@bethcodes

Software Engineer. Democratic Socialist. Former candidate for Congress in MA-06. any/all

 Middleton, MA
bethfordemocracy.com
Joined October 2007
  • Tweets9K
  • Following1.1K
  • Followers2.1K
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All legislators have a responsibility to take these threats seriously. We cannot afford to wait for another warning sign or whistleblower testimony. We must act now to reign in these companies and prevent catastrophic consequences before it’s out of our hands.
Jacob Coxon
@hilbertspaessSep 9
Replying to @hilbertspaess
The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible - but I hear the same people express fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger.
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It really is appalling that the primary in Massachusetts takes place on the week when college students are moving in, and that same-day registration isn’t allowed. It’s such an obvious means of limiting participation from young voters and thereby protecting incumbents.
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Here's the most awkward custom search function I've ever created: everyone you follow, who's also paid Elon $8 for a dodgy tick The Search Of Shame xitter.cf/search?q=filter%3Afoll…

filter:follows -filter:verified filter:blue_verified - Search / X

The latest posts on filter:follows -filter:verified filter:blue_verified. Read what people are saying and join the conversation.

x.com
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AI take: We are only in the very beginning of an absolute renaissance of spam and fraud.
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Teams dedicated to making Twitter better for individual users and the world at large have been completely decimated. Some of these folks were doing such smart, creative work to better the experience, provide context, curation, transparency, safety, equality, etc. A bummer.
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Two years ago we published a paper about online community migration, and I think the findings and recommendations are relevant to what I'm seeing right now on Twitter. Especially the barriers and challenges to relocating (and maybe some solutions). 🧵cmci.colorado.edu/~cafi5706/…
Moving Across Lands: Online Platform Migration in Fandom Communities CASEY FIESLER, University of Colorado Boulder, USA BRIANNA DYM, University of Colorado Boulder, USA When online platforms rise and fall, sometimes communities fade away, and sometimes they pack their bags and relocate to a new home. To explore the causes and effects of online community migration, we examine transformative fandom, a longstanding, technology-agnostic community surrounding the creation, sharing, and discussion of creative works based on existing media. For over three decades, community members have left and joined many different online spaces, from Usenet to Tumblr to platforms of their own design. Through analysis of 28 in-depth interviews and 1,886 survey responses from fandom participants, we traced these migrations, the reasons behind them, and their impact on the community. Our findings highlight catalysts for migration that provide insights into factors that contribute to success and failure of pla

ALT Moving Across Lands: Online Platform Migration in Fandom Communities CASEY FIESLER, University of Colorado Boulder, USA BRIANNA DYM, University of Colorado Boulder, USA When online platforms rise and fall, sometimes communities fade away, and sometimes they pack their bags and relocate to a new home. To explore the causes and effects of online community migration, we examine transformative fandom, a longstanding, technology-agnostic community surrounding the creation, sharing, and discussion of creative works based on existing media. For over three decades, community members have left and joined many different online spaces, from Usenet to Tumblr to platforms of their own design. Through analysis of 28 in-depth interviews and 1,886 survey responses from fandom participants, we traced these migrations, the reasons behind them, and their impact on the community. Our findings highlight catalysts for migration that provide insights into factors that contribute to success and failure of pla

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We all have the option of doing software design that enhances our relationship with ourselves, our peers, and people with different perspectives. The more you can make your changes in small safe steps, the more you can preserve your relationships. @kentbeck
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“This is not normal,” said Narayana Kocherlakota, a former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. With a bank’s clients involved, he added, “the optics are terrible.” “Optics” I am so done with Fed euphemisms. It’s unethical, It’s wrong. – at Manhattan, NY
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Some think algorithms can't collude. But a former FTC official says sub "a guy named bob" for the algorithm. “Is it OK for a guy named Bob to collect confidential price strategy information from all the participants in a market and then tell everybody how they should price?” 8/10
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One of my favorite headcanons is that Murder, She Wrote is actually a very popular holo-novel in the world of #StarTrek and it was particularly beloved of the Voyager crew (after all, it was the only entertainment they had). My evidence? Let's go! 🧵 #MurderSheHoloWrote
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“[Compliments] are thus a safe way to move code reviews beyond bug hunting. It shows people that aesthetics are relevant to code quality.”
Beth@bethcodes4 Oct 2022
I finally turned some of my thoughts about how to give better code reviews into a blog post: blog.bethcodes.com/for-delig…

