Notices by iona 🐝 (iona@social.coop), page 8

@aral I notice a lot of (mostly non-EU) sites pulling this crap. There's a big "OK, give me the article" button with a tiny text link to opt out, which requires you to then go through several screens of options before being (sometimes) taken to your article.

Also non-GDPR-compliant: sites that say "you have to accept our tracking and data retention before you're allowed to use the site at all".

Packing up an eBay order for someone in Mid Glamorgan in South Wales.

I have to pack it Caerphilly 🎉

@Graham_Mitchell At that point, only the folk with the mega coding skills needed to write AI code that can write code will be needed.

Seriously, though, we put people with high level tech skills on too much of a pedestal. So they can write code that makes computers track and advertise shite to people - bully for them, I guess?

Why is the world not working towards a transition away from environmentally and socially damaging capitalism? It's like everyone's deluding themselves that this is the only way to do things and there's no alternative.

Surely there must be some country, somewhere, that's looking at ways to move on from consumer capitalism to something more sustainable and conducive to quality of life for its people.

@zatnosk No one's paying for anything other than people who can make computers advertise things to people.

You don't get to be a researcher or writer, for instance, unless you have the wherewithal to literally work for free until someone notices you.

@amphetamine where's the exit :(

@kevinbeynon I'm always reading, and I have the kind of brain that can pick up bits of foreign languages really easily.

My dream job would be as some kind of analyst - researching and reading and analysing and writing, becoming a deep expert in some topic, probably to do with the politics of a foreign country.

Part of the problem is living in 🇬🇧 where the jobs are largely sewn up by the children of the people who had those jobs before. Social mobility is alien here.

@kevinbeynon I don't really know what you're getting at.

I can't make computers advertise things to people. Therefore, in 2018, I can get in the sea.

I have the kind of brain that's good with language and words and feelings rather than logic and code. That makes me worthless in this day and age.

It didn't used to be like this, it won't be like this at some point in the future, but right now society says take a hike, Iona.

@kevinbeynon Local Radio Shite

"Now, forget everything you knew about erm, ballpoint pens because we've got airtime to fill"

@kevinbeynon I always wanted to be on the radio, but I did that for some years. There's no meaningful radio industry anymore outside London - constant cutbacks and closures of stations, radio is over.

@kevinbeynon All the time

@simon_brooke The low claimant count is a bit of a red herring. People who lose their jobs on Shetland leave and go somewhere else, which is why there are so few people on jobseekers' allowance.

@kevinbeynon I'm more preoccupied with my own survival. I live just to survive, and I survive just to live. I struggle to see the point.

@kevinbeynon Thing is, in the now times, rather than after some hypothetical apocalypse, I'm useless. If I disappeared tomorrow no one would actually notice - some other eBay trader selling identical items would have my sales and no one would be any the wiser.

@kevinbeynon Trouble is, I'm none of those things either. I eke out a tiny below-poverty-line living by trading on eBay because I have no marketable skills.

Come the end of times, I'll be the first to get my brains scooped out to make fuckwit soup.

Those of us who are just a bit thick still have to live somehow. What's going to happen when the only way to make a living is being able to code?

If you can't code, what can you do in the modern world? It feels like those of us with brains not tuned to programming are doomed to a life of being repeatedly automated out of admin jobs.

One wonders if it would be easier simply to take a long walk off a short pier, and save Silicon Valley having to do it for us.

@fitheach These letters are just automated crap. I did once get a visit when I didn't have a TV, and he took one look at my TV-less house and left.

Anyway, the BBC isn't perfect, or even very good in a lot of cases. But a quick listen to American radio (and closer to home, commercial LBC) is a good advert for keeping things as they are.

By "Brits" I basically mean "anyone who lives here and gives half a shit about the future of this country".

That doesn't include 'rock star' millionaire Goldman Sachs bankers.

@priryo @kde The departure board at that airport makes Northern Rail's knackered station displays look intelligible