Notices by Louis Ingenthron (louis@ingenthron.social)

@mekkaokereke The obvious answer would be centralization of services. With groups like MastoHost using shared resources for lots of servers, the economies of scale drops the overall per-server costs. If there's enough demand, that would even create competition to lower the price further.

@freemo Thanks! It's also responsive to the user's choice of dark mode in their browser, so the background becomes black for them.

Redid my website for potential new clients. Open to both criticism and referrals!

https://www.ingenthron.us

@freemo Personally, I don't think they "control" either party, other than a few useful-idiots like Tim Pool who take their money without even realizing it.

I do think they're involved in deep influence ops in the US, but my grasp of it is that it's largely geared more towards the masses than the electeds, riling us up and inflaming tensions and the like.

@freemo That kind of thinking strikes me as overly-conspiratorial and direly lacking in evidence. It's certainly possible, but I think Occam would take issue with it.

@freemo "when normalized" lmao.

I'm assuming you're normalizing against the donor country's GDP? I'm sure if you asked Ukraine if they'd prefer 2% of America's help or 90% of Ghana's, their answer would come immediately, because such normalization is meaningless in this circumstance.

@freemo If they had so much influence, why wouldn't they just prevent the aid packages from the beginning so they wouldn't have to throw their entire army through the meat grinder in Ukraine for over a year?

I certainly think Russia is trying to influence our political sphere, but much like everything else Russia does, it's only about 10% Machiavellian and the other 90% is buffoonery.

If you think Biden pardoning his own son is a good thing because it will piss off Republicans, you might be blue-MAGA.

#uspol

@freemo They lifted those restrictions a couple weeks ago, interestingly. Ukraine has now launched US missiles against Russian targets.

And, yeah, I disagree with that initial restriction too, but I see the logic: trying to do just enough to stop Russia without getting NATO dragged into a full-on land war. It's a difficult balancing act.

@freemo Maybe so, but it seems a bit far-fetched to me, especially what with their pushing so much funding to Ukraine as well.

If the Democrats have been bought by anyone, current evidence would seem to point to Israel, for whom they've shown far more deference.

@freemo Wait, if he's "controlling" the democrats, then why did the Democrats sanction so many of his oligarchs and take their shit?

Software engineers are hit hard in the current economy, and I'm no exception. As such, I now have an opening for new clients.

If anyone knows of a group that needs a Software Architect with 20+ years experience, for short- or long-term contracts, let me know.

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Important PSA:

Being a pacifist doesn't mean you'll never throw a punch.

It means you'll never throw the first punch.

You should always do your best to throw the last punch, pacifist or not.

@freemo @kraweel65 No, I'm saying the media failed to adequately cover him. They cleaned up his gibberish quotes into policy positions and failed to report on some of the more egregious things his ticket did (i.e. I just spoke to a Trump voters who didn't know his own running mate called him "America's Hitler").

@kraweel65 @freemo I'd argue it's a mix of what freemo is saying (supporting Israeli genocide) and an abdication of the mainstream media to cover Trump's abnormality to the degree it deserved.

@freemo Wait, aren't the last set the same thing?

@freemo Isn't it luck, though, even if purely through timing? If you were unlucky enough to be born a year or two later than you were, do you not think that head start would give your competitors enough time to make your same discovery before you did?

My point is that, as I believe it to work, success is nearly always equal parts luck of being presented with an opportunity, and hard work/preparation of being able to seize that opportunity.

@freemo Okay, so I'll grant that you met your opportunity with determination and hard work and that paid off.

But let me ask you this: How much of your overall success do you attribute to the good luck of having the right skills at the right time when there was a specific identifiable need that you could fill? In other words, if someone else released your algorithm a month before you did, how would your life now be different?

@freemo Learning coding and electronics is one thing, but you need money and hardware to practice them to any reasonable degree, especially for building new technology. Where did that come from?

@freemo Okay, let's drill into that first bit. How was your first job $100K? Mine was $5.50 an hour.