EthanStark.com - a tech-y blog

👋🟦 Deleting Facebook

2025-01-20T00:00:00Z

Image CC 2.0, Credit to shopcatalog.com link

Prelude #

Facebook is a cancer of a company founded to nonconsenually rate the fuckability of Harvard undergrads (incredibly, that was Facebook’s least terrible moment. It actually got worse after that). - Cory Doctorow

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask.
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don't know why.
Zuck: They "trust me"
Zuck: Dumb fucks.

Source

Why I'm Deleting My Account #

The last straw:

Stephen "Mask-off White Supremacist" Miller, Trump's deputy chief of staff for policy, walks into Meta.

Continued, via Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman, David A. Fahrenthold, and Charlie Savage in the (separately awful) New York Times:

Mr. Miller told Mr. Zuckerberg that he had an opportunity to help reform America, but it would be on President-elect Donald J. Trump’s terms. He made clear that Mr. Trump would crack down on immigration and go to war against the diversity, equity and inclusion, or D.E.I., culture that had been embraced by Meta and much of corporate America in recent years.

Mr. Zuckerberg was amenable. He signaled to Mr. Miller and his colleagues, including other senior Trump advisers, that he would do nothing to obstruct the Trump agenda, according to three people with knowledge of the meeting, who asked for anonymity to discuss a private conversation. Mr. Zuckerberg said he would instead focus solely on building tech products.

NYT Archive Link

What followed was Meta dismantling its DEI programs, and unilaterally changing its policies to "actually, hate speech is allowed now!"

Leaked internal docs from Meta, with the headline: Facebook now allows attacks on immigrants and trans people, and posts like “Mexican immigrants are trash!” and “I’m a proud racist.” via The Intercept, and here's a paywall bypass. (Go ahead and click "wayback" or "archive" to avoid any AI summary nonsense and read the actual text of the article)

Historians note that this sort of acquiescence is often the precursor to genocide and/or organized attacks against vulnerable groups.

Also, Myanmar: Facebook’s systems promoted violence against Rohingya; Meta owes reparations -Amnesty International so we've seen this before.

How I'm Deleting My Account #

DeleteFacebook.com is a good place to start. FB doesn't make it easy.
Requested a copy of all of my data, had to specify "full resolution photos"
Was able to download "photos I'm tagged in" with this browser extention, though I can't make any promises about what the extension does or doesn't do with your data.

What I'll Miss #

A dim sense of connection with old friends and family
Facebook Marketplace, which, in my estimation, has fully eclipsed Craigslist
A few special interest groups, some music-related, and others specific to my area

Alternatives to Meta Products #

I recommend apps within the Fediverse, which run on the Activity Pub protocol. Wanna switch to a different server? You can bring your connections and followers.

Once again, Cory Doctorow:

I have no plans to ever again put effort or energy into establishing myself on an unfederated service. From now on, I will put more weight on how easy it is to leave a service than on what I get from staying. A bad service that you can easily switch away from is incentivized to improve, and if the incentive fails, you can leave.

You can learn more at Fedi.Tips.

Facebook ➡️ Friendica
Twitter / X / Threads ➡️ Mastodon
Instagram ➡️ Pixelfed

Another nice feature: a user of any of the above Fediverse apps can easily follow and interact with users of a different Fediverse app, e.g. Mastodon and Pixelfed users can follow each other.

P.S. Bluesky ain't it: it's centralized, and there's nothing stopping them from enshittifying the service, and then you're stuck looking for somewhere else to hang out online, and starting from scratch.

🖼️ JPG-XL - The Web Image Format of the Future

2024-09-20T00:00:00Z

Originally posted 2023-09-20

The future of web image formats looks to be JPEG-XL! 60-70% smaller file sizes than jpg?! 😮

The JPEG-XL format was previously in trial by Chrome and Firefox, but was dropped in 2022. Apple, however, has added support in iOS17 and macOS Sonoma.

Gumlet, a CDN, also just added support, and wrote this lovely blog post about the format.

September 2024 Update #

Apple has incorperated JPG XL into how the iPhone 16 Pro captures photos.

🇺🇸 Project 2025

2024-07-04T00:00:00Z

If you're not yet familiar with Project 2025, please read up on it, or you will be learning about it in real time as it's implemented. Visiting family for the 4th? Please talk to them about it.

