@firebreathingduck@social.vivaldi.net

firebreathingduck @firebreathingduck@social.vivaldi.net · Aug 05, 2026

Replying to @prietschka@mastodon.social

@prietschka@mastodon.social @zzt@mas.to Ayn Rand’s free market fantasy is built entirely on this myth: that all of the kings of industry would never, ever lobby or bribe politicians. It’s ludicrous blindness. If Rand’s fictional hero John Galt was alive today, trying to build a business, he would be bought out or sued into oblivion by Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, or Larry Ellison. There’s no free market anywhere where men like Galt could ever thrive. The same minimalist corporate governance that’s supposed to pave the road for Galt to succeed also lets the robber barons buy all of the politicians they want and crush ethical competitors.

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firebreathingduck @firebreathingduck@social.vivaldi.net · Aug 04, 2026

Replying to @tanquist@masto.ai

@tanquist@masto.ai @ketan@climatejustice.social Yeah. I have a 2020 Chevy Bolt, bought used, that’s not too bad. The next time I need an EV, I might buy, for example, a 2010s Nissan Leaf and a new battery pack for it. The whole cost will be under $20k, maybe under $15k.

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firebreathingduck @firebreathingduck@social.vivaldi.net · Jul 31, 2026

Replying to @LunaDragofelis@void.lgbt

@LunaDragofelis@void.lgbt @dysfun@social.treehouse.systems Thanks for mentioning Kittyscript, I’ll give it a look! For something that seems at least superficially similar, there’s the Janet Language. (I have a directory on my computer with dozens of downloaded languages I haven’t had the time to play with 😭 )

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firebreathingduck @firebreathingduck@social.vivaldi.net · Jul 30, 2026

Replying to @danirabbit@mastodon.online

@danirabbit@mastodon.online @elementary@mastodon.social Happy Birthday, Danielle! I increased my Elementary sponsorship in GitHub just a bit, but I have a lot of family expenses right now. I hope others chip in. I love Elementary, it’s on my laptop. (Edit: eh, I threw in a few extra dollars as a one-time donation. Call it a prepayment for Elementary OS 9 - but no rush on the release, I’m quite happy with 8.1.1 )

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firebreathingduck @firebreathingduck@social.vivaldi.net · Jul 29, 2026

Replying to @kimcrawley@zeroes.ca

@kimcrawley@zeroes.ca Backed, 🎉 Edit: I am astonished by your courage to walk away from your previous career over your convictions. I have to use GenAI at work, and I hate it - but I'm the sole income source for a family of six, and it would be exceptionally difficult to find a job in tech that doesn't include GenAI these days.

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firebreathingduck @firebreathingduck@social.vivaldi.net · Jul 27, 2026

Replying to @cwebber@social.coop

@cwebber@social.coop I hope everyone will forgive me for stating this, since it's probably obvious to most: Before the Claude rewrite, bun.js was almost 1300 Zig files and 700k lines of Zig code. A fast rewrite in any other language for a million dollars is a colossal technological achievement. But only if it works, and only if that's the actual cost. In this case, it looks like neither.

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firebreathingduck @firebreathingduck@social.vivaldi.net · Jun 30, 2026

Replying to @tinker@infosec.exchange

@tinker@infosec.exchange I honest to goodness used to buy or rent every piece of video media I consumed. Then in 2023 I saw that Big Tech decided it could pirate the universe with no consequences, and copyright is only a tool to use against the 99%. If copyright is irrelevant to Sam Altman and Satya Nadella, who can literally buy access to everything but choose not to, then it's irrelevant to everyone else. So I started using bittorrent to download content - and immediately received automated warnings from my ISP that my account would be deactivated. I set up a VPN, and the warnings stopped. My VPN provider won't provide copyright holders my information, because if they do they'll lose most of their customers.

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firebreathingduck @firebreathingduck@social.vivaldi.net · Jun 25, 2026

Replying to @CanuckistanBob@cosocial.ca

@CanuckistanBob@cosocial.ca I would think "not being dead" is enough reason to get the vaccines, but what do I know? Reduced risk of dementia is just a bonus.

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firebreathingduck @firebreathingduck@social.vivaldi.net · Jun 02, 2026

Replying to @parismarx@mastodon.online

@parismarx@mastodon.online @TomMullaney@mastodon.education Maybe on topic, maybe not: American kids spend 32.5 hours a week in a school, for 36 weeks per year. The need for homework on top of that, even in high school, is absurd. It doesn't improve academic performance in research (save when the homework is "memorize the answer to these 10 questions for the quiz tomorrow"). It reduces child interest in learning. So do all learning in-classroom, without screens. You can't use an LLM to do homework if you don't have homework.

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firebreathingduck @firebreathingduck@social.vivaldi.net · May 15, 2026

Replying to @mwl@io.mwl.io

@mwl@io.mwl.io Aw damn, we had to euthanize the last of my daughter's three rats yesterday. 😢 If the adorable little things lived longer, I would call them the best choice for pets, ever. But they're adorable, perfect little heartbreakers.

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firebreathingduck @firebreathingduck@social.vivaldi.net · May 14, 2026

Replying to @baldur@toot.cafe

@baldur@toot.cafe Just to state the obvious: a rewrite in something else may be justified, I'm not in a position to judge. A rapidly LLM-coded rewrite in _anything_? They just took the dials on whatever their old problems were and turned them up to 11. And that doesn't even dive into the ethical considerations of LLMs. I'm hoping the Zig community reacts by making an independent JS runtime, or Bun fork, that has no LLM contributions and kicks the new Bun's ...buns.

