"Unexpectedly"

Vox introduces Eric Raymond's open letter to the Democrats as follows:

 ESR writes one in the faint hope they will react reasonably and learn from their unexpected defeat:

"Unexpected".

...

Ok, now that I've stopped laughing - tempered by the fact that no matter how much I knew things would not be the walkover Democrats expected the morning of November 8th, that things were still uncertain as to victory - let's get to the term "Unexpected".

It's been an ongoing meme for the last eight years every time a failure predicted by those opposing a Democrat policy came about, to snark about it by mentioning that it was "unexpected."

Health insurance costs rose? "Unexpectedly" - and so forth. Amazing how often the "unexpected" came about - and if you only listen to the left, it is unexpected.

It's worth reading the comments at Vox's, and at Eric's article, but it's also worth noting here that the left has been living in a bubble for years. 

#OrangeList

Ken Burnside of Ad Astra games is a nice enough guy who has put together a few space combat sim boardgames like Attack Vector: Tactical, the Saganami Island Simulator (the same basic system set in David Weber's Honorverse), and Squadron Strike which, despite some seriously innovative game mechanics to translate 3D movement into something approaching a playable system, still is more the province of those who, growing up, thought Harpoon, Advanced Squad Leader and Starfleet Battles were either just right, or didn't have enough detail.

Yeah, that's me.

Anyway, he's a good enough fellow, and a sharp designer, but on the "nice guy" side of libertarianism that still buys into feminism, rape culture, etc., and anything but a Trump supporter. So imagine his surprise when (as he posted on Google+, re-shared courtesy of Eric Raymond aka ESR. Yes, that ESR.):

I've been informed that someone has created an "orangelist" of Trump supporters in the game industry, and that Ad Astra Games is top of the list, largely due to alphabetical order.

The progenitor of the list says that all entities on the list were contacted before he added them. We have no record of this contact for Ad Astra.

At least two other game companies listed on the "orangelist" have been out of business for ten years, and one designer listed has been dead since 1997.
Ad Astra's position is that we'll work with anyone who knows our products and does work we can use, and that whomever you voted for in this election is your business, not ours.

While we were going to create a Black Friday discount code that ran through the first Sunday in December...we're going to start it a day or two earlier than normal, and call it the NoOrangeList code instead.

For those of you interested in seeing the list:

So yeah.  In all their stellar competence, some SJW's not only put together a list to shame "Trump Supporters", but they didn't bother finding out if some of the people on the list were indeed supporters, much less alive. Apparently Dems and SJW's are so used to the dead voting they figure some must support the guy somewhere.

Every incident like this - SNL and their condescension, liberals sneering about people being too poor to boycott Hamilton, NY Times and Colbert and many other outlets failing to get it and doubling down on the contempt - gives me hope. For the first time in years I smile at SNL routines (except the travesty of politicizing a tribute to Leonard Cohen) because I watch how completely fucking clueless they are as to why they were so hated.

They won't listen, and that's good for us.

Twitter: Moral Treason

Scott Adams recently covers his ongoing shadowban, the symptoms of which match those of other shadowbans: results easily visible on a users timeline not showing up in the regular "algorithm" timeline, or more significantly, in search results. He also covers how his Periscope numbers, "coincidentally" drop to zero (though he still is interacting with viewers who can still see his stream) when he starts discussing Trump. Finally, he finishes with this:

As I said before, if Twitter is suppressing my political speech, I consider it moral treason against the people of the United States even if it is allowed under their terms of service, and even though it is technically legal. I hope I’m wrong, and that my problems are simply technical in nature. Because if Twitter is doing what people say they are doing, and suppressing certain types of speech, the company needs to die for the good of the Republic.

This goes well beyond what even Milo Y has said - that Twitter is entitled, on their service, on their servers, to allow or disallow whatever they want, but that Twitter has to own up to that, and stop saying they are part of the "free speech party". That the people at Twitter are duplicitous hacks who say one thing to bring users on, but do another when needed to support their team.

