Reddit’s disrespectful design

Posted on July 23, 2021 by David K.


An overview of Reddits seemingly counter-productive changes.

Source: Reddit’s disrespectful design

The author says, “I’ve stopped using Reddit mostly because I no longer wanted to support a site that has aggressively started to employ disrespectful design patterns.” Excuse me, but “started?” They’ve been going down this road for years. I’ve stopped using Reddit entirely, and have the site blocked on my network, so that I can’t inadvertently give them traffic by clicking through a search result, as they have obviously paid through the nose for placement these days! Just about everything I search on has at lease one Reddit link in the first page of results. For awhile, I would click through to the page, wait for the site to load it’s 100 MB of scripts, dismiss the popups, expand the answers, and see what Google had supposedly found, but I gradually realized there is never a good answer on the site. Technical discussions are not what people are doing on the site.

500 comments on the HackerNews discussion about this post, and these are the only comments about porn:

This exchange is utter nonsense. Reddit is filled with porn. Thousands and thousands of subs are dedicated to it. If you have an account, and allow NSFW content — and take note that most of the viral posts on the site are marked NSFW, encouraging you to do so, even if you don’t necessarily want to look at porn — all it takes is one search on the site, and you can instantly infer how much of it there is. Yes, a lot of it is come-ons for someone’s paid site, but there is a virtually limitless supply of free, high-quality porn to accommodate everyone’s tastes.

No one wants to admit this. I will. I’ve had a look around. It’s bewildering how much of it there is, and how specific it can be. I’ve brought it up many times in various HN discussions, and no one even wants to acknowledge it. The exchange above is a perfect example of just ducking the issue entirely. In fact, the exact inverse of what’s stated here is true: Reddit is a porn site, with some user-interest topics (like gaming, audiophile headsets, or mechanical keyboards) to keep you engaged between wanks. One of these days, I expect PornHub to take a note, and start forums on their site about whatever people want to talk about. Who knows? Maybe they already do. I’ve not “researched” that site.

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IT Project “Thermocline”

Posted on July 19, 2021 by David K.

Source: https://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/15/the-wetware-crisis-the-themocline-of-truth

A thermocline is a distinct temperature barrier between a surface layer of warmer water and the colder, deeper water underneath. It can exist in both lakes and oceans. A thermocline can prevent dissolved oxygen from getting to the lower layer and vital nutrients from getting to the upper layer.

In many large or even medium-sized IT projects, there exists a thermocline of truth, a line drawn across the organizational chart that represents a barrier to accurate information regarding the project’s progress. Those below this level tend to know how well the project is actually going; those above it tend to have a more optimistic (if unrealistic) view.

This is all true, but the article assumes that everyone is acting rationally, in service to the stated goal(s) of the project, and that problems with the timeline are just honest mistakes. Unfortunately, in my 25 years, I’ve witnessed a nauseating amount of political infighting that sought to undermine projects in attempts to build and/or preserve personal power. This behavior employs the two things readily at-hand for ruining estimating: bad-faith technical decisions, and good, old-fashioned feet dragging. So the problem isn’t just people being wrong, there’s also a large component due to people actively sabotaging a project for their own purposes. 

I’ve spent most of my career in Fortune 250’s, but I’ve seen this happen in a couple of very small companies too. As someone with a personality that is honest to a fault, this has caused me a significant amount of distress in my career. More than once, I’ve been the lone voice in the wilderness crying about the forthcoming train wrecks, only to be ignored, and then ultimately blamed for the crash, because I was the only one that people could point to for having said anything about it at all.

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Leo Morris: News ‘philanthropy’ is a bad idea

Posted on July 19, 2021 by David K.

Now, advertisers seek targeted audiences rather than broad coverage, and savvy consumers read online reviews of everything before making a purchase. People glimpse the news in their Facebook feeds and find amusements through social media forums. They complain bitterly on Twitter, then look around and wonder where the sense of community went.

Source: Leo Morris: News ‘philanthropy’ is a bad idea

The problem has been debated for about 20 years now. But I think history will look back and find one point he made to be the most-compelling problem: “the sense of community.” The internet has eliminated the “gatekeepers” or the “arbiters” or the “curators” of common knowledge. There was a guy who became famous for describing “the long tail,” and that people could find anything they wanted with the modern internet, and people could make money filling those desires, no matter how obscure or arcane. The internet has allowed each person to radicalize along intensely-individualized lines, and be virulently opposed to anyone who differs in any way. This is the problem. It’s just that Twitter found a way to capitalize on this virulence.

