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tesseract

@tesseract@beehaw.org

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tesseract ,

Exactly what we need! More pods! SMH!

tesseract ,

The fact any board of directors considers this man employable at all is mind boggling to me.

All recent events indicate that the board of directors are seriously manipulated by the chief executive and are not good at taking sane decisions. Musk companies, OpenAI and Theranos are good examples.

As I recall, there was a board meeting of Theranos where they summoned Elizabeth Holmes to fire her for misleading them about the state of development of the project. But she managed to get them to reverse that decision and then take action against the person that reported her.

tesseract ,

I wish they undid a lot of their stupid redesigns instead of doubling down on it.

tesseract ,

Even then, you'll be opted into sharing your information with Microsoft and their 942 business partners.

tesseract ,

You have seen what he has done to twitter/X. For all his talks about freedom, free speech and survival of mankind, he is fundamentally a conservative billionaire oligarch who has no qualms about exploiting others to death to add to his wealth.

Now just imagine if a brain implant goes the same way. Forget his delusions about backing up the human brain and telepathic nonsense. Even simple implants meant to help paraplegics are going to be dangerous under the control of people like him. Just the way the brain moves our limbs can be used against us.

This is why it's important to report on matters like this. So that people understand the danger and avoid it, instead of falling for the propaganda that he is some sort of tech messiah.

tesseract ,

I'm shocked that the human trail was authorized at all, considering the fate of the monkeys that were subject to the same. I'm not confident that this man or any future subjects will be truly safe. We won't know even if something goes wrong.

tesseract ,

Honestly it's not as bad as I expected.

Based on what you know.

tesseract , (edited )

They're not addicted to work. Just money. In exploiting regular people - both workers and customers - by robbing their wealth. Do you think their pay is proportional to their work? How do you think they get time to socialize and scheme against plebs if they are addicted to work?

In this particular context, they insist on return to office because WFH represents a loss of returns on the investments they made on corporate real estate.

While their addiction to money is a disorder, it's as bad to the general public as people with antisocial and criminal tendencies. The only difference is that these rich sociopaths have enough capital to buy their way out of being held responsible. They won't seek help because they enjoy the harm they inflict - just like how criminals don't consider their sadism as a mental disorder. They need to be treated the same way as any other criminal - as a threat to society. And measures should be taken to prevent them from inflicting harm on normal people. Something like locking them in a cell and throwing the key away.

tesseract , (edited )

Covid demonstrated that the physical presence of the staff in the office is not necessary for many types of jobs. WFH is shown to be economic, time saving and improving the work-life balance of those workers, without sacrificing productivity. It's not like any of these companies are willing to compensate the workers for the hours lost in the commute.

If you still refuse to return to the office, then you're just being lazy at that point.

That is classic gaslighting. What matches the current situation better is that the corporate overlords are being greedy AF. They are worried more about the returns on their real estate investments than about employee wellbeing, practicality and sustainability.

tesseract ,

Ajit Pai didn't have to audition for anything. His employment was already guaranteed. He just had to do his assigned task. You see the same with NASA's Kathy Lueders and SpaceX. The US is totally blind when it comes to the concept of conflict of interests.

PS: When I typed 'Ajit Pai', my phone auto corrected it to 'Ajit Paid'. I guess even my phone knows!

tesseract ,

I think you misspelled 'backdoors'.

tesseract ,

Modern legged robots are great. But they're no match for crafty humans yet. It will get blown up from all sides. I'm pretty sure that the IDF has much more sinister and lethal weapons.

One weapon I'm particularly worried about is a swarm of mini drones equipped with AI to detect their targets and kill them with shaped charges. The only humans who deserve to be killed by it are the ones who were evil enough to invent it in the first place.

Google fires 28 workers for protesting $1.2 billion Israel contract (www.nbcnews.com)

"Google issued a stern warning to its employees, with the company’s vice president of global security, Chris Rackow, saying, “If you’re one of the few who are tempted to think we’re going to overlook conduct that violates our policies, think again,” according to an internal memo obtained by CNBC."

tesseract ,

Google would like to apologize for that inadvertent mistake. All efforts are being made to identify how this came to be and to avoid doing the same in the future.

tesseract ,

Ooh! I would like to hear from all those who were fervently vouching for Discord as a support channel for FOSS projects.