A few policy highlights: #

Place entire federal bureaucracy, including DOJ, under direct presidential control – a controversial idea known as “unitary executive theory”.
eliminate job protections for thousands of government employees, who would then be replaced by political appointees.
eliminate the Department of Education 🤯

Look, I got you an accessible, humorous breakdown of what’s included!

Here’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.

This is not a hypothetical: Project 2025 has a $22M budget and has been recruiting folk and gathering a database of loyalists who can fill both partisan and nonpartisan government roles; this effort has been going on since the 2023 Iowa State Fair. Source

Who Is Behind This #

Notable authors of the project's Mandate for Leadership include many officials and advisors from the Trump administration including Jonathan Berry, Ben Carson, Ken Cuccinelli, Rick Dearborn, Thomas Gilman, Mandy Gunasekara, Gene Hamilton, Christopher Miller, Bernard McNamee, Stephen Moore, Mora Namdar, Peter Navarro, William Perry Pendley, Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Kiron Skinner, Roger Severino, Hans von Spakovsky, Brooks Tucker, Russell Vought, and Paul Winfree.

These are folk who were employed by Trump’s administration, and some of them will absolutely be part of a future administration.

Or, dive into the source material yourself PDF! It’s the saddest game of roulette—just pick a page from “Mandate for Leadership”

“Our goal is to assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State.”

Licensed under CC0 1.0, free to use, no attribution required.

🧑🏽‍💻🌅 Coding for a Cause

2023-11-27T00:00:00Z

When I've been mentoring folk who are learning the craft of software development, I'll often encourage them to seek out open source projects to contribute to, so they can get some experience contributing to a larger codebase.

It's tricky, though, since there are SO MANY barriers in finding projects that are accessible to new contributors.

GitHub just launched For Good First Issue, a curated list of open source projects recognized as digital public goods that need help.

That said, the site itself looks very young, and doesn't list very many repos.

So here are a few more resources for seeking out a "good first issue" to contribute to open source software.

🌴👨🏻‍💻 Remote Work Resources

2023-10-24T00:00:00Z

Dall·E 3 Prompt: "Stock photo of a man working on a laptop. He is laying in a hammock. There is a tropical drink on the table next to him." Editor's note: he drinks to dull the pain of AI disfiguring his left pinky. 😉

I started writing a friend to share some favorite resources for remote software engineering work, and remembered something I read and appreciated: If you're writing something that might have utility for more than one person, consider making it a blog post.

Here it is! What did I miss? Hit me up!

Personal Connections #

I've seen tech workers make the following case: cold applying (aka "Spray and pray") doesn't work; you're up against way too many candidates. (One role I was in final rounds with had received ~1400 applications, half of whom were qualified to do the work.) Just keep talking to friends and connections, telling everyone you're looking for work, and at some point, you'll find an opening that you're a good match for.

I can relate to this: there was a point in my current job search in which cold applying was landing me exactly zero interviews, and my only interviews were via friends' connections.

Hired.com #

If you sign up with that link and get hired, I get some 💵. Thanks! 🙏

How it works: You sign up. If you're accepted, your profile / resume is shown to internal hiring managers / internal recruiters of hiring companies. If they're interested in you at your asking salary, they'll reach out about an interview.

🤩 During my 2017 and 2022 job hunts, I received a total of 30 interview requests and landed two amazing dev roles.

😭 During my 2023 job hunt, I've received exactly one interview request.

LinkedIn #

💡 Tip: search for jobs at companies where you have a connection. The majority of interviews I've landed this round have come from connections.

💡 Tip: the LinkedIn algorithms have to account for folk who don't update their profile, e.g. a stale #OpenToWork status. So it prioritizes folk who have recently updated their profile's "Open To ___" setting. Flipping your "Open to work" setting off on a Friday and back on on a Monday can help your profile show up higher in results for recruiters looking for your skills.

If you're on LinkedIn, say hi! Here's my profile.

Climatebase #

"A hiring platform for the climate workforce." I attended their virtual job fair, which landed me two interviews. They have a ton of remote roles listed.

Wellfound #

Formerly AngelList, it's a sizable, easily searchable collection of roles with startups.

We Work Remotely #

I don't have personal experience with this site, but it is a popular job board for remote roles.

Key Values #

"Find engineering teams that share your values." This one is not a huge job board, but it does have some brilliant functionality.

From the homepage, you can the values that are most important to you in a work environment. Then, scroll down to find comanies with open roles that share your values.

