SynAck

skiles, 3 months ago to random

"Enshittification as Overproduction" expanded my thinking about why the internet feels worse now than it used to.

https://medium.com/@ElizAyer/enshittification-as-overproduction-in-software-part-1-seeing-overproduction-7f175bca7724

Many tech companies have left the (apparent) exponential growth phase and are failing to see it, failing to adjust to the maintenance phase. My emotional posture has also changed, because I depend on the internet now in a way I didn't during the exciting growth phase.

Credit:

• blog posts by my coworker @elizayer
• based upon pluralistic@mamot.fr

SynAck, 3 months ago to random

In my opinion, the tech requirement that every engineer at any level be a "full stack" developer is a fraud and a bald-faced exploitation of the worker. And a lot of tech workers have blindly bought into it as "just part of the job". But let me be clear:

• UX design is a full time job
• UI/front-end dev is a full time job
• API/backend dev is a full time job
• Database administration is a full time job
• QA and testing is a full time job
• Deployments/sysadmin is a full time job

Each of these things has their own set of mindsets, disciplines, and tools that need to be thoroughly understood in order to work properly, and their goals are often at odds with each other in implementation.

I believe that this "full stack developer" malarkey is why we have so many buggy, insecure, and inefficient apps and web sites. Devs are forced to be "jacks of all trades, master of none" just to keep their job.

And the ludicrously high salaries (at least here in the US anyway) aren't fooling anyone. They're a smokescreen to keep the worker blind to the fact that they're doing the jobs of 2, sometimes 3, other people all so the company doesn't have to hire those 2 or 3 butts to fill the seats.

It's a leftover relic from the "startup scramble" days that has become the norm, and I'm calling bullshit. The emperor is naked, friends.

SynAck, 1 month ago to random

I really wonder what society would look like if people weren't forced to do jobs they hate just in order to live.

The fact that a capitalist system makes money by denying people the basic necesssities of life and then lays the blame for not being able to live at the feet of the people that the system has screwed is despicable.

Capitalism profits the most on the misery that the capitalist system itself creates. The fact that "work" is seen as both an ideal state of being as well as an "incentive" to get the basic necessities of life is reprehensible. Forcing people to start work as young as possible and then work until they've been completely used up through decades of constant work like so many cogs is abhorrent.

And the capitalists who perpetuate this system have likely never been anything less than affluent their entire lives. The irony is that their accumulated wealth allows them to be more of a "freeloader" than any person without a job. They have transferred their "work" to their money and the only "work" they do is to say, "put this much here".

Capitalism is a lie. It is the ultimate ponzi scheme. It is a system of control by which the wealthy control the rest of us. Capitalism devalues humanity to the point of insignificance.

I hate it here.

SynAck, 1 month ago to random

You know, you don't have to smash things and bust heads to be punk. I mean, you can - no one's stopping you if that's how you wanna express it - but you don't have to. Punk is a subversive state of mind. It's saying, "I see your rules, but I'm not gonna play by them."

Work the system, don't let it work you. Being punk can be as simple as missing out on events because you're not willing to step within 1,000 miles of a Facebook account. Requiring your friends to communicate with you on E2EE platforms is subversive. You don't have to be a hacker to be a cyberpunk (but of course it helps). Being here in the 'verse is subversive, if you think about it. Fighting for a free, open, and secure exchange of ideas is subversive. If someone asks, "well how do you make money on this?" and there's no answer, that thing is subversive. It's a mindset and the will to use it, choom.

My point is, be subversive. Don't let society tell you what to read, what to think, and who to associate with. Use their own logic against them. Be different. If you have to burn something down, so be it; but if you can work around it or bend it into something that is no longer an obstruction, well.... that's punk af as well, IMO. :thinkaboutit:​

SynAck, 1 month ago to acab

Max Headroom knew the score even back in 1985...

"You see, I'm not one to beat about the large, black boots but the first requirement for any security guard is to be totally-totally-t-to-totally insecure. I mean, who else needs to dress like a riot control cop so that he can write down your name and tell you where to park your car?"

#acab #MaxHeadroom #CyberpunkWisdom

Animated GIF of Max Headroom smiling and winking

SynAck, 8 months ago to random

Best thing I've heard on the Internet in a long time in reference to Joe Biden, from @briannawu:

"You're like Robocop but much slower".

I literally lol'd at this. Well played, well played. 😂​🤣​💀​

Original Toot: https://mstdn.social/@briannawu/110984565178801506

SynAck, 8 months ago to random

Best decision I've made in the last year: setting the "boost" notification sound in @moshidon on my phone to an F1 car racing past the grandstands.

