talkingtab (u/talkingtab)

talkingtab commented on Pricing Changes for GitHub Actions resources.github.com/acti... · Posted by u/kevin-david

talkingtab · 2 days ago

We're microsoft. We don't care. We don't have to care, we're microsoft. Lock in? Embrace, expand, extinguish? Anti-competive? Anti-trust? We don't care. We don't have to care. Pay taxes? We don't have to pay taxes (https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-microsoft-audit-back-...). We're ... etc.

This is not new, not unexpected. This is ongoing. Nothing stops this because who wins elections? How do they pay for all that publicity. Certainly "contributing" to campaigns is much cheaper than paying your taxes.

Supposedly this is a place for hackers. Hackers can build a better alternative.

talkingtab commented on Bruno Simon – 3D Portfolio bruno-simon.com/... · Posted by u/razzmataks

talkingtab · 9 days ago

The course is great. I am a fan. This, not so much.

One of the unsung problems of any technology is understanding what you can do with it that you could not do before. Lets say you are a prehistoric person and somehow you find a modern steel axe. What do you do with it? Ultimately, it is not the axe that is important, it is the metallurgy.

Lets say you are a modern person and you found bitcoin. What do you do with it? Again, my thought is not the bitcoin, it is the cryptographic technology.

Lets say you are a modern person and you find threejs. What do you do with it? My personal reaction is that there is so much more that can be done with threejs, react-three-fiber, react-three drei, shaders, shadertoys, than this.

For me the definition of "cool" is things that change how you see the world. Where you never look at things the same way. A little example for me was this:

https://codepen.io/prisoner849/full/wBGQYvy

talkingtab commented on Advertising as a major source of human dissatisfaction (2019) [pdf] andrewoswald.com/docs/Adv... · Posted by u/anigbrowl

talkingtab · 13 days ago

OMG. This is like reading a headline that says "Cigarette Smoking is a source of dissatisfaction"

It is not advertising. It is a targeted attempt by other people to persuade you to do something for their benefit, their good. Without regard to the effects on you.

Do you remember the Marlboro Man persuading people to buy cigarettes? Many people made lots of money from owning that stock. Lots of people died. Lots of people got addicted. Lots of people suffered.

Do you remember Purdue Pharma? They made billions after persuading doctors to prescribe their drugs. They destroyed the lives of millions of Americans. Calling that "a source of dissatisfaction" is just wrong.

Targeting makes this persuasion more effective and more abhorrent.

You live your life, but targeted propaganda is designed to ensure that someone else gets the benefits. As though you were some domesticated animal.

talkingtab commented on We're committing $6.25B to give 25M children a financial head start onedell.com/investamerica... · Posted by u/duck

talkingtab · 16 days ago

Let them eat cake.

talkingtab commented on Proximity to coworkers increases long-run development, lowers short-term output (2023) pallais.scholars.harvard.... · Posted by u/delichon

talkingtab · 16 days ago

The question is what do you mean by proximity? Is this only physical proximity?And does it mean that if you isolate people, but they are within 10 feet of each other they are more productive? And do the results change when there is not physical proximity, but substitutes or alternatives?

talkingtab commented on Arduino Terms of Service and Privacy Policy update: setting the record straight blog.arduino.cc/2025/11/2... · Posted by u/manchoz

shevy-java · a month ago

> 1989: Tim Berners-Lee invents the World Wide Web

I think ideas etc... existed before that, e. g. DARPA and what Alan Kay said.

Tim mostly pushed forward a simple protocol that worked. Would be interesting to see how much Tim really generated de-novo, but in general I disagree that he "invented" the world wide web as such. That would seem unfair to many other people - just like Alan Kay once said, you see further by standing on the shoulders of giants (translation: you benefitted from earlier inventions and ideas, made by other people).

talkingtab · a month ago

Complained about and already modified. However, what is "wrong" is that some "person" invented the internet. We live in a time of "followers" and in that paradigm we need some singular person to follow. But it was actually a bunch of original thinkers of whom TBL was one. But it was not a person. I suspect a closer answer is the IETF, but that is also a leaky abstraction.

