In light of the whole word press situation, I would like to reiterate that free software institutions should be giving the same kind of attention and support to project governance as they do to licenses.
It's badly overdue. I think we can say it's dereliction not to.
If the Kubernetes material was honest about "your team will need recurrent annual training to remain current with this tool," adoption would crater overnight.
That's not unique to Kubernetes, though it is fun to pick on them for it. _Nearly every_ significant infrastructure tool has this shape. Organizations that adopt these tools are unable to receive their value until their staff know how to use them, and that knowledge is deeply not self-sustaining.
In my experience as a manager and leader, I spend a lot of time trying to get engineers to care more about business outcomes than technical issues. Not because I think the technical issues don't matter. But because I know if that if you're not trying to understand business outcomes, your judgment about the technical issues is going to be much worse.
Many engineers fundamentally do not believe this to be true. And it's one of the things that sets them at odds with leadership.
The UK helped usher in the coal era — now it’s closing its last remaining plant
The Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottinghamshire is slated to close on September 30th, marking the end of coal power in the UK. It’s turning the page on an era of dirty energy that the UK helped usher in globally and now has to leave behind to meet climate goals.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/23/24252195/last-coal-power-plant-close-climate-change-clean-energy
I left the Social Web working group because of the eagerness of allowing known endorsements of digital violence having a say in the development of it.
And now it's also a big sponsor of the new Foundation. Since ethics, for most, tends to be a sort of T-shirt you can get a conference and not something that's a lived value, as with it all, I do not trust anything coming out of it and those places.
https://www.jacky.wtf/essays/2024/pulling-from-fedi/
https://www.jacky.wtf/essays/2024/deinvest-open-web/
<p>Ok, I should be sleeping right now, but what's happening is SO FUCKING CRAZY.</p><p>Long story short: WPEngine is suing Matt Mullenweg, Automattic and the WordPress foundation for slandering them. In return, Matt is suing them for trademark violation.</p><p>But, BUT, WPEngine has fired their first shot. And what a shot it is, friends:</p><img src="https://goblin.band/files/ccae0c7e-bcad-4df8-833e-198c82647f14" alt /><p></p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Cease-and-Desist-Letter-to-Automattic-and-Request-to-Preserve-Documents-Sent.pdf">Link to the full letter</a></p><p>Some extracts:</p><blockquote><p>Stunningly, Automattic’s CEO Matthew Mullenweg threatened that if WP Engine did not agree to pay Automattic – his for-profit entity – a very large sum of money before his September 20th keynote address at the WordCamp US Convention, he was going to embark on a self-described “scorched earth nuclear approach” toward WP Engine within the WordPress community and beyond. When his outrageous financial demands were not met, Mr. Mullenweg carried out his threats by making repeated false claims disparaging WP Engine to its employees, its customers, and the world. Mr. Mullenweg has carried out this wrongful campaign against WP Engine in multiple outlets, including via his keynote address, across several public platforms like X,YouTube, and even on the <a target="_blank" href="http://Wordpress.org">Wordpress.org</a> site, and through the WordPress Admin panel for all WordPress users, including directly targeting WP Engine customers in their own private WordPress instances used to run their online businesses</p></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p>During calls on September 17th and 19th, for instance, Automattic CFO Mark Davies told a WP Engine board member that Automattic would “go to war” if WP Engine did not agree to pay its competitor Automattic a significant percentage of its gross revenues – tens of millions of dollars in fact – on an ongoing basis. Mr. Davies suggested the payment ostensibly would be for a “license” to use certain trademarks like WordPress, even though WP Engine needs no such license. WP Engine’s uses of those marks to describe its services – as all companies in this space do – are fair uses under settled trademark law and consistent with WordPress’ own guidelines. Automattic’s CFO insisted that WP Engine provide its response to this demand immediately and later, on the day of the keynote, followed up with an email reiterating a claimed need for WP Engine to concede to the demands “before Matt makes his WCUS keynote at 3:45 p.m. PDT today.”