“One of my favourite Steve Jobs stories was the time the engineers working on the iPod brought their finished prototype to him in his office. He said it was too big, they needed to make it smaller. They said it was as small as they could make it, it couldn’t be made any smaller. So he took the prototype over to his aquarium and dropped it in. The iPod sank to the bottom, and as it did, tiny little bubbles came out. ‘See those bubbles,’ he asked. ‘They’re air inside the iPod. Make it smaller.’

“Another story about Steve Jobs was when they brought the prototype for the iPad 2 to his office. The engineers told him it was faster than the first iPad. He took it over to his aquarium and dropped it in. ‘Look how slowly it sank,’ he told them. ‘Make it faster.’

“One time a newly hired intern had been sent out to get Steve a sandwich. When she brought it to him, he looked at it. ‘I thought I ordered the beef on rye,’ he asked. She told him it was indeed beef on rye. He took it over to his fish tank and dropped it in. ‘Does that look like beef on rye?’

“He was always dropping things in that fish tank. We couldn’t stop him. We told him he had to stop, he wouldn’t listen. It was full of stuff that shouldn’t be in an aquarium.

“The fish had all died years ago. One had been crushed under an early generation iMac. The others were all poisoned. He didn’t care.

“It got to the point where there was no room for anything in the fish tank. When we emptied it after he died, we found a body in there. We never found out who it was.”

Unironically I think we might run into another video game crash like back in the day

Game creation has become another husk capitalism has its greedy little fingers in and its like. Its genuinely sucking the joy out of it all for more profit and more profit and even if it succeeds its not enough it needs to be more to the point there really isn't a reason to create games anymore if you're not an indie dev

And being an indie dev isn't easy because no one has the time anymore. Everyone is drowning in student loans and low wages. Capitalism is sucking the joy out of them and overworking them and ai art is taking away opportunities to be something unique

Games are $70 fucking dollars now. I can't afford that like. I just can't. Most of us are struggling with finances as is.

We're drowning and it's happening so fast there's not enough time to panic

This is what I mean. Games aren't enough to be good or creative or excellent or fun anymore.

Like. AAA games are unfinished tech demos with dlc tacked on that is mostly content that should have been in the base game at launch

You get an indie game with love put into it and it gets received insanely well and it's. Just. Not enough.

Its burnout waiting to happen. No fucking body who goes through the trials and hardship that is game dev wants to be laid off after finishing a game there fully put their chest into. Soon why even bother? It's just another dead end for most and the student loans from learning through school is insane and no one has the time or drive to learn through their own means because we're working two jobs to pay for necessities.

Shit sucks

I hate how people will look at popular indie artists who had one or two songs go viral on TikTok and start making fun of anybody who listens to them. "Oh you listen to Lemon Demon, Will Wood, Jack Stauber, Glass Animals, and Mother Mother? Tsk, don't you know that is stupid TikTok neurodivergent white transmasc preteen music? It's so mid and bad you should listen to real music–" you are a pit of misery

People can't just say "I don't like this music" anymore they gotta call you gay and autistic for listening to a band that had one song go viral

just gonna drop this here

emergency i gotta fix my car commissions!

howdy folks! my name's rowan, and i am a queer artist who recently moved states to escape anti-trans legislation. unfortunately, my catalytic convertor got stolen, and my insurance isn't going to cover any of it, which means it's time for emergency commissions! all pricing in usd.

WRITING

-1k snapshot of a moment character studies for $25, oc or fandom; fandoms i'm familiar with get a $5 discount! if you want longer stuff we can chat! -1k smutfics for $50, oc or fandom! again, $5 discount for fandoms i'm familiar with! -3-card tarot reading + poetry about it for $15!

you can read some of my writing here, here, and here for character studies; smut here; and some poetry here, here, and here.

MUSIC

-16-measure character intro themes for $35! length will vary slightly depending on tempo, but expect 0:30-1:15. base instrumentation is 3 instruments; if you want more than that, we can chat!

you can listen to some of my music here, here, here, and here.

you can message me here or shoot me an email at eravine16@gmail.com if you’re interested!

(reblogs are deeply appreciated even if you can’t commission!)

lets give it up for pleasures of the flesh !!

so we're just not gonna have a national conversation about how Boeing killed one of their own employees to keep him from talking to the press

like we're really not gonna address the fact that he died of a "self inflicted head wound" literal hours after Boeings lawyers asked him to stay an extra day. We're not gonna speak on the fact that he told his family "if I die, it wasn't suicide " before he went to go testify. None of it huh

Oh? You haven't heard? I'm not surprised with how hard the media are parrying it

THAT TOO. LMFAOOO

A 2nd Boeing whistleblower has died of MRSA 🤨‼️

I was not prepared for Boeing apparently just straight up murdering people now. Holy shirtballs.

