Notices by Your friendly 'net denizen (cstanhope@social.coop)

@cwebber I know this doesn't explain everything, and it's a completely US perspective. But I noticed growing up that we mostly compartmentalize democracy in the US and practice it in very few ways. Mostly only in government. Even our legislative bodies constantly hand new powers over to the executive branches.

(I realize this is a convenient strategy. It allows a legislator to run for or against an executive without taking responsibility themselves.)

@cwebber Thanks! 😄

@cwebber Beware... I live!

I mean, they attempt to do it in a lot of ways (e.g. public school curriculum), but it's wild to watch them edit the transcript of past discussions:

https://github.com/nasa/Transform-to-Open-Science/commit/bb7560bd1c35f6e2e200a1ad78f4c78d28ab282b#diff-90ec3c142ac23b2fc386e0464bcc8f652f2022526488bf66880836a4692b3611

(The speed (and lack of discretion) at which this is happening makes me think LLMs are involved. I'm so glad my... *shudder*... peers built these bullshit machines.)

@clacke Reminds me how I didn't hear glottal stops until a friend of mine from Venezuela pointed out she couldn't pronounce Cotton like I do (the name of a coworker). And I was confused, "I'm pretty sure I've heard you say Cotton's name..." She says, "No I say it with a 't' and you say it with..." and then she gestured to her throat. And my mind was blown a tiny bit when I realized what she meant. 😆

@cwebber Too real... 😭

@KasTasMykolas @hisham_hm Oh cool! I didn't know about that. TIL.

@hisham_hm If you use from:hisham_hm on mastodon.social's search box does that help? Or is the search so limited it's still not doing what you need?

(I've had to resort to downloading an archive of my toots and then grepping the .json file. 😆)

Code like other people matter.

@valhalla This is going to be one of those associations that's going to get stuck in my head on first exposure and will pop to mind whenever I see a trackpoint device. 😆

Phrases like "average user"... "normal people"... kind of set me on edge. We should just say "imagine a perfectly spherical person".

Logging off like...

@yrabbit You're right about the boards. I haven't tried to price their parts in any sort of volume, but if there is a similar price difference, then yikes!

@yrabbit I dug up an old invoice. Back in 2015 I was able to get that icestick board for $21.86. Hmm...

Aw, bummer. It looks like makers and hobbyists are not buying enough Lattice FPGAs. Lattice is announcing layoffs:

https://www.hillsboronewstimes.com/business/hillsboro-semiconductor-industry-takes-another-hit-as-lattice-announces-14-workforce-reduction/article_5bc138c6-a089-11ef-b6ed-c36ab7740877.html

#FPGA

Some DIY inspiration and aspiration:

"It's a digital book called Make it Yourself: 1000 Useful Things to Make...

Think of it like those old mail order catalogs that contained everything the average person might use in every day life. The difference here is that instead of products to buy, every item listed represents a DIY project that you can make yourself."

https://n-o-d-e.net/makeityourself.html

https://makeityourself.org/

@theruran Sometimes we write in ancient dialects because we're supporting hardware with ancient compilers. Not that you should see much of that sort of code in the open, but I don't know anything about the cultish types.

I like how Apple's "Gatekeeper" name says exactly what it is. It's cool how we sleep walk into a computing world where you are only allowed to trust somebody as long as Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc. also trust them.

https://hackaday.com/2024/11/01/apple-forces-the-signing-of-applications-in-macos-sequoia-15-1/

(Note I had dalliance with Apple products a long time ago. I don't currently use Android. And I only use Windows at work because its a requirement there. But dealing with one or more of these corps are largely unavoidable to most of us.)

Step by step they're enclosing computing. Pick your preferred monopolist gatekeeper.

Between individuals like myself and whole communities of people helping each other out there in various ways, I suspect that's a large part of what allows the modern complex tech stack to actually continue to exist. If corps actually had to bear the entire burden of technical support for their products, could they continue to exist in their current form?