capitalism

Some on twitter have bragged about having sex with their fitbits on

For instance, Google kneecapped the Fitbit Versa 4 and Sense 2 by removing features like Google Assistant and third-party apps like Spotify and Starbucks. As a result, any longtime Fitbit user would be “upgrading” to products with fewer smart features than their predecessors — unless they chose to buy a Pixel Watch instead. And the decision to remove legacy Fitbit social features without offering an alternative threatens to chip away at one of Fitbit’s greatest strengths: its community.

Source: What is going on with Fitbit? – The Verge

A repeat of what Yahoo did to Flickr

And that was the problem. At the time, the Web was rapidly becoming more social, and Flickr was at the forefront of that movement. It was all about groups and comments and identifying people as contacts, friends or family. To Yahoo, it was just a fucking database.

All they’re trying to do is figure out how to make money off it. Fuck the people that came up with the devices, fuck the community built on those devices. To googke, fitbit is just a fucking database of lots of some of the most intimate and personal data they have: Their bodies themselves.

Some on twitter have bragged about having sex with their fitbits on Read More »

This is being one hell of a ride

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 »

We’ve been avoiding thinking about work for the past two weeks. Why? Cos we had a jerb interview! Codename hrJerb.

Glorified receptionist but gets us out of the IT sector. We’d be able to get some actual experience working outside of the crypt.

IT Crowd - Hello IT

This would be a full time job. That’s in addition to sysadminJerb, itself a full-time job; and hostJerb, which is a part-time job. We’d have no time for ourselves other than basic system (human) maintenance. We’d be working an average of 85 hours per week— I checked. But we’ll take it if we have to. There is no path forward but pain.

It all came about cos when we got off work today I hit up Inbound Brewing, chatted with a couple friends, and on the way to Nightingale two songs came on just as a decision erupted from my subconscious.

This first one hit hard:

It played just as I was thinking about all the effort I’ve put into hostJerb only to be told “we don’t need your help” when management are clearly underequipped, underprepared, and clearly overtaken by the job.

We’ve tried chasing this kind of thing in the past and it never ends well. We learned.

And just as we were about to feel sorry for ourselves for… Coming up short for people that don’t appreciate us, this song played.

Sure it’s a love song but right there and then it felt like a balm. Like… “oh wow, other workplaces can actually be nice? I don’t have to chase people around?” and “huh we do love ourselves” and “we love this one beer and it’s not her fault the people who make her suck at their jobs”.

It’s Celia Cruz too so that helps.

All we need do is wait. Play capilalists off against one another; one set know what they can do but they don’t want to own up to it, the other coming in blind with cash and benefits. And extra seasoning! Cos all the people at hostJerb who can challenge what hrJerb might offer are out of town, and they are competing with people who are known to not care about their employees. In a competition like this everyone loses.


Then there’s also the fact we’re addicted to this fucken industry.

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Another reason why AMTRAK sucks and it even isn’t their fault

As BLET forcefully put it in a May release, “The time has come for our Nation’s railroads to be held accountable for their actions, and reconcile the long-term effects of their greed.”

Source: Corporate billionaires are wrecking the supply chain. Just look at the railroads.

Then, the train companies will fail hard as they no longer have employees in operations, only in corporate. And then the government (state, federal) will have to intervene after deciding the train companies are Too Big To Fail™.

The people who railroaded the system into oblivion will walk away with billions, while the workers lose everything, and the taxpayers foot the bill.

Another reason why AMTRAK sucks and it even isn’t their fault Read More »

Burrito with wage theft, retaliation, and extra employer abuse

Chipotle won’t follow labor laws unless workers force them to do so. There’s no excuse for believing Chipotle’s denials on this subject (the company called the city’s complaint a “dramatic overreach” from which Chipotle vows to “vigorously defend itself”). The complaint lists 599,693 violations — in one city, in a two-year period. That’s an enormous number. Chipotle’s slogan might be “food with integrity,” but its business model is about dishonesty, disrespect, and downright endangerment of workers.

Source: Chipotle Is a Criminal Enterprise Built on Exploitation

Don’t forget when Chipotle voluntarily joined the e-verify program so they could then fire all of their undocumented workers and not pay them the wages they worked for, nor make valid any benefits they accrued.

Burrito with wage theft, retaliation, and extra employer abuse Read More »

It’s done, thank Chaos

This past week was truly a week from fucken hell. Six nights in row at sysadmin jerb, three doubles in a row , then another two doubles in a row.

I’m fucken tired but with the fucken pigs doing curfews in Minneapolis and firing off emergency alerts at all hours of the day it hasn’t been easy to actually get any fucken sleep after they killed a Black guy in Brooklin Center and protests started.

Google Calendar from April 4 until April 17

I think I only survived thanks to the free coffee I get at my barista job and napping at my sysadmin job— which we try not to do because then we’re groggy the rest of the night and when the job is thinking that leads to problems.

