#but it shows how all these changes are not for the benefit of the user and are always unpopular

[valmillion]

really funny that every website is in an arms race to make itself as bad as possible and immediately someone makes a firefox extension to fix it

[reasonsforhope]

"High along the peaks and ridges of the mountains in Ecuador, a 25-year-long conservation program is bearing succulent fruit in the form of cleaner water and abundant wildlife.

Established in the year 2000, Quito’s fund for the protection of water has allowed a critical South American ecosystem unique to the world and vital to both plants and animals to reclaim vast tracts of its former landscape, and people are noticing the difference.

“Before the water fund, the páramo in Antisana was very degraded. The only thing you would see was sheep.” Silvia Benitez, the Nature Conservancy’s Director of Freshwater for Latin America, said in a statement. “The change has been amazing. Vegetation is back. The wetlands are restored.”

“Now people see groups of deer. They see puma. I saw a fox. I had never before seen a fox in this area.”

The story of this quarter-century success began when the United States nonprofit the Nature Conservancy partnered with Quito’s water utility company, known as EPMAPS. The second-highest capital city on Earth by altitude, Quito is surrounded by a famous ecosystem called the páramo, a biodiversity hotspot where masses of mosses, lichen, high-altitude palms, and endemic grasses create a mountain environment unlike any other.

The páramo covers slopes above 10,000 feet in elevation all over the Andes Mountains, and acts like a giant sponge absorbing and condensing moisture from the lower ground before releasing it in streams and rivers further down. The Nature Conservancy estimates that in Colombia, where páramos cover just 2% of land area, this hydrological service provides 70% of all municipal water. It’s estimated that páramo sequesters 6 times more carbon than tropical rainforest.

EPMAPS and the Nature Conservancy organized $21,000 in seed money to kick-start a trust fund that would charge downstream users of water from the páramos around Quito for the conservation measures needed to protect them.

Called the Fund for the Protection of Water, or FONAG, it’s accumulated $2.5 million in annual contributions over the last 25 years, and as a result, páramos are retaking ranchland that once displaced them, and the wildlife like whitetail deer, Andean bears, Mountain tapirs, and condors are returning as well.

“Since FONAG’s beginning, its priority has always been the protection of the water sources. But when you conserve water sources, it’s almost automatic that you have other co-benefits—biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and social benefits,” said Bert de Bievre, Technical Secretary of FONAG.

Local communities have become very involved in FONAG’s work. Two dozen have become páramo rangers, local ranchers have moved their animals to lower elevations, agriculturalists have worked with EPMAPS to switch to low-impact methods of cultivation away from watersheds, and the Nature Conservancy runs a nursery that grows many of the endemic páramo plants for use in reforestation.

The Quito-FONAG model is now being implemented across the northwestern areas of South America, and it shows how much can be achieved by simply letting rivers run free.

“Each year, the global water sector spends $700 billion on building and repairing pipes and reservoirs, using grey solutions to engineer themselves out of a problem created by deforestation, agriculture or other threats upstream,” said Brooke Atwell, Associate Director of the Nature Conservancy’s Resilient Watersheds strategy.

“If we were able to reallocate just 1% of that spending ($7 billion) toward protecting nature, it would eclipse all global philanthropic spending on conservation today.”"

-via Good News Network, April 1, 2025

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Tech’s benevolent-dictator-for-life to authoritarian pipeline

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/10/bdfl/#high-on-your-own-supply

Silicon Valley's "authoritarian turn" is hard to miss: tech bosses have come out for autocrats like Trump, Orban, Milei, Bolsonaro, et al, and want to turn San Francisco into a militia-patrolled apartheid state operated for the benefit of tech bros:

https://newrepublic.com/article/180487/balaji-srinivasan-network-state-plutocrat

Smart people have written well about what this means, and have gotten me thinking, too:

https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/why-did-silicon-valley-turn-right

Regular readers will know that I make a kind of hobby of collecting definitions of right-wing thought:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/29/jubilance/#tolerable-racism

One of these – a hoary old cliche – is that "a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged." I don't give this one much credence, but it takes on an interesting sheen when combined with this anonymous gem: "Conservatives say they long for the simpler times of their childhood, but what they miss is that the reason they lived simpler lives back then wasn't that the times were simpler; rather, it's because they were children."

If you're a tech founder who once lived in a world where your workers were also your pals and didn't shout at you about labor relations, perhaps that's not because workers got "woke," but rather, because when you were all scrapping at a startup, you were all on an equal footing and there weren't any labor relations to speak of. And if you're a once-right-on tech founder who used to abstractly favor "social justice" but now find yourself beset by people demanding that you confront your privilege, perhaps what's changed isn't those people, but rather the amount of privilege you have.

In other words, "a reactionary tech boss is a liberal tech boss who hired a bunch of pals only to have them turn around and start a union." And also: "Tech founders say things were simpler when they were running startups, but what they miss is that the reason no one asked their startup to seriously engage with the social harms it caused is the because the startup was largely irrelevant to society, while the large company it turned into is destroying millions of peoples' lives today."

The oft-repeated reactionary excuse that "I didn't leave the progressive movement, they left me," can be both technically true and also profoundly wrong: if progressives in your circle never bothered you about your commercial affairs, perhaps that's because those affairs didn't matter when you were grinding out code in your hacker house, but they matter a lot now that you have millions of users and thousands of employees.

I've been in tech circles since before the dawn of the dotcoms; I was part of a movement of people who would come over to your house with a stack of floppies and install TCP/IP and PPP networking software on your computer and show you how to connect to a BBS or ISP, because we wanted everyone to have as much fun as we were having.

Some of us channeled that excitement into starting companies that let people get online, create digital presences of their own, and connect with other people. Some of us were more .ORG than .COM and gave our lives over to activism and nonprofits, missing out on the stock options and big paydays. But even though we ended up in different places, we mostly started in the same place, as spittle-flecked, excited kids talking a mile a minute about how cool this internet thing would be and helping you, a normie, jump into it.

Many of my peers from the .ORG and .COM worlds went on to set up institutions – both companies and nonprofits – that have since grown to be critical pieces of internet infrastructure: classified ad platforms, online encyclopedias, CMSes and personal publishing services, critical free/open source projects, standards bodies, server-to-server utilities, and more.

These all started out as benevolent autocracies: personal projects started by people who pitched in to help their virtual neighbors with the new, digital problems we were all facing. These good people, with good impulses, did good: their projects filled an important need, and grew, and grew, and became structurally important to the digital world. What started off as "Our pal's project that we all pitch in on," became, "Our pal's important mission that we help with, but that also has paid staff and important stakeholders, which they oversee as 'benevolent dictator for life.'"

Which was fine. The people who kicked off these projects had nurtured them all the way from a napkin doodle to infrastructure. They understood them better than anyone else, had sacrificed much for them, and it made sense for them to be installed as stewards.

But what they did next, how they used their powers as "BFDLs," made a huge difference. Because we are all imperfect, we are all capable of rationalizing our way into bad choices, we are all riven with insecurities that can push us to do things we later regret. When our actions are checked – by our peers' social approval or approbation; by the need to keep our volunteers happy; by the possibility of a mass exodus of our users or a fork of our code – these imperfections are balanced by consequences.

