I’m trying to get better at this myself, but most people are incredibly bad at systems thinking.
In fact, most people don’t even truly understand that there are systems that interact in multifarious ways at all. Sure, they may make sounds that indicate they do, but in reality, they have no clue and furthermore have no idea they are missing so much.
This is because it’s hard. Which is why getting better at it will give me huge advantages when I need them.
Updating software these days is really dangerous.
Chances are, the update will remove necessary functionality, not notify you about the change at all, or with evident disdain inform you that it’s “for your own good.” Or it will install spyware (like Pocket and embedded ads on Firefox) or actual malware that gets to data-thievin’.
There is almost no case where an upgrade improves anything these days.
Now, we’re back to around 1992 levels of usability of software. Peak usability was around 2007 or so. Then, OSes and applications didn’t restrict you overly much. There were only a few hurdles to jump to make things work as one wanted them to function. Customization was easy and possible. Developers wished to help users be productive, rather than restrict them to the One True WayTM (always the developer’s way, of course) of doing things.
If I could use Windows 7 or any major Linux distro from 2007 with Firefox before the 4.0 transition forever, with security updates and have them work with modern technologies, I would. It’s the only environment that cared about me as a user and allowed me to work without obstruction.
The problem when people write about something they know nothing about, they sound like idiots and don’t even realize it.
So Elon Musk shot a car into space. There had to be some load on that flight; that was the whole point of the test. That much concrete — which is what normally would have been used as the test load — would have been nearly if not just as expensive and would have gained SpaceX no publicity at all and would not have caused everyone on the planet to start ceaselessly gabbing about what SpaceX can do.
Some people — all idiots — seem to think the point of the fucking flight was to shoot a car into space.
Nope.
That was just a side benefit of the mission. The mission would’ve happened with a car or with concrete or any other suitable test load.
The point of the flight was to test deep-space heavy lift and orbital insertion capability for large payloads of a new rocket configuration. And for that — are you surprised? — you need a heavy payload. Like, say, something that weighs as much as a car. But something not too expensive. Like, say, a used, depreciated car that your company makes. It’s a lot better to lose a used car than a $50 million satellite on a test run. The flight, after all, only had a 50/50 chance of success.
The only thing worse than Musk’s cheerleaders are his damn critics. They can’t seem to read, write, or understand any language known to humankind.
I was going to write a post nearly identical to this one. Instead, just go read it.
I wanted, though, to talk about this part a bit.
On the Right there are things like MRAs and PUAs (if that’s still a thing, is that still a thing?) but most of what the Left is embracing are things that also lead right back to traditional gender roles and the idea that women need to be modest (hijab-o-mania among supposed feminists) and need special protection #metoo!metoo! around male predators (which is all of them).
There is what the #metoo movement claims to be about, and what many of its proponents believe it is about, but that and what is actually about and what will result from it are very different. This divergence occurs in most social and political movements. It’s not unique to #metoo, but it is almost always verboten to point it out.
All that said, what the #metoo movement is now mostly about — and this will only increase — is to ensure that assortative mating occurs correctly, that undesirable men (and sometimes, undesirable women) are driven out of the dating market and punished, and that traditional gender roles are upheld and strengthened.
Again, it does not matter what the #metoo movement thinks it’s achieving or doing; those ends are what it’s achieving no matter its members’ self-opinions about its directions and focus. As the post points out, rather than being liberating, #metoo and its offshoots will be constraining, though not of the predators imagined to be restricted. This is not accidental, because truly punishing sexual predators is not the goal now, if it ever was. (And I do think it was at very beginning.)
Whether it’s the stated goal or not, in our social milieu what the movement will actually achieve is the infantilization of women and the punishment of (mostly) low-status men.
Great post on Clarissa’s Blog today.
I’m driven nuts by folks who rant against the injustice of having to compete on the job market with candidates who have a PhD from an Ivy, an independent income, a supportive spouse, a helpful thesis director, etc. And in the same breath, these very folks loudly denounce the nation-state and call for open borders, which would mean that thousands of talented, hard-working colleagues from Peru and everywhere else would be on that same market immediately, willing joyfully to take on conditions of labor that none of the current contenders would be able to survive.
She is herself an immigrant, but recognizes that the “open borders” stance is not tenable for a society.
The “open borders” rhetoric, though, is just demonstration of mood affiliation. Hardly anyone one really means it. Those who do mean it most often are those who wouldn’t be harmed by it, or need the cheap labor for exploitation and then disposal.
Open borders and ideas like it are a way of virtue signaling, but a particularly hypocritical one: it means that relatively well-off people are willing to harm millions of Americans so they can feel better about themselves.
I guess that’s not so unusual, really, but in this case it’s particularly egregious and obvious what’s going on.
If I am ever hiring anyone for a business strategist, I will ask them, “Why do you think that Google forced HTTPS to be used?”
If they get that wrong, if they blather on about being “helpful,” they obviously are not a good business strategist and I will not hire them. No business does anything to be helpful. Never. This is not a thing. That people can believe this is astounding.
If my prospective strategist answers even with a simple, “They must have done it to help their business and to harm their competitors,” then I will likely hire them.
About this, as I guess as there are about many things, there are some very powerfully stupid people with some equally stupid ideas about how the world and how business works.
Any browser where I can’t see the full URL is a fucking worthless piece of putrescent detritus.
Though I believe smartphones are a net negative for the world, I remember in 2007 when the iPhone was released the most common conclusion that I saw online was that the Steve Jobs demo of the iPhone was fake, as no such device was possible.
This was the received wisdom, though now, as with most things that happened but to most people “never happened,” hardly anyone recalls it.
For all of Apple’s flaws, saying that they don’t create innovative products — well, they are one of the few companies you can’t actually say that about.
Though to be fair, like nearly every tech company, they relied 80% on government-funded research and development to achieve anything at all.
Another reason for the HTTPS push is to lock users out of setting up their own infrastructure at home that is not cloud-connected. If it’s not capable of being spied on/monitored, it is useless to the Googles, Firefoxes, and other ad delivery platforms of the world.
Since it’s impossible to obtain a valid TLS cert for a local connection, this means that any non-cloud-connected device will be marked insecure by Firefox, Chrome, etc. By marking anything that has a self-signed cert insecure (which goes along with this HTTPS push), and making it impossible for TLS to work, this deliberately and maliciously breaks anything that doesn’t have a constant external connection. Thus, it’ll then require any configuration (even if the device sits in your home) to be done via some cloud service.
You think this breaking of devices is accidental?
Nope, it is a strategy. A deliberate and obvious one. Obvious if you aren’t morons like John Scalzi and his affirmational choir.
It’s really odd but predictable too that on Scalzi’s cloyingly mediocre site and other similar pseudo-intellectual habitats that I’ve been called a paranoiac for voicing opinions that the frenzied push to HTTPS is being done for anything other than altruistic, benevolent reasons by Google, etc. Why these self-avowed liberals trust that large monopolistic or near-monopolistic companies have their best interests in mind, I have no goddamn idea. It makes no sense at all. I assume it’s just easier than thinking, which pseudo-intellectuals in particular are averse to.
Next up from a delusional liberal near you: how the NSA and CIA are really just fuzzy little puppies who only want to lick your face and cutely attempt to navigate the stairs.
Google Chrome Pushes For User Protection With ‘Not secure’ Label.
Nope. Headline should read: Google Protects Its Ad Network and Erases the Early Web With Fake Security Push.