I'm hoping to one day have a post that goes viral and makes my phone sound like I'm at a race. 🏎️​ :spongebobsmug:​

SynAck, 7 months ago to random

Just a gentle reminder as today is #Cyberpunk2077 #PhantomLiberty release day: please be kind and CW & hashtag any spoilers that you may want to post about. This could include mission discussions, screenshots, characters, or anything else that could spoil the game for anybody else.

Not everyone is going to be able to get to playing it right away, so I'd suggest considering it as "spoiler material" for at least a month or two from release day, just to give folks a fighting chance to discover the new content on their own.

Thanks, choombas! :samurai:

SynAck, 7 months ago to random

So here's a question for anyone that cares to answer it: at what point (if any) does a free piece of software become more beholden to the desires of its users as opposed to the desires of the author/developer?

Is there ever a point where a developer can no longer reasonably say, "it's my software so I'm taking this in direction X and I don't care what the users want" because the software effectively "belongs to the people"?

An example I like to use is Star Wars. The original trilogy didn't quite tell the story that George Lucas wanted to tell in a way that he was happy with so when he retconned the original 3 and also produced the prequels, there was outrage over the changes. Even though the story didn't completely match Lucas' original vision, an entire generation grew up with the original films and some even felt betrayed by the additions and changes some 20+ years later. At some point, those films became part of the cultural Zeitgeist as-is; to change them after the fact to match one person's vision seemed like the ultimate hubris. In effect, at some point, those films came to belong to the culture and not to Lucas anymore.

Can the same be said for software, especially free software? If yes, how does that developer effectively walk away from the software when it no longer matches their vision or is "fun"?

SynAck, 3 months ago to random

So I've finally started reading Chokepoint Capitalism (by @rgibli and @pluralistic) and I only wish I had started reading it sooner. I'm only 1 chapter in, so I don't know if they talk about this in later chapters, but while the focus is the impact of these chokepoints on creatives, it also sheds light on what is really going on with these tech layoffs.

Essentially, Big Tech - which has created these chokepoints - is now cannibalizing their own workforce to squeeze more margin out of their flywheel. While the pandemic lockdowns seemed to be a boon for remote workers, it also showed upper management where to put the squeeze on.

Tech workers know their jobs are never secure (or they should by now), but Big Tech is using the same terms as during the dotcom burst to cover themselves as they do these layoffs. The problem is that these same conditions don't apply now - it's not that the company can't pay its workers, it's that it doesn't want to. But it worked before, so let's see if we can get away with that same reasoning again, shall we?

The fix/squeeze is in. Tech is no longer a "special" industry. Software is creative work, and corpos are now ensuring that it is being treated just like all the other creative work these days: just another margin to be twiddled for their benefit.

Cannibals, all of 'em.

SynAck, 1 month ago to random

I did not take this picture (my karate sensei did), but it is representative of the view from Austin. While this picture appears to be an annular eclipse, it's just overexposure from the corona due to being shot on a phone (pixel 6, I believe).

Photo credit: Paul Wilson

SynAck, 3 months ago to random

BTW, before I forget, I just want to give a little shout out to @revengeday and say that I'm really enjoying listening to the Voyage EP. It's one of the older works (2017) in the collection that I downloaded yesterday, but it's super nice for latenight 'versin' and surfin'. Really chill, a lot of Middle Eastern/Central Asian flavor to it and sort of desert-y, if that's even a real word or concept.

Checkit.

https://revengeday.bandcamp.com/album/voyage-ep

SynAck, 1 month ago to random

Hey, any of my choombas out there know where I might get my hands on a link to The Max Headroom Show that ran on Cinemax circa 1985 or so?

I never saw it because I grew up in a house where HBO was a gateway straight to hell, and of course that meant that "Skinemax" was out also. But I'd be interested to know if anybody has it archived somewhere so I could grab it.

There's not enough Max in either of the Max Headroom movies or series that I have.

SynAck, 3 months ago to random

So, it struck me that now that I've got my own local music store online again that I finally needed to get around to downloading Bandcamp tracks I bought a while back.

I realized I had never grabbed @revengeday's entire catalog, so I got that today, as well as some stuff by @syntheholfm, @aisle9, @jonnyfallout, @thor, and @feedtunes.

This should also serve as your periodic reminder to download the stuff you've bought from independent outlets like Bandcamp or Soundcloud or whatnot. I already discovered one artist that I bought who's tracks are no longer available, so I've lost them. If you like something enough to buy it on some streaming platform, make sure you download it locally to keep from losing it. These days, any number of things could happen to the platform to cause music you've bought to evaporate.

If you paid for it, make sure to download it! You own it!

SynAck, 2 months ago to random

I think I just encountered my first biker furry, y'all. This is a shot through my back car window at a stoplight. The person was in full Holstein mode from head to toe (hoof?) and I've never seen a full-on plush helmet like this one. Goodonya mate, wherever you may roam!

SynAck, 3 months ago to random

NEW TO MASTODON? Here's some quick tips to help you get around and get your feet wet!

