frankhecker.com
Resident of Howard County, Maryland, systems engineer, and occasional blogger. Staff writer for Okazu. Author of the book That Type of Girl: Notes on Takako Shimura's Sweet Blue Flowers.
553 posts
316 followers
112 following
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The letter was likely written by an LLM as well. “I hope this email finds you well” is a famous ChatGPT “tell”.
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Of course one should never post it (and thereby waste anyone’s time), but it might be fun to try to create a math post that ranked as high as theoretically possible on the crackpot index. I bet an LLM would be great for this.
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I’ve never read the Silmarillion but have heard it said that it’s like reading the phone book, only in Elvish. Uncalled-for insult or only a slight exaggeration?
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The Math Academy system is still technically in beta & evolving in terms of the classes offered and the instructional techniques embodied in the system. It's thus still somewhat of an experiment. But based on my experience thus far, I'm happy to pay for the privilege of being experimented upon. 5/5
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I understand why some people object to online learning systems like Math Academy when forced on K-12 students, especially as a substitute for live instructors. But as an adult without the time/opportunity to take live classes it's a godsend: much more effective than trying to learn from textbooks 4/
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The machine learning (*not* "AI" as in generative AI) aspects of Math Academy work pretty well in scheduling lessons and reviews, although they could do a better job of figuring out why I missed a particular question. The spaced repetition system for memorization is excellent, the best I've used 3/
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I still think Math Academy is an excellent (albeit expensive) service for self-motivated adults wanting to learn or re-learn math, while reserving judgment on its usefulness for K-12 students. Even adults might feel the lack of a human instructor, though the MA discord tries to fill the gap 2/
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Look to @tbaudinette.bsky.social
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Also, the Yuricon site has a page with lots of academic references to Yuri-related research: www.yuricon.com/essays/ 2/2
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Check out the abstracts from the just-ended online "Queer and Feminist Perspectives on Japanese Popular Culture": docs.google.com/document/u/1... There were at least three Yuri-related or Yuri-adjacent presentations. 1/2
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Ah, horse animation, one of my favorite plot points in Shirobako.
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Conservation of hair: a new physical law elucidated
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Here's some more Sandie Shaw / Smiths collabs. I love the 60's feel she gives to "I Don't Owe You Anything". www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNej... 2/2
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In case you want to read even more Joanna Russ, here’s my collection of everything she ever published (pretty much all of which is still in print) plus a book of critical essays on Russ. (I also have Brit Mandelo’s "We Wuz Pushed: On Joanna Russ and Radical Truthtelling" on Kindle.)
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Full props for promoting Joanna Russ, one of the best SF writers of the 1970s (no gender or other qualifiers needed). (For other folks unfamiliar with Russ, her short story collections are great, starting with The Adventures of Alyx--time-traveling sword and sorcery)
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Do you have a favorite technology or culture project that's doing great things on a small budget and could use some help? Feel free to promote it here, and if I think it's worthy and matches my interests I'll considering supporting it as well. 11/11
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And, finally @animefeminist.com, "exploring Japanese pop culture through a feminist lens", and (according to some) the fourth most popular anime news and review site on the Internet: www.patreon.com/c/animefemin... 10/11
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Then @okazu.yuricon.com, your go-to spot for wall-to-wall coverage of #yuri manga, anime, light novels, visual novels, and live-action shows from Japan and East and Southeast Asia in general: www.patreon.com/c/okazu/about (Disclaimer: I sometimes write for Okazu.) 9/11
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And finally, four indie publications that publish great articles and actually pay people to write them. (What a thought!) First up, @yattatachi.com (ko-fi.com/yattatachi) and @animeherald.com (www.patreon.com/c/animeheral...) 8/11
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But technology by itself is not enough. We need art too, and for that we need artists. @subvert.fm is a cooperative working to build an alternative to Bandcamp and similar platforms. You can join as a supporter-member, like I did: buy.stripe.com/5kAg324kOdGN... (musicians can join for free!) 7/11
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"As We May Think" for the 21st century: @andymatuschak.org is researching and prototyping new "tools for thought" to help us think better: www.patreon.com/c/quantumcou... 6/11
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@dynamicland.org is working to reimagine computing itself, trying to get us to come out from behind our screens and collaborate with others face to face: dynamicland.org/donate/ 5/11
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And let's not forget another open source decentralized social network, the Fediverse and the @joinmastodon.org.web.brid.gy software that helps run it: www.patreon.com/c/mastodon/a... 4/11
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Continuing the social network theme: @dustyweb.bsky.social and the Spritely Institute are working to push decentralized networking even farther: spritely.institute/donate/ 3/11
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While I'm here: Not every great thing was created on a relatively minimal budget, but lots of them were. While VCs throw billions at the latest hot trend, you have the opportunity to make a difference with your own much smaller contributions. Here are some worthy projects I've supported myself: 2/11
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Good info, thanks! I focused on Bluesky because that's basically what the general public knows right now. (And I'm not that well-versed in the AT Protocol details.) But it's good to see that the protocol allows alternative approaches and that other apps are implementing them.
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Because they seem to have just adopted the old Twitter "checkmark" model with some tweaks, and said tweaks basically replicate the old browser/root CA model (verification delegated to third parties via a "trusted verifier" list). They don't seem to have thought much about alternative approaches.
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Even if the Bluesky folks don't want to commit to that level of public discussion around their policy and design decisions, I think they should at least consider publishing their rationales for how they're approaching user verification and what their criteria are for selecting trusted verifiers. 4/4
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Third, per Mozilla practice, creating the root CA policy and deciding which CAs would be "trusted" was all done in public. You can still read all the discussions about it: groups.google.com/g/netscape.p... (threads in the relevant public newsgroup/mailing list in which I posted or commented). 3/4
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Second, re @rudyfraser.com's "horseless carriage" analogy, Mozilla was constrained by 10 years of how browsers treated "trusted" websites, which in turn was based on 20+-year-old standards based on a centralized model of trust & identity. The ATProto world should be freer to explore new designs 2/4
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Good point.The way I’d put it is that the old Twitter and now Bluesky identity verification and checkmark scheme is designed for celebrities, not communities. Something different is needed.
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Yes, it's a related idea: use something that is known between you and the other person/organization, but is not known to anyone else. Browser bookmarks are also related: you've saved a website as a bookmark "My Bank" or whatever, and then you use the bookmark instead of typing the name.
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Well, ATProto already has a cryptographic scheme for underlying user identity (though it's hidden for most people) and I'm not sure how it would work to port over the existing SSL/TLS X.509 certificate scheme. But I think there's lot of prior art around standardizing IRL identity verification etc.
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Good point. My concern is that Bluesky and others are going about this in a relatively ad hoc manner, with a minimal amount of public discussion and reference to relevant work past and present. I've been out of this space for a while, but the ToIP stuff sounds interesting and I will check it out.
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True but I suspect that most people will be using the vanilla Bluesky app. Also, as I noted, other apps may use the Bluesky list just to avoid having to create/vet their own. There are 175 root CAs in the Mozilla list, and I can easily imagine that many organizations wanting to do user verification
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Yes. As I wrote to someone else, the blue checkmark is or could become a form of security UI, and security UI is notoriously hard to design.
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Thanks, glad you found it to be of some use!