He kinda started strong with trying to undo the toxic Ballmer era culture and scrambling to try to catch up on cloud infra. But even back then, the push for crazy excessive telemetry and moving pretty much all of QA into data science was the beginning of the end. And like all tech execs, AI has them losing their GD minds.

Is this including the ones actively promoted by the POTUS?

Then you have to skip that one Futurama episode with the dog.

I’m gonna guess that you put a decent amount of time into figuring out a good set of smart home products and maybe even put some effort into looking up which products play well together and what configurations are ideal.

And that’s great if you enjoy shopping for, setting up and maintaining all those toys. But we all know there is too much shitty tech out there to think that it’s a good idea to grab a bunch of smart home stuff at Best Buy one afternoon and just plug it all in and call it good.

I think the thing is, folks in tech are less likely to be cool with, for example, exposing their door locks on the internet without doing a decent amount of due diligence. You have to want it enough to put in the work to make sure you have something that you can feel is secure, smooth operating and meets your personal privacy expectations. It kinda has to be a minor hobby. Which is cool if you happen to enjoy it or get enough joy from the result to make it worthwhile.

For me, I have enough hobbies and pastimes. I’ll put in the effort when the payoff is high, like for a home media server. But there’s no way in hell I’m signing up for future chores and headaches just so I can control my window curtains from my phone.

I didn’t know that my beloved toast was carcinogenic so this doesn’t feel like good news.

I’m hoping that the actual risk if getting cancer from toast is minimal since like a third of the world lives off of various wheat preparations.

IIRC, her family closed it after getting in way more money than they ever imagined and suggested that folks donate to other impacted families.

I’m a gen Xer in the US. I and most of my peer group have our own places. The ones with good careers and stable relationships generally have houses in more desirable areas, but even folks with more blue collar or less fancy jobs have a place further out in the suburbs or have a small condo. The only younger people I know who own are either in a situation where they both make serious money (like doctors or do well tech), come from money or occasionally just make it happen with just serious hustle and grit (and even then, I’m amazed they can do it).

But individuals do have power to make Twitter less important. Well, maybe not Twitter, just because it’s 95% bots, but social media companies are usually only valuable if they have users. There are people who depend on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram for their business but 99% of users absolutely do not need to use those services. The analogy with recycling and climate fall flat because it takes many orders of magnitude more effort to avoid most/all plastics/packaging/fossil fuels than it does to just avoid IG/FB/X. The biggest barriers to getting rid of these shit companies is 1) too many people don’t realize how awful they are 2) too many people just don’t give a shit and 3) too many people are addicted to the dopamine hits from these trash sites.

Seriously, just don’t use them. When you’re presented with something that tries to force you to use them, say “sorry, I don’t use Meta products, do you have another way for me to get [the pop-up dates, the invite, etc]”

It’s rainy here today and my dogs aren’t happy about the whole walk situation. It’s nice to have a reminder to try and enjoy it.

More businesses need to hear people say “I don’t use Meta products “ so that they consider making critical information available elsewhere. And businesses that still use Twitter should be shunned.

Too bad the genius, job creators couldn’t have possibly foreseen this outcome before giving financial and algorithmic support to a malicious, compromised, demented, fool. But I guess they can always retreat to their doomsday bunkers while the rest of us deal with the (hopefully not literal) fallout.

I hate that breaking up will be giving Putin exactly what he wanted when he started propping up the orange shitgibbon, but we can’t stay in an abusive marriage forever. I’m tired of paying taxes to fund the boots that will eventually be on my neck.

I’ve seen some mention of prepubescent kids in the file dump. IDK if any of it has been substantiated but people willing to abduct 13 year olds are probably OK with abducting 10 year olds if that’s what they or their friends are into.

Of course, minors can’t consent but there are a lot of accusations of brutal violence, coercion and murder, in addition to the sexual assault. There is a lot of truly repulsive and vile shit in the files and we ought to have a justice system that brings it all to light and punishes anyone who committed crimes. In light of all of that, handwringing over whether it’s misleading to call a 13 year old rape victim a child is some weak sauce. Try hitting on a 13 year old in front of their parents and see how the “if there’s grass on the field” defense plays out.

It’s not incorrect language, but it is a deliberate choice to use language that minimizes the offense. They could describe the victims as children , teens, minors, girls, etc. They are deliberately saying “underage woman” instead of “15 (or 13) year old girl” because their editors will pull it for being too inflammatory, sensational or unprofessional (as if that is a regular concern in the modern press).

A similar thing happens when the police kill someone. All of a sudden all of the rules about using active voice for good writing go out the window and it’s “man dies in police involved shooting” rather than “Police shot man.” People who study journalism and writing in school and are full time career writers and journalists absolutely think about word choice so I have a hard time believing that this is accidental.

I thought that the LAPD wasn’t supposed to be assisting ICE? All these LAPD assholes need to be fired. And the ICE agents need to be fired, out of a canon, into the sun.

I’m very lucky to have my own house. The number of spam calls I get from randos trying to buy houses is staggering. Some are obviously from call centers. I don’t understand how it makes financial sense to pay people to cold call every fucking homeowner in the US constantly in the hopes that they catch someone looking to sell quickly (and cheaply?). WTF is their endgame?

I kinda want to get everyone on board with refusing to sell single family houses to anyone who isn’t going to live there as their primary residence. Back in the not so old days, people would refuse to sell to “undesirables” because they didn’t want to tank property values, which would also carry significant reputational harm. We need to use that energy for good.

In theory, developers who would replace single family houses with multiple houses, townhomes or condos would be OK. We do need more housing in general. Although, IDK if real estate developers are a trustworthy bunch.