We can’t get along any more, because we all presume ourselves the final authority on everything. So there’s very little room in the market for a journalistic publication that’s supposed to offer a wide swath of “important” stories. No one agrees on what those stories are, let alone why they’re important, and what they infer. The entire idea of a publication has been (almost) destroyed by the internet. Only a few bigs will remain. It has much less to do with how to monetize it as it has to do with people’s desire to consume it. I guess what I’m saying is that I think what people really wanted all along was Facebook, but the closest thing we had was the local paper. I mean, look at the orchids and onions in The Republic. It has always been a “compelling” reason to get it. Facebook is just that, times a million.

While linking my local paper, I see that there are twenty-seven trackers and ads on that page, and this is another thing to talk about in the future.

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Who Moved My Cheese

Posted on July 19, 2021 by David K.

I started working at a company named Arvin in 1994. It no longer exists. In 2000, they had a “merger of equals” with a company named Meritor. They promised the Arvin shareholders that, in 2 years, the CEO of Arvin, Bill Hunt, would become the CEO of the combined ArvinMeritor. The execs split $50M in bonuses, $15M of which went to Hunt. As soon as the ink was dry, Meritor started liquidating Arvin’s divisions, and Arvin VP’s started pulling the rip cords on their golden parachutes. One year into the deal, the board pulled the $19M ripcord on Hunt’s golden parachute for him. In just another 2 years, all that was left of Arvin was the OEM exhaust division (Arvin’s largest), which they renamed EmCon, and then sold to a private equity firm. Then they changed their name back to Meritor, and probably had a drink and played golf.

Textbook corporate raidership. And the senior leadership of Arvin all “got theirs.”

From 2000 to 2003, there was a game of musical chairs played internally for who would be doing what in the “merged” company. I had been working in the engineering group, as a programmer and system admin. The project I was working on was determined to be redundant, and was canceled. (A very long story, which picks back up at the end, but one for another day.)

I quickly found a spot in the IT group, and moved over to doing systems administration proper. As things started to shake out, one of Meritor’s “brilliant” corporate leadership moves was to get everyone to read the book, Who Moved My Cheese. The Wikipedia page summarizes it well:

Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life, published on September 8, 1998, is a motivational business fable. The text describes change in one’s work and life, and four typical reactions to those changes by two mice and two “Littlepeople”, during their hunt for cheese. A New York Times business bestseller upon release, Who Moved My Cheese? remained on the list for almost five years and spent over 200 weeks on Publishers Weekly’s hardcover nonfiction list. It has sold more than 26 million copies worldwide in 37 languages and remains one of the best-selling business books.

In a move that surprised not even myself, I was the first one in my group to be handed the communal copy by my boss. I knew that I could be difficult, so even I thought it was appropriate to start with me. What I should have seen coming, though, was that I was about to get the shaft, and thus, according to management’s plans, I needed it first.

In a few short months, I had setup and configured a Sun E10000 from scratch, by the book, with all the bells and whistles, configured 10 TB of EMC disk cabinets, setup a backup area network and a 384-tape silo and all the backups, and gotten several other mission-critical machines up and running. Just about the time it was all done and running like a sewing machine, with lots of housekeeping scripts setup to automate and groom the operation, I was told I would have to hand it all over to the Windows admin, and switch over to doing Windows administration.

Uh, wut?

Just prior to this, I was also told that I would be taken off the bonus plan, with nothing given in return. Still stinging from this, I was aghast and offended. I pulled a string, called in a favor, and got moved back to engineering. This was a mistake, from both ends.

I hung my decision on one thing: we had bought a $50,000 PC server to be the backbone of managing our 150-or-so Windows servers, then chickened out of spending the $250,000 it would have taken to buy the management software the machine was intended to run. Because of this, this massive machine was just sitting around collecting dust. In fact, we used it on several occasions to host the game servers on LAN party nights. Anyway, since it seemed like we needed this really huge, expensive piece of software to manage the Windows “farm,” the job seemed intimidating without it, so I didn’t want to do it.