I’m going to bed in an occupied territory. Fuck the police.

For Third Night After Daunte Wright’s Killing, Protesters And Law Enforcement Clash Outside Brooklyn Center Police HQ

It’s done, thank Chaos Read More »

In the olden days they used to call it indentured servitude

I still use ride hailing and food delivery services, but the fact is that the core functionality of these apps — despite all their fancy technology — is not significantly different than having a servant. What the technology has done is pool the servants, make them available to more people, make it easier to communicate tasks, and — most importantly — make it possible to not think of them as servants at all.

Source: The Gig Economy Is White People Discovering Servants | by Indi Samarajiva | Medium

When you don’t think of people as your servant you don’t have to think about the implications of servitude— including the linguistics of it, like “master”, “servant”, or “honor”. How long before people find themselves finding themselves in “exclusive contracts” with a specific gig agency?

In the olden days they used to call it indentured servitude Read More »

All for a fistful of dollars

FOSS is dead. what now?

Source: Post-Open Source | boringcactus

the gods fucken damnit, Mozilla. This is but one article out of so, so, so many out there that are talking about the death, dearth, and zombification of open source projects. And that’s before we even bring in the tweets.

But sure, those Mozilla Corporation executives deserve millions of dollars so they can look preen themselves when they have to prostate themselves before their capitalist gods making hundreds of times their salaries.

All for a fistful of dollars Read More »

I want a multiuser Amarok database, is what I want

Alright, so when I’m getting on my bike I usually just load up spotify on my phone, get to the “Songs” section of the app then hit “Shuffle Play”.

This is when the problem starts.

Over the past few months I’ve noticed the service will just give me recycled playlistss that happen to include:

  • The latest songs I’ve liked within the past thirty days.
  • A few songs that I’ve played a lot over the past three months.
  • One or two full albums that I like whole but fuck it, throw them in there see what happens.
  • The same exact playlist that was previously listened to within the past 24 hours because hey he might be tired and not notice.

The thing is I do notice. I don’t want to listen to mere rehashes of what I’ve listened to before; if I really wanted that I would go just go listen to Pandora or regular FM radio. Just tonight I got the very same playlist I listened to twelve hours ago.

There are reasons for this, I’m sure. Maybe the processing power for random playlist seeds for millions of users is too computationally intensive to actually provide a profit to the company, as it does make money from actual playlists curated by humans; could be their devs are lazy assholes, like most developers I’ve met; could be the company just doesn’t care, as it happens with most companies that are on public stock markets. Could also be the CEO just wants everyones sucking his dick.

I don’t know.

All I know is it annoys me and I’m looking to avoid this problem in the future. But I don’t know if any companies will actually safeguard my personal data should they go public, go get hacked, or worse— go bankrupt.

I want a multiuser Amarok database, is what I want Read More »

Hospitals giveth, Hospitals taketh.

According to Alan A., the nurse generally handles three or four patients at a time. That would mean Sloan-Kettering is billing more than $1,200 an hour for that nurse. When I asked Paul Nelson, Sloan-Kettering’s director of financial planning, about the $414-per-hour charge, he explained that 15% of these charges is meant to cover overhead and indirect expenses, 20% is meant to be profit that will cover discounts for Medicare or Medicaid patients, and 65% covers direct expenses. That would still leave the nurse’s time being valued at about $800 an hour (65% of $1,200), again assuming that just three patients were billed for the same hour at $414 each. Pressed on that, Nelson conceded that the profit is higher and is meant to cover other hospital costs like research and capital equipment.

I don’t know any nurses who get paid US$800 an hour. Hell, I don’t know any nurses who get paid even US$50 an hour. An acquaintance works 12 hour shifts at a nursing home and at the end of the day gets paid about US$10 an hour by her own reckoning. She gets yelled at, bit on, pissed on. Her employer constantly threatens her with unemployment to obtain free labor. She doesn’t have any satisfaction about her job or herself at the end of the day.

I’ve gotten paid the same amount per hour washing dishes and I’ve gotten the satisfaction of hearing people say “these are the cleanest dishes I’ve ever seen at a restaurant.”

In Mexico we’ve got some price controls implemented so the most egregious overcharging doesn’t happen… but then again, most people would prefer spending more money than they can than to go to a state hospital managed by the IMSS, where mothers give birth on the bathroom floor and you can spend 12 hours sitting in the waiting room before a general practice doctor will even bother to tell you to go home.

I’m now wondering how long until the IMSS is dismembered and the pieces sold. Millions will instantly be unable to afford any kind of emergency healthcare and most types of outpatient care; the same thing that’s happened in the US will happen in Mexico. It will happen by design too.

You can go to the hospital, but you can never leave it behind. The sticker shock at the bills will prevent any kind of health recovery, not matter how many drugs they pump into you.

Then again, it’s by design. A hospital without consumers makes no profit.

Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us | TIME.com.

Hospitals giveth, Hospitals taketh. Read More »