Like most leftists and SJW's, the only principle is "what helps me, right now".  And yes, "right now" is important, because Hillary, and many SJW's, are willing to take any position that gives them momentary advantage no matter the long-term consequences to, among other things, their credibility, or to those they make promises to.

Moral treason. Ponder that for a bit. Actively working to prevent voters from informing each other and being informed, thus taking from the citizens the right to choose knowledgeably.

For all of those who want to start mouthing off about how Twitter is a private entity and can do as they wish, or grant service to those they wish - something Scott not only acknowledges, but a degree of free association that flies in the face of lawsuits over wedding cakes for same sex couples by selfsame  mouthbreathers - he's hearkening to the more fundamental philosophical and moral position behind the first amendment. Again, Scott chooses his words carefully.

Sit back and think for a moment. We have an election where the Green Party, Anonymous, Wikileaks, the Alt- Right, the Tea Party, and non-establishment republicans are all working to take out Hillary (though not all support Trump, specifically), in the face of massive media, corporate, and government support and "rigging" - Scott is hardly the only voice that could be thought of as "liberal" or left that is working to sink Hillary and tacitly calling Trump the better choice.

Yeah, I've seen the recent videos from Anonymous targeting the Lizard Queen.

I'm cracking open some Jack and raising a glass to a well-deserved death on the part of Twitter, and every other SJW-converged IT outfit.

Interesting times, my friends.

What a Week

I go away for a few days, and when I come back from what I thought would be a quiet weekend on the news front at least, there are a lot of things to let slide.

Seriously, Tim Burton, the brilliantly hit-or-miss director of endless movies about outcast freaks was taken to task for insufficient dieversity (and no, I'm not linking to the Verge....)? I don't think he's figured out yet that liberals, especially SJW's, are not the tolerant ones, nor do they care about artistic vision, only their vision.

Duke starts a re-education campus course on toxic masculinity? Of course, they insist it isn't....

In a piece of true glory though, I finally found a use for personal pronouns....

A conservative student at the University of Michigan brilliantly worked the school’s new pronoun policy in a way that shows just how absurd things have gotten on college campuses. From now on, Grant Stroble’s professors have to address him as “His Majesty.”

Remember when I said one of Apple's few advantages was that they had internal "tribal" knowledge of how their product was developed, assembled, and programmed from top to bottom? Well - so much for that one....

BEIJING—Apple Inc.’s first research center in China will be a $45 million facility located in the capital to develop hardware, the site’s landlord said, announcing some of the first details of the project.

No, they're not moving everything offsite, but now it's not just manufacturing but company-critical research stuff is now moving to places not here, not at the center of the company, and subject to the whims of third parties.  It's a core competency of theirs. I know Michael Crichton had a few choice words about the long-term wisdom of such moves in his book Airframe.

ISIS, Again. #Coincidentally

A man goes around the St Cloud Mall in Minnesota with a knife attacking people. Amazingly, it is reported he was shouting Allahu Akbar, that he asked his victims whether or not they were muslims, and ISIS claimed credit. Just as amazingly I have yet to hear insistence that Islam had nothing to do with it. 

A wonderful example of reporting the facts while still carefully avoiding any of the obvious conclusions. After all, if we state that his political ideology / religious death cult was a motive, we'd have to start looking deeper at the pattern. 

The bomb in New Jersy that injured no-one near the route of a USMC charity run.

The bomb in Chelsea, NYC, that injured 25. A second device was reported found, and while I hadn't seen the word "terrorist" bandied about, the reported behavior of the police was that of "We think this is terrorists, so we're on the lookout for secondary explosives to catch responders."

I've noticed that these attacks, while news is posted on them, are quickly shuffled aside. You can blame "it's not news anymore" when we regularly have body counts and injury rates equal to or well North of what used to get extensive national attention (San Bernandino, Ft Hood, Boston). That said, the lying press decides what to fill the airwaves with. Reporting the bare minimum allows them to claim to be truthful, while they go back to wring their hands over Trump, Pepe, and "RACISTS!!". 