This was precisely what the book was supposed to get me to see past. I should have recognized the opportunity for what it was, and made the best of it. I should have made those Windows servers my puppets. If they wouldn’t buy the management software, I should have written my own automation, like I did for the Sun machines. But, no, I didn’t want to be seen as working with Windows — yuck! — I was a Linux Man! I also didn’t get along well, personally, with my boss, and it seemed like I wasn’t getting any credit for the work I had already done with the Sun equipment. As per the graphic above, I felt exploited.

So I abandoned the group, and was soon put on a project which became a living nightmare. For 3 years, I worked for absolute narcissist who I watched lie to senior management to try to build an internal empire, and achieve his career goals, and who relentlessly ridiculed me for a perceived professional slight by someone form whom I had worked for previously.

I look back and wonder. If I had swallowed my pride, and made the Windows servers dance to my tune, where would I be today? If I hadn’t stayed a Linux Man, would I have learnt the world of Gentoo? Would I have wound up at AEI and DataCave? Would I have eventually worked my way into programming bliss with Rails? Would I have returned to writing engineering apps for engineers again? Maybe; maybe not. I love what I do these days, and hope to do it till I retire. So I guess it doesn’t matter how I got here.

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#GossipGirlHere #girlboss #mensuck

Posted on July 19, 2021 by David K.

A TikToker’s recording of her male classmates joking about rape and saying that ‘silence is consent’ has viewers horrified.

Source: TikToker who’s the ‘only girl in tech class’ films male classmates joking that ‘silence is consent’ right in front of her

I’ll make a confession.

About 30 years ago now, I was walking through the ME labs at Purdue with a professor. If I’m frank, I didn’t care much for this professor. I didn’t think he was a good instructor. I only found out later why, when I was told by another professor that his field of expertise was different than what he was teaching, and he was bitter about the path his career had taken. I don’t say this to besmirch him; we all have career regrets, but it’s important in a moment.

As we walked by one experiment, running on a bench, I asked about it. In the process of giving me the context, he mentioned that it was a woman who was doing it. I made a comment about wondering if she were studying engineering to design better hair dryers. And, yes, it makes me cringe to this day. The professor — despite whatever job disappointments and career pressures he was under — just calmly said that she was one of the brightest people he’d ever worked with, and he looked forward to amazing things from her career.

In that moment, as they say, I was enlightened. Both about my attitude, and how to be an “ally.” Honestly, I was “going for the joke” more than I was being intentionally misogynistic, and I claim some small amount of pride, in today’s politically-charged society, that all it took was one measured response from an actual adult to recalibrate my boundaries.

The males in this classroom aren’t just ignorant, and they aren’t just joking. They’ve been making these sorts of comments on Reddit and 4chan for a long time, and their behavior has been reinforced through those moderation systems. Women don’t speak up about this sort of systemic, generalized misogyny because — if it doesn’t achieve social media virality as a shield — the blowback will be too much to handle. And even now, as the video has been marked private, I guess it was too much for her. That’s OK; that’s for her to decide. I understand it. I’m just glad she got this out there to begin with. We need more of this. A LOT more. As a society, we need to name and shame this behavior. It needs more sunlight and fresh air as disinfectants.

We also need adults in the room to say that this is not acceptable, but to do it in a non-confrontational way. This is vital, no matter how good it would feel to lose your mind about. Not because these comments aren’t worth yelling at someone over, but, rather, doing it in a measured way will avoid the very human, gut-level response of getting defensive when attacked, and shut down the person’s ability to hear that this is not acceptable.

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Cory Doctorow: Tech Monopolies and the Insufficient Necessity of Interoperability – Locus Online

Posted on July 13, 2021 by David K.

The story of how this came to pass is tawdry and oft-told: it’s the tale of how switching competition law’s enforcement to focus on “consumer welfare” (low prices) destroyed labor markets, national resiliency, and the credibility of democratic institutions. It’s the story of how control over industries dwindled to a handful of powerful people who captured their regulators and got themselves deputized as arms of the government.

Source: Cory Doctorow: Tech Monopolies and the Insufficient Necessity of Interoperability – Locus Online

Bingo.

