As a human rights lawyer, let me state Mayor Mamdani is right to reject the IHRA definition of antisemitism because it equates criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
Jewish people have rightsβhatred of Jewish people is antisemitic. States don't have rightsβcriticism of states is NOT antisemitic.
Ken Sternβwho drafted the IHRA definitionβdeveloped it to guide research and law enforcement data validation, NOT to use as, "a blunt instrument to label anyone an antisemite.β (his words)
See this excellent piece by Human Rights Watch that details why the IHRA definition is deeply problematic and counter productive, how even the IHRA drafter himself rejects its use as the definition of antisemitism, and how such a definition fails to protect Jewish people because it conflates human rights with made up "states rights."
Dear UN Secretary-General AntΓ³nio Guterres and Under Secretary-General Miguel Γngel Moratinos:
Our coalition of 60 civil society organizations is writing to you to voice our strong support for the United Nationsβ commitment to combatting antisemitβ¦
This is an important point. Conflating criticism of a state with antisemitism doesnβt protect Jewish people; it risks diluting the fight against real antisemitism and chilling legitimate human rights advocacy. Clear, precise definitions matter if we actually want to combat hate effectively while protecting free expression.
Wow.. This is timely, i finished @pluralistic 's book #enshitification yesterday and today this pops up on my masto feed. Pretty shameful. I'm not sure if there's really a chance it'll get taken down. so i'll use my comically long character limit for good here.
"Iβm posting this from a library Wi-Fi on a burner laptop because I am technically under a massive NDA. I donβt care anymore. I put in my two weeks yesterday and honestly, I hope they sue me. Iβve been sitting on this for about eight months, just watching the code getting pushed to production, and I canβt sleep at night knowing I helped build this machine.
You guys always suspect the algorithms are rigged against you, but the reality is actually so much more depressing than the conspiracy theories. Iβm a backend engineer. I sit in the weekly sprint planning meetings where Product Managers (PMs) discuss how to squeeze another 0.4% margin out of "human assets" (thatβs literally what they call drivers in the database schemas). They talk about these people like they are resource nodes in a video game, not fathers and mothers trying to pay rent.
First off, the "Priority Delivery" is a total scam. It was pitched to us as a "psychological value add." Like I said in the title, when you pay that extra $2.99, it changes a boolean flag in the order JSON, but the dispatch logic literally ignores it. It does nothing to speed you up.
We actually ran an A/B test last year where we didn't speed up the priority orders, we just purposefully delayed non-priority orders by 5 to 10 minutes to make the Priority ones "feel" faster by comparison. Management loved the results. We generated millions in pure profit just by making the standard service worse, not by making the premium service better.
But the thing that actually makes me sickβand the main reason Iβm quittingβis the "Desperation Score." We have a hidden metric for drivers that tracks how desperate they are for cash based on their acceptance behavior.
If a driver usually logs on at 10 PM and accepts every garbage $3 order instantly without hesitation, the algo tags them as "High Desperation." Once they are tagged, the system then deliberately stops showing them high-paying orders. The logic is: "Why pay this guy $15 for a run when we know heβs desperate enough to do it for $6?" We save the good tips for the "casual" drivers to hook them in and gamify their experience, while the full-timers get grinded into dust.
Then there is the "Benefit Fee." Youβve probably seen that $1.50 "Regulatory Response Fee" or "Driver Benefits Fee" that appeared on your bill after the recent labor laws passed. The wording is designed to make you feel like you're helping the worker.
In reality, that money goes straight to a corporate slush fund used to lobby against driver unions. We have a specific internal cost center for "Policy Defense," and that fee feeds directly into it. You are literally paying for the high-end lawyers that are fighting to keep your delivery guy homeless.
And regarding tips, we're essentially doing Tip Theft 2.0. We don't "steal" them legally anymore because we got sued for that. Instead, we use predictive modeling to dynamically lower the base pay.
If the algo predicts you are a "high tipper" and youβll likely drop $10, it offers the driver a measly $2 base pay. If you tip $0, it offers them $8 base pay just to get the food moved. The result is that your generosity isn't rewarding the driver; itβs subsidizing us. Youβre paying their wage so we don't have to." social.lansky.name/@hn50/11582β¦
A confession from a mainstream food delivery app engineer
Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/confession/s/gbrh2zxeou
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46461578
same. Unless the restaurant has their own drivers, then we'll order from them for delivery.
I found that restaurants on Door Dash seem to add $1-2 to the prices of their menu items so it's also just cheaper to call them up and place an order for collection (especially if it's the kind of restaurant where you want to order a bunch of little items).
@[nate@social0 ~]$ @Cory Doctorow As a gig worker, there's very little in here surprising, aside from the anti-union funds, and honestly I should've expected that. There's a reason why I don't do on demand gigs, they're a scam.
@BenHM3 True! I don't have the ability to verify. There are folks in the reddit thread suggesting the same. and it sounds like the poster is intending to follow that lead.
