Amazon has invented a new kind of labor travesty: the chickenized reverse centaur. That's a worker who has to foot the bill to outfit a work environment where they nevertheless have no autonomy (chickenization) and whose body is conscripted to act as a peripheral for a digital system (reverse centaur):
pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algβ¦
1/
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So Katy got a scam text claiming to be Canada Post with an underliverable package. I'm in the process of gathering information to send a report to their registrar's abuse department, but they're doing something clever to cover their tracks that I haven't fully been able to unravel.
For context, here is the link (with spaces added to prevent it from turning into an actual link and being accidentally clicked):
https:// canadapost-postecanadadeliverylivraison .com/canadapost/index.php
When opened from Safari on her phone, it loads a realistic looking phishing site, but when opened from any other browser, it returns an empty (0 bytes) page. I assume this is to hamper attempts to investigate abuse claims (though the domain name is already pretty incriminating).
Since there doesn't appear to be any kind of unique identifier, I assumed this to be some kind of spear phishing attack that was based on her browser's User-Agent string, but when I tell curl to mimic it, I still don't get a result.
Any ideas about how they're doing this?
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There are ways to determine what sort of browser is actually being used, even if the User-Agent string is set to pretend to be a different browser.
For a while, Disney+ was using this to make sure you weren't trying to watch it on a Linux computer.
I don't know what genius thought that was a good idea, but after some months they must have realized they were punching themselves in the nuts for no reason and stopped blocking Linux usage.
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Headline: βWomen who own horses live longerβ
Implied correlation: Horses make you live longer.
Reality: If you own a horse, you can likely afford health insurance.
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Love it.
I heard this one too:
Do you notice that wealthy people have great teeth? So if you want to be wealthy, brush your teeth every day!
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@TeflonTrout itβs like the β5 habits rich people do that you should do tooβ and itβs like:
1. Go on lavish trips
2. Ensure your private chef has all of the highest quality ingredients
3. Take a four hour break midday to reset/unwind
4. Home repairs causing headaches? Spend time in one of your vacation homes
5. Buy a house with cash to avoid fees and interest payments
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I enjoyed your shrewd observation - it's true!
But there are fine points regarding this question, as always. The big point is right, but there might be exceptions. To some extent, owning a horse is like owning a boat. What's a boat? It's a hole in the water that you pour money into. Might be hard to pay the insurance premiums on top of the other expenses.
a favourite I saw on LinkedIn last week.
Uptake of ChatGPT is already more than uptake of internet in its first decade.
Reality: itβs a little easier to go to a URL than rip up streets, lay copper wire, buy a computer, and convince people to visit what is only academic websites
we studied this one in stats class recently.
One glass of red wine every evening correlates with...
- health! Yay, let's all drink red wine to be healthy!
- and also housing stability. Cool? Let's all drink red wine so we can be healthy and have stable housing.
- and also here's a correlation with going to university. Awesome, let's all drink red wine so we can be healthy, have stable housing and go to uni.
- wait, here's a positive correlation with income....
....Alright class, let's all drink a single glass of red wine every night so we can be healthy, have stable housing, go to university and have above average incomes?
Etc
Aside from exotic big cats (like lions), horses are probably the most expensive pets you can have.
It's a little cheaper if you own the property required, but the vet bills alone are amazingly prohibitive; and horses hurt themselves a lot.
Anyone who owns a horse spends ALL their money on the horse and has none left for ANYTHING else.
True fact. π
and presumably get some sort of regular exercise
cuz, you know
horse
But if you own a horse, you need health insurance more than most people!
United States Equine Market 2023 | Veterinary 33
Horse-related activities, from horse racing to hunter-jumper shows, are extremely popular in the United States. The equine industry not only entertains numerous horse enthusiasts but also contributes significantly to the nationβs economy.www.veterinary33.com
Consequence: Women who can't afford horses save money to buy them and are more likely to die even sooner.
Capitalism: A lot of horses are being sold
Implied Correlation:
Fifty Years of Academic Careers in Psychology Built Upon Dogma, and Self-Help Books Industry:
Reality:
In a world where an algorithm is working on programming **you**, right now, to accept complacency, it feels real good to assert control over something minor like "dumping your own ROM" or "ripping your own media".
If someone's pumped about that, don't harsh their buzz by telling them they can get it from a piracy website.
Your snark might make you feel good but if it's diminishing someone else's light, knock that shit off.
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I should start looking on how to dump GameBoy cartridges.
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I remember the Asilomar accords in the late 70's declared behavioral modification to be generally unethical, especially in regard to areas where there isn't rigorous informed consent.
Fallout from the Stanford prison experiment.
yea, feels liberating and has its practical advantages. my rips are usually better quality than whatever tv screen recorded torrent from 2007 I can find.
Easy to copy to one of the many used 2tb salvaged hdds i have lying around and give to friends too.
I just got an email today from my doctor that there will be a charge of $25 for prescription renewals when requested by the pharmacy effective... at the beginning of this month (retroactively?).
Katy and I just renewed five prescriptions this way yesterday.
It's been a morning of interesting and stressful phone calls.
too many people try to avoid calling the doc by letting the pharmacy do it and some docs are inundated by the e requests.
It's easier on everyone if you can try to get all prescriptions updated during your doc visit.
@e bored Sure, but up until this point that was the way he specifically told us to do it.
The thing that's changed is that he can no longer bill OHIP* for these renewals.
* Ontario Health Insurance Plan
I keep saying it, but I think there needs to be a much more robust cultural conversation about tech and consent where it concerns custodianship over other peoples' data.
If I know details about you such as your contact information, or hold work of yours in trust, how does my own relationship with tech affect and respect that trust?
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I don't know of or have any answers here. More I intend this as a kind of consciousness-raising? If you're writing a privacy guide, please consider broadening past the individual reader; if you're in a peer group, try to find ways to model raising these questions.
