Content warning: Tech nostalgia, discussion of scarcity vs. abundance in gaming/RL communities - A Burr Essay
One of the things that the 80s and 90s taught me was that meaning and experiences often came from scarcity.
Games were expensive, so I'd often explore every single nook and cranny. We didn't have all the games ever made for a console at our fingertips, or instant communication.
Scarecity, effort put into focused tasks, and a bit of mystery made for novel experiences and often times acted as a way to meet others who were along similar journeys.
In a world of scarecity, meeting someone who had a different computer than you, or different games or a different console meant you got to experience new technology through your friends /while/ you got to meet them. It brought a sense of real community.
Pivoting to the furry fandom, back in The Day, Furry was difficult to find - You had to have some technical acumen in order to even find the MUCKs or IRC back when it was all terminal/text-based, so there was a baseline that was shared in common. There weren't 4-5 social media platforms, 10 art web sites, countless conventions, thousands of artists, hundreds of fursuit makers...some folks formed communities based solely on sharing ideas for even making suits.
A lot of what was gained resulted in loss. You can buy a cheap Chinese handheld that contains every Sega Genesis, SNES, TG16, etc. game ever made. But have it cast aside, as abundance of options has paradoxically created boredom and dissatisfaction.
It sounds almost ridiculous to have a longing for the days of scarecity where that alone helped form friendships and opened horizons for new experiences, when everything is on a silver platter today. It seems ridiculous to want to call a BBS on a 900 number and use a terminal buffer to capture game hints while paying $10/hr, but trying to get all of the hints so you can use them when you need help, rather than doing a Google search, or if you're into that, asking an LLM.
But that sort of information scarecity spawned bulletin boards, swap meets, user groups, things that had a much more physical and tangible feel to them. It formed smaller, tighter knit communities.
I absolutely do not believe in gatekeeping; I completely acknowledge and even value the benefits of pervasive accessability. In tech and in the furry fandom. But there's still something valuable, at least to me, lost in the process.
There are many advantages of bigger tents and abundance for all when it comes to tech advances, and fandoms, but I still often reminesce about how scarecity, mystery, and the effort I had to put into things to get a reward shaped me and makes it really difficult for me to ever truly feel bored. If I'm feeling bored...I have tens of thousands of things that I can focus on and find joy...if I just put in the effort.
Content warning: Tech nostalgia, discussion of scarcity vs. abundance in gaming/RL communities - A Burr Essay
We didnât have easy ways to pirate Genesis, NES and SNES games back then. Or going further back, Atari and Coleco carts. And even when we could download pirated games on the computers, it took forever to download them. And before modems were common, meeting up with folks to have copy parties still was a social thing.
You often still had to know people in order to pirate things. Get âEliteâ access on bulletin boards, etc. And even then, you didnât have complete sets of every game made for every period system. It was just impossible to store and even more impossible to keep in your pocket. Accessing pirated software often meant effort with a social part to it.
Content warning: Tech nostalgia, discussion of scarcity vs. abundance in gaming/RL communities - A Burr Essay
We still have this in a way, it's just now that's gone to nerd culture. People that are really into the nitty gritty of some things getting together to dig into them, or who like retro tech or other things and are really into them. Like I like typewriters, and they have get togethers called âType In's" where people get together, show off their machines trade, buy, sell, and just overall enjoy being around other typewriter users. That scarcity you're looking for, it's there too. It's just different now than it used to be.
Content warning: Tech nostalgia, discussion of scarcity vs. abundance in gaming/RL communities - A Burr Essay
@xoagray My point is not that it isnât there. But most everyone is on âcheat modeâ and that makes commitment difficult because of lack of required effort.
To use a stronger example, when BlockBuster was a Thing, you had to drive there, commit to a movie, IF they had what you wanted, drive back, then watch it before it was due and then bring it back. So you watched with a bit more intention and were deliberate about doing it before a certain time.
