Caching is an MFer

Mmmm, most of my stress about tasks is from tasks that:

• I’m not sure if I need to do at all
• don’t need to be done yet
• I can’t work on yet
• are less important/urgent than other tasks

So uh… why? They claim it’s to get people interested in cybersecurity. Isn’t an exploit just as interesting after it’s been responsibly disclosed? The only reason it’d be more interesting for the reader is if you intend to actively use it. Which they claim to not endorse.

It couldn’t possibly be… that they would lie to a faceless megacorp to use their servers to distribute transgressive material for no other reason than to get attention, right?

I mean, take your pick. This is a place where a lot of us…

• are leftists who disagree with extractive, anti-human economic systems
• left Reddit because they insisted on controlling how people could connect to each others ideas
• like the open collaboration of open source, which is getting wrecked by AI
• like open access communities like wikipedia, which are also getting undermined by AI
• dislike copyright law, which is being selectively ignored here because the people violating it are rich (on paper)
• are marginalized people, who tend to be disproportionately effected by AI decision-making

Plot twist: it’s accurate, because the price is not a number but in fact your very soul.

The folks who said barcodes were the mark of the beast were so close!

It’s the modern digital equivalent of the Inclosure Acts

docker-sbx

…have finally stopped trying to finish people’s sentences.

Preview.app

I’m convinced that the real goal of most tech these days is not to solve problems, but to make them someone else’s problems.

You’re a driver and think we’re not paying you enough? Sorry, our hands are tied, it’s all algorithmic.

You want sick time and health care? Sorry, since your manager is an app you’re technically not an employee but an independent contractor.

You want the food you paid for? Sorry, that’s between you and the driver and/or restaurant. We’re just a mediator.

And then they dupe some of us into blaming the consumers or workers. This is not a problem you can solve with market forces.

They act this way because the regulatory environment allows them to, not because they’re carefully watching what consumers think.

Remember, these are companies that are willing to burn billions to shut down any threats to their business models. By all means, be choosy with where you spend your money and who you work for. But don’t delude yourself into thinking that’s how we win.

Incredible. They’re speed-running enshittification, but they forgot the step where they make something that almost everyone wants to use.

Maybe you only know about the ones who got caught?

You would need a way to walk through a good chunk of realistic gameplay without user input. Good luck with that.

The closest thing to this right now is the performance monitoring that Valve does for Steam Deck compatibility — which isn’t headless, it’s just crowdsourced.

That’s excellent. I think the initial momentum towards a DSL is basically equivalent to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner-platform_effect

But have you considered that people also consume water? Checkmate, Luddites.

Yep. And that’s exactly why we need to keep electing self-proclaimed socialists.

That’s quite a cherry-picked quote, and to connect it to Bernie and AOC is to completely disregard the rest of the text.

Rosa draws a distinction between being a legislator in a parliament – where you’re able to battle the state within its own arena, and expose its contradictions – and being an executive in a cabinet – where your job is to manage crises and therefore hide contradictions.

But coming from a minister, social reforms can’t have the character of the proletarian class, but solely the character of the bourgeois class, for the minister, by the post he occupies, attaches himself to that class by all the functions of a bourgeois, militarist government. While in parliament, or on the municipal council, we obtain useful reforms by combating the bourgeois government, while occupying a ministerial post we arrive at the same reforms by supporting the bourgeois state.

She also explicitly endorses political engagement as a means of class struggle:

Personally, in this great gathering of the different socialist organizations in the free play of the daily political struggle, we don’t fear the least danger for the doctrine of Marx and the principles of democratic socialism, in as much as they have already taken root in France. There is no better school for socialist democracy than the great and living class struggle freed from abstract clichés. The materialist conception of history doesn’t allow us to believe in the development of a living popular movement begotten of abstract formulas; on the contrary, it’s on the material base of a great and strong class struggle, embracing all of the proletariat, that a clear conception of theory and principles will be erected.

And not for nothing, the Communist Manifesto does too:

In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.

In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.

Finally, they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.

The broader theme of Rosa’s text is to not accidentally align yourself with liberals in a cross-class coalition by focusing only on the political question of the day. I think we’re in danger of doing that with memes just as much as self-proclaimed socialist politicians are in danger of doing it by entering government.

There’s an episode of the You Are Not So Smart podcast where the guest (either was? or just interviewed?) the psychologist in charge of interviewing astronauts for suitable personality traits. He had a ton of great insights, but the thing that stuck with me is that there are basically three kinds of conversations:

• Solving practical problems
• Venting emotions
• Affirming social worth

They’re all important, but having the right one at the right time is the key.

Found it: https://youarenotsosmart.com/2025/02/20/yanss-305-how-to-become-a-supercommunicator-according-to-science/

And also unnecessary, commas.

I believe that they use it all day. I believe that they say they find it useful.

I also believe that their bosses gave them a productivity slot machine and told them if they don’t play it they’re fired.

So some of them like it for bad reasons, and some of them have to pretend to like it.