If they report the news, if they point out the connections, the constancy of the attacks, again, and again, and the multiple common traits. If they even begin to speculate "on air" that a culture that holds grudges for centuries for blacking their eye when they came raping, pillaging, and burning is at fault (remember, loot, pillage, then burn. Burn always goes last). People might get angry, and do something about the ones who know what we should want for us. And maybe we'd have to accept that "magic dirt" doesn't convert someone from the beliefs they brought with them. 

SJW Convergence and Apple, Redux

I recently wrote about how Apple, despite the technical momentum and inertia it still has, is already being affected by loss of both product and technical focus as it spends more and more time virtue signalling by working to have "diverse" presenters, a "diverse" programming staff, and expanding their product line.

And sure enough, the iPhone release and iOS 10 update proved my point.

First - we had a few update issues in the early hours of the iOS10 availability that caused a small percentage of phones to brick. I say small in the overall scheme of things, but large enough that it was reported, and caused people problems. As things go, it was actually not a problem with iOS10 itself, but an issue with the update servers that was quickly resolved.

Should it have happened? No, but it's not unheard of, and frankly, pushing out major updates like this is what we call "non-trivial" - note that most android manufacturers, never mind the carriers, effectively don't do the update thing. In isolation, it would be annoying, but...

The new iOS was released. It was presumably beta-tested. Yet T-Mobile is now recommending their customers do not update to iOS10 if they own an iPhone 6, 6plus, or SE. "iOS 10 is causing those three iPhone models to lose connection to the T-Mobile network."

While there is a temporary workaround (reboot the phone) and Apple and T-Mobile are working together to get it resolved via software or carrier-side fixes, and again, it's not unheard of in isolation....

Let's talk the iPhone. I'm not even going to argue the whole "no headphone jack" decision - I'm personally neutral. I get some stuff needs to be deprecated but that throws out interactivity with a lot of stuff out there. Sure, they provide one free adapter and lightning earbuds, but people need to charge the damn thing while listening to it sometimes...

No, this is even more subtle.

So one of the new features of the iPhone 7 is the "taptic" home button. Basically, the home button no longer is a mechanical button, but "clicks" by kicking off a little tactile feedback device. This was apparently to deal with a huge chunk of the non-American market that, due to a few failures of the home button, actually use an accessibility feature to enable an on-screen home button.

Well... we can deal with not having the fingerprint sensor work when sweaty, or wearing gloves, but keep in mind, these trackpad-style surfaces need skin contact.

Where the screen is sensitive enough to register a touch through thin cloth, screen protectors, etc., the new home button either uses the fingerprint sensors, or is much less sensitive due to said fingerprint sensors, and will not work through thin cloth, plastic excercise pocket covers, and even many "touch" capable gloves.

Seriously - I know Jobs is famous for some really weird fucking design decisions. Some, like killing ADB ports and the floppy drive were needed, and worked out in the end. Others, well, you either wanted to use a device that way, or you didn't. Some post-Jobs even made a half-assed sense, charging the new generation mice and the pencil is annoying, but at least it's quick. To me, the headphone decision, even if it's "wrong" falls into this "we made a deliberate choice" category.

But the home button? What fucking moron didn't think to ask about how people working out, or in winter north of the Mason fucking Dixon line were going to open up their phones?

Not a single one of these in isolation is more than an embarrassing blip. Taken together in close conjunction, and the pattern emerges that Apple is no longer as focused on quality of product, whether or not you agree with their vision of said product.

Hmm - Tim Cook is a great material and logistics guy, but what have he and the company been focusing on other than just "awesome product!"? (SJW Convergence and virtue signalling ruin everything....)

And while I've been a mostly-Apple guy since my first highly modded II+, I've got a lot of time in Windows and Linux as well - and so I'm not above laughing at Apple, or myself.  If you don't mid a little simply wrong humor.... (don't say I didn't warn you)

Still not sure if and how I'll jump ship. For mobile, Android is the only other viable option for my requirements, and hardly a privacy/etc. improvement, though outside of that Linux could handle most everything else (I usually keep one up in VMWare and do roughly a quarter of my work there), with a VM for MacOS or Windows as needed. Also, it's not like the other hardware manufacturers are becoming less mediocre...

