anachronist

anachronist , 2 months ago to Technology in Google fires 28 workers for protesting $1.2 billion Israel contract

2000s were peak libertarian for SP. They were against the war on terror so they didn't code "Bush-right" but they were extremely libertarian. I remember the media trying to push this "millennials are conservative actually" line by inventing the phrase "South-park republican"

Still I remember them landing some good observations. For instance, in one episode the boys learn how veal is made and become animal rights activists. You can tell TP/MS are not animal rights activists, but after the boys steal the cows the media, police, government, etc all instantly start calling the boys "terrorists." It really caught the whole post-9/11 zeitgeist of "anybody you don't like is a terrorist."

anachronist , 2 months ago to Technology in Enshittification Continues: Discord to begin showing advertisements on it's free platform

This is the definition of late-stage capitalism. Capitalism starts out by finding useful things that improve lives for at least some people (potentially by ruining it for others). For instance, it invents assembly lines to make manufactured goods cheaper but in so doing makes the worker's job dull, repetitive, stressful, and robs him of his agency. This is early stage capitalism. Things are getting worse for some people but broadly better for many.

But then later on capitalism runs out of things to improve. You can only invent the assembly line once. You only get that boost when you implement it. So you have to come up with something else. Maybe you computerize things. But eventually you can't wring any more profits out of production and profits must go up, so you have to take them out of the customers. You roll up all the competing firms into a monopoly and then start jacking up the price, slashing the quality, etc. This is late-stage. It becomes more and more parasitic and the snake eats its own tail.

anachronist , 3 months ago to Technology in Google’s self-designed office swallows Wi-Fi “like the Bermuda Triangle”

"You know what would be totally sick? What if we made our building's roof into a matrix of inverted metal parabolas?"

anachronist , 3 months ago to Ukraine in Sweden officially joins NATO

Is surströmming considered a chemical weapon?

anachronist , 3 months ago to Technology in Generative A.I - We Aren’t Ready.

We're not ready because we're using concepts like "raising" to describe the creation of a probabilistic word sequence generator.

Don't anthropomorphize the algorithm.

anachronist , 3 months ago to Europe in Sam Altman's eye-scanning Worldcoin banned in Spain over privacy issues

Altman makes my skin crawl because whenever I see him in an interview he looks like Patrick Bateman practicing empathetic facial expressions in a mirror.

But if that doesn't do it for you, you need to look into worldcoin. It's like as if they watched Minority Report and said "Yeah, let's do that, but with crypto."

anachronist , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago) to Technology in Oregon OKs right-to-repair bill that bans the blocking of aftermarket parts

I don't think Jack Ryan would have won. Obama had already won a crowded and contentious democratic primary and was a really strong candidate. Ryan, on the other hand, wasn't a very good candidate and was kinda floundering even before the divorce scandal. This was at a nadir for the Republicans in Illinois because it was after the Ryan/Licenses for Bribes scandal and before Blagojevich. Most of the Republican A-tier had been indicted or had their careers ruined (including Fitzgerald who Ryan was trying to replace) and they were running B-tier candidates.

anachronist , 3 months ago to Technology in Microsoft is ending support for the Windows Subsystem for Android

I assume the real main selling point for Windows 11 is the inescapable constant nagging you get when you try to stick with WIndows 10.

anachronist , 3 months ago to Technology in Firefox plan to show ads and shopping in the near future in the browser as an opt-out

Wikipedia gets something like $150 million in donations annually. Firefox absolutely could have done similar numbers back when they had a massive userbase, and it would have given the users a feeling of ownership. Instead they decided to be funded almost entirely by the technology monopolist.

anachronist , 3 months ago to Technology in Firefox plan to show ads and shopping in the near future in the browser as an opt-out

The purpose of Mozilla is to kill Firefox. That's what Google is paying for.

anachronist , 4 months ago to Ukraine in Russian pilot who defected found dead in Spain, says Ukraine security agency

Just goes to show the whole of Europe is infiltrated by Russian agents (US too probably).

anachronist , 4 months ago to Technology in Mozilla downsizes as it refocuses on Firefox and AI

I mean that's pretty standard for a McKinsey ghoul:

• Step 1: go to an ivy league college, get a business degree
• Step 2: work for McKinsey for a few years as an associate
• Step 3: get a job at a McKinsey client leapfrogging everyone else into management/c-suite
• Step 4: hire McKinsey to bring their arrogant children into your org and screw things up

Everything about her subsequent career has been going from one upper management/c-suite role in a tech company to another. This is not the resume of a person who should be running a nonprofit that controls the most important open source project on the internet. But beyond that just look at what she's done in her one month at Mozilla:

• 1. Massive round of layoffs
• 2. "Focus on {buzzword}" where {buzzword} in this case is AI

That's straight out of the McKinsey playbook.

anachronist , 4 months ago to Technology in Mozilla downsizes as it refocuses on Firefox and AI

Unfortunately Mozilla's brand new CEO is a McKinsey ghoul: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chamberslaura/

anachronist , 4 months ago to Technology in Mozilla downsizes as it refocuses on Firefox and AI

I remember what happened last time. Gradually the web will become unusable if you're not using Chrome. That's how it worked back in the day with Internet Explorer. Microsoft even began hooking things into IE that can only work on windows (activex controls) and then getting websites to support them.

When I first started using Linux I had to switch to Netscape 4.7 because it was the only browser available and the web barely worked. I remember thinking "well, the web sucks on Linux but I guess I can live without it."

anachronist , 4 months ago to World News in Israel’s Ruthless Propaganda Campaign to Dehumanize Palestinians

This is daft though considering that he needs Michigan and the Muslim voters in were one of the Democratic pillars in that state, and he has completely and possibly irrevocably alienated them.