FoxQuirk 🦊 @quirk@computerfairi.es

The secret economics of Google Street View makes me think if the folks contributing to that would be better off contributing to #openstreetmap instead 🙈 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jp2Qgw44MsA

When you live in a system that is always pushing for growth, your perspective becomes skewed. There are problems that we deal with everyday that probably could be solved — permanently (or at least for a long time) — but to do so would eliminate an entire cascade of profit, which is considered unacceptable.

So we continue to try to reinvent the wheel, or add features, or enshittify to increase profits.

This goes back to something I've ranted about in the past. Capitalism is incapable of comprehending the idea of a solved problem.

There is a class of problems for which optimal (or nearly optimal) solutions exist or could exist. Some of those solutions have existed for decades. But capitalism is never satisfied — growth must continue. So people keep trying to reinvent the wheel, making solutions that are more profitable but also more abstracted and inefficient.

Putting advertising on everything takes power.
Making everything internet connected takes power.
Pushing notifications takes power.
Autoplaying videos and sound takes power.
Tracking and data collection systems take power.
New "features" take power.

Manufacturing new computing hardware is an enormously energy and resource intensive process. Having to make hardware obsolete because the *software* isn't efficient is an absurd waste.

Something no one talks about enough:

CPU cycles aren't free.
Memory reads and writes aren't free.

That shit takes power. A miniscule amount per instance, yes, but it adds up quick if it's from an app that everyone uses constantly. All that power comes from somewhere, and right now that's mostly fossil fuels.

When people complain about software bloat, it's not just a UX problem, it's an environmental one too.

i'm a silly catgirl who has done a silly comfort purchase (tasking a satellite to take a high resolution image of the quartz mine in Spruce Pine, NC)

the licensing terms do not allow me to share the image but i'll keep you updated when it comes :3

it's actually pretty difficult to find a definitive source on the distrubition of usable high purity quartz beyond "that one mine in NC dominates the market"

there is like a dozen more deposits in Norway and in China and in Australia, but I can't easily find any information on how good the quartz is, much less how easily would it be to ramp up production there

I think this is basically something only an industry insider could say

What a phenomenal project. I would love to have the spare time to work on fun projects like this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkfzjmY9cF8

Frankly I'm shocked that IRL sulfur isn't called "yellowstone"

Redstone is the most creatively named item in minecraft

today at work: "at a raw level the message looks fine but when the system gets it, it turns into gibberish chinese"

us: i bet you something is misdeclaring the email as UTF-16-LE

the email: misdeclares iso-8859-1 text as UTF-16-LE

💅🏼💅🏼💅🏼

Today I learned that Apple Air Pods Pro in noise cancelling mode perfectly cancels the clicking of a geiger counter. You would not know it was making a sound. I hope that this is not relevant to /your/ day.

There's really only two kinds of coffee people:

• everything weighed, timed, and configured to perfection
• Zubereitung nach Gefühl und Wellenschlag (so, whatever feels right, no metrology involved)

curious poll: what's your level of experience with mahjong?

before assuming your problem is imposter syndrome, consider the possibility that the job you’re being asked to do doesn’t make any damn sense

"On July 29, the Gaza-based Ministry of Education announced that 39,000 high school students from the Gaza Strip did not take the Tawjihi exam this year, with 10,000 of them killed alongside 400 school teachers.

"The Government Media Office said that since the beginning of the war on Gaza, the Israeli army had completely destroyed 125 schools and universities and partially destroyed 336 schools and universities.

"The assault on education is mirrored in the genocidal onslaught on all other sectors that make society in Gaza function, from healthcare to food systems to waste management facilities. But one of the most insidious parts of targeting the educational sector is that it aims to erase children’s future."

https://mondoweiss.net/2024/09/the-most-precarious-place-in-the-world-to-be-a-child-israels-year-of-war-on-children/

@palestine #Palestine #Israel #Gaza