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firebreathingduck @firebreathingduck@social.vivaldi.net · May 13, 2026

Replying to @ludicity@mastodon.sprawl.club

@huronbikes@cyberplace.social @ludicity@mastodon.sprawl.club I worked at a corporate giant (not FAANG) with nice people. My manager asked for a single additional testing VM to improve team productivity. She filed the request every few weeks for two years until we got it. That was ten years ago. I'm still wondering if the problem was a sysadmin who was too lazy to click three buttons (or the equivalent Infrastructure-as-Code action) or an accountant who was happy to waste a quarter of a million dollars on team productivity to save $1,000 in VMs.

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firebreathingduck @firebreathingduck@social.vivaldi.net · May 13, 2026

Replying to @autonomousapps@mstdn.social

@autonomousapps@mstdn.social @ludicity@mastodon.sprawl.club But it seems like consulting is only easy money for a competent engineer if you can convince clients to hire you. I work full time at a tiny company and our single consultant is a freaking wizard. Clean API designs, asking the right questions, documenting his decisions, _fast and stable CI_ that has saved our behinds from putting a bug into production countless times. He should be ignoring us and making five times as much money from (and for!) other customers. How do you stand out in a sea of trash?

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firebreathingduck @firebreathingduck@social.vivaldi.net · May 06, 2026

Replying to @cstross@wandering.shop

@cstross Thanks for posting this. I have Chrome installed everywhere as a backup browser. Time to find a new backup.

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firebreathingduck @firebreathingduck@social.vivaldi.net · May 04, 2026

Replying to @leeloo@c.im

@leeloo @Retreival9096 Yup, I deleted my Proton account when Andy Yen posted a ludicrous statement in support of the Trump Administration's choice for anti-trust enforcement. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of Trump knows he only uses anti-trust law as a way to solicit bribes. I'm still angry about it, I had pre-paid Proton for another two years shortly before I saw that announcement. But they can go to hell, I'm not sorry I deleted my account.

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firebreathingduck @firebreathingduck@social.vivaldi.net · Apr 28, 2026

Replying to @bodil@social.treehouse.systems

@bodil Well damn, it had been a few years since I had noticed Canonical do something obviously foolish or evil¹². I guess they were saving up for a doozy. The timing is impeccable, though. I expect OpenAI, Anthropic, etc... to be on fire by the time these features land in Ubuntu 😁 ¹ Not that they hadn't done it, but since I noticed. ² Not counting their hiring practices.

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firebreathingduck @firebreathingduck@social.vivaldi.net · Dec 07, 2025

Replying to @billiglarper@rollenspiel.social

@billiglarper@rollenspiel.social @tuban_muzuru@beige.party @aj@gts.sadauskas.id.au @mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io Thank you for the information about China's investment in Africa still being much less than the US and several EU countries, I didn't know that. On the other hand, South Africa, Egypt, and Ethiopia are members of the the BRICS economic alliance that includes China. And Nigeria and Uganda are in the process of joining BRICS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_states_of_BRICS and one of the BRICS policy goals is moving away from the US Dollar as a global reserve currency. So even if China may not run BRICS or dominate BRICS policy, the growth of BRICS weakens US global hegemony. The African Union has a single seat at the G20, but my understanding (don't take my word for it!) is that the G20 doesn't have the same influence on global economic trends that BRICS does.

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firebreathingduck @firebreathingduck@social.vivaldi.net · Nov 16, 2025

Replying to @FluentInFinance__dup_1991@mastodon.social

@FluentInFinance@mastodon.social "It's cheaper to let someone die than save them with a procedure they can't afford." Nah, it's more likely that having all of the employees underpaid, all of the positions understaffed, and cutting budgets for equipment all in order to boost profits just degrades the quality of care as a byproduct.

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firebreathingduck @firebreathingduck@social.vivaldi.net · Sep 07, 2025

Replying to @gimmechocolate@bark.lgbt

@gimmechocolate@bark.lgbt @gabboman Thank you for documenting this. I am crushed. If someone doesn't reverse this, I'll be looking for another distribution. We use Ubuntu Server at work, too, dammit. I'm disappointed that Canonical has incrementally lost its way from the beacon of community and acceptance it started out as.

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firebreathingduck @firebreathingduck@social.vivaldi.net · Sep 07, 2025

Replying to @log@mastodon.sdf.org

@log@mastodon.sdf.org @gimmechocolate@bark.lgbt I think it must be *intentionally* enforcing the status quo. We are not yet in a society where leaving one's gender and sexual identity out of your profile means nothing. Today, it means the default cis+het (or not cis+het but forced to conceal your identity). So "can't say queer" == "can't be queer". And frankly, if taking a stand on gay and trans rights is divisive to someone, that person is a bigot.

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firebreathingduck @firebreathingduck@social.vivaldi.net · Jan 15, 2025

Replying to @rileytaylor@hachyderm.io

@rileytaylor@hachyderm.io @OptiplexPrime@mastodon.social @danirabbit@mastodon.online While I wholeheartedly endorse criticizing Microsoft's poor engineering practices, I think React in general is now heavyweight. Lightweight PWAs whose creators try to incorporate only exactly what they need are rare.

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firebreathingduck @firebreathingduck@social.vivaldi.net · Jan 13, 2025

Replying to @OptiplexPrime@mastodon.social

@OptiplexPrime@mastodon.social @danirabbit@mastodon.online I disagree. I think a huge set of well done (emphasis on 'well done') web apps is the world's key to breaking proprietary operating system hegemony. If someone can do 97% of what they need on a device from a good browser, then maybe they can stop caring if the browser is running on Windows or iOS. But most modern websites that try to replace desktop applications are obscenely bloated and laden with ads, which is a cure worse than the disease.

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firebreathingduck @firebreathingduck@social.vivaldi.net · Jan 13, 2025

Replying to @wendynather@infosec.exchange

@wendynather@infosec.exchange It's almost like everything that every mattered about being a good man was always just about being a good person.

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