Nowadays, folks will scroll through Netflix for 15 seconds and declare thereâs nothing they want to watch. Can you make a pilgrimage to the last Blockbuster to do this? Sure. Can you find conventions where you still have to sift through a lot of used physical media to find the one you want to buy, then commit to it? Sure. Like records and tapes and such.
My point is, again, thatâs not what most people do. Pervasive convenience and immediate accessibility makes non-commitment and lack of focus/appreciation the norm.
Itâs not that there isnât a way to âenjoy the process.â Itâs that the path of least resistance is to do so whereas it absolutely wasnât an option before so everyone of a certain age learned to focus on the little they had rather than be overworked or bored by the instantly available abundance in the palm of their hand.
The same thing you can type on and take everywhere with you that in most all practical ways is superior to a typewriter, except the ways that matter very, very much to a select few.
Content warning: Tech nostalgia, discussion of scarcity vs. abundance in gaming/RL communities - A Burr Essay
Oh yeah, I'm not really arguing your point, I was just pointing out that for folks that are still seeking that kind of community feel, it is still there. But yeah, 100% it's not the norm. It is unfortunately just smaller groups of people now. Society in general has gotten more used to everything being instant and being massively spoiled for choice. Couple that with everything trying to vie for our attention in the most dark patterned ways possible and it's a recipe for short attention spans and an inability to commit to anything.
âThe world is full of refugees They're just like you and just like me But as people we have a choice To end the void with all its forceâ
The Everlasting, Manic Street Preachers
This verse hit so hard at yesterdayâs gig at Audley End. James Dean Bradfieldâs voice is still incredible. The words, imagery and power of the music when they work are just something else.
Why do the Stereophonics sell out bigger stadiums than these guys???
I wish my body gave semi-decent errno-style diagnostics like ENOBOWELSPC, instead of the vague Windows-like "Warning: feeling generally weird. Check diet and sleep quotas and retry."
(Ugh, unless it's appendicitis. I *think* the occasional ouch I'm getting near my right hip that started this morning is just muscle pain from building a set of shelves in the garage yesterday, but I probably ought to get it checked⊠:/)
@Jencen Thankfully none of those, and everyone I've talked to about it so far thinks it's probably not a worry (yet). Could be a pulled muscle, could be to do with dinner last night which was quite large (my dad cookedâŠ!), and apparently appendicitis is very painful, which this isn't - mainly just a twinge with certain movements. So I'm thinking, keep an eye on it, get help if it gets more painful instead of recovering. I guess my aunt falling and ending up in hospital yesterday has concentrated my mind on medical things.
I canât help but wonder what Cescoâs thinking. That quiet smile, just enough to make it suspicious.
Painting for Cesco Traditional. Acrylics over canvas.
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There is a time-lapse video, that despite my camera was out of focus during the half of the recording of it, I edited it to show it, you can see it on the first comment of this submission on my Telegram art channel: https://t.me/panda_paco Or you can see the full video, among with others, and to see paintings I've done that I haven't shared on my galleries yet, exclusive for those who support me on Patreon and Ko-Fi, I would appreciate your help so I can keep doing this for living, I always try my best to give so many cool exclusive things there: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/pandapaco Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/panda_paco Thank you!
No man is an island, Entire of itself. Each is a piece of the continent, A part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less. As well as if a promontory were. As well as if a manor of thine own Or of thine friend's were. Each man's death diminishes me, For I am involved in mankind. Therefore, send not to know For whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee.
"The monsters who benefit from the status quo don't want you to know this. They want to brainwash you with Margaret Thatcher's mantra, "There is no such thing as society." They want you to think that you are a pathetic, atomized individual. They want you to die in a heatwave while gasping out your profound regret for not recycling more diligently and taking more care with your "carbon footprint." They want you to drive around for hours looking for an independent cardboard seller to make your protest sign with, convinced that it's more important to avoid shopping on Amazon than it is to actually show up at the protest outside the Amazon warehouse. They want you to curse yourself for failing to cycle and take the bus in your city where there are no bike lanes and the buses run every 45 minutes and stop at 8PM. If you wanted a livable city, you should have made better consumption choices! Perhaps you could dig your own subway, ever think of that, hmmm?