Uber workers are classified as independent contractors. Click here to learn how this classification impacts accident victims' ability to receive compensation for an Uber accident.
has someone mounted a relatively high fps camera on their fursuit and used that to show the user a relatively low latency view of what's in front of them via a vr headset? or maybe use a vr headset's camera to give them visual feedback
I think there are a few cases of this, I've thought about it too, but there are some issues; Heat for one (a screen inside your fursuit head will make it even hotter than it already is), and battery power secondly (you'll likely need a large backpack for all the hardware and battery you need). Usually just having covert/covered up holes that you can look through makes it much simpler (and way cheaper).
That said, so many interesting sensors and things you could integrate with it heh
There is one fursuiter who has a custom head with two cameras built in, which stream video to two small displays into the head using an FPGA. And he also has two displays for eyes. It is quite cool
"Microsoft and Google keep the energy consumption of their Dutch data centers secret, despite European reporting obligations. The Netherlands Enterprise Agency (Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland, RVO) received blank forms or no data at all. The Dutch newspaper NRC reports that the government has no legal means to request the actual figures."
I don't do new years resolutions because years ago I made a new years resolution not to make new years resolutions π BUT if I did make new years resolutions I'd want to be more weird and quiet π
President Donald Trump escalated his fundraising rhetoric this week by warning his own supporters that they would be punished if they failed to send him
President Donald Trump escalated his fundraising rhetoric this week by warning his own supporters that they would be punished if they failed to send him
Apparently some people who do not understand the point of swearing an oath on something sacred to the oath taker are unhappy Mamdani swore on a Koran rather than a Bible. John Quincy Adams swore on a law book. What book would you swear on if you were being inaugurated?
If it means more to my constituents, Iβd swear in on a bible, but thatβs not meant to disrespect Mamdaniβs choice. Itβs that, to me, the choice is insignificant. I do not need to make that choice.
I haven't thought about the historical origin/development of the practice before. Is it truly just "something sacred to the oath-taker"? Or might it have started as a religious thing and become (relatively) secularized under freedom of religion principles?
I'd probably pick a book for the context. For president, Library of America's Debates on the Constitution, as "sacred" to me in context. Though LoA's collection of James Baldwin essays might be even more sacred and better.
Jake Tapper is a jagoff, but this clip is for the ages. He's interviewing a spokesman for the paedo Roy Moore, about swearing-in props. It's the only time I've ever seen actual visual proof of a human brain cease functioning in real time.
For real though why is seemingly everyone doing password-less login all of a sudden? Feels like it spread like wildfire in the last year. Did I miss a memo on that?
In some ways its good as its one less element compromised when there's a data breach on the web service's side. And bad in that if everything relies on your email for auth, taking over it becomes a lot more valuable.
I think services are going that way to shift the liability away from them in part. "It's not us! It's your email that must've been compromised."
We have seen a recent wave of impersonation accounts which claim to be another fediverse user, often with a similar username and boosting some posts from the original account, before reaching out to followers over private mentions and claiming to have issues with their original account.
I had an account through med-mastodon. The server looks like it is under maintenance since 12/28. I found out that it may be history, so I am using my other mastodon account with the same handle which I created when I first was trying out Mastodon. I kept my same handle/username. I am not boosting posts from old account or doing private mentions. Just saying that you may see new accounts now under the same username bc a server went down.
Koschei, I learned the other day, is a Russian folklore character who hides his death and misfortune inside objects like eggs. They may be nested and hidden again inside other objects, and then secreted away to hidden places. The story goes that the original Koschei was a Kahn who, according to custom and ritual, placed arrowheads inside little eggs, or bells, or something like that. Neat microfiction, I can nest it what I learned and it is even richer. Anyhow, I'll leave now. Bye.
I never say this, but you want to watch this commercial, and I suggest you be somewhere that you can cry a bit without anybody caring. (Damn ninjas cutting onions somewhere in the houseβ¦)
Welcome to the Public Domain, ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (1930) ποΈ
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Libraries, archives, and museums have always collected, preserved, and provided access to knowledge for the public good. But in the digital age, those foundational rights are increasingly under threat. Join [β¦]\n
@Bellarome I'll believe it when I see it, considering how long some of our Congresscritters have been serving: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_β¦ I think 51 years is too much.
I would totally watch a #muppets version of beauty and the beast! I have never seen the Disney animated movie but read/reread a picture book of the story as a kid in the 70s. #muppetsRock
Me, today: Why can't I find a single power cable anywhere? I have dozens! How can they all be missing? What's going on here?
Me, a few weeks ago: This box will be perfect for storing all my mixed power cables! I will put them all in here and I'll never have trouble finding the one I need ever again! I am the god of organisation!
The image is a single-panel cartoon. At a border crossing, a Canadian Mountie, with snow on his hat and the shoulders of his uniform, is on the phone, saying, "We've got a desperate woman seeking asylum who is fleeing intolerable conditions." The woman, standing on the other side of the crossing gate, covers her face in despair. It is the Statue of Liberty, her extinguished torch still smoking. #Alt4You Please include #AltText for the benefit of Blind and low-vision users.
Chris Ford
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