Dictators aren't necessarily any more prone to these lapses in judgment than anyone else. Benevolent dictators actually exist, people who only retain power because they genuinely want to use that power for good. Those people aren't more likely to fly off the handle or talk themselves into bad places than you or me – but to be a dictator (benevolent or otherwise) is to exist without the consequences that prevent you from giving in to those impulses. Worse: if you are the dictator – again, benevolent or otherwise – of a big, structurally important company or nonprofit that millions of people rely on, the consequences of these lapses are extremely consequential.

This is how BDFL arrangements turn sour: by removing themselves from formal constraint, the people whose screwups matter the most end up with the fewest guardrails to prevent themselves from screwing up.

No wonder people who set out to do good, to help others find safe and satisfying digital homes online, find themselves feeling furious and beset. Given those feelings, can we really be surprised when "benevolent" dictators discover that they have sympathy for real-world autocrats whose core ethos is, "I know what needs to be done and I could do it, if only the rest of you would stop nagging me about petty bullshit that you just made up 10 minutes ago but now insist is the most important thing in the world?"

That all said, it's interesting to look at the process by which some BDFLs transitioned to community-run projects with checks and balances. I often think about how Wikipedia's BDFL, the self-avowed libertarian Jimmy Wales, decided (correctly, and to his everlasting credit), that the project he raised from a weird idea into a world-historic phenomenon should not be ruled over by one guy, not even him.

(Jimmy is one of those libertarians who believes that we don't need governments to make us be kind and take care of one another because he is kind and takes care of other people – see also John Gilmore and Penn Jillette:)

https://www.cracked.com/article_40871_penn-jillette-wants-to-talk-it-all-out.html

Jimmy's handover to the Wikimedia Foundation gives me hope for our other BDFLs. He's proof that you can find yourself in the hotseat without being so overwhelmed with personal grievance that you find yourself in sympathy with actual fascists, but rather, have the maturity and self-awareness to know that the reason people are demanding so much of you is that you have – deliberately and with great effort – created a situation in which you owe the world a superhuman degree of care and attention, and the only way to resolve that situation equitably and secure your own posterity is to share that power around, not demand that you be allowed to wield it without reproach.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Caffeine

Caffeine - A mild alkaloid stimulant made by some plants.

Found in coffee beans, tea leaves, and cocoa beans; added to soft drinks, energy drinks, and energy bars; and sold in capsules and tablets as a dietary supplement.

A mild stimulant. It is used to temporarily relieve fatigue and increase mental alertness. Caffeine is added to some antihistamine drugs to help counteract the sleepiness they may cause. It is also added to over-the-counter headache remedies (e.g., Excedrin) and migraine headache drugs to enhance their painkilling effects. Under medical supervision, citrated caffeine (a prescription drug) is used to treat breathing problems in premature infants.

From the Italian word cafée, meaning "coffee", is naturally made by about 60 plants. The most familiar of these are coffee leaves and beans, tea leaves, kola nuts, yerba mate, guarana berries, and cacao (the source of chocolate). In plants, caffeine is a pesticide. Insects eating plants that contain caffeine become disabled or die.

It has no nutritional value. But there seem to be some benefits to regular caffeine consumption, despite conflicting research.

Effects on the Body

Increases heart rate

Temporarily increases blood pressure

Relaxes smooth muscle cells in the airways

Releases fatty acids and glycerol in the body for energy use

Easily crosses the blood-brain barrier and changes the level of neurotransmitters in the brain

Passes into breast milk

Caffeine is absorbed in the stomach.

Its effects are noticeable in about 15 minutes and usually last several hours.

However, there is a huge variation among people both in their sensitivity to caffeine and in how long it stays in their bodies.

Although the average time it takes half a dose of caffeine to be eliminated from the body is 3-4 hours, this time may extend to 6 hours in women taking oral contraceptives; much longer in pregnant women and in people with liver damage.

Many well-designed, well-documented studies show that caffeine makes people more alert, improves short-term memory, enhances the ability to concentrate, increases the individual’s capacity for physical work, and speeds up reaction time.

In habitual caffeine drinkers, caffeine achieves this by preventing the detrimental effects of withdrawal.

It does not boost functioning to above normal levels.

All of these effects are temporary.

Caffeine does not replace the need for rest or sleep.

Caffeine Withdrawal

Discontinuing caffeine among regular users can cause withdrawal symptoms. These can include:

Headaches (very common)

Irritability

Nausea

Fatigue

Sleepiness

Inability to concentrate

Mild depression

Caffeine withdrawal symptoms begin 12–24 hours after caffeine is stopped.

Withdrawal symptoms peak at around 48 hours, and can last up to 5 days.

Tapering caffeine use, for example cutting down on caffeine by the equivalent of half a cup of coffee (about 50 mg) a day, minimizes or eliminates withdrawal symptoms.

Caffeinism

People who consume more than 500 mg of caffeine a day—equivalent to about five cups of coffee—may develop a condition called caffeinism, though the threshold varies among individuals.

Produces unpleasant sensations, some of which are similar to withdrawal symptoms. Symptoms of Caffeine Overuse include:

Restlessness

Irritability

Nervousness

Anxiety

Muscle twitching

Headaches

Inability to fall asleep

A racing heart

Related Disorders

Severe overuse of caffeine can cause a number of related disorders, including:

Caffeine Intoxication—usually the result of taking caffeine pills (e.g., NoDoz), this condition causes mental changes, rambling thoughts and speech, irregular heartbeat, and other symptoms associated with overuse. In severe cases death can result from ventricular fibrillation (unsynchronized contractions of the ventricle of the heart).

Caffeine-Induced Anxiety Disorder—severe anxiety that interferes with daily social interactions and occurs after caffeine intoxication or heavy long-term use of caffeine.

Caffeine-Induced Sleep Disorder—an inability to sleep that is so great it requires medical/psychiatric attention and occurs after prolonged caffeine consumption.

Non-Specific Caffeine-Induced Disorder—disorders not listed that are attributable to either acute or long-term caffeine consumption.

Source ⚜ More: Writing Notes & References ⚜ Describing Food ⚜ Cocktails

[nasa]

For the Benefit of All: Assistive Tech Developed from NASA Tech

What do modern cochlear implants and robotic gloves have in common? They were derived from NASA technology. We’ve made it easier to find and use our patented inventions that could help create products that enhance life for people with disabilities.

October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month, which highlights the contributions of American workers with disabilities – many of whom use assistive technology on the job. Take a look at these assistive technologies that are NASA spinoffs.

Low-Vision Headsets

The Joint Optical Reflective Display (JORDY) device is a headset that uses NASA image processing and head-mounted display technology to enable people with low vision to read and write. JORDY enhances individuals’ remaining sight by magnifying objects up to 50 times and allowing them to change contrast, brightness, and display modes. JORDY's name was inspired by Geordi La Forge, a blind character from “Star Trek: The Next Generation” whose futuristic visor enabled him to see.

Cochlear Implants

Work that led to the modern cochlear implant was patented by a NASA engineer in the 1970s. Following three failed corrective surgeries, Adam Kissiah combined his NASA electronics know-how with research in the Kennedy Space Center technical library to build his own solution for people with severe-to-profound hearing loss who receive little or no benefit from hearing aids. Several companies now make the devices, which have been implanted in hundreds of thousands of people around the world.

Robotic Gloves

Ironhand, from Swedish company Bioservo Technologies, is the world’s first industrial-strength robotic glove for factory workers and others who perform repetitive manual tasks. It helps prevent stress injuries but has been especially warmly received by workers with preexisting hand injuries and conditions. The glove is based on a suite of patents for the technology developed by NASA and General Motors to build the hands of the Robonaut 2 humanoid robotic astronaut.