You, me and everyone we know have all been subjected to a 40-year blitz of anti-solidaristic propaganda, aimed at convincing us that we are only allowed to fight the system as individuals. Don't like your health care? Shop around! Don't like your boss? Quit your job! Under no circumstances should you advocate for either a union or socialized health-care. You're an individual, there is no such thing as society.â
In short, running from platforms that do things we don't like won't change them. Because too many people are just going to stay there anyway. Running from Twitter, Discord, etc, they're not going to change because the vast majority of people won't do that. They'll just carry on doing what they always have.
What's needed instead is for the users to collectively tell companies to knock off their shit. Which admittedly is something also pretty damed hard to get people to do, but it's the better option of the two.
I donât understand this. The only thing that gives these platforms their power is their huge user base - leaving is the only method that you as an individual have to directly affect that power.
Collectively demanding anything wonât make a difference - it doesnât threaten their power.
@nepi This is true, but their huge user bases also insulate them from people leaving unless it happens en masse. For example, just before Musk bought Twitter, it had around 260 million users. When he bought it many people left. I'm not exaggerating when I say millions. But, it's continued to get worse. All in all about 10 million people have left Twitter since then. But out of 260 million that just wasn't enough. The vast, overwhelming majority of people stayed, and other than changing their name to X and becoming even more of a cess pool nothing else really changed.
Sometimes it's better to stay, make noise, and get anyone else you can to also make noise. Be intolerable, getting together and being loud about the things you want to see change can sometimes work against large companies where just leaving doesn't.
@nepi "Sometimes it's better to stay, make noise, and get anyone else you can to also make noise. Be intolerable, getting together and being loud about the things you want to see change can sometimes work against large companies where just leaving doesn't."
This also means putting a hudge target on our account for the people with too much free time. Receiving torrents of hate of people which are very happy with the way this plateforms work isn't funny nor good for the mental health. It would feel more approripate to leave a bot doing it instead, while leaving to an other plateform.
@ck0 @nepi This is a risk. But it's a risk we face in everything we do. And I understand not everyone is up to bearing that risk. And if it's not something you're up to that's also fine. There have been times I've just stepped away from things as well, not every cause is a hill worth dying on.
If someone is legitimately afraid that people will come after them directly for one reason or another and they're not up to that, they definitely shouldn't put themselves potentially in harms way.
They won't do it. The only way to move towards it is to help or fund a platform that is moving in the direction that you want - you're already on Mastodon, so you're already doing that.
Unfortunately what people actually want is a benevolent billionaire that provides roughly what they want. In that absence they will choose a free of cost platform run by venture capitalists until it becomes unbearable, then move directly on to another VC backed service. Rinse and repeat.
Until the average person understands that to control something they consider important they need to pay for it *even and especially if it is free* nothing will change. That's the more likely option.
The other option is everyone collectively provides their labour to create the service they want. That's even less probable.
@syllopsium You're right from a certain point of view. It's really hard to get people to agree on or move in unison on anything. But often as not a small vocal group can do more than a silent group of people that leave. Unless that group can reach a critical mass, it might not even be noticed.
Although, if you're talking about a commercial service it'll have to align exactly with their commercial interests, otherwise they will continually try to shift the goalposts.
That takes a montruous quantity of time and energy to do so. I get that's possible, there are laws in EU which can be exploited for this. But when just to get the GPDR applied in the right way requires to legally attack the administration in charge of the GPDR application because they are more busy trying to find ways to bend the laws in order to let the companies no respect the GPDR, attempting to exploit a local legislation in order to constrain a company to be less shitty feels like an impossible task.
It feels much more easier to just leave to a more appropriate plateform, or to make a selfhosted one.