Perhaps the same might happen to a web forum or matrix channel. But at least you get an opportunity to backup and migrate.

tesseract ,

You'd at least get a chance to migrate if you do daily backups. Not so with Discord.

tesseract ,

Yes it's Nintendo. But it wouldn't be this bad without Discord's design that emphasizes centralization and corporate ownership of user data. Forums can at least be backed up and migrated elsewhere.

tesseract ,

Backup and migrate. Choose only platforms that support it. The only weak point there is the DNS registrar.

tesseract ,

Discord hosted the community, not the code. And that community is now destroyed without even a chance to backup. And Discord can absolutely be blamed because people were warning that this would happen. This is as much a result of Discord's centralized design as it is of Nintendo's greed. Now the community has to be reestablished on a new platform from scratch.

tesseract ,

That's why you don't backup on the same provider. You can always backup to the local system with encryption. And they can't attack the owner in every jurisdiction.

tesseract ,

I wonder if the codeberg site is vulnerable to such laws. I think they operate from the EU.

tesseract ,

OK, I misunderstood it. However, this was something that people were warning about for a long time.

tesseract ,

These days, paying doesn't guarantee your exclusion from being the product. The only way to guarantee privacy is to design it into the product.

tesseract ,

Wow! That's one annoying video!

tesseract ,

That suggestion is because the attack took years of ground work, psyops, multiple disciplines and several levels of obfuscations. It needs the kind of effort that only a well paid and dedicated team can pull off. But that need not necessarily be a state actor. It could also be some spying/malware company (like NSO), any of the big corporates or a criminal group with lots of money.

But don't lose hope. All it took to uncover all of that was just one engineer who was annoyed by SSH slowing down from 0.3s to 0.8s. The effort needed to uncover it is only a fraction of what's needed to hide it. This is also a vindication of the FOSS philosophy. Imagine uncovering this if the source wasn't available.

tesseract ,

If that's your notion what laws and judicial systems are for, check out the ongoing Post Office scandal in the UK.

tesseract ,

OK. Let me spell it out. The laws aren't there to protect the rights of the ordinary citizens. It's there to keep them under control. The rich and powerful are not only exempt from it, but the laws exist to protect their interests. That's why cracking and jail breaking are illegal.

I used the example of the UK post office because they didn't even need the evidence of theft to send hundreds of sub postmasters to jail. But even after it became clear that the post office management lied and extorted, those responsible still roam free.

tesseract ,

I think you misunderstood my politics from my initial comment.

It was more a reflection of my outrage at the injustice and inequality that plagues the world, than a judgement of your politics.

tesseract ,

While I agree that many FOSS devs/maintainers would find donations and other monetary support very useful, please remember that money isn't the solution for everything. This is especially the case for mental and emotional wellbeing. Funding might increase the entitlement and demands of the users on the maintainer's time. What the maintainer really needs might be some time off or reduction on their workloads.

I'm all for donating to these projects. But don't let that be an excuse to treat them badly and make unreasonable demands on them.

tesseract ,

Anyone involved with a rocket would want to run outside and watch it climb. That isn't uncommon. But Musk had a vile character even before that. The hopeful nerd was just a facade propped up by PR pros. You can check out the history of Tesla. Despite him being hailed as its founder, it was neither his idea, nor his creation. The real founders were pushed out rather unfairly in his signature power play. That power play is still visible in Musk vs OpenAI.

tesseract ,

While your argument is correct, it was none of us that raised Musk to a 'genius' idol. It was his own marketing campaign, probably done on his behalf by a professional PR team. When the rest of us heard the amount of praises going around, we just assumed that there was some substance to it. That's until the 'pedo guy' incident started the collapse of that facade.

tesseract ,

One of the main factors contributing to this problem is how customers simply give up their rights for convenience. Pro-customer options don't disappear. They die a slow painful death.

Take the example of DRM in books. All the easy options like from Amazon are DRM encumbered. But the DRM-free options are still available if you are willing to search a bit. They don't cost much extra either. But people don't care. And direct sellers providing DRM-free books wither away in neglect. Similar examples are still around for reparable devices, DRM-free multimedia, etc.

Consumers rights are not a given. Like any rights, those are the ones you have to defend. You have to put at least a little bit of effort to protect it. When I suggested this recently, I was accused of 'victim-blaming'. What escape is there when the victims are not ready to fight back?

tesseract ,

Why wouldn't they? Their corrupt influence is what toppled the previous democratically elected government in the first place. The US is pretty eager to promote dictatorships and genocides if it suits them.

tesseract ,

Most of the exploitation that we suffer in the digital world are primarily due to our laziness. If we had made the right choice instead of convenience, we wouldn't be paying so much to rent seekers.