Smart Glasses

Neurofeedback technology NASA originally developed to improve pilots’ attention has been the basis for products aimed at helping people manage attention disorders without medication. The devices measure brainwave output to gauge attention levels according to the “engagement index” a NASA engineer created. Then, they show the results to users, helping them learn to voluntarily control their degree of concentration. One such device is a pair of smart glasses from Narbis, whose lenses darken as attention wanes.

Anti-Gravity Treadmills

A NASA scientist who developed ways to use air pressure to simulate gravity for astronauts exercising in space had the idea to apply the concept for the opposite effect on Earth. After licensing his technology, Alter-G Inc. developed its anti-gravity G-Trainer treadmill, which lets users offload some or all of their weight while exercising. The treadmills can help people recover from athletic or brain injuries, and they allow a safe exercise regimen for others with long-term conditions such as arthritis.

Wireless Muscle Sensors

Some of the most exciting assistive technologies to spin off may be yet to come. Delsys Inc. developed electromyographic technology to help NASA understand the effects of long-term weightlessness on astronauts’ muscles and movements. Electromyography detects and analyzes electrical signals emitted when motor nerves trigger movement. Among the company’s customers are physical therapists developing exercise routines to help patients recover from injuries. But some researchers are using the technology to attempt recoveries that once seemed impossible, such as helping paralyzed patients regain movement, letting laryngectomy patients speak, and outfitting amputees with artificial limbs that work like the real thing.  

To further enhance the lives of people with disabilities, NASA has identified a selection of patented technologies created for space missions that could spur the next generation of assistive technology here on Earth.

Want to learn more about assistive technologies already in action? Check out NASA Spinoff to find products and services that wouldn’t exist without space exploration.   

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

[the-defender-of-tomorrow]

This post is about the user @/kayden-kay

All of their Arcane-based roleplay blogs:

This is not a thing I ever wanted to make. Please don’t send any harassment towards Kay, but consider blocking them. 

I just don't want to give them the benefit of the doubt anymore. People have tried to explain to them some of the things they have done wrong before and end up just getting blocked.

Rest if the info under the cut :

If possible all links to posts will be provided.

It originally started with a group of roleplayers realizing that they had all been having issues regarding roleplay with Kay. Someone compiled these concerns and sent Kay a private

message about them. I had mentioned feeling uncomfortable with some remarks Kay made in-characters, which was included broadly in the message. 

This document contains the message written out and then sent to Kay: Doc

The concerned person was immediately blocked with no response. 

Screenshot as proof of message being sent with no reply:

Now the stuff regarding their general lack of regard for the safety of minors. I would like to note I am 16. I make it very clear I am 16 on all my blogs, either putting it in my description or the pinned post. I sometimes reply to asks with suggestive jokes, but this does not change the fact that I am a minor.

Screenshot of the comment Kay made that made me uncomfortable:

Link to the original post. I can’t get a link to their post because they have me blocked: Post

At the time I didn't realise I didn’t process this wasn’t a comment I found uncomfortable, but looking back at it knowing this person is 20 it feels kind of gross. I decided to try and avoid interacting with them, blocking them for my own comfort until they pinged me in a post regarding one of my blogs. I learned about said post through someone else who had seen it.

Screenshot for said post :

I then messaged them regarding how I'm not comfortable with them making any sort of contact with my blogs. I understand the way I ended up talking to this person was not fair and I should have tried to be a little more civil about my approach.

Here is that entire conversion. They block me at the end of it.

I do not think using your age or disabilities as an excuse for your actions is right. I have an understanding that these things can make things harder as I have dyslexia myself (A mutual of mine edited this post for me and fixed any typos and grammar). I have a hard time reading things and having to have aides to help it. But that doesn't excuse not taking into consideration how old the people that you are interacting with are.

For context this is where my age is on all of my accounts.

After this they made a couple of posts on their main account.

Link to post

Link to post

Kay, I doubt you are never gonna read this. You block people a lot of the time when they are trying to tell you they are uncomfortable. But even if you were 18 or such you should know better than to make suggestive comments to people you don’t know the age of or minors. You especially should not excuse your actions using your age or disabilities rather than apologizing and trying to do better. Whether or not you realize it, you are 20. You are an adult, you should know you have a responsibility to make sure you aren’t exposing minors to NSFW content. Check people’s ages, and tag your blogs and posts as NSFW if they include suggestive or 18+ content. 

On another note:

Link to post

If your blog is NSFW, do not interact with minors using that blog. The fact you either ignore or do not understand shows you should not be in spaces with minors.

That is all, again please do not send harassment to this person in any regard. If you feel uncomfortable with them, ignore or block their accounts. This is just to show their disregard of minor safety online and how they ignore people when they try to mention the things they have done wrong.

thanks to @prince-o-rot for helping me edit this

[alphajocklover]

Hello, basic 40 year old flabby, short, wimpy nerd nerd here. Been trying and failing to get fit and transform into a stud since I've been thirteen to no avail. Pretty much decided that that the project is genetic. I don't suppose you can genetically graft me to a hypermasculine dad or maybe a hypermasculine brother so puberty could have dealt me a way different hand?

Huh. I’ll admit, I’ve never really done anything like that before. I mean, I’ve talked about changes that alter someone’s past in previous post, and I performed one myself using time travel (I fucking hate time travel), but what’s you’re asking is so much more intense. You want me to make it so that you grew up with a super manly dad or brother. You want me to make it so your genetics are different, your history is different, so that you’re basically an entirely different person. I’m not sure I’ve ever altered anyone that much before. But… I’m willing to give it a try.

You’re an only child right? And you never knew your dad? Raised only by your mom? Good, that will make this much easier. Now, I should warn you that we’re going to have to be very careful. We’re going to use an artifact that my Uncle left to me. I’ve mentioned him before. I really should tell you all about him one day. Anyways, what we’re using to change you might not look like much, but… it’s very powerful. We need to use it carefully.

Ok, I know what you’re thinking. It’s a little statue of a metal tree. Yes I know I sound crazy but in a world with time travel, an app that turns people into meatheads, and reflections that can swap places with the person they’re reflecting, I think you can give me the benefit of the doubt. The little statuette doesn’t look like much, but it’s one of the most dangerous magic items I own. It’s known as the Family Tree, and it allows the user to, well, alter their family tree. Literally. All you have to do is press your thumb to the wooden base, and the tree grows and changes until it resembles your own family tree, complete with pictures. Then it’s as simple as moving some things around, or adding a picture to the tree. So, let’s get to work.

You asked for a super manly dad, or a super manly brother. But since we’re already changing your family, why not give you both? First let’s change out your deadbeat dad for someone a little more… impressive. A real man, a man’s man, one so muscular and sexy that if he walked out on your mom you’d still thank him for the amazing genetics. But don’t worry, your new dad isn’t going to walk out like the old one. He stayed with your mom (who as it turns out is a real babe with the right man encouraging her), and raised you to be just like him. He taught you how to play sports, how to workout, how to shave your hairy face, even how to make a girl putty in your hands. You were always especially talented at that last one. You’re starting to remember it aren’t you? Everything your dad taught you, how far you pushed yourself because you wanted to make him proud. You especially remember him showing him how to throw a football. In this world you were a natural.

