Cheryl Platz

@funnygodmother.bsky.social

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Author, Design Beyond Devices. Director of UX, Scopely. Adjunct faculty, Carnegie Mellon. Ex-Riot Games, MSFT, AMZN, EA, Disney. EDS spoonie. Owner of Ideaplatz. UX designer, actor, improvisor, #GameDev, streamer. She/her.

🏠 https://CherylPlatz.com

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Number of times I have thrown my watch across my desk due to > 50 notifications in a 20 minute period in the last 2 days: 2 everything is fine definitely feeling calm and zen and well balanced Also I think I need a watch pillow for my desk for Reasons

When did the cell phone race go from “we have the most coverage” to “we have the most remaining uncompromised digital customer records” 🤦‍♀️

Seems bad.

Hackers Steal Text and Call Records of ‘Nearly All’ AT&T Customerswww.404media.co In one of the most significant data breaches in recent history, hackers stole AT&T customers’ call and text metadata spanning several months.

My employees said they like “COVID Cheryl” oh no what did I say 🤣🤣🤣

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Let’s hit the Heritage Foundation where it’s REALLY gonna hurt for their heinous Project 2025 proposal: www.dailykos.com/stories/2024...

Tell IRS to Revoke Heritage Foundation’s Nonprofit 501(c)(3) Statuswww.dailykos.com Yes! It’s easy! Search for IRS form 13909, “Tax-Exempt Organization Complaint.” It appears as a fillable PDF. Tell IRS that, based on the statements of Kevin Roberts, the foundation’s president, on Ju...

Don’t worry, I am not drinking any beer. In fact, it’s like this weird “oh hey, beer but no hangovers” vibe which is really odd because all we are really getting out of the equation is bitterness and bed rest 🫠

A lesser known side effect of Paxlovid is a lingering bitter aftertaste which persists during the course of treatment. It resembles the aftertaste of an IPA. For those who have consumed an IPA, this causes a faulty brain loop… “And that’s the end of that thought. beer?” Homer Simpson simulation 🤣

Game dev problems: when your Marvel licensed game team schedules an official team Deadpool and Wolverine screening right before the tickets you got with your husband who you’re definitely not abandoning so Thursday July 25 is a full on doubleheader ‘Pool Party 🤣 #marvel #gameDev

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WE ARE THE ONES WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR there is no daddy potus magic there is no special counsel daddy magic If someone is going to make change it is us. A sustained grassroots effort that lasts years. All of us. This is the only way out.

The response to "Can they do that?" is "Who's going to stop them?"

This is not the kind of user testing I wanted to do firsthand, but for me Paxlovid is a miracle drug. Twice I have seen it take a rampaging, worsening, full body reaction with severe throat swelling, body pain, and high fever (101+) - and effectively stop it in 24 hours. Give someone a Nobel Prize.

If you have a Fortune subscription, this article actually navigates the complexities of Alexa vs LLMs very accurately and plausibly in a way that tracks with the organizational and creative environment I experienced on the Alexa team in 2015-2016. #AI fortune.com/2024/06/12/a...

How Amazon blew Alexa’s shot to dominate AI, according to more than a dozen employees who worked on itfortune.com Alexa desperately needs an LLM upgrade to compete with the new breed of chatbots from the likes of OpenAI and Google. But a lack of data and other obstacles have stymied Amazon's efforts.

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Good reporting on an entirely predictable problem. Fun fact: Airbnb also covers up thousands of sexual assaults every year! Its internal safety team has "cool-down rooms" to take a break from the trauma of what they hear. It's a bad company, a bad industry, and people should just stay in hotels.

No room for privacy: How Airbnb fails to protect guests from hidden cameras

How Airbnb fails to protect guests from hidden cameras | CNN Businesswww.cnn.com A CNN investigation finds Airbnb fails to protect its guests against the persistent threat within its industry.

Airbnb Is Spending Millions of Dollars to Make Nightmares Go Awaywww.bloomberg.com When things go horribly wrong during a stay—the company’s secretive safety team jumps in.

Well, I tested negative on 3 drugstore COVID tests from 2 different brands but my PCR test came back positive. Careful of false negatives out there right now. Twice in one year despite masking. FML.

In AI, we often talk about bias and how it’s hard to detect when you don’t know where the data is coming from. But sometimes, companies like Tesla confirm that their data collection is INHERENTLY biased. (Raw driving data isn’t useful without annotation.) www.businessinsider.com/tesla-priori...

Tesla's self-driving bias: Musk and influencers get priority in autonomous driving AI developmentwww.businessinsider.com Current and former Tesla workers say the company prioritizes data from Elon Musk's car and influencers' vehicles to improve its self-driving software.

Repeat after me, tech folks: marginalized communities are NOT a valid test bed for your shiny AI tools. AI bias has already caused enough harm to these communities. Don’t go in without humility, partnership, and a deep community understanding of the unintended consequences your work will have.

Also known as “training your replacement.” 😩

Morehouse to be the first university to use virtual AI teaching assistantswww.axios.com The Atlanta HBCU will have AI teaching assistants this fall.

