deleted_account

Joined 14 years ago

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Comment · 1 year ago
Comment · 3 years ago
Comment · 3 years ago
This may be the wrong take-away, but the Air Force shooting your balloon down would be a massive source of pride for the science clubs I remember from my youth. We would have had that on a t-shirt within a week.
Comment · 3 years ago
Comment · 3 years ago
I was a tabletop gamer for 25 years before I played my first sit-down D&D session. GURPS, Paranoia, Cyberpunk 2020, WHFRP, TOON, Amber, World of Darkness...you name it. To say, "Wizards of the Coast wants to dismantle the tabletop industry," feels like hyperbole when there's a rich history of alternatives, but I sympathize with the content creators. There's a cultural battle as much as there is a commercial one being waged here.

That said you gotta be _asleep_ to not see the tightening of the reins coming from these mega-companies sitting on fertile creative IP. Marvel Cinematic Universe only made — what? — $28B worldwide while making Rocket-fucking-Raccoon a household name. Games Workshop put the screws to content creators leading to the launch of Warhammer+ and r/grimdank is still hitting the front page of Reddit. Not to mention Uber-nerd Henry Cavill is hooking up with Amazon to bring 40K to streaming.

The strategy works and I suspect it's driven entirely by folks — all grown up and with deep pockets — thirsty to see their marginalized childhood hobbies hit the mainstream. I'm conflicted. As much as I want to say, "Fuck WotC. Fuck Games Workshop" there's visceral appeal in hoping for good Drizzt Do'Urden movie or the Drop Site Massacre becoming as much a cultural touchstone as the The Red Wedding.

Comment · 3 years ago
Comment · 3 years ago
I feel like stupid is at least quantifiable. We just tolerate a lot of stupid.
Comment · 3 years ago
Comment · 3 years ago
Comment · 4 years ago
The timing makes this look like a reaction to Musk firing Twitter engineers for criticizing him on social media[1]. It seems like a thinly veiled loyalty test instead of a marshaling the troops for the rough road ahead. The lowest performing engineers ostensibly got the axe in the first round of layoffs. Now Musk wants to root out those employees who aren’t willing to dedicate their lives to the bizarre theater[2] of Total Commitment.

Some folks seem content to give this behavior a pass citing Musk’s admission that he works 100 hours a week The self-satisfied joy that the gravy train is over for these “lazy tech socialists” is surreal. When you consider that Musk is literally the richest person on earth, it is physically impossible for Musk to work enough hours — over multiple lifetimes — to reconcile a $193B net worth with what any reasonable person would consider a fair compensation.

And to believe that he has a plan for Twitter 2.0 as a “digital town square”[3] strains credulity when he’s been a notorious shitposter. It’s almost as if he insists on sincere engagement from everyone but himself. The Twitter Blue fiasco makes it look like Musk is struggling with his first truly /complex/ challenge. As opposed to, you know, simply complicated shit like rockets and electric vehicles.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/11/musk-fires-twitt... [2] https://twitter.com/esthercrawford/status/158770970548883046... [3] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1518677066325053441

Comment · 4 years ago
In contrast to what, the impartial journalism of the past[1]? It doesn't serve well to surrender your worldview to the journalistic authority over truth any more today than it did then.

But now, articles like the TechDirt post are extremely verifiable (admittedly, the "anticipating a messy collision" is my own editorializing.) Don't believe Twitter is under a consent order? Go read it[2]. Don't believe their CSIO quit? Go look at their LinkedIn profile[3]

But I suspect your issue is not with the facts of the article, but the motivation behind making this /news/. I'd argue it absolutely is news regardless of the circus surrounding surrounding the acquisition especially if you care about consumer privacy. You can go read the 2011 complaint[4]; TLDR Twitter was super cavalier with non-public consumer data and the FTC was, "Clean this shit up and put a process in place so it doesn't happen again." And it did happen again! This year Twitter paid $150M for using 2FA numbers for ad targeting[5].

So you now have to think: is Musk going to make consumer privacy a priority? Maybe these exoduses are a good thing? Clean house and all. Or maybe he still coming up with a plan while courting advertisers[6] and scrambling for recurring revenue? But that comes back to the original question: even if Musk gave a shit, does Twitter retain the organizational capacity to police itself?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism [2] https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/cases/2010... [3] https://www.linkedin.com/in/lea-kissner/ [4] https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/cases/2011... [5] https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2022/05/twitter-p... [6] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1585619322239561728

Comment · 4 years ago
Comment · 4 years ago
Comment · 4 years ago
I have to imagine Facebook and Uber had a few lawyers and one paid $4.9B in fines and the other's former-CSO is now awaiting sentencing on an obstruction of justice conviction.

The interesting proposition here is that Twitter could have lost the organizational capacity to comply with these consent decrees, or at least abdicated the responsibility to the engineers...which sounds bananas.

The Prequel-meme writes itself...

    ELON-AKIN: I'm not worried about the FTC. I build rockets.
    PADME-GNINEER: Then I shouldn't be either.
    ELON-AKIN: ...
    PADME-GNINEER: I shouldn't be either, right?
Comment · 4 years ago
Eighteen-percenter here. Made the decision the next car was going to be all-electric. Ended up going with a Chevrolet Bolt EUV. Prices are already competing with gas (compare 2023 All-Electric Bolt EV with, say, a 2023 Honda Civic Sedan) even before the rebates. And Chevy pays for the installation of the level 2 charging outlet; the installer had it down to a science: "I'm doing ten of these a week."

It's such a better driving experience. Untethered from buying gas, I'm now astonished how much infrastructure is dedicated to internal combustion vehicles.

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