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This is being one hell of a ride

/ rucksack / , ,

Well, now he’s truly done it. The melon husk bought twitter.

The writings were quick to arrive, particularly after the husk fired the A-levels first thing, and then dissolving the board of directors. Pretty sure all of that will result in lawsuits. Rich people don’t like not getting their golden parachutes.

The Verge posted:

What I mean is that you are now the King of Twitter, and people think that you, personally, are responsible for everything that happens on Twitter now. It also turns out that absolute monarchs usually get murdered when shit goes sideways.

Welcome to hell, Elon

The Intercept wrote:

This could have been the mission statement of pre-Musk Twitter. But now there’s one big difference: When the content moderation of Twitter remains largely the same, the sense of betrayal among Musk’s super-fans will explode with the force of a supernova. And they will scream at Musk about it nonstop — on Twitter.

By Buying Twitter, Elon Musk Has Created His Own Hilarious Nightmare.

The chaos started immediately, with the husk firing a lot of people willy-nilly all over the company, and the world. Then it started asking people to come back. The company is now also on the hook for breaking California labor laws, with a looming lawsuit and employment attorneys commenting on this.

Nine days on from the purchase, the chaos continues:

Scoop: all of Musk’s companies use MS Teams for comms, where new channels are private by default.

When software engineers from Tesla, Boring and SpaceX came in to Twitter a week ago, they created Slack channels to communicate amongst themselves.

Several channels were public

@GergelyOrosz

Twitter Co also has zero potential advertisement income coming in, due to the husk’s erratic management style and general assholery. Also, someone please tell @Jack to shut the hell up.

Ourselves don’t plan on switching platforms until they shut the servers off… but then again we came from IRC, which has greatly reduced in size and influence; we keep a foothold on a couple networks but we don’t see any kind of substitute for the glorious chaos of an open timeline. But we’ll see.

Dril predicted all this, by the way. A true prophet of our age.

This is being one hell of a ride Read More »

Baristas see the worst of their guests.

/ from outside / , , ,

Before he started working at the café, Devon rarely talked to any hipster or goth people, now he’d talked to more than he could count of his fingers; being a barista was similar to being a bartender in some ways.

Source: [WP] You are a barista in a 24 hour coffee shop. Every night at 3:33am a demon appears for the Dark Lord’s latte. : WritingPrompts

We’ve been both. We’ve been a barista, we’ve been a bartender.

And being a barista is far, far worse than being a bartender.

As a bartender people will come up to you and try to behave their best, hoping they will be able to get faster service.

As a barista we will deal with whatever bartender wrought. And all baristas will try to make the experience palatable, to that person who just left the clutches of a bartender, hours ago.

Baristas see the worst of their guests. Read More »

We would terrify

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I’m not sure why that thing comes to my store, or where it takes that coffee, but I am sure it’s for someone or something else. I can recognize the bad temperament of an unpaid intern anywhere, and I can only hope whatever dark lord it serves is content with its beverage, for its sake and mine. I seem to be doing well so far.

Source: [WP] You are a barista in a 24 hour coffee shop. Every night at 3:33am a demon appears for the Dark Lord’s latte. : WritingPrompts

We have been of coffee service.

We will be of coffee service.

We would terrify Read More »

Trust google at your peril

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It really is that simple: No one trusts Google. It has exhibited such poor understanding of what people want, need and will pay for that at this point, people are wary of investing in even its more popular products.

Source: Stadia died because no one trusts Google | TechCrunch

The wake-up call was when google killed google reader, but it was ignored by a lot of people cos it was a free service.

Then there was G Suite (Legacy Free). They got a lot of people to rely on google services and then proceeded to straight up betray them. People still didn’t care cos it was also “free service”.

But now with Stadia people will care cos the cost of this cancellation won’t be paid by google— they already wrote off the money. The cost will be borne by developers who trusted google with their games.

I’m somewhat safe as I do pay for some google services but I am looking for alternatives now. Microsoft is not a particularly viable option.

Trust google at your peril Read More »

Coders came up with NFTs

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As a rule, the coders liked to code and make computers do new stuff, and the sysadmins liked to make sure said computers worked smoothly. Coders would eagerly explain that with some easily acquired new kit, they could revolutionise things for the business, while sysadmins would roll their eyes and ask how this would affect user management, or interoperability, or stability, or account management, or some other boring subject no-one wanted to hear about anymore.

Source: zwischenzugs

And for the past ten years coders have ruled the world and have broken it into ever smaller pieces for the marketers to be able to sell them to others.

Sysadmins still make sure to prevent coders from breaking organizations but we can only do so much.

Coders came up with NFTs Read More »

Cost 3.1 Billion in today’s USD, it did

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Forget solidarity: the global south will not survive this century without climate justice. You in the west are talking about paper straws, we in the global south are talking about reparations.