• Know your timelines!
  • Local (Live Feeds > This server): This timeline only shows posts from residents on that instance.
  • Home: This TL shows posts from everyone you follow, and also the people that follow them
  • Federated (Live Feeds > Other servers): This TL is the firehose that displays all toots that this instance knows about through federation. It can be.... a lot.
• Some "customs" that aren't really "rules" but that a lot of people expect here that one should get used to:
  • adding alt tags to images (simple descriptions of what an attached picture is about for accessibility)
  • use hash tags if you want your posts to be seen by a wider audience and show up in fediverse searches
  • use Content Warnings on any toots that might reference content of any kind that could trigger someone else (for example, food, drugs, politics, NSFW stuff, pictures, etc.)
  • know your instance's policies and rules with respect to the country that the instance is hosted in, and follow them accordingly
  • get familiar with what a "reply-guy" is and don't be that person. :bec_wink:​
  • fedizens, by and large, prefer "opt-in" models to "opt-out" models. tl;dr, it's better to get permission first than to ask for forgiveness.

SynAck, 2 months ago to random

Anybody else have any issues with FF slowing down loading TLs over time? It's especially bad on the Home TL for me. It works great for a while, but then sometimes it can take 10+ seconds to load the TL, and then stays that way until I restart FF. Everything on the web UI tab starts to slow down after that.

I'm running FF on Ubuntu 23.10 and I have two custom userscripts from my instance running through Tampermonkey. Disabling the scripts doesn't seem to solve the problem, so it seems to be an issue with FF itself.

Might just be a local instance thing, or just a me thing for some weird reason, but I thought I would ask to see if anyone else running the masto web UI is having this issue.

TIA

SynAck, 21 days ago to random

My favorite privacy-related quotes from the movie Anon (which, if you haven't seen it, you absolutely should, like, right now):

The Girl: "It's not that I have something to hide. I have nothing I want you to see."

The Girl: "You invade my privacy, it's nothing. I try to get it back, it's a crime."

Josef Kenik (a cop): "We rely on transparency. We can't control what we can't see. We require persistent identity."

The Girl: "We close our eyes to pray, cry, kiss, dream....or break the law."

I need to get these on some t-shirts or something.

SynAck, 1 month ago to random

Well of course he couldn't, because this "AI" bubble is all smoke & mirrors in the first place.

The failing was pinned on Mostaque's inability to devise and execute a viable business plan.

I just hope that Stability is the first domino to fall in this whole ridiculous hype machine. Will this wake people up to show how expensive, wasteful, and unfulfilling this lunacy is? Probably not. :gnah:​

https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/03/stability_ai_bills/

SynAck, 26 days ago to random

Happy 2nd Birthday :corteximplant: !!! 🥳🎉 It's been a great 2 years, although I've only been here for 1 and a half of them. :holdthepain:

I'm really happy and proud to be part of the community that has grown here, and I echo all the sentiments that @lucy posted earlier. I have never had a social media experience like the one I found here, and within 2 days of joining :corteximplant_b: I knew I had made a good decision for my "home" instance!

For those of you young'uns out there, this place is a lot like what things felt like back in the early days of the 'net and combined with all the other OTS stuff in the "family" has given me back an excitment that I lost so many long years ago. It's good to be here, with good folks, with lots of diverse interests but also lots of shared passion from all over the world.

I'm glad to be a part of it, and I'm so glad that everyone on #CORTEXIMPLANT decided to be a part of it too!

And much thanks to @revengeday for opening up his hobby project to us and giving all of us nomads a base camp to call home. You're a true street samurai, choom! :samurai: :silverhand:

SynAck, 1 month ago to random

Waiting for grass to grow is like watching paint dry while boiling water in a pot.

#AnalogyOverload

revengeday, 28 days ago to random

📻 And here we are again on Radio Nonsense with the worst hits from the 80s, 90s, and the worst of today! Our next hit is called, "Damn, I'm so freaking tired and need 1000 liters of coffee." 🎶

inquiline, 2 months ago to random

deleted_by_author

SynAck, 28 days ago to random

🎵 dah-dah-dun-dun-dun...another one bites the dust! dah-dah-dun-dun-dun...hey, gonna get you too! Another one bites the dust! 🎶

Hope all y'all Terraform users out there got some deep pockets, cuz that choice might start to cost you soon...

https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/ibm-acquires-hashicorp-for-6-4b-open-source-terraform-questions-remain/2024/04/

historyofpunkrock, 1 month ago to punk

47 years ago
The Dead Boys pose along a wall at CBGB, April 1977.

Cheetah Chrome, Jimmy Zero, Stiv Bators and Johnny Blitz

Photo by Roberta Bayley

#punk #punks #punkrock #DeadBoys #cbgb #history #punkrockhistory