Alternatives to Twatter

[citoyen]

Mysterious.  Will it even stay up and running?

I’ve seen some credible suggestions that it won’t last much beyond the weekend.

Also mentions that in closing the offices, he dished everyone’s building pass - including his own.

I don’t really understand the technicalities of it. But then neither does the idiot who recently spent $44bn on it.

[ian]

Musk really is a dickwad.

Although there's a soupçon of enjoyable schadenfreude in watching a true Business Genius practice his trade, he truly is an abhorrent piece of shit.

I read a thing the other day, not sure how true it was because it was on the internet website, but apparent the Business Geniuses are running around impregnating each other so they raise a civilisation of little Business Geniuses. Nothing like the smell of eugenics in a morning. (I am sure the heritability of Business Genius is substantially lower than the heritability of wealth.)

[Mr Larrington]

With working from home out, all the offices bolted and barred and the staff fleeing for the exits this must be a new type of “hardcore” of which I was only tangentially aware.

[Jaded]

Seems a bit weird to demand everyone comes into the office then lock them all out.

[rogerzilla]

Apparently it's to prevent sabotage or, presumably, stealing branded office stuff, ready to put it on eBay as a souvenir when Twitter croaks its last tweet.

[TheLurker]

Do you think that, if we asked very, very nicely, Gerald Elon would buy Facebook and apply his Business Genius (TM, R, Pats. Pending, All Rights Reserved) to it?  Asking for a friend.

[Kim]

Apparently it's to prevent sabotage or, presumably, stealing branded office stuff, ready to put it on eBay as a souvenir when Twitter croaks its last tweet.

Yeah, or some internal DNS server has fallen over and the door locks have lost access to the card database.  At least when that happened to Facebook, the staff responsible for the server in question were merely locked out of the building, rather than no longer employed.

[Polar Bear]

I understand that the offices being locked is partly due to the entire team responsible for security took the package.

[Mrs Pingu]

Musk really is a dickwad.

Although there's a soupçon of enjoyable schadenfreude in watching a true Business Genius practice his trade, he truly is an abhorrent piece of shit.

I read a thing the other day, not sure how true it was because it was on the internet website, but apparent the Business Geniuses are running around impregnating each other so they raise a civilisation of little Business Geniuses. Nothing like the smell of eugenics in a morning. (I am sure the heritability of Business Genius is substantially lower than the heritability of wealth.)

I also read that sort of article, quite disturbing.

[rogerzilla]

They don't understand the main error in eugenics, which is regression to the mean for many "desirable" traits such as intelligence, which are not simply hard-coded into genes in the same way as, say, eye colour or haemophilia.  Two highly intelligent people having a child are likely to find it is less intelligent than they are, albeit probably somewhere above average (the converse is true for two incredibly stupid people).

On the other hand, ASD appears to be very strongly inherited.

[rogerzilla]

From t'Internet:

Rather than buying the company and running it into the ground, Elon could have taken the simpler route to kill Twitter by offering each of the 7500 employees $5 million to quit and he would have saved 6.5 billion dollars.

[spesh]

They don't understand the main error in eugenics, which is regression to the mean for many "desirable" traits such as intelligence, which are not simply hard-coded into genes in the same way as, say, eye colour or haemophilia.  Two highly intelligent people having a child are likely to find it is less intelligent than they are, albeit probably somewhere above average (the converse is true for two incredibly stupid people).

On the other hand, ASD appears to be very strongly inherited.

The story goes that the dancer Isadora Duncan once wrote to George Bernard Shaw: "Will you be the father of my next child? A combination of my beauty and your brains would startle the world," but he replied: "I must decline your offer with thanks, for the child might have my beauty and your brains."

[Ham]

....which is reminiscent of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF-PuHFwGZc

[andrewc]

I read a thing the other day, not sure how true it was because it was on the internet website, but apparent the Business Geniuses are running around impregnating each other so they raise a civilisation of little Business Geniuses. Nothing like the smell of eugenics in a morning. (I am sure the heritability of Business Genius is substantially lower than the heritability of wealth.)

This one ?  https://archive.ph/2022.11.17-150216/https://www.businessinsider.com/pronatalism-elon-musk-simone-malcolm-collins-underpopulation-breeding-tech-2022-11

[ian]

It's wasn't that one, though if those pro-natalists succeed the population of earth will be both very poor at basic maths and genetics. They will all look like people you want to set fire to though.

I think the story was in Insider, but it's behind a paywall now.

Still, Elon reassures us that if you're born rich enough and have enough luck, not even being as thick as mince will hold you back. I think that's an affirming message.

[Mr Larrington]

Well, we already knew that thanks to four years of TЯump in the Awful Office.

[Ham]

The entirely sensible poll to reinstate the orange one is 6% ahead in allowing him, with 15 hours to go. https://twitter.com/elonmusk

Of course, if he was and if he did, that would likely mark the end for the Lies Social platform, which is crumbling anyway.

