betaveros ❎ @betaveros@cybre.space

this is probably something i should have posted much earlier but:
the third galactic #puzzlehunt is happening in a few hours! check us out if you like #puzzles! we have some great stuff lined up and i am excited https://galacticpuzzlehunt.com/

https://www.getrevue.co/profile/caseynewton/issues/mark-zuckerberg-pivots-to-privacy-164362

mark zuckerberg announces a pivot to a "privacy-focused" messaging platform (as usual, the link is to casey newton's amazing newsletter The Interface, which links to the announcement and to all the excellent and rather obvious reasons one would be skeptical)

but still. we live in interesting times.

actually I should probably have said, what makes social media platforms succeed and fail at becoming or staying popular; that's definitely not the only metric of success. still very illuminating

very long (20,000 words) but very good read on what makes social media platforms succeed and fail: https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2019/2/19/status-as-a-service

this is not that related to anything but The Intercept ran a good long harrowing read on two police officers uncovering massive corruption in their department a few years ago https://theintercept.com/series/code-of-silence/

(pretty interesting but I did have to switch to Chrome to play it :( )

working at an amazon warehouse, the interactive experience: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-27/amazon-warehouse-workers-game-race/10803346

i'm pretty excited for the NSA's upcoming open-source reverse engineering framework — a bit apprehensive because, well, it's the NSA, but it looks powerful and whoever came up with the name and logo has 🐉 🔥 good taste https://www.nsa.gov/resources/everyone/ghidra/

even security engineers have to do computational geometry sometimes apparently 😥
https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-curious-case-of-convexity-confusion.html

The secret lives of Facebook moderators in America (dark stuff, content warnings in link): https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebook-content-moderator-interviews-trauma-working-conditions-arizona

the psychological cost of content moderation is immense and well underappreciated (and underpaid for)

I'm sure everybody has heard about Doug Bowser and nominative determinism by now but this is my favorite attempt to describe it so far (birdsite link) https://twitter.com/BearUNLV/status/1098980665289293824?s=19

pentatonix covers the sound of silence https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdVjVtpr55M

aaaa too much goodness.

it looks like things are stuck on "Awaiting approval. Click to cancel follow request" which idk even, but, sad

hmm weird importing my old list of accounts i'm following didn't seem to work completely

a vaguely spiritually related revolutionary creation: http://www.introducingcarrot.com/

Oh I totally forgot — somebody actually made Updog: https://updog.pw/