Rob Fahrni

Ryan Peterman, via LinkedIn

They are so rare that most people don’t work with them directly, but their work is highly visible.

The thing that stands out to me is Meta has all these absolutely amazing people working for them and what exactly do they work on? New ways to extract personal information or track people around the web?

It’s too bad they’re wasting their talent at such a horrible company.

If I were that talented I would, unfortunately, be tempted by a $3mm per year salary. Thing is, I kind of doubt that entire $3mm+ is entirely salary. It’s probably some mix of salary, benefits, bonuses, and stock options. That’s how Meta keeps their talent I suppose, those golden handcuffs are tempting.

To quote the Tool song, Hooker with a Penis:

All you know about me is what I’ve sold you, dumb fuck I sold out long before you’d ever even heard my name I sold my soul to make a record, dip shit And then you bought one

Yes indeed. I suppose we’re all Hookers at some level.

Lora Kelley • The Atlantic

Musk is mainstreaming new standards of behavior, and some of his peers are joining him in misguided acts of masculine aggression and populist appeals.

MIKE ISAAC and Ryan Mac • The New York Times

The day after Elon Musk challenged Mark Zuckerberg on social media to “a cage match” last month, Dana White, president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, received a text.

I’m not a fan of Mark Zuckerberg but I think he’ll knock Musk on his butt pretty quickly, if he has the guts to step into the ring.

Matt Binder and Matt Binder • Mashable

Twitter’s new API may now cost tens of thousands of dollars per month, but the service being provided to its customers appears to be worse than ever.

It’s really sad to see what was once a decent service turn into a junker of a service.

Oh, BTW, that API was the way to limit folks from overwhelming your servers. If the API was still open, or cheap enough, folks wouldn’t be scraping the site and you could’ve controlled API access by throttling just that for bad actors.

Once again. Stellar job.

There’s nothing better than a self own! Nice work Space Karen. You DDOS’ed yourself. Genius! 😂

The Verge

Elon Musk continues to blame Twitter’s new limitations on AI companies scraping “vast amounts of data” as he announced new “temporary” limits on how many posts people can read.

This kind of checks out. Genius indeed. More like grifter with too much money.

He’s not really killing Twitter, he’s just making it a really crappy platform. He has so much money the thing will probably keep running for years and years to come but it’ll remain a crummy experience.

I’m a big biased because I have my own instance but Mastodon is a very good — not Twitter — experience. I’ve heard technically savvy people say it’s hard to figure out. I didn’t have that experience but I did not like the default web UI experience. It defaulted to a three way split screen with views of different data. I was able to fix that to be more like Twitter in settings then it looked and felt much better.

If you follow the rich and famous and are into shitposting then Mastodon might not be for you. Each server in the federation has its own set of user rules to abide by and if you break them you’ll be blocked or your server could be defederated, which is a very bad thing.

If you’re a techie I’d encourage you to consider starting your own instance with friends. It’s what I did with Curmudgeon Cafe and it’s been wonderful. I use masto.host to host my instance and I’m sure there are others. More smaller instances are a good thing.

If you’re on iOS there are really great iOS client apps for you to choose from; Mona, Ivory, Toot!, and Ice Cubes are really solid client applications and I will hop between them from time to time to see how they’ve improved.

The latest bad press for Space Karen and his mismanagement of Twitter.

To think Reddit CEO Steve Huffman thinks Musk has done a great job running Twitter with less is shocking.

I’m not sure how anyone labels this guy a genius. He’s a huckster, racist, masochist, and anti-Semite among other things.

If you still believe in him dig deep and ask why you believe that. The answer should scare you or at least make you think about your values as a human being.

Enjoy the links.

Daring Fireball

There are some moments in this video interview that are just cringe-inducing. Even just the awkward pauses. (Faber, to my mind, did a hell of a job — Musk is obviously a very difficult person to interview.) I’m starting to get real Bobby Fischer vibes from Musk — a genius, yes, but descending into conspirational hateful madness. But Fischer became a recluse; Musk is one of the most prominent people in the world.

Vox

In the past five days, Musk has doubled down on a conspiracy theory about the Allen, Texas, shooter; tweeted that billionaire philanthropist George Soros (who has long been the target of antisemitic conspiracy theories online) wants to “erode the very fabric of civilization” and “hates humanity;” and promoted a quickly debunked rumor that falsely claimed Washington Post journalist Taylor Lorenz was related to the founder of the Internet Archive.

The Atlantic

Twitter has long been described, even by its most ardent users, as a hellsite. But under Elon Musk, Twitter has evolved into a platform that is indistinguishable from the wastelands of alternative social-media sites such as Truth Social and Parler. It is now a right-wing social network.

France 24

Researchers have documented an explosion of hate and misinformation on Twitter since the Tesla billionaire took over in October 2022 – and now experts say communicating about climate science on the social network on which many of them rely is getting harder.

