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Any corner of the internet that declares itself a ‘Free Speech Fundamentalist’ zone eventually ends up flooded with Nazis, Pedophiles and Scammers, basically the very worst people imaginable. As a result the ‘normies’ very sensibly decide they can’t be bothered with all this, leave and take their advertising dollars with them.
Exactly this, the few of the FB or Twitter alternatives I've tried (MeWe was the last I think) after failing to get a good size user base normally start to play the "Free speech" card and within weeks every other avatar is AR-16s or a misappropriated pepe the frog at which point all the normal leave. If Musk turns Twitter into a free for all it'll dead in no time, it's not like the internet isn't littered with yesterday's must be on platforms.
Anyone watched the Elon Musk Show on iPlayer? Worth watching? Is all singing his praises or actually more balanced?
I caught the last episode....he came across as a terrible human being who has never had anyone tell him "no". And having seen his parents interviews, particularly the mother, you can see why he's so deeply deeply unpleasant
Robert Evans did a few episodes on him in Behind The Bastards a while back. He really is a massive ****.
No longer a lefty echo chamber? Sounds great, I'll rejoin.
Reminds me of another so called mountain bike site that's a lefty echo chamber. Lolz
Good luck with the trolling there as it doesn't work well for you here...
I caught the last episode….he came across as a terrible human being who has never had anyone tell him “no”. And having seen his parents interviews, particularly the mother, you can see why he’s so deeply deeply unpleasant
I never realised his father was Sir Les Patterson 😉
I would imagine his Autism has a bearing on how he acts too
I would imagine his Autism has a bearing on how he acts too
Yep, that's the excuse I use.
Yep, that’s the excuse I use.
Not a believer then?
Or just have no experience of people with Autism?
I recognised it in him long before he "came out"
And doge hits another 10% after months of inactivity
Musk = fraud and a psychopath.
Just taken advantage of the new era of free speech on Twitter and called Farage a c**t.
*Cough* mastodon might be worth a look. Of course like all these things it needs critical mass to work.
So, if Zuckerberg is going off the rails with this Metaverse project and Musk ruins Twitter, is this the start of a new era?
Metaverse was, at least in part, a response to the fading popularity of facebook with an aging user base as the cool kids, literally, started using snapchat and then tiktok (then possibly other stuff. Not being either cool or young I dont know the finer details beyond facebook isnt doing well in that demographic). Previously it had been done by buying whatsapp and instagram but if the metaverse does work then its a massive lock in due to the hardware needed.
The meta verse is just another way to sell shit to folk dumb enough to sign up for it
And as for Elon buying Twitter?, this is a good explanation as to why he’s ****ed from the verge
The meta verse is just another way to sell shit to folk dumb enough to sign up for it
But if you do get people paying for it then, at least for the foreseeable future, you will have them locked into your platform.
It does seem a tad hopeful and mostly based on growing up reading cyberpunk stories although that said I do know a couple of people who have had to set up facebook accounts so they can play VR games so I guess thats some success?
My general point though was facebook was already facing long term problems and the metaverse was in large part a response to it rather than some random mad decision.
And as for Elon buying Twitter?, this is a good explanation as to why he’s **** from the verge
I have enjoyed over the last couple of days reading fanboy accounts of how he is a genius who is seeing far deeper than everyone else. They seem to have missed that he spent several months trying to exit the deal but, since he chose not to do due diligence, was pretty much guaranteed to lose the case based on the initial rulings.
That Verge article is very good.
He really has skewed himself with this purchase hasn't he?
Apparently there's another "bluesky" thing just created by the twitter crew. I would die laughing if everyone switched in a week leaving Musk with a 40 billion crater.
Yep, that’s the excuse I use.
Works for me too.
the tech stack is not the valuable asset. The asset is the user base: hopelessly addicted... people who should know better but keep posting anyway.
looks around
coughs uncomfortably
Not a believer then?
Having lived with it for 55 years I am very much a believer yes. But high functioning autistic people such as Musk (and me) are in more control of the way they act and think than more severely autistic people.
IF you have someone telling you how you are acting is not 'normal' you can actually learn to adapt your behaviours to make things smoother in life. Not saying you have to pretend to be someone else but just have the awareness of how your words and actions are seen by others.