[Lightning Phil]

They don't understand the main error in eugenics, which is regression to the mean for many "desirable" traits such as intelligence, which are not simply hard-coded into genes in the same way as, say, eye colour or haemophilia.  Two highly intelligent people having a child are likely to find it is less intelligent than they are, albeit probably somewhere above average (the converse is true for two incredibly stupid people).

On the other hand, ASD appears to be very strongly inherited.

The story goes that the dancer Isadora Duncan once wrote to George Bernard Shaw: "Will you be the father of my next child? A combination of my beauty and your brains would startle the world," but he replied: "I must decline your offer with thanks, for the child might have my beauty and your brains."

😁

[rogerzilla]

51.8% is now The Magical Percentage Of Shit Things.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-63692369

[Polar Bear]

Desperate roll of the dice to save his sinking ship. 

Number One: Captain, there is a hole in the side of the ship perfectly round and exactly the size of the cross section of one of the torpedoes our subs carry.

Captain: Ask TWAT Orangutan to plug the gap with one of their topredoes then.

Number One: Captain, the TWAT Orangutan has launched the torpedo ...

[perpetual dan]

News on the radio this morning was that agent orange didn’t see the point of going back to twitter.

Meanwhile someone vaguely sensible (Paul Graham) was making the point (yesterday) that the “next twitter” won’t look quite like twitter or consciously try to be the next twitter.

[ian]

We should consider Twitter was a success because it's a hell site. Sure, it's the sort of party where people are fucking on the coat pile and some just fell out of the window and yes that is a fireman; but the Mastodon party is a bit like oh thanks for the wine, we'll put it in the fridge, you're just in time to help us with the jigsaw puzzle, it's 5000 pieces so should take us all evening.

I've been enjoying the pictures of the Business Genuis holding his remaining staff hostage at 1 am so he can diagram how Twitter works for them in a sort of the front end talks to the back end via the middle bit level of informed detail, because it's not like they didn't cover that in their first day of induction. It's been pointed out that they're probably visa captives* because everyone else left or isn't sure if they have left yet, but aren't going to chance going to work just in case.

*an H1-B visa only allows you to work on that one job, so if disappears or you choose to leave, you have to leave the US effectively immediately, you can't apply for another job – indeed to even apply for another visa, you have to leave the country to do so.

[TheLurker]

Ian>I've been enjoying the pictures of the Business Genuis holding his remaining staff hostage at 1 am ...

Now that's interesting. Who's really the hostage here?  The poor sods on the H1-Bs or the pillock Business Genuis who's in the hole for for 44 beellion US dollars plus interest payments and is utterly dependent on them staying put if he's to stand any chance not losing even more money?  I think if I was on an H1-B I'd have trousered the 3 month's severance and pissed off home to look for a job with a less poisonous boss.

Ian> so he can diagram how Twitter works for them in a sort of the front end talks to the back end via the middle bit level of informed detail...

Not only "Business Genius", but man-splaining at an epic level.

[Jaded]

I saw the photos of the strategy planning meeting and wondered if ian had been there the night before, writing things on the board…

[ian]

Ian>I've been enjoying the pictures of the Business Genuis holding his remaining staff hostage at 1 am ...

Now that's interesting. Who's really the hostage here?  The poor sods on the H1-Bs or the pillock Business Genuis who's in the hole for for 44 beellion US dollars plus interest payments and is utterly dependent on them staying put if he's to stand any chance not losing even more money?  I think if I was on an H1-B I'd have trousered the 3 month's severance and pissed off home to look for a job with a less poisonous boss.

Ian> so he can diagram how Twitter works for them in a sort of the front end talks to the back end via the middle bit level of informed detail...

Not only "Business Genius", but man-splaining at an epic level.

At the end of the day, the Business Genius doesn't have, and never had that $44billion, so he's in hock to a lot of people. It's amazing how people fall for this (see also Elizabeth Holmes and her device that was obviously bullshit and that FTX guy who's well... obvious bullshit, you know how it goes).

As for H1-B visas (these are specialist visas for overseas workers to fill roles that can't be filled by someone in the US), there's no grace period, the day your employment ceases you are liable to immediately leave the US or be subject to deportation proceedings (the only credit you get is that your employer should pay reasonable costs to send you home). If you do overstay, of course, to clear up your affairs (you may have family, partners, you know, a life you can't curtail with a few days' notice, not to mention re-establish your life in another country), then that will probably disqualify you from a future visa (or at least lead to awkward questions). It's a visa status that's easy for unscrupulous employers to take advantage of.

Jaded is right though, I think he might be trying to practice Thought Leadership. I'm sorry, but even a Business Genius should not take on a Thought Leader. I'm pretty sure I once sat in a meeting and someone asked what are calling that bit between the front end serves (Angular, UI) and the back end (the DBs and Elastic) and I gave it some thought and said 'the middle bit.'