Culture Queries offers really thoughtful questions for you, the candidate, to ask the folk you're interviewing with. Once you've selected your values, scroll down and click "See results".

A favorite of mine:

Technical capabilities aside, what soft skills would make someone successful in this role?

SUNrise #

A weekly newsletter tracking companies that have recently raised heaps of 💸 money, and are now hiring.

Recruiters #

In a surprising turn of events, it was an external recruiting agency that led me to my latest software engineering role.

My interactions with external recruiters have mostly been dead-ends. I've spoken with hundreds, and about 99% of the time, the experience is like this:

Recruiters often present me with exciting roles that appear to be a good fit, but rarely do these discussions progress to an interview stage.

There have been a few exceptions. For example, I once got to the onsite interview stage for a position at Cruise through an external recruiter. Unfortunately, it turned out they had submitted my application with a higher salary expectation than I had specified, to incorporate their commission. This discrepancy in salary expectations was a key factor in Cruise deciding not to proceed.

But then came Caitlin and Gavin from TEKsystems. They had a role with an EdTech company and were its exclusive sourcing agency. They leveraged their internal contacts, including an engineer they had previously placed, to my advantage. Their communication was outstanding, and they provided excellent preparatory materials, ensuring I was well-prepared for each interview round.

If you're interested in working with them, hit them up on LinkedIn (Caitlin and Gavin), and tell them I sent you. (I don't get any kickbacks.) Caitlin informed me that they usually recruit for roles requiring skills in Java, React, Node, Angular, Python, and .NET.

💡 Tip: It's a common line from recruiters that your higher salary means higher pay for them, suggesting they'll always aim for the best offer. However, remember that once you're close to receiving an offer, a recruiter's priority often shifts to closing the deal rather than pushing for a marginally higher salary, which would only slightly increase their commission.

Those are my favorite resources! Did I miss any that you like? Let me know on Mastodon, or Ethan [at] EthanStark [dot] com.

🎨 DALL·E 3 + ChatGPT

2023-10-20T00:00:00Z

My 3yo son recently inquired about the prospect of a bird made of cheese (naturally).

Since we live in The Future, I did the thing I'm fond of doing, and translated an idea into pixels. (Somewhat related to my other hobby, translating a song in my head into soundwaves!)

DALL-E 3 is available for free using Bing Image Creator

It was also recently added to ChatGPT Plus, which is nice, since you can make adjustments to the generations conversationally.

The ChatGPT + DALL·E 3 chat interface also does a nice job of taking your prompt ("a bird made of cheese"), and then taking some creative liberties with the prompt it feeds the image generation to try to make it more awesome: "Photo of a meticulously crafted bird sculpture, made entirely out of swiss cheese, with the characteristic holes visible throughout the structure. The bird is perched on a wooden pedestal, with its wings slightly spread."

👁️🚨 Write Your Representatives - KOSA Is Not OK

2023-10-05T00:00:00Z

TL;DR:

The KOSA bill is not an effective way to combat online abuse.
It's a direct threat to the open web.
It increases the surface area for our personal, sensitive data to be leaked.
It puts marginalized groups like LGBTQ+ folk at risk.
Write your representatives to oppose the bill.

EFF says it better than I can. Here's their excellent writeup, and here's a delightfully simple, pre-filled form that lets you write your representatives. It took me literally 4 minutes.

Now, let's dig into a few of these points.

Power to Censor in the Hands of 50 State Attorneys General #

The KOSA bill would give state attorneys general the power to sue online platforms for content that is "harmful to minors". This is a vague and subjective term that could be interpreted in a myriad of ways. Since numerous states currently have laws on the books claiming that gender-affirming care for trans youth is child abuse, it would only be a matter of time before state attorneys general bring lawsuits against sites that contain content about trans healthcare.

Privacy Nightmare #

Hey, you know how every other week, we hear about another data breach? Per this list of data breaches between 2004 and 2023, the number of leaked records is over 17 BILLION. By forcing sites to implement age verification systems, KOSA would create a massive database of personal information that would be a prime target for hackers. It would be a matter of not if, but when, this data is leaked.

This Is Not The Fix #

As EFF's article notes, "There is no question that some elements of social media today are toxic to users." But KOSA is not the fix.

My Letter #

While EFF's form includes a perfectly servicable letter that you could just send, I thought I'd share my own variation here, written with the help of GPT-4. Feel free to use it as a template for your own letter.