Source: The west is ignoring Pakistan’s super-floods. Heed this warning: tomorrow it will be you | Fatima Bhutto | The Guardian

A clear example of flooding in this scale has already happened in California, of all places: The Great Flood of 1862:

  • Heavy rains over the preceding months.
  • Record amount of rain in a short period of time.
  • Knowledge from Native people was ignored. Their lore had passed down knowledge of such events.
  • Sacramento was underwater for three entire months after the storms causing the flooding passed, forcing a move of the state capital from Sacramento to San Francisco.

This is just one instance. The lack of infrastructure maintenance in the US will prove very, very costly. Just look at New Orleans.

The US should be bracing for a very watery future.

Cost 3.1 Billion in today’s USD, it did Read More »

They all evolve until you can text people on them.

/ from outside / , ,

Instagram’s co-founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger created a mobile social network based on visual storytelling. The impetus provided by the early photography-centric approach turned it into a fast-growing phenomenon. For Facebook, it was an existential threat. And it was worth spending nearly a billion dollars to own, control, and eventually subsume. And that’s precisely what Facebook has done.

Source: Instagram is dead – On my Om

As stated by Zawinky’s Law:

“Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.”

In the age of social media I suppose email is passé, so apps expand until they can do what every other social media app does

They all evolve until you can text people on them. Read More »

This livejournal page is a LOTR Heritage Post

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What do we know about Tom Bombadil? He is fat and jolly and smiles all the time. He is friendly and gregarious and always ready to help travellers in distress.

Source: Oldest and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil: km_515 — LiveJournal

Iarwain Ben-Adar, Oldest and Fatherless. It always cracks me up to see this post making the rounds again.

This livejournal page is a LOTR Heritage Post Read More »

A DALL-E, but for music

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In short, TikTok virality isn’t great for sustained careers, but it does represent a monumental shift in what it means to make audio as an art.

Source: The Unlikely Odds of Making it Big on TikTok

The length of a tiktok video is perfect to have some audio as the carrier of an action within the video, but it is rarely the main thing to be consumed in the video itself.

How long before someone figures out how to create music via machine learning? Something may already exist that I’m not aware of.

A DALL-E, but for music Read More »

AFAIK this was accomplished

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The new scheme uses names usually derived from the location of the interface in terms of hardware buses etc: eno1, wlp1s3. The idea was that this provides “Predictable Names”, though as it turns out the main thing that’s predictable about it is that calling it this will cause furious users to pop up disputing the appropriateness of that name. (Can we just skip all that here, please?)

Source: NetworkInterfaceNames – Debian Wiki

I lol’d

AFAIK this was accomplished Read More »

I’d pay money for this ish, too

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Source: How I wish I could organize my thoughts

We are dying for something like this. Recently acquired an iPad Pro and we’re absolutely over the moon at how easy it is to take handwritten notes with it! Had a job interview and it was an absolute relief to not have the clacking of my keyboard be a distraction during the phone call. But dovetailing with the linked post, there is nothing out there that is open source that can even interface with the iOS Notes app, or any non-iOS applications that even try. Apple know they own this and it’s not because they’re good, but rather that no one else is even willing to try and compete.

There’s nothing out there, and I looked hard for a couple of days.

We’re willing to use closed source apps but it they do have interface with Nextcloud for file sync, or at least DAV. But yeah there’s nothing out there. That’s even before we bring up file compatibility. I feel this is something Mozilla could do but they’re sucking on that google dick too hard to care.

Most devs truly think you carry your laptop with you everywhere you go and can just bust it out to take notes and… no, that’s not how it works for people who aren’t in the IT sector full time.

But no, most developers out there would rather figure out how to sell your data to facebook and google because a problem like this is Too Hard™.

I’d pay money for this ish, too Read More »

♪ fonts fonts fonts

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Honestly it’s probably more like 90% of the work! Am I right! I am joking! (Am i????) this is a design humor account #fonts #fontstudio #design

Source: Honestly it’s probably more like 90% of the work! Am I right! I am joking! (Am i????) this is a design humor account #fonts #fontstudio #design

It’d be awesome if social media platforms allowed some form of searching text people put up on their video, like subtitle metadata or something. It’ll never happen cos they depend on this kind of thing to keep you there.

But in this case, she’s talking about

♪ fonts fonts fonts Read More »

Maybe someday

/ from outside / , ,

Once mutually wary, farmers and scientists are working jointly to save a key ecosystem — and an endangered salamander.

Source: Mexican Farmers and Scientists Share a Mission: Saving a Wetland

via Ars Technica.

You don’t see an article about Xochimilco in English, much less have it pop up on Ars Technica. One of my great regrets while living in Mexico City is we were never able to make it all the way out there.

Maybe someday Read More »