NotPavlovsDog

It might all still go the way of the TV [0]. We've been seeing the demise of general computing in real time. The current generation may be the last that got to pop the hood on the internal workings of the Internet, from inspecting HTML source of a web-page to disassembly of whatever was running it, if source code was not available (or at least port scanning and possible stack bashing).

With corporations doing their best to remove that ability, and consumers gladly buying curated experience boxes, it all might culminate with an encapsulated silo park selling all you can eat broadcasting (think one-way directed stream, with consumer only getting to send back analytics). So in a way, Gibson got very many things right, maybe even the core thing. I remember thinking in the 90's "Oh, he got it so wrong, the Internet changes everything". Hah.

Alan Kay's "the computer revolution has not happened yet" is more relevant today than ever [1]. It's up to us to change that.

[0]I think JWZ (Jaimie Zawinski) spoke about that in "Coders at work", can't find the exact source.

[1]PDF: http://worrydream.com/refs/Kay%20-%20The%20Real%20Computer%2... There's also a youtube video of his presentation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYT2se94eU0

I remember watching it and wondering what that code language on the screen was.

Alan Kay's classification of modern state of computing as pop culture continues to ring true.

I would have benefited greatly to be exposed to Lisp early on, but it was outside of the info-bubble I was in.

machine readable can involve more than visible spectrum. Radar and light beam reflectors, non-vis spectrum strobes, radio beacons, swarm. Volvo was working on this years back, before "autonomous" - cars sharing data via wireless comms, using installed navigation markers by roads and more. There are ways, just no central will.

Google, among others, is using private (external, not owned or controlled by google) wi-fi access points as radio beacons for navigation today. Good old wardriving google. This is one factor facilitating navigation in cities when GPS is spotty. And then you have cell towers.

Centralized, standardized navigation facilitation solutions would be better, more reliable, not require mobile internet access for alignment with beacons, as they would be in a stored database in the vehicle, etc.

> What breaks the narrative is that the system is clearly not antagonistic

So why the shift to Taylorism at Toyota, the heart of the Toyota system? Why the shift to projectification from life-long employment at Japan? How can one explain chronic injury if workers get to plan and improve the workflow (or are wasted humans not considered waste)?

And the Toyoda principles at the heart of Toyota predate Deming. (Ohno, Taiichi (March 1988), Just-In-Time For Today and Tomorrow, Productivity Press, ISBN 978-0-915299-20-1 )

The list of paradoxes can continue indefinitely, or one can elect to look for the root cause.

I would appreciate an expansion on the "break into".

The approach I outline can explain and predict why the two Ts rotate, including at Toyota (Toyota going Taylor, or rather normative - rational).

I prefer not to base my experience on what Deming or anyone else wrote, but how their writing relates to real-life practice (though of course as a critic of Taylorism as represented by MBO and other Performance Evaluation rational schools, he is a welcome breath of fresh air).

Have you observed, preferably both as a participant and independent, Deming idealism in a functional real-life system? I have only seen a shift towards projectification and cultural hegemony.

There may not be that much difference between Lean (Toyota) and Taylorism. Don't forget that Toyota (Toyoda) is not that far from Fordism - "you get whatever color you want as long as it is black". Employees get to tweak the process but the fundamental model stays the same. They don't get to change the assembly line, nor the parts, nor what is assembled. And Toyota guaranteed life-long employment when it was implemented.

I've worked the line twice - first time as a teen looking for any work, the second time as an undercover analyst hired to examine why Lean was failing at a plant, both doing the same type of job: electrical component assembly. I got physical injuries (minor) both times. The majority of the assembly line workers had repetitive stress injuries, including losing fine motor skills and wrist control due to use of impact wrenches and exposure to bad ergonomics. If a human delaminates, you can't glue them back.

Although rational (Taylorism, Management by Objectives, MBO, OKR, Milestones, management by goals ) vs. normative (Lean / Toyoda, human-centric, Agile, humanist, culture ) division of management styles/rhetoric has been proposed, they should perhaps be seen through the prism of Creative Destriction (not disruption, and surprisingly, CD comes from Marx).

