Sven Slootweg @joepie91@pixie.town

with the recent moves of the EU to regulate “gatekeeper platforms”, we have talked a lot about the unethical practices that platforms use to lock users and vendors in. but there’s one unethical practice that has suspiciously been missing from the whole conversation.

why aren’t we talking about how the main, if not the only, function of #DRM is to lock people into large platforms?

Not sure who needs to read this, but I guess many of you who follow me either don't care, or know.

Anyways, I wrote some words about Flakes, and channels, and channels, and channels, and related things.

https://samuel.dionne-riel.com/blog/2024/05/07/its-not-flakes-vs-channels.html

okay, wait: one last thing i want to say, in somewhat good faith to these people

If you genuinely believe that bringing #AI to #StackOverflow is going to be a net benefit, understand this:

You’re cheering on your own demise. If this AI will actually be as good as some of y’all think it is, you, a person now reliant on this tool, will be the first one to get fired

Out of all of the things, that should atleast be one of your concerns

Some of the racists on here are so unsubtle about it lol. Like, you think we don't notice when you ask for feedback to a political question and ignore all the Black and brown folks who respond, graciously thank the white ones, and delete?

.......we have eyes and brains to work them, you know! You're not fooling anyone 😂

I applaud Apple for their new iPad ad: "We are a huge corporate machine that will crush anything you love in order to make a buck" is refreshingly honest.

In software architecture you have to recognize when you're adding a rocket stage.

In rockets and aeroplanes it's a simple truth that weight adds more weight. To carry more you need bigger engines, a bigger fuel thank, more fuel. More weight becomes even more weight.

For rockets to make it out of the atmosphere they use multiple stages. Each stage carries the rocket to a certain height, once the fuel is used up the stage is ejected so the next stage can push forward a lighter rocket. So adding a stage will get you further, but at the cost of much more machinery, engineers, and complexity. You now have a much heavier rocket to launch.

Switching to kubernetes, kafka, microservices, a single page app, ... is adding a rocket stage. Maybe it's what you need to get where you want to go, but be clear about the extra weight, operational cost, engineering overheard, mental overhead.

Stack Overflow announced that they are partnering with OpenAI, so I tried to delete my highest-rated answers.

Stack Overflow does not let you delete questions that have accepted answers and many upvotes because it would remove knowledge from the community.

So instead I changed my highest-rated answers to a protest message.

Within an hour mods had changed the questions back and suspended my account for 7 days.

the babysitter died in my house and then the grim reaper started doing the dishes and took out the trash before dissapearing again

in reality, pulling everything into the computer does empower people to some extent, but the reason corporations want to do it has always been so that they can impose their own new constraints in the new context. the goal is not for humanity to solve its problems, but for corporate entities to be in charge of the problems and profiting by them.

[serious, no joke replies or guesses / autotranslation please]

do I know anyone *native or otherwise very fluent* in Chinese who can tell me the correct term for a plated edge connector, like you might find on a PCIe card? specifically the "gold fingers" style connector feature you would find on the PCB side, not the plastic connector it slots into.

I've had an absolute nightmare trying to communicate this feature to a Shenzhen-based PCB vendor and I would like it to be easier in future.

are there any games where you're an employee of a theme park

I guess there are some for the food stalls but I don't think Viscera Cleanup Detail: Theme Park That Is Operating Normally exists

Oh and also, Dewey, and anyone else who needs to hear this...

Starting HRT is not an irreversible leap off a cliff. If you wanna experiment with hormones for a bit, and decide you don't like them, that's absolutely 100% chill and no trans person that isn't a sucky truscummy piece of shit is going to be mad at you about that.