Jayjader

joined 10 months ago
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (2 children)

To be fair, weren't Valve the first company to do that? People were really annoyed at having to install steam just to play some Half-Life.

Of course, that was only 1 launcher, no launcher-in-launcher shenanigans back then.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Aside from echoing @[email protected] and Doctorow's statements about unionizing, I am aware of a few others who are trying things that I'd describe as complimentary to unions.

This is a panel titled "Why hasn't Open Source Won?" where several of the speakers attempt to sketch out a framework wherein a programmer would have more decision over how their code is used: https://youtu.be/k3eycjekIAk . I'll admit, I'm not the most impressed with where they get to in the limited time they have. Nevertheless, I think it's a useful angle of consideration to have in the tool belt.

This is an org/foundation that is trying to walk the walk with regards to governing tech democratically: https://nivenly.org/ I haven't kept up with any recent developments of theirs.

 

cross-posted from: https://jlai.lu/post/10771034

Personal review:

A good recap of his previous writings and talks on the subject for the first third, but a bit long. Having paid attention to them for the past year or two, my attention started drifting a few times. I ended up being more impressed with how much he's managed to condense explaining "enshittification" from 45+ minutes down to around 15.

As soon as he starts building off of that to work towards the core of his message for this talk, I was more-or-less glued to the screen. At first because it's not exactly clear where he's going, and there are (what felt like) many specific court rulings to keep up with. Thankfully, once he has laid enough groundwork he gets straight his point. I don't want to spoil or otherwise lessen the performance he gives, so I won't directly comment on what his point is in the body of this post - I think the comments are better suited for that anyways.

I found the rest to be pretty compelling. He rides the fine line between directionless discontent and overenthusiastic activist-with-a-plan as he doubles down on his narrative by calling back to the various bits of groundwork he laid before - now that we're "in" on the idea, what felt like stumbling around in the dark turns into an illuminating path through some of the specifics of the last twenty to forty years of the dynamics of power between tech bosses and their employees. The rousing call to action was also great way to end and wrap it all up.

I've become very biased towards Cory Doctorow's ideas, in part because they line up with a lot of the impressions I have from my few years working as a dev in a big-ish multinational tech company. This talk has done nothing to diminish that bias - on the contrary.

 

Personal review:

A good recap of his previous writings and talks on the subject for the first third, but a bit long. Having paid attention to them for the past year or two, my attention started drifting a few times. I ended up being more impressed with how much he's managed to condense explaining "enshittification" from 45+ minutes down to around 15.

As soon as he starts building off of that to work towards the core of his message for this talk, I was more-or-less glued to the screen. At first because it's not exactly clear where he's going, and there are (what felt like) many specific court rulings to keep up with. Thankfully, once he has laid enough groundwork he gets straight his point. I don't want to spoil or otherwise lessen the performance he gives, so I won't directly comment on what his point is in the body of this post - I think the comments are better suited for that anyways.

I found the rest to be pretty compelling. He rides the fine line between directionless discontent and overenthusiastic activist-with-a-plan as he doubles down on his narrative by calling back to the various bits of groundwork he laid before - now that we're "in" on the idea, what felt like stumbling around in the dark turns into an illuminating path through some of the specifics of the last twenty to forty years of the dynamics of power between tech bosses and their employees. The rousing call to action was also great way to end and wrap it all up.

I've become very biased towards Cory Doctorow's ideas, in part because they line up with a lot of the impressions I have from my few years working as a dev in a big-ish multinational tech company. This talk has done nothing to diminish that bias - on the contrary.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Do you perchance know if a similar manoeuver can be attempted to fix a mouse wheel click issue?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago

Get off of .world if you want to see a difference.

The size of that instance almost guarantees these kinds of dynamics will emerge, especially on a website run by volunteers and paid for by donations.

Stop complaining to other users; go be the change you wish to see.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

When you use Git locally and want to push to GitHub you need an access token.