@ck0 I'm not familiar with the specifics on laws in the EU, but I get that legally forcing a company to do anything is difficult. Over here. (US,) basically money is god so large corporations with their vast wealth typically just buy whatever lawmakers they need to get things the way they want them. And for some things sure, just leaving and going to something else, or doing something self hosted is a viable answer, but for other things it's not. Every situation is going to be different. Sometimes just leaving isn't an option because a service or piece of software has become so ubiquitous that it's basically infrastructure. Sometimes neither approach will really make a difference. Everything has to be looked at on a case by case basis.
@Lemmus Oh yeah, that's a whole other side of the thing. In cases like that it makes sense to individually move away. Same for Twitter as they now use all of the tweets to train the love child of Elon Musk and a 30 year old CRAY super computer.
And of course, if you run from Company Nasty to Company Slightly Less Nasty, there's nothing in the way for Nasty to simply buy Slightly Less Nasty along with their customer base. Which is the other side of the coin why systemic, collective fight is the answer to lasting improvement.
Also, I know perfectly well it doesn't change Facebook or reduce their income in any meaningful way that I'm not there. On the other hand it makes a meaningful difference to me. Not being exposed to their racism amplifier and not contributing to ad impressions feels good. To me.
@gimmechocolate @nepi The thing is leaving isnât a challenge to that power either. Most large companies have user bases in the millions. Some the tens or hundreds of millions. The small number of people that stop using their services in cases like this arenât enough to matter. Twitter is a special case where because the owner is a shitbird nothing will really matter there.
If you can do that it's a great thing. But getting people to move off of one service onto another is in it's self kind of like trying to move a mountain a teaspoon at a time. I hate to keep using Twitter as an example here, because this isn't specifically about Twitter, or even social media. But it provides a good example here.
When Musk bought Twitter and started turning it to shit Mastodon users thought that Mastodon would be the easy choice. And that people would happily come here over somewhere else corporate owned like BlueSky where they'll probably face the same fate in a decade or less. But that isn't what happened at all.
95%+ people that were on Twitter, stayed on Twitter. And to this day are still there. 4.5% went to BlueSky, and like .5% came to Mastodon. In a lot of ways on paper Mastodon was easily better than the alternatives, but it wasn't what most people wanted. Most people just wanted to stay where their friends were. And were willing to put up with everything to do so.
This kind of thing also applies to other businesses in a way. People get stuck into a software, service, operating system, etc, and don't want to leave it because they become familiar with it and use it a lot. They don't want to learn something else or invest in different hardware. It makes getting people to just leave anything en masse very difficult.
It can also be difficult to recreate what they do for logistic or legal reasons. Sometimes there's a lot more to it than just splitting off and making your own version of something.
None of this is to say that people shouldn't try, just that it doesn't always work.
@gimmechocolate @nepi It's largely the case everywhere. At least here in the US. And I think that's the real crux of the problem. Too many people are just totally unwilling to do anything.
If you find a way to make a computer bad at maths, you've fucked up.
If you've found a way to make a computer bad at maths, and are calling it the next big tech revolution, then I hope you're ready to get hauled in front of a public inquiry in 10 years time.
Science Officer's log - we've returned from a very successful away mission to Anthro Irish where our scans recorded amazing vibes and wonderful times with friends. A stellar time was had all around.
Anyone here familiar with physical fibre types and could give me a bit of advice?
I am planning to put a network cable between my house and garage. The only feasible route seems to be the one the solar panel guys put their cables along: out the eaves of the house, down the wall, through a groove dremmelled between two paving stones in the path, and in through the garage wall. There's already an AC power cable on that route, so I'm looking at putting in fibre instead of copper as I won't be able to get any separation between the parallel AC and network cables.
I would expect to cable-clip it to the wall (I think flat plate ones with cable ties are recommended for fibre, yes? I think those have already been used for some of the other cables) and run it loose through the groove between the pavers - probably covered by gravel later. It looks like loose tube fibre is probably not right because the fibres would have a whole storey drop where they hang inside the tube and I understand that's not good. So probably tight buffered, right?