Next is your brother. I don’t wanna give away your identity, or his, so let’s call him Brad. He’s actually your younger brother, not your older brother. You were the one who taught him how to be a man, how to be a stud, and in doing so, became an even better one yourself. As reality changes you remember growing up with him, teaching him the ropes, playing and working out with him. You even remember the girls you’d sometimes fuck together. You remember the first time you and him spitroasted a bimbo, how hot the girl looked and how proud and manly your brother was.

But let’s move on to you. In this life you took after your dad and your little brother, being a natural stud. You were a strong kid, an active kid, but puberty hit you like a dump truck. You shot up, your shoulders widened, and you gained an almost obscene amount of muscle and hair. You’ve got a different personality too. Cocky and confident, a constant flirt and a total bro. You thought you’d never settle down, fucking a different girl every night. Until… you met your wife. Yes, in this world you have a wife. She’s a bit of a bimbo, but the kindest person you’ve ever met. She enchanted you, and soon… while, you were married, and have stayed married for almost 20 years.

You’ve changed your past, your future, and everything about yourself. You’re finally the man you always wanted to be… but your kids are really the lucky ones. They’ve got awesome genetics, killer bodies, and a great dad to show them how to use it, just like how you did growing up.

[thebroccolination]

GMMTV’S “SNEAKY” MARKETING

I’ve never really looked closely at those trending posts GMMTV puts out but something about the design of the one for “Leap Day” amused me, so I wanted to break it down for fun.

Since GMMTV is a management company, they have to regularly promote their artists—and by proxy the series they’re in—to potential advertisers. According to Tha, they used to do this by showing advertisers the TV ratings and viewing numbers for a series, but times have changed, and now advertisers are asking for Online Engagement Numbers. Trends, especially.

So, check this out with me:

(This isn’t to pick on “Leap Day,” it’s just the post that caught my attention.)

The top numbers are Twitter trends for the hashtag #LeapDaySeries. That’s common, and I’ve seen that before.

What amuses me is that “2.6M+ views in 24 hours” bit, because that made me go, “Whoa, really?” I know GMMTV series tend not to get 1M+ views on YouTube overnight, so I went to check.

192k views is not 2.6M+ views.

So you read the fine print beneath the giant red numbers:

2.6M+

FROM ALL ONLINE PLATFORMS COMBINED

And then I thought, “Oooh, sneaky.” Because how are you counting that 2.6M+ exactly? What does “all online platforms” mean? Which platforms? Are you counting views on reposted videos also? How many views are repeat users?

It’s clever, because in all likelihood, GMMTV’s hoping all advertisers care about is the big red number and not how they got it.

Part of me wonders if they’re obfuscating the numbers because other management companies are starting to challenge them. IDOLFactory and Domundi make fewer series, but they’re starting to produce better quality series.

And just yesterday, an interview with KristSingto was released where they said they’re conscious that they’re in an era now where consumers are spoiled for choice, so they’re determined to keep the quality of what they produce as a khuujin. SOTUS might have ushered in the Thai QL wave, but they have no illusions or goal of taking the top spot again. They’re happy to create quality series for anyone who loves them.

Of course, GMMTV is under Grammy, which is a massive corporation that gives them a good deal of resources and clout, but they nearly went bankrupt once (only rescued by SOTUS), so they’re not invulnerable.

One of my main criticisms of GMMTV is that they’ve started churning out dozens of series in the apparent hope that one or two will be a viral hit, but the quality overall of what they create has dropped, and I hear more and more international fans starting to equate GMMTV with poor quality series. Personally, I only ever see about three pilot teasers with promise from any given GMMTV showcase, and of those three, maybe two of them will follow through on their potential.

It’s all about the bottom line, but there’s more than one way to get there. GMMTV’s seems to be mass series production, top spender events, merchandise, and online platform subscriptions. Which makes for good business, but not so great for the quality of their series’ storytelling, directing, acting, visuals, sound, etc.

There will always be plenty of viewers who want the eye candy first and queer representation second (if at all), so GMMTV doesn’t necessarily need high quality series. If they throw two half-naked men onscreen and have them sell a bit of sunscreen or a printer, the trends will soar.

Since GMMTV is just the management side, the quality of their actors’ series is down to the actual production teams. Like I love to say, Waa knew “Be My Favorite” wasn’t going to soar in the trends, but it was a passion project for him, so he and his writing team took their time with it. As a result, BMF is one of the best series I’ve seen from GMMTV. But, in the year and change since BMF aired, you almost never hear about it.

That’s because, presumably, there’s no benefit to GMMTV acknowledging a series starring a pair who aren’t an official khuujin with merchandise and events. Even though it’s an incredible series on every measurable scale, “Be My Favorite” isn’t GMMTV’s success: it’s the production team’s. I used to be annoyed with GMMTV for essentially pretending it doesn’t exist, but I just had to remind myself over and over that they’re a management company, not a studio. Krist is already in their most legendary khuujin, so it benefits them to pretend the blip where he worked with someone else never happened. I get it.

But also, watch “Be My Favorite” because Waa is an incredible director and he really outdid himself with it.

Aaanyway, I guess I just wanted to ramble about the business side of BL for a bit.

Bye!

[toskarin]

As someone knowledgeable about MMOs, and given the topic of SAO just came up. If you were to write a .Hack/SAO/Log Horizon style story, what kind of things would you focus on? I personally feel like there are a lot of different elements of MMO culture anyone writing about them could really delve into. So I'm curious what Tumblr user Toskarin would choose.

condensed

back when I played Perfect World, it had some empty spaces. this wasn't uncommon for mmos, and if you can name one older than 15 or so years, you can bet there were vast empty spaces on the world map that existed to pad it

but they were important! sure, they added nothing of obvious value and could cynically be read as existing just to pad travel time, but they also made the worlds feel bigger than you what you were doing in them. and more mysterious.

some friends in my guild and I got a message one day that one member was going to roll a new character and wanted help levelling. a complication: their starting zone was across the sea.

a few friends and I volunteered to swim across the sea to their zone. there were definitely easier ways to go about it, but setting out to do something just to see if it was possible seemed fun

now, they may have changed this since then, but the sea in Perfect World felt strange in a way I haven't seen any game really emulate since. the sky was a dull, and as was the fashion, everything was a bit muted. the sea itself was opaque, and when you swam under it, there was a significant amount of grey-blue terrain that seemed to stretch on forever into the fog

and of course, there was fuck all in it. nothing alive. no monsters until you got close to a shore. just vast empty sea that you swam through, only your friends' characters to break up the odd stillness of it. you probably turned the music off at this point, too, so there was only ambient sound and splashing

this is because you were supposed to fly over it, if you crossed it at all. and because there wasn't really a good centralised source of knowledge on these things, it wasn't really clear if it was entirely empty

the trip there was fine, if a bit boring and lonely. during the trip back, I accidentally clicked on something in the middle of the ocean

now, there weren't supposed to be things there. I had my friends, but I clicked on a monster, and when I swam down to look at it, I saw that it was actually an enormous sea monster

so I pinged one of the guildmates swimming with me and they thought I was lying, so I showed them, and then we repeated this several times until everyone in the group had seen this weird thing that felt like it came from a schoolyard rumour

Ancient Sea Dragon. 99,999,999 health points and none of us could find anything on it posted online. it was pretty common for players to run into it and be shocked, but we didn't know that

so we naturally let the rest of the guild know, got a hunting party together, and spent the better part of a day just whittling its health down

with the benefit of hindsight and documentation of this thing existing now, I can spoil this and tell you it didn't drop anything, but this long down the line, I still think about how deeply surreal it felt to stumble on an enormous sea monster in the middle of what my brain had come to understand as a liminal space. the sea was supposed to be mostly empty, and here was this thing

which is a very long way to introduce what I think is lacking here: we need more of those enormous empty spaces that leave characters with nothing to do but talk and feel completely isolated. sometimes you get to a sprawling castle city and it's completely empty because the players moved on. sometimes the devs threw an enormous monster in the middle of nowhere just to fuck with you, and that was kind of cool even if it sucked

[theyanderespecialist]

Base Yandere Lord Muzan Kibutsuji Headcanons: Power And Control (Demon Slayer)

[Hello, My Sexy Muffins, and Bad Butt Biscuits! I am here with a new chapter! This one has The Original Version of Muzan as I did the Female/Genderbent Version of him! So now let's Do Muzan! I hope that you all enjoy this chapter!] 