The point is that if you want to do something, you are probably more likely to do it well with lots of other doers. Not followers.

talkingtab commented on I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon blog.joinmastodon.org/202... · Posted by u/Tomte

dbingham · a month ago

I'm exploring various systems of community moderation.

Right now experimenting with a "demote" button that people are encouraged to use on: disinformation, misinformation, propaganda, spam, and slop.

Communities' default feed is just chronological, but it also has "Most Active" and "Most Recent Activity". Right now, Demote knocks things down the "Most Active" feed.

Eventually, a high enough percentage of demotes would result in posts being removed from public feeds. A second, higher threshold, would result in it being removed from all feeds.

Demote usage would be moderated, and removal thresholds could be appealed to the official moderation team. Users who abuse or misuse demote would lose the privilege.

It's an experiment and we'll see if it works. It's also really early. But the thing that Communities is doing differently is that the users will ultimately be in control through democratic elections of the board. And I expect moderation to be a frequent and recurring issue in elections. (You know, if the whole thing gets off the ground at all.)

talkingtab · a month ago

When driving a car, I often wish I could tag other cars with arrows that mark them as bad drivers. These are the ones who weave in and out over 4 lanes on an interstate highway. When enough tags get the car, they have to pull over and take a break or something.

One immediate problem is malicious or over zealous taggers. But it seems easy to build a system that if you are too enthusiastic, then you have to pull over and take a break.

But accumulated reputation seems a thing. And if it is universal read and write it seems beneficial. It is somewhat like reputation in real life.

This depends somewhat on identities with some degree of stickiness. If you can just change who you are then bad reputation is not a big deal. But if there is some cost to establishing and maintaining an identity ...

talkingtab commented on I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon blog.joinmastodon.org/202... · Posted by u/Tomte

talkingtab · a month ago

This is unfortunate and ultimately wrong. The ultimate stupidity is exemplified by Musk and Bezos, and others of their ilk. To step away from Mastodon because people compare you to them is an error.

We need not just Mastodon's but to find new ways - non-corporate - ways to come together and collaborate. I am beginning to suspect that Democracy is not a political system but an economic system.

A better way to address your situation is perhaps to work on implementing a distributed democratic system that works. We can incorporate, but can we indemocrate?

Just my 2cents

talkingtab commented on Do not put your site behind Cloudflare if you don't need to huijzer.xyz/posts/123/do-... · Posted by u/huijzer

talkingtab · a month ago

Lets solve the problem. Why should some IP address be on the internet when it is being used for malicious activity. Everyone seems to assume there is no fix for this. Really?

The discussion is here is sort of which way do you want to let DDos sites damage you? By signing up for Cloudflare or not signing up for Cloudflare. In both case normal users suffer harm.

Why? This is a serious question.

talkingtab commented on AirPods libreated from Apple's ecosystem github.com/kavishdevar/li... · Posted by u/moonleay

kakacik · a month ago

This is patently incorrect. Wife switched from iphone 13 mini to samsung s24, and airpods pro 2nd gen immediately started behaving extremely annoyingly to the point of becoming completely useless for any serious use and she just gave them away to her sister which still is on apple, although she loved them before.

Literally all other earpieces work flawlessly with that phone including dirt cheap chinese stuff, apart from apple.

Now somebody could come and claim multi trillion company couldnt just nail that pesky bluetooth protocol well, but everybody else can do it better than them, including 15 bucks products. Its all by design. They clearly dont need hardware revenue to have products who can compete on open market, they need their closed ecosystem revenue, hence these dirty practices. There is hopefully a billion or ten lawsuit in the making by courts with balls, ie EU.

All the downvotes in the world won't change above.

talkingtab · a month ago

Just take apple to small claims court. If everyone who is scammed by Apple takes them to small claims they will have an incentive to change. Without this they have -0.00000000000 incentive to do anything. Even a class action suit won't help. The fundamental question is whether Apple should be able to sell products with lock in. Since there is lockin on all Apple products it is not accidental. In my humble opinion only. You, dear reader, work out your own thoughts.