Here's why we don't like how the world currently works

ben_vulpes 'Insta-zap' this reminds me of the poor, self-deluding fuckers who work at a defense contractor client of mine. "It's different somehow if there's a *camera* on the flying robot", never mind that the algos to point a gun are a quadratic estimation away from the algos to lock a camera. "It's different somehow if we write 'pure' code to do flight path planning", never mind that the flight paths are for killing. Just pick up a gun and be done with it, ye hypocritical nerds.
mircea_popescu You got your finger on a sore spot there.

ben_vulpes This is the "curse of the cool problem" that these over-educated CS people must endure. Cannot simply work in salt mines, 'cause inadequately intellectually fulfilling. Instead, sell soul to devil, lie about it to self for the duration of life.
mircea_popescu Hey. It's adequate to their needs and aspirations.

ben_vulpes Tellingly, none of them will touch BTC. "Too volatile". "No economists".
mircea_popescu The entire "shit in your mouth and think about how you're not" thing definitely manages to keep a bunch of intelligently stupid folk busy. The best makework the devil ever invented. beats the shit out of painting rocks white then turning them over.ⁱ

ben_vulpes Poor children, unable to comprehend the world for themselves without someone there instructing them on what to parse from the atoms a-knocking. "We need safe-by-construction computers in this application. Here's 10M." ('safe-by-construction', 'correct-by-construction' - as asciilifeform points out time and time again, these are impossibilities). They do enjoy themselves, and the USG keeps otherwise brilliant and hardworking people from being useful at large.
mircea_popescu Exactly the Wordpress problem, repeated.ⁱⁱ Because a bunch of asswipes are pushing out insecure code, and because a bunch of imbeciles heart those assholes, people can't run websites.ⁱⁱⁱ This is the entire US system, at its core.

nubbins` Otherwise brilliant 8) "He's brilliant, except for the fucking idiot part".
mircea_popescu Happens atrociously often.

nubbins` No kidding
ben_vulpes Bright folks are easily deluded outside their areas of competence.
mircea_popescu And you know, everyone's hope is that they will live for long enough in a pile of goop made out of copies of themselves big enough that they won't ever have to go face to face with those "evil sociopaths" and "trolls". Yet something tells me the recent beheadings aren't excesses, but merely the early drops of a coming avalanche.

So... yeah. I don't believe you will survive. The women might, but they won't like household slavery all that much. Then again... you people can put up with anything, right ?

Cool.

1. If you remember the 60s you weren't there, man, and if you don't understand this reference you've never lived on a military base. That's all. [↩]
2. Do you know what Wordpress does, since pingbacks were introduced ? It allows ANY IP to call up the installation and claim site X is sending a pingback. No need to check that the IP making the call and the domain of site X check out. Because why bother add another line of code in there ? On top of all the rest of the meaningless, useless turd one line is too much. Code is poetry indeed.

   This is periodically reported in the so-called IT press, by people who lack the intellect to understand what's happening, or the drive to even try. Mullenweg's response ?

   "This tradeoff in pingback’s design has been there for a decade now,” he said via email. “It’s seldom used outside of experimentation because it gets shut down by anti-spam providers like Akismet or web hosts when used at any scale, and there are cheaper, easier, and more effective ways to DDOS sites. That’s why no serious attacks (above 2gbps) use it."

   That's right, you heard it here first, being inept and writing bad code is now "a tradeoff". Like any bug is a feature - for your average cockroach, any other cockroach is not a bug in the landscape, but a feature of the landscape. And yeah, "code is poetry" doesn't need to fix the bad code he pushes out to millions of eager muppets, because whatever, "nobody is using the holes". Think about that.

   While you think about that, think about this : top tier providers still charge a cent per gigabyte. Two cents a second still comes to 1`728 dollars a day. Got 1`728 dollars a day to spend on keeping your website online ? You'd better, or else you're not part of the Mullenweg Minority. You know, the people that are allowed to run websites, because someone decided to push out buggy code a while ago.

   And you fucking love him for it, is the problem. If anyone asks you Mullenweg is not the worst enemy you ever have. You think he's helping you, you think he did something good, and useful, and is a nice guy. Meanwhile he's efficiently and effectually working to fuck you in the ass, together with all his similarly minded friends. As long as you don't realise it, all gravy. Right ? [↩]

3. And it doesn't stop there, either. Take Buffett, the dead lion. Guy's not paying himself a salary, because why would he ? I don't pay myself a salary either, why the fuck would you want to pay 50% of what you make to the Derp Union when you can just use corporate tax structures like anyone sane in the head ?

   Unlike me, however, Buffett also displays the outrageously offensive degree of hypocrisy required to go around complaining that "my secretary is paying more taxes than I do". Of course she is, poor woman doesn't own Berkshire, she has to make a salary, which is taxed to hell.

   Unlike you, however, Buffett also understands why he is doing this. No, it's not "a tradeoff" and no, it's not benign. And it's not what you think it is, nor is it hard to understand for that matter, if put in plain words. If you force a high tax level on upwardly mobile young people at that time when they're yet vulnerable, they won't ever be able to acummulate the sort of capital required to play on a level field with Berkshire & the rest of the old boys club. If you make it so that any website out there can be DDoS'd at any time, you ensure that only Apple, Google and friends can make websites.

   And that's exactly how the whole thing works, from high to low and at all levels in between : a bunch of idiots who can't see past the skin of things imagine Buffett's a nice guy, a bunch of kids who could have been the next Buffett get raped. So in the end a Romanian takes the place they should have taken long ago (hey, you can screw over your own kids, you can't really screw over other people's kids - not nearly as well, anyway) and Buffett gets to cling to power and relevancy long past his expiration date. Win-win, right ? Yeah, I don't mind it, Buffett doesn't mind it, meanwhile you're screwed and good luck with the college debt.

   Because you don't have the sense to protect the vulnerable but essential 1% among yourselves, because instead you listen to the poisonous drip coming from insolent douchebags too old to get it up anymore, you get screwed. But... it's not being screwed if nobody knows about it, right ?

   Well... you're screwed. I know about it. So do you, now. Burns like a motherfucker, dunnit. A well. [↩]