starless @starless@pixie.town

Friend of mine will be doing free online Javascript classes on matrix. Mostly self-directed, in a classical setting, but with (more or less) 1:1 support from them whenever you get stuck. You'll be working on a project of *your* choice. The teaching is text-based, but you don't need to be good at expressing problems in text!

Marginalized folks particularly encouraged.

~3 hours a week, skipping sessions not an issue, schedule tbd with participants

more info: https://twitter.com/joepie91/status/1471084098634530819
matrix room: #open-js-class:pixie.town

I know there are folks on the fediverse who work for companies like Google and Amazon (Ive seen your bio's, you cant hide from me).

I wanna know: how many Black devs do you work with? How many black devs -- or fuck, just Black folks in general -- have been hired on around your sphere?

I can definitely guess as to what these statistics are, but I wanna know forreal. Let me know.

The Amazon warehouse collapse reminds vee of my own brushes with companies that put their profit over worker safety in such a flagrant manner.

The thing is, from the inside, it's never quite so flagrant. There's never a human being telling you to your face "Yes we're putting you at risk to keep our profits up". It's always a policy, an oversight, a glitch, something that's being worked on.

My first real job was a call center in Florida. I remember when hurricane season hit and we were given a number to call each day before leaving for work to check if the office was open. It always was. Every time.

I remember one particular day we had a predicted hurricane landfall set for my commute hours. I decided not to go; I'd be spending half an hour on the road right when it was projected to hit; no way. I tried to call in, using the automated PBX garbage we were instructed to. It was "down".

I tried to call my manager, couldn't reach him. I eventually called HR directly and was told if I didn't submit my call-in to the PBX I'd be considered a no-show and terminated. When I explained the PBX was down, the rep repeated their statement verbatim. I explained again, they repeated again.

They didn't know (or rather wouldn't tell) who to contact about the PBX being down. They said it was an oversight in process and they'd look into having someone to call for next time.

That's when it kind of clicked for vee, you know? I refused to go in; I got "lucky". The office got closed basically by order from the state. Next time I went in for work, parts of the building were damaged; I got seated next to a blown out window. I got rained on during my shift.

In my next manager meeting I relayed this story to him. He nodded slowly and jumped into an obviously rehearsed speech about "Yes our policy says you must call the PBX to call in. It being down is an oversight. We will consider revising the policy in the coming weeks"

They never did. They didn't because this was all deliberate. Never tell your workers "We're abusing you", but put up velvet ropes so they can't exit the planned path. The planned path being abuse.

It's never flagrant. They never bold-faced tell you. They just wall you in, force you to follow a protocol, and claim any abuse baked in is "a glitch", then never fix it. They blame the slow wheels of business, every time. A fix is coming, once all the stakeholders sync up.

Then people die because with no humane, basic respect for their safety and dignity, they're left with the choice to submit to the abusive system or be victimized "by policy"

I'm not surprised this happened.

I just returned from Atlanta, Georgia where @j3s and I did maintenance on Baikal, cyberia's server and the workhorse behind https://capsul.org

Baikal has been running for years with an inefficient QEMU VirtIO configuration which caused its SSD disks to wear out much faster than they should, and our decision to use NVME drives for some of the disks in the ZFS pool almost prevented us from being able to expand disk capacity to meet demand: We kept mailing PCI-e to NVME adapters to the datacenter and they kept saying "It doesn't fit".

Life happened and it got kinda bad, with a legitimate risk of everything going kablooie, so we had to work hard to get everything fixed in short order and ensure that our little project has a future. I suppose it's not-so-little anymore, depending on your perspective.

Attached are a couple fun pictures from the trip. You can also see a video I took of us replacing one of the SSDs that was wearing out here: https://picopublish.sequentialread.com/files/zfs_disk_replacement/

I was sweating bullets while j3s carefully pulled the disk out of the server while it was running 😅

Use programming-positive language!

🚫 DON'T say "arbitrary code execution vulnerability"

✔️ DO say "surprise extension API"

I just heard a little honk and was like, What notification was THAT, I do not recognize it, and turns out there was a literal goose outside

The very first release of Matrix Stream Chat is here!

#matrix powered community interactions on *your* livestreaming, through any OBS supported service!

code & instructions at https://git.pixie.town/f0x/matrix-streamchat

and hosted instance at https://streamchat.pixie.town

#VerseThursday

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
standing by the windows looking out
in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
taking our feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
thank you we are saying and waving
dark though it is

hell yeah!

First running prototype of Matrix Stream Chat, https://matrix.org powered community interactions on *your* livestreaming!

https://git.pixie.town/f0x/matrix-streamchat

the topic of what trans (or adjacent) people picked for names came up in a channel i'm on, and i'm kinda curious where the hell they all got their names from (due to a high density of certain names), so i'm doing a Purely Unscientific™ poll on a site full of people who could answer this. answer if you want, please boost if you want, i ain't gonna do shit with this info

(also: testing if polls on this dingus even work)

Signups are OPEN for The Longest Night, Tidal Cycles' 2021 online solstice marathon! Open to all, especially if this is your first stream/performance. Grab a 20 minute slot here:
https://night.tidalcycles.org
More info:
https://club.tidalcycles.org/t/signups-are-open-2021-the-longest-night/3657

Fun fact: Phi (~1.618) is really close to the ratio between miles and kilometers (~1.609), which means you can use adjacent fibonacci numbers to quickly mentally convert back and forth between them.

for instance: 21 kilometers is roughly 13 miles (it's actually 13.05)