Developers wanted to build and deploy apps to end user machines. The round trip for page loads was lousy for usability.

Java applets were too shitty. Flash was too janky and hard to work with. So Mozilla started adding JavaScript as a hack. It filled a need.

a barrier-to-entry that makes it difficult to develop new browsers,

It definitely adds a barrier to entry, but JavaScript was really perfected in chromium, which is a different codebase from the folks who proposed and built js to begin with.

I’m not saying JavaScript is good, but it fills a need.

Our reality feels superficial and degenerate.

I suspect it was ever thus. As long as wars are far away they won’t seem real.

The 15th Federated will remember our sacrifice at the Battle of the Erie. As long as there’s a Fifteenth, we’ll live on. o7

Cyberpunk is a critique and warning about hypercapitalism with cool aesthetics and technology. Somehow we ended up with zero aesthetics, meh technology, and we’re far down the road to actual factual shit down your throat hypercapitalism.

I always try to end depressing comments with something positive, but I can’t think of anything. Hug your favourites, and good luck in the Climate Wars.

In your face Premier League! MLS is where it’s at!

I just do it for social reasons.

In a recent series of experiments, we paid people a few dollars to unfollow the most divisive political accounts on X. After a month, they reported feeling 23% less animosity towards other political groups. In fact, their experience was so positive that nearly half the people declined to refollow those hostile accounts after the study was over. And those who maintain their healthier newsfeed reported less animosity a full 11 months after the study.

Twitter got a lot better when I unfollowed the peeps whose tweets I hated. But it also got boring, so I stopped using it (this was loooong before Trump, Elon, etc).

There’s probably a lesson there.

Cloudflare’s customers probably wouldn’t be on board with that. Google’s properties provide a tonne of traffic to businesses. Doing anything to put that in jeopardy would probably have many of Cloudflare’s customers looking for a new provider.

I have been a disciple of wobbly windows since they graced Compiz in the Year of Our Jiggle 2006. Often have I taken solace in their bounciness.

It just seems like dude is suffering from Not invented here and wants to reinvent the wheel. The only reason anyone noticed is because a tech b-lister is involved.

I, for one, welcome our new jiggle physics overlords.

Let’s fucking go

The Facebook Files made – and provided evidence for – multiple allegations, including that Facebook was well aware of how toxic Instagram was for many teen girls; that Facebook has a “secret elite” list of people for whom Facebook’s rules don’t apply; that Facebook knew its revised algorithm was fueling rage; and that Facebook didn’t do enough to stop anti-vax propaganda during Covid-19. Most damningly of all, The Facebook Files reported that all of these things were well known to senior executives, including Mark Zuckerberg.

It’s clear which side Sorkin is taking. “I blame Facebook for January 6,” he said last year. “Facebook has been, among other things, tuning its algorithm to promote the most divisive material possible. Because that is what will increase engagement … There’s supposed to be a constant tension at Facebook between growth and integrity. There isn’t. It’s just growth.”

Corps are gonna corp.

That’s a really weird way of looking at it.

That’s how I roll.

Without the database, there’s no central ledger to consult as to whether or not you’re legally a person.

We’re already seeing them do that without a database. 🤷‍♂️

Other countries are able to maintain internal databases without using them to screw over their own citizens (except when they do). The problem isn’t the database.

See the UK Post Office accounting scandal, in which a persistent computer error went unfixed for decades and caused hundreds of post office employees to be fired and dragged through courts for corruption that never happened. A good chunk of them committed suicide.

The database is the least important part of the system: the organizational structure, rules, and procedures are way more important, because they actively help or harm people.

no no, it’s an input to a Palantir database

As someone in the software/networking space, I have a hard time with the author’s lack of attribution of the control/evasion characteristics of networks to people (developers of protocols, network operators, and users). Yeah, he admits the MPAA exists, but dude doesn’t mention Bram Cohen.

Describing files as “artificial life” in

Because peer-to-peer networks on which all files replicate are unpredictable complex systems, the files themselves can be seen as a form of nonorganic life. The reproduction of files can be described with a family tree in the same way that genetic family trees show the relationships between biological relatives.

is tortured.

Yeah, control/evasion is an arms race, but it isn’t meaningfully described as interactions within file sharing networks. It’s interactions between people, institutions, laws, legislators, courts, and software owned by different actors.

Generally speaking, no programmable networked device is guaranteed to be under your control.

You can make strong arguments about certain types of hardware and software, but it is always possible that it contains a backdoor from the manufacturer, and it is almost guaranteed that it has multiple vulnerabilities that would give a remote attacker full control.

Related

Edit: Generally, I agree with the sentiment that things shouldn’t be this way, but that’s the world we live in. Given how we build software and hardware, we need to be able to update our devices to fix vulnerabilities. As long as that requirement exists, no device can be considered trustworthy.

1. I haven’t seen a built in picker for multi-character emojis, like the ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (on OSX and Android)
2. Sometimes the description I’m thinking of and the picker text doesn’t line up, but I’m not sure if Google’s picker will be that smart.

🤷‍♂️