Platformer

Their high-profile event on Twitter Spaces, where DeSantis had just announced his run for president, had been plagued by technical glitches. The first audio livestream cut out before DeSantis could get his news out.

Daily Kos

Billionaire conspiracy promoter Elon Musk spent $44 billion on Twitter to implement his special brand of “free speech,” essentially bringing back all the Nazis, conspiracy theorists, and all-around deplorables that were once moderated out of the platform, relegated to darker corners of the internet.

The Daily Beast

Twitter is failing to remove 99 percent of hate speech posted by Twitter Blue users, new research has found, and instead may be boosting paid accounts that spew racism and homophobia.

Ben & Jerry’s

We’ve watched with great concern the developments at Twitter following Elon Musk’s purchase of the social media platform. Hate speech is up dramatically while content moderation has become all but non-existent. In addition to the changes on the platform that have led to an increase in hate speech, Musk himself has doubled down on dangerous anti-democratic lies and white nationalist hate speech. The platform has become a threatening and even dangerous space for people from so many backgrounds, including people who are Black, Brown, trans, gay, women, people with disabilities, Jewish, Muslim and the list goes on. This is unconscionable in addition to being plain bad business.

Erin Reed

As Pride Month began, Elon Musk stated his intention to lobby for the criminalization of gender-affirming healthcare for transgender minors - a move that is unequivocally harmful and contradicts all major medical organizations in the United States and standards of care.

Ars Technica

Twitter’s US advertising revenue plunged 59 percent year-over-year during a recent five-week period, The New York Times reported today. The firm’s US ad “revenue for the five weeks from April 1 to the first week of May was $88 million, down 59 percent from a year earlier, according to an internal presentation obtained by The New York Times.”

The Business Journals

Judge orders sheriff to evict Twitter from Boulder office

Turkish Minute

Twitter succumbs to Erdoğan’s pressure, silences key voices in Turkey on election eve

Space Karen really wants to live in a racist, white, Christofascist America.

The Verge

Twitter 1.0 was particularly notable for standing up to government censorship around the world. Twitter 2.0 under Elon Musk is actively complying with authoritarian government censorship demands ahead of elections.

See statement on the first link. I like this version because Nilay Patel called the post Welcome to Hell. Accurate.

NBC News

Graphic videos of animal abuse have circulated widely on Twitter in recent weeks, generating outrage and renewed concern over the platform’s moderation practices.

Psychopaths like to torture and kill animals. Twitter is the perfect place for them! It already has a narcissist sociopath as an owner. Why not add some psychopaths?

Ars Technica

Graphic images from a Texas mass shooting on Saturday that killed nine (including the gunman) and wounded seven are still circulating on Twitter after spreading virally all weekend.

So, yeah, more of the same disturbing behavior as the link above. What’s wrong with these people?

The Beaverton

KINGSTON, ON – Queen’s University has reached out to Elon Musk offering eight dollars a month to stop telling people he attended the higher learning institution.

This is an older link and I’m not sure if I’ve already posted it but I don’t care because it’s funny and perhaps a new way Space Karen could grift more cash out of folks to pay for his $44 billion mistake?

Robert Stribley

Instead, he’s making changes to satisfy the whims of his real core audience now, a ramshackle collective of alt-right extremists, Proud Boy/white supremacist types and Q-Anon whackos.

More on the abuse of the LGBTQ+ community at the hands of Twitter’s new policies. This article about the plight of the Transgender community in particular.

Variety

Elon Musk Confirms Linda Yaccarino as Twitter’s New CEO, Focused on Business Operations

Oh, look, he’s finally picked a new CEO. Perhaps Ms. Yaccarino will be able to figure out how to make money for the company now they’ve lost many of their best advertisers.

Good luck.🍀

Also, over or under on her making it six months in the position?🎲

What a horrible take. On the left we’d been saying the same thing about abortion “Oh give up it’s the law of the land.”

Well, the GOP took a very long view and kept at it to overturn abortion. Some shenanigans from the evil — but brilliant — Mitch McConnell and the GOP was allowed to get three lying Supreme Court judges through. Yes, they’re liars and I believe at least two of them are wholly unqualified. Heh, not to mention how corrupt some are.

Anywho, we need to keep hammering away at guns. Overturn the second amendment and put in super strict gun laws to lower mass murder in the United States.

Oh, and if it’s a matter of mental health then why can these “mentally ill” people get their hands on weapons of war? Nice try, assholes. The weapons are the problem.

Wow, I wrote about this less than a year ago and we’ve done nothing.

Disgusting.

I hear folks say “Stop calling the GOP Nazis.” Fine. I’ll stop when they stop behaving like Nazis.