In a vulgar approximation, imagine capital-backed entities served by the manager class, which are stressed by short deadlines and performance-tied bonuses and careers. They are constantly shifting basic approximations of solutions and perspectives, without challenging the system.

Give employees more autonomy, and output and managerial control suffer. Instill more rigid control, and risk losing the ability to innovate and "knowledge producing" (Drucker of MBO fame) talent such as programmers.

In an antagonistic system, whatever you come up with has its own roots of destruction on top of built-in conflict (Marx again). Hence the back-and-forth re-framing between "rational" (Taylorism) and normative "culture, baybe, Holocracy!" so fast that today it is a zombie that has both and neither.

You end up with projectification, corporate "culture" that demands the soul and meeting arbitrary "milestones" from employees, but the corporation itself can only guarantee arbitrary termination.

There is a great and influential analysis "Design and Devotion: Surges of Rational and Normative Ideologies of Control in Managerial Discourse" by Barley and Kunda. I would suggest reading "Management fashion" by Abrahamson as well. Both can be found through G.scholar, including no-registration copies.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2393449 https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/amr.1996.9602161572

Let's not forget upfront and arbitrary budget and time constraints from the customer side.

"We want the project to be delivered by X, and we have a budget of Y. Our specs are Z, but not really, so factor in A refactorings (A for arbitrary). Oh, and we don't have Q for Quality defined."

Especially prone in government and military contracts. Throw in some arbitrary public procurement rules so that Y is allegedly not disclosed, except to the select contractors that somehow know what the desired Y is and what the competition is bidding before bid close.

You get the F-35, which pragmatists say was never meant to fly, just to make the players rich in the process of failure.

Sauces: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2021/02/23/the-us-air-... https://pando.com/2015/09/24/war-nerd-why-f-35-albanian-mush...

when calling cheat.sh for youtube-dl, it appears to cite tldr:youtube-dl

So perhaps a suggestion could be to install tldr so as to be able to call a summary in your terminal without the need for web-access to cheat.sh

You don't buy the bull, but consider this: why is there proven age bias in tech hiring? Same reason the military likes 'em young: it's easier to mold and manipulate fresh adults.

If I'm in control, i plan to take a nice deep scuba dive, somewhere warm, with blue water.

I would prefer to avoid a department keeping me hooked up for stats and fees.

Wishing us all a pleasant death! With life being what it is, even some dignity while dying is a great gift.

From my experience as a rescue-worker, I have instructed my SO to never have me on a machine for life support longer than one week before I'm in my sixties, and no longer than 3 days if I'm over.

This is my decision, and I won't go into details, because they are personal and I am not a doctor. Perhaps the point I desire most others get from my post is this:

We are all going to die. Usually unpleasantly. Most often, unexpectedly, even with a prolonged illness.

Plan your death. Plan your medical treatments. There are things you can control, you need to know & state what they are, and have it in writing.

I'm glad that that xiaomi eu incident I shared has served as a warning for you and perhaps others, but saddened that it took place and perhaps represents the broad state of android custom ROM development.

I've avoided Android development as much as I could - it's a mess. Right now I am actively reviewing what my options are for some older hardware that I would hate to toss just because of no updates. So far I unfortunately don't have any other positive suggestions, outside of Lineage and the few software/app developers that have a serious approach to development, such as Magisk for root access.

What I have seen on XDA forums was not inspiring, unfortunately. I regret not being able to suggest anyone else, so I suppose it's the unsatisfactory general "do your own research and be extremely wary" recommendation/warning.

XDA forums even have a sticky post for developers about respecting the GPL, yet most custom ROM builders don't share code nor a build manifest nor a report of what different licensed code / binary is included in their build, thinking that linking to the original GPLd code, such as xiaomi's GNU/Linux kernel github page, is enough.

