Notices by Dave Lane :flag_tino: 🇳🇿 (lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz), page 11

@djsumdog Even if (& I clearly don't think it's the case) 'climate catastrophe' isn't upon us, decoupling human prosperity from fossil fuel use is good & necessary no matter what.

@djsumdog I happen to think that we, as humans in the rich part of the world, have got used to expending vastly more energy than we need to in order to 'thrive/prosper' & that we'd actually enjoy our lives more if we expended far less and invested much of our energy in using less energy. And yes, you sometimes need to invest (energy) up front to save it in the longer term.

@djsumdog And wow, that's a pretty serious leap suggesting I want people to die. On the contrary - the same claim could be levelled at folks like you who're claiming that all this is made up, as people living on low-lying islands around the world find it impossible to grow crops due to salt water incursion... Not to mention the other 20-30% of humanity who live within a metre or two of sea level.

Fascinating: https://mastodon.social/@Snoro/111009719372820276 But not sure I'd take this approach without direct provocation from drivers. That said, it might influence people's vehicle purchasing decisions... Disclosure: I've used this (non-destructive but inconvenient) approach on a couple occasions when I've come across cars whose drivers have previously put my safety (as a cyclist obeying all road rules) at risk for their own convenience or out of ignorance of their responsibilities...

Thinking about the poor woman who was locked out of her Facebook-dependent business by the system & hasn't been able to contact anyone at FB. Was reminded of all those software companies who became 'Silverlight' developers... Haven't heard of them? There's a reason for that: Microsoft owned Silverlight, and then end-of-lifed it. Those companies, like this woman, got kneecapped because they made a very naïve business decision. Never let your business depend on a 3rd party you don't control.

@dogriley the best thing humanity could do is abandon FB en mass.

Periodic reminder: proprietary SaaS like Slack, MSO 365, Harvest, Trello, etc. are a lot like sending your beloved mission-critical data to a Mafia-run reform school. Sure, you can visit lil' Bobby Tables at Christmas, but only if you pay monthly & adhere to their strict terms. Yeah, you can have Bobby back... but it won't be in form you recognise. To look after your lil' Bobby properly, send him/her to a local school run by trusted folks in your community. Or heck, home-school. 1/2

@lnxw37a2 I know a fair bit about it. MSFT got its partners in every jurisdiction to join their national ISO committees just for that one vote. In effect, MSFT showed they could corrupt the global ISO process on a whim.

@topher the problem is gov'ts giving MSFT a get-out-of-jail-free card by adopting OOXML as an 'open standard' (that MS controls unilaterally & allows for 'binary blobs' within it). As a result, it can continue to keep potential competitors at bay by tweaking/changing details that make the competing software (from the uniformly oblivious user-perspective at least) look 'less capable'. It's entirely insidious and quite deliberate. @jackivan88

Periodic reminder: just because 'everybody does it!' or 'everybody uses it!' doesn't mean that everybody isn't wrong, generally badly informed, and working against everybody's best interesting. More often than not, that is, in fact, the case when technology is involved.

In the context of software provision, it's almost always the case. And yes, it is Microsoft/Google/Apple/Amazon/Facebook/Twitter/Oracle/Adobe/Salesforce/et al.'s fault. They deserve all the blame.

This is worth a read. Google aren't a 'safe pair of hands' for the digital world. https://www.defectivebydesign.org/blog/web_environment_integrity_is_an_all_out_attack_on_free_internet

@Suiseiseki in 'the damage they can do stakes', yes, take them seriously, but in the 'tech cred' stakes, nah. What's so sad is that so many people think they're great, mostly because they're totally dependent on them, and they have to adopt that impression in order not to feel like they're totally screwed... event though they are.

Microsoft, as usual, you're doing the wrong thing. https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/07/us-senator-blasts-microsoft-for-negligent-cybersecurity-practices/ I can't understand how anyone can take these Redmond folks seriously.

@sidawson @zyk I like the generic term "post" rather than toot or tweet. And #NZPost means we're rekindling a venerable identity that's otherwise flaming out...

This is a dire emergency - the people *in charge of digital education in NZ* haven't got the frickin' foggiest idea of what they're talking about. Not even the vaguest inkling. This, my friends, is why we cannot have any nice things.

They don't even realise how completely out of their depths they are. No one is holding them to account. This needs to change, urgently. Our society cannot afford for this wellspring of ignorance to be running the show, spending all our money on the *wrong* stuff.

Ugh. Just took part in a Zoom meeting (yes, stooped to putting it onto my Linux machine) with the Min of Ed and Edtech talking about some new VR-assisted driver education software they're all excited about. Oh. My. Goodness. The lack of knowledge in evidence among those running the meeting was utterly discouraging. The Edtech rep asked - with a straight face! - the Ministry person "when can new technologies like Blockchain and AI be added?" The ministry person said "we're looking into it". OMG.

Periodic reminder: public corporations are engines of inequity.

That's all they exist to do - extract from the many and bestow unto their shareholders, increasing disparity, concentrating wealth for the few. They are not benign.

@Suiseiseki yup. (I wrote up how/why here: https://davelane.nz/proprietary) @Firesphere

Don't you love proprietary software and trillion $ proprietary software corporations that really owns & controls 'yours'? 🤣 https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/15/amazon_echo_disabled_allegation/

@Firesphere yes, it does so implicitly, if it's proprietary. If it hasn't screwed us yet, there's still time. (but maybe it already has, and we just don't realise it yet).