aspensmonster

We know that not everyone in our community will embrace our entrance into this market. But taking on controversial topics because we believe they make the internet better for all of us is a key feature of Mozilla’s history. And that willingness to take on the hard things, even when not universally accepted, is exactly what the internet needs today.

But you're not doing the hard things. You're doing the easy thing. Capitulation to surveillance capitalism is the easy thing.

If automation really is the boon to society that we think it is, then buying out the displaced workers is a no-brainer. If, on the other hand, it's really just a boon for the bourgeoisie, then fuck their automation. Automation will be liberatory or it will be bullshit.

Dover: it's either a breeze or completely inscrutable.

Holy shit that's fuckin' awesome XD

"Could you please rebase over main first?"

Perhaps I should rephrase. They attack Mozilla (and users of Firefox) infinitely more than Google (and users of various Google products). I heard it said after Mozilla introduced their opt-out privacy-respecting ad tracking that users should “move to a more privacy-friendly browser like Google Chrome”.

One of those entities claims to be on the side of users. When it constantly throws those same users under the bus anyway, it isn't surprising that it gets more hate than the entity that removed "don't be evil" from its motto.

Tell them you’re a liberal? You’re practically a Nazi collaborator!

It's not our fault that fascists bleed when liberals get scratched.

Similarly, I find a fair number of Rust crates (that I want to use) have virtually no doc or inline examples, and use weird metaprogramming that I can’t wrap my head around.

Is it really a true rust crate if it doesn't contain at least one inscrutable macro?

Turns out they thought ArcGIS cost the same as like Office or Acrobat, and they didn’t budget for it for the fiscal year that started 2 weeks before I started working.

ESRI is in the position that Microsoft and Adobe want to be in, a de-facto monopoly.

Well shit I didn't expect this to be relevant again so quickly

"in the highest exalted way"

https://yewtu.be/watch?v=8g4d-rnhuSg

Once you’ve eliminated the cause for NATO, then dissolving NATO will make sense.

The cause for NATO was eliminated. NATO didn't dissolve. It grew. Spoiler alert: there are no good guys in a war between imperialists.

I'd say there are three pieces, each feeding into the next.

1. A Culture Favouring Novelty Over Replication - There are no Nobel prizes for replicating findings. There is no Fields medal for roundly and soundly refuting the findings of a paper. There is no reputation to be built in dedicating oneself to replication efforts. All incentives push towards novel, novel, novel.
2. Funding Follows Culture - Nobody wants to pay twice for a result (much less thrice) especially if there's a chance that you'll expose the result as Actually Wrong on the second or third go.
3. Publish or Perish - Scientists have material needs -- both personally and for their actual work -- acquired through funding. That funding demands the publishing of novelty. If your results aren't novel, then they won't get published (not anywhere that matters, anyway). And if you don't get published (where it matters), then you don't get funded. And if you don't get funded, you perish. And so the circle of scientific life is complete.

At every step, the incentives involved in the production of science are, ironically, rewarding un-scientific behaviour and ignoring -- if not outright punishing -- actual science. Until replication is seen as an equal to novelty, this regime will persist.