It's the two year anniversary of Jeff Bezos' sexts being leaked
Also, I'm still sad about Adobe Flash dying
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Railroad systems in China are collapsing because Adobe Flash has stopped running
Link to the article here.
Personally, I was kinda sad to see Adobe Flash go. Every good thing that I can remember from my childhood was built in Flash. I might have been born too early to become TikTok famous and born too late to be able to afford a house, but what I did get to do was play Flash games every day after coming home from school. In the same way that many people in their early thirties feel disconnected from both the “Millenial” and “Gen X” categories and instead feel more at home in the micro-gen label of “the Dial-up Generation”, I feel like my age group is defined less by Fortnite or avocado toast and more by the immense amount of childhood hours we wasted on Flash games. To be honest, I think I remember the achievement box popups on Kongregate more vividly than I remember learning how to ride a bicycle or my first day of highschool. The death of Flash has made me acutely aware of the passing of time, a process that I somehow thought I’d be immune against. I try to laugh that feeling off, but on the days when it’s hard to get out of bed I think about how some doors that I thought would be open forever are now closed, and that many of my greatest losses are still ahead of me.
But railway engineers in China had to pirate Flash to get their trains to work again, and that’s kinda funny.
It’s the two year anniversary of Bezos’ sexts being leaked
Enjoy.
A good r/clojure comment
Link here.
They make a good point. Why should websites load? I think we’d all be better off if they didn’t. Parler has the right idea.
Github has taken a bold pro-Nazi stance
We’ve all known for a while now that Github’s management has no moral qualms about aligning with fascism. They’ve shown no signs of wanting to drop the ICE contract, preferring instead to take symbolic measures like renaming branches whenever they need to deflect criticisms.
Recently, they fired a Jewish employee who said that “nazis are about” during the attempted Capitol coup. This was considered a little too blatant, even for Github.
After a lot of people tweeted angrily about this, Github apologised and offered the employee their job back. We’re lucky that the internet outrage machine worked this time, but I don’t think it’s something we can count on. Platforms like Twitter, even when they give social justice a voice, are owned by people who don’t actually give two shits about human rights. And if the Github employee had been fired on a day when the tech community was worked up about something else, it’s unlikely that there would have been enough outrage to pressure Github into reversing their decision. There’s also a certain kind of survivor bias to this story: we know about the Github worker being fired precisely because the internet outrage machine turned on, and there’s no telling how many similar stories have completely slipped under the radar.
Ultimately, all of this would have been much less likely to happen if tech had a strong union presence that allowed workers to actually protect themselves in a reliable way.
Cops on Teslas? Cops on Teslas
I wonder if the cops have to turn off autopilot when they’re trying to run over protestors, or if the police Teslas come with a specialized targeting system.
This has nothing to do with technology but I still think you should see it
Link to article here.
A few days ago in Australia, the country I try to pretend I don’t live in, there was a huge outrage about a pigeon who supposedly has a US leg band appearing in Melbourne. The Government deemed the pigeon a health risk and sentenced it to be executed, presumably to stop the spread of Americanism. People were up in arms about this and called for the pigeon to be spared, or at least placed in a 2 week hotel quarantine until we could be sure that it’s screams of Star-Spangled Banner lyrics and “where are my jumbo fries?” weren’t contagious.
Relief was felt around the country when officials confirmed that the leg band was fake, and that the pigeon wasn’t actually from the US. I’m glad that at least the bird was spared from our draconian immigration policies, but it was a little jarring seeing the country come out in support of a pigeon when we have so many refugees dying in detention centers being met with silence.
Anyway, uh, here’s a funny section from the article:
Acting Australian Prime Minister Michael McCormack had earlier said there would be no mercy if the pigeon was from the United States.
“If Joe has come in a way that has not met our strict biosecurity measures, then bad luck Joe, either fly home or face the consequences,” McCormack said.
Martin Foley, health minister for Victoria state where Joe is living, had called for the federal government to spare the bird even if it posed a disease risk.
“I would urge the Commonwealth’s quarantine officials to show a little bit of compassion,” Foley said.
Some good content
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Any typos in the above post are caused by bit flips and are not my fault.
Thank you as always for the post! I never heard of Jeff Bezos' sexts before. He reads like an AI in a human suit...