Notices by Elias Mårtenson (loke@functional.cafe), page 6

@jneen @mcc gatekeeper is an incredibly arse-backwards way to implement platform security and could only be conceived by someone who has a binary view of the world: our code=good, anybody else's code=bad.

Why shouldn't I be allowed to have security while also having the ability to run what I want? What does it take to get these organisations to understand that security isn't binary?

Very few systems exist that solve this in the correct way, with Qubes OS probably being the most mature. Sadly these come with their own set of drawbacks which makes them suboptimal to a lot of people.

There is unfortunately no incentive for platform vendors to pursue this because locking down the platform also aligns with the financial incentives of the companies so we're just going to see more of this.

I remember back in the 90's, when I was doing military service in the airforce. I was in a forest with my unit, and it was dark, cold, we were all tired and it was all in all a terrible time.

At the time, someone (maybe me?) said: "Don't worry, years later we won't remember this. We'll only remember the good parts".

It's now been 25 years or so, and you know what? They were right. I'm thinking back on that time as having had a fun time with my friends.

I see people post rose-coloured representations of past times over here on a variety of topics. The good old days were never as good as you think they were.

I don't use twitter, but I kinda enjoy watching the drama. I went to the main page to see what it looks like now, and really? How incompetent can you get?

@lauren I mean, that means you're doing it right, no?

@thomasfuchs imagine if they were using a federated protocol. Then they could have moved to a different instance.

@teajaygrey @zens @mcc Madam DOS?

I have listened to a few episodes of Tech Won't Save Us, and it's pretty good.

But... Why on earth are they only advertising their presence on twitter of all places? The content of the show is precisely the content someone here would produce, but yet, even when Molly from web3 is going great was on, only the twitter feeds were advertised.

Perhaps I'm living in a bubble, having only been on the Fediverse (and Reddit, until recently) for the last 6 years or so, but I thought at least big tech sceptical people in general had started looking for alternatives to Twitter. Apparently I was wrong about this.

https://www.techwontsave.us/

@clacke I have to watch the TOS episode where they introduced Kahn, but was he actually known? I seem to recall Kirk had never heard of him before?

@doot Linux runs on bluesky. That's why bluesky is compatible with the androids.

It's true. The Talon Tusk told me.

@thomasfuchs If you mention games and excel, then I'm reminded by this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xubbVvKbUfY

@bagder I read the critique. It's very good. I can only conclude that they don't have any arguments.

@uliwitness I'll call them movie locomotives from now on.

@armadsen @thomasfuchs I'm gen-x and I think there was a misconception in the generation before mine that once kids grow up with computers they will all understand it.

That was wrong. Once you grow up with something that is established you stop caring about how it works. I got a drivers license in the 90's, and I have no idea how to fix anything in a car, and frankly have no interest in it. If I had a car in the 50's or earlier I think I would have needed to understand it. Opening the bonnet to check the oil was was just part of driving cars.

@clacke there is a French product that combines ibuprofen with caffeine. It's quite effective. I haven't seen it here.

@clacke how was it?

@larsbrinkhoff I'm not sure a single line of code was written on it, but it was supposed to be gule based. It died once Gnome became a thing.

@larsbrinkhoff You mean teak? I mean, I'd love to see that too, but at least they haven't claimed it's actually an active project, much less posting regular progress reports. 🙂

When the Star Citizen kickstarter was announced I put about 35 dollars into it because why not? I'd get the game, and if the project failed I wouldn't have lost much.

What I didn't expect was to still be getting progress updates mailed to me over a decade later.

I wonder if anyone has compared it to Hurd. Someone really should because it's on that level.

I joined Sun Microsystems back in 1997. My job, at least initially, was to support customers with their problems in case they were more complex than can be covered as part of a simple support call.

On my first day at the job, I got the usual introduction. Here's the computer, here's your account, etc. And here's a copy of "Sun Performance and Tuning" by @adrianco. Read it.

Well, I did. The next two days I red it from start to finish. It may seem like a weird thing to ask a new employee to do on the first day, but that book really got me through the next several years working for Sun.

Sun was really a special place at that time, and while I definitely have appreciated other places of employment, Sun was really somewhat unique. It was a place that were doing absolutely cutting edge stuff, while at the same time being open enough that I could contact pretty much anyone if I needed information.

I'm glad I had the opportunity to be part of that, and I'm sad that they didn't make it, and eventually were absorbed by Oracle, which probably (I had left long before that) didn't go any good for the morale of the people who were still there.

@atomicpoet You have to understand where he's coming from.

He's very used to attaching himself to something, and then strongly identifying with that thing. This is of course true for the Apple stuff, but for the longest time it was Twitter, until it wasn't tenable anymore.

Twitter really suited him, since it very well matches his blogging style (quite something and add a few sentences of sometimes snarky commentary)

Twitter was definitely part of his "rise to fame" so to speak, since it amplified his blog posts, so being forced off the platform cannot have been easy.

I remember when G+ came out, and he made a single post on there pretty early, with a single sentence where he proclaimed he didn't enjoy it. Note that this was long before G+ actually failed.

So what do you do when your megaphone has been shut off? You go looking for another one. If your replacement megaphone has the property that it can be silenced by a nearby neighbourhood that doesn't want to hear it, you'll be upset.