Notices by D Dino (garbados@toot.cat)

# Regarding why software is so bad

> There is no way for Google, Facebook, or Twitter to quit ad revenue and continue to exist in the marketplace. There is no way for Microsoft or IBM to turn down contracts with body counts and continue to maintain their power. Profit enthralls them, and it infects our craft. To afford food, we have paywalled the sum total of human knowledge.

https://garbados.github.io/my-blog/regarding-software.html

when i tell people “capitalism is why software is bad” unless they’re already anti-capitalists, they don’t believe me; but if you walk through the evidence and the dynamics, they just get sad and talk about wanting to give up. really? your alternatives are “unquestioning compliance” and “depression”? lord help me the centrists will kill us all

reading "want to feel old?" memes and solemnly remarking, "i want to feel old"

imagine if everyone in advertising were doing literally anything else

i've been shitposting for about seventeen years

hello! ok, so.

i made a patreon page to support my work on free software. it's difficult to keep up when you can't afford your own time, so if you'd like to help me make accessible software and can spare some survival dollars, consider becoming a patron. thanks comrades ✊ ❤️

https://www.patreon.com/garbados

i also have a liberapay:

https://liberapay.com/garbados/

thanks google

> Google has hired an anti-union consulting firm to advise management as it deals with widespread worker unrest, including accusations that it has retaliated against organizers of a global walkout and cracked down on dissent inside the company.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/20/technology/Google-union-consultant.html

the alternate present in which netflix is just one of many portals to a vast and singular public media repository, as long ago people realized intellectual property was bogus

i am suspicious of in-the-weeds reporting that concerns itself with policy minutiae to the exclusion of structural analysis, which is basically vox’s whole bag

vox could have made this article about fare-free transit but instead spends hundreds of words wondering if fare-evaders are morally deficient

https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/11/12/20959914/fare-evasion-costs-cities-millions

vox is the kind of center-left publication that believes city officials when they say “there’s no money for that” because analyzing the structural causes of such binds and failures would be too radical to consider

i'm a software freelancer with hours to spare. if you need a pythonista or javascripter with a background in distributed systems from databases to p2p networks, hit me up!

fallout is anti-revolutionary propaganda meant to make you think you have it good just for not dying of radiation

it doesn’t have to be like this

so i mentioned working on a library for working with activitypub servers a few days ago and writing it has been going well so i figured i’d share what it is and where it’s at.

the library is called (tentatively) “activitysearch” and it operates around the model of a single actor. an actor has an associated database (pouchdb) where it stores any data it downloads about the actor — but it need’s that actor’s permission to get the necessary creds. it is not a tool for checking out other people on the fediverse. it is a tool for working with your own data.

the data it downloads is then indexed so you can make queries against it without hitting the network, queries like, “who am i following whose instance has disappeared?” or “where’s that toot i fav’d about crows?” i have a rudimentary text-search algorithm i use to build a search index but it’s not really professional-grade like lucene, just something useful enough for general purposes.

i love technology. i love how often it breaks inexplicably because it was built by a combination of overworked serfs and gilded worms. i love how companies hoping tech will reduce costs fall into an endless trap of increasingly inferior replacements. i love how often the most innocuous pieces of tech get blood on them and it takes us years to even realize. fuck i love technology.

somebody tell me about the activitypub threat model for when a server's domain name expires and years later is bought by a malicious party in order to assume the role or rights of a specific actor

*chewing on a computer* mmm data

i like that The Politician is so forthright about corruption in the US. everyone can be bought. police? easy. education? they'll even come to you! law is different for the rich and everyone knows it.

the pansy division does an incredible rendition of "sweet transvestite" in the punk rock show album

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpAtKUjHOaU

chilling at the village commissary in the alternate socialist present. yesterday for the sixth year running the village elected a local cat monarch-in-chief, and today is the coronation ceremony where villagers try to goad the cat onto the throne with treats long enough to place a crown upon their head. it is a difficult and usually futile endeavor, but we have fun.