FoxQuirk 🦊 @quirk@computerfairi.es

I had heard RAM prices were up, but checking it for myself is a gut punch. The 16GB stick I bought in November was €100. It's now €235 on Paradigit, €250 on CaseKing. The future sucks and I hope Sam Altman falls down a flight of stairs.

It's not like the "computer industry" did this, that industry was IBM and Siemens and Xerox and Cray. At the start it was all missile targeting systems and concentration camp organizers. A few upstarts happened to notice that miniaturization and cost reduction in industrial process was going to open up new target markets (small office / home office / individual use); the fact that this gave people new capabilities was (from a corporate perspective) an unfortunate, and temporary, side effect

I'm trying to shift my perspective from "there was a glorious computer revolution that empowered the user and disrupted authority and we have fallen from the heights of its transcendental grace" and towards the more accurate "my formative years just happened to coincide with a period where a few technical innovations briefly conferred a small amount of power on individuals and labor, and capital has been efficiently reversing that small disruption ever since" but it sure doesn't *feel* like that

but seriously:

$ systemd-run --user --scope -p MemoryMax=4G cargo nextest run woops

is preetty cool. I thought I'd have to mess with docker or something.

expectation: I will use SHM (shared memory) for my plugin system, so that communication is fast despite code living in completely separate binaries

reality: my test suite will suddenly start consuming all available memory, I will have to hard-shutdown my MacBook 3 times then learn about systemd-run

would you still love me if i was a binary blob

WEBSITE: enter password

ME: okay here ya go

WEBSITE: incorrect password

ME: na it's not, babes. check again.

WEBSITE: incorrect password

ME: hmmm maybe I mistyped something. I'll type it slower this time.

WEBSITE: incorrect password

ME: your mom's a incorrect password.

WEBSITE: maybe you forgot your password?

ME: idk maybe.

WEBSITE: do you want to reset it?

ME: ya ok fine whatever

WEBSITE: type new password

ME: here ya go

WEBSITE: new password cannot be the same as old password

ME: asdfhjkl what the fuck do you mean a second ago you said that password was incorrect

WEBSITE: it is

ME: so let me get this straight... the password I just gave you...

WEBSITE: yes?

ME: the new password, the one I'm trying to reset my old password to...

WEBSITE: uh huh?

ME: that password is being rejected because it's the same as the old password...

WEBSITE: mmhmm?

ME: which is incorrect because it's not my password.

WEBSITE: you got it!

ME: that makes negative sense.

WEBSITE: I don't know what to tell you man. just pick a different password?

ME: motherfucker

WEBSITE: password "motherfucker" accepted.

ME: you know what, I ain't even mad.

WEBSITE: now please prove that you are human by solving this fourier transform in 5-dimensional noneuclidian space.

ME: FUUUUUUUUUU—

I did a thing! Almost three years ago, I launched a co-operative newspaper in Leicester. Now, we're officially in print 🥳

The Leicester Gazette is our revolution against a broken industry.

#Media #News #Journalism #Cooperatives #Newspaper #Magazine #Nonprofit #Leicester

🐹 :loads the dishwasher, presses the wrong button:
🤖 *beep!*
☁️ Haha! You got yelled at!
🐹 It wasn't me! It was... the bird boys! I've seen them do it!
☁️ :sarcastically: Oh yes, magpies, famously always coming into our kitchen to mess with the dishwasher.
🐹 Yes! You've seen them too, right?

This.

It is literally impossible to explain ADHD task avoidance to people who don't experience it, I think.

It has to sound absolutely insane to just sit around, filled with dread and anxiety, not doing a small thing you "could do any time" that really needs to get done. And to just continue that way for hours, days, weeks, months, even fucking years.

Like, who lives that way? How can anyone live that way? (I live that way, but I don't know how I survive)

Some people, when confronted with a compiler problem, think
“I know, I'll use LLVM.” Now they have two problems.

#programminghumour

Remember: Gravity is your friend

Tilting your head to one side moves all the thinking to that side which helps you process better

If that doesn't work, tilt your head the other way

what's the last major tech empire to have fallen? i don't mean a company that balloons into empire and then keels over all within a decade. i'm talking about the ones that last a generation or more. i think about IBM, roughly 1985-1995, when they went from carved-in-granite forever-monopoly to sidelined usurped panicking giant, and the decade of more obvious decline that followed.
they're still around, of course. but the empire ended, so conclusively even shareholders had to admit it & move on.

for another half billion the communication you can perceive through this is, "fine! your current perfectly functional PC is now ewaste. we're willing to tank that incomprehensible environmental cost just to force/sell you [the thing half a billion other people actively don't want]. happy?"
(i think deep down they know how most people would answer that rhetorical)

https://www.theverge.com/news/831364/dell-windows-11-upgrade-numbers-earnings-call-q3-2025 no matter how badly you fuck up at your job you'll never fuck up so badly that half a billion people would choose to stick with the older, now-unsupported version of your product than take the free upgrade to the new version.
unless your job is being a product strategist, project manager, marketer, etc on Windows i guess.