kitten_tech

appassionato, 2 days ago to palestine

People in Gaza are drained, frustrated and exhausted. They have been displaced more than five or six times. There's a family that literally had to evacuate nine times.

People are tired of being constantly displaced. They’re also feeling hopeless because they know even being evacuated from one place to another does not guarantee they’re going to escape the Israeli air raids.

@palestine
#Gaza
#displaced

mcc, 6 days ago to random

Pondering configuring a web server to set the EICAR antivirus test string as a cookie on all page loads and never bother reading it back

whitequark, 15 days ago to random

many of you have seen me speak out against Thiel companies participating in Rust and NixOS development, but I don't think I ever clearly said why

as anyone who has opened and read my bio will know, I'm fine with the existence and use of weapons. no, what I have the problem with is imperialism; and Palantir and Andruil, and their acceptance, is currently the means by which it's capturing our communities

mcc, 17 days ago to random

For the last two years I've been semi-daily posting "What I'm Listening to Today" links here. Mastodon has some problems with threads containing hundreds of posts, so I re-create the thread once a year.

If you'd like to see, here's my "year two" thread: https://mastodon.social/@mcc/110266770603341546

Or, alternately, every song from year two in the least practical format possible: A 301-song, 38-hour YouTube playlist (note: video #1 contains flashing):

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLIjft6ja7DM_kacOW8zo2vtr-aWpTNX6

And here's the thread for "year three":

philpem, 17 days ago to random

Cross foxes: so angry, the white flipped to black. https://botsin.space/@FoxesEveryHour/112353215461183467

javi, 22 days ago (edited 22 days ago) to random

offf, this story about how Google made google search into a pile of seagull shit hits me hard:

https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/

Around the time of this story, I was living through a similar situation in my work life (on a much smaller scope, of course, WordPress.com first, Tumblr later).

Back in 2019, working on WordPress, I started finding myself, almost weekly, arguing against people who wanted to take the product we were working at and made it worse if that mean they could squeeze 0.1% more revenue from it

The 0.1% figure is not even a random number: I remember this speciffic A/B test on WordPress.com that was declared a success and shipped to 100% of the users because it increased the free-to-paid conversion by 0.1%. Soon after it was released, I found out that as a side effect, it increased the churn of free users by 20 something %,so I called for an urgent rollback and removal of the change. So I was promptly explained that we didn't care about free-users churn, because finance had calculated the average long-term value of the free users to be something like $2 per year, and the increase in conversion was bigger than what we could get from them.

Everything became about growth hacking. Everything became thinly-veiled dark patterns. In our private dev slack channels, we joked that since it was impossible to make it smaller or less conspicuous, the next thing the growth team was going to ask us to do was to make the 'free plan' button flee away from the mouse pointer when the user tried to click it. We kept making our product worse, we kept consciously crippling the cheaper versions so we could force people to move to the more expensive options.

Back then I was the lead of one of the two dev divisions working on WordPress.com, so my job was mainly to discuss what we were going to be doing, when and how. And I was getting drained by a constant state of fight against a constant wave of shit they wanted us to build. So much than by the end of 2020, the CEO quietly told me to follow the growth team plans and shut up or step down.

So I requested to move to tumblr, because I thought the pastures were greener over there. But it was all the same: Adding login walls to what we were pretending to be "the last bastion of the free internet", cramping in embarrasingly obvious money-making schemes disguised as features, and making them silently opt-out instead of opt-in so the less people the possible would deactivate them, having to fend off the pressure from the CEO to make everything algorithmic timelines because, you know, tiktok makes a lot of money and why aren't we, etc etc.

I found myself in a place where building something good that people enjoy using was no longer a priority, but tricking people into generating more money for the company was. And when I looked around me, I could see that happening everywhere else, not only in my company. Experiencing the start of the enshittification years from inside wasn't easy.

And, as in the article, the people who decided to turn the shit-metter up to 200%, have a name, in every case. And these people, no matter if they are called Sundar and Prabhakar or Matt and Mark, are destroying the internet. These people are milllionaires, or billionaries, and are destroying our shared, common spaces to squeeze some extra cash from us.

That's why the fediverse and its principles are important. Because that's how we take back internet from their dirty hands. That's how we make internet resilient against them. That's how we build the commons.

Edent, 28 days ago to random

Decided to get a set of fancy monitor arms for my standing desk.

My 15.6 inch screen already obscures the monitor. Not sure how I'll cope with my new 17 inch laptop.

If I move the main screen any higher I'll hurt my neck.

