Author Archives: Published articles

NYT Opinion: How Democrats Drove Silicon Valley Into Trump’s Arms

Source: Published articles

Article note: That's a lot of words for "The Democrats started exerting social and regulatory pressure on the silicon valley investor class' scam-adjacent cash cows, so we turned on them." I'm never sure how many valleybros _actually believe_ there is real value in the Crypto and AI energy-wasting scam projects, and how much they just know it's a path to lucre and pretend for show. This whole interview is Andreessen acting like ramping up AI is the most pressing moral/technological/societal imperative, and that is grounds to justify going along with _anything_ else, and ... I can't tell if he believes it, or it's just an excuse to do whatever will give him and those like him the most money and power in the near term (and fuck everyone else).

Marc Andreessen explains the newest faction of conservatism.

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Cutting the cord again? Americans are spending less on streaming as fatigue and options grow | TechSpot

Source: Published articles

Article note: Imagine that, the media companies have balkanized and re-invented all the things people hated about cable - the cost, the ads, the array of premium plans all missing content, the site-locking - trying to maximize extraction, and now everyone is trying to get out. The entertainment media market _isn't actually that big_ so it won't long-term support a bunch of players with small libraries and high prices. The music market has mostly figured out that they need their content on all the major distributors (though the deals have horrifically bad payout for artists), the same consolidation and commoditization is coming for video (and/or everyone is going back to piracy).
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Prusa CORE One | Original Prusa 3D printers directly from Josef Prusa

Source: Published articles

Article note: Oh look, Prusa has arrived at the local maxima (CoreXY over three point bed, Enclosed) Slightly more expensive than some of the competitors, but not drastically, and the ecosystem effects usually favor Prusa.
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Anycubic 3D printers hacked worldwide to expose security flaw

Source: Published articles

Article note: MQTT configured such that any valid credential could access every device. I quite like some Anycubic printers, but their level of software sloppiness has never been something I'd want plugged into a network, because this seems entirely expected.
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Dunkey’s Guide to Streaming Services – YouTube

Source: Published articles

Article note: Beyond fucking satire. The Pokemon service-hopping example is _real_, because no one could have made it up.
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The Aol Chat Room Monitor Revolt – Priceonomics

Source: Published articles

It really is more or less exactly the Reddit situation: A buisness that understood they were stewards of communities got profit focused and shit on their volunteers, and when the volunteers noitced it was a shitshow. This priceonomics piece from 2014 even called out reddit as a likely parallel.

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[Approved] Plasma 6 Proposal: incubate SDDM (#91) · Issues · Plasma / Plasma Desktop · GitLab

Source: Published articles

Article note: Woo! SDDM is great, but hasn't had a release in like 4 years, despite major patches in git (like... working Wayland support major). Sending some resources their way would be awesome.
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Kentucky can’t reduce CO2 emissions with Bitcoin tax breaks | Lexington Herald Leader

Source: Published articles

Hell yeah Dan, hell yeah.

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How Covid-19 Exposed the Cracks in a Public-Private Housing Deal

Source: Published articles

This is some uncut "privatize profits socialize losses" bullshit. Private developers made bets assuming universities were an infinite source of an easily-abused captive audience. The pandemic made it not so, and now they're in a bind and looking for ways to make any and everyone else keep them solvent.

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Some Students Are Smarter Than Others (and That’s OK)

Source: Published articles

Yesssss.

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