The default will always, *always* be what malicious actors make sure is the easiest choice β full submission and full subversion of community trust.
It has come to my attention that my favourite jacket is falling apart. I would like to repair it for two reasons:
- I love this jacket.
- I can't afford a new one right now.
I have no opposition to #VisibleMending.
Suggestions?
#AskFedi #ClothingRepair
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Spiked rivets?
Or... beaded tassels?
Then afterwards please explain to me how to do it?
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Either a parachute stitch (but given that there stitching already on one edge it might be unpleasant to do) or a canvas patch (preferably both inside and outside) and running stitch embroidery to keep them in place. Colours and designs of your choice.
@PeryleneBleu TIL, thanks!
secondsunrise.se/blogs/news/meβ¦
Mending resource: Parachute rangers stitch
We call this technique the Parachute rangers stitch, but it has many other names aswell. It is used all over the world to keep cloth edges together and its a strong, easy stitch.Kerstin NeumΓΌller (Second Sunrise)
@PalmAndNeedle @sinituulia @heartofcoyote a narrow patch wouldn't be awkward I think. It would be a bit bulky, that's all.
Your idea works too, but it requires more skill and time.
Any of this could be done with fun contrasting colours, by hand or by machine!
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It is the perfect stich for repairing jeans etc. with or without patches.
@Jonathan Lamothe I wonder how the jacket would look with two bands of contrasting colour bias tape sewn (by hand, if I had to do it) around the cuff seam.
but I'm not sure it would last long, if the rip is because it's a high friction area, maybe you'd need something stronger than bias tape
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@pteryx exactly!
One of @pluralistic 's points in his new book feels especially relevant: competition enables regulation, because it's one lever companies can use to get a leg up. If Joe's AC figures out how to produce more efficient AC's, they'll to *ask* regulators to label AC's with their energy consumption to boost their sales. Conversely, if there's only a few companies, they have tons of profit to spend on lobbyists to *protect* them from regulation that could threaten their profits.
but then who would referee the referee?
One of Cory's points is that greed was not invented in the 21st century - it will always be there, and we will always need checks and balances
Maybe the fact that people are forming emotional connections on genAI chatbots means we have an unmet need for social workers and therapists and in fact should invest more heavily into these fields as a society
Because given the scale of investments on genAI itβs pretty fucking clear we have the money
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But the thing with LLMs is they'll just say whatever is statistically likely to be enchanting; some people will just prefer that. π€·π»ββοΈ
Thought I had berry juice on my hand from the food I was eating so I licked it.
It was ink.
I love my #FountainPen but sometimes...
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Not that knowledgable about that ink/line. I have noted that stuff like walnut ink, tea ink, sumi ink, very much can have a distinct flavour. A fair amount of ball point ink I've noticed certainly has a flavour. But some of the potential fountain pen inks, I can see basically not having anything you'd note.
I'll have to look up that ink.
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I rarely eat potato salad, but when I do, it needs to have some tartness from including either mustard, dijon, or a type of vinegar.
Without one of those it's just bland crap.
cause "salad" originally meant anything chopped and sprinkled with salt long before it meant specifically lettuce, etc.
Salad - Etymology, Origin & Meaning
Late 14c. "late" originates from Old French salade and Medieval Latin salata, meaning "salted vegetables," from Latin sal "salt," reflecting its meaning of season...etymonline
how about- and stay with me- cabbage, mayo and a little vinegar?
Or, if youβre like me, a bottle of good wine vinegar, and a straw
Snickers salad - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snickersβ¦
Huh. I appealed the speed camera ticket online. They sent an email saying that it was being reviewed but nothing else since. Suddenly this morning when I try to check the status of the ticket, it doesn't seem to exist any more.
I don't want to just assume they've waived it, but I don't know what else to make of this. It'd be nice to have some sort of confirmaion.
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But Marc Andreesen said the only job that would not be automated by AI is venture capitalist (presumably because it can be automated by a bank account and an RNG)
businessinsider.com/marc-andreβ¦
Marc Andreessen says AI can't replace his job: VC tech investing
Marc Andreessen thinks AI can do every job in the world β except hisAdam Rogers (Business Insider)
Why would anyone bother to automate something that didn't need doing in the fist place?
If every CEO on the planet keeled over and died tonight then the world would happily tick along without them tomorrow morning.
I worked at a company years ago, & for some reason was left alone in the CEOs office. He had one of the fancy DEC terminals we all coveted, not even turned on. I unplugged the serial cable (this dates this anecdote) and left.
A month later I happened to be in there & noticed the terminal was still unplugged.
There are engaged, hard-working CEOs out there. There are also completely useless fuckwits who contribute nothing positive. Their companies run despite them, not because of them.
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I was always bothered by the scene in #StarTrek II when they used Reliant's prefix code. The input device they used made absolutely no sense from an electronics (or user interface) standpoint.
It just recently occurred to me though that it makes absolute sense from a quick and dirty movie prop standpoint.
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In today's age of internet security, the handful of numeric digits is clearly not an effective password.
Maybe we can assume that there was some kind of additional layer of authentication behind the scenes, such as voiceprints based on the pronunciation of the digits...or coming in on a channel encrypted with Starfleet protocols, etc.
The computer certainly had to set up the codes so the crew could just throw the switches.
Had the car towed to the mechanic's and walked to my brother-in-law's to wait for the mechanic to call us with the damage.
That was a longer walk than I expected. We also took a "shortcut" along a walking trail that I found on OpenStreetMap.
I was sure we were going to spawn a true crime documentary: couple disappear into woods never to be seen again.
Had to power cycle my router and my sshfs mounts... persisted somehow?
I'm not complaining, but I am confused.
