Notices by SlightlyCyberpunk (admin@mastodon.slightlycyberpunk.com)

@kaia OK but that is actually when I purchased my last PC and pretty close to when I'm expecting to buy my next one. I'm already on that ten year upgrade cycle and it's kinda nice tbh. Unlike Dell and HP and such, System76 does not produce instant e-waste. We need a whole lot more of that in this world...

@benroyce @john @ShredderFeeder Not everyone has the time to do that research. It ain't always easy. I'm regularly voting based on literally nothing more than a four year old interview on local radio from when the person was running for some different office. And for some races even that would be a lot of information. In at least one election all I could find to go on were photos of the candidate putting up yard signs! You only even get *claims* about what they want to accomplish at the highest level races, and even those require carefully watching their past history to know if they actually believe a single damn word of it. I struggle to figure this shit out and I'm invested enough to be taking classes on how to research candidates!

It'd be great if we had a party that actually held their candidates to some standard; an organization to do some of that vetting for us; instead of Ds and Rs that switch parties like an NFL draft without actually changing their positions...

Running under either party is basically just running with a corporate sponsor at this point. The only thing it proves is money and/or connections. And if you truly believe that people can all independently determine and vote for the best candidate then why does it matter which party? Why do we need parties at all? These organizations are either irrelevant or failures. Or they're highly successful as gatekeepers against us.

@bweller Seems like pretty obvious bullshit to me. There is no logical reason for them to do this, and the cartels are not stupid. And there's no evidence beyond statements from frequent liars in Trump's admin. This is the same "violent paid protesters" shit they've been trying to sell for years. Just more fabricated justifications for their own brutality.

@fkamiah17 @aral Any idea if Fair Lady was captured? They were having engine trouble and were literally sailing, and were one of the last still going last night...but they were in the back of the pack.

According to Al Jazeera, Israel says one boat still sailing that will be stopped if it attempts to breach the blockade -- implying they haven't even tried. Feels like either an insult to sameone far behind or they're just referring to one of the legal support ships.

@BeAware they also said bluesky was decentralized...

@maj “They falsely stated that I, a U.S. citizen, have no constitutional rights at a point of entry"

That's not exactly false. That's been the situation for a LONG time now.
https://www.aclu.org/documents/constitution-100-mile-border-zone

@vkc Voted for KDE although I gave up on both of them a couple years ago for Enlightenment which is SO MUCH BETTER! ;)

1) I dislike Gnome because I don't want to have to rely on a bunch of third-party extensions from god only knows where for crap that should just be a checkbox in the settings app.

2) Last time I used Gnome I couldn't even use the system settings app anyway -- it was taller than my screen, it wouldn't let me move it, it wouldn't let me shrink it, I couldn't hit the apply button because it was off the screen and about 80% of that vertical space was just empty space between options. They prioritize obnoxious unnecessary white space over basic accessibilty.

3) I gave up on KDE shortly after 4.0 not because it lacked any features or functionality, but because it was a bit slow and a bit unstable. So if forced to choose I'd just hope those issues had improved.

Christ when did utility poles become cache that needs to be constantly refreshed??

These executives must be *freaked* if they're sending goons out to rip paper off poles every day...

@lauren stumbled into this lovely example of that at work recently...and no, I was not trying to use any AI:

@bmacDonald94 I have Signal on my Android phone without any Google account connected...?

@lfa What server software are you running?

What's the current consensus on secure decentralized chat apps? We still on IRC/Jabber/Jitsi or is that all old news?

Apparently people are thinking that storing a copy of the Signal app will be enough to prevent fascists from shutting down secure comms. But of course, Signal is centralized so it'd be relatively easy to shut it down server-side. And while the code is all open, Signal has gone out of their way to shut down other projects trying to build on that code, so it probably would not be easy to make use of that at this point...

So should I just back up some Jabber apps and throw a server together or what? :)

Corporate putting in all of these extra hoops to jump through for "security" just to have the admins responsible for these systems go "I dunno what you're talking about, I'll just give you root access and you can do it yourself."

Lovely, even after explaining that corporate policy prohibits me from knowing the password to this account the admins are demanding that I be the one to choose the new password. OK then, I guess I'll take that secret unauthorized privilege escalation if you're just handing them out like fuckin candy...

Our unix admins seem very confused by the concept of FUCKING SSH

We've been trying to get this issue fixed since last week. It's fucking Thursday. "This issue" is a goddamn expired password on a service account whose password should not ever expire it the first place (it shouldn't allow you to login with the password, we don't need that, but now we can't login even without the password because it's expired.)

BUT PRIVATE CORPORATIONS ARE SOOO EFFICIENT!

Oh god I fear I've gone full middle-aged suburban white dad. For a minute there I was seriously considering trying to 3D print some kind of utility belt for holding a coffee cup.

But like...it's cold, so I want to bring some hot tea for the walk. But it's cold, so I would like to put my hands in my pockets not have to be holding the cup! I mean I could modify a bag to keep the cup upright easily enough but it'd still be a two hand operation to get it out and put it back...with a belt clip it could pop right off with one hand!

Sometimes I can just pocket that shit...but only if those aren't already filled with books and electronics...

@briansullivan @skinnylatte Yeah they definitely scam this. I worked for Tata for a few years. The trick is, your job is not your job. I was either an application team member, or a level three dev, or a senior analyst depending on who you asked. You'll have two guys trading shifts doing exactly the same work but the guy with a year more experience is here on an H1B and HR says he's a level 2 and the American working the other shift is a level 3 so the guy with the H1B gets paid 15% less.

And they'll justify that with education or annual reviews (which are largely political negotiations between managers) or whatever, but the fact is they're both doing the same work but the H1B worker gets paid less. And usually they work way more hours too. Because if they don't, they might no longer be in the top x% of the team and they'll get sent back to the team in India and one of those folks gets sent over here to replace them.

@FediTips I remember learning this when they first introduced edits but I think edits weren't widely supported by clients yet or something, so by the time I started seeing edits in the wild I'd forgotten. Just tried it out and it is excellent! Especially when someone edits a reallly long post, after you've boosted it. You get a notification that it changed, but it's good to be able to quickly know *what* they changed that now got your pre-emptive endorsement. Thanks for the reminder!

@brianvastag Oh shit it finally happened...I've been wondering when this would become a thing.

See, if you had ever asked my father what kind of music he listened to, you'd get specific artists and a detailed listing of subgenres. If you ask my mom what music she likes, you'll get an answer like "something happy"

The musicians my dad listened to probably do alright, but they certainly aren't world-famous millionaires. The musicians my mom listens to are though, because it's just whatever is on the radio, whatever is popular. Always felt weird that you kinda get paid more to make music for people who don't give a shit than you do if you make music for people who are super passionate about it. The easier you are to replace, the more money you seem to get.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Spotify is doing a good thing...but it did feel kinda inevitable to me that something like this would happen eventually...the secrecy and fraud ought to offend anyone, but I'm sure plenty of listeners had no issue with the music itself...

I just pictured the outcome being cheap tracks for streaming platforms and more exposure for random garage bands. But I guess I should have predicted fake bands instead, this is capitalism we're talking about after all...