My sister’s blind dog loves fetch

(Source)

@beemovieerotica like your boy!!!

Maybe this is the wrong platform to pose this question given the average tumblr user but

Is it just me or did our generation (those of is who are currently 20-30 ish) just not get the opportunity to be young in the 'standard' sense?

Like, everyone I talk to who's over 40 has all their wild stories about their teens and 20s, being young and dumb, and then I talk to my friends and coworkers and classmates, and we just... dont.

My mom tells stories of skipping school to sneak across the border and spend the day at a bar in Mexico. I was threatened with not being allowed to graduate because of senior ditch day. One of my friends had to go to his first hour class on senior ditch day because the teacher, who almost exclusively taught seniors, arranged a huge exam that day with no available makeup days, specifically to punish kids who took part in ditch day. Our wild and crazy ditch day was playing mini golf and then stopping for ice cream on our way back to one of our friends' houses to play cards against humanity.

Don't get me wrong, we had fun. But all of that, threats of not graduating, threats of failing classes over a single test, over some mini golf and ice cream?

Throughout high school and early in college, my friend group got kicked out of malls, stores, and even a parking lot just for being there wrong. Not being loud of disruptive. Not causing problems. Just being there too long, or without buying anything.

My mom graduated high school, after repeating her senior year, without a single grade above a D, and was offered a full ride scholarship to a state university to play on their women's football team. I had a 3.8 GPA, multiple extracurriculars, a summer job, and over 100 hours of volunteer work, and barely got into that same university, and then couldn't afford to go there anyway.

We've made getting into college so important and yet so difficult that kids are sacrificing their childhoods for it.

Then they become adults and it doesn't go away. Your employer/ potential employers are searching your social media and internet presence so you'd better hope no one has ever posted a picture of you at a party, or with alcohol, or wearing revealing clothes, or whatever else they've deemed unprofessional. And if you want to go out it's a 10 dollar cover and drinks are at least 8 dollars, and you need to tip if there's any kind of live entertainment, who can afford to do all that regularly?

My physical therapist, when I was 18, told me about his 21st birthday, how the last thing he remembers is people taking body shots off him. I spent my 21st birthday alone, was in bed by 10pm because I had to be at work the next morning. My boss had already told me that they knew it was my 21st, and if I called out, she'd write me up for improper use of sick leave because you're not allowed to use sick leave for a hangover. I don't know anyone whose 21st birthday was a big deal. No one went out and partied for it.

I dont really know where I'm going with all of this. I guess I just don't understand the point of it all. We spend our youth working hard to provide a future that we still can't afford. We have to be responsible and professional as teenagers. And we get nothing out of it. We can't afford life or friends or fun. At least our parents got to have fun being young and dumb, we just got groomed on kik.

So I'm not the only one noticing this. I wish I had an answer or at least something to say about it. But I dont. I'm just tired.

Original report (waybacked PDF) is from 2007. That's Gen Z kids.

When I, Gen-Xer, was about 12 - in my rural home, I had about a three-mile range. (Could've pushed it to more, but didn't want to walk that far.) In the city, it was about a mile. Not that anyone was checking; again, that was about the distance I wanted to walk, and besides, that covered all of "downtown."

My kids? Closer to that 300 yards limit at the same age. Not because I wanted to restrict them, but we live next to a freeway on-ramp and between two sets of train tracks... and there is absolutely nothing kid-friendly within a half-mile for them to visit.

I spent my 21st birthday bar-hopping. My kids spent their 21st birthdays at home with a nice meal. I don't think either of them wanted to go bar-hopping - but yeah, as a society, we've removed a LOT of teen-friendly options.

See also: End of Third Places, switch from video game arcades to home consoles (hey, then every kid has to buy their own copy--great for game-makers!), shutdown of malls or restrictions on youth at them, closure of public parks, reduced/removed after-school programs, etc. Plus the places that think it's illegal for a 12-year-old to walk to the corner store unsupervised.

