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Once again thinking about the concept of lateral violence

kinda subposty, on the use of proprietary tools 

I honestly have substantially less sympathy for folks who get shafted for corporate decisions, like Unity's, when the disaster scenarios they're describing are already just like, par for the course for folks like me

a lot of the stuff I make is incredibly slow to make because I don't use all the proprietary tools. yeah, it feels awful. but the solution isn't to crawl back to companies and ask them to take back their actions, but to sit down and realise where we are and why companies are the issue

like, my life would be a lot simpler if I just paid AWS to host a billion services and chain them together myself, or if I got loads of fancy editing software to make videos, or used proprietary game engines and other tools

but I don't. not only do I not have the starting cash to invest in that nonsense, but the fact that it prevents so many people from using what I've made (because I need to charge big bucks to afford it) is also a non-starter

like, sure, I have made a lot of money (most of which has gone into rent or food or other necessities) by working with these tools for companies. yes, it feels easier. no, I do not want it.

the solution is solidarity, not crawling back to companies and asking for their support instead

statistical fallacies in capitalism 

one thing that gets thrown out a lot in discussions of packages getting lost, food never being delivered, etc. is this idea that these kinds of errors are just associated with the scale of businesses nowadays

and, I actively reject this notion. sure, if there's a static probability of failure, increasing the number of chances for failure will increase the amount of failures you encounter

but like, that's not what we see. let me maybe give you an example.

imagine the simple scenario of delivering mail. we have been delivering mail for decades, and while it's not impossible for things to get lost in the mail, nowadays, it's rather rare for a letter or document to get lost in the post. however, it's extremely common for a package or food delivery to get lost. why?

it's not that error is inevitable at scale. it's that greedy executives, at a certain scale, like skipping all the necessary parts that make things actually reliable. if we hired enough people to deliver food instead of rushing a fleet of underpaid, gig-economy workers, people would actually spend the time to make sure that everything is done properly

instead, companies expect a large number of things to go wrong and take an enormous cut out of the money sloshing around to ensure that they're still on top despite wasting so many resources and people's time. Amazon offers painless returns not because they're so kind, but because they pay their workers so little and mistakes are so common that people would actually stop buying from them if they just told people to fuck off.

it's not scale that's the problem. it's greed

I keep seeing people saying they are happy to use AI text generators as sources of factual information, because they're confident that when the thing generates an inaccurate answer they'll easily spot it.

Speaking from my experience of 20+ years of professional fact-checking: the errors you can spot easily are not the ones you need to worry about.

Unity: We need more funding for engine development, therefore we will unilaterally increase fees and start charging per installation, or you can be exempt from that if you lock yourself into our advertising platform, and it's not like you can really switch to a competitor anyway

Godot: We need more funding for engine development, therefore we will cut out the donation processing middleman so that we get to keep more of your contribution, and do an additional funding drive for those who can afford it, but don't worry if you can't contribute!

I don't know, but if I were a game developer, I'd certainly be developing some Opinions around engine choices and sustainability right about now

i dont even understand how they think this is going to work? it's designed for exactly one revenue model.

how do devs engage with all you can eat services like netflix or humble bundle?

how does unity track installs on tracker-less services like apple arcade or every console?

i knew unity didn't understand how games are developed, i didn't realize they also don't know how they're sold

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#introducton we are the c3soft.. a inofficial official operation center for all things soft. We restuff Haj, print cat ears and wash your favorite plushs at your next event (the #37c3)
Sewing machines and upcycling included.

🏳️‍⚧️Trans rights are human rights!

You might know us already as the people who printed cat ears at the
#gpn21 and the #cccamp23
We decided on founding this group so we could expand our scope to more. Take care of youe haj, bring it to us!

More info soon!

they made the ">pirate game 6 million times >company loses $60 million" greentext real

INTERVIEWER: why do you want to work at Unity Technologies? what makes you a good fit for us?

ME: well, i’ve got almost 29 years of experience in making rash decisions without thinking about the long-term impact of those decisions on the people who rely on me

A12-blokkade, populistische onzin 

Reactie 1: "het worden met de dag minder demonstranten, haha"

Reactie 2: "hoeveel verlofdagen hebben die gasten wel niet? hebben ze geen baan ofzo?"

Goh, je zou bijna denken dat er een verband is tussen die twee dingen, he? Bijna.

Day 4 of the daily #A12 blockade in the Hague.

100 activists sat down on the asphalt today, protesting against the 100 million euros that the Dutch govt spends on fossil subsidies *every day*!

Tomorrow, 12:00, they'll be back. #StopFossieleSubsidies #ClimateCrisis

twitter.com/NLRebellion/status

Something I still find a fascinating concept, is theme parks selling used wheels from their rollercoasters as merchandise.

This is actually... kind of nice? Instead of throwing them away (I don't believe they are very recyclable, and they do need to get replaced fairly frequently), they get a second life as someone's memento, without needing to manufacture some new tat that will just end up in someone's drawer.

Most days the fave button does all my heavy lifting, like "I read this and appreciate it, but I'm too spoonless to respond, so this will have to do byeee"

for anyone who missed out:
- Calvin is a six-year-old gremlin of a boy with a hyperlexic vocabulary, wild imagination, and poor executive function
- Hobbes is either a bipedal tiger or a stuffed tiger, depending on whose viewpoint you're in, and is probably the second biggest troll in the comic after Calvin's dad
- they're best friends
- the art is great
- Watterson actually managed to wrestle the syndicate into letting him make his own layouts for the extra-large color Sunday strips, instead of using the generic panel sizes that other Sunday comics used to make it easy for newspapers to rearrange into different shapes
- the comic is a mixture of one-off jokes and short storylines (prolly like a week), as you'd expect
- it's mostly funny stuff but there were a couple serious storylines, like the time the house got robbed while they were on vacation
- a favorite option for waiting rooms at dentists

can't say how well it holds up in 2023, but the nostalgia is very real for folks who grew up with it

- 🎒 ( 🐱 ?)

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