(Disclaimer: Muzan is not yandere in canon this is just for fun and not to be taken seriously at all! Simping for fictional and yandere characters is fine just do not be illegal or gross about it! You know who you are, you dirty flaky biscuits! Yanderes are not ideal partners to have in real life! Also, remember to separate fiction from reality and headcanon from canon! Thank you!) 

-Base Yandere Headcanons With Lord Muzan Kibutsuji- 

.He is a man that loves power and control and hates a lot of change.  .He does like things when they do change in his benefit. .Because if you look at him, he wears more modern clothes, has a more modern chair, and a more modern car (For the time period of the show)

.He may say he does not like change, but he does like the benefits of the modern age he is in. 

.Though the change he does not like it more the things to do with his demise, he has a fear of death. 

.He had this fear of death since he was alive and was close to death, being the first demon was not enough for him. 

.He has to conquer the sun as well. 

.He was not a good husband, as he pushed his five wives to take their own lives.  .He was not the best partner to have that was for sure as he had never felt love for anyone.    .That was until he met you, something about you consumed him. 

.He did not like the control he did not have over it or how he felt. 

.How his heart raced, how you were always on every single thought he had, how he longed to have you in his presence.  .It goes on and on and he hated it with all his being and blamed you for the lack of control you made him have. 

.Yes he would blame all these new and strange feelings on you, you must be some sort of magic user that has cast a spell on him and made him weak for a pathetic human like yourself.  .That is what he thought, at least at first.  .For at some point he could not stand being without you and you would become a prisoner in the infinity palace.  .That is right, Lord Muzan is the type of yandere to capture you/kidnap you, and keep you in a gilded cage.  .He finds himself to like your company and he likes the power he has on you.  .That you are fully dependent on him for food, company, and well anything really.  .Some days he forgets to feed you and other days he makes you beg. 

.He can be a very mocking yandere and loves the power he has over you.  .Though if you did try and hurt yourself or kill yourself to escape him, he would grab you by the throat, in a bloodthirsty enraged way.  .He learns in this moment that you are something special to him, and he is not going to let you take the easy way out and leave him. .This moment that happens will actually have him treating you better, he is less cold to you, and remember to feed you more often. 

.At this point he has learned that he cannot live without you, and he only would not have turned you into a demon yet because of the demon slayers.  .Even if he gave you a lot of his blood, you would still not be strong enough to fight off Hashiras.  .So he is not going to risk his prize being harmed or stolen from him. 

.He still has the power and control over you, he just allows you more freedoms now.  .Everyone now knows that you belong to him, so no one dares lay a hand on you, if they did well they would be slaughtered and made an example of.  .He also finds himself considering something, that you would need the best of things, if you are going to belong to the Demon King, then you must look the part.  .So he would spoil you, yes this is Muzan as a yandere for sure, once he accepts that he has a darling that is.  .Him showering you with gifts, is a way of having his ownership over you. 

.You are wearing the clothes, he thinks is nice. You have on the make-up that, he thinks you look good in, your hair is done in a way he loves. The list can go on and on. 

.But of course, Muzan is a master manipulator, so you would not know any of this.  .Muzan would have successfully tricked you into thinking that all of it is things you chose and things you liked. .And you are so deep into his mind games that you do not realize it was him pulling the strings. 

.He is the type of yandere that would mold you because he is not the type of yandere that needs to change for his darling.  .Why would he have to change, he is almost nearly perfect. 

.All he has to do is conquer the sun, and make you his spouse!  .That is all that he needs to do and then his life will be perfect.  .On a bit of a more steamy note, he would have much desire to claim you in an intimate way over and over and over.  .He will show you just a great lover, and future husband he can be. .If he did have "rivals" well let's be honest, it is laughable that they even consider themselves to be his rivals.  .No, Demon Slayer, Human, or Demon (other than himself of course) was good enough for you.  .So if someone claimed you to be theirs, they were simply erased from the world. 

.He would not confess his love, instead, he is going to just one day declare that you are his and that you were his the day he kidnapped you, you just did not know it yet. 

.You also would no longer be allowed to see family and friends, and if he deems it, he will be the only other person you ever see again.  .So you might as well as give up and accept your fate, be a good little spouse for him, and warm his bed.  .If you can do that you will get a treat, remember It does not matter if you love him right now, you will be immortal like him and then you both have all the time in the world... 

.And Muzan he will have all the power and control over you for all this time and all the time to come.  .You are his, you never had a choice. 

[YASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS another chapter done! I hope you all enjoyed and stay sexy, all of my sexy muffins!] 

[terribledactyl]

I hate to be #thatbitch who’s joyless in main tags, but I wish fanartists and fic writers put just a *hair* more thought into how they write/draw Viktor’s disability, especially in modern AUs.

To start, let’s try to unpack what in particular seems to be his disability. It’s nonspecified in show, but we can at least look at the areas he seems to be struggling in most. I’ll try not to be too biased towards projecting my own disability onto him and only talk about what’s shown on screen.

Let’s start with the obvious: examining his mobility aids. Through most of the “past” (from childhood to first meeting Jayce) he only uses a cane. I’m going to focus on the ones that seemed to give him the most support, which are his crutch and his brace.

The brace seems to be stabilizing his whole leg, with extra support around the knee and ankle, plus two straps at the thigh and one at the calf. Consistent with what we’ve seen in childhood flashbacks as well, where his ankle is held at an angle I recognize most as what mine look like when I roll it.

When he trips in the flashback, it seems to be primarily over his own feet, which emphasizes the weak ankle to me. As a whole, that leg seems to be capable of supporting a bit of weight, but not consistently.

We also see him transition from a cane to a crutch. It’s not a more stylish version of the cane, it’s got a different function. And not just any crutch, but an ergonomic one. I recognize it off my wishlist.

Now branching into personal interpretation and what I’d like to see more of, I think he needed that extra support all along. Using a cane when you need more support than that really sucks, spoken from experience. So why would someone use a cane with no brace when they need a crutch and a brace?

The truth is, there are a lot of reasons. Pride, cost, internalized ableism, any mix of those and more. And I think if you’re going to give him only a cane in your modern AU, I’d like to see some consideration as to why someone who needs more support than that is only using a cane.

Is he having a good day, and he keeps the crutch and brace for emergencies? Would a good brace be too expensive? Can he not afford an ergonomic crutch? Would he benefit from having more chairs in school/work/The Lab(tm)? Would he benefit from being an ambulatory wheelchair user? Could he afford one even if he did? Is he too stubborn to admit he needs more support than he’s getting from a cane? Embarassed? Afraid of what it means for him? If he’s only using a cane, does he have to go out less and that’s what makes him more of a homebody? These are all REALLY interesting things to explore!