Is this a satisfactory approach to you? Let us leave out the whole "spirit of the thing" debate, Free Software etc -

knowing what code your application includes, crediting it, listing the different licenses and having a manifest of binary blobs is mandatory if not for the reason of keeping track and having a sane development workflow.

So, if the majority of the ROM developers don't do it, that is an avoid them sign to me.

As you outline, only a partial blocking is possible when google services and applications are on the phone (today this includes most apps from the g-store).

A "pure" analytics service may be blocked when reaching to a known spyware server. Bundled spyware and telemetry (is that "google core") are unfortunately not blocked.

A simple approach without root is using a fake VPN blocker such as Blokada (FOSS) https://blokada.org/

Scary to see all the hits. For complete - requires a lot of work and the custom ROM builders do not appear to be so interested.

I have been reviewing security for unofficial builds, and it's pretty abysmal, same for GPL compliance by the ROM creators. Could you share how you reviewed security for the unofficial ROM?

I'm putting a list of actions to take, but so far it appears it will take days to review ROMS, alternatively download a rom, review what is in it and build from Lineage official source, with Lineage having the better privacy record ....

Some things I would need to check:

- The binary blobs at least match the originals, for example binaries from xiaomi

- Included applications that DO publish their source match the published source / binaries built from said source

- Permissions are sane/correct and don't have too many 777 where it is not needed, which is often set for convenience during development

- That developers are aware and transparent about any telemetry or spyware, which appears to receive a rather cavalier approach from many developers.

This is just one example of developer hostility and incompetence on the xiaomi eu rom community when asked about spyware: https://xiaomi.eu/community/threads/why-does-xiaomi-eu-rom-t...

There are many more to be found at the XDA forum, under custom roms.

There are also some older discussions on HN, xiaomi related, but it does bring up the larger point - how many of the applications and core functionality in custom roms is spyware ? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26306661

As others have commented, the long hours essentially have to do with hazing and conformance vs productivity. It is almost impossible to expect "leaders" that have gone through the same grinder to treat new employees differently.

"I have suffered, hence you must suffer"

For those considering a job at GS, or, for that matter, any job, examining the core culture, and asking about it early in the recruitment process, is a must.

This really needs to be the top comment about alternative tokens and pollution.

US military has been estimated between the world's largest polluter and as much as 140 countries.

That Dollar, that "Freedom" isn't free, and it's the world paying the bill.

[Note: American here. Ashamed about our imperialist impact ]

https://theconversation.com/us-military-is-a-bigger-polluter...

Seconded. For reference, have multiple websites with 10K to 100K visitors monthly on a DO droplet, with a wiki and a dynamic blog working just fine.

Trying this project out made it quite slow and not practical, would need a beefier machine / setup. I decided not to invest time in testing it further, but it may work for others.

I've been collecting on that gap in personal interviews, I have observed it as well. CMS (Critical Management Theory ) had some tidbits that I found useful, since they criticize mainstream management and describe some of the tactics avoided by mainstream research.

What would you suggest from your readings?

I've mostly benefited from hard realism approach and Actor theory (as applied by some: everyone has an agenda, to work with them: Align, make Peace, or Destroy).

There is a view that the ego, being non-existent, is constantly shifting and re-framing. Observe the roles/personas you shift to throughout the day, how and why?

I find the Actor theory applicable - in the end, everyone in an org has dominant interests, usually not many.

And the most dangerous are the systems players - because organized groups can take out and dominate any individual. One of the reasons why those playing the system vs the value creators take over in most large organizations.

Apache and *nix, for some applications LAMP was a game-changer for rapid web solutions for me, back in the day.

Started with FreeBSD for my servers and box, then GNU/Linux on my boxes and laptops, as the hardware support got better on GNU/Linux. Apache, but really the whole stack, what a 10x!

No clicking, no checkboxes, no go to this or that website to download, just run a command or a shell script and pull in software you need, configs, etc ...

Of course I wish we had Lisp machines, but this is what I have to work with. Having *nix, learning it over 30 years ago, and it's still at the core of what I do. So much time saved over the years not re-learning the fads. I shudder to think how much time I would waste on the other platforms and their quirks, planned obsolescence, etc.