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- YouTube
Auf YouTube findest du die angesagtesten Videos und Tracks. AuΓerdem kannst du eigene Inhalte hochladen und mit Freunden oder gleich der ganzen Welt teilen.www.youtube.com
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We were driving home and suddenly heard a clunk and the battery light on the dash suddenly came on.
Fantastic. We've been driving Instacart to make ends meet. We can't afford a huge repair bill right now. Hopefully it's just the alternator belt that snapped.
This car is 20 years old. It's not like it owes us any favours, but it's still a problem. The one positive thing I can say about this car is that of the two major issues it's had, it's always had the courtesy to break down a couple blocks from home so that we can limp back there and figure out what to do next.
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A screenshot of a social media post. It reads:
I love public libraries because they are built on the principle that books are so important and so necessary to human flourishing that access to them cannot depend on your income.
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Just saw lemons priced at .98Β’
I wonder if Verizon's gotten into the grocery business.
@π °π »π Έπ ²π ΄ (ππ¦) A question about security pins:
My understanding is that the said pins are the key pins, not the driver pins, so if I'm gentle enough to not over set them, the shape of the pin should be completely irrelevant, right? I mean, they'd only pose a problem if they were pushed beyond the shear line, wouldn't they?
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Wanted to know if I could set gelatin faster by putting it in the freezer instead of the fridge. This is the first paragraph of the first result I found on the subject.
When it comes to culinary creativity, gelatin is a versatile ingredient that can bring remarkable textures and flavors to our desserts, jellies, and savory dishes. However, those who have worked with gelatin often find themselves asking: βWill gelatin set faster in the freezer?β In this article, weβll explore the science behind gelatin, how it sets, and whether using a freezer can indeed speed up the process.
That's a lot of reading for what the author knows damn well is a yes or no answer I'm looking for. I kind of understand why people like the idea of "AI summaries". Though I imagine this whole article was spit out by an LLM in the first place. Gotta keep people on the page as long as possible to drive up potential ad revenue, right?
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The only reason I've put up with android for as long as I have is that I've had full freedom to run my own code and install my own applications.
Google wants to end that. That's the end of android for me.
hackaday.com/2025/10/06/googleβ¦
Google Confirms Non-ADB APK Installs Will Require Developer Registration
After the news cycle recently exploded with the announcement that Google would require every single Android app to be from a registered and verified developer, while killing third-party app stores β¦Hackaday
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Of course, I'd rather combine those two. Let me know if that becomes possible.
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@zillion I don't have any thoughts on the current feature phone/flip phone landscape, although I expect I will at some point in the near future.
When I do, I'll blog about it ajroach42.2com
@BustaMarx @geniodiabolico@wandering.shop @zillion
Replying from my other account because I used the wrong one before.
I found my Sharp Zaurus in a tub of old tech in my storage space. It is charging now. I don't see any lights but I don't remember if there are supposed to be. If this actually powers up I will consider it a minor miracle.
@Unlikelylass @BustaMarx @geniodiabolico@wandering.shop @zillion I lived in Evanston and worked across the street from the Sears Tower in the era when I was using this regularly. I remember answering an email from the wifi in a bank lobby in the Chicago Loop and I thought I was a character in Neuromancer. Later I would haul way out to Schaumburg to attend user groups and hang out with other nerds. It was so much fun from top to bottom.
@Unlikelylass @BustaMarx @geniodiabolico@wandering.shop @zillion
I have been putting a 9V battery across the terminals for about 30 seconds at a time. The first 5 or 6 times appears to have done nothing. This last time I measured 2.7 V across the old battery so I put it back in the Zaurus and on the charger. The light is not on. I'm not really sure what the minimum voltage needs to be for the charger and the device to recognize this as functioning. I'm just throwing spaghetti at this.
@Unlikelylass @BustaMarx @zillion After running around like a maniac searching for the charger in my office, my garage, the storage space and literally everywhere a charger might sit ...
Turns out that Skylight Frames have the same barrel connector and a 5V 2A charger. I have the light!
@Unlikelylass @BustaMarx @zillion
At this point that is all it does. The wifi is too old to connect to my AP and I have failed to get the USB networking from my PopOS laptop to connect. I might find an old wifi router and stand it up so that I can try to update some of the stuff on here.
This whole project has been like the 3rd act of The Graduate. Frantic rush to get this up then we all stare at each other like "now what?"
@zillion The most affordable linux-based phone is the pinephone.
I missed my old Nokia linux phones, so I got one a while back to play with, but never used it as a daily device.
Jolla C2 Community Phone
Reclaim your smartphone with Jolla C2 The Jolla C2 isnβt for everyone. Itβs for those who believe their privacy is their own to control, who value trust over shortcuts, and who have the courage to make their own way.Jolla Shop
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@geniodiabolico ADB will keep working for installing applications for people in your situation.
But yeah, this is some shit.
I was perfectly content with my heavily de-googled G85, already out of support and perfect.
They forced an update on me overnight a couple days ago and it's completely trashed my mobile. Battery life is 1/3rd, dozens of new services (like Moto AI) that I had to go find and kill, you name it.
I wish I could get a fairphone or something.
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@Longplay_Games Right?
But when the recent EU move that phones have to hav ea locked bootloader, who knows what comes next.
@lyncia Back to the Ma Bell days of a leased phone line, wiretapped and bugged within an inch of its life?
Does feel that way.
Android is done when Fdrioid won't run.
I have no use for a pocket computer I can't program.
Might as well have an Apple.
I feel like this is meant to point out that android is open source and that, if phones worked the way laptops do, we'd be able to just install a fork of android.
But en.xiaomitoday.it/goodbye-bootβ¦
Goodbye Bootloader Unlock in Europe: What's Happening?
