Meta plans to work with ActivityPub, a vendor that already partners with Mastodon and is currently working on a deal with Tumblr. The agreement isn’t finalized yet, but has been referenced in press releases announcing Threads.
Lol. The author of this article is braindead and has no Idea what he’s writing about. ActivityPub is an open standard not a vendor. There can’t be an agreement because there’s no one to agree with. All they will do is implement the standard
If you spend too much time in Microsoft-land or Enterprise-ville, you will start to see everything as vendors. But in the open source world it’s different.
I’m expecting FB to make some sort of proprietary fork of ActivityPub. I’m not quite sure what the point of Threads is, from Zuck’s POV, excluding the desire to eat Musks’s lunch, which is huge, so that’s more than enough. The man needs a win, bad, after that Metaverse flop heard round the world.
But everything you’d consider an advantage to the Fediverse is a downside to his business model, and the things it enables, like user-controlled hosting, don’t suit his ends. Maybe he intends to colonize this place, too, but up until very recently there wasn’t a meaningful user base to gain control over. Still isn’t. Mastodon got the biggest boost, they’re up to 8 mil users now, a healthy number for sure, but Instagram is pushing a billion users, so the number isn’t much to him.
So he’s not going to actually like anything about the Fediverse, or what it offers, nor will he like its downsides much. ActivityPub, as it is, doesn’t do him any favors. I can’t imagine anything other than the skeleton of ActivityPub getting repurposed into something else that runs Threads in the locked down way that Meta is accustomed to. He just seems to be grabbing at anything that’s loose for the taking.
I have the barest grasp on what “proprietary fork” actually means. All I know is that Meta is probably here because everyone is bailing to Mastodon, especially journalists. Fuckin Fox News threw up an outpost, they’re all there, the userbase is ramping up past 8mil. Meta sees that, and wants a piece of Musk’s market. The question is how, exactly, they are going to make the model become something they control properly, or worse, they manage to engulf the whole thing and somehow this all becomes facebook against everyone’s will. Hopefully they make their own walled garden out of it and we can all stay safely outside the cursed thing, being dweeby and free.
I don’t have the background to judge the situation, and I don’t like it. Somehow I went as far away from facebook as I could and ended up back on facebook, gimme a fuckin break
All I know is that Meta is probably here because everyone is bailing to Mastodon, especially journalists.
I wouldn’t exactly say that everybody is bailing on Mastodon. I don’t like the Twitter format, but a lot of people prefer that over a threaded set up like Reddit/Lemmy/Threads. Right now, the only other option is Twitter, and Musk is actively burning that to the ground.
I just wish Mastodon would stop catering to mobile people and give me browser width space that’s not the size of a large potato.
Fuckin Fox News threw up an outpost, they’re all there, the userbase is ramping up past 8mil.
Right-wing assholes gonna asshole their way into the platform with the most corporate influence, while still pretending they are “rebelling” and “sticking it to the man”. Fox News are the Kings of Astroturfing. Not surprising at all.
He’s persona non grata these days, but the old quote from Scott Adams applies here:
“I read a newspaper article about something I know very well—my own field—and it was so full of errors that I had to wonder how many errors there were in other articles on topics I didn’t know much about.”
If they’re getting an important detail like this so mindblowingly wrong, what else are they getting wrong?
Journalists are not educated in anything except how to write. And they go and write about everything, aiming for an audience that is dumber than them. On top of all that journalism is an industry in contraction. Even the good journalists are paid as badly as teachers and they work under great pressure. Many of them are addicted to watching their click stats and not much better than a meatspace Facebook algorithm on legs. Is it any mystery how the end result is crap?
Does Fortune think Linux also partnered with RedHat, Ubuntu, Apple, Windows and everybody else who's every borrowed from/made use of/implemented an open standard??
There is a captive market for residential real estate, and a glut of commercial properties...
Everyone MUST live in a home while offices and other commercial spaces are a "nice to have" - so the businesses and individuals with extra capital have gobbled up the residential property to further push us into the "own nothing and be happy" economy.
I like the idea of transforming the old commercial properties to condos, but there's a ton of issues with retrofitting - which is the result of zoning and differences in building codes. Then there's the zoning issues themselves.
So.. as usual.. we are beholden to politicians doing the right thing for their constituents, and not their donors. These commercial properties are going to sit idle, and decay until it becomes a "true" crisis (buildings collapsing, mass squatting causing major health and safety issues) - causing untold costs to fix them to accrue in the meantime.
It'll never happen, but my grandiose solution is to deliberately crash the housing market via legislation limiting ownership of single family homes. This would boost the "velocity" of cash (lowering inflation), allows taxpayers to own (solves housing crisis), and would renew interest in the commerical real estate.
