to me.

In a single move, Stack Overflow has alienated its community - which is also its main source of competitive advantage, in exchange for token lucre.

Stack Exchange, Stack Overflow's former instantiation, used to fulfill a psychological contract - help others out when you can, for the expectation that others may in turn assist you in the future. Now it's not an exchange, it's #enshittification.

Programmers now join artists and copywriters, whose works have been snaffled up to create #GenAI solutions.

The silver lining I see is that once OpenAI creates LLMs that generate code - like Microsoft has done with Copilot on GitHub - where will they go to get help with the bugs that the generative AI models introduce, particularly, given the recent GitClear report, of the "downward pressure on code quality" caused by these tools?

While this is just one more example of #enshittification, it's also a salient lesson for #DevRel folks - if your community is your source of advantage, don't upset them.

Let me tell you a little story.

Japan is mostly mountainous. There is very little flat land. The whole country is basically a mountain range sticking up out of the sea floor, and the parts of the mountain range that are above the water is called "Japan." Only 10% of the land is flat enough to put buildings on.

Japanese farmers had to be very good at what farmers call "farm management." That is just the reality given their circumstances.

1/

Some have been raising questions about the potential affect of current solar storm activity on satellite operations, and in particular the potential for something called Kessler Syndrome where loss of navigational control results in satellites colliding with each generating a runaway cascade of destruction (https://interestingengineering.com/science/kessler-syndrome-spacex-starlink-orbital-chaos).

Perhaps the foremost advocate for sensible regulation of low earth orbit, astronomer Prof. Sam Lawler @sundogplanets discusses this subject: https://mastodon.social/@sundogplanets/112416664121492169

I have egregiously abused my (moral only) authority as the faculty adviser of the new Northwestern Law Journal des Refusés to explain why the Bluebook is an abomination. It's time to light every copy on fire and start anew.

https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/nljr/vol1/iss1/2/

And here’s the thing: more of the US’s farmland is farmed by tenants now (40%) than in a previous peak during Jim Crow (28% in 1920).

We sure do love to talk about how agriculture's changed over the last century. But somehow, we missed that very significant detail!

@QasimRashid

"An unjust system is when four Supreme Court Justices nominated by Presidents who lost the popular vote, confirmed by a Senate who represent 40 million fewer Americans than the other party, strip rights the vast majority of Americans loudly support, while secretly (and openly) taking bribes from billionaires because they know they face zero accountability. "

https://qasimrashid.substack.com/p/expand-scotus-and-save-democracywhile

FWIW I’ve never met anyone at PBS that looks like the that fellow. 🤔

When a woman or girl goes missing in the woods, no one assumes it was a bear.

This is taught to 7-year olds in our schools, because our society loves guns more than children, you absolute chucklefuck fartwaffle

The intended effect of equating student protests with the horrors of the mass atrocities committed by Nazi Germany is to legitimize violence against the protesters.

What a shameful, disgusting instrumentalization of the Holocaust.

The actual Kristallnacht was a country-wide pogrom in November 1938 in which the Nazis killed hundreds of German Jews, threw tens of thousands in concentration camps, destroyed hundreds of synagogues and thousands of Jewish businesses.

Was even a single person hurt at Columbia?

Regardless of how you feel about the content of the protests, one thing is absolutely clear: If you've read any of @pluralistic books, you would definitely not be surprised at the police's actions last night at Columbia University. The books have been an eye-opening education in how adversarial modern protest response is.

Breaking: South Dakota governor Kristi Noem takes her vice presidential aspiration to gravel pit and kills it.

Fight for your libraries. Don’t let them take away your library by defunding it out of providing vital services. Don’t let them shackle the library with rules meant to prevent the right people from getting the right book to change their life. Don’t let them close the doors, because you know they will never open again. Fight for the freedom to read and explore new ideas. Fight against censorship and denying people the materials their souls need. If a library closes, it will never open again. You couldn’t create libraries today. You want to loan out books? And people will just willingly give them back? Are you mad? Naïve, perhaps? Once a library closes its doors, it’s over. The book banners have won. Do not let them win. Fight for libraries. Fight for library workers. Fight for patrons. Fight for free people reading freely. #libraries #censorship #librarians #LibraryWorkers #LibraryPatrons #BookBans

Campuses aren't being rocked by protests.

They're being rocked by politicized administrators ordering students beaten and jailed to satisfy the political elite.

Let's be clear who is causing the violence.

the world needs more recreational programming.
like, was this the most optimal or elegant way to code this?

no, but it was the most fun to write.

https://www.tiktok.com/@msolurin

#policebrutality #studentspring #abolition

Columbia University’s President was so bad at basic strategic comms that now we’ve got police snipers on the roofs of campuses around the country.

I got a little mad about it in my latest post.

https://open.substack.com/pub/davekarpf/p/the-only-thing-university-administrators?r=eeyg&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Normalize asking people, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

I have ZERO faith in a Supreme Court who's rationalizing putting SEAL Team 6 at anyone's front door.