If you think about it though, it's the danger of being wildly successful. If you end up creating a car company larger than every other car company on the planet combined, and then and a claimed space company, and you have a bunch of other things that seem to be doing fine, the message that the entire universe is sending you is that you're something special.
That's how you overextend yourself, and we really do see it with a lot of these really successful people.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure Elon works very hard and makes a lot of good decisions, you don't get to be in the spot that he's in without doing some things right, but there's an awful lot of stuff that was pure chance as well. Just happened to be the guy running the company that all the investors decided to dump all their money in during an era of unprecedented money printing. Just happened to become the darling of the environmental movement. Just happened to become super rich in the com blow up, and be one of the few people to keep their wealth.
Once you temper your view of yourself as an infinite genius with the reality that no matter how infinite your genius and how virtuous your life is, you only get the opportunities that you get, and if you're the best it's probably because you got some opportunities someone else didn't, then you stop imagining that everything that you do is going to be immediately and automatically successful.
Now getting away from all that stuff for a second, seems to me that if you wanted to produce an open ecosystem, it would make a lot more sense to support the existing open ecosystems. Instead of making a brand new operating system, pay some people to contribute to the existing open operating systems such as mobian, and if you're going to make a new phone, figure out how to make one that's powerful enough to run the software that already exists. Pine phone is great, but it's like a 15-year-old phone and that is immediately apparent once you load Android on it.
That's how you overextend yourself, and we really do see it with a lot of these really successful people.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure Elon works very hard and makes a lot of good decisions, you don't get to be in the spot that he's in without doing some things right, but there's an awful lot of stuff that was pure chance as well. Just happened to be the guy running the company that all the investors decided to dump all their money in during an era of unprecedented money printing. Just happened to become the darling of the environmental movement. Just happened to become super rich in the com blow up, and be one of the few people to keep their wealth.
Once you temper your view of yourself as an infinite genius with the reality that no matter how infinite your genius and how virtuous your life is, you only get the opportunities that you get, and if you're the best it's probably because you got some opportunities someone else didn't, then you stop imagining that everything that you do is going to be immediately and automatically successful.
Now getting away from all that stuff for a second, seems to me that if you wanted to produce an open ecosystem, it would make a lot more sense to support the existing open ecosystems. Instead of making a brand new operating system, pay some people to contribute to the existing open operating systems such as mobian, and if you're going to make a new phone, figure out how to make one that's powerful enough to run the software that already exists. Pine phone is great, but it's like a 15-year-old phone and that is immediately apparent once you load Android on it.
It's really interesting having a server with way too much memory for what you're using it for. I started with a server with 2 gigabytes of ram, then bumped it up to four, and then eventually ended up with 16. So at this point I have more memory then I had memory and swap at various times, and it's surprisingly challenging trying to force the server to keep things in memory rather than hammer the hard drive. I had my swappiness down to one, now I'm trying zero to see how that works.
The implied conspiracy theory that people saying that have is hilarious.
"All kinds of people went on to a platform that I wasn't on years and years and years ago, and created multiple communities running across thousands of servers in dozens of countries on a platform they had absolutely no idea that I would come to, and this is all been a massive conspiracy theory to attack me personally in the unlikely event that a billionaire that I don't like by the platform that I prefer using and I tried to migrate"
Talk about the pettiest 15 dimensional xanatos festival!
"All kinds of people went on to a platform that I wasn't on years and years and years ago, and created multiple communities running across thousands of servers in dozens of countries on a platform they had absolutely no idea that I would come to, and this is all been a massive conspiracy theory to attack me personally in the unlikely event that a billionaire that I don't like by the platform that I prefer using and I tried to migrate"
Talk about the pettiest 15 dimensional xanatos festival!
The thing I find most baffling is the fact that these people who are complaining about how hard things are aren't even running their own instances. They're just coming to a website someone else is running for free without any advertising and complaining that it doesn't cater to them.
I hate to swing around the e word, but it kind of seems super entitled. "I have been here for 37 seconds, let me tell you what you are doing wrong on the platform you have been happily enjoying for the past few years"
I hate to swing around the e word, but it kind of seems super entitled. "I have been here for 37 seconds, let me tell you what you are doing wrong on the platform you have been happily enjoying for the past few years"
Completely different application of rules is a huge one. Over 150 days of violent riots causing hundreds of millions of dollars and including explosives attacks on courthouses, an attack on the Whitehouse that sent the president into a bunker, buildings burned down with innocent people inside, and occupation by a group claiming to be autonomous of the government were "mostly peaceful protests" and most people involved were released immediately. Contrast with j6 or the trucker convoy, it's clear not all people are treated equally under the law.