Mass squatting. Hmm. That's an interesting idea. I wonder if local governments will turn a blind eye, sort.of how they did in Brooklyn warehouses that rented out space to artists (which the artists used as live work spaces, unofficially).
Some of these offices are extremely small and don't have bathrooms (there was an article in Curbed IIRC about psychiatrist offices that were empty because most patients are now doing Zoom sessions). But they would make good SROs (they just need to retrofit the bathrooms to have showers). They are about the size of a studio.
Some countries have actually legalized squatting in certain situations (like if a building is long term empty) to put some fire under the landlord’s ass to either find a paying tenant or sell. And honestly I think it’s an inelegant but effective solution.
It’s not productive to have real estate units sitting empty in the middle of the city and we simply shouldn’t allow it.
I worked for an engineering company that had "secret" projects. So when you were assigned to a secret project, you'd move all your desk stuff into that project area where everyone coming and going had to enter a security code to get through the door. But the size of projects would vary over the weeks. I remember one Friday I finished my work on a secret project along with several other people in the desks and drafting tables near me. The next Monday, we found that our desks were in the same place, but they'd moved the wall; so we were outside the project area - or actually we had been absorbed into a different project area with a different door code. So in those big buildings, there may be small offices, but they are easily reconfigured.
I wonder if squatting in high-rise office space might give rise to sort of communal life - something more social than single-family units of today. It will be an interesting social experiment
One of the first places I lived when I moved out of my parents house was a converted hotel in a really old part of Los Angeles. My studio unit had a bathroom, but no kitchen. I lived off of microwave Trader Joe’s meals and stuff I could cook on a foreman grill. Cheaper units were basically just bedrooms that shared communal restrooms. We may be seeing more of this setup in the future.
In my family, if a kid (such as myself, for example) tended to talk a lot, they'd say "he was vaccinated with a Victrola needle" (because, for the younger readers who are possibly ignorant of history, vaccines were originally applied by scratching the skin surface with a needle, and a Victrola was an early record player with an actual needle for converting the grooves into vibrations - so perhaps some of the capacity for endless automatic patter carried over with the vaccination)
I think it's less likely they'll turn a blind eye these days. Oakland was similar but there was a massive crackdown on artists wherehouse spaces after the GhostShip fire (36 people lost their lives) .
They have the data because they ask (corporate) employees about their working experience constantly. I’m sure employees love the option to WFH. But they don’t like the data (typical) because they spent billions building cheap, crowded, loud office space around the world.
So what do they do? They pull out the mantra, “Disagree and Commit”, which is Amazon manager speak for “shut up and do what I say.” Ironically, Disagree and Commit is actually “Have Backbone, Disagree and Commit” and is about finding alternative solutions or data when you think the company is doing the wrong things rather than keeping quiet.
Amazon, like most American corporations is an oligarchy and it’s run terribly at the top with dire consequences for their employees, customers, and the world.
Just reading these words hurts. I’ll never forget visiting Fitbit’s offices. They had these extra narrow desks - imagine a regular office desk but without the extra width for that rolly-drawer. They were strung out in long rows, smack up against each other side to side. And the rows were also arranged back to back. When everyone was sitting down, the legs of their chairs would interfere, and they had nowhere to put their backpacks except down in that mess of chair legs. The place was a constant high volume din, and if it wasn’t you’d be listening to the people in either side of you breathing. Need to get up and leave? Prepare to tiptoe through that entire mess for 10-20 desks until you reach an aisle.
Are there stats on how many more sick days people in the office take? I don't really catch anything except from the kids, and I'm almost never sick enough to not at least send a couple emails.
I was just there to give a presentation and walked through the place once. It gave me such heebie jeebies even from just that… I can’t imagine what it must have been like for people working there.
this reminded me of a quote from a tv show i'm watching. "Hell is just the product of a morbid human imagination, The bad news is whatever humans can imagine they can usually create"
Yep. There have been so many people having backbone since this was announced in January. The remote-advocacy slack channel is the third largest opt in channel (pay-equity is the largest opt in, with people posting their salaries anonymously). There have been many protests and many people pushing back.
It’s all about the money to these corporate execs. Tax cuts, real estate value, parking lot payments, etc.
I will say that working in the office with others on your team has benefits. However, I’m not working with my team directly for 3 days a week. We could do a couple design days a few days a month or even a full week a few times a quarter and that would cover the bases. Half my team is on the other side of the US anyways.
If “downtown” were a carless urban greenscape, it would be thriving, particularly if folks had control over their own busy schedules. Instead, this idiot presides over a traffic-jammed, smog-filled, noisy, ugly, colorless concrete jungle and he’s sad it’s dying? Yeah, because most cities are hideous blight zones.
Are you a poor CEO in need of more income? Just fire ALL of your employees and run the whole company your damn self since you think it’s so easy! Now you get 100% of the profits! GREAT SUCCESS!!!
