Rob Ennals

Principal Software Engineer at New Public. Building a new publicly-owned, public-interest online platform that naturally encourages more productive interaction.

[Drew Pavlou 🇦🇺🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 @DrewPavlou]

Imagine a terrorist organisation completely dedicated to wiping out an entire ethnic minority group from the Middle East - an ethnic minority group that within living memory endured the worst genocide in history.

Imagine that this terrorist group smuggled meth for cartels and carried out countless suicide bombings across the world deliberately aimed to murder as many civilians as possible.

Imagine that this terrorist group lorded over their society and ruled through terror and fear, abducting and murdering their political opponents with car bombs.

Imagine that this terrorist group had murdered tens of thousands of Syrian civilians over the course of a decade, starving entire towns into submission and ethnically cleansing entire regions.

Imagine that this terrorist group constantly fired missiles at the neighbouring state they wish to destroy as part of their genocidal mission. Imagine that they even massacred ethnic minority children playing soccer, murdering 11 kids in cold blood.

Then imagine that this terrorist group decides to order 5000 encrypted pagers as part of its terror command and control network. Imagine that they use this pager system to communicate military messages and plot further terror attacks and massacres.

And then imagine that a minuscule amount of explosive was placed in each pager such that it would incapacitate and injure the wearer of the pager. Imagine it was so precisely targeted that the overwhelming majority of those injured were part of the terrorist command and control network and the only civilians injured were injured because the cruel terrorists embedded themselves in civilian areas with no heed to the danger this posed to innocents.

Then imagine that millions of people on Twitter melt down in anger and fury that the military operation was overwhelmingly successful. Imagine that they were more angry at the existence of the counter-terrorist operation than the existence of the brutal and vicious terrorist group.

What a world we live in:

[David Frum @davidfrum]

On the eve of the Islamic Revolution of 1979, GDP/capita in Iran lagged only slightly behind Portugal.

At that same time, GDP/capita in Syria was nearly as great as in South Korea.

Outsiders often explain Islamic radicalism/anti-Zionism as a function of poverty.

It could as well be said that poverty is a consequence of Islamic radicalism/anti-Zionism.

If the region had chosen peace and coexistence with Israel, it could have grown and flourished as Israel has done.

The choice for war was also a choice for backwardness.

I think a reason so many Western advocates of "resistance" are so enraged by Israel's brilliant and precisely targeted operation against Hezbollah is not only that it crippled Hezbollah's (and thereby Iran's) war-making power.

The operation also drove home the huge technological and social gap between Israel and its enemies - a gap that widens with every year that those enemies choose to remain enemies.

If the region accepted Israel as a true neighbor, not only would peace arrive immediately - but development and prosperity would follow rapidly after.

Middle Eastern anti-Zionism has ravaged the societies that succumbed to it. Turn the page. Cut off the terror groups. Join the modern world. Let governments work to educate and enrich their own people, rather than fancifully and hopelessly plotting the destruction of another.

[Rob Ennals @robennals]

We are working

[Rob Ennals @robennals]

We are hiring a software engineer to work with me on Public Spaces Incubator.

We are working with a group of public service media companies to build a publicly-owned public-service online space, that increases social cohesion.

https://t.co/NPo2t3oDcb

[Rob Ennals @robennals]

DM me if you have questions.

[New_ Public | BSKY: @newpublic.substack.com @WeAreNew_Public]

A very cool project from our friends at @Integrity_Inst:

Looking at how design features can encourage behavior. Do you see misinformation? How about prosocial, empathetic discourse?

Look to the features!

https://t.co/qW7blQq7mw

[Rishi Sunak @RishiSunak]

I stand with you, the British Jewish community, and I will do everything I possibly can to protect you.

To those trying to stir up tensions online and on our streets with intimidating behaviour and shameful antisemitism, I say this:

Not here. Not in Britain. Not in our countryI stand with you, the British Jewish community, and I will do everything I possibly can to protect you.

