Ed Zitron’s rant was a long read, but it sure did resonate with me. I’ve been in IT for quite a while (our first computer needed an upgrade for lower-case characters) and the current state of tech is utterly depressing. After reading the post, I think that our nerd culture in IT paved the way for the techbros. We need to take a hard look at ourselves, if we want to support this dystopian future we’re heading towards.

Back then, with the family computer (now having 16Kb and lower-case), computing was magical. You all know how it felt like, everything seemed possible, the screen was a window into the future. There were constant leaps in technology - we could store and edit audio, then video, instant worldwide communication. I’m sure that you believed, like I did, that IT could really improve people’s lives and make the world a better place.

But now, the meaningful improvements have become fewer, evolutionary. Consider the updates from your current phone and the last. Maybe the camera was a bit better, but did it really excite you or change your life? What about your laptop? Hardware is plateauing. Just like software.

I know that the engineering behind large enterprises like AWS or Netflix is just fantastic and improving all the time. But from a user’s point of view, not much has changed in a while.

Here’s the problem. We techies believe in the future, that we can change the world. And we are such insufferable know-it-alls that want to help you, and will help you, if you want it or not. There is nothing that could not be improved without computing and digitization. It’s how we are trained to think, it’s in our DNA. While you are speaking, we are making notes of redundancies, mentally tsk tsking your Excel sheets. We view the world a set of problems to be solved.

So then you have a site like (the olde) reddit, or your car, or your TV. All fully functional and fulfill all your needs. But we simply cannot admit to ourselves that our job is done - we must solve the next problem. Even if it isn’t a problem you’ve got!

And so we get computers in everything. In your TV, your car, your alarm clock, your living room lamps and kitchen appliances. All with their host of issues. And we get algorithms in everything, giving us suggestions and sending us reminders.

Current tech is intrusive, overbearing and patronizing - that’s putting it nice. A bunch of well-meant ingenuity is being wasted on problems nobody has.

We need to take people and their time serious, let them do their shit and just leave them the fuck alone when the job is done.

Male and female are also insanely large groups but I’ll never understand why the color of your skin is so important in the land of the free.

Which of the following best describes your race or ethnic background?

Seriously, WTF? Why the hell is this relevant? Is this some American thing?

deleted by creator

Thanks. Damn autocorrect.

Back in the 80s, Don Norman popularized the term affordance. Humans need something to push, pull, turn or otherwise interact with. We are physical beings in a physical world.

Driving vehicles is potentially life-endangering. Just because the technology is there and cheaper does not mean that humans can push aside their physiological limitations in a critical situation.

Take the emergency blinker. You know where it is, you see it all the time - it’s right there in front of you! But when a real emergency happens, you’ll be fumbling for the button, concentrating on the situation at hand. Now imagine that button on a touchscreen.

Just recently saw a video of an experimental self driving vehicle from Bosch - from the 90’s!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTnBiTIvGqY

You could imagine we’d be much further now, considering how far computing power, computer vision and AI have come.

Also not exactly cheap!

If you’re into self-hosting there’s Wallabag, but it’s not half as slick as Omnivore.

I’m out of the loop since I’ve been using a self hosted Miniflux, but Raven certainly is an alternative.

Actually, there is a company that makes resin printed children’s glasses for about €200 a pop. My son tried them at the opticians and I was impressed by the finish and flexibility. Just to say that 3d printed glasses are really commercially viable.

I had to check Wikipedia to be sure. OK, the S got updated motors or restyled taillights, but they’re all externally indistinguishable for the non Tesla nerd. Look at how the Corvette and Mustang changed over the years, or the F-Series trucks. They went with the zeitgeist, and the S is still visually stuck in 2012.

What I don’t get about Tesla is: when will they ever update their existing vehicles, like every other car company does? The Model S has been around for over ten years. Aren’t they planning an S2? Or this all the RnD they have?

The Internet Archive is being DDOSed for the lulz.

https://mastodon.archive.org/@textfiles/113279179271574005

I’m worried that the boat is full of water.

Pihole is good for a private network, but you can forget it in a work setting, especially corporate networks.

Keep in mind that that was a demo to sell Copilot.

The issue that I’ve got with GenAI is that it has no expert knowledge in your field, knows nothing of your organization, your processes, your products or your problems. It might miss something important and it’s your responsibility to review the output. It also makes stuff up instead of admitting not knowing, gives you different answers for the same prompt, and forgets everything when you exhaust the context window.

So if I’ve got emails full of fluff it might work, but if you’ve got requirements from your client or some regulation you need to implement you’ll have to review the output. And then what’s the point?

Always happy to see gemini-related posts!

Check out https://levior.gitlab.io/, a http to Gemini gateway. Found it at https://github.com/kr1sp1n/awesome-gemini

Because they don’t give a shit what their people think. Yes, they are still building new coal and nuclear power plants, but it’s being outpaced by renewables.

Wait, so you think nuclear reactors spew out uranium?

Didn’t say that. But I also don’t think that it magically appears in the plant.

While coal powerplants don’t spew out radioactive coal ash??

Please stop this whataboutism.

Nobody cares to recycle concrete.

Not true. Making concrete creates huge amounts of CO2 during production. Sand is becoming a valuable resource. Recycling concrete for aggregate absolutely is a thing, but that’s a different topic.

I wont talk about storing waste, because I dont know why it is marketed as prohibitively expensive.

Convenient. Then I will because I’m not finished. You have to ensure containment of the barrels for decades, if not centuries. The mine has to be in geologically inactive area, and you have to be certain that no ground water will seep into the mine in the foreseeable future. We don’t want ground water in the mine, its cold and wet and seeps through everywhere.

And you have to figure out how to keep idiots from breaking into the mine in 150 years and using spent rods to heat their homes. If you think that’s far fetched I encourage you to read about the Goiânia accident , one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters. Some kids found the radioactive source of an abandoned xray machine while playing around.