Post B0RkCLR6sKu6W5dEXo by SimonCHulse@mastodon.nz
(DIR) More posts by SimonCHulse@mastodon.nz
(DIR) Post #B0RiUEfUZsHWpWlK4G by kottke@mastodon.social
2025-11-19T18:26:02Z
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Iowa City Made Its Buses Free. Traffic Cleared, and So Did the Air. “The transit system is one of the greatest tools communities have to combat climate change and reduce emission. You can make a pretty immediate impact.” https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/18/climate/iowa-city-free-buses.html?unlocked_article_code=1.2U8.ikg9.G_8g-6-gYeyM
(DIR) Post #B0RiUFvpsawukVPtBI by SimonCHulse@mastodon.nz
2025-11-20T18:51:24Z
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@sidawson if only our government could stop focussing on spending tens of millions developing a national payment card, and just do this, they would save so much money.
(DIR) Post #B0RiUHCBBJcIfU4SIK by sidawson@mas.to
2025-11-20T18:52:24Z
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@SimonCHulse It's never about the money (except putting more of it in their own personal pockets, of course).Also, just in general they're assholes. So there's that.But yeah, free buses are a HUGE win for everyone. Poor people. Rich people. The whole community.So SO dumb that people in power don't just... do it.
(DIR) Post #B0RiUIJf0zCA8yZwau by SimonCHulse@mastodon.nz
2025-11-20T18:54:11Z
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@sidawson they could stop paying fees to whoever runs Snapper/ATHop et.al. (admittedly a few tens of jobs might be lost as those companies lay off their staff), but other than that it would be a net positive.
(DIR) Post #B0RiUJMB96ntN4lT9s by lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-11-20T19:08:35Z
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@SimonCHulse @sidawson they've all already been cut off at the knees by the gov't's decision to engage US defence contractor Cubic to do it. That was a huge mistake. Totally agree that free pub trans makes sense. Otherwise, it should be base on an open standard for ticketing to allow competition (see https://openstandars.nz).
(DIR) Post #B0RiUO7TRD0o8uvIQq by SimonCHulse@mastodon.nz
2025-11-20T18:55:10Z
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@sidawson it would also mean we could stop making tonnes of plastic cards.
(DIR) Post #B0RirnSvMtKTPd7Poe by sidawson@mas.to
2025-11-20T19:12:52Z
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@lightweight We have the American problem - hire the biggest, most ignorant idiots available, then be constantly shocked at just how awful they are.
(DIR) Post #B0Rj54zJX1FZWPbP3w by lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-11-20T19:15:19Z
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@sidawson there're lots of dedicated, smart, conscientious, hard working people in the public service, but there's no evidence that any of them are involved in tech procurement. None.
(DIR) Post #B0RjBCDxXZ9zhaMx0a by sidawson@mas.to
2025-11-20T19:16:22Z
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@lightweight This might be just a human thing.How many orgs, the biggest asshole with the loudest voice gets final say on key decisions. Not, I dunno, the experts who actually know what they're talking about.it's depressing as hell.
(DIR) Post #B0RjKwpPdY0OqeXOF6 by lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-11-20T19:18:10Z
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@sidawson yep. The worst thing, though, is that the decisions of the private sector are, on the whole, even worse. There's so much dumb at the highest levels. It's a marvel to me that *anything* in the world works at all. It all just seems to be limping along, one stumble away from total collapse.
(DIR) Post #B0RjTsz9IIyFXHLzKi by sidawson@mas.to
2025-11-20T19:19:45Z
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@lightweight yeaaaah.<sigh>I grew up reading cyberpunk, and various other dystopian futures.I _really_ didn't want to be living in one :(
(DIR) Post #B0RkCKqb45hGgqY4dE by sidawson@mas.to
2025-11-20T18:55:18Z
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@SimonCHulse 100%.Also, nationalise a whole bunch of services.I'd MUCH rather pay a lot less/nothing for occasionally crappy services than what we currently do for services we KNOW will be atrociously worse and exponentially more expensive over time.
(DIR) Post #B0RkCLR6sKu6W5dEXo by SimonCHulse@mastodon.nz
2025-11-20T18:56:17Z
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@sidawson oh and those cards are not only plastic when they’re retired, they’re also ewaste on account of the NFC chip stuck inside
(DIR) Post #B0RkCM0ujDXmJ8NpLs by sidawson@mas.to
2025-11-20T18:56:43Z
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@SimonCHulse Ai ai ai. I hadn't thought of that, but yeah. They really are. UGH.
(DIR) Post #B0RkCMeGMv1GHAnFgW by SimonCHulse@mastodon.nz
2025-11-20T19:00:09Z
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@sidawson moving everything to Apple Pay et.al will significantly reduce that because the ewaste will be built into a phone which already will be that one day anyway.Japan and London and probably lots of other places have already done this.
