Tag: technology

The Cancer that is Coraline is truly the Black Plague of technology. Now xit has authored a manifesto of post-meritocracy, complete with the core values and principles of xit’s philosophy of mediocrity:

• We do not believe that our value as human beings is intrinsically tied to our value as knowledge workers. Our professions do not define us; we are more than the work we do.
• We believe that interpersonal skills are at least as important as technical skills.
• We can add the most value as professionals by drawing on the diversity of our identities, backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. Homogeneity is an antipattern.
• We can be successful while leading rich, full lives. Our success and value is not dependent on exerting all of our energy on contributing to software.
• We have the obligation to use our positions of privilege, however tenuous, to improve the lives of others.
• We must make room for people who are not like us to enter our field and succeed there. This means not only inviting them in, but making sure that they are supported and empowered.
• We have an ethical responsibility to refuse to work on software that will negatively impact the well-being of other people.
• We acknowledge the value of non-technical contributors as equal to the value of technical contributors.
• We understand that working in our field is a privilege, not a right. The negative impact of toxic people in the workplace or the larger community is not offset by their technical contributions.
• We are devoted to practicing compassion and not contempt. We refuse to belittle other people because of their choices of tools, techniques, or languages.
• The field of software development embraces technical change, and is made better by also accepting social change.
• We strive to reflect our values in everything that we do. We recognize that values that are espoused but not practiced are not values at all.

It would be amusing if technical people began imposing this manifesto of mediocrity in non-technical areas. If interpersonal skills are as important as technical skills in the tech industry, are not technical skills as important as interpersonal skills in the service industry?

And given what we now know about social media causing depression, how can any ethical person work for either Facebook or Twitter?

Instapundit deactivated his Twitter account to protest SJW censorship there:

TWITTER’S GONE CRAZY BANNING PEOPLE ON THE RIGHT, so I’ve deactivated my Twitter account.

UPDATE: People seem to want more, and although there’s nothing duller than posting a screed on why you’re quitting a platform, here’s the gist: I’ve never liked Twitter even though I’ve used it. I was a late adopter, and with good reason. It’s the crystal meth of social media — addictive and destructive, yet simultaneously unsatisfying. When I’m off it I’m happier than when I’m on it. That it’s also being run by crappy SJW types who break their promises, to users, shareholders, and the government, of free speech is just the final reason. Why should I provide free content to people I don’t like, who hate me? I’m currently working on a book on social media, and I keep coming back to the point that Twitter is far and away the most socially destructive of the various platforms. So I decided to suspend them, as they are suspending others. At least I’m giving my reasons, which is more than they’ve done usually.

I left Facebook for much the same reason, whereas I was permanently suspended by Twitter. There really isn’t any good reason for anyone to the ideological right of Jeb Bush to be on these sites anymore.

From the transcript of the Darkstream:

Not stick not stay that bag STATCOM and Amy’s to shake the happy a finish big medics begin my humanity is biggest angle. He started haven’t been I didn’t birthday last couple days I’ve been a little busy trying to get away it has a book on pre-order heels it for a while. Maybe I do? Big Mike Patton okay hang on and it she yeah let me see that I can give you okay hmm seems to be going in and out okay are we doing any better yeah it looks like oh it’s fixed okay, all right.

Seriously, that’s the actual transcript. I appear to have had a mic issue there at the start. But doesn’t it remind you of Jordan Peterson’s lectures, at least just a little? Perhaps I should do them all that way. Anyhow, it’s been disappointing to be reminded that not everyone is capable of grasping the basic idea that seeds planted in the spring face different prospects than those planted in the fall or winter.

VFM at Google are reporting “a major concession” has been made by management after a big meeting concerning sexual harassment. Accused male Googlers are henceforth to be deemed guilty until they can prove otherwise.

It is good to see that Google is finally putting its corporate policies in line with its publicly expressed values.

What we have here is a complete failure to anticipate:

When Gab.com goes back online this weekend there will inevitably be a flood of psyop accounts created to drive division and break our guidelines. We will need your help more than ever to spot them and take action.

It only took Andrew Torba 14 months to come around to the very position for which he attempted to publicly mock me and for which he completely sold out Spacebunny, to whom he had appealed in the first place in order to obtain my help. Why do you think I subsequently concluded he was not ready for prime time and refused to have anything to do with him or his site? I’m not pretending that I don’t despise the guy, of course I do, but when have my analyses of people or situations ever been based on my feelings about them?