This is me not so subtley begging people to explore his disability more, because it affects everything. I’d really love to see more fanart of him with a crutch and not a cane, although he does use canes canonically into adulthood so I can’t say that’s not a founded choice to make. I’d love for fic writers and fanartists who give him a cane to know that’s an intentional choice and how it would change how he interacts with the world, even in small ways.

Learn the different types of braces and what they’re good for! Learn about bandages, tape, compression braces, hinged braces! Learn about forearm crutches, ergonomic crutches, canes, walkers, wheelchairs! Just please be intentional with the choices you make!

[team7-headquarter]

Do you ever think about how the two kyubi jinchurikis previous to Naruto were married to a hokage? How the women serving as the recipient of the feared beast were some of the most beloved people of the head of the militar state?

The strongest man in the village marries the deadliest woman in the village and people were like "I trust our leader but I am terrified of his wife".

What about the children?

Not even one mention of how the Uzumaki and Senju kekkei genkais mixed. What about the contrast of the Uchihas marrying within the clan to maximize their sharingan users while the Senjus and the Uzumakis married?

There's no mention either of Hashirama and Mito's kids. Would their mixed blood make them more or less powerful? Would some of them still get the red hair? Would some of them choose to move with the majority of the Uzumaki clan? Would they rather use the last name Senju to prevent getting hunted like their cousins outside of Konohagajure?

Tell me, if Tsunade is a direct descendant of Hashirama and Tobirama, doesn't she also has Uzumaki blood from Mito?

What about the influence?

Mito raises all those children and they knew to fear the kyubi, but how did they feel about the jinchuriki? What about their mother? And how did it shape the way they would later perceive Kushina? How did the Senjus treat Kushina? Was she family to them? Had Mito any influence over how Kushina was raised and trained even as old as she was?

What type of influence did Mito have over Hashirama? Even if she never mediated on the Hokages duties, how her beliefs shaped the beliefs of her children? Of the Senju clan? Of the Uzumakis? Of the people of Konoha? When Hashirama died, did Tobirama pushed aside? Or she retired herself given her age?

When did the Uzumakis and the Senjus disappeared from Konoha? If you follow the Minato one-shot manga recently published by Kishimoto, the Uzumakis were still highly respected on Konoha-- or at least had their own space, a place to keep their legacy and train their own. So when did it all come down and when did the Senju and Uzumaki clans started dying enough to be completely gone when Naruto was born?

The Minato manga shows that Kushina was a reason for him to take certain choices. So did he have a plan to change Konoha to become a place for his wife and son to live happy and not rejected? What type or political changes would he have applied if given the chance?

The only real option to try and make sense of the history of Konoha is if you acknowledge that 1) Tobirama did make the militarization more efficient, but not necessarily made life better for everyone; 2) Hiruzen must be the WORST hokage given his indecision between doing what Tobirama did which would have turned him into Danzo or try to benefit the lives of the people under his commands even if it meant risking Konoha as a militar state.

Then again, what exactly means to have the advice of an Uzumaki woman? How does it change things? Did Mito ever tried to be the mediator between Hashirama and Madara? What could a friendship between Kushina and Mikoto could have changed the future?

Is there something to say about the positions of both Mito and Kushina as women from a clan that's hunted down for their power and that has been turned to weapons/sacrifices? How would their identities parallel the Uchiha clan?

How could this all reflect on the story and the theme of the manga?

Framing Naruto as the survivor of a genocide would have been an amazing point to meet or finally understand Sasuke in his rejection of Konoha. Sasuke saw his clan died but they denied Naruto that knowledge. Sasuke lost it but they didn't even allow Naruto to have it. Sasuke can return to the Uchiha compound and visit the sacred secrets of his people, but the story denied Naruto of that. Itachi cursed Sasuke with his choice to kill the clan in order for Sasuke to live and Konoha to be safe, Minato cursed Naruto by sealing Kurama in him to protect his life and the village. They were manipulated from the start, everyone deciding which parts of the story they got to listen to, never allowing them to decide with eyes wide open. Of course they can speak to each other without words. They don't know how similar their experiences are.

Hashirama and Minato didn't mean for the jinchurikis to be just a weapon of the state (those were their wives!!!!!!!), but Tobirama allowed that to happen and Hiruzen actively dictated rules to make sure it'll be the result (isolating Naruto from the village, like they did with the Uchiha clan). Tsunade only tried to keep things rolling, but she at least can defend with her medical achievement and the fact the system was rotten to the core when she became hokage.

Even Sakura and Hinata benefit from this, both in the deepening of their characters and the canon romantic plotlines. To be soft or wild, to be bullied by others or constantly left behind given their lovers' duties, to be raised under the pressure of a legacy or to be helpless and wanting to stop being a burden, to break the expectations and reclaim your identity, to make your own path and become a great kunoichi who can also love and fight to he loved, to be seen, to be there with the man they love.

Thinking about Mito and Kushina make me spiral because they are so important!!! Yet we don't have many mentions of them!!!! Why!!!!

[ecargmura]

Blue Lock Episode 38 Review + Final Thoughts - No Longer PNG Lock

I don’t care what you say about this episode and the entirety of Season 2 as a whole. Call it PNG Lock; call it Powerpoint Lock; call it whatever you want. I was entertained, so I like it! The whole finale was crazy and I honestly can’t wait for more as you know a Season 3 is on the horizon with what the ending showed.

Anyways, the finale is basically what happens when Rin awakens his flow, which is a more ominous depiction compared to his competitors who had more of a positive depiction. He can hyper analyze his opponents, detect their weaknesses and use it to his advantage. Unlike the other instances where it mainly benefits the user without hurting others, Rin’s Flow feels as if it’s intended for harming his opponents, as his move against Niou did feel like he was purposely harming him. It’s basically berserk mode for Rin.

Though, I have to say, despite the animation being subpar for these past three months, the one-minute additional time segment was seriously well-animated. Like the quality upgraded so much just from this segment alone—heck, it’s not even CG! It feels like I’m watching an anime film with the cinematography and how each character is moving so fluidly. I especially loved the part where Isagi swoops in to take the final goal, securing the win for Blue Lock.

To be honest, Isagi was a bit meh as an MC to me, but this season really got me liking him a lot more than before. I like that, while he is affable, he’s not afraid to be selfish and will steal another person’s glory to do so. In fact, the last goal he made wasn’t for Rin; it was for him and his ambitions only. His actions actually affect those around him, which I like. This actually causes Rin to mark Isagi as his rival as Sae acknowledged Isagi as the one who could change soccer and not his own brother. It’s also thanks to Isagi that the Blue Lock project is able to continue and allow Ego to continue his nefarious schemes to raise the top striker. It was nice seeing him change from the kid who lost because he passed a goal to the guy who stole the ball from Rin and made a goal. That’s his ego, after all.

The season ends with a phase 2 called Neo Egoist League. I wonder how many phases there are and just what sort of trials await the Blue Lock players. From what I know, this next phase will be global as the Blue Lock players will be on teams in different countries. That’s why white German boy Michael Kaiser was trending and still is even after like what, 12 hours, after the episodes aired? Also, he’s voiced by Mamoru Miyano who seems to be voicing blonds in sports anime recently as he was Atsumu from Haikyuu and voiced Kei Kaname from Oblivion Battery in the spring season. I haven’t read the manga, but I know a lot about Kaiser due to research. I honestly believed Tetsuya Kakihara would voicing Kaiser as he is native German, but I do hope he gets casted as Ness as he speaks more German than Kaiser does!