I don't understand; I can push to GitHub using https creds or an ssh key without creating access tokens.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

In case the "dim" comment isn't a joke, as I recall it's short for "dimension", as in you are specifying each variable's dimension in the computer's memory. Source: some "intro to programming with vb6" book I read like 15 years ago at this point.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Microsoft is pivoting its company culture

Oh yes, the thing they're well known for succeeding at.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

According to Our World In Data (which claims to use the Energy Institute's Statistical Review of World Energy from 2023 as a data source), that waste is from producing around 70 TWh each year:

That only covers around a third of Switzerland's energy consumption over those years. Furthermore, Switzerland is a small mountainous country with decent access to hydropower (making up around a third of its needs over the same years). They are not necessarily representative of the waste that would accumulate from a more agressive switch from fossil fuels to nuclear across the world (which is what we're talking about, if I'm not mistaken).

France is about 10 times larger in surface area and according to the same source, consumed/produced over 1,000 TWh of nuclear energy each year:

And officially has still has no place to put the high-energy waste (source - in french), leaving it up to the plant's owners to deal with it. There is an official project to come up with a "deep" geological storage facility, but no political will seems musterable to make that plan materialize beyond endless promises.

I should mention that I'm not super anti-nuclear, and I would certainly rather we focus on eliminating coal and oil power plants (and ideally natural gas ones as well) before we start dismantling existing nuclear reactors that are still in functioning order.

That being said, there are other problems with nuclear moving forwards besides waste management. The main one that worries me is the use of water for the cooling circuits, pumped from rivers or the sea. Not only do open cooling circuits have adverse affects on their surrounding ecosystems, as the planet gets warmer and the temperature swings during the hotter seasons become more pronounced, the power plants will become less efficient. The water going in will be at a higher temperature than it is today, and thus will absorb less energy from the nuclear reaction itself.

Overall, I don't trust our current collective responsibility as a species to manage our current forms of nuclear production. Russia sent its own troops into the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone to dig trenches in contaminated soil last year, and they allegedly recognized last week that the Zaporizhzhia power plant is now "unsafe to restart" because of the military activity in the region.

The world has not experienced generalized warfare with nuclear power plants dotting the countryside; WW2 ended around a decade before the first nuclear power plants were up and running in the USSR, the UK, and the USA.

Not to mention how few European countries have access to uranium on their own soil/territory. Of course, most of the rare earth metals used in photoelectric panels and windmills aren't found there either, but as least with "renewables" they are used once to make the machinery, not as literal fuel that is indefinitely consumed to produce power.

I don't know enough about thorium-based reactors nor molten salt-based reactors to go to bat for them instead, but they seem like a more promising way for nuclear to remain relevant.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I was saying that it’s weird to blame Mastodon for “complex sign-up”, when you’re using a “3rd-party” tool to do so. That’s completely down to the app.

Ah, I understand now. Thanks for the correction.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Why would anyone try to register via a non-official app first (especially for a procedure like signin-up) is beyond me.

You may or may not have heard this before, but the app is not the instance is not the platform. I registered both my Mastodon account and this Lemmy account via their respective instance websites. I used mastodon in the browser for literally over a year before installing an app for it on my phone.

Apps are alternative front-ends to the fediverse, even "official" ones.

"Basic stuff" is very weird to read for me when many of the internet services I have accounts for don't have apps - and I would rather they never make an app for it. My electricity bills, my hosting costs, my home internet, all are done through web pages that I can access from any internet-connected device, unlike an app.

Not to mention I appreciate being able to type things on a bigger screen and physical keyboard when I register for things.

Lastly, it is much easier for me to deal with a sloppily made website than a sloppily made app. I can use extensions, and if need be can open up the network tab to see if the registration request was accepted or not before the website malfunctioned on my end.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Still, I think the only way that would result in change is if the hack specifically went after someone powerful like the mayor or one of the richest business owners in town.

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