I am the journeyer from the valley of the dead Sega consoles. With the blessings of Sega Saturn, the gaming system of destruction, I am the Scout of Silence… Sailor Saturn.

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 29th, 2023

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  • Yeah I already have a lot of non-US stocks, and next week I’m going to rebalance to make them the majority.

    I’m not a finance person. My uncle who’s in the world of international corporate law thinks things will be fine so maybe I’m being a bit cautious but the way I see it there are a few big issues:

    • The US government is trying it’s best to implode itself.
    • There is a brain-drain effect (or heck, a worker-drain effect in general), it will pick up as things get worse.
    • The US government is becoming much more isolationist and detached from the global economy.
    • There is a small but real chance that the US government will start one or more major wars over the next decade

    All of this also increases the risk of “black swan” events like pandemics, hacks, the US “investing” all the “savings” they “found” into cryptocurrency schemes, large-scale unrest, or god knows what else.





  • US government tech hellscape roundup part the third (ugh):

    1. Elon Musk jokes(?) that the government doesn’t use SQL ??? (source, note that his tweet has an ableist slur). I don’t even know what to think about this. Is it supposed to be funny or something? Does he actually believe it?

    2. Article: Elon Musk’s A.I.-Fuelled War on Human Agency – People here probably already knew all this; but one of the ways the admin thinks they can fire everyone is by replacing people with AI / automating everything. Some of the social media responses from federal workers are pretty great:

      Really excited to see AI put on some waders and unclog a beaver dam from a water structure for me.

      If I’ve learned anything from all this it’s about how unfathomably based cool a lot of federal workers are.

    3. The less fascist / cowed parts of the infosec industry are currently raising the alarm about how insecure this all is. A representative social media post from Gossi The Dog

      I definitely recommend posting about what is happening in the US on LinkedIn as you will quickly learn many of the largest security vendors are staffed by people who have no interest in protecting people, while posting with their employers names.

    4. Some federal workers have been fired via emails calling them [EmployeeFirstName].

    Edit:

    1. Elon Musk The US State Department plans to buy $400m worth of armored Cybertrucks from Elon Musk (nytimes) (Edit: may have been ordered under Biden’s administration)

    2. doge.gov has been updated. Mostly just with more useless baby’s first website materials; but they promise a “comprehensive, government-wide org chart” and are hiring “software engineers, InfoSec engineers, and other technology professionals”.

      Aside: I already found two three minor website bugs despite not really looking for them and the website being tiny. But that can’t be right… they’re IT professionals while I’m DEI.

    3. Find replace is so hard :( and that’s why the government writes about “gay and rights” to avoid saying the… the… the forbidden t-word of which I dare not speak

    4. So about how I said doge.gov gives baby’s first website vibes; it’s database was left world writable lol

    5. doge.gov shares classified information

    6. Classic Musk “humor”: a “tech support” T-shirt to allude to all of this. The dude really likes custom T-shirts (which to be fair custom t-shirts can be awesome when they’re less bad)


  • Holy smokes Jeeps will reportedly show ads while you are freaking driving:

    Imagine pulling up to a red light, checking your GPS for directions, and suddenly, the entire screen is hijacked by an ad. That’s the reality for some Stellantis owners. Instead of seamless functionality, drivers are now forced to manually close out of ads just to access basic vehicle functions.

    One Jeep 4xe owner recently shared their frustration on an online forum, detailing how these pop-ups disrupt the driving experience. Stellantis, responding through their “JeepCares” representative, confirmed that these ads are part of the contractual agreement with SiriusXM and suggested that users simply tap the “X” to dismiss them.

    “Listen guys, if you don’t want me stabbing you you simply have to ask nicely every time, and also I’m trying real hard to reduce the rate of stabbing incidents so in a way I’m the victim here.”

    Reading around it sounds like modern cars can be user-hostile in general, and this might not be new; so I’m sure glad I have one from the ancient times of 2012. It has a tiny unobtrusive screen which does nothing but show my music, the odometer, the backup camera, any warnings, and the Hatsune Miku wallpaper I loaded into it.


