Notices by volkris@qoto.org, page 3

@freemo Yeah, one thing I was struck by was the constant talk of himself and what he (supposedly) did, instead of what we did, or what the government did, etc. Humility would be nice, but at least he should realize that it wasn’t a moment to talk about himself.

The big problem with the #Biden State of the Union speech was that instead of speaking to the whole country about the whole country, it focused on speaking to his own choir about himself and his reelection.

That’s why people are criticizing it as a campaign speech.

If you’re a Biden supporter, realize that the speech did not invite non-supporters, including independents, to join in his efforts. It appealed only to those already on board, which is not productive in terms of actually getting those efforts done.

In other words, if you’re in favor of what Biden was calling for, you too should be critical that this #SOTU won’t help get those things done.

The speech seemed focused on helping nobody… except Joe Biden’s personal reelection.

@wjmaggos what about ATProtocol prevents decentralization?

From what I’ve read it promotes it better than the protocols here.

@wjmaggos

It’s a really important point that different people use social media differently and expect different things out of social media.

The reason I think this point is so important is because too often users will think the system works one way and expect it to work that way when in reality it’s working a different way.

That applies here. You bring up the idea that most of what we do on social media is targeted toward the public, and platforms like Twitter and Mastodon seem very focused on that mode, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

However, a user that expects more privacy and less targeting toward the public might find themself surprised if their content is much more public than they were expecting.

So that’s why I grind that ax pretty regularly.

@Hyolobrika

@wjmaggos Well the other half of the ax that I grind is that I wish Fediverse developers had much more of a focus on end users, on letting end empowering end users to shape their experiences the way they want so that different people can use the same platform in different ways.

We do see some of that with, for example, picture posting sites existing alongside the microblogging sites. Different interfaces just have to figure out how to handle different types of content coming across.

But taking it a step farther, this is why I emphasize ActivityPub being not so much decentralized as centralized around instances. That is a constraint that prevents this platform from being as flexible to different users.

And I think ATProtocol seems more decentralized and more flexible so that more users can have different sorts of experiences all on the same network.

In a way it’s like how web traffic and email all coexist on the internet. If you decentralize more control you can have more different approaches to the experience.

@Hyolobrika

@wjmaggos

Well for what it’s worth, my opinion, just an opinion, is that the platform was held back by engineering decisions that came out of a web server world, where everything was focused on servers instead of users.

If you look at the technologies underneath ActivityPub, it looks like developers grabbed a bunch of off-the-shelf web technologies and cobbled them together. Lots of http and webfinger and web certificates, etc.

They could have started more from scratch, but this is the direction they went, and for better or worse, it’s going to be a server oriented platform because it was built on server oriented technologies.

I think it was a case of having a hammer and everything looking like a nail 🙂

@Hyolobrika

@Hyolobrika I’d be interested in learning about those proposals.

My concern is that it’s like trying to bolt wings onto a car to make it fly instead of starting from scratch with an airplane fuselage: I think the platform is fundamentally not adapted for it, so I’m skeptical that those additions would work in an elegant way.

But I’m interested!

@wjmaggos

@freemo that has been the opposite of my experience.

Ugh, #docker!

This doesn't help me feel any better with my long criticisms of the industry-wide move toward #containerization.

Versioning has always seemed to be especially problematic in those systems.

But mainly I'm half joking with this post. I know a person can't cling to the old solutions while the world moves on.

But you kids need to get [your containers] off my lawn! :)

@freemo #computerengineering #softwaredevelopment

@freemo right so that’s why I wonder what @notaleman is actually asking.

I will leave it up to them to clarify the question.

@freemo then I’d ask him to rephrase the question because it seems odd to ask about society being held at gunpoint.

I’m thinking about literal guns, but perhaps he means something figurative if he’s talking about society.

@notaleman

@freemo not necessarily

@freemo a while back, maybe last year? I heard somebody propose that these days Republicans tend to err in magnitude while Democrats err in direction or sign.

Since then it’s been very interesting to think about current events through that lens.

For example, off the top of my head, you could consider federal government deficit spending where Republicans have been talking as if it’s the end of the world while Democrats have been talking as if it’s actually a good thing.

So I don’t think Democrats are following suit, but they are committing their own errors in ways that are orthogonal to the errors of Republicans.

To put it simplistically, it’s almost like Democrats are doing a good job of a bad task while Republicans are doing a bad job of a good task.

I don’t know which is worse, but I personally find the Republican side to be more frustrating.

I often stay up to date with #conservative media in #USPolitics just to keep apprised of what the #GOP is talking about, or to put it in a different way, so you don’t have to, but lately it’s getting just two much even for me.

It’s one thing to disagree with facts that #Republicans are working with, but lately they are getting more and more unhinged in their actual arguments, contradicting themselves but seeming oblivious of it.

For example, this week I heard the line that progressive attacks against #Trump are good for him because they will make him seem moderate to voters. If the ideologues are attacking him, then he must be moderate, right? But then the next moment that same presenter started talking about progressive attacks against #Biden without applying the exact same reasoning to that case.

In the past few weeks mainstream conservative talking points have just gotten ridiculous in their blind support for Trump. They’ve stopped talking about policy, or their claims about accomplishments, or anything like that. Now it’s just getting into chanting that really didn’t exist before.

On one hand, it’s sad to watch, it’s pathetic, and on the other hand it’s boring.

So I figure they are setting themselves up for a repeat of the red wave that never showed up during the last election. They are not setting themselves up to win.

Sigh. I wish they would at least make it interesting to watch.

@HistoPol The problem is that a lot of that has already been debunked.

It looks like a clear pattern if you don’t take into account that a lot of it just isn’t the sensational story that pro-publica is trying to sell to the public.

@cdarwin

@freemo these days I'm constantly struck by how much money is spent to buy the latest computers that are slower at doing the same processes we used to do decades ago on hardware that was exponentially slower.

Because apparently efficiency is not given enough priority in computer engineering these days.

It's really something.

@Moon in my experience one really important reason is because the brim interferes with field of vision, so you end up knocking your hard hat into obstacles that you would have otherwise seen.

Which is annoying.

Another reason is fitting into some welding masks that fit much better with the hat backwards.

Sometimes on construction sites you can identify the welders by their backwards hard hats.

@olmitch

@freemo it's a tough call, especially if you might suspect the tips are shared with other employees who actually were helpful.

@Hyolobrika Oh, it’s one of the main areas I nerd out on, so I could talk about it all day 🙂

I also think it’s fascinating to contrast the US system against the UK system, the role that the written Constitution plays in contrast to the British system of fundamental law.

If you’re really interested I could suggest some readings, particularly from the federalist papers, a set of documents written by the people who wrote the US Constitution explaining exactly what they were thinking and how they imagined the US system functioning.

But yeah, in a sentence the US president has absolutely no authority that hasn’t been granted to him by the Constitution plus the Congress. Any action he attempts to take that is not granted by both is illegal and anybody carrying out such orders would be carrying out illegal orders.

So it doesn’t matter how much a president might want to be a dictator. The entire massive institution that is the federal government is structured such that dictatorial leanings would be smothered.

@freemo @realcaseyrollins

@Hyolobrika (ok fine I suppose I should correct my statement that there are some limited authorities that don’t require Congress, but they are extremely limited :) )

@freemo @realcaseyrollins