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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)YO
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2 yr. ago

  • You seem like a caring person, so perhaps this will help guide decision-making. When you make major decisions that deeply impact another person, or even just get real far in evaluating options and imagining outcomes, asking strangers, etc....when you do these things without communicating with the other person at all, the end result is you protecting yourself, not them. Even if it feels like you're carefully considering their interests.

    No matter your intentions, if you're not communicating with them and letting them participate in big decisions that affect you both, you are not acting in their best interests. There are many times (like abuse) when that is 100% the right approach, but you need to be very clear eyed about that choice to remove the other person's agency. The way you're going about this protects you at their expense, and in this situation it sounds kind of cruel, rather than justified. I'm not judging you harshly, your intentions seem good, but you need to understand that this is not a loving way to treat an adult.

  • One of our political parties discovered they can reliably achieve short term goals by politicizing facts and science. The success of this strategy points out that it's available to anyone who wants to use it, which over time has meant that group of voters just got continually flooded with nonsense, until we got here.

    There's (almost) no one pushing back from that side - the strategy is too successful, the margins of victory for the party are too small, and most politicians in general want what's best for them and would put the long term health of the group they're representing as a distant priority, if at all.

    Doesn't even really require coordination/cooperation. With enough people willing to employ this strategy for enough time, by now the distrust of science and official communications is extremely entrenched.

    If you're looking for the "why" we're susceptible to it, it's the same old story - people angry at how things are going can often be manipulated into blaming people and things other than the true causes, with obvious advantages / incentives for those doing the manipulation.

  • Heard anything about Mullvad's browser? You seem knowledgeable about the topic. I use their VPN already, still using Firefox for my browser though. I'm further behind the curve than you are, lol.

  • I think we're on the same page :)

    I'm mostly describing an idea where the contracts approach takes care of the necessary iteration to get a given tech policy sorted, and then legislation comes in to require it.

    My country can't even get some basic stuff done, though, so realistically I may as well be writing fan-fic, lol

  • I'm gonna make what I consider to be an important distinction here, but I also want to say I mostly agree with you and I'm bummed by the downvotes.

    I think we can lump the middle manager into two broad "types". And you seem to be exclusively describing one of the two types - the one that's, frankly, smart and "aware" enough to realize that middle management is trash, rank and file is trash, and they know precisely why they are aiming to get above everyone. It ain't cuz they want to help, of course, and they never intend to. Fuck those people every possible way, because not only do they understand that the purpose of middle management is to be the buffer between the owners and the laborers, they also have decided - with full awareness! - fuck the laborers, I want to be good with the owners.

    But there's another, sadder kind of middle manager, and I think maybe your hostility is unkind and unfair to this type. This middle manager still has the wool pulled over their eyes, they really think if they work hard and do well, they'll be rewarded! And hey, isn't the fact that they've been promoted (!) to leadership a clear indicator that they're doing things right? Just gotta keep at it, the really important people keep telling me this is what they like to see, I'll finally be able to get all these bills paid / improve my life! I'm on the way up, finally.

    And then that person says "YEESH managing this store is really hard, I've gotta get better at this. My leadership doesn't seem to think this should be a struggle..."

    Etc., etc., for 10, 20 years as the wool gradually falls from their eyes. Not everyone is able to see things as clearly as you are. Most middle managers, I think, are basically suckers. Naive and exploited. The rest, tho, are basically monsters without enough power to be monsters. No argument there, and fuck those people.

  • Oof, well, point taken and sorry for your loss lol. I hear where you're coming from. And I'm sure we'd get a worst of both worlds situation here in the US where we spent a ton of time and money developing whatever standards and definitions, and then we make it an optional guideline like you're saying and it never goes anywhere.

    Dunno. The fundamental problem is tech is always able to move faster and smarter than legislation.

  • That's fair, and government work can feel kind of like its own parallel business ecosystem in some ways. Sort of like how most of us think of the shops and businesses that are visible to us but not the massive B2B ecosystem just under the surface.

    But I think the hope is that gov can standardize and define a certain net positive thing, and use its contracts to start requiring that thing, slowly making it more widespread and therefore common. Ideally the kinks get ironed out over time, and eventually it's in a state where you can make the leap and start to require it be in place for any application / service above a certain user count.

    Bit pie in the sky, but we should be at least trying to find ways to use govt to improve our situation. Things at policy level that don't require chronically status quo politicians to vote in our best interests.

  • FWIW you've been level-headed throughout the thread and it does seem like a valid note to me. It's not like, damning, as you've pointed out yourself, it doesn't magically invalidate his work. But it does seem odd to me and I'm glad you pointed it out, and the response you've been getting seems weird and disproportionate.

  • That hasn't been quite my experience. For one thing, they cap their pay and don't (can't) negotiate like a private client. So generally less money per given project.

    Comparatively little work and little validation also wasn't my experience but I do get the sense it used to be more common, and it did feel like the experience I had was in some sense a reaction to previous contractors taking advantage.

  • Can confirm, I've worked for a company doing govt contract work and I really don't know what it'd take for us to have walked away. They can dictate whatever terms they like and still expect to find plenty of companies happy to bid for contracts I think.

  • Lol yep sounds a lot like my process! Took time to get it down and settle on tools (though those always changed anyway) but once you did, could make a buncha money for sure. With KVMs I could do a lotta volume on those kinda jobs and get some of my engineering homework done in between. Hardware repairs were more fun but way more time consuming and hit or miss depending on overall condition.

    Not a bad gig overall but certainly did come with some downsides. Like, desktop computer filled with insect carcasses, brown everywhere with tar from cigarette smoke, stinking up the shop, customer somehow oblivious to the gnar-bomb that is their daily life intersecting with "ordinary" society.

  • Definitely not wrong! Especially once you've dialed in your routine of anti-malware utilities to run on pretty much everything. It's like an antibiotic cocktail, lol. Or did you prefer the "back up and nuke on sight" approach?