Public sentiment is more alive to the problems of monopoly than at any time in decades, but still most voters don’t see monopolism as a great evil. They may worry that all their beer comes from two companies or that the internet has turned into five giant websites filled with screenshots of text from the other four.

I love this take, and I’m glad to see it being repeated.

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Dead Startup Toys

Posted on July 12, 2021 by David K.

Iconic startup disasters – now as collectible toys!

Source: Dead Startup Toys

You simply must press “F”, as it says at the bottom.

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Home Assistant

Posted on July 12, 2021 by David K.

Open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first.

Source: Home Assistant

I’ve been through MythTV, Plex, Zimba, and OwnCloud, and eventually just given up on each of these self-hosting categories, and fallen back to using established service providers. This whole field of self-hosted home automation looks very cool, but even if I decide to go down this road, at this point, I’m just going to get into bed with HomeKit.

It’s kind of scary how much of my life now revolves around Apple. They do a lot of messaging about respecting the vast trust we users put in them. I know that doesn’t necessarily prove anything on its own, but they unquestionably have the best track record for trustworthiness among the big tech firms. They are certainly the most financially-aligned with user rights and privacy, and that’s really the only metric that matters. As long as Apple primarily makes money selling hardware, and their services are fundamentally just icing on that cake, then I think we’ll continue to get along just fine.

The Biden administration has already done a lot of interesting things to put a check on big tech and monopoly power, though we’ll see how this plays out over the next couple of years. I think some new laws should be written to codify these executive orders to direct regulatory agencies, once they’re proven in practice and tweaked. Otherwise, the next President can just reverse these things, which we’ve already seen through Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden. It’s become a game.

Anyway, I hope Apple — like other monstrous companies — can read the prevailing winds, look at their balance sheet, and decide to let a little profit slip through their fingers in the name of giving users a little more privacy, a little more respect, and a little more freedom.

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Ads, ads, and more ads

Posted on July 9, 2021 by David K.

I read that Matt Damon’s new movie is generating Oscar buzz, so I moseyed over to IMDB to watch the trailer, but it won’t play because of my ad blocker. Let me get this straight. I’m TRYING to watch an ADVERTISEMENT, but I can’t, because I won’t let them show me another ad for something else before I watch the ad. Got it. The internet sucks.

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Biden’s Lawless Bombing of Iraq and Syria Only Serves the Weapons Industry Funding Both Parties – by Glenn Greenwald – Glenn Greenwald

Posted on July 7, 2021 by David K.

Indeed, anyone invested in endless war in the Middle East — including the entire U.S. intelligence community and the weapons industry which feeds off of it — must be thrilled by all of this. Each time the U.S. “retaliates” against Iran or Iraqi militias or Syrian fighters, it causes them to “retaliate” back, which in turn is cited as the reason the U.S. can never leave but must instead keep retaliating, ensuring this cycle never ends. It also creates a never-ending supply of angry people in that region who hate the U.S. for bringing death and destruction to their countries with bombs that never stop falling and therefore want to strike back: what we are all supposed to call “terrorism.” That is what endless war means: a war that is designed never to terminate, one that is as far removed as possible from actual matters of self-defense and manufactures its own internal rationale to continue it.

Source: Biden’s Lawless Bombing of Iraq and Syria Only Serves the Weapons Industry Funding Both Parties – by Glenn Greenwald – Glenn Greenwald

If you draw a logical line between President Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex speech and the revelation of the Pentagon Papers, it intersects perfectly with JFK’s assassination. And the extrapolation of this line extends straight through the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Tangentially, the infamous Zapruder film was confiscated on the day of the assassination, before it was developed. Once it emerged from the hands of the Secret Service, it had been doctored to make it seem as though the fatal shot came from behind JFK, despite his head jerking backwards, and Jackie picking up pieces of skull from the trunk lid. Someone at the agency did fantastic work on this for 1963, and I’m still waiting for him/them to make a deathbed confession. It occurs to me that someone, somewhere has to have a pre-doctored, original copy. I’d give my eye teeth to see it, if I still had them.

Anyway, it would be less sad that we are in a state of endless war in the Middle East if George Orwell hadn’t predicted it so perfectly as a tool of the State to maintain its power in 1949.

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