I am, however, DELIGHTED to hear that the booze & other vices industries are panicking over Gen Z not going out to party. Like, you spent 30-odd years removing all the places and ways people can hang out together and have fun outside of someone's personal house, and... guess what, when people hit milestone events (graduation, milestone birthdays, job promotion, whatever), they don't immediately flock to the Party Zone that they have never been welcome at. How shocking.

It sucks that Gen Z does not get to party, does not have good celebration options. REALLY sucks that that's often because school or job has decided to tell them not to celebrate, rather than just not having places to go. I'm just not upset over party capitalism taking a hit.

Unauthorized water

It’s not clear when General Electric started boobytraping appliances with DRM. I first encountered it in January when Shane Morris tweeted about his fridge refusing to accept the $19 generic filter he replaced the GE $55 filter with.

https://twitter.com/IamShaneMorris/status/1220367934947758080

The fridges use an RFID detector to distinguish original GE filters from generic replacements, and engage in lots of anti-owner trickery, like memorizing the IDs of previously used filters and refusing to accept them.

https://bbs.boingboing.net/t/unauthorized-charcoal-ge-fridges-wont-dispense-ice-or-water-unless-your-filter-authenticates-as-an-official-55-component/159552/41

Morris isn’t the only one ourtaged that his fridge is plotting against him. One (anonymous) owner was so offended that they created a site dedicated to warning off potential buyers and explaining to other suckers how to bypass GE’s lockouts.

https://gefiltergate.com/

There’s a good reason for the anonymity. Under Sec 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, showing how to bypass an “access control” to a copyrighted work (eg RFID-detecting code in the fridge) is a potential felony, carrying a 5-year prison sentence and a $500k fine.

This is quite the moral hazard. Manufacturers have learned that if they design their products so that any use that hurts their shareholders (like buying third party parts) requires bypassing DRM, it becomes a felony to use your own property to your own advantage.

Which is why we’ve seen DRM creep into all manner of devices, from insulin pumps to tractors to car engines to Iphone screens. “Felony contempt of business model” is the statute that every monopolist has dreamt of, and with DMCA 1201, they have it in their grasp.

Back in 2011, I wrote a short story about this for MIT Tech Review’s first sf anthology, called “The Brave Little Toaster” (in tribute to Tom Disch).

https://craphound.com/news/2011/09/28/the-brave-little-toaster-from-trsf/

The issue only got worse, and so last year I published “Unauthorized Bread” as part of my collection “Radicalized” (it’s being turned into a TV show by Topic):

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

The metastasis of DRM into every product category shows that when business apologists talk about the sanctity of property, they mean the sanctity of CORPORATE property.

If the manufacturer gets to override your decisions about the things you buy - and felonize any attempt to wrest control back - they property ceases to exist. We become tenants of our devices, not owners.

It’s digital feudalism, in which an elite owns all the property and we get to use it in ways they proscribe. The difference is that today, our aristocracy isn’t even human.

It’s the immortal, remorseless colony organism called the Limited Liability Corporation, to which we are mere inconvenient gut flora.

This is why so many copyright activists are saying “the whole system is fucked; we need to rebuild it from scratch.” 

I’ve got an older HP color laser printer that I adore, and plan to keep running as long as possible. It wants to phone home for updates but I have that stuff blocked.

It recognizes when I jam a non-HP toner cartridge in there, and delivers some horrific warnings like NON-GENUINE HP PRODUCT DETECTED and DAMAGE MAY OCCUR and USE IS NOT RECOMMENDED but still grudgingly uses it. Newer models simply refuse, and I reckon this one would too if I allowed it to update its software.

And lemme tellya, the price difference between genuine HP and cheap knockoff (that works just fine) is… staggering:

Color laser printing requires four (4) toner cartridges, one black and one each Red/Blue/Yellow, for a combined cost of $704 bucks.

Remember, that’s just for replacement toner.

Compare that to:

$60 for a set of four, black included. That’s what? 12x difference?

Absolutely bonkers.

please tell me you guys know what im talking about 

btw! I was made aware that many people don't know that we're boycotting Eurovision this year, so.

we are boycotting Eurovision, as per BDS guidelines.

don't watch the stream, don't engage with the videos, don't post it about it on social media using hashtags that are going to trend. whatever you're getting from the show isn't worth it

The spouse is getting curious about tumblr

I hear Kendrick Lamar murdered Drake with his voice.........shouted him apart.....

Please enjoy a goofy little comic I made last year that became something I'm quite proud of! A combination of Wallace and Gromit and the hit webcomic Kill Six Billion Demons- Kill Six Billion Gromits!