Federated Republic of Sean @freakazoid@retro.social

THREE follows from spambots on mastodon.social that I have no way of reporting. Fuck it. Mastodon.social is now muted. If you're following me from there, please re-follow from an instance with better moderation.

The fourth hit for "unetbootin" on both Google and DuckDuckGo is for unetbootin.org, which AFAICT distributes a malware-infected version of it. uBlock Origin stops me from going there, but why is it even in the index?

Automatic representation of some kind seems like a pretty clear answer. But I think it's also important not to tip the balance too far in the OTHER direction, because we do want people to start businesses and do stuff. But maybe this doesn't matter, because that'll just help eradicate "employment" as a thing and we'll all form co-ops instead?

Notwithstanding what happened to the workers who voted to unionize, the union actually DID do a service here, which is to reduce the number of workers working under conditions that they're dissatisfied with. They also reduced the number of non-union employees at the company. I'm not trying to be glib; I do think this is important.

We need to equalize power between "employers" and "employees". Personally I'd prefer eradicating that relationship entirely.

2/n

If a company is operating on thin margins in a highly competitive industry already, then to the extent that a union increases labor costs (after all isn't that a union's job?) we should not be surprised when this is what happens. We could pass laws to prevent firing people once they vote to unionize, and maybe the company will survive and maybe it won't. But then companies will just make changes like this earlier.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/evjenn/this-solar-energy-company-fired-its-construction-crew-after-they-unionized

1/n

I'm looking at you, Monit.

Every time I go to look up a piece of Free Software only to find it has a super glitzy web site, I immediately question whether it's something I really want to use. All other things being equal, I'll always choose software with a simpler web site.

I can't wait to live in a house with only 4 doors to slam instead of 10.

There is a high school on this road, but despite the fact that about half the students cross Santa Teresa, the speed limit doesn't drop to 25. At least they use crossing guards, but only one per crosswalk and they need at least 2 because of the right turns, which for some mystifying reason have islands guarding them. (Because the designers considered traffic flow and not safety.)

The closest of these roads to my house is called Santa Teresa Avenue, but my neighbors have nicknamed it the Santa Teresa Speedway because people drive extremely fast and aggressively on it despite pedestrians, bikes, and low-visibility corners. People change lanes into one another all the time, often getting knocked completely off the road into trees, poles, and occasionally people. Despite the sidewalks, pedestrians are mostly afraid to walk on it.

This is mostly a problem in the Santa Clara Valley, which used to all be farmland so has a lot of sprawl. If we were willing to let the suburbs suffer (which of course the city won't because it's where the people who pay the most property taxes live), we'd make these roads much narrower and drop their speed limits to 35, forcing people to take the freeway as close to their destination as possible, which would be much safer.

In the SF Bay Area we have roads with speed limits between 40 and 50 mph. These roads have intersections (all of which have traffic lights), are often divided down the center and allow bicycles and often pedestrians. As you have probably already guessed, people use them when the freeways are clogged and drive at up to 70 mph on them, and they are a major source of fatalities.

Can we talk about how shitty Android is for a moment? Even the tiny number of apps I have install on my Pixel XL causes the battery optimization list to freeze up. And the battery optimization feature itself is idiotic because it breaks apps left and right. A user shouldn't need to be to control it. Give apps a good API to minimize their own battery usage and tell users how much battery apps use both in real time and on the play store.

"The counter will wrap around only after 2¹²⁸ blocks."

I originally read that as "after only 2¹²⁸ blocks" but either way it's still funny how software folks use so many words to write "never".

What we really need are statistics on how often these requests are being made, how often people are refusing them, and how often these cameras are actually installed in compliance with their laughable privacy policies.

Their claim that somehow they're making it less intimidating for people to refuse police requests is also disgustingly bad. They're making it much easier for police to make the request to begin with, so obviously many more requests will go out. Police don't go knock on someone's door unless they have a good idea the camera caught something. And I know from NextDoor that my copsucking neighbors are falling all over themselves to help the cops with racial profiling.

I find it ludicrous in the extreme that Amazon thinks their privacy policy stating that users must install the cameras so they can only view their own property has any meaning whatsoever. The vast majority of the cameras installed outside are obviously filming off of people's property, so they are facilitating mass surveillance of public spaces, knowingly and intentionally.

https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3038688/amazon-owned-ring-says-police-can-keep-and-share-surveillance-videos

I'm tickled that Lenovo is going out on a limb and doing this, and I'd like to thank the folks who will waste $1500 on a device that will likely have a lot of problems so that I can eventually buy the third generation of it used on Swappa.

There are only two kinds of Republicans remaining among the electorate: stupid and evil. And there is significant overlap between these groups.

I sure hope the tiny snail on the other snail's shell is just a baby and not a parasitic species.