Notices by Mallory's Musings & Mischief (malcircuit@thingy.social)

When you live in a system that is always pushing for growth, your perspective becomes skewed. There are problems that we deal with everyday that probably could be solved — permanently (or at least for a long time) — but to do so would eliminate an entire cascade of profit, which is considered unacceptable.

So we continue to try to reinvent the wheel, or add features, or enshittify to increase profits.

This goes back to something I've ranted about in the past. Capitalism is incapable of comprehending the idea of a solved problem.

There is a class of problems for which optimal (or nearly optimal) solutions exist or could exist. Some of those solutions have existed for decades. But capitalism is never satisfied — growth must continue. So people keep trying to reinvent the wheel, making solutions that are more profitable but also more abstracted and inefficient.

Something no one talks about enough:

CPU cycles aren't free.
Memory reads and writes aren't free.

That shit takes power. A miniscule amount per instance, yes, but it adds up quick if it's from an app that everyone uses constantly. All that power comes from somewhere, and right now that's mostly fossil fuels.

When people complain about software bloat, it's not just a UX problem, it's an environmental one too.

Manufacturing new computing hardware is an enormously energy and resource intensive process. Having to make hardware obsolete because the *software* isn't efficient is an absurd waste.

I get that there are more impactful changes to society that can be made that would reduce our environmental impact more than writing better software. But it's still a thing that matters and should improve.

Putting advertising on everything takes power.
Making everything internet connected takes power.
Pushing notifications takes power.
Autoplaying videos and sound takes power.
Tracking and data collection systems take power.
New "features" take power.

Don't even get me started on all this new "AI" bullshit.

I resent the term "prompt engineering" because it implies that there is a sophisticated theoretical basis to writing LLM prompts and not simply "fuck around with the wording until the dumb computer makes me happy"

It's an insult to every domain of engineering to insist interaction with an LLM requires the same level of training. Give me a fucking break.

Sometimes people will use the analogy of a butterfly emerging from a cocoon when talking about transitioning. The thing is, with actual butterflies, when the caterpillar is in the chrysalis it just kind of dissolves into a chaotic soup of miscellaneous caterpillar bits that somehow reforms itself into a butterfly.

It's me. I'm the soup.

STOP DOING OSes

- Machines were not meant to have more than one function

- YEARS of OSes, yet NO REAL-WORLD USE FOUND for sharing CPU time between multiple programs

- Want to run a different program anyway? We had a tool for that: It was called EEPROMS

- "Yes, please install a program for me. Oh, there's a software update available" — statements dreamed up by the utterly deranged

"Hello, I need drivers installed to use this hardware"

They have played us for absolute fools

Corporations love to tell you about how you can "save the planet" or whatever by buying things made from recycled materials, using less water, buying an efficient car, using paper straws, or <insert trending thing>

Those things might help, but the problem isn't the choices we make, it's the options we're allowed to choose from. Your options aren't optimized for eco-friendliness, they are optimized for profit.

That's why the planet is burning. It's not because you didn't recycle the pizza box.

I just got my Circatboard dress and OMG, I am in LOVE :blob_aww:

Gender euphoria is through the roof at the moment :ablobmeltsoblove:

#TransJoy