The landscape is changing for those who have turned modding into a form of digital control. Bootloader unlocking in Europe is at risk of disappearing.Gianluca Cobucci (XiaomiToday.it)
I'm surprised that they are doing this now, just that it feels like the global political tide is turning against Big Tech lock-in...
Can't imagine this is going to go over well in Europe, and they already got hit with something like $4B in fines last month. Killing 3rd-party app stores (however unpopular they may be with most users) is a real bad look.
I wonder what the strategy is going to be for Googleβpoint at Apple and yell "but you let *THEM* do it!" ?
Ugh, I just read up on that and while I don't think it's as straightforward as outlawing or banning bootloader unlocking, that's certainly the approach that device manufacturers seem poised to take, since it's the easiest way for them to conform to the regulation.
I assume it's a shitty unintended consequence of a badly designed rule, but that's without knowing how corrupt the EU regulatory process is. (If it was coming out of the US FCC, I'd probably assume the opposite at the moment.)
However, one small bit of progress is that, compared to 10 or even 5 years ago, it's much easier to call up a device manufacturer in China or Taiwan and have them make you a short run of custom handheld devices to whatever specifications you'd like.
It's not economical if you only want to buy one or two (of a truly custom design), but if you're willing to buy dozens or hundreds, it's not like you need to be Samsung to make a smartphone anymore.
@Kadin2048 If you're not in the US, for sure.
But 1) They still gotta have an OS. 2) in the US, we gotta deal with tariffs on all that now, making it 2x or more as expensive, 3) most of the major US carriers require your phone to be one they have personally approved.
Some of the smaller carriers are exceptions to this but, at least where I live, my options are verizon and ATT, and both are only offering esims which will only work on devices they've approved.
It's not *impossible* to route around, but it's harder than I'd expect anyone who lives nearby to undertake.
Yeah, I don't like eSIMs for a bunch of reasons, but as long as devices continue to have physical SIM slots (which is admittedly going to become more of an issue as time goes by), you can drop an eSIM-to-pSIM adapter into them.
Most of the ones I've seen generally have a companion app that will let you load and switch between multiple eSIMs on a single card, as well.
esim.me/ seems to be a popular choice, but there are lots straight out of Shenzhen too.
If you pick the right baseband / cellular modem, you can also change the IMEI to whatever value you want. (A *friend* of mine may have a bunch of Netgear LTE pucks that report themselves as iPhones to the cell network, for... testing purposes. Thanks, Quectel!)
But in general, I expect there's going to be a widening gulf between people who know enough about hardware to make the phone do what they want, and normies who are going to take it in the tradesmans' from the cellular companies. Such is deregulation.
Upgrade to eSIM | eSIM.me
Download SIM cards directly onto your smartphone | Works in any country | No more plastic, good for our planet :)eSIM.me Store
> even if all i can do with it is voice and text
If there was a linux phone that could do voice and text, I'd be happy! I haven't found one.
Goodbye Bootloader Unlock in Europe: What's Happening?
The landscape is changing for those who have turned modding into a form of digital control. Bootloader unlocking in Europe is at risk of disappearing.Gianluca Cobucci (XiaomiToday.it)
When you couple this with the recent change in the EU outlawing unlocking bootloaders, the DMCA in the US making any kind of digital tinkering illegal if Washington says so, and the various Chat Control and other "For the Children" legislation ...
We're shuffling full steam ahead into a surveillance machine the likes of which are unprecedented.
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@patrick That's fair. It's entirely possible, likely even, that I've misunderstood the rules here.
I didn't read much into it beyond the fact that it looked like a bad day for unlocked bootloaders.
To expand on the issue: the changed EU regulation is basically "consumer electronics with radio components must ensure that the radio doesn't inflict harm."
That's pretty easily done in hardware if there's a will. Even when the will is there at the consumer product level but the some component supplier makes an ass out of themselves, there's a way.
Case in point: I was involved in the development of Google Wifi 2, released in 2023.
We had to deal with new FCC regulations. The issue: 5GHz radio (wifi) potentially messing with airport radars. Kind of a good reason to limit what a consumer device can do, I think.
The chipset didn't support enforcing radar detection (which is how these 5GHz wifis work: passively listen for radar pings and if they show up, they stop doing 5GHz), so the workaround we did to keep the system _somewhat_ open is that going to unlocked mode disabled 5GHz completely (2.4GHz still works).
There's no Google Wifi 3, and the company culture broke down entirely anyway, but back then I expected that "enforce road legal radio cmpliance outside the OS' control (so that we can keep the device hackable)" becomes a hard requirement for the chipset in the follow-on product.
Samsung et al deflecting and claiming they have to lock the bootloader is just them finding a new excuse for doing what they wanted to do all along, while not suffering through the backlash.
I'm in kind of a charmed position in that I have no need for an Android or Apple device.
There are a few ways that *life* is trying to conspire to make me keep one in spite of that, but most of them are things I can currently route around.
But I'm no longer in an oncall rotation. I no longer use Okta. I can do 2FA a dozen ways that don't mandate google.
I'm not normal.
I suspect they're going to get the same sort of pushback that Windows is with Windows 11 - people aren't going to abandon Android, they're going to perch on the last "good" update that they can and rely on community patches and updates and unofficial forks to keep them alive.
And hopefully this protest with our dollars will mean something, but even if it doesn't it'll at least buy us some time until something new and better rises to fill the vacuum.
@DrakkenZero Sure, I expect that will also be true.
Except android is especially adept at forcing updates.
I suspect it's one of those things, not unlike piracy - we've always had the technology to do custom firmware and jailbreaking, it just stopped being a necessity once the carriers and Android codebase stopped being antagonistic towards their own users. But that technology has never gone away, there's still a thriving hobbyist community that's been lurking in the background maintaining the old ways.