To those trying to stir up tensions online and on our streets with intimidating behaviour and shameful antisemitism, I say this:

Not here. Not in Britain. Not in our countryI stand with you, the British Jewish community, and I will do everything I possibly can to protect you.

To those trying to stir up tensions online and on our streets with intimidating behaviour and shameful antisemitism, I say this:

Not here. Not in Britain. Not in our countryI stand with you, the British Jewish community, and I will do everything I possibly can to protect you.

To those trying to stir up tensions online and on our streets with intimidating behaviour and shameful antisemitism, I say this:

Not here. Not in Britain. Not in our countryI stand with you, the British Jewish community, and I will do everything I possibly can to protect you.

To those trying to stir up tensions online and on our streets with intimidating behaviour and shameful antisemitism, I say this:

Not here. Not in Britain. Not in our country.

[Marina Medvin 🇺🇸 @MarinaMedvin]

Thread of pro-Hamas activity on college campuses in the US.

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

More than 350 of my fellow faculty @Harvard have delivered this open letter to the Harvard community this morning unequivocally denouncing the mass murder and kidnapping of noncombatants and rejecting the false equivalence between war crimes and self-defense. https://t.co/MPLT2RkA00

[AG @AGHamilton29]

So let’s talk about this nonsense:

1) The warnings for evacuation started 5 days ago.

2) The 24 hours is from the UN. Israel has said they understand it could take longer.

3) Hamas is actively trying to keep people from leaving to use them as human shields.

4) What other army in the world pauses their attacks and puts their soldiers at greater risk by warning the enemy as to try to give civilians a chance to leave?

5) Every hour that Israel delays means more rocket attacks on Israelis, gives Hamas more chance to lay traps for them in a ground operation, and reduces the chances of saving the hostages in Gaza. Hostages, including Americans, that you will notice people like AOC and others simply pretend don’t exist. There are infants that have now been held by terrorists for 6 days. Any idea what Hamas is doing to the young women they kidnapped?

6) What alternative are people like AOC offering Israel? They do nothing and allow a group that just massacred 1300 of their citizens to stay in power and prepare for the next attack? They wait 2 weeks- as if AOC and her ilk will support it then? They offer not solutions and no concern for those dealing with this reality on the Israeli side, just attacks.

[Joe Biden @JoeBiden]

We have to be crystal clear: There is no justification for terrorism.

My commitment to Israel’s security and the safety of Jewish people is unshakable. The United States has Israel’s back.

[Joe Biden @JoeBiden]

The United States stands with Israel in the aftermath of the acts of sheer evil perpetrated by Hamas.

[Niall Ferguson @nfergus]

"Apparently it still needs saying that Zionism is not the cause, but the consequence, of perennial, dehumanising, antisemitism." Essential reading by @simon_schama: https://t.co/V4XEpEM05N

[New_ Public | BSKY: @newpublic.substack.com @WeAreNew_Public]

Staff Researcher Mary Beth Hunzaker is refreshing our lit review and is putting out the call:

⚠️Digital Community Researchers & Practitioners⚠️

What research/insights re: encouraging healthy digital communities do you wish more tech builders/designers were aware of?

[Rob Ennals @robennals]

@Meaningness I expect it’s the fact that tic tac toe is being expressed as ascii art game boards - which don’t work well with the GPT tokenizer.

[Rob Ennals @robennals]

In my blog post I look at what this means in practice, drawing on examples from machine learning, metric-driven development, online experimentation, programming tools, large scale social behavior, and online speech.

https://t.co/5DLAYEwIjF

[Rob Ennals @robennals]

GPT-4 was created by people, but is too complex for people to fully understand.

This is also true of pretty much everything that matters.

So how do people create things that are valuable-but-incomprehensible?
https://t.co/dwnsJ3ZmB7

[Rob Ennals @robennals]

Those structures ensure that iteration is fast, that each step has low risk of causing harm, and that iteration progresses in a good direction.