  • go to linkedin and post the first thing you see (that provokes a reaction).

    Why would you do this to me?

    spoiler

    Great leadership is born under pressure.

    Anyone can perform when things are easy. Real leadership shines in moments of pressure.

    Most people react. Great leaders respond.

    Here’s how you can too:

    ❌ “You need to calm down” ↳ Why: Instantly escalates tension ↳ Instead: “I’m noticing we’re both getting tense. Should we take a break?”

    ❌ “This is a complete disaster” ↳ Why: Spreads panic and paralyzes action ↳ Instead: “What’s the one thing we absolutely must get right?”

    ❌ “You should have known better” ↳ Why: Creates shame, not learning ↳ Instead: “What can we learn from this for next time?”

    ❌ “It’s not my fault” ↳ Why: Signals lack of ownership ↳ Instead: “I may have contributed to this. Help me understand where”

    ❌ “Just figure it out” ↳ Why: Shows poor leadership ↳ Instead: “Can we clarify what success looks like for both of us?”

    ❌ “Why isn’t this done yet?” ↳ Why: Creates defensiveness ↳ Instead: “What’s the most immediate barrier we need to address?”

    ❌ “That’s not my problem” ↳ Why: Destroys team cohesion ↳ Instead: “We’re on the same team. Let’s figure this out together”

    ❌ “I don’t have time for this” ↳ Why: Devalues others’ priorities ↳ Instead: “I want to give this proper attention. Can we schedule 30 minutes?”

    ❌ “I already told you that” ↳ Why: Makes people shut down ↳ Instead: “Let me explain this another way”

    ❌ “That’s how we’ve always done it” ↳ Why: Kills innovation ↳ Instead: “What if we tried a different approach?”

    The truth: Reputations are fragile. And rebuilding them is expensive.

    P.S. Which response do you want to use more often?

    ♻ Repost to help your network communicate better.

    ➕ Follow me for more like this.









  • The file metadata of the oldest copy on the gutenberg webserver says 2003 – and the document itself says Gutenberg created it in 2003 and published it in 2005 (whatever that means, maybe they were delaying ebook releases to ensure a steady stream)

    Anyway this 2003 copy had their public domain boilerplate; it was described as a book in the public domain.

    There are indeed a lot of websites about this, but none with any more information that Project Gutenberg so I’m guessing they all trace back to the Gutenberg release. Probably you’d have to find some physical information about it in an actual library to trace it further.

    But I’m not like a professional book researcher or anything, that’s just my opinion!


  • Hackernews woke up feeling like fascism ( make sure to enable dead + flagged comments if you hate yourself):

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42905937

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42897696

    (Two comment threads about the CDC purging “woke” research, the comments are bad even by HN standards)

    Gee given a forum full of hackers you’d expect them to be against arbitrary removal of scientific studies. What happened to “information wants to be free”?


    Bonus US terribleness: the NTSB suddenly thinks Twitter* is the bee’s knees and way better than email! What coincidental timing https://xcancel.com/NTSB_Newsroom/status/1885734974298435943


    Also I know I know, more US politics. It turns out silicon valley fascists have gained power so expect this to keep happening for the forseeable future 🙃.

    These past two weeks have made me very uncomfortable working in Silicon Valley, I know last time I said I was planning to get out; but now it feels urgent both for my own well being, and to stop contributing to this industry. In trans communities we immediately saw coupy stuff** for the attempted transgender genocide that it is, the wider public and media is waking up to this very slowly.

    * An account-only platform that sometimes bans US citizens for being cool.

    ** If there’s interest I could try turning all of this into a top level post on morewrite or techtakes. I’ve been trying to avoid inundating people with US politics, but it’s extremely bad. Like constitutional crisis, rise of techno-fascism, dismantling of the administrative state, transgender extermination, put career roadblocks in front of minorities bad.