Good morning y’all. It’s raining this morning, a repeat performance of last weekend. I did manage to get the steps completed in the garden now we let the rain test my work.

This week I had to get a tooth and removed and a bone graft due to a 20 plus year old root canal failing. I don’t recommend it. 🦷

Time to go lay down in a field and have Kim throw some dirt on me. 😂

CNN

On Monday, it was Nashville’s turn to join the roster of cities made notorious by a mass shooting epidemic much of the country seems prepared to tacitly accept as the price of the right to own high-powered firearms. 

No words. 😔

Microsoft Design

Today marks the debut of the new Microsoft Teams app, released in public preview for Windows customers.

This redesign of Teams looks extremely thoughtful, well planned, and well executed. I’d like to get my hands on it and run it through dumpbin and other tools to see just how it’s put together.

It’s my understanding it’s a native app — no more Electron — with an HTML/CSS/JavaScript filling using the new, Chromium based, WebView2 control

It also means no Mac or Linux client until they can get those items ported to Mac and Linux. You can write C#/.Net code on Linux and Mac today, but as far as I know WebView2 hasn’t been ported. Heck, who knows, the shell around the app could be written in C++? I’m not really clear on that bit, it’s why I want to get my hands on it. 😁

Wired

The US Republican Party has become increasingly authoritarian and extreme in recent years, and it doesn’t seem likely to moderate that in the foreseeable future.

Red States are becoming more and more radical. The entire anti-LGBQT, anti-woman, anti-education, movement is in full swing.

Next thing you know women will have to walk 10 paces behind their husbands in their modest to the ground dress with their eyes on the ground. Disgusting.🤬

Dave Winer

In September 2004, the activity we called audioblogging was starting to gain traction.

Neat little story about how podcasting got its name. 👍🏼

The Guardian

A dispute between the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, and Disney over control of the company’s Florida theme park district hinges on a clause referencing King Charles III and his descendants.

The authoritarian was outwitted in this story. If you haven’t heard about this yet go read it. 🤭

John Nunley

This year is supposed to be the year of the Rust GUI. So why is it still so unsafe?

This discussion focused around handles in Windows is quite interesting.

Having written a lot of Windows code that uses handles everywhere — HWND, HINSTANCE, HANDLE, anyone(?) — because that’s the way the Windows API works I don’t see it as an issue.

A HANDLE is a persisted thing that allows Windows to shuffle the underlying object around if needed. It’s a remnant of 16-bit Windows days, because 640k of memory was a precious commodity. It’s a safe thing to the developer as I see it but I do not fault anyone wanting to make things even safer for developers. 👍🏼

John Scalzi

Trump is and has always been the sort of person who believes that laws are for the little people, and has acted accordingly.

I love John Scalzi’s books and prior to Twitter becoming a worthless piece of poo I really enjoyed reading his tweets. In case you don’t know he’s had a blog for many years and it doesn’t disappoint.

Judo Blog

We believe that designer-developer handoff is broken and to solve this problem well requires software that is familiar to designers and developers alike—software that makes building an app’s user interface a collaborative process instead of handing off files back and forth.

I’d really like to take a look at Judo to see how it could improve my own coding efforts. Stream for Mac could use some help. It’s been a slog for me and I keep switching between AppKit and SwiftUI. I really need to focus on SwiftUI going forward.

Los Angeles Times

Only two centuries ago, a shallow inland sea dominated California’s Central Valley.

Tulare Lake is fascinating. California Highway 41 runs right through the lake between Lemoore and Kettleman City. I’ve heard tale in the olden days one had to catch a barge or take a boat from Lemoore to Kettle City.

We drove that route all the time when we lived there. It’s one way to get from the San Joaquin Valley to the Central Coast and all the lovely towns and beaches we fell in love with. Places like San Luis Obispo, Avila Beach, Cambria, Morro Bay, and Pismo Beach.

As it is today you’d have to go out to I-5 and loop back to get to Kettleman City.

Twitter is doing just fine! 🤣

Platformer

When bleary-eyed engineers began to log on to their laptops, the nature of the emergency became clear: Elon Musk’s tweet about the Super Bowl got less engagement than President Joe Biden’s.

Vox

The broken Twitter everyone warned us about is finally here.

Business Insider

Twitter suffered another outage during Rihanna’s Super Bowl halftime show Sunday, despite Elon Musk’s efforts to make the platform as stable as possible.

Forbes

An attorney who says she represents approximately one-third of all Twitter employees that were fired since Elon Musk bought the company late last year, told a federal court in a new filing that the company is not serious in its attempts to resolve worker disputes through private arbitration and is asking the court to halt that process.

HuffPost

Elon Musk made an announcement Friday morning that could make Twitter users with legacy blue checks feel blue: He wants to take away the social media status symbol.