There are few things I find more stupidly tedious than clueless people babbling about “not punching right” or “we’re all on the same side”. No. We’re not. There are more than two sides. That’s binary thinking. And believing and supporting everyone who says they are opposed to the most extreme Left or are capable of mouthing the right words at the right time in a public situation is exactly how the Right wound up following opinion leaders such as William F. Buckley, Bill Kristol, Glenn Beck, and Ben Shapiro, and enriching shameless grifters like Jordan Peterson and Candace Owens. It’s how the Right always end up with sell-outs, surrender monkeys, cucks, cons, and outright liberals running the Conservative Establishment.

Character matters. Integrity matters. A willingness to speak the truth matters. Consistency matters. Loyalty matters. A devotion to a consciously anti-Christian tactic as a principle, especially a false devotion to a fake principle one is not even willing to stand by under pressure, is simply no basis for trusting someone, following someone, or even deeming someone to be on our side.

In other platform-related news, if you subscribe to the Darkstream, I would encourage you to follow my new account on Stream.me for a livestreaming alternative to YouTube. There are some minor issues to resolve; my new router appears to be causing occasional interruptions in the simulstreams and I can’t see the Stream.me comments yet, but we’ll work them out.

From the transcript of the Darkstream:

Twitter is controlled by SJWs. There is a central control there that dictates what the official perspective is, and so when they look at something like Gab, then they say, “Well, this is like Twitter,  Twitter has a core perspective there, so Gab must as well.” And then they look at what the dominant influence there is, and when you go to Gab – I haven’t been on it in in months – but you know, a year ago when I was on it, you could not get away from the Alt-Retards, you could not get away from the Fake Right. And so it’s not surprising that Gab was universally condemned for the political perspective that you could not help but encounter there.

Nobody says the same sort of thing about Infogalactic. They kind of made a half-hearted attempt, but nobody could do that because they would go there and they would see that it just wasn’t true. Because what we are doing with Infogalactic is that we’re giving the control to the user. The user’s perspective is what is going to ultimately define what he sees, and so it’s impossible to claim that Infogalactic is Wikipedia for Nazis or Wikipedia for Communists or any of these other sort of things. You can’t do it because the answer to all of it is yes. Anyone can use it, and anyone will see what it is that they prefer to see. The control is in the user’s hands. We’re not talking about something that is some sort of free speech thing, we’re not talking about that at all, we’re talking about from a basic technological point of view the perspective is under the control of the user.

I’ll give you an example. If you look at any Wikipedia page, people tend to think of it as being just one page, but every page is really a vast vertical stack of pages. The problem is that the page that you see on the subject is the one that the 535 Wikipedia admins have determined is the One True Page. That is the only perspective that is permitted and if you violate that perspective they will override you, they will block you, they might even kick you off. In the case of Infogalactic what we’re doing is we’re taking that vertical stack and we’re spreading it out and then we’re allowing you to decide which of all of those pages is the one that you want to see. That’s the approach we will take to all our social media efforts.

NOTE: Ironically, in light of the criticism that this approach will “lead to echo chambers”, this video is the second one in succession on the Darkstream channel to have its recommendations removed. Between the rampant Big Social censorship of what can be posted on any social media or commenting system and various alternative sites and individuals being removed from the Internet, it should be apparent that you’re going to be forced into an echo chamber whether you happen to find them desirable or not. The only real question is if you would prefer the perspective of the echo chamber you inhabit to be one that you choose or one that is imposed upon you by SJWs.

Mike Cernovich recognizes that while the deplatforming craze among the converged corporations is a bad thing, there is a silver lining in even the darkest cloud.

I blocked Gab’s CEO months ago as he was reporting accounts on Twitter to try get people banned. That was his business strategy. He’s a piece of sh-t with no vision or leadership. He should still be able to run his hell hole website, and it’s unfortunate he can’t.

True story. Gab’s CEO was reporting accounts to Twitter for “hate speech.” He tried getting me banned, thinking I’d post to his shithole website where people called my beautiful daughter a “mud baby.”

Gab is garbage.

And it has a right to exist.

What happened today is bad.