Karma

Man, I absolutely love the little stick toy the dudes playing with, got one set at a ren faire, but that's not why I'm posting this shot.

That said, I brought you this lovely image because it looks like the god KEK has a sense of humor. Or Eris. They can fight over it, I'll stay out of the way.

Just look at the sign being held up on the hood, and the full glory of their attitude towards that which got them there in the first place.

Not At ALL Surprised - NYC and Free Internet

Well - NYC is disabling web access on the "free" internet kiosks provided (at great expense) to allow people to look at maps, make calls, and browse online.

The tablets will still offer free phone calls, maps, and access to emergency services. New Yorkers can also continue to connect their own devices to LinkNYC Wi-Fi hotspots. But browsing on the publicly accessible tablets is being restricted after some disturbing reports.

"A Murray Hill resident was horrified when she witnessed a vagrant masturbating" at one of the kiosks "while walking her dog Sunday morning," the New York Post reported Sunday. The Post report said that "horny homeless men have been plaguing the [LinkNYC stations] since they debuted in January."

Maybe it's just because I've worked at providing kiosks and access on a much smaller scale at various sites, but I'm trying to figure out how someone got a project this big through the government of NYC and no- one thought "hey, we might need porn filtering?"

Seriously - I've seen bored High School kids hire botnets to take down their school internet connection, and had to put content filtering in place at another client that provided a couple "internet kiosks" because visiting customers were surfing NSFW sites - with kids hanging around a fairly public space.

Libraries also have to deal with this kind of crap.

Seriously, it's not an unknown problem or a new issue... what kind of  idio....

Nevermind, I forgot who is running the place there these days.

Chilling Free Speech

A Huffington Post reporter discovers that censorship isn't only the province of government, and in an Orwellian way.

I know it's tempting to say "told you so." I also think the shock of this will eventually wear off. He wasn't entirely unprepared - he had noted earlier that the coverage seemed very one-sided -  but I daresay he had not realize how systemic this was until it directly impacted him as well.

The real question then becomes - will Youtube follow Twitter's lead in ghettoizing their conservative users so that it's harder to tell they're shadowbanned, because they never let word leak out to anyone else?

Their Children, or Ours

Posted at Vox Day:

Who's children are more important to us?

#Coincidentally #Pravda Two stabbed at music festival

A "man" stabs two people at a music festival in Germany:

A couple was stabbed at a German musical festival by a man who attacked them while shouting "Allahu Akbar."

The male victim, aged 57 was seriously injured, his 66-year-old wife is said to be fighting for her life. Despite his injuries, the man was able to overpower the attacker who was arrested by police.

The couple was enjoying a picnic when they were attacked.

Police say the attacker was "apparently under the influence of narcotics". The suspect was also described as a 26-year-old homeless man from Duisberg, Germany.

The weapon was recovered from the scene.  Officer are still looking for a motive.

Police spokesman Andreas Wilming-Weber said there is "no indication of any political motive."

A judge ordered the man be put in a psychiatric facility.

"A man" - nondescript. "Homeless". I'm hardly the only one who's noticed that when they go out of their way to obscure how the criminal looks, he's almost certainly not "White cis". Especially how when no-one really knows who the perp is, they speculate endlessly about right-wing haters.

It hardly surprised me to discover that he shouted "Allahu Akbar". #Coincidentally.

Nor does it surprise me that the police report "no political motive".

Well - I doubt you'll ever find a conspiracy organized for this, but if you look at the structure of the political ideology known as the islamic faith, it's a prospiracy - like minded individuals making very similar decisions with a common goal and path. So in one sense, there is no political motive, he wasn't an activist or part of cells. But Islam is political, and the ultimate example of making the personal political as it is also a totalitarian system of governance.

To put it into fancy lib-speak, they've been memetically programmed to go off and slaughter people shouting "god is greater" when they finally get pissed off enough over some perceived wrong.