Platformer

Employees showed Musk internal data regarding engagement with his account, along with a Google Trends chart. Last April, they told him, Musk was at “peak” popularity in search rankings, indicated by a score of “100.” Today, he’s at a score of nine. Engineers had previously investigated whether Musk’s reach had somehow been artificially restricted, but found no evidence that the algorithm was biased against him.

Rolling Stone

Late yesterday — the day after firing the engineer who theorized that he might not be as interesting or popular as he believes — Musk announced that Twitter’s recommendation algorithm would be “fixed” by today. So don’t be surprised if you start seeing a lot more of him in your feed.

TechCrunch

Twitter claims it is “committed to keeping people safe and secure on Twitter.” This is not true. Instead, you’re looking at one of the stupidest security decisions made by a company playing out in real-time.

As I’m getting started it’s a nice crisp 27F outside just before 8AM EST. The sun is out and will be all day. We’ve had a very mild winter this year, with the exception of that polar blast around Christmas, and I don’t expect us to get any snow.🌞

My coffee is in hand, time to get started. Hope you enjoy the links. ☕️

Reuters

A gunman opened fire on Monday night on the main campus of Michigan State University, killing three people and injuring five, before an hours-long manhunt for the suspect ended with his death, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot, police said.

It’s the guns. I don’t know what else to say. Over and over and over again we see this and do nothing. A truly American thing and not one to be proud of. 😞

Chicago Tribune

Kansas City Chiefs win the Super Bowl for the 2nd time in 4 years, beating the Philadelphia Eagles 38-35 on a FG with 8 seconds left

I’m happy for the Chiefs and their fans. It was a great Super Bowl, a nail biter, not a blowout. Oh, and the Mahomes to Kelce connection is without a doubt the best in football and one of the best ever. If Patrick Mahomes can stay healthy and have a 20-year run he’ll break all kinds of records and win some more rings.

Macworld

Just short of the 10th anniversary of that first Mac Pro misstep, Apple is now late in concluding its processor transition by shipping the first Apple silicon-based Mac Pro. What’s worse, reports from Bloomberg suggest that the company has ditched the next Mac Pro’s highest-end processor, calling the computer’s entire purpose into question.

Given Apple’s new chip architecture with memory and processor built into the chip I have a difficult time defining what a pro machine should or would be. Maybe you have to accept a new definition? Maybe it doesn’t mean a flexible and expandable architecture?

What I’d like to see is Apple give the Professional computing world a way to use their current investment in Mac Pro a way to replace the x86 based Xeon chips with Apple Silicon. Of course Apple would never do such a thing because money. 💸

Linode

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Feb. 15, 2022 – Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), the world’s most trusted solution to power and protect digital experiences, today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Linode, one of the easiest-to-use and most trusted infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform providers.

I follow a number of indie software developers and they tend to use Linode for their service backends. Two that come to mind are Micro.blog, the system I use for publishing my blog, and Overcast, the indie podcast app for iOS. I’m sure there are many more out there I don’t know about. I’ve never done any large scale backend work for my indie endeavors but if I did I’d most likely choose Linode because they’re inexpensive, reliable, and have great customer service.

Hopefully they don’t start hiking prices, laying off people, and becoming a terrible place to host. 🤞🏼

Semafor

Spotify’s podcast push began in earnest in 2016, when Ek invited audio executives including higher ups at Gimlet to the company’s headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden to explain the emerging American podcast market.

Spotify calls their recorded audio podcasting. It’s not. Podcasting is the audio plus a delivery mechanism in the form of RSS. Yes, you can have a podcast as I’ve defined it behind a paywall. They just want to lock you into their app with their advertising and try to upsell you on other things. That’s fine. It’s their business but don’t call them podcasts. Ok, off the soap box. 📦

I was listening to the Pivot Podcast last night and Scott Galloway point out that very few podcasts make a profit. That’s true of what he defines as a podcast. Remember, this started as an open technology built by Dave Winer and Adam Curry. It was used and loved long before businessmen decided they could monetize it. Just like blogging. It’s was and still is a way for us mere mortals to communicate to the outside world, even if we’re not paid a dime to do it.

Oh, and I have a feeling some of the small podcasting shops are doing just fine, but they do things differently and have well loved shows. They’re just not exclusive to Spotify or Apple or whatever Big Co place you get your podcasts. They’re fully open and downloadable using your podcast player of choice because they’re built on top of RSS as the delivery mechanism.

The key phrase to listen for when you hear a podcast advertised is ”Download wherever you get your podcasts.” Then you know it’s a real podcast.

Crooks and Liars

The hearing got incredibly creepy when Arkansas state Sen. Matt McKee asked a trans pharmacist if she had a penis. “Do you have a penis?” he asked the woman, who seemed stunned at the question.

Unbelievable. I wish we could get past this and so many other things. So many people want to control how others behave and how they live their life. Often times based on some form of religion they’ve twisted to support their hate, disdain, or jealously of others.