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Reply to

Dr. Damien P. Williams: The Birthday Beast

Because people seem to not understand how "AI" uses so much water, here's a quick+dirty breakdown: The more data centers you have & the more traditional power you use, the more water you 1a) use To cool & 1b) lose, because they arent perfectly sealed systems, & 2) will need to boil to run turbines.

Remember when some of y'all got real mad at me for doing some back-of-the-napkin math about how much water "AI" likely uses, in light of the fact that they refuse to release their actual numbers? Anyway.

Pepperidge Farm remembers. And Politico. www.politico.com/news/2019/12...

Oh god I felt like I was going insane “surely I can’t the only one who remembers this?? Why aren’t we talking about this? Why hasn’t the party held him to account earlier?” 🤦🏼‍♀️

Biden signals to aides that he would serve only a single termwww.politico.com Advisers weigh the merits of a one-term pledge by the 77-year-old former vice president.

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A whole lot of people need to internalize this ASAP when talking to their sick friends/acquaintances:

(again) Kyle (but direct quote this time): "Because of the stakes here, you can't recommend anything unless you know how dangerous it is to try things."

The thing I’m most angry about is the broken promise that he would be a one-term President. None of this would be as bad if he had stuck to that promise. And it looks much like what many women go through - promised opportunity dangled to get us doing the hard work only to realize it was never real.

Hey everyone. Happy “it’s time to update your Ticketmaster password and any app that got close to sharing that email/password combo” holiday, for the 500 million who should be observing this new holiday 🫠

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Nintendo, unlike many other companies, is in the business of creating things

Nintendo says it will not use generative-AI, preferring to create stuff that is "unique to" them and to avoid copyrighted material used by gen-AI: gameworldobserver.com/2024/07/03/n...

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An aspiring dictator & convicted felon w history of treason may win the presidency. Profoundly corrupt SCOTUS justices undermined the constitution and gave him immunity from prosecution for past & future crimes. This is all political journalists should be writing about 24/7. We’re at the precipice.

That thing where your relationship is so in sync that your husband is developing adult onset food allergies right along with you, the EDS patient 😮 I lost apples in Nov and he lost oranges this spring. Yesterday I said “well, we’re a pair” - and he said “well, we can’t be apples and oranges!” 🍐

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So. Now that google's "AI" overview is starting to put pets in danger, this is is the part where they either admit GPT-type "AI" is not fit and should not be used for "search" or they double down on ruining themselves. Not saying pets *should* matter more than humans to a lot of people… but they Do.

Google's AI recommends rubbing castor oil in your cat's eyes to treat cataracts and glaucoma. I doubt that feeding castor oil to your cat will help with digestion and nutrient absorption. Castor oil causes explosive diarrhea.

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I can't believe we, as a species, invented bread and cheese - two things that require multiple, complicated steps as well as microbe husbandry - and this is the best political system we've got

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Like, no shit, the heritage foundation in tandem with the majority of the justices on this court are actively seeking to dismantle the administrative state as the spear point of an authoritarian fascist power grab & just becasue it makes pundits or pols uncomfortable to say doesn't make it less true

It is long past time for way too many people to realize that we desperately need to either Expand the Supreme Court with actual progressives or actively remove those justices who have committed gross ethical offenses, & replace them people who, y'know, have morals & values beyond "power at any cost"

I have wanted this from EVERY social media network I’ve used. Think about what a game changer this would be on TikTok compared to the neutral feed. It makes bringing new folks in a question of community and not isolation. Incredibly smart and innovative move. #UXdesign

Today, we’re releasing starter packs — personalized invites that allow you to bring friends directly into your slice of Bluesky! 🚀 Update to version 1.87 of the app or refresh desktop to create a starter pack. (It may take a moment for version 1.87 to appear in the iOS App/Google Play stores.)

Think about it. Who does mask wearing harm? If the masked person is sick - they are helping you. If you are sick - the masked person making sure you don’t inadvertently cause harm without burdening your freedom. If you are oversurveilling people using facial recognition? Masks break your stuff.

This is why mask bans are suddenly being proposed. If you’re in a place where that’s happening and you think we should prioritize public and personal health and freedom over expanding the powers of the police state then please do let your representatives know why the freedom to mask matters to you

THERE’S MY PROBLEM

You shouldn't have built yourself in GURPS I know Weirdness Magnet gives you lots of points, but it really can mess with your day

Part 2 of the thread, since it looks like BlueSky has to do a thread reload in the middle of longthreads 👻🚗😮

Eventually, Dave leaves; I work a solid 8 hour day chained to my desk designing a Marvel game; and then we go back to the dealership where they tell me the battery was faulty. Bad cell. Not the hybrid battery. The starter battery. They assure me they’ve recalibrated all the electronics. We’ll see.

Epic thread about my car haunting yesterday as the latest casualty of my overly aggressive Main Character Energy - and trying to figure out what the patterns mean 🤣🧐🫠

In my latest episode of “life as a cartoon character”: We are buying a home in another state. They do not accept wire transfers. I wake up early to overnight a personal check clear across the country. We get into my brand new 2023 car, and… It is POSSESSED. Alarms, warnings, lights, *pedals*. 😱