And just like many of us old guard have dusted off our tricorns as streaming world has gotten more and more "all the worst parts of cable, but now with added extra bad stuff"-y, I am betting that we'll be seeing a resurgence and renaissance for Cyanogen or whoever the prime de-Googler is nowadays
@DrakkenZero I agree.
For those that have the skillset and wherewithal, and who can deal with the consequences, you're probably right.
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@SarraceniaWilds This is why so many people are exiting the internet, quietly and probably permanently.
I've seen a number of tech and security people just quietly depart, and some (like @mbybee and Simone Silvestri) entirely revert their tech stack and leave.
Not sure if we'll do the same here, I mean, we're a game dev shop. It's all I can do to keep reasonably current with the cost of hardware being what it is now.
@datarama Most folks I know use Apple Pay or Google Wallet instead of their credit or debit cards, and the rest use credit or debit instead of cash.
It's not so much that we *won't* accept and trust a technical solution as that no one will accept there being only one option.
Too many people can't afford phones.
@Longplay_Games @SarraceniaWilds @mbybee
I haven't left completely (obviously) but I have specifically built out a tech stack that is offline first and that I use whenever I can get away with it.
@daniel I read that one a while ago. Varoufakis is brilliant.
(I don't *quite* agree with the premise that technofeudalism is something distinct from capitalism; I view it as a variant of capitalism. Capitalism has always had feudal aspects to it; what else is a corporation but a little privately-held kingdom?)
I was in Norway recently and found it to be the same way. The transit system and many businesses relied on apps, no cards, a nightmare for MIL whose phone company (verizon) insisted she wasn't eligible to purchase an international data plan (??). It took *hours* out of our trip getting the family set up with apps to exist there. I was surprised bc this is a clear equal access issue that I imagined would be better managed there than in USA.
@leighms @datarama you can have a tablet or second phone as a backup - I happened to have both available.
I left Denmark about 2 years ago after living there for almost 7 years - the digital system was damned convenient.
Yes, Danes are typically more trusting in government and in general it works pretty well over there.
The US is a bit nuts right now and it got there without anywhere near the level of digitization they have in Denmark. Every company has their own, slightly different mechanism method of authentication and that leads to confusion for users. The MitID was used by so many companies and social services that authenticating was trivial.
@datarama
All fine and dandy until you lose your phone or it stops working. Older folk may struggle with phones.
This will be all of us at some point.
I lost my phone a few weeks ago and it was challenging. I do have a laptop and tried to order a phone - the bank wanted send me a verification code by text.
I am over 60 and most people I know of similar age or older do not use their phones to pay.
Personally I don't trust it. My data has been taken too many times to have finances on a cell phone.
Work (before I left) had a massive data loss, as has two of my pensions, one insurance company and various other institutions.
Digital is a leaky sieve.
(ps been in computing since 1970s, digital literate, use Linux, my cell is ungoogled).
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@nthia This.
This is why I'm on the fedi and am uninterested in looking at other social media platforms.
It's certainly not perfect, but it's the most enshittification-resistant system I'm aware of.
Working on a simple #web site for a client, and I'm trying to balance keeping it from becoming a bloated mess of unnecessary code, and minimizing the amount of unnecessary work I have to put into it.
For one feature they want, I'm tempted to install #jQuery. It feels like unnecessary bloat, but it makes the process easier. How much overhead does it really add?
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@AdiposeOverclocked Yeah, I have a habit of fainting around needles. It's usually fine if I'm laying down though. The doctor wrote on the form that it's a perpetual thing, but their damn cards expire anyway.
Folks, I promise I'm not just here for kicks.
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I've been agonizing over posting this for like 46 minutes now. It started as a reply to one of @FinalGirl's posts (as we're mutuals and her posts give me a glimpse into a side of Mastodon that I don't normally get to see).
So, the meat of what I want to say is that I'd love to have more Black folx in my day-to-day life. There's so much shit that I'm just not privy to because my circles are hella white...and that's fucked up.
At least on Fedi I get to hear about some of the issues the Black community faces, but I also feel like I can't do much other than *try* not to be one of the problematic white folx while boosting Black voices into my circles.
Why the agonizing? Because I know about the three types of Queer Allyβ’, and I assume Black folx deal with something similar.
- Type 1 is "okay with you being queer", but will probably vote against you if it lowers the price of eggs.
- Type 2 puts up a "love is love" sign and congratulates themselves on being such a good allyβthey might even know some queer folx.
- Type 3 has queer friends and family because it's a normal thing to have, supports them like they would anyone they really cared about, and listens to queer voices in their lives when they say there are problems. They may not always "get it", but they actively try.
The problem is that the ratio of the three is like 100:10:1 (if I'm being *really* generous).
I want to be that third type. I worry that I'm that second type. But I know it's safest for Black folx to assume I'm the first type (or worse) because that's just how the numbers workβespecially when the cost of misplaced trust is much higher than the benefit of a potential friend.
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I'm not "liking" β this because I actually don't like it. I hate it. But other than that...
I'm right there with you, sibling! This is *exactly* how I've been feeling about the dearth of Black folks on here for years. I want to help, but I know how I look, and I know it means I look untrustworthy. And I don't blame Black people for that.
Anyway, 100% co-signed.
I have many of the same worries - but not limited to that group. I grew up in Scandinavia with everyone being white, cis and straight. We had one gay dude and two adopted Asians in the entire community *.
My racism and blindness to it is ingrained from childhood and something I have to actively combat - and I fear, I fail all too often.
*I later learned another story, but that was how it felt back then and how it was -told-.
I wonder how much of the invisibility of harassment comes from federation/decentralization.
I will often see someone complaining about the replies to their post and think "but all of these seem fine" before clicking through to the home instance and seeing the ones that did not get federated over to my instance.