Let people live their lives. Show them respect and grace as fellow human beings. It’s not our job to tell folks how they should live. That goes for women, brown skinned people, and the LBGTQ+ community. ❤️

Doctorow

After half a decade of sedate, steady growth, Mastodon suddenly surged, from 600,000 daily users to 2.6 million in the space of months.

Some folks are already writing off Mastodon. Silly people. If you’re looking to get a huge following and interacting with movie stars, influencers, government officials, and the rich and famous, don’t expect that from Mastodon. It’s not built for that. It’s built like your everyday neighborhood for us commoners to engage in. It’s real people carrying on real discussions. Sure, there’s gonna be some hate but there are mechanisms in place to take care of that crap. I love it and I’m excited to see it grow. There’s no algorithm to encourage you to follow people or corporate master to satisfy and no need to grow to billions of users because of it.

It’s like blogging. It’s all open and up to us, everyday people, to keep it. ✌🏼

New York Times

Lurking behind the concerns of Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, over the content of a proposed high school course in African American studies, is a long and complex series of debates about the role of slavery and race in American classrooms.

Talk about hateful, mean, and unsympathetic to fellow human beings. DeSantis is an authoritarian who wants to mold Florida into his own disgusting image. He doesn’t want you to think for yourself or question authority, no sir. He wants a bunch of dumb drones serving the rich and powerful.

Get out if you can. It’s a terrible state. If you can’t, or don’t want to, I wish you luck and hope you find a way to help change the state. 🍀

Joseph Heck

In the past couple of years, I’ve had the occasion to want to make an XCFramework – a bundle that’s used by Apple platforms to encapsulate binary frameworks or libraries – a couple of times.

I don’t know Joseph personally but I’ve interacted with him on the NetNewsWire Slack and Mastodon and he’s a really kind, thoughtful, selfless man. He’s given me feedback on Stream and Mac programming questions. All that to say he’s one of the good ones.

Anywho, this is a great piece on how he built an XCFramework with a Rust core. Rust has become the new, safe, language for creating highly performant software and being able to use it natively on iOS or Mac and integrate it right into Xcode is wonderful. 🧰

Cory Doctrow

Mobile tech is a duopoly run by two companies – Google and Apple – with a combined market cap of $3.5 trillion. Each company uses a combination of tech, law, contract and market power to force sellers to do commerce via an app, and each one extracts a massive commission on all in-app sales – 15-30%!

Web tools continue to improve to the point that native apps may become a thing of the past for many companies. Of course folks like me will continue to do native iOS, and hopefully Mac, apps for as long as we can, but the writing has been on the wall for a long time. Native apps are becoming less and less important with each passing day. Learn HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

New York Times

Over the past year, we have seen a sweeping and ferocious attack on the rights and dignity of transgender people across the country.

A really great piece by Jamelle Bouie. Please, go read it if you can.

Yours truly who accidentally started a conversation about SwiftUI List performance. Smooth, fast, stable, code is important to me and most developers. we do strive to make our apps the best they can be. I’m still learning, still trying, to make all my apps better each time I work on one. This conversation may change how I do Stream for Mac.

The biggest story of 2022 was, without doubt, the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

The Ultra Conservative packed Supreme Court decided it would overturn 50-years of law and plunge women’s rights back into the stone age.

I don’t know a single woman who supports this decision. These are not women who’ve had abortions, rather women who want control over their own bodies. It mostly comes down to having men taking decisions about their own healthcare out of their hands. It makes sense.

Shame on the Supreme Court and the three TFG appointed judges who flat out lied during their confirmation hearings. Of course nothing can, or will, be done about the corruption, gaslighting, and grifting that is the way of the GOP.

The Hill

Multiple busloads of migrants were dropped off at Vice President Harris’s residence in Washington, D.C. on Saturday — Christmas Eve — leaving migrants on the streets in below-freezing temperatures, according to multiple reports.

Of course Greg Abbott was responsible for this cruel, cruel, act.

Jesus was pretty well known for stranding poor children outside in freezing weather as a hilarious joke to make fun of his enemies. https://t.co/IJOcbYouy6

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) December 26, 2022

Anyone who claims to be Christian and behaves this way is clearly not a Christian.

A simple piece of scripture for those who love to quote it to people.

“Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.” - Matthew 25:40

Don’t look to the GOP for servants. They only serve themselves; power hungry, money grubbing, hate mongers.

Vox

It’s been over 36 hours since people voted overwhelmingly for Elon Musk to step down as CEO of Twitter (out of some 17 million votes, 57.5 percent were in favor of Musk resigning). But instead of immediately and publicly accepting the results, which he said he’d do, Musk is now casting doubt on the validity of his poll after Musk himself launched it on Twitter, a platform that he owns.