For Delightful Code Reviews, Say Nice Things

A rebellion is brewing.  Ideas like post-commit reviews or even a return to cowboy coding are gaining traction over the unpleasant & unproductive experience that is the bug-hunt code review. This...

blog.bethcodes.com
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This is all so well put, important stuff to keep in mind when looking at other people's work.
This isn’t some shit sandwich technique: if you don’t have something nice to say, for goodness sake don’t make something up.

ALT This isn’t some shit sandwich technique: if you don’t have something nice to say, for goodness sake don’t make something up.

Our trade is fun, and it is worth taking the time to remind myself of that. Not every piece of code we write will gracefully communicate the problem and its solution, but when one does it is a wonder worth celebrating. ... Not every piece of code we write will gracefully communicate the problem and its solution, but when one does it is a wonder worth celebrating.

ALT Our trade is fun, and it is worth taking the time to remind myself of that. Not every piece of code we write will gracefully communicate the problem and its solution, but when one does it is a wonder worth celebrating. ... Not every piece of code we write will gracefully communicate the problem and its solution, but when one does it is a wonder worth celebrating.

Beth@bethcodes4 Oct 2022
I finally turned some of my thoughts about how to give better code reviews into a blog post: blog.bethcodes.com/for-delig…

For Delightful Code Reviews, Say Nice Things

A rebellion is brewing.  Ideas like post-commit reviews or even a return to cowboy coding are gaining traction over the unpleasant & unproductive experience that is the bug-hunt code review. This...

blog.bethcodes.com
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Terrifying fact: we figured this out at Google and it was part of why we stopped the program. The folks who left the program to start Starlink knew all this.
Ronald Drimmel 🇺🇦@rdrimmel26 Aug 2022
Ok, short thread about why this could be an ecological and cultural disaster. I'm on the beach, so this might be a bit slow..
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Also, government literally exists to further the common good and to help its citizens. Non-homeowners subsidize homeowners, non-business owners subsidize business owners, people w/o schoolchildren subsidize schools. Why is it politically expedient to think so little of each other
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Historian here to remind you that when the student body was predominantly white, world-class public universities like Berkeley charged no tuition. Today's student debt is a product of underfunding of education right as integration began to take place. dailycal.org/2014/12/22/hist…
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so far we have about 40 pages of debugging strategies and trying to organize them is a struggle :) here's a draft of the table of contents (though it's SO FAR from being done, note the "unsorted pages" section haha)
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Now we have some semblance of a federal policy alleviating student debt, Congress needs to pass legislation to address the root cause of the problem: tuition. States need incentives to stop cutting funding to their university systems, which is driving tuition up everywhere.
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I find it funnier that people who claim to be comics fans are getting performatively grumpy about things that were no big deal in the comics 34 years ago. (Although the Concerned Mothers of America did announce they were boycotting Sandman for having gay characters back in 1991.)
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What we *can* perceive is whether we're happy and comfortable (if we're paying attention) And I don't know about you, but I have to struggle against decades of cultural programming that says, basically "Happy and comfortable" = "relaxed" = "unproductive" = "bad"
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This is an excellent use of Critical Race Theory in the context it was originally developed for--understanding how the law helps perpetuate existing systems of oppression and the way that manifests in discourse.
Dr. Marcus H. Johnson@marcushjohnson10 Aug 2022
One of the reasons why Trump supporters don’t care about evidence is because the legal system was designed not just to uphold the “law” but to maintain the social hierarchical order. The law is supposed to be something that empowers the ingroup and harms outgroups.
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