People just don’t want to spend what little time we have on this earth commuting, paying $10 for a shitty Subway sandwich for lunch, and listening to Elderly Manager Brian talk about his glory days to a captive audience.
“They’re like, ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10:30 a.m,’” Foster said of her younger colleagues in an interview with The Guardian.
Every single generation has thought this about the younger generation. Every single one.
In this case, I think the whole issue is exacerbated by the fact that giving sincere effort at work is so clearly a mug's game. It used to be that being disciplined about showing up and doing your job was difficult, but at least there was a reason to do it and develop the skill over time. Now? Unless you have some sort of unusual job where the management gives a shit about you, why would you?
I'm in the highest paying workplace for my field in the country and it's still not worth putting in any extra effort.
Capital just fundamentally doesn't understand that monetary incentive has an inverse relationship with performance and that you can't hire 9 Women to have a baby in 1 month.
They simply don’t remember how much time they spent screwing around at their desk, chatting with colleagues, taking long lunches, etc. Obviously, I’m speaking mostly about corporate/Office jobs. More physical/shift work is a bit of a different beast.
Nobody at an office desk works 8hrs consistently. Hell they don’t most days. That has always been the case.
I spent a over a year trying to get a promotion while an ex boss who’s team I left was secretly sandbagging me.
I got an offer elsewhere and suddenly leadership asked “what number would keep you”. That was exciting until they followed up that raises and promos were frozen so I’d have to wait indefinitely.
“Hey so I’ve been here a few years and I’ve learned a lot more and I’m much more productive in my role. I’ve also learned the business enough that I’ve applied the skills I brought with me to the point that that’s now less than 10% of my workload, having become so efficient with it that you haven’t had to fill the other opening you had for my role because I’m handling it all. What do you think my prospects would be for a raise or promotion?”
“Sorry, no budget for a raise this year beyond your 1.3% annual raise (in a year with 4% inflation). And sorry but we can’t promote you either. You don’t have the skills for the position above yours, and besides, if we promote you out of your role we’ll be too under staffed in it.”
“So hire someone, let me train them for my role while you train me for the role I could promote to?”
“Nah that’s too expensive and we wouldn’t likely get the performance from them that we get out of you. Great job by the way. But no, no promotion, no raise.”
“Do you think that might change next year? Or like…where do you see my role here in the future?”
“We’re really happy with the roles you’re in and feel you’re well suited to it. And we feel that your pay is in line with the work you’re doing, so just keep up the good work.”
…so they basically told me that they’d keep overworking me and that I could expect to never get a significant raise or promotion ever again.
Two months later I got a job offer doing less work, work that was much more in line with my skills and preferred work…and a 38% raise. When I gave my notice, immediately they wanted to make a counter offer. I said I’d hear them out but based on our last conversation I doubted they were going to be willing to retain me…but sure I’ll listen.
Their offer:
No raise.
I could work a shift of mandatory 9 hour days to make more money (OT was always unlimited and freely available so this was literally just taking away my choice to work OT and forcing me into it).
No promotion.
But they would also start training me to assist another guy in the office with his work. Basically I could work longer hours and have more responsibilities for the same pay.
…and they were surprised when I refused.
They even had the gall to tell me how they felt betrayed that I only gave them 2 weeks notice, rather than agreeing to stay on until they could find my replacement and I could train them. When I pointed out that they literally told me they weren’t hiring my replacement as long as I stayed their only response was that they would have if they knew I was going to leave.
I was late to work last Friday, intentionally, because my cat fell asleep in my lap while I was eating breakfast. That moment meant more to me than making sure I was there in time, no matter what it may have impacted. Working to live, not living to work, is the rallying cry upper management needs to come to terms with.
Every single generation has thought this about the younger generation. Every single one.
I think you’re right. My guess is that as companies get greedier and work offers fewer and fewer benefits, people are less and less willing to work as hard as their parents did. Employers that don’t understand this are either genuinely ignorant or just pretending to be ignorant.
Strategic ignorance. You can exert more pressure on someone if you genuinely believe the crazy self-serving things you're telling them with a straight face.
I sincerely doubt the idea that people are working less. I worked at a college with a lot of boomers. Great people, but I was radically more efficient than any one of them. The woman who had my job before (college print shop), would complain about the work load. I only really worked until lunch and caught up on every single thing I needed to do. Watched YouTube and coded the rest of the day. Helps that I had a boss that didn’t care as long as I was caught up.
“Young Americans are upset that the economy is tanking and stacked to exploit them for their masters’ benefit as their planet boils in real time for the rest of their lives.”
Wow, yeah, that’s so hard to understand! Who would have guessed that would result in cynicism regarding capitalism? Shocking!
Just a reminder that if you commute by car it's probably the most dangerous thing you do every day. This guy is literally saying "I have no data but I want you to risk your lives and waste your money twice a day."