It was rigged, rigged I say!

Sound familiar?

Even I didn’t think @elonmusk would screw Twitter up this much.

It’s turned into a Right Wing Haven.

Tech Dirt

Look, I fucking warned Elon that this is exactly how it would go. It’s how it always goes.

Texts from an unknown sender, from discovery in the Elon Musk/Twitter suit months ago.

Pretty remarkable to read after these suspensions of journalists tonight. pic.twitter.com/clCw8xxioE

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore\_\_) December 16, 2022

Daily Kos

This week, its new owner, Elon Musk, signaled to his 121 million followers that, not only is he now red-pilled, but he too subscribes to the QAnon universe of conspiratorial beliefs—with a simple one-word/one-emoji tweet: “Follow [rabbit emoji].” Like much of Musk’s recent right-wing trolling, its simplicity offers plausible deniability, but “follow the white rabbit” is a well-established QAnon motto urging its adherents to plunge down its otherworldly conspiracist rabbit holes.

yo this is getting wild, @lopezlinette is both a great markets reporter and someone who also just happens to have done great investigative work on @elonmusk’s $TSLA pic.twitter.com/GVdc3o4LIn

— talmon joseph smith (@talmonsmith) December 16, 2022

PC Magazine

The former CEO and co-founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, says it’s time to move on from the troubled social media platform and embrace a more open and decentralized approach.

And soon, ladies & gentlemen, the coup de grâce

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 16, 2022

Futurism

Remember that ElonJet Twitter account? Well, under the site’s new CEO — the self-identified stalwart free speech champion Elon Musk — it just got suspended, despite Musk previously promising he would leave it alone.

The ban appears to be what we thought it was. An impulsive attempt to lash out against accurate reporting Elon Musk didn’t like. This is exactly the role of an independent press - to hold powerful and public officials to account. 1/2

— Jason Kint (@jason\_kint) December 16, 2022

NPR

Twitter owner Elon Musk says he’s pulling back the curtain on how the social network has handled high-profile content moderation decisions, including banning then-President Donald Trump after his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

UPDATE: I had posted an image here earlier that I found out was a fake, so I’ve removed it. Hat tip, Tommy Williams.

What a week! That dude that took over Twitter is driving it in the ground with a gigantor hammer all while we watch from the cheap seats sipping our soda and eating popcorn. What a spectacle.

This week was a busy week at work, promotion time. Lots of meetings. I’m all Zoom’ed out.

Enjoy that morning elixir of life. I certainly am. ☕️

Wired

Eugen Rochko looks exhausted. The 29-year-old German programmer is the founder of Mastodon, a distributed alternative to Twitter that has exploded in popularity in recent weeks as Elon Musk’s ownership of the platform has rained chaos on its users.

I’ve heard some folks doubt the survivability of Mastodon and doubt hate can be squashed there. In my experience on the platform it’s quite the opposite. If you’re running a server full of racist white nationalists, Nazis, or other hate groups it’s extremely easy for the admin of your server to block federation of that entire server.

I’ve found Mastodon to be so much better for conversation with folks outside my little friend bubble on Twitter.

Brent Simmons

For writers, artists, podcasters, journalists, and people who make things in public, Twitter was the one social networking site we all had to use.

Brent is a long time blogger, Mac programmer, creator and leader of the NetNewsWire team, and all around great guy. If you’re a consumer of RSS point your feed reader to his site. It’s a great read.

Platformer

Musk went on to say that “Twitter will be much more engineering-driven,” and that while design and product “will still be very important,” engineers “will have the greatest sway.” And then Musk presented employees with an ultimatum: click “yes” on a Google form affirming your desire to “be part of the new Twitter,” or leave in exchange for three months’ pay.

I’ve heard from a friend that most of the US Engineering staff left. That’s just wild.

Last week, I made the decision to leave my role leading Trust & Safety at Twitter.

Today, I'm sharing a few thoughts about what comes next for the site. https://t.co/QPAQR6zpqU

— Yoel Roth (@yoyoel) November 18, 2022

I don’t have a NY Times subscription but I’ll bet this piece by Mr. Roth is quite good.

Daring Fireball

If you had told me three weeks ago that Twitter, as a company, would today be embroiled in turmoil — perhaps outright existential crisis — over a company-wide email from Elon Musk centered around the phrase “extremely hardcore”, v-1 is not the scenario I’d have imagined.

In my career I’ve worked for some hardcore companies, like the old Microsoft, it’s not fun. Don’t do it.

NEW: Email from Elon to the engineering team: "Anyone who can actually write software, please report to the 10th floor at 2pm today. Before doing so, please email me a bullet point summary of what your code commits have achieved in the past 6 months" 1/

— Zoë Schiffer (@ZoeSchiffer) November 18, 2022

I don’t understand why he continues to ask for snippets of code from his employees. It’s just some random metric he’s using to what what end? What about the devs who made Twitter better by removing code?