</p></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p>In parallel and throughout September 19 and 20, Mr. Mullenweg embarked on a series of harassing text messages and calls to WP Engine’s board member and also its CEO, threatening that if WP Engine did not agree to pay up prior to the start of Mr. Mullenweg’s livestreamed keynote address at 3:45pm on September 20, he would go “nuclear” on WP Engine, including by smearing its name, disparaging its directors and corporate officers, and banning WP Engine from WordPress community events.</p></blockquote><p>They... they have text message captures. In the pdf. Matt Mullenweg was trying to extort them ... by text messages. They seem to have the entire thing in the writting.</p><p></p><blockquote><p>In the final minutes leading up to his keynote address, Mr. Mullenweg sent one last missive: a photo of the WordCamp audience waiting to hear his speech, with the message that he could shift gears and turn his talk into “just a Q&A” if WP Engine agreed to pay up</p></blockquote><p>They finish requesting Automattic to "preserve, and not destroy, any and all documents or information in their possession, custody, or control that may be relevant to any dispute between WP Engine and Automattic". They are going to war, big time.</p><p>All this crap is just because they refuse to pay his protection money. And the guy has been stupid enough to put everything in writting.</p><p></p><p>Holy. Fucking. Shit.</p><p>HOLY FUCKING SHIT.</p><p>They are going to toast him alive</p> 📎
AI, taking complex topics and fucking them up, giving people bad information that’ll get them killed, all for the low low price of more energy and water than we have to spare. This is such a waste of time. https://mastodon.social/@emanuelmaiberg/113192736734791060
If I’ve learned one thing from 15 years in tech it’s that men can be in the arena trying stuff and it ain’t matter how many times they fuck up but women have to land fully formed and perfect beyond reproach or they’re not serious people.
Dear fellow Europeans, I am respectfully asking you to consider signing this European Citizen Initiative to institute a billionaire tax. It was invented by leading French economist Thomas Piketty; I read the whole thing, and it is technically excellent. Hit me if you have questions, but please sign it, it is important.
https://www.tax-the-rich.eu/
It needs 1 million signatures (currently 300K) and seven countries over their threshold (currently three: Denmark, France, Germany).
#economics #tax
Remember everyone: if your CEO insists that you can only work at the office, only work when you’re at the office. Leave when your contracted hours end. Do not work at home. Take whatever your contracted breaks are.
Oh and join a union.
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/ceo-andy-jassy-latest-update-on-amazon-return-to-office-manager-team-ratio
[me]: ok, lets try something simple, just add this one thing.
[chatgpt]: ok, I sort of did that so that it it looks mostly right, but I also randomly removed subtly important details that will definitely break everything, good luck hunting down the regressions I introduced!
So:
Mu. Ask a different question.
You have dependencies. You will always have them. Choose them thoughtfully. Invent where it matters most to you, and re-use where it does not, and where you can benefit from somebody else's care & testing.
Talk your employers into sponsoring the important ones if you can, because that will improve their quality. Probably.
There is no such thing as free-as-in-lunch software.
FIN
@Em0nM4stodon@infosec.exchange
That EU law does not require a #CookieBanner unless the web site wants to track your clicks or sell your data.
Because people do not understand this, they think "stupid EU law" instead of...
- "website owner has no respect for consumer rights"
- "website owner has no solid business plan and just hopes for a few bucks from the advertisement industry"
#GDPR
Also, if you're like me, and were raised to scoff at people who needed to hire cleaning services as it is a "rich lazy" person thing, I urge you to absolutely let go of that. The last two years I've been incredibly burnt out both from work and from, idk, probably 39 years of undiagnosed autism. If you can pay for an accommodation like this to help give yourself some space to breathe, do it.
Get ready to celebrate open-source once again with Hacktoberfest! Whether you're going to be creating pull/merge requests, maintaining a participating project, or hosting a community event, check out the site for all the information you'll need: https://hacktoberfest.com
My no-nuance take on the recent discourse:
I am not less than the other people in the IndieWeb community for not having a fancy, automated, cool setup on my personal website. Nobody has ever made me feel that way. It doesn't matter if all you have is a simple page with your name and email.
