Esme Povirk @madewokherd@computerfairi.es
Joined Aug 2018
Esme Povirk
boosted
Two different approaches to debugging a software problem:
The Sudoku approach: stare at the limited set of clues you have, and think harder and harder about them until you find a way to deduce something useful.
The Minesweeper approach: don't even try to figure out the solution from only the clues you have right now. Instead, focus on finding a way to acquire another clue, and then using that to get another, and so on. Eventually you've collected so many clues that the answer is obvious.
Sometimes the Sudoku approach is necessary, because you've got all the clues you're ever going to get. But I think my new motto is "Never Sudoku a problem when you can Minesweeper it."
Esme Povirk
boosted
"play is only play if it's self directed" has just set off a lot of lightbulbs about my school's mandatory sports program 🤔
uspol, transphobia
“It is not strategic to abandon trans people to the toxic rhetoric of an authoritarian movement that seeks to find scapegoats to distract from their insatiable appetite for power,” Strangio wrote in part. “What the center-right and center-left people who claim that support for trans people is [n]ot strategic are struggling with is not a question of strategy, but of their own confusion about and discomfort with trans people.” https://www.them.us/story/john-ewing-jr-jean-stothert-anti-trans-propaganda-omaha-mayor-election
@minego Now it's time for meds.
@minego It's not time for that yet. You're skipping ahead in my routine.
@mavica_again I bet AI companies could also trivially configure their scrapers to not DDoS the Internet, but apparently they don't care enough to do that either. It'd probably be less work for more payoff than participating in this particular arms race.
@mavica_again It's an arms race, but one where no one is currently escalating. Probably because it buys them very little. Yes, an AI scraper could trivially detect Anubis and change the user agent to wget or whatever. And they could scrape the very small portion of the web behind Anubis for maybe a weekend before people start configuring it to block that.
@mavica_again Apparently, they don't care that much (yet).
@mavica_again The point is it doesn't take 5 minutes to load Bugzilla anymore. If that changes, then they escalate, I guess.
@mavica_again Nerd-sniped into searching GitHub for the answer
I think maybe it's a deliberate choice to not make it any more complicated than necessary for actual existing bots https://github.com/TecharoHQ/anubis/pull/78#issuecomment-2764334672
Esme Povirk
boosted
Trans Happily Ever After: The Forgotten Folktales of Trans Joy
“While people have been reading themselves into these stories since time began, there have also been deliberate attempts to remove queerness from folktales, which is why so many of us might have thought that queer and Trans+ stories don’t exist in fairy tales.”
#lgbtq #trans #transgender #queer
https://www.wearequeeraf.com/trans-happily-ever-after-the-forgotten-folktales-of-trans-joy/
Esme Povirk
boosted
“false dichotomies around the artificial polarization of complex issues into two opposed camps. You’re either focused on immediate relief or systemic change. You’re either practical or idealistic. You’re either working within the system or fighting against it.”
“What if the emotional resonance of specific, concrete actions is precisely what builds the coalition necessary for systemic change?”
Esme Povirk
boosted
I’m not spiritual but the old religions had it right when they worshipped trans women
Esme Povirk
boosted
Tech Companies Apparently Do Not Understand Why We Dislike AI
It's becoming increasingly apparent that one of the reasons why tech companies are so enthusiastic about shoving AI into every product and service is that they fundamentally do not understand why people dislike AI. I will elaborate. I was recently made aware of the Jetbrains developer ecosystem survey, which included a lot of questions about AI. After I answered some of them negatively (and possibly…
http://soatok.blog/2025/05/04/tech-companies-apparently-do-not-understand-why-we-dislike-ai/
christianity
Oh, you love Jesus? Name every category of person he was kind to.
Esme Povirk
boosted
I think a lot of people that don't really understand what they're doing obsess over LLMs for the same reason that they might have obsessed over visual programming or plain-English-programming a generation ago.
In their mind, programming works like this:
1) A clever person designs the system/app/website/game in their mind.
2) The person uses whatever tools available to wrangle the computer into reproducing that vision.
(1/...)
@recursive I have found the same, and it's why I no longer drive.
plurality, spirituality
Also last night I prayed to a mouse to lead me to my friends, and it worked - I dreamed of at least one friend.
plurality, spirituality
Just realized that, because I regard my headmates as spirits (in addition to my own spirit), and because to me "praying" requires a felt spiritual connection, my system and my pantheon are equivalent.
Esme Povirk
boosted
Redditor accidentally reinvents discarded ’90s tool to escape today’s age gates
The '90s called. They want their flawed age verification methods back.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/04/redditor-accidentally-reinvents-discarded-90s-tool-to-escape-todays-age-gates/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social
Joined Aug 2018