Do I need SWA or something, or is normal outdoor cable likely to be okay? Do I need to put it in a conduit to protect it from the elements? But if I do that, it'll be hanging loose inside a tube again and presumably that's not great.
Should I go for SMF? I would think if I install it right it should be fine and not need to go for MMF, but I'm not sure if there's any other reason to favour one over the other - it's only going to be 20m at most I would think. Do I need an attenuator for that kind of range?
Oof, I can't think what else I ought to consider. OM3 is presumably fine if going for multi-mode, and OS2 for single-mode. Are mode conditioning adaptors still a thing that are needed, for getting the right launch offset? I'm assuming not as I haven't seen any mention of them in my recent reading, but I just seem to have no ideaâŠ
I used to do networking in power plants and OM1 MM was used for most everything below a 2000m run and is fine for 100Mbps and 1Gig up to about a few hundred meters. MM also has the advantage of being cheaper. Loose tube should be ok if vertical run is less than a 10m or so. What ever you used, make sure that the cable has more strands than needed and are terminated (so much easier if you get a broken fiber. I always wanted my fiber runs to be protected, unless armored
@Mira Thank you! I still have plenty to think about but all the info helps. My searches for preterminated outdoor fibre cables tend not to come up with any 1- or 2-strand cables, 4 seems to be the minimum, but 8 seems barely more expensive so it might well be worth getting 8 even though I probably only need 2 at the moment and am unlikely to need more than 4 in future, IMO. I assume I'm best putting one of those little patch boxes at each end so I can plug all the strands in so they don't get dirty or damaged, and so I can fix the outdoor cable in place all the way along and never have to touch it again, then use short patch leads to the actual devices.
For that distance, even OM1 will technically do 10Gbps. These days it's easier to get SMF fiber and optics, the MMF stuff is actually getting harder to find, at least in US suppliers. We default to SMF for everything new now.
@Thumper Ah, nice. At least one supplier I looked at seemed to have SM cable slightly cheaper than MM, but the difference wasn't huge and most places seem to do both. I do wonder if SM is any more fragile? I get the feeling it would be but I'm not sure I can source that feeling. I'd guess SM might be a little more futureproof too, although 10Gbps will likely be enough for me for a long long time!
We just did SMF upgrades for two runs at two sites and both were 15-20% cheaper than MMF. I don't have hands-on experience with new SMF termination but I'm told there are lots of quick/easy termination tools that don't require the hours of polishing anymore if you're just using it for local LAN stuff and not long range stuff.
"Are you aware of anything which would prevent you from holding SC or DV clearance?"
No, but if you put me in for it, I'm going to spend the next few weeks dressing like I'm on my way to Pride. You know, just to reduce the blackmail potential a little more, and improve my chances...
I feel like this decade is going to end more or less like the XKEYSCORE/Snowden scandal did: the level of encryption used on the internet increases further. Maybe to the point of "everything travels over VPNs"
Four windows. Four cute faces: Slyde, Scotch, Russec, and Kosten, each painted on their own acrylic canvas, all turning to look at one another, just like a certain TV intro⊠but fluffier.
Acrylics over canvases.
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There is a time-lapse I recorded working on these 4 pieces, you can watch it on the first comment of this submission on my Telegram art channel: https://t.me/panda_paco
Or there is even a longer version (36 minutes long) of the process of this project, exclusive for Patreon and Ko-Fi supporters, as well of other time-lapse videos, many pictures I haven't shared on my galleries yet, high resolutions and more. Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/notifications Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/panda_paco Thank you!
Official Art Channel đČđœ Clean cute artist. Full-Time Panda. Here to paint some smiles. https://linktr.ee/panda_paco Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/pandapaco Ko-Fi Shop: https://ko-fi.com/panda_paco/shop Stickers channel: @pacostickers
Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) are often left out of critical infrastructure discussions. From Sudanâs total Internet isolation to traffic collapses in Italy and the Netherlands, fragile interconnection leaves nations vulnerable.
