1993: "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog"
2017: Google and Facebook know the names and birthdays of each one of your fleas
Economic orthodoxy argues that price is set by supply and demand.
Truth is that price is determined by BATNA: best alternative to negotiated agreement.
If you have alternatives, then you've got discretion in the price you're willing to accept, or offer. If you have no alternatives, then you don't.
A ‘job creator’ is someone who figures out how to threaten you with starvation unless you do something you don’t want to do. - Cory Doctorow, /Walkaway/
"Researchers synthesize a "generalized fingerprint" that opens 2/3 of smartphones. Without knowing the real print."
It's almost as if a lossy compresion algo based on a shitty camera is a bad way to authenticate... not to mention the "unchangeable-ness" of biometrics. Far from first time a "flaw" was discovered (using photos of fingers etc). Biometrics are absolute shit auth controls, avoid them at all costs.
https://www.mobilegeeks.de/news/fingerabdrucksensor-sicherheit-generalschluessel/
@Irick I mean, if we don't radically alter our social trajectory (which is hurtling towards 'if you have no job you die instantly'), then the natural result of the 'outmoding of labour' will be the mass outmoding of human life.
I don't think Silicon Valley has quite grasped that they are telling the world 'Our products will kill millions, among them your children. We are all very much okay with this.'
@pixelguff Personally, I added
@daily cd /home/mastodon/live && RAILS_ENV=production /home/mastodon/.rbenv/shims/bundle exec rails mastodon:media:remove_remote
to my crontab. It removes local cache of remote media older than 1 week. Huge save of space
Cloudflare's business with hate-speech sites, and policy of forwarding complainant contact information to those sites
"Cloudflare, a prominent San Francisco outfit, provides services to neo-Nazi sites like The Daily Stormer, including giving them personal information on people who complain about their content."
https://www.propublica.org/article/how-cloudflare-helps-serve-up-hate-on-the-web
Brexiteers supporting a holocaust denier, invoking 1940 and unable to accept a 65%-35% vote against their supported candidate.
eeeeeuw.
It would be laughable. Except these are the people driving #brexit in the UK.
Leave.EU, the pro-Brexit pressure group set up by Nigel Farage for last year’s referendum, tweeted that the French people had once again “rolled over” just as they had done in 1940 – except this time they saved Germany “the bullets and the fuel”. The tweet also included a picture of a newspaper headline from 1940 reporting the surrender of France to the Nazis.
Mastodon instances are like towns. And some of them are like Scarfolk, and some are like Amityville, and some are like Innsmouth and Dunwich. Hello, stranger! You're new in town, ain'tcha?
Remember in the 90s, when teens were more tech savvy than adults, and everyone assumed that the savviest would just keep getting younger? Now it's 2017, and the people who were teens in the 90s are the most tech savvy generation and probably will be until they die.
Kids don't grow up with computers any more, they grow up with iPhones. If it's possible to learn to code on an iPhone, it's despite Apple's best efforts.
i knew like half of these, how many do u know?
https://mastodon.xyz/media/mXM2fptN1iI5t6y9czs
"Windows hasn't increased computer literacy, it just lowered the standard"
"The strongest bulwark of authority is uniformity; the least divergence from it is the greatest crime. The wholesale mechanisation of modern life has increased uniformity a thousandfold. It is everywhere present, in habits, tastes, dress, thoughts and ideas. Its most concentrated dullness is 'public opinion'. Few have the courage to stand out against it. He who refuses to submit is at once labelled 'queer', 'different', and decried as a disturbing element in the comfortable stagnancy of modern life."
-- Emma Goldman
Without "riots", overwhelming majority (if not all) of the world would still be under absolute monarchies.
They didn't let go because people signed nicely worded petition lists.
The fact that we nominally have basic human rights now is done to prevent rebellion is even listed in the preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
To rebel into "riot" is (sometimes) the only response available to an imposed odious situation.
I wrote a thing about my experience of having neo-nazis marching on my neighborhood yesterday.
CW for neo-nazis and descriptions of hatred.
http://briarrose.info/living-in-the-fear/
*This is a first draft, but I'm finding it really hard to edit right now. So, I may update it later when I can do so without bursting into tears.
Witches Town user in the subway