It wasn’t the employees who killed the “Company Man”. It was the companies themselves. Corporations value short term profit above all else, including long term stability. This means that the older, higher paid employees are a liability, not a benefit. So, they get shown the door the first time the line doesn’t go up. Loyalty is a two way street. If the company isn’t loyal to it’s employees, the employees won’t be loyal to the company. Once people woke up to the fact that the corporations are fully mercenary about employment, it was a natural reaction for the employees to become mercenary as well.
This is also why every company pushes bullshit about “we’re a family”. It’s a bald faced lie to sucker gullible employees into thinking that the company wouldn’t gut them and sell their organs at the first sign of that making a quick buck.
Every worker should watch this video at least once. It was speaking to designers, but is applicable everywhere.
Seriously. I watched both of my parents get their "good jobs" sold right out from under them to private equity firms that laid off all the older, more expensive workers immediately. I, myself, was laid off twice before I turned 28 years old.
I have zero incentive to be "loyal" to any company when they so clearly will never be loyal to me. What a load of horseshit.
This is literally the definition of a liberal market economy. Bust unions and make it easy to hire and fire, and what you'll get is a highly mobile and vibrant but unspecialised workforce. Great for quick innovation like silicon valley, less great for traditional manufacturing that requires specialized talents.
It's all wanted politics - maybe more than anything, this is what they busted the unions for.
Corporations value short term profit above all else, including long term stability.
It didn’t used to be this way. I mean, all Corporations need to be profitable, of course, and the successful ones are more profitable. But using Shareholder Value as the main (perhaps only) metric for decisions didn’t really come around until the 80’s and Jack Welch at GE started talking about it extensively.
This focus on shareholder value exclusively also implies that Corporations do not have any responsibility to anyone except its shareholders. You can see the effects of this philosophy even today, where Republicans attack corporate ESG initiatives because they feel that they undermine this commitment to increasing shareholder value. It even extends to the Twitter mess: Twitter’s board felt they had to force the sale to Musk at the inflated price he offered because it was so much higher than the company was objectively worth, and would be the best return for its shareholders, even though they probably knew he would end up wrecking the company (and screwing over employees). They felt they could only make decisions for the benefit of shareholders, and not employees or users.
Republicans attack ESG initiatives because their constituents are hot garbage. Shareholders are the ones demanding ESG principles.
You’re correct, of course. But they view that a public corporation’s sole responsibility is to increase shareholder value, not do what the shareholders say. There can be no other priority.
This is not even true. In fact, the fastest growing companies are the ones that have the potential to be profitable in the future. The established ones that are run into the ground are often profitable, but it makes more money in the short term for vultures to dismantle and sell off the parts.
The real issue is that the tax structure incentivizes terrible business practices that rapidly funnel money into the wealthy instead of rewarding ownership of businesses for that are successful in the long term.
My wife and I left our company when they clawed us back to the office. It’s been 3 years now and there is 0 chance we’ll go back at this point. For all the big companies complaining about their empty buildings there are medium size players happy to poach top talent and let them work remote
Im currently complying with RTO because my office is close to my house and it is convenient, but there are talks of forcing employees to relocate to where the majority of their team is which would be halfway across the country for me. Needless to say we’re losing people in droves and many medium/small companies are picking up tons of talent.
The headline left out something important from the article and posed a false dichotomy, a minority of harvested crabs are being used to develop medicines, and most of those are released and survive. The vast majority that are killed are being harvested for use as bait in commercial fishing. Seems like that’s the obvious thing to cut back on to save the humans, the crabs, and the birds.
Also, it looks more like climate change is what’s fucking over the spawning of horseshoe crabs. Not blood harvesting. Eggs need a specific temperature to survive.
I’m presuming when he says “we” he means the royal “we”, ie “I”. I’m not expecting him to negotiate on it. The next CEO will, though, in a couple of months.
While that quote has been attributed to Twain (and several others) over the years, there is nothing to suggest that Twain used this particular phrasing nor was he the originator of it. That credit goes to George H Derby, under the pseudonym John Phoenix, back in 1855.
The trifecta of “kings, editors and people with tapeworm” has been widely attributed to Mark Twain, but like so many witticisms credited to him, there’s no record he ever said it. It’s also unlikely that Henry David Thoreau ever made the remark once ascribed to him: “We is used by royalty, editors, pregnant women and people who eat worms.”
Worms, or more specifically tapeworms, figure prominently in we-related humor. The earliest known joke to combine parasites and pronouns comes from George Horatio Derby, a humorist from California who assumed the pen name John Phoenix. “I do not think I have a tapeworm,” he wrote in 1855, “therefore I have no claim whatever to call myself ‘we,’ and I shall by no means fall into that editorial absurdity.”
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