I think it was worse befor

I didn’t say it was a new thing. Every time I read the news or open a hisoty book, I’m hit by a wave of nausea, How can a species this evolved be this terrible?

And the shame is, while I try to be a decent person, I’m still one of them.

I am ashamed to be part of the humane race.

Funny you should ask: I installed Debian 32-bit on an old Asus Eee PC netbook yesterday to breathe new life into that old machine and turn it into a controller for a piece of test equipment we have at work. My company keeps old stuff like that around until space is needed in case someone needs something.

Just in case I had to modify something in the tester’s control software, I figured I’d install i3wm and Vim. It didn’t take long and I was surprised by how usable the machine ended up being. Honestly I wouldn’t have minded using it as a bone fide laptop for light-duty work on the go.

So basically keep your expectations low and install super-lightweight software, and your old Aspire could live a few extra productive years instead of going to the landfill.

Here’s a little story that shows how much society has become dystopian:

Back in the 90’s, I worked in France for a while. When I was there, a case was brought up against the state that had violated a CNIL rule: some dude was cheating on his taxes by claiming he lived at some address. Tthe French fiscal administration sued him because they obtained a file from the electricity company and another from the water utilty company showing that the consumption of both electricity and water were so low it wasn’t consistent with the dude actually living there.

The case was thrown out, the dude walked and the state was fined because it had violated a rule that clearly stipulated cross-referencing files for the purpose of extracting secondary information that wasn’t available in each single file was a violation of privacy and civil liberties.

I shit you not. This used to be a thing.

Can you imagine this today? All the Big Data sonsabitches cross-reference billions of files ALL THE TIME and nobody bats an eyelid anymore.

If you’re old enough, you remember sovereign states taking privacy seriously. If you’re not, you don’t. And that’s how Big Data gets away with what they do today because fewer and fewer people remember a time when it was unacceptable.

Eventually we’ll hit big brother levels.

As someone who was born before the age of surveillance capitalism, I can tell you we’ve hit that level a long time ago. Anybody who thinks society has been running normally for at least the past 15 years is too young to have known what a normal society is.

To evade taxes of course.

Have you ever asked yourself how it’s possible that ALL the fucking ultra-rich almost without exception do philanthropy?

It doesn’t make sense: most of those millionaires and billionaires are psychopaths who essentially don’t give a shit about their fellow man, acquired their wealth by exploiting and shafting others for the most part, and don’t give a shit about how that makes them look: why on Earth would any of them do philanthropy, let alone all of them?

It only starts to make sense when you understand philanthropy is yet another tax loophole.

I would suggest we give him the 3,000 acres of Lana’i he doesn’t own, so the entire island belongs to him, then strand him there forever.

I have been hating this man’s guts since the mid 90’s and somehow it never lets off. Most hateful people manage to become a little bit more likeable as they age. Even this disgusting piece of human refuse Bill Gates might pass for a somewhat okay human being if you wilfully overlook why he truly does philanthropy.

But Larry Ellison? Hell no. He never changes. he’s just consistently the worst year after year, decade after decade.

I hate Putin and any Russian war sympathizer as much as the next guy, but…

My grandfather got a white phosphorus burn during WW2. He told me it was the most terrible pain he ever felt in his entire life, you can’t extinguish it, and he wouldn’t wish it on his worst enemy. I heard the same kind of stories from people who got napalm burns in Vietnam.

I’m pretty sure thermite munitions are in the same category of basically inhumane weapons regardless of the circumstances, right up there with NBCs, mines, napalm and white phosphorus, and I can’t say I fully side with the Ukrainians on this one. I mean I understand why they do it, but I also remember my grandfather’s leg and the horror of what he told me.

Pray tell, what possible benefit can Lemmy communities gain from Facebook users?

You do realize most people who joined the Fediverse did so because Facebook and the likes are a steaming pile of shit, right?

What possible benefit is there to the pile of shit coming to splatter itself here uninvited?

It’s not just a matter of blocking Threads users.

Facebook is coming on here to slurp up data I don’t want them to have, and enriching their own Threads ecosystem with Fediverse content they haven’t lifted a finger to create.

Not to mention, when Threads users are able to fully interact in the Fediverse, do you really want that particular bunch to create noise in your communities? I don’t. There’s a reason why I avoid Facebook in all its forms.

Great.
I joined the Fediverse to escape Facebook’s toxic interpretation of communities, so Facebook is coming to the Fediverse instead.
Just great…

They’re going for property managers who can claim expenses.

The Pitchfork and Torches

They don’t work without a subscription.

Just another company taking part in the worldwide subscription model scam.

Here’s another one: LynkD. I have a few of their NFC padlocks. They’re not particularly well made, nor are they particularly secure, but they’re convenient and I like them to secure low-importance things like my gym locker or the shed at the back of my garden.

I wanted to buy more. LynkD informed me that the padlocks now require a subscription. It’s even written at the bottom of the product page:

Membership to these platforms costs $15/Month + $5/Device + $5/User with the first user free. An active membership is required in order to use this device.

Yes, you read that right: a fucking PADLOCK now requires a subscription.

The mind boggles…

There’s one crucial link missing in your assessment: economies are in shambles mostly because of that infinitesimal fraction of humanity’s efforts to hoard the wealth.

And note that I said wealth, not money: those are two completely separate things. Many of those billionaires have a lot more dollars than actual wealth.

Well, I hope you’re right and I’m wrong. I really do. But sadly I’m not terribly optimistic.

AI will turn most cities in the world into Detroits within the next 10 years. You ain’t seen nothing yet.