People leave corporate big tech for a place that is literally its opposite, and then they bitch that it's not big tech.
Guys! Big tech is that way! 👈 If that's what you want you can go back and have it!
Guys! Big tech is that way! 👈 If that's what you want you can go back and have it!
I find when I go into an exclusively right wing space I start to think "oh, I must be left wing" and when I go I to an exclusively left wing space I start to think "oh, I must be right wing"
Honestly, I would prefer not to throw in with either one entirely because you end up getting a whole bunch of weird baggage. It's like, if you agree that the government should really be balancing budgets then you also have to agree that children should be forced to pray to a religion they don't necessarily follow in schools. On the flip side, if you agree that we should be doing more to help the poor, you also have to believe that we should be trying to destroy the family. I'm sure that that works out very well for certain people who don't really want to have to think a whole lot about their political ideology, but I actually do want to think about my political ideology. I want to make decisions about what I support on the case by case basis and sometimes the things that I'm going to support are not going to be on the same "side".
So there's a fallacy out there saying that because you don't support one side or the other you don't have any strong opinions about anything, I think that's completely wrong. Just because you aren't walking in lockstep with a certain complete ideology that someone else developed does not mean that you don't have your own ideology consisting of strong opinions.
The thing is, if you look at the world and make your own decisions, you make a very poor pawn. Nuance and discussion amongst many people may come up with very good ideas, but it doesn't build an army -- and the powers that be want an army.
Honestly, I would prefer not to throw in with either one entirely because you end up getting a whole bunch of weird baggage. It's like, if you agree that the government should really be balancing budgets then you also have to agree that children should be forced to pray to a religion they don't necessarily follow in schools. On the flip side, if you agree that we should be doing more to help the poor, you also have to believe that we should be trying to destroy the family. I'm sure that that works out very well for certain people who don't really want to have to think a whole lot about their political ideology, but I actually do want to think about my political ideology. I want to make decisions about what I support on the case by case basis and sometimes the things that I'm going to support are not going to be on the same "side".
So there's a fallacy out there saying that because you don't support one side or the other you don't have any strong opinions about anything, I think that's completely wrong. Just because you aren't walking in lockstep with a certain complete ideology that someone else developed does not mean that you don't have your own ideology consisting of strong opinions.
The thing is, if you look at the world and make your own decisions, you make a very poor pawn. Nuance and discussion amongst many people may come up with very good ideas, but it doesn't build an army -- and the powers that be want an army.
I wonder if you could create a whole website who's sole purpose is just a route your Twitter through it, and place all the Twitter logos with Mastodon logos and replace any reference to Twitter with mastodon. Then they would just be posting to twitter, and what they wouldn't be able to see the name and they would have the perfect Mastodon that they've always wanted.
I recall around 2008, a lot of companies were complaining that financial regulations in Canada didn't allow "innovative" Fintech. They said we needed more flexibility. Seems to me flexibility is the flexibility to run comple scams...
Along the same lines, I think a lot of people liked the old Star Trek and Star Trek TNG and DS9 (and yes, to an extent even Voyager and maybe Enterprise but I never really saw that one) because one of the big parts of the show is that the people on the screen are virtuous but not magically so. Big parts of the show were people sitting around talking about what is right because it isn't always immediately apparent, and depending on how you approach the problem you could end up with completely different answers to that question.
Contrast with today's media which unfortunately reflects today's culture. If there are questions about the virtue of an action, they're superficial rather than complex, and usually what is right is treated as black and white and self-evident, rather than grey and ambiguous.
In some ways, I suspect this is a negative consequence of a post-world war 2 culture. Because that one war was relatively straightforward where one side was seen as atrocious and the other basically wasn't, that became the mythologized. A few straightforward stories aren't bad, but when that is the default every time and we stop questioning ourselves it's a path to decadence.
Contrast with today's media which unfortunately reflects today's culture. If there are questions about the virtue of an action, they're superficial rather than complex, and usually what is right is treated as black and white and self-evident, rather than grey and ambiguous.
In some ways, I suspect this is a negative consequence of a post-world war 2 culture. Because that one war was relatively straightforward where one side was seen as atrocious and the other basically wasn't, that became the mythologized. A few straightforward stories aren't bad, but when that is the default every time and we stop questioning ourselves it's a path to decadence.
Watching homeward bound, that movie where the two dogs and the cat end up going on an adventure to try to find their masters.
One moment that made me really think was a scene where they finally got on the path to going home. Basically, they found a little girl and had a choice at that point: They could leave the little girl, or they could help the little girl find the adults, but helping the little girl had a good chance they'd be sent to the pound as strays.