I know there was some work recently to fix the "get all replies to this post" code and I wonder if it's changed anything there
Yeah I've seen a couple of threads about the "followers only + tagged" brigading system and that does look like a big problem.
I wonder if they will just remove the ability to tag additional people in a followers only post
I feel like there's another likely element at play for Fedi too. Plenty of us here are marginalized ourselves whether it be because of our sexuality, gender identity, religion or lack-there-of, and/or disability status.
As a result, a lot of us are in a position where we have the privilege of being white, abled or abled passing, and have given up some of our privilege in order to be who we are.
Plenty of us come from bigoted upbringings. Arguably, I would say that any white person has come from a bigoted upbringing whether it be obvious or not. I'm from Mississippi and from a part of it that is overwhelmingly black. So in my case you'd have to actually be trying to miss it instead of being allowed the freedom of ignorance that comes from being raised in a whitetopia where you could live you whole life and never see a person of color more times than you could count on one hand.
As a result, when we move from privilege to being more marginalized, I think a lot of us look at that and think that makes us the minority whisperer that can relate to anyone of marginalized status. A lot of us don't do the work and as a result we have problematic behaviors and because we're also marginalized we don't listen and learn as we should in order to be able to do that work.
I am one of a small minority of white people in the US who will know what it's like to go to school with people who don't look like you, to have had mentors who don't look like you, and to have authority figures in local government who do not look like you. I understand why black people have to code switch because I have actually had to code switch in my life. People accept you better if you engage with them in a way that they recognize and feel comfortable with.
All that said, I cannot speak for black people. I can talk about a minority experience because I am a minority, but only for the specific minorities I am a part of. I may have a fraction of an experience that's in common with the black experience but that's from the other side of things and due to whiteness, people who have had experiences like mine can use those experiences to further justify the bigotry they were raised on.
There are a bunch of us who are supportive on paper, have some means of relating, and will then talk over black people anyway because we think our marginalization makes us special.
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Sensitive content
A) Follow and Boost Black voices (or better BIPOC) -- they are the experts.
B) If you've been doing (A) and a type (1) person is being vocal about being right ("not ALL white people ... for example), talk about how you learned to listen without getting out of joint about it.
C) Basically, teach type (1) and (2) about how to move to (3): that shouldn't be the job of which ever minority we are trying to help.
D) Report any abusers/nazis. You can report on behalf of someone else, and more people reporting may get a faster response.
E) Again, listen and boost!
@Retreival9096 the BIPOC folks I follow have mostly gone silent. I don't know if they left Fedi entirely or just don't bother. This place was hostile and when they pointed it out, they were told the equivalent of "it works for me" or "can't reproduce, won't fix".
I reiterate that white people should believe BIPOC people when they report abuse, especially when they have receipts. Don't downplay it or excuse it or be like, "lol switch instances". Report those who abuse, no matter who they are. Tell abusers to STFU or GTFO and fucking mean it.
We are stronger together.
I live very close to a large German club.
As always, It's going to be a long (and loud) October.
#locksport
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Not gonna lie, this lock is giving more difficulty than I expected. The shape of the key hole is making it difficult for me to get consistent torque, and everything in the lock feels mushy, making it hard to get a feel for what's going on inside.
So far, in my absolute newbie opinion, this $3 lock is outperforming my $10 Master lock. Who'd have guessed?
The biggest problem I'm having with this new lock is that my tension bar keeps slipping like so:
When it does this, it doesn't leave enough room for the pick to move around freely. I've tried a using a wider tension bar, but while it doesn't slip, it also crowds out the pick just on its own.
This is what the key hole looks unobstructed:
Any suggestions on how I should proceed?
CC: @π °π »π Έπ ²π ΄ (ππ¦)
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@π °π »π Έπ ²π ΄ (ππ¦) Gah, I have a tension bar that's almost big enough to do the red option.
Almost. π«
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2025/10/23/traβ¦
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Pluralistic: Checking in on the state of Amazonβs chickenized reverse-centaurs (23 Oct 2025) β Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
"Chickenization" is a term of labor economics, inspired by the brutal state of the poultry industry, where three giant processing companies have divided up the market so that every chicken farmer has just one place where they can sell their birds. To sell your birds to one of these plants, you have to give them total control over your operation. They sell you the baby chicks, they tell you what kind of coop to build and what lightbulbs to install and when they should be on.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
They tell you which vet to use and which medicines can be administered to your birds. They tell you what to feed your birds and when to feed them. They design your coop and tell you who is allowed to maintain it. The one thing they don't tell you is how much you'll be paid for your birds - that's something you only discover when it's time to sell them, and the sum you're offered is based on the packer's region-wide intelligence on how you and all your competitors are faring.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
It is calculated to be the smallest amount to allow you to roll over your loans and go into more debt to grow more birds for them.
At its root, "chickenization" is about de-risking, cloaked in the language of entrepreneurship. Chicken farmers assume all the risk for the poultry packers, but they're told that they're their own bosses.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
The only way in which a chicken farmer resembles an entrepreneur is that they have to bear all the risk of failure - without having any upside for success. Packers can (and do) secretly decide to experiment at farmers' expense, ordering some of their farmers to vary their feeding, light and veterinary routines to see if they can eke new efficiencies out of the process.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
If that works, the surplus is reaped by the packer. If that fails, the losses are borne by the farmer, who is never told that they were funding an experiment.
Amazon makes extensive use of chickenization in its many commercial arrangements, tightly defining the working conditions of many "self-employed" workers, like the clickwork "turkers" who power the Mechanical Turk service.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
But the most chickenized of all the people in Amazon's network of cutouts and arm's-length arrangements are the "entrepreneurs" who are lured into starting a "Delivery Service Platform" (DSP) business.