As your constituent, I urge you to reject and publicly oppose the Kids Online Safety Act.

While the fundamental intention of protecting children online is commendable, the ramifications of this bill extend far beyond its purported objective. By endorsing a sweeping measure like KOSA, we risk undermining the very essence of an open and free internet, which has been a beacon of knowledge, innovation, and democratic discourse.

The bill's provision to compel online platforms to deploy age verification systems is particularly alarming. Such systems would not only infringe upon users' right to online anonymity but also create a reservoir of personal data ripe for misuse. This accentuates the risk of private entities, such as identity verification firms like Clear or ID.me, amassing unprecedented amounts of sensitive user data.

Moreover, KOSA's design could inadvertently transform state attorneys general into de facto gatekeepers of online content. This has profound implications. If platforms, in their bid to comply with KOSA, preemptively censor content that could be deemed unsuitable by any of the 50 state attorneys general, it would lead to a homogenized, sanitized, and heavily redacted internet. Such broad discretionary powers might result in the loss of access to legitimate, educational, and crucial information simply because it doesn't align with the views of one state's leading legal official. This isn't protection—it's blatant censorship under the guise of safety.

As we stand at this pivotal juncture, I implore you to prioritize the collective rights of internet users. The internet, in its vastness, offers a diverse range of perspectives, and it's imperative that we preserve its integrity. Please champion the cause of internet freedom and privacy, and publicly voice your opposition to KOSA.

Thank you for your attention to this critical matter.

Sincerely, Ethan Stark

✊📖 Book: The Internet Con: Seize the Means of Computation

2023-09-27T00:00:00Z

Cory Doctorow is easily my favorite tech writer and activist. He's sharp, insightful, and extremeley entertaining.

He posits, and I tend to agree, that certain tech giants, including Facebook, Google, and Amazon, have followed a similar trajectory:

First, they are good to their users.
Then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers.
Finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves.

He's coined a term for this lifecycle: enshittification.

The Internet Con is a collection of essays that explore the problems of the modern internet and offer shovel-ready solutions.

I appreciate that he offers concrete actionable steps that are accessible today. One core theme is interoperability.

Many remain tethered to platforms like Facebook due to the presence of their social circles, despite the platform becoming increasingly saturated with ads and misinformation. This scenario epitomizes the concept of network effects, where platforms benefit simply because "everyone is on them."

Interoperability offers a a compelling solution to this bind. Imagine if you could seamlessly interact with your Facebook friends while using an entirely different social network. The choice to move becomes far more enticing.

The ActivityPub protocol is one of the most widely used interoperable-first standards. Platforms like Mastodon (Twitter clone) and Pixelfed (Instagram clone) are built atop ActivityPub. I've spent a fair amount of time on Mastodon and can attest to its refreshing environment — free from ads, hate speech, and unwarranted negativity. By aligning with well-moderated instances, users can genuinely curate their online experience.

For those keen to delve deeper, Cory Doctorow has shared the first chapter of The Internet Con. Additionally, here's his talk at Defcon 31 in which he shares the core of his thesis.

While I have no direct affiliation with Doctorow, I can't recommend his work enough. For those intrigued:

🕸️📚 Foundational Web Dev Reading List

2023-09-22T00:00:00Z

Zach Leatherman, the brilliant creator of the static site generator 11ty (that's what powers this site!), asked folk on Mastodon what blog posts were most influential to how you build for the web.

He then gathered the responses into a li'l micro-site (using 11ty, of course); makes for some good reading.

https://esif.dev/

ChatGPT Bad At Coding? A Closer Look

2023-09-06T00:00:00Z

There's an article making the rounds. ChatGPT's odds of getting code questions correct are worse than a coin flip! it breathlessly proclaims.

Let's take a closer look at the source study it cites.

A pre-print study titled Who Answers It Better? An In-Depth Analysis of ChatGPT and Stack Overflow Answers to Software Engineering Questions arxiv link pdf

First off: the study is not peer-reviewed. It's a pre-print, meaning it hasn't been reviewed by other experts in the field. It's also not published in a journal, but on arxiv, a site where researchers can post their work.

Second: any article that references "ChatGPT" without specifying if it's version 3.5 or 4 needs to be carfully examined. Sure enough, deep in the body of the study, it notes that they're using version 3.5. In my experience, 4 is much better at coding questions.