Find out why IXPs are systemic stabilisers, not just technical optimisers:
In âEveâs Byte of the Appleâ, Sandi Toksvig will be taking an alternative look at the evolution of information, at how the knowledge of women and about women...
Happy Spider-Man day! (Apparently? I used to have it in the calendar on my old phone, but that phone broke a few months ago and I'm still finding things I used to be forewarned about but⊠am no longer.)
I might adopt that. I've never liked that "self" is a convention rather than a language definitive. Using "elf" would be more obviously arbitrary but still be close enough to convention to not throw off those who depend upon them.
I am an artist from Montreal currently working fulltime on furry art! I studied 3D animation for 3 years, and worked as a 3D modeller for about a year, ultimately realising that I didn't enjoy it as...
official petition to the national french assembly just got 2 million signatures against bad farming practices and corruption and the speaker of the gvt responded by hiring a lobbyist as chief of staff...
For the US, just change it to say "GOP Run US Government Response: We'll not just say no. We'll do the opposite to cause the most pain, harm, and chaos."
Tom Lehrer on public domain (2020):https://tomlehrersongs.com/The recording is from Copenhagen, Denmark, in September 1967.Here are some other links:Tom Lehr...
The physical cart shows the original cartridge's label on a tiny screen? Heh, wow. (I probably still have a Star Raiders cartridge in a box somewhere, somewhere... I am sure I've at least seen my old Atari Assembler relatively recently.)
DecentCart2350, new upcoming open source #Atari8bit computers multicart with a nice screen (and many other useful features - see video). Entry for ABBUC Hardware Contest 2025. https://youtu.be/o-sEndb4mEI #atari #retrocomputers
The DecentCart2350 is a new multicart for Atari 8-bit computers. It's based on the RP2350 microcontroller and features a large screen that can display the cu...
Content warning: Tech nostalgia, discussion of scarcity vs. abundance in gaming/RL communities - A Burr Essay
We didnât have easy ways to pirate Genesis, NES and SNES games back then. Or going further back, Atari and Coleco carts. And even when we could download pirated games on the computers, it took forever to download them. And before modems were common, meeting up with folks to have copy parties still was a social thing.
You often still had to know people in order to pirate things. Get âEliteâ access on bulletin boards, etc. And even then, you didnât have complete sets of every game made for every period system. It was just impossible to store and even more impossible to keep in your pocket. Accessing pirated software often meant effort with a social part to it.
Content warning: Tech nostalgia, discussion of scarcity vs. abundance in gaming/RL communities - A Burr Essay
Content warning: Tech nostalgia, discussion of scarcity vs. abundance in gaming/RL communities - A Burr Essay
@xoagray My point is not that it isnât there. But most everyone is on âcheat modeâ and that makes commitment difficult because of lack of required effort.
To use a stronger example, when BlockBuster was a Thing, you had to drive there, commit to a movie, IF they had what you wanted, drive back, then watch it before it was due and then bring it back. So you watched with a bit more intention and were deliberate about doing it before a certain time.
Nowadays, folks will scroll through Netflix for 15 seconds and declare thereâs nothing they want to watch. Can you make a pilgrimage to the last Blockbuster to do this? Sure. Can you find conventions where you still have to sift through a lot of used physical media to find the one you want to buy, then commit to it? Sure. Like records and tapes and such.
My point is, again, thatâs not what most people do. Pervasive convenience and immediate accessibility makes non-commitment and lack of focus/appreciation the norm.
Itâs not that there isnât a way to âenjoy the process.â Itâs that the path of least resistance is to do so whereas it absolutely wasnât an option before so everyone of a certain age learned to focus on the little they had rather than be overworked or bored by the instantly available abundance in the palm of their hand.
The same thing you can type on and take everywhere with you that in most all practical ways is superior to a typewriter, except the ways that matter very, very much to a select few.