Also, Kunigami shows up too with a very changed appearance. That doesn’t look good for the viewers, fans, fellow Blue Lock players and Chigiri. Will we ever get a side story about what happened in Wild Card? I’d love to learn about it—why does it exist?

FINAL THOUGHTS

It sucks that the second season was a product of rushed production. An anecdote I read stated that the animators had to cut some frames to meet deadlines, hence why Blue Lock became the annoyingly memed PNG Lock. The additional time segment in the final episode of the season showed that if they weren’t rushing, the quality of the matches would’ve been really good. I get that 8Bit was busy with both the Episode Nagi movie and Season 2, which both came out this year.

Regardless of the issues, I actually enjoyed this season a lot. Yes, it’s not visually appealing, but I still liked the story and what the next phase of the competition came with. I liked seeing Isagi meeting these new characters and seeing what they’re like. I liked Hiori, Karasu, Otoya and Yukimiya thanks to this new season. It’s also nice seeing the world building expand with Blue Lock players having to face off against the national U-20 team and what sort of people the opponents are. The standouts are easily Aiku, Sae and Sendou—Shidou doesn’t count because he’s a Blue Lock player. I’m still surprised that Aiku and Niou are under twenty years old—they look so old for their age.

The first few episodes was nice to see as Isagi has to be teamed up with new people and we also see other characters paired up with new people to see if they got chemistry or not. After that, the U-20 is introduced. Seeing how much fans they have really showed the difference between them and a bunch of teenagers in a competition. I also liked seeing the beef between the Itoshi brothers and how Rin is dealing with it from his perspective.

Though, what surprised me the most in the second season was the voice cast. They really did a crazy job with the casting, especially with the U-20 cast. If you look them up, they’re practically names you see in recent anime. Not only that, but even the characters’ childhood selves and their parents get amazing voice actors too. You didn’t expect Sae’s childhood self to be voiced by Boruto Uzumaki’s voice actress, right? Or how Chigiri’s sister Koyuki is voiced by Mem-cho’s voice actress? Heck, they even casted Mamoru Miyano as Kaiser! You know what that means? The characters that will appear in the Neo Egoist League will get crazy casting as well. Given how popular Blue Lock is, casting choices will be a lot more rigorous. I’m still praying for Kakihara to be casted as Ness. It’d be a waste to not cast the native German speaker as the German speaker—the anime already casted Subaru Kimura and Wataru Komada as other characters in the show.

I also liked the increase in comedy from the Additional Time segments at the end of the episodes. They’re so hilarious and very fruity. I seriously loved the YukkiNagi segments where they compared players to animals and then Rin comes in annoyed, but still participates too. I feel like the writers for these segments really amped up the scenarios for this season because the animal comparison thing was seriously hilarious. They know what the viewers want!

I guess if I were to pick out gripes that are NOT THE ANIMATION, I guess it’d be a lack of Raichi? I have a bit of a soft spot for him, so the lack of Raichi screen time saddened me a bit. Other than that, I’d love to learn more about the other U-20 characters that aren’t the central ones a bit more. Too bad that there are already so many characters that not all of them, whether they be from BL or U20, will get the screen time they deserve.

I do wonder when they’ll announce Season 3. I just hope they have a better production schedule next time. I’ll be waiting patiently for when that comes! Let me know your thoughts on the final episode and Season 2 as a whole!

[wolfliving]

It starts with him

What was once a promise of technology to allow us to automate and analyze the environments in our physical spaces is now a heap of broken ideas and broken products. Technology products have been deployed en masse, our personal data collected and sold without our consent, and then abandoned as soon as companies strip mined all the profit they thought they could wring out. And why not? They already have our money.

The Philips Hue, poster child of the smart home, used to work entirely on your local network. After all, do you really need to connect to the Internet to control the lights in your own house?  Well you do now!Philips has announced it will require cloud accounts for all users—including users who had already purchased the hardware thinking they wouldn’t need an account (and the inevitable security breaches that come with it) to use their lights.

Will you really trust any promises from a company that unilaterally forces a change like this on you? Does the user actually benefit from any of this?

Matter in its current version … doesn’t really help resolve the key issue of the smart home, namely that most companies view smart homes as a way to sell more individual devices and generate recurring revenue.

It keeps happening. Stuff you bought isn’t yours because the company you bought it from can take away features and force you to do things you don’t want or need to do—ultimately because they want to make more money off of you. It’s frustrating, it’s exhausting, and it’s discouraging.

And it has stopped IoT for the rest of us in its tracks. Industrial IoT is doing great—data collection is the point for the customer. But the consumer electronics business model does not mesh with the expected lifespan of home products, and so enshittification began as soon as those first warranties ran out.

How can we reset the expectations we have of connected devices, so that they are again worthy of our trust and money? Before we can bring the promise back, we must deweaponize the technology.

Guidelines for the hardware producer

What we can do as engineers and business owners is make sure the stuff we’re building can’t be wielded as a lever against our own customers, and to show consumers how things could be. These are things we want consumers to expect and demand of manufacturers.

Control

Think local

Decouple

Open interfaces

Be a good citizen

1) Control over firmware updates.

You scream, “What about security updates!” But a company taking away a feature you use or requiring personal data for no reason is arguably a security flaw. 

We were once outraged when intangible software products went from something that remained unchanging on your computer, to a cloud service, with all the ephemerality that term promises. Now they’re coming for our tangible possessions.

No one should be able to do this with hardware that you own. Breaking functionality is entirely what security updates are supposed to prevent! A better checklist for firmware updates:

Allow users to control when and what updates they want to apply. 

Be thorough and clear as to what the update does and provide the ability to downgrade if needed. 

Separate security updates from feature additions or changes. 

Never force an update unless you are sure you want to accept (financial) responsibility for whatever you inadvertently break. 

Consider that you are sending software updates to other people’s hardware. Ask them for permission (which includes respecting “no”) before touching their stuff!

2) Do less on the Internet.

A large part of the security issues with IoT products stem from the Internet connectivity itself. Any server in the cloud has an attack surface, and now that means your physical devices do.

The solution here is “do less”. All functionality should be local-only unless it has a really good reason to use the Internet. Remotely controlling your lights while in your own house does not require the cloud and certainly does not require an account with your personal information attached to it. Limit the use of the cloud to only the functions that cannot work without it.

As a bonus, less networked functionality means fewer maintenance costs for you.

3) Decouple products and services.

It’s fine to need a cloud service. But making a product that requires a specific cloud service is a guarantee that it can be enshittified at any point later on, with no alternative for the user owner. 

Design products to be able to interact with other servers. You have sold someone hardware and now they own it, not you. They have a right to keep using it even if you shut down or break your servers. Allow them the ability to point their devices to another service. If you want them to use your service, make it worthwhile enough for them to choose you.

Finally, if your product has a heavy reliance on the cloud to work, consider enabling your users to self-host their own cloud tooling if they so desire. A lot of people are perfectly capable of doing this on their own and can help others do the same.

4) Use open and standard protocols and interfaces.

Most networked devices have no reason to use proprietary protocols, interfaces, and data formats. There are open standards with communities and software available for almost anything you could want to do. Re-inventing the wheel just wastes resources and makes it harder for users to keep using their stuff after you’re long gone. We did this with Twine, creating an encrypted protocol that minimized chatter, because we needed to squeeze battery life out of WiFi back when there weren’t good options.