Lastly, and most critically: as software engineers, we do not simply expect a snippet of code to work, be it from Stack Overflow or generated from an LLM. We write automated tests to verify that the code works as expected. If an LLM can get me 90% of the way there, and I can debug the last bit, I'll take it!

🤖 AI Won't Replace All Jobs, But . . .

2023-08-07T00:00:00Z

Around January 2023, as ChatGPT was blowing up, I was experiencing some existential dread: At this rate, will software engineer roles even exist in a few years? 🤔😳

Since then, after voraciously learning and exploring these tools, and reading and listening to great minds discuss this topic, my prediction is:

For a lot of fields, including software engineering, AI will not replace jobs wholesale. But human workers who can learn to wield these powerful new tools will replace those who don't.

I say this while acknowledging that AI is aboslutely causing seismic shifts for many, many fields, including replacing jobs, and that I'm coming from a place of privilege that maybe, if I continue to learn to wield these tools, I'll be partially insulated. Also, I make this prediction with a healthy dose of humility: the rate of technological change is rapid and exponential, and who the heck knows what five years from now might look like.

On the Hard Fork podcast, one of the hosts described the trend of newsrooms having fewer writers and more editors, and suggested that other industries, like SWE, might go in that direction: more devs acting like Engineering managers, supervising AI devs, assigning them tasks, reviewing their code.

Here are a few concurring opinions that are worth a read:

Wired.com: ChatGPT Isn't Coming for Your Coding Job

AI Will Not Replace You, But You Will Have More Squeezed Out Of You

AI Won’t Replace Humans — But Humans With AI Will Replace Humans Without AI

Hello World! - Building a Blog with Eleventy

2023-08-06T00:00:00Z

Once upon a time, I wanted to blog about interesting tech things. Reading Hacker News, I was familiar with the trap many developers fall into - either reinventing the wheel or bikeshedding when it came to building a blog, and I didn't want to do the same.

"Should I just . . . Wordpress?" I wondered. I do love and respect what WP has done for making the web accessible to so many folk, but . . . it's also a bit of a dumpster fire.

For a minimalist blog, I didn't require the complexities of JavaScript, a database, or myriad plugins. My requirements were simple: HTML, CSS, some hosted images, and a hassle-free deployment mechanism.

That led me to discover the magic of Static Site Generators (SSGs).

In essence, an SSG transforms raw data (like my Markdown files) into static HTML files.

Advantages: #

Speed: Pre-built pages are incredibly swift to serve. For instance, this site, at a mere 7.6KB, boasts a a 99/100 on Pingdom's speed test. In contrast, my 2009 Wordpress blog, which wasn't particularly optimized, clocked a loading time of 1.85 seconds for its 1.3MB took 1.85 seconds to load its 1.3MB, scoring a 62/100. Oh look, a helpful graph! 😉
Security: Without a server dynamically processing information and user requests, there is a much smaller surface area for malicious activity.
Version Control: The entire content resides within your codebase, simplifying version control. This streamlined approach contrasts sharply with the periodic backups Wordpress demands.
Cost-Effective: Static files are typically cheaper and simpler to host, as opposed to managing dynamic server resources. Companies like Netlify even offer free hosting and complimentary SSL certificates. (I must clarify, this isn't a sponsored mention. I'm genuinely impressed with their service.)

Cons of a Static Site Generator: #

Ease of use: SSGs are primarily developer-oriented and demand a certain degree of technical expertise for setup and maintenance.
Dynamic Content: SSGs aren't the go-to solution if, for example, you're looking to host an e-commerce platform or manage user logins.

Why Did I Choose Eleventy? #

Eleventy is an SSG built on JavaScript. It stands out due to its comprehensive documentation, supportive community, and an excellent starter blog repo that was the foundation for this site.

The code for this site, which used that starter blog for its template, can be viewed here.

Deploying to Netlify #

I make changes to my blog, and push it to GitHub. Netlify seamlessly detects these modifications, builds the site using 11ty, and deploys it. The entire process is remarkably smooth.

Wordpress vs. SSG: A Helpful Graph #

"Hey, GPT-4 (Advanced Data Analysis Mode)--please generate a graph to represent the following:"

"My Wordpress Blog": load time=1.85s. page size=1.3MB
"EthanStark.com - 11ty": load time=138 ms. page size=7.6 KB

😎 Cool. Good job, robot.