Sometimes bad things happen to bad people. That doesn’t mean that what has happened to them is positive. Life isn’t math.

In addition to being cut off by Paypal, Gab is down again. A number of readers have emailed to tell me about this Twitter post:

Breaking: @joyent, Gab’s new hosting provider, has just pulled our hosting service. They have given us until 9am on Monday to find a solution. Gab will likely be down for weeks because of this. Working on solutions. We will never give up on defending free speech for all people.

If you recall, the original cause of my break with Gab and Andrew Torba was due to his absolute refusal to eliminate the criminal and pornographic material that infested the site. I told him that it wasn’t about me or my preference for not being libeled, it was something that he was going to have to do if he wanted Gab to remain operational. I even offered to design a game-style moderation system that would have eliminated any need for an Orwellian Trust & Safety Council of the sort that Twitter, Facebook, and Indiegogo presently utilize.

And we all know how that ended. Instead of listening to me, Torba responded by calling me a crybaby for protesting his free-speech defense of the Alt-Retards who were not only libeling me, but also posting images of a woman being gang-raped by Africans with my wife’s head photoshopped onto it on Gab.

So, I have absolutely no sympathy whatsoever for either Gab or Torba. I was confident that Torba’s stubbornness, volatility, and lack of professionalism was eventually going to sink the site, and it’s more than a little appropriate that it should be Gab’s connection to the very Alt-Retards he defended so assiduously that is proving to be its primary vulnerability to those seeking to destroy it.

Regardless, the entire Right is going to have to divorce itself from the techno-Left, and it will have to do so sooner rather than later. A number of people are already working on solutions to everything from the domain registrations to the payment processors, but in the meantime, get off Twitter, get off Facebook, get off Wikipedia, and start using alternatives such as Oneway, Idka, and Infogalactic. We can, and we will, rout around these artificial barriers being imposed by the converged technology giants, but it’s going to take time, patience, and effort. And most of all, it’s going to require the willingness to actually leave the enemy sites.

In that vein, it’s important to understand the SJW’s Code of Conduct offensive in the Open Source space is intended to deny us the ability to do that. But remember, they can only win if you give up and submit.

A complete SJW fail at Google has infuriated Googlers:

At Google’s weekly staff meeting Thursday, the top question employees voted to ask Larry Page, a co-founder, and Sundar Pichai, the chief executive, was one about sexual harassment.

“Multiple company actions strongly indicate that protection of powerful abusers is literally and figuratively more valuable to the company than the well-being of their victims,” read the question, which was displayed at the meeting, according to people who attended. “What concrete and meaningful actions will be taken to turn this around?”

The query was part of an outpouring from Google employees after a New York Times article published Thursday reported how the company had paid millions of dollars in exit packages to male executives accused of misconduct and stayed silent about their transgressions. In the case of Andy Rubin, creator of Android mobile software, the company gave him a $90 million exit package even after Google had concluded that a misconduct claim against him was credible.

While tech workers, executives and others slammed Google for the revelations, nowhere was condemnation of the internet giant’s actions more pointed than among its own employees.

I don’t know why anyone is even remotely surprised. Male feminists always behave badly around women. If they understood women or knew how to behave around them, they wouldn’t be male feminists.

I do enjoy that rank stink of SJW hypocrisy in the evening.

And there was no one to defend it from the censors, because YouTube had already censored or suppressed everyone with the inclination to fight.

YouTube’s CEO has urged creators on the popular video site to organize against a proposed EU internet regulation, reinforcing fears that the infamous Article 13 could lead to content-killing, meme-maiming restrictions on the web.

The proposed amendments to the EU Copyright Directive would require the automatic removal of any user-created content suspected of violating intellectual property law – with platforms being liable for any alleged copyright infringement. If enacted, the legislation would threaten “both your livelihood and your ability to share your voice with the world,” YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki warned the site’s content creators in a blog post on Monday.

The regulation would endanger “hundreds of thousands of job,” Wojcicki said, predicting that it would likely force platforms such as YouTube to allow only content from a hand-picked group of companies.

This is genuinely amusing. YouTube hasn’t shut down my account, but they have suppressed and demonetized some of my videos. What a pity that they can’t rely upon Alex Jones, Paul Joseph Watson, or anyone on InfoWars, none of whom are fans of the European Union, to defend them….