| Name | Marco von Ballmoos |
|---|---|
| Member since | |
| [hidden] | |
| Home page | https://earthli.com/users/marco |
| Description |
The (only) developer at earthli.com. |
| 3749 | Articles |
|---|---|
| 113 | Comments |
Published on in Quotes
“As soon as you say the topic is civil disobedience, you are saying our problem is civil disobedience. That is not our problem…. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is the numbers of people all over the world who have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. And our problem is that scene in All Quiet on the Western Front where the schoolboys march off dutifully in a line to war. Our problem is... [More]”
Published on in Quotes
“The earth is not dying, it is being killed. And the people who are killing it have names and addresses.”
Published on in Notes
Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.
Published on in Notes
Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
The article “Settler madness.” by Cara MariAnna (The Floutist) writes of how a society teaches its young to hate. The example comes from observing Israeli settlers in the West Bank.
“The following three images are screenshots from a video of another incident in which settlers harassed the same family. The boy with the side curls holds a stick. He’s the same boy who was wearing a sweatshirt with a hood in the previous video. I’m showing you these pictures because settlers use their boys as attack dogs. The armed man... [More]”
Published on in Programming
The book-length Performance Improvements in .NET 10 by Stephen Toub (Microsoft DevBlogs) arrived a couple of months ago.
He explains how the various compilers (AOT, JIT, etc.) have been optimized to eliminate allocations and just generally optimized for performance. A reduction in allocations is a multi-win: the performance is better because the allocator isn’t working, the memory usage has dropped, and the garbage collector also works less.
See previous coverage in:
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
The article Some Days There’s Just Too Much Israeli Psychopathy To Write About by Caitlin Johnstone (Substack) writes,
“If I had murdered people for trying to retrieve the bodies of their loved ones who I had also murdered, I’d definitely be asking myself a lot of questions, but “what was so important about that corpse?” would definitely not be among them.
“Gaza has become a hunting ground which is visited by psychopathic individuals who want to experience what it’s like to kill human beings, and it’s always open... [More]”
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
The US is famously and proudly anti-intellectual. It has been for most of my life. There are exceptions but those exceptions live at the edges of society. While their Wikipedia entries might laud them, they acquire neither wealth nor power.
Wealth and power are reserved for the largely self-anointed princelings of the Idiocracy. Europe held itself aloof from its ignorant progeny across the Atlantic for a reasonably long time. But that time is unquestionably past.
Knowledge? No thank you.Kaja Callas is a sad example... [More]
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
If you’re looking for a more optimistic take, read Hold strong: The cruelty increases with desperation. The video below is by the same guy—Hasan Piker—as in the other article but with a much less hopeful take this time. This video describes the current state of things: that we are cogs in a well-oiled, rent-extraction machine. We have to wake up to it, use our agency, and stop believing all of the bullshit.
you think you have rights? by HasanAbi (YouTube)
“Every single American is being surveilled at every single moment of the day.
“How... [More]”
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
To be optimistic for once: It’s always darkest before dawn. That is, the reason that the elites are lashing out so cruelly is that they are getting more and more desperate as some of them can’t help but notice that the wheels are coming off of this whole rent-extraction contraption that they’ve built.
Sloppy Jenga TowerSome of the other are just yanking Jenga bricks out of the tower of the global economy as fast as they can, utterly oblivious to or uncaring about the degree to which they’re destabilizing their... [More]
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
This video of Donald Trump going off the rails is a couple of months old already but the content doesn’t really matter. He’s still doing the same song-and-dance, keeping the plates spinning and the plebes distracted while he makes himself richer.
Trump dancesHe’s benefitted less than a handful of other billionaires but he and his family have gained about $3B since he took office. Those are incredible numbers but no-one with any power really seems to care. There is no real uproar about it. He’s still... [More]
Published on in Technology & Engineering
The article Smartphone Buyers Care Even Less About AI Than They Did Last Year, CNET Survey Finds by Abrar Al-Heeti (CNet) contains the following illuminating graphic.
Almost no-one cares about AI on their phone
“In 2024, the biggest motivation for US smartphone owners to upgrade their devices was longer battery life (61%), followed by more storage (46%) and better camera features (38%). Just 18% said their main motivator was AI integrations. This year, it appears that number is even lower, even as AI capabilities become more ubiquitous. ”
“Just 13% of people... [More]”
Published on in Technology & Engineering
The article Where’s the Shovelware? Why AI Coding Claims Don’t Add Up by Mike Judge is an interesting read that makes the following argument, more or less,
“If so many developers are so extraordinarily productive using these tools, where is the flood of shovelware? We should be seeing apps of all shapes and sizes, video games, new websites, mobile apps, software-as-a-service apps — we should be drowning in choice. We should be in the middle of an indie software revolution. We should be seeing 10,000 Tetris... [More]”
Published on in Notes
Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.