(DIR) Post #B0RkCNIJxz3uHPXF7g by sidawson@mas.to
2025-11-20T19:01:00Z
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@SimonCHulse Maybe.The tracking aspect though.Personally, i'm a fan of cash (for all of the above reasons).
(DIR) Post #B0RkCNns4gIbrGIRIe by SimonCHulse@mastodon.nz
2025-11-20T19:01:29Z
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@sidawson cash can’t be tracked by the person who lost it.
(DIR) Post #B0RkCOdywvz0Ssg3Wa by sidawson@mas.to
2025-11-20T19:02:46Z
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@SimonCHulse It's a small risk I'm willing to take.Can't think the last time I lost cash.Can definitely think the last time I was tracked by a large organisation/legal entity whom it was none of their goddamn business that I was doing some entirely legal, harmless ordinary thing.
(DIR) Post #B0RkCPMeGriChPZj96 by SimonCHulse@mastodon.nz
2025-11-20T19:07:32Z
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@sidawson speaking as a neurodivergent alphabet soup of a person who is also prone to minor panic attacks when I lose things, I’ll personally take the trackable technology. I use Apple to keep the company-side spying to a minimum.
(DIR) Post #B0RkCPtGJbneKYplyq by lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-11-20T19:27:43Z
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@SimonCHulse @sidawson hmmm. Re the Apple spying thing... I hate to break it to you... but if they're not spying now, they will be soon - shareholder value *always* wins with corporations.
(DIR) Post #B0RkG3nkNpfoytzYlE by sidawson@mas.to
2025-11-20T19:28:28Z
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@lightweight Strong agree.And Apple are, alas, looking at MS record profits from turning into a spyware company, and, now Jobs is out of the way, sidling steadily in that direction themselves.
(DIR) Post #B0RkTMC1JchDmngZzk by lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-11-20T19:30:54Z
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@sidawson corporations are all just at various stages (directly proportional to their sizes) in the race to the ethical bottom. The biggest are the farthest gone, and Apple... and MS and Google and Nvidia, etc. are the biggest in human history.
(DIR) Post #B0RkdGisVXo7iVmUSG by sidawson@mas.to
2025-11-20T19:32:40Z
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@lightweight Huh. Interesting observation.I think you might be onto something there (size directly related to speed/closeness to ethical bottom).Hmm.
(DIR) Post #B0RkgaN1umjTWP8x04 by lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-11-20T19:33:17Z
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@sidawson I wrote this a while back to document the observation for posterity: https://davelane.nz/megacorps
(DIR) Post #B0RkqFT6U0VRahal84 by SimonCHulse@mastodon.nz
2025-11-20T19:33:18Z
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@sidawson @lightweight but also I DO NOT have the spoons for open source. Not yet anyway.
(DIR) Post #B0RkqGSQnzYweuHjii by lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-11-20T19:35:00Z
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@SimonCHulse @sidawson a lot of us are working on making it require fewer spoons. It's also worth noting another observation: that the 'ease of adoption' of a new technology is directly linked to how completely those adopting it can be exploited... to wit: https://davelane.nz/why-mainstream-social-media-so-damn-user-friendly
(DIR) Post #B0Rl1oW4W3uRTXUkng by sidawson@mas.to
2025-11-20T19:37:05Z
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@lightweight yeah nice, good read!
(DIR) Post #B0RlOwlE1u5Xhnc6Vc by sidawson@mas.to
2025-11-20T19:41:16Z
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@lightweight Time is a big factor, too.For scale, I have a password manager on a local linux box. It busted maybe a month ago. I haven't bothered to even look at why (I can still read, I just can't write).Last time it needed kicking it took 3 full work days to fix (messy complex shit). So, fuck that.Maybe next month. Maybe next year, I'll look again. I _really_ can't be bothered with that level of pain.But, that doesn't bode well for a whole new platform. At least, not yet.
(DIR) Post #B0RliPKi1T3Xp5UTFg by lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-11-20T19:44:49Z
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@sidawson a few of us are looking at solving this by providing commercially supported libre tools to our local (Aotearoa) community. Fwiw, I've found password managers (VaultWarden is hands down the best I've found) to be one of the least problematic self-hosted tools out there... I wrote up my method here: https://tech.oeru.org/setting-your-own-bitwarden-password-manager-and-vaultwarden-sync-server
(DIR) Post #B0Rm4gnrkVweNQkkvg by sidawson@mas.to
2025-11-20T19:48:48Z
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@lightweight Yep, that's more or less how it's done here.Something is wrong with it, somewhere inside. Can't be fucked triaging it.I've used linux since maybe 1991? I did spend a month trying to get desktop running (as in, one month where I did _nothing_ else), a couple of decades ago, but it was super jank, so I gave up.I realise it's much better now, but I'm also fully pragmatic that shit breaks. It takes time to fix.I've been in IT 40+ years. I'm not new at this. But also, life, blah.