To start a DSP, you borrow lots of money to buy vans that you outfit to Amazon's exacting specifications, filling them with interior and exterior sensors and cameras, painting them with Amazon livery.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
You kit them out with shelving and other infrastructure to Amazon's exacting specification. Then, you hire workers - giving Amazon a veto over who you hire - and you train them - using Amazon's training materials. You sign them up for Amazon's platforms, which monitor and rank those workers, and then you get paid either $0.10 per parcel, or maybe $0.50 per parcel, or sometimes $0.00 per parcel, all at Amazon's sole discretion.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
That's a pretty chickenized arrangement. But what about reverse centaurs?
In automation theory, a "centaur" is someone who is assisted by some automation system (they are a fragile human head being assisted by a tireless machine). Therefore, a *reverse* centaur is a person who has been conscripted to serve as a peripheral for a machine, a human body surmounted and directed by a brute and uncaring head that not only uses them, but uses them *up*.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
The drivers that DSPs hire are reverse centaurs. Using various forms of automation, Amazon drives these workers to work at a dangerous, humiliating and unsustainable pace, setting and enforcing not just quotas, but also scripting where drivers' eyes must be pointed, how they must accelerate and decelerate, what routes they take, and more.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
These edicts are enforced by the in-van and on-body automation systems that direct and discipline workers, tools that labor activists call "electronic whips":
crackedlabs.org/en/data-work/pβ¦
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Surveillance and Algorithmic Control in the Call Center
Cracked LabsCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
The chickenized owners of DSPs *must* enforce the edicts Amazon brings down on their reverse centaur workers - Amazon can terminate any DSP, at any time, for any reason or no reason, stranding an "independent entrepreneur" with heavily mortgaged rolling stock that can only be used to deliver Amazon packages...
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
...Long term leases on garages and parking lots, liability for driver accidents caused by automation systems that punish drivers for e.g. braking suddenly if someone steps into the road, and massive loans.
So when Amazon directs a DSP to fire or discipline a worker, that worker is in trouble. Amazon has hybridized chickenization and reverse centaurism, creating a chickenized reverse centaur, a new kind of labor travesty never seen before.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
In "Driven Down," a new report from the DAIR Institute, authors Adrienne Williams, Alex Hanna and Sandra Barcenas draw on interviews with DSP drivers and Williams's own experience driving for Amazon to document the state of the Chickenized Reverse Centaur. It's not good:
dair-institute.org/projects/drβ¦
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Worker Surveillance and Wage Theft
DAIR (Distributed AI Research Institute)Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
"Driven Down" vividly describes - often in drivers' own words - how the life of a chickenized reverse centaur is one of wage theft, privacy invasions, humilation and on-the-job physical risks, for drivers and the communities they drive in.
DSP drivers interact with multiple automation systems - at least *nine* apps that monitor, score and discipline them.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
These apps are supposed to run on employer-supplied phones, but these phones are frequently broken, and drivers face severe punishment if these apps aren't all running during their shifts.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
As a result, drivers routinely install these apps on their own phones, and must give them broad, far-reaching permissions, such that drivers' own phones are surveilling them for Amazon 24/7, whether or not they're on the clock. It's not just DSP owners who are chickenized - it's also drivers, footing the bill for their own electronic whips.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
First and foremost, these apps tell the drivers where to go and how to get there. Drivers are dispatched to hundreds of stops per day, on a computer-generated route that is not vetted or sanity-checked by a human before it is non-negotiably handed to a driver. Famously, plotting an efficient route among many points is one of the most insoluble computing problems, the so-called "traveling salesman" problem:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelliβ¦
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NP-hard problem in combinatorial optimization
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
But it turns out that there *is* an optimal solution to the traveling salesman problem: get a computer to make a bizarre and dangerous approximation of the optimal route, and then blame and fine workers when it doesn't work. This doesn't optimize the route, but it does shift all the costs of a suboptimal route to workers.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Crucially, Amazon trusts its computer-generated routes, based on map data, over the word of drivers. For example, drivers are often directed to make "group stops" - where the driver parks the van and then delivers to multiple addresses at once (for example, at an apartment complex or office block). Amazon's mapping service assumes that addresses that are in the same complex or development are close together, even when they are *very* distant.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
If a driver dares to move and re-park their van to deliver parcels to distant addresses, the app punishes them for making an unauthorized positional adjustment. If a driver attempts to deliver all the parcels *without* moving the van, they are penalized for taking too long. Even if drivers report the mapping error, it persists, resulting in strings of infractions, day after day.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
When drivers fail to make quota, the DSP's per-parcel payout is reduced. DSPs whose drivers perfectly obey the (irrational, impossible) orders of Amazon's apps get $0.50 per parcel delivered. If drivers fall short of the apps' expectations, the per parcel-rate can fall to $0.10, or, in some cases, zero.
This provides a powerful incentive to DSPs to pressure drivers to engage in unsafe practices if the alternative would displease the app.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Drivers are penalized for sudden braking and swerving, for example, but are also penalized for missing quota, which puts drivers in the impossible position of having to drive as quickly as possible but also not to swerve or brake if a sudden traffic hazard pops up. In one absurd tale, a driver describes how they were shifted to an electric van that did regenerative braking when they released the accelerator.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
The app expected drivers to slow down by releasing the accelerator, not by touching the brakes, but this meant that the van's brake lights never switched on. When a driver slowed at a yellow light, they were badly rear-ended by a following UPS truck, whose driver had assumed the Amazon DSP driver was going to rush the light (because the van's brake lights didn't light up).