Published on in Technology & Engineering
This Record Label Is Trying To SILENCE Me by Rick Beato (YouTube)
Rick Beato was forced to hire a lawyer to defend his fair-use playing of artist’s music in his videos. The labels abuse the copyright-strike system and Google cheerfully goes along with it.
He has “successfully fought thousands of them—never lost one—they still keep coming in.”
There is no way for him to defend himself against these without a lawyer. UMG (Universal Music Group)—or, most likely, the third-party firm that they hired to enforce their copyrights—are not punished at all... [More]
Published on in Technology & Engineering
This 21:36-long video is chock-full of useful information: use a real VPN (not a free one; be sure of the vendor), hide your real email address wherever possible, stop clicking sponsored links in search results—although he doesn’t recommend to use a search engine other than Google—, use an authenticator app for 2FA instead of text messages, etc.
The Truth About Those Age Verification Pop-Ups by Evan Edinger (YouTube)
0:54 Details of the UK’s Online Safety Act 3:19 Recent “unavoidable” Data Leaks 4:55 Why the Online Safety Act Immediately Fails 7:10 How... [More]
Published on in Quotes
“To think ill of mankind, and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.”
I had a lovely discussion with a dear Slovakian friend just this past weekend. We agreed that we seem to think well of individuals but that people in groups are nearly always detestable and that mankind is doomed.
We further agreed that, although we are very likely unwittingly sometimes part of the problem, there is nevertheless nothing for it but to continue to try to drag each and every one of us,... [More]
Published on in Quotes
“The Greatest Obstacle to Discovery Is Not Ignorance—It Is the Illusion of Knowledge.”
Published on in Quotes
“Pyramid schemeWe live in a system that is utterly incapable of evaluating anything on its actual merit and suitability to task when there is so much more money to be made by lying about it instead.”
Published on in Quotes
“
Now that the neighborhood is nice, why do I have to move?When colonization happens within a country, we call it gentrification.
“We are encouraged to believe that pricing people out of their homes is somehow following a law of nature, that it’s not immoral or violent.
“Whereas the word ‘colonization’ has negative connotations, ‘gentrification’ sounds kind of nice, like you’re making things better.
“You are making things better, but for the conquerors, not the conquered.
“The conquered can take a long walk off a short pier.”
Published on in Notes
Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
Pro-Palestinian protesters in Bern, SwitzerlandI was listening to the Swiss news on the radio a couple of weeks back. There had been pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Bern the day before. Instead of discussing why people were protesting, the reporters dutifully reported about the damage that had been caused and dutifully reported on right-wing politicians who blamed it all on leftists and Antifa, as they’d been dutifully instructed to do by their ideological masters in the U.S., to whose Truth Social accounts they’ve all dutifully... [More]
Published on in Technology & Engineering
I, for one, welcome our new AI overlords.A friend sent me the article Finger weg von den neuen KI-Browsern by Michael Andai (20min) (“Hands off of the new AI-browsers”).
The article largely focuses on the grievous security holes in these browsers, making them not browsers but data-exfiltration apps. In an age of unprecedented scammery, it is an affront that these tools even exist.
But that’s not even the worst of it.
With a web browser, you type in an address and see the content hosted for that address. You trust your browser to deliver—unfiltered and... [More]
Published on in Notes
Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
This is also a couple of months old but remember when, about 400 news cycles ago, federal museums like the Smithsonian were told to dial it back on exhibits that cast slaveholders in a bad light? I don’t recall hearing whether that was retracted in the meantime. Probably not, because so many closet racists have positively soared out of the woodwork and and are cheerily enjoying what I imagine is, even for them, a wholly unexpected moment in the sun that they will, characteristically, round up... [More]
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
Almost every line in the following video was important and necessary for people to hear. I dare say …. brilliant. This video seemed completely extemporaneous. It’s Hasan expressing his deeply held and well-considered beliefs, pretty much all of which I agree with. Chapeau.
TRUMP'S MILITARY REVENGE by HasanAbi (YouTube)
The video’s not even 20 minutes long and I found nearly all of it worth citing below.
“What could be a solution to crime? Great question. This has been something that thinkers have gotten together and and tried to find... [More]”
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
The article Trump & the Russophobes by Patrick Lawrence (Scheer Post) was written near the end of August—about two months ago—and discusses the U.S.‘s obsession with just absolutely hating first Bolsheviks, then the Soviet Union, and now Russia.
“I say this because Russophobia is about more, much more, than near-term geopolitical strategies and policy choices. This is a question that goes to the ideology that makes America America, to the collective psyche, to Otherness and identity (which are intimately related in the... [More]”
Published on in Notes
Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.
Published on in Notes
Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.
Published on in Notes
Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.
