2024-02-08

Items_of_interest, February 8-18, 2024

Morale plummets at Google as workers complain bosses are ‘inept’ and ‘boring’ - Stephen Council, SFGate

“We get that execs are excited about Google’s future,” another question reportedly said. “Why should we be excited, when we might get laid off and not be around to share in that future? If we lose our jobs and equity grants, it’s cold comfort that Google is succeeding off our hard work, and we don’t get rewarded for it, but you do.”

The Viral Smart Toothbrush Botnet Story Is Not Real - Jason Koebler, 404 media

The story quickly went viral, because things like this have happened before, because it feels absurd, and because we as a society deserve it for putting internet connectivity in everything and for not securing those devices.

„ICH HABE MITGEMACHT“: „QUERDENKER“ LAGEN IMMER FALSCH – WO SIND DIE ENTSCHULDIGUNGEN? - Thomas Laschyk, Volksverpetzer.

„Querdenker“, wie wir im allgemeinen die Szene der Pandemie-Leugner nennen, die große Überschneidungen mit Impfgegnern und Rechtsextremen haben (auch bei Befürwortung von Putin und dessen imperialistischen Angriffskrieg), lagen immer falsch. Sie haben von Anfang der Pandemie an stets mit Manipulation, Lügen, wirren Verschwörungsmythen und überzogenen Behauptungen gearbeitet, haben stets Wissenschaftler, Politiker (und auch Faktenchecker) attackiert und bedroht, sogar zu Gewalt, Mord und Terrorisierung gegriffen.

It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU - OWA. This seems bad considering that at least one organisation I’m a member of uses a web app for its digital membership cards. This was done as an economization measure but replacing web apps may be more expensive to them than the amount that they saved. Never trust a platform not to sell you out.

Gelekte documenten bewijzen tot nu toe onbekende connecties tussen Rusland en de PVV - Laurens Groeneveld, Follow The Money, in Dutch, from October 2023. Surprise! Our local populist fascists who won the last elections (as opposed to the elitist fascists who have been pushed back to the margins for now because their leader is nuts) are Russian assets.

AI undermined my old job and then destroyed the market for one of my creative pursuits that I’ve been trying to make some money on. Now it may contribute to keeping me unemployed: AI hiring tools may be filtering out the best job applicants - Charlotte Lytton, BBC Worklife.

Some good news: Climate scientist wins $1mn in defamation case against rightwing bloggers

• Financial Times, paywalled so hard you can’t even see the byline for free, but honestly, all you need is the byline. The climate scientist in question is Michael Mann and I hope he gets to rub that million buckaroos into the faces of the people who falsely accused him of fraud for years (the defamation case took 12 years to resolve).

Last week’s new old The Hooded Crow track is one of my favorites: “Ravine”, a fast, driving, riffy rock song with a lot of movement in the middle section.

Unfortunately, at the time of writing, it’s been out for two days and it’s already clear that whatever YouTube audience my brother has built with his weekly posts does not agree that it’s great. As I’ve said before, the potential reach for this sort of thing - lyric videos for demos created by an unsigned band almost 30 years ago - is brutally low, but the pattern for the last few months of The Hooded Crow posts has been that each video gets viewed about 150-200 times. Most of those views happen in the first day, and the counter basically comes to a standstill when the next video is posted and the previous one ceases to be the latest one. Compared to that low expectation, “Ravine” still laid an egg, standing at 61 views after just two days. So the YouTube game is even harder than I thought.

For Valentine’s day, my brother released three old The Hooded Crow tracks in a week. I’m gonna highlight one: Never Play The Fool Again, written by Patrick Krop, which is the only one out of the three that has the full band.