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Meeting quota means that drivers are also not able to stop for bathroom breaks or to take car of other personal hygiene matters. This is bad enough when it means peeing in a bottle, but it's even worse when the only way to take care of period-related matters is to go into the back of the van - where cameras record everything you do - and manage things there.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Drivers are told many inconsistent things about those cameras. Some drivers have been told that the footage is only reviewed after an accident or complaint, but when drivers *do* get into accidents or have complaints lodged against them, they are often fired or disciplined without anyone reviewing the footage. Meanwhile, drivers are sometimes punished for things the cameras have recorded even when there was no complaint or accident.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
The existence of all that empirical evidence of things happening in and outside an Amazon DSP van makes little to no difference to drivers' employment fairness. When a malfunctioning seatbelt sensor insists that a driver has removed their seatbelt while driving, 80+ times in a single shift, the driver struggled to get their docked wages or lost jobs back.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
When a driver swerved to avoid an oncoming big rig whose driver had fallen asleep and drifted across the media, the driver was penalized - the driver this happened to had his score in "Mentor" (one of the many apps) docked from 850 to 650. Amazon won't tell drivers what their Mentor scores mean, but many drivers - and DSP owners - believe than anything less than a perfect score will result in punishment or termination.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Attaining and maintaining a perfect score is an impossible task, because Amazon will not disclose what drivers are expected to do - it will only penalize them when they fail to do it. Take the photos that Amazon drivers are expected to snap of parcels after they are delivered. The criteria for these photos is incredibly strict - and also not disclosed.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Drivers are penalized for having their hands or shoes or reflections in the image, for capturing customers or their pets, for capturing the house-number. They aren't allowed to photograph shoes that are left on the doormat. Drivers share tips with one another about how to take a picture without losing points, but it's a moving target.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Among drivers, there's a (likely correct) belief that Amazon will not tell them how the apps are generating their scores out of fear that if drivers knew the scoring rubric, they'd start to game it. This is a widespread practice within the world of content moderation and spamfighting, where security practitioners who would normally reject the idea of "security through obscurity" out of hand suddenly embrace secrecy-dependent security measures:
pluralistic.net/2022/08/07/comβ¦
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Como Is Infosec β Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
All this isn't just dangerous and dehumanizing, it's also impoverishing. Drivers who get downranked by these imperious and unaccountable and unexplained algorithms have their hours cut or get fired altogether. The apps set a quota that can't possibly be reached if drivers take their mandated (and unpaid) 30 minute lunch and two 15-minute breaks (drivers who miss quota twice are automatically terminated). This time is given over to unpaid labor.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
As the report explains:
> Drivers are not paid for their 30 minute lunch. A full-time employee working an 8 to 10 hour shift would be working either 4 or 5 days out of each week. At $20 an hour, that is two hours a week for four-day employees, resulting in $40 of unpaid labor a week, $160 a month, almost $2,000 a year.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Drivers are also assigned "homework" - videos they are required watch and simulator exercises they are required to complete as remediation for their real or imagined infractions. This, too, is unpaid, mandatory work. Drivers are required to attend "stand up" meetings at the start of their shifts, and this is also often unpaid work.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Amazon makes a big show of "listening to drivers," but they're never heard. A driver who reported being held at gunpoint by literal Nazis who objected to having their parcels delivered by a Jew had his complaints ignored, and those violent, armed Nazi customers continued to get their parcels delivered.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Even modest requests go unanswered. Drivers for one DSP begged for porta-toilets in the parking lot, rather than having to waste time (and miss quota) legging it to a distant bathroom. They were ignored, and all 50 drivers continue to share a single toilet.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
But - thanks to chickenization - none of this is Amazon's problem. It's all the problem of a chickenized DSP "entrepreneur" who serves as a useful accountability sink for Amazon and who can be bankrupted at a moment's notice should they fail to do Amazon's precise bidding.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
There's one bright spot here, though: the National Labor Relations Board has brought a case in California seeking to have Amazon held to be a "joint employer" of those reverse centaurs behind the wheels of those vans:
freightcaviar.com/amazon-facesβ¦
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Amazon Faces Mounting Union Pressure as NLRB Case and Teamsters Wins Converge
Jerome Washington (FreightCaviar)Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
This is the very last residue of the NLRB's authority, the rest having been drained away by Trump as part of Project 2025. If they prevail, it will open the door to drivers suing Amazon for unfair labor practices under both federal and state law - and in California and New York, that labor law just got a *lot* tougher for Amazon:
laborrelationsupdate.com/2025/β¦
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
The chickenized reverse centaur is a new circle of labor hell, a genuinely innovative way of making workers' lives worse in order to extract more billions for one of the most profitable companies in history.
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Charlie Stross
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Alternatively you could just call them Meat Puppets? Contracted to "muppets".
(I went for that in "Quantum of Nightmares".)
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
I'm on a tour with my new book, the international bestseller *Enshittification*!
Catch me next in #Vancouver, #Montreal and #Ottawa!
Full schedule with dates and links at:
pluralistic.net/tour
(New dates just added in #SanDiego and #Denver!)
--
Image:
Cryteria (modified)
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Filβ¦
CC BY 3.0
creativecommons.org/licenses/bβ¦
eof/
File:HAL9000.svg - Wikimedia Commons
commons.wikimedia.orgCykonot
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Cory Doctorow reshared this.
Krupo
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Krupo
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
I was going to comment on the later part of this thread that this is why I dislike Amazon.
Now I learn I have a reason to dislike the US poultry industry.
And makes me wonder how much better / worse things are in Canada.
Both for the chickens and the Amazon subcontracted workers.
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Wulfy
in reply to Krupo • • •Sensitive content
The "chicken industry" in the entire civilised world is something YOU DO NOT WANT to look too closely into...
...least you intend on becoming a #vegetarian and an animal rights activist.
Cy
in reply to Wulfy • • •Now, now. Surgical removal is important, otherwise they might peck each other to death!
...what why are you looking at me like that
CC: @krupo@infosec.exchange @pluralistic@mamot.fr
RΓΌ
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Tink
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •