Ed Zitron’s rant was a long read, but it sure did resonate with me. I’ve been in IT for quite a while (our first computer needed an upgrade for lower-case characters) and the current state of tech is utterly depressing. After reading the post, I think that our nerd culture in IT paved the way for the techbros. We need to take a hard look at ourselves, if we want to support this dystopian future we’re heading towards.

Back then, with the family computer (now having 16Kb and lower-case), computing was magical. You all know how it felt like, everything seemed possible, the screen was a window into the future. There were constant leaps in technology - we could store and edit audio, then video, instant worldwide communication. I’m sure that you believed, like I did, that IT could really improve people’s lives and make the world a better place.

But now, the meaningful improvements have become fewer, evolutionary. Consider the updates from your current phone and the last. Maybe the camera was a bit better, but did it really excite you or change your life? What about your laptop? Hardware is plateauing. Just like software.

I know that the engineering behind large enterprises like AWS or Netflix is just fantastic and improving all the time. But from a user’s point of view, not much has changed in a while.

Here’s the problem. We techies believe in the future, that we can change the world. And we are such insufferable know-it-alls that want to help you, and will help you, if you want it or not. There is nothing that could not be improved without computing and digitization. It’s how we are trained to think, it’s in our DNA. While you are speaking, we are making notes of redundancies, mentally tsk tsking your Excel sheets. We view the world a set of problems to be solved.

So then you have a site like (the olde) reddit, or your car, or your TV. All fully functional and fulfill all your needs. But we simply cannot admit to ourselves that our job is done - we must solve the next problem. Even if it isn’t a problem you’ve got!

And so we get computers in everything. In your TV, your car, your alarm clock, your living room lamps and kitchen appliances. All with their host of issues. And we get algorithms in everything, giving us suggestions and sending us reminders.

Current tech is intrusive, overbearing and patronizing - that’s putting it nice. A bunch of well-meant ingenuity is being wasted on problems nobody has.

We need to take people and their time serious, let them do their shit and just leave them the fuck alone when the job is done.

You see, that is another perfect example for why earth has to be flat, anything else just isn’t logical!

deleted by creator

Show the rest of the comic - I dare you!

I don’t know of it’s exactly that font, but it looks like OpenDyslexic.

Just stop!

But what helped me: often smoking is part of a daily routine or ritual, so mix up your routine. Take up a new hobby or take the bus instead of the car. Go for a walk after lunch. Giving up smoking is a big change, so don’t be afraid to make big changes. Get new clothes. Make new friends. You have discarded your old identity as a smoker. Still smoking? Doesn’t matter! You already want to stop - you’re becoming that person already.

And don’t be so hard on yourself if you have a smoke now and then. Be conscious of what situation or routine triggered the reflex, and change it in future. If you have a smoke every few days or weeks, don’t sweat it, you’ve broken addiction as far as I’m concerned!

Just recently saw a video of an experimental self driving vehicle from Bosch - from the 90’s!

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

You could imagine we’d be much further now, considering how far computing power, computer vision and AI have come.

Also not exactly cheap!

The Internet Archive is being DDOSed for the lulz.

https://mastodon.archive.org/@textfiles/113279179271574005

Pihole is good for a private network, but you can forget it in a work setting, especially corporate networks.

Im OK with social media as long as it has RSS. But that also means no insta and no twitter.

Keep in mind that that was a demo to sell Copilot.

The issue that I’ve got with GenAI is that it has no expert knowledge in your field, knows nothing of your organization, your processes, your products or your problems. It might miss something important and it’s your responsibility to review the output. It also makes stuff up instead of admitting not knowing, gives you different answers for the same prompt, and forgets everything when you exhaust the context window.

So if I’ve got emails full of fluff it might work, but if you’ve got requirements from your client or some regulation you need to implement you’ll have to review the output. And then what’s the point?

Always happy to see gemini-related posts!

Check out https://levior.gitlab.io/, a http to Gemini gateway. Found it at https://github.com/kr1sp1n/awesome-gemini

Wait, so you think nuclear reactors spew out uranium?

Didn’t say that. But I also don’t think that it magically appears in the plant.

While coal powerplants don’t spew out radioactive coal ash??

Please stop this whataboutism.

Nobody cares to recycle concrete.

Not true. Making concrete creates huge amounts of CO2 during production. Sand is becoming a valuable resource. Recycling concrete for aggregate absolutely is a thing, but that’s a different topic.

I wont talk about storing waste, because I dont know why it is marketed as prohibitively expensive.

Convenient. Then I will because I’m not finished. You have to ensure containment of the barrels for decades, if not centuries. The mine has to be in geologically inactive area, and you have to be certain that no ground water will seep into the mine in the foreseeable future. We don’t want ground water in the mine, its cold and wet and seeps through everywhere.

And you have to figure out how to keep idiots from breaking into the mine in 150 years and using spent rods to heat their homes. If you think that’s far fetched I encourage you to read about the Goiânia accident , one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters. Some kids found the radioactive source of an abandoned xray machine while playing around.

Uranium is a heavy metal and of course its poisonous. Just like lead, but radioactive. Why aren’t we using uranium glassware or uranium paint anymore if it’s supposedly not poisonous?

When was the last time a solar farm or a wind park had a catastrophic accident leading to large parts of land being uninhabitable for decades, even centuries?

Of course they are explodey. It’s a fission reaction that has to be constantly modulated and cooled to not go critical.

The other argument is the cost of properly storing waste and decommissioning the plant, which is often conviently ignored. Not much of a NPP can be recycled, unlike solar.

Like most things with environmental impact, we just let later generations deal with it. Somehow.

Microsoft jumped fully on the AI hype bandwagon with their partnership in OpenAI and their strategy of forcing GenAI down our throats. Instead of realizing that GenAI is not much more than a novel parlor trick that can’t really solve problems, they are now fully committing.

Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI, and reactivating 3 Mile Island is estimated at $1.6 billion. And any return on these investments are not guaranteed. Generally, GenAI is failing to live up to its promises and there is hardly any GenAI use case that actually makes money.

This actually has the potential of greatly damaging Microsoft, so I wouldn’t say all their decisions are financially rational and sound.

Nuclear has its advantages, but there is hardly anything as cheap and maintenance free as solar+batteries. Anyone can set it up, and it just runs all by itself for years and years.

In Europe, the price for electricity on the spot market regularly goes in the negative. Jep, you can get paid money to consume electricity because it’s so abundant.

Look at France, their new NPP is taking 12 years and 12 billion euros more than planned. Is it really worth all that financial and environmental risk building something poisonous and explodey that needs constant attention?

I installed Bluefin on my mother’s laptop and it’s like a Chromebook for her. She just wants to surf and consume media, and the OS stays solid and out of they way.

Atomic distros are the biggest advance for Linux in recent years.

So I got a crazy idea - hear me out - how about we just abolish copyright completely, for everyone?

I mean, it works in China pretty well.