If there is one place where you can do whatever you want and how you want is your personal website. I'm lucky to have found a community that supports this.
Contributing to open source is a privilege. It doesn't mean you have cheated to do it or that you don't deserve praise for doing it!
It only means that not everyone can do it. You need the skills, time and will to do it in addition to doing whatever you need to have a good life.
Not everyone has that time. Not everyone works in the field.
We must acknowledge it to meaningfully convey the value of open source in society.
#opensource #privilege
If I ran a dentist practice in 2024 I would simply advertise that we're ADHD-friendly and say up-front that we would just see you and treat you, and would never, ever remark on or shame you for the state of your teeth or how long it's been since you've last seen a dentist
@docpop
STOP DOING EMBEDS
Things dreamed up by the UTTERLY DERANGED:
<iframe src="...site that is not yours...">
<script src="https://mastodon.social/embed.js">
"Hello I would like to mine bitcoin for you"
"Thank you for the tracking cookies and single point of failure"
THEY HAVE PLAYED US FOR ABSOLUTE FOOLS
The UK's largest free culture and free and open source community unconference is back, after a 5 year hiatus. Come along and take part! #OggCamp #OggCamp2024 #Blaugust2024 #100DaysToOffload
http://andypiper.co.uk/2024/08/20/return-of-the-oggcamp/
if there's one thing i hate more than not having executive function to do the thing it's finally having the executive function to do the thing but then being blocked by external factors outside my control
Fuck everyone who uses "unalive" with zero sense of irony. Fucking socmed algorithm brain poisoning.
Say "kill". Say "murder". Say "suicide". Say "rape". Say "pedophile". Say what you mean. If people need to not see or hear those words they'll use a filter.
(Or if you're on a platform where you feel like you're forced to elide a word, make it obvious you know you're being censored and don't use stupid euphemisms like it's a totally normal thing to do.)
OK! I *think* I've finished.
You can now "rescue" any embedded Tweet and recreate it as simple HTML - no tracking.
Includes:
🗣 Avatars inlined as WebP
📸 All attached photos inlined
🎥 Video poster inline, <video> to original mp4
🔗 Hyperlinks don't use t.co
#️⃣ Hashtags & @ mentions linked
🔄 Includes reply threads & quote Tweets
🕰 Semantic time
🔍 Schema.org metadata
🖼 Cards
📊 Polls
♥ , ♻ & 🗨 counts
One command. No API key needed.
Code at https://github.com/edent/Tweet2Embed
Feedback *very* much welcome!
Hey you! Yes! *YOU!*
Come to #OggCamp in Manchester - October 12-13.
It's a delightfully nerdy open source / open culture conference.
Meet new friends, give new talks, learn new things.
Tickets available now - https://oggcamp.org/
@simon@simonwillison.net
every now and then i feel like im taking crazy pills because i remember when aaron swartz killed himself because he was going to go to jail forever because he scraped JSTOR,
and eleven years later your manager tells you “sshhhh it’s fine just scrape all of it don’t worry the CEO said it’s fine”
The problem with being a programmer with ADHD is that it's often more fun to build a chainsaw from scratch than it is to chop down a tree by hand with an axe.
An important lesson is that you can never easily tell who is “vulnerable” to COVID. Olympic champions are at risk from COVID. In different ways COVID poses a risk to all of us. This is why it’s important for everyone to take measures to protect themselves and others from COVID.
I used "crowdstrike" as a verb at work today, to paraphrase: "CI is broken because github crowdstruck us with a bad rust compiler update". AKA: usable any time an automatic update from a vendor breaks your infrastructure.
All I'm saying is, if they didn't want this neologism, they shouldn't have ruined my flight home from Italy.
#crowdstrike
Jamie Tanna
.