Was saved relatively early (enough), an iMac I got as a gift & tried to update to the next OS got fried, was perhaps a bug, some say malevolent design by apple to get consumers to buy new machines. Don't care, done with that platform. Though I did buy an iPad 2 for peanuts, to read on. It's cheap because people can't update it anymore, so there's that.

I suppose I saved about a year of man-hours at this point in life, just using the *nix stack that just keeps on truckin'

& Common Lisp for rapid idea implementation.*

I could have worded better, thanks.

Primarily because the companies listed succeeded in capitalizing on Software Eating the World (Thiel).

Software companies grew the way they did because, for a while, there was little regulatory capture, with tech doing what tech wanted, at least with the unicorns. Thiel, PG have commented on this.

There was a recent article on HN from O'Reilly - the new wave of breakthroughs anticipated, in biotech, might not have room for engineer CEOs, nor the unicorn growth of software-based start-ups.

The writer is writing on "what is art", while being a gallery represented professional artist (i.e. sold his art in the system) and a paid professor(again, professional system player).

It's brand awareness building, also known as self-promotion. "See, I'm in the racquet, but I'm not like the others!" He went on to publish a book on the subject, 3 years later. [ source : gallery statement, wikipedia ]

He is pushing art as politics and himself as the arbiter, all while preaching in the royal "We". Like I wrote, how tedious.

This is why i concentrate on "professional art". It's a commercial endeavor. Often, it excludes the creator.

Art sure is more valuable once the artist is dead, from a dealers perspective.

As for what is "art" in general? Whatever you want it to be!

If you have to buy a book or go to school to figure it out, you just engaged in commerical / professional art, as a buyer. Back to commercial art we go.

Professional art is whatever you can sell as such.

What i find boring with western art is that it is completely dependent on the critic and the discourse statement, in text, that must accompany any "serious" work of art.

Zen and objects created under that philosophy makes no distinction between "high" and "low" art. There are multiple other approaches outside of the western paradigm.

The writer of the article is selling a monetary-driven agenda, as they are dependent on getting paid for their strong-worded texts, while refusing to address that particular elephant in the room, connecting western art and discourse. How tedious.

I have to put this on my wall. I made this point to a "designer" in love with the trend of the full-splash intro video. They wanted to use it on a website targeting managers.

Trying the demo on three middle-aged individuals, two did not have the habit of hitting page down or scrolling. So, two out of three did not find the "obvious" content of the website below the video.

   Who are the audience and what are their true needs?

is what we have to concentrate on when we sell products. I am sitting in zoom sessions with individuals that complain about their "wireless" headphones failing / discharging. Yet they happily paid for them, hundreds of dollars. Consumers are magic. I suggested they use a wired headset. They will not spend 10 dollars to buy one. One should contemplate deeply why, if one wants to sell to people like this. Observe them in their natural habitat. They can't explain why.

This is why having a digital product out in the market with paying customers is valuable in itself. You get to observe and measure, and pivot if you're lucky. The userbase is the resource, and the paying userbase is gold.

It's far from done, and some would say not done at all, depending on the definition of microplastic. Microplastic in cosmetics is absolutely not even close to solved.

https://www.plasticsoupfoundation.org/en/2020/03/battle-on-t...

Agree on both counts.

It's really inspiring to see what real engineering is. Makes me feel like a sell-out massaging Skinner boxes.

In the laundry problem they are dealing with both the extreme challenge of physical objects (connecting the right pump to the right controller, battling liquid pressure loss, unreliable reference washing machine performance and water quality ), abstract concepts ("what shall be identified as microplastics?" "is the reference wash cycle in any way relevant to how plastic clothing sheds when worn by humans?" "how shall the conflicting measurement methods from literature be addressed / unified?") and project constraints. To say nothing about filter clogging.

And it's a great feeling to know that your work is fundamentally relevant, i see that even when they hit their lows.

Really making me re-consider my career path.