In the movie, they chose to save the little girl despite the risk because it was the right thing to do.
It's hard to describe, but I felt like that moment is something we rarely see in movies anymore today: Instead of being the designated good guys and getting everything because they are the designated protaganist, they actually do a thing that is purely altruistic and carries significant risk of loss for themselves, showing virtue when it's not the best thing to do for them, but it's the right thing to do. The story then rewards that virtuous behavior with progress, and even though it's not logically sensible, it is emotionally resonant -- they *deserved* to get what they wanted because they're good, and so when their selfless deeds are unexpectedly rewarded, it packs an emotional punch.
I think this is what a lot of critics mean when they accuse modern protagonists of being unlikable. They get what they want because they are the designated protagonists, but they don't display active virtue besides just being generally inoffensive.
One moment that made me really think was a scene where they finally got on the path to going home. Basically, they found a little girl and had a choice at that point: They could leave the little girl, or they could help the little girl find the adults, but helping the little girl had a good chance they'd be sent to the pound as strays.
In the movie, they chose to save the little girl despite the risk because it was the right thing to do.
It's hard to describe, but I felt like that moment is something we rarely see in movies anymore today: Instead of being the designated good guys and getting everything because they are the designated protaganist, they actually do a thing that is purely altruistic and carries significant risk of loss for themselves, showing virtue when it's not the best thing to do for them, but it's the right thing to do. The story then rewards that virtuous behavior with progress, and even though it's not logically sensible, it is emotionally resonant -- they *deserved* to get what they wanted because they're good, and so when their selfless deeds are unexpectedly rewarded, it packs an emotional punch.
I think this is what a lot of critics mean when they accuse modern protagonists of being unlikable. They get what they want because they are the designated protagonists, but they don't display active virtue besides just being generally inoffensive.
I've been really impressed with Rex Murphy's writing as of late, though I don't know what that means exactly.
I think this is totally correct.
The actual unemployment rate is at record highs if you also look at the labour participation rate. Used to be like 90% of people were working, now it's like 60%. That means a huge number of people are consuming productivity but not producing anything themselves.
The actual unemployment rate is at record highs if you also look at the labour participation rate. Used to be like 90% of people were working, now it's like 60%. That means a huge number of people are consuming productivity but not producing anything themselves.
Although I'm on the record saying some pretty mean things about Elon Musk, the fact is he's following the tech startup playbook to the letter.
"Fail fast" -- isn't this what he's doing? Making big changes immediately and iterating rather than bothering to wait until things are perfectly planned? Arguably it's a better strategy for a website than a car manufacturer or a spaceship company or a medical implant manufacturer.
"Fail fast" -- isn't this what he's doing? Making big changes immediately and iterating rather than bothering to wait until things are perfectly planned? Arguably it's a better strategy for a website than a car manufacturer or a spaceship company or a medical implant manufacturer.
I think their automated moderation systems would be just fine sitting before the activitypub interface and allowing or blocking incoming posts, so moderation probably wouldn't be a huge problem, it's just more stuff to moderate.
At that point the big thing would be selling users on a better UX to justify the advertising and tracking. With a capital on-hand, dedicated people working on it, and all the other perks of being a big corp, I think they could make the argument successfully for a lot of customers. It wouldn't be unprecedented.
The big problem is that if they succeed, then it's probable they come in and break everyone else's toys.
One thing I was thinking about though is that federation doesn't really make much sense for these companies if you believe their numbers. The Fediverse has about 6M users, and many of those users are unplatformable for a corporation. Why reach out to such a tiny number of users if you're claiming to have 100M users on your platform aline?
At that point the big thing would be selling users on a better UX to justify the advertising and tracking. With a capital on-hand, dedicated people working on it, and all the other perks of being a big corp, I think they could make the argument successfully for a lot of customers. It wouldn't be unprecedented.
The big problem is that if they succeed, then it's probable they come in and break everyone else's toys.
One thing I was thinking about though is that federation doesn't really make much sense for these companies if you believe their numbers. The Fediverse has about 6M users, and many of those users are unplatformable for a corporation. Why reach out to such a tiny number of users if you're claiming to have 100M users on your platform aline?
Thinking about it, it's possible I've been talking to what I thought the post was about rather than what it actually was about, and that was unfairly tilted by the barrage of "The fediverse will never be a good platform because it isn't enough like big tech" posts and I got annoyed, combined with posting too early before my coffee kicked in.
Felt good to write as a "take that!" to the people who are doing that, but it's possible I misread things.
Felt good to write as a "take that!" to the people who are doing that, but it's possible I misread things.