Sven Slootweg @joepie91@pixie.town

everyone is building new social networks and nobody is reimplementing Google+ circles

Remember that the NAACP is calling for a massive boycott of Walmart, McDonald's and Meta because of their about face on DEI under pressure from the vague notions of the US president and his friends.

I would appreciate it you participated in this boycott too. It seems like it's pretty big.

(The NAACP has likely spoken with people at these organizations and found no common ground. They kind of hate calling for corporate boycotts so I can only imagine they go nowhere and were disgusted.)

So, summing up: software estimates are bad and wrong because even people asking for them rarely want good ones, and an effective project will learn enough as it goes to make them obsolete.

If you have to do one, fine, hold your nose and do it in a low-cost way, and then run your project in such a way that your stakeholders get what they actually need, both in terms of software and politics. But for many projects it's sufficient to just get on with the project.

Either way, it's usually possible to work with integrity. And if not, estimates are the least of your problems, so remember that developers are still in high demand, so it's worth looking for a job that won't eat your soul.

15/15

I think the right answer depends a ton on circumstances. But what has worked for me is to listen very carefully to find the actual needs behind the stated needs, and find ways to satisfy the actual needs without feeling like I'm grossly compromising my own integrity.

11/

@Redfuchs

Eventually this transition point will end, and either we have come out the other side a more open and free global society where digital access isn't gatekept by tech oligopolies... Or those that failed to gear down are now fully captive to those same tech oligopolies, unable to own anything.

I can't claim the term, I learned it from the late Eric Flint, author of SF alternate history Ring of Fire/1632 series.

But it really is where we are at, we're still in a transition point where we can build communities based on older and more open standards and where physical media is still obtainable and reproducible, with storage cheap enough to hold digital copies of that media locally. Older technology and appliances are still useful enough that we can learn the skills to maintain/repair.

I've decided to embrace my lack of high speed internet during the week. It will encourage me to stick to my principles on "gearing down."

Gearing down is the concept of using a currently available higher level of technology or convenience from the same to build out a more sustainable lower level of technology or convenience before the current higher level runs out.

This is really what people are talking about when they say to combat enshittification we need to go back to X or Y:

Gearing down

The freedom to let others make my decisions for me is nearly as vital as the freedom to make important decisions myself.

Some people see "empowerment" as helping people to do everything themselves but that's an overly individualist approach. What empowers me is systems/cultures of transparency, accountability, and flexible delegation that help me rely on my community.

game where you have to try to avoid all the AI shit companies keep throwing at you, call it Escape From Markov

hi.

i am tillian. you probably have boosted this fundraiser post in the past, wondering where i went.

well, i moved!

i finally made the jump and collected enough money to last me for months on my own. i have my own apartment, and i am now living away from my abusive parents.

i am so, so, so thankful to all of you. this plan would have never left the ground without all of your undying support.

i owe you. all of you.

thank you.

love. so much love.

#mutualaid

NAACP lists companies that dump #DEI in its tactical spending guide for Black Americans - I love the idea of a ‘tactical spending guide’. #NoBuy #Boycott #BlackHistoryMonth #BlackMastodon #BLM https://apnews.com/article/black-consumers-dei-buying-guide-naacp-34664d8af92e2dc1ba787a498348b7a4

grateful to everyone who contributes to https://gaza.memorial/, it means so much to log into the moderation and find new voices there 🙏

Turns out, Hash Tables are good...?
(wait. they always were!)

Undergraduate Upends a 40-Year-Old Data Science Conjecture

... searches within data structures called hash tables can be much faster than previously deemed possible ...

https://www.quantamagazine.org/undergraduate-upends-a-40-year-old-data-science-conjecture-20250210

The actual Paper is here:
https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.02305
(the article erroneously refers to the older Tiny Pointers paper 2111.12800, which is just mentioned in a footnote but also really cool for game devs)

you never get credit for all the weird shit you manage to NOT say 😔