That said, ebooks are one area where freedom-respecting choices still exist. DRM-free ebooks are still available. We have the opportunity to save them from greedy rent-seeking middle man corporations. Please don't squander it away too in the name of pathetic excuses that nobody wants to hear.

tesseract ,

While you do have a point, there are very well known exceptions where people make bad choices regardless. Ebooks are one example. DRM-free books don't cost extra because the authors often dislike DRM. Another is the example of browsers. Firefox doesn't cost a penny. But people choose a spyware browser from an ad company.

tesseract ,

It's always easy to find 'can't have/couldn't have' style excuses for laziness. But ultimately, issues like DRM on ebooks or spyware from an add company all boil down to consumer vigilance and defense of consumer rights. It isn't just about the digital goods - that applies even to Mom & Pop shops, without which the mega corps are free to price gouge to their hearts' content.

Consumer rights protection is a culture that takes time and effort. There is no getting around it. If users are being exploited by big corporations, it the users' fault for not being vigilant. It's not rocket science. These options aren't hard to find. Whether that be a browser that respects you, or buying a DRM-free book directly from the publishers, it takes hardly a few minutes to learn and execute. Ultimately, there is no excuse for squandering away any respect we have as consumers, due to sheer laziness.

tesseract ,

Last time they touched an open chat protocol, they hung it out to dry. That was XMPP. That's why more than half of the fediverse is reluctant or outright hostile to federate with anything meta.

tesseract ,

You are underplaying the damage Google and FB did to XMPP. It wasn't supposed to be relegated to an obscure backend protocol. The involvement of those companies ensured that it didn't become a popular user-facing protocol.

tesseract ,

Now that I read it again, you may be right.

tesseract ,

Or, the EU recognizes bribery that the US hides behind the euphemism called 'lobbying'.

tesseract ,

That's definitely a concern. But at least for now, the EU isn't a pretend-democracy like the US is, with the actual shots being called by rich billionaires and corporations.

Apple will require notarization for apps from third party app stores, and will disable updates for apps installed via third party app stores if staying outside EU (support.apple.com)

As far as I can tell this basically means that all apps must be approved by Apple to follow their "platform policies for security and privacy" even if publishing on a third party app store. They will also disable updating apps from third party app stores if you stay outside the EU for too long (even if you are a citizen of an EU...

tesseract ,

but App Store doesn't guarantee that the code on Github matches the app in the Store

This is why I like fdroid. They insist on building the app themselves, ensuring that it does indeed match what's on github. Now you need to trust only fdroid to do the right thing. Then again, if they do something bad, someone will recognize it.

tesseract ,

The return of investment on crypto doesn't come from any value it generates. It comes from other people who made bad bets and lost their money on the same. That makes investing in crypto the same as participating in a Pyramid. Your argument, if taken for face value, can easily be extended to defend pyramid schemes.

tesseract ,

I was talking about the use of crypto as an investment, not as currency. While the latter was the purpose that cryptocurrencies were originally designed for, the former now far outweighs it.

tesseract ,

Wow! You really believe all the lies Musk says? This is the same guy who has been promising 'full software driving' next year for nearly a decade, fantasizing about downloading human memory engrams, insisting that hyperloop is 'not so hard' and says things like 'I know more about manufacturing than anyone else alive'.

How much knowledge does it take to realize that 100 people per starship is simply impossible? There simply isn't enough room. And read your statement about underground dwellings and sunlight times together to see how they're incompatible. Musk isn't saying all these because he's a dreaming visionary. He's saying these to trick other rich people into giving him more money. It has the same vibes as the monorail song.

tesseract ,

LOL! SpaceX doesn't do those things because of him. They do it despite him. They even have special procedures and meetings to stoke master Elon's ego and trick him into agreeing with them. Elon is a fictional visionary, not a working one. It doesn't take half decent knowledge of physics to recognize the nonsense he spouts.

jlou , to Technology

Apple Is Trying to Kill the Open Internet!

https://youtu.be/up-zUEFNMww

@technology

tesseract ,

News doesn't become rage bait just because it is against your beloved Apple. The video does discuss very relevant points about how abusive this move from Apple is. In fact, this news has been discussed seriously for two weeks now.

Firefox does that too

Firefox is just a browser and has nothing to do with PWAs that require OS support. This is about PWAs as an alternative to app side loading, which Apple doesn't allow. You're needlessly misconstruing the issue.

tesseract ,

'GenZ is emotionally attached to things from their childhood'. You can replace GenZ with any other generation and it will still work. The stupid article is about mocking one generation to create outrage among others.

tesseract ,

It's very satisfying to hear that you made someone happy. Regards!

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