CNN

Amazon confirmed on Wednesday that layoffs had begun at the company, two days after multiple outlets the e-commerce giant planned to cut around 10,000 employees this week.

It’s been a rough couple weeks in the tech sector. I’m sorry to see so many folks having to deal with this. Here’s hoping they land on their feet quickly.

Fresnoland

While Central Valley agricultural leaders warn of jobs loss during California’s ongoing drought, some local leaders say it’s time for less water-dependent economic opportunities.

California is in deep trouble so the United States food supply is in deep trouble. You’ll see it at the grocery store.

Becky Hansmeyer

When I tweeted my way into the iOS community so many years ago, I felt the same energy and excitement, if not necessarily the same level of closeness. You all gave me the confidence I needed to keep going with programming when I felt like giving up. We’ve person. Like her I lament the loss of the Twitter we knew but all good things come to an end, right?

America, America

I’m not anywhere close to assuming redemption for Rupert Murdoch or his publication for their role in empowering the dangerous desecration of the last six years, particularly since Fox News showed reluctance in quitting the man by airing nearly all of his sour announcement. (For me, the announcement at Mar-a-Lago had more of the air of a man running from the law than running for the presidency.)

How TFG avoids jail time at this point is beyond me.

The Register

Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich has had it with C and C++, time-tested programming languages commonly used for native applications that require high performance.

Russinovich is a legendary software engineer. It’s gonna be interesting to see how many new products come out of Microsoft and other companies written in 100% Rust.

The Brookings Institution

In this second edition of our October 2021 report, we review the investigation and its basis. We assess the publicly known facts and relevant law and analyze the extent to which the former president may be held criminally responsible for his conduct in Georgia. We conclude that Trump is at substantial risk of criminal prosecution in Fulton County.

At substantial risk? How is he not already in handcuffs? If any of us “regular” people had done this we’d be thrown in a dungeon.

Jalopnik

Haas’ Kevin Magnussen just scored his first-ever pole position in Formula 1 during the Brazilian Grand Prix. Yes, I intended to write that sentence. It’s not April Fool’s Day. Kevin Magnussen is polesitter for Saturday’s sprint race.

I support Haas. It’s an American F1 team and I’m happy for Kevin Magnussen and Haas. Now, get some podiums! 😂

PZ Meyers

Between the Church Militant and Nick Fuentes, it’s pretty clear what the theocratic Right wants to do: they want to kill you or force you to be as mad as they are.

Nick Fuentes is a piece of work but at least he’s not hiding his White Christian Nationalism behind dog whistles, no sir, he’s just saying it out loud.

From: @twittereng
To: @elonmusk
Subject: pic.twitter.com/EiDADFtMCN

— DM of Engineering 🎲 (@dmofengineering) November 17, 2022

Go check out that tweet thread. It’s full of Twitter Employees saying goodbye after the hardcore time limit expired.

It’s a sad day for the social network. How long will it stay up?

Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists.

Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 4, 2022

Corporations should think carefully before throwing in their lot with the far left of the Democratic Party. [@GM](https://micro.blog/GM)https://t.co/iHh7ZfY2O1

— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) October 29, 2022

What’s wrong with these people? One a billionaire, one a US Senator. They both seem to praise the open market but in these tweets they seem to think that open and free market is punishing them because “the left” is somehow controlling them? Wacko.

Here’s a reminder Mr. Musk and Mr. Cotton of what the First Amendment means.

Look, businesses don’t care for assholes. If they detect the slightest stench of controversy they’re going to do what’s best for their company, not to mention their shareholders. It’s smart. Sorry, bros, they don’t like Twitter at the moment. I agree with them.

If Musk’s new Twitter climbs to new heights and he’s able to keep it from being a hellscape filled with trolls, monsters, and Nazis I’m sure advertisers will happily give their money to him. As it is nobody knows what the hell Musk and his sycophant advisers come up with to make the platform a success.

$20 a month to keep my blue check? Fuck that, they should pay me. If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron.

— Stephen King (@StephenKing) October 31, 2022

I mean, come on, an $8 blue check mark? Bad idea. Will Twitter even bother to verify the person paying their fee to make sure they’re the real person? Probably not. Those check marks are there for a reason. It’s so you know the person with it is the real person. It all started as a safety measure.

Years ago, before verified accounts were a thing, back when I was on Eastenders, I was contacted multiple times by parents of children who had been “conversing” with me online. 11-15 year old children that had been talking with a fake me.
I was informed one of these children-

— Rob Kazinsky (@RobertKazinsky) November 2, 2022

At one point I’m fairly sure Musk said all people should be verified. That is a great idea. All humans should be verified, if of course, it’s the real them. After that verify corporations and the like. Make special allowances for posting bots that represent companies or real verified humans. E.G. something that auto posts news updates to an account and label them as bots with a special symbol and test indicating they’re bots and who runs them.

