Notices by Ernie Smith (ernie@writing.exchange), page 2

There's an interesting trend in cheap laptops of late. To get you to buy, they soup up all the specs, including RAM and screen size, around a dog slow processor.

An 18.5 inch screen on a $379 laptop is kind of absurd.

@foone LOL, I should have known it’d be on your radar.

Found a piece of tech so obscure that one of the few modern-day references to it that I’ve found is in a Twitter thread by @foone from six years ago.

It’s so obscure that if you try to look it up on Google or Twitter it brings up a completely unrelated thing.

Clearly, I need to write about it.

Apparently Warner Bros. is just straight-up posting old movies on their YouTube channel now.

All within the last three weeks. There are 22 of them. Some stone-cold classics like Waiting for Guffman are in the mix, but most are DVD bargain bin fare.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7Eup7JXScZyvRftA2Q5hv69XiegDm6tQ

Proton deleted their replies, but I’m still cancelling them.

Thoughts on this? Based on the fact that two Mozilla Foundation folks are in the mix of advisors, I imagine it’s probably tied to them.

Kind of weird we didn’t see this type of org being built for the fediverse.

https://freeourfeeds.com/

@mastodonmigration @pluralistic Whatever your point of view on this, there has to be a better term you could use to make that point. It carries some pretty charged associations.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/05/11/527459106/tar-baby-a-folktale-about-food-rights-rooted-in-the-inequalities-of-slavery

@mastodonmigration @pluralistic Thanks. I get you’re passionate about this, and I don’t want to come off as dismissing your point (even if I have a less skeptical POV personally), but that was an important callout.

@pluralistic @josh I’m glad you signed onto this by the way.

@murph @tedium @jwz Sorry, I probably should have. I admit that I really got sucked into the “prior art in hardware form” rabbit hole when writing the piece.

When did the screen saver come to life? And why are they more boring now than they were 30 years ago?

I’d like to argue that when we talk about screen savers, we’re talking about two very different things.

https://tedium.co/2025/01/12/screen-saver-history/

new @tedium

Automattic decides to stop investing in WordPress more than it has to.

Because of course

https://automattic.com/2025/01/09/aligning-automattics-sponsored-contributions-to-wordpress/

Existential dread is on the menu for 2025. Here’s my attempt to work through it.

https://tedium.co/2025/01/02/tedium-trends-2025/

new @tedium

Hi, @tedium has a new website.

I just launched it as of two seconds ago. I would be chuffed if you came to visit it.

https://tedium.co

Gonna be straight up with y’all. I share paywalled links sometimes. I may not gift link them, or even call it out.

I’m a journalist and I want to support journalism. If I share something that’s intriguing enough for you to support a journalist, awesome.

Support my field.

Talking to someone whose late husband was a moderator on CompuServe. Now that's a fascinating data point for a resume.

Starting to feel like something.

LOL at this weak-ass reply to the Honey video. (via @theverge)

Not a denial, just a “this is fair game” response.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/23/24328268/honey-coupon-code-browser-extension-scam-influencers-affiliate-marketing

Over on Bluesky, I caught a fairly up-close view of the system not working. I didn’t like what I saw.

https://tedium.co/2024/12/17/bluesky-impersonation-risks/

new @tedium

@killyourfm @jnv You need the secondary partition, alas. But you can more or less ignore it once it’s all set up.