If you do have a need for a proprietary protocol (and there are valid reasons to do so):

Document it. 

If possible, have a fallback option that uses an open standard. 

Provide tooling and software to interact with your custom protocols, at the very least enough for open source developers to be able to work with it. This goes for physical interfaces as much as it does for cloud protocols.

If the interface requires a custom-made, expensive, and/or hard-to-find tool to use, then consider using something else that is commonly available and off the shelf instead.

5) Be a good citizen.

Breaking paid-for functionality on other people’s stuff is inherently unethical. Consider not doing this! Enshittification is not a technical problem, it is a behavioral one. Offer better products that are designed to resist enshittification, and resist it yourself in everything you do.

Nothing forced Philips to do what they are doing: a human made a decision to do it. They could have just as easily chosen not to. With Twine’s server lock-in, at least we chose to keep it running, for 12 years now. Consider that you can still make a decent living by being honest and ethical towards the people who are, by purchasing your products, paying for your lifestyle. 

We didn’t get here by accident. Humans made choices that brought us to this point, and we can’t blame anyone for being turned off by it. But we can choose to do better. We can design better stuff. And we can choose not to mess things up after the fact.

We’re putting this into practice with Pickup. (We also think that part of an IoT reset is giving users the creative freedom of a general-purpose device.) If you’re looking for something better and our product can fill a need you have, consider backing us. We cannot claim to be perfect or have all of the answers, but we are absolutely going to try. The status quo sucks. Let’s do something about it.

Published October 15, 2023 By Jeremy Billheimer

[brnest]

So I decided to post my thoughts from AO3 about JJK and how to correct the issues i saw in the next arc. Let me know what you all think.

rant:

I didnt like how gege built up the zenin clan only to throw them away as a plot device for maki's development. I thought the story would take a different turn when megumi was named heir but it felt rushed and extremely contrived, beginning immediately with the round table decision to KILL megumi. I cannot understand why anyone backed this decision. Why would a family that values power, tradition, prestige and inherited techniques so much not just have a duel to decide the leader?

1) It retcons everything we know about the Zenin including Toji's logic for giving megumi away. He knew if megumi had a good technique the family would invest in his development… turned out megumi didn't just have a "good" technique he had THE BEST technique! Toji' concern was never that theyd kill his som but that they'd turn megumi into a POS. Gojo explictly stated that hundreds of years ago a TS and 6E user killed each other in a mock-duel and the 2 families NEVER got over it. So the idea that the zenin would kill a TS user is completely out of the question. Even IF killing Megumi served Naoya, it didnt serve anyone else and goes against the zenins principles.

2)The TS literally puts the zenin on par (or higher) to satoru gojo in terms of strength. With gojo sealed The zenin clan would jet-propel to no1 in jujutsu society, which is what the family WANTS, power and prestige.

3) Megumi canonically had a lot of supporters, so this goes back to my first point that the blowback of killing him wouldve caused mass, internal strife.

4) Maki's massacre. (Ugh...)

So my headcannon is this:

Naoya gets told he isn't gonna be heir and calls the elders to the round table. Since a large portion of the family want megumi as head, naoya issues a challenge/duel on the condition that if naoya wins, megumi becomes an official zenin member but forfeits all rights to ever become clan head (doesnt matter if its on paper or binding vow, point is megumi won't be head). This would enable naoya to stay at the helm, while also boosting the zenins prestige because they'd have the TS under their control. Having a duel would also showcase naoya's talents so he doesnt come off a glass cannon like he did when maki flattens him later to show HER overwhelming strength. This plan makes infinitely more sense to me than what the manga did because it benefits EVERYBODY. Maki wants this. Naoya wants this. And so does the entire clan, because megumi will be a zenin regardless of who wins. It also put megumi in an active role, instead of passive one.

With this simple change, we can explore the characters introduced in the hei unit, tojis backstory/life, mai and makis sisterly bond, megumis leadership acumen, And ofc this would be the perfect time for naoya to reveal the truth about toji: That Satoru gojo is the one who killed him and thats why megumj and tsumiki were alone (in an attempt to turn megumi against satoru).

This change also benefits Maki's character too because after megumi loses, she tells him not to worry because he has enough supporters to drive a split in the clan, so while he can't be head of the zenin he can be head of his OWN faction. (remember this was makis ultimate goal, to have a safe space for mai, thats why she wanted megumi as head in the first place) now I'm skipping details, but ogi catches wind of maki's coup to start a civil war within the clan and throws her in the pits for it (a MUCH better reason to kill her than taking curse tools. I mean maki has been taking curse tools for years and nobody cared!) She becomes toji 2.0 and the story continues along the lines of the canon. Maki still gets her power boost and her revenge on NAOYA's supporters instead of the entire clan so she doesnt come off as a psychopath, and megumi learns the truth. There is even room for potential redemption for naoya should megumi prevent Maki from killing him which eliminates the need for curse naoya (a colossal waste of time)

What do you all think?

[ms-demeanor]

As I understand it you work in enterprise computer acquisitions?

TL;DR What's the general vibe for AI accelerating CPUs in the enterprise world for client compute?

Have you had any requests from your clients to help them upgrade their stuff to Core Ultra/Whateverthefuck Point with the NPUs? Or has the corporate world generally shown resistance rather than acquiescence to the wave of the future? I'm so sorry for phrasing it like that I had no idea how else to say that without using actual marketing buzzwords and also keeping it interesting to read.

I know in the enterprise, on-die neural acceleration has been ruining panties the world over (Korea's largest hyperscaler even opted for Intel Sapphire Rapids CPUs over Nvidia's Hopper GPUs due to poor supply and not super worth it for them specifically uplift in inference performance which was all that they really cared about), and I'm personally heavily enticed by the new NPU packing processors from both Team Red and Team We Finally Fucking Started Using Chiplets Are You Happy Now (though in large part for the integrated graphics). But I'm really curious to know, are actual corporate acquisitions folks scooping up the new AI-powered hotness to automagically blur giant pink dildos from the backgrounds of Zoom calls, or is it perceived more as a marketing fad at the moment (a situation I'm sure will change in the next year or so once OpenVINO finds footing outside of Audacity and fucking GIMP)?

So sorry for the extremely long, annoying, and tangent-laden ask, hope the TL;DR helps.

Ninety eight percent of our end users use their computers for email and browser stuff exclusively; the other two percent use CAD in relatively low-impact ways so none of them appear to give a shit about increasing their processing power in a really serious way.

Like, corporately speaking the heavy shit you're dealing with is going to be databases and math and computers are pretty good at dealing with those even on hardware from the nineties.

When Intel pitched the sapphire processors to us in May of 2023 the only discussion on AI was about improving performance for AI systems and deep learning applications, NOT using on-chip AI to speed things up.

The were discussing their "accelerators," not AI and in the webinar I attended it was mostly a conversation about the performance benefits of dynamic load balancing and talking about how different "acclerators" would redistribute processing power. This writeup from Intel in 2022 shows how little AI was part of the discussion for Sapphire Rapids.

In August of 2023, this was the marketing email for these processors:

So. Like. The processors are better. But AI is a marketing buzzword.

And yeah every business that I deal with has no use for the hot shit; we're still getting bronze and silver processors and having zero problems, though I work exclusively with businesses with under 500 employees.

Most of the demand that I see from my customers is "please can you help us limp this fifteen year old SAN along for another budget cycle?"