Everything else is garbage and should be wiped from the platform.

Yeah, that’s going to be really expensive to pull off. Make the sign up process easy but don’t activate the account until an actual human being or company is verified. Then turn it on.

If you want to allow porn, allow it. Just put it behind a paywall and verify any customer of the service is of legal age to view the content. If I’m not paying for it, I don’t see it. What a concept!

How about adding long form writing, like a blog post? Sure, you could charge for that too!

And for heavens sake put some adults on your new content review board thingie. Don’t fill it with out of touch Elon bros.

Robert Reich

“If Musk’s tweet doesn’t raise bright red warning signs all over the world about his judgment and character, just days after he took over one of the planet’s largest and most influential media machines, I don’t know what will.”

Musk is already stinking up the place with conspiracy theories, also know as misinformation, also know best as a lie.

Elon Code Review

“Most code is reviewed in Github, Gitlab or somewhere online, but that is too efficient. Why not print out your code and submit the printout by fax for review by Elon Musk personally!”

Why not get Elon to personally review your code! It’s a great use of his time and terrific way to line his pockets because the man is leveraged up to his eyeballs! 🤣

Robert Reich: “Decades ago, America’s wealthy backed a Republican establishment that believed in fiscal conservatism, anti-communism, and constitutional democracy. But today’s billionaire class is pushing a radically anti-democratic agenda for America — backing Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen, calling for restrictions on voting, and even questioning the value of democracy.”

Our slide toward the destruction of American Democracy is real and it sucks.

Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of usershttps://t.co/Y2t0QMuuyn

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2022

I’m shocked! Said no one ever. Musk is just another billionaire bro who gets off manipulating people and systems.

Real piece of work.

Lickability: “While there have always been many third-party iOS apps for Mastodon on the App Store, Eugen wanted us to create a native first-party application that showcased what’s unique about Mastodon while also focusing on bringing in entirely new users.”

This piece is a bit older but it’s worth mentioning if you’d like to move off Twitter to Mastodon. The Lickability built, native, iOS app is really nice.

Rolling Stone - Adam Rawnsley: “As of Tuesday, Truth Social hasn’t even submitted an Android app to Google to review for Play Store approval, an individual familiar with the matter and two Trumpworld sources with knowledge of the situation tell Rolling Stone.”

Trumps paranoia is real and his band of grifters and politicians aren’t serious people trying to do things the right way, like us regular people.

Bloomberg - Mark Gurman: “Apple Inc. delayed a plan to require workers to come back to the office three days a week, citing a resurgence in Covid-19 cases, marking the latest setback in its efforts to return to normal.”

Apple has lost some folks and others really don’t want to come back to the office.

It’s gonna be a challenge.

CNN - Marianne Garvey: “Ward, known for his work in “The Right Stuff,” “Short Cuts,” and numerous other films, died on May 8 at age 79.”

This death was a gut punch to me for some reason. I liked watching Fred Ward movies. My favorites are Tremors and Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins. Of course those weren’t mentioned in the article.

The Sun Gazette - John Lindt: “On May 12, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released its 2022 almond forecast estimating the California almond crop will be 4% lower than 2021, meaning there will be about 100 million fewer pounds produced in the Golden State.”

I don’t think folks realize how much of the worlds fruits and vegetables come out of California’s San Joaquin Valley. It’s not L.A. it’s not San Francisco or any other well know California destination. It’s the poor part of California nobody pays attention to. It’s hot and dusty and full of hardworking migrants to deliver us the food we need to survive. Crops like Almonds are very popular, they also use a ton of water. The only other nut crop I know of that uses more water than Almonds is Walnuts.

Growing up in California’s San Joaquin Valley water was always an issue. But now? Now is way more extreme than those days and is only going to get worse due to climate change.

Harvard Business Review - Thomas Stackpole: “White created the website Web3 Is Going Just Great, a time line that tracks scams, hacks, rug pulls, collapses, shady dealings, and other examples of problems with Web3. HBR.org spoke to White over email about what people aren’t hearing about Web3, how blockchain could make internet harassment much worse, and why the whole project might be ‘an enormous grift that’s pouring lighter fluid on our already-smoldering planet.’”

Crypto coin values fell off a cliff shortly after this article appeared.

Check out Web3 Is Going Just Great it’s full of interesting reads.

Dallas Morning News: ”One post from a widely-followed QAnon social media account said that after being reinstated as president, Trump would step down. The post said JFK Jr. would then become president, Michael Flynn would be appointed as his vice president, and Trump would ultimately become the “king of kings,” according to Newsweek.”

The QAnon people are completely insane.