Also need somewhere for the webcam so it isn't looking down on me.

burgerdrome, 1 month ago to random

NOBODY:

ABSOLUTELY NOBODY:

NOBODY AT ALL:

TV COMEDY WRITER: I should write a joke about how ska music is embarassing and cringey

dansup, 1 month ago to fediverse

Don't get me wrong, I love Mastodon and everything it's done for the fediverse

That being said, I don't want Loops to become the only short form video platform, or the only well known one

I'm working with @stux on his own short vid platform called #GoldFish and PeerTube to enable seamless interop

We're stronger and better together

There is no reason NOT to work with "competitors" because when you have the right mindset and goals:

You build for the people, and listen wisely.

#activityPub

philpem, 1 month ago to email

There's a special place in hell for Spamhaus deciding to return a "spam" response for all queries from DigitalOcean droplets. Stunning to do this right before the easter holiday with zero announcement or notice. @spamhaus
#email #sysadmin

lauren, 1 month ago to random

It's important to understand that "age verification" schemes being passed by states, ostensibly to "protect the children", won't do that and will bring about incredible abuses.

In order to age verify children, obviously EVERYBODY of any age must be verified, for every account, under every name or pseudonym, ultimately on every site no matter how public or private the topic, and before downloading any apps.

Children will find ways to work around this. They'll use the accounts of adults, which will be openly traded. But because these age verification systems must by definition be based on government IDs, the verification process creates a linkage between your account names and your actual identity, subjecting you to all manner of leaked personal information, government abuses (think MAGA in charge), and worse. Firms will claim their systems either don't keep this data or can't be abused. History strongly suggests otherwise, and when courts step in, those firms will have to do what the courts say, often in secret, when it comes to collecting data.

Age verification is in actuality a massive Chinese-style Internet identity tracking project -- nothing less -- and there are many politicians in the U.S. who look with envy at how China controls their Internet and keeps their Internet users under police state controls.

mcc, 1 month ago to random

So I'm trying to install a piece of software on Linux, and I run a "./launch_installer.sh", and immediately it prints a message suggesting it is unpacking a JRE so it can run the installer inside the JRE, and I wonder if I am going to a dark place here

NOTE TO ZOOMERS: That's Java Runtime Environment not the other thing. "Java" is a programming language people used in the 1800s, when programming meant making punchcards for Jacquard looms

philpem, 1 month ago to random

I'm reading a technical manual while the Connections Museum panel switch ASMR runs and a few things are happening:
a) I'm impressed an engineer snuck "System Control and Access Module" (SCAM) past the censorship board.
b) I want to see the Connections Museum
c) I also want to see Sam's museum down south, with the MIDI church organ and Strowger switch.

revk, 2 months ago to random

Anyone else with me on this?

https://www.revk.uk/2024/03/missing-unux-file-open-option.html

@torvalds

tedu, 2 months ago to fediverse

I guess I'll add C2S #activitypub support to #honk today.

And then next week I can my spend time complaining that the whiners who wanted more servers to include C2S support don't even use it.

mcc, 2 months ago to random

Today is my birthday!

If you'd like to do something for me for my birthday, would you please reply to this with—or by other means send me— something with colors you liked? Like an image or a video or a link. Music would also be acceptable if it gives you a strong synesthesiac association with color.

If this request confuses you, here are some examples of images with colors I found striking [Artists: Laurie Barmore, Vian Borchert, Erica Aurahack]. But your reply can be whatever colors you like.

Abstract art by Vian Borchert
Abstract art by Vian Borchert

mcc, 3 months ago to random

Every time I have tried to install Linux and Windows dual boot on a computer, Windows has screwed up grub or whatever and I've had to do horrible magic to get the computer to boot into grub after Windows wedges its bootloader in instead.

But on THIS computer. On THIS computer, I don't WANT it to boot into grub— I want it to boot into Windows and I want to use the UEFI menu to choose grub. Naturally, on THIS computer, grub took over Windows and I'm not sure how to make Windows the default again

danhon, 3 months ago to random

If your code of conduct hasn't grown from "don't be a dick"to thirty pages of clearly written explanatory notes along with actions taken over the last 15+ years then are you really running an online community*

• no you are not and for the avoidance of doubt the above is a super good sign that you are doing a good job

ai6yr, 3 months ago to random

Wee bit too much insulating foam in a small hole, LOL #insulation #retrofit #disasterremodelling

Edent, 2 years ago (edited 16 days ago) to random

Where are the articles asking why men don't want to have children?

Truly, men have the worse of everything…⸮

But, there's something we blokes can be grateful for. No matter what grief the world throws at us, it'll always be the women's fault that there aren't enough babies!

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2022/04/where-are-the-articles-asking-why-men-dont-want-to-have-children/

#childfree #sexism #statistics