I am very different now than I was 40 years ago due to that learning process and much happier because of it. However you do need to have a person in your life that is prepared to put up with you and also 'coach' you. Thanks wife 🙂
Imagine your new boss is this much of a dick
https://twitter.com/CaseyNewton/status/1586127052767318016?t=1LZmiUWnDB6Xvf_pJ9luEQ
On the code thing… two observations from a professional software engineer…
1) peer review of code is not unusual and an excellent way to improve quality and efficiency.
2) in asking to produce all the code they’ve written in the last X days is a great way of finding out who is actually contributing and who isn’t, as well as helping truly size the team. If you’re employed as a coder, and haven’t written any code in 60 days, what have you been doing with your time?
No one is going to argue peer review or measuring output is a bad thing.
He got them to print it out.
in asking to produce all the code they’ve written in the last X days is a great way of finding out who is actually contributing and who isn’t,
Twitter's code isn't the product he's bought. If Musk thinks that he can run Twitter "better" with better coding he's even more stupid than most people already think he is.
Yep, it’s the usual content is king.
You can always fiddle with ‘better’ code but that’s not the problem.
On the code thing… two observations from a professional software engineer…
1) peer review of code is not unusual and an excellent way to improve quality and efficiency.
2) in asking to produce all the code they’ve written in the last X days is a great way of finding out who is actually contributing and who isn’t, as well as helping truly size the team. If you’re employed as a coder, and haven’t written any code in 60 days, what have you been doing with your time?
From an occasional code dabbler,
1) Peer review... on paper?
2) Surely this can be gauged from CVS commit logs? In any case, raw volume of code has to be a terrible metric for measuring programmer performance. "What have you been doing with your time?" - thinking? Actually entering code into a computer is the last stage of development, that's the easy part. I've written some of my best code in lane two of the M65 or on the great white telephone.
Actually entering code into a computer is the last stage of development, that’s the easy part
Amen to that.
^^ this and you could spend days tracking down a "bug" and end up adding a single ampersand to the code base 😀
and I do some of my best thinking playing AOE 😉
Apologies @kerley
I miss read your “I” as “I’d”, which put your response into a different context 😁
1) peer review of code is not unusual and an excellent way to improve quality and efficiency.
'peer' being the operative word.
I’ve written some of my best code in lane two of the M65
This explains some of the interesting driving I've encountered around Blackburn and Burnley.
My original comment may no comment on volume of code, because I know as well that it's a poor metric of productivity. "On paper" is one way of Musk of saying "I think you've produced so little, you could fit it on a piece of paper". Apparently Twitter has around 7000 employees. For such a simple site, that's a remarkable number of people. He's trying to weed out the chaff.
Now it could be a developer has only written a couple of lines, but it's a smart fix to a problem that required a lot of thought to get to it. In which case they'll easily be able to defend it in a code review.
One who has to print out a lot may equally get challenged on how efficient their code is.
Source control system logs will only tell you what was committed and when. Not why. Because developers are uniformly shit at commenting their code, especially places like Twitter where everyone will think they're a Rock Star Developer whose work product is so esoteric and advanced that nobody but themselves could possibly understand it and that it's "art".
FWIW I don't agree with his approach but I can understand why he's doing it.
Source control system logs will only tell you what was committed and when. Not why.
The very first (if not only) thing that commit logs should tell you, is why. That's where you go to if you want to understand the reasons behind the code being written, they're the best documentation of the development process and I imagine a company like Twitter enforces that rigorously.
The very first (if not only) thing that commit logs [b]should[/b] tell you, is why
Should. They rarely do. I've seen vastly more code committed without any commentary than I have with.
And in my experience, tech companies like Twitter are the worst for it.
Apparently Twitter has around 7000 employees. For such a simple site, that’s a remarkable number of people. He’s trying to weed out the chaff.
My understanding is that a huge number of them will be working on defeating spam, nasty porn, scammers, etc. If you sack them, Twitter will go into a death spiral.
My understanding is that a huge number of them will be working on defeating spam, nasty porn, scammers, etc. If you sack them, Twitter will go into a death spiral.
delete anyone with a flag or emoji in their description and it’d cover about 95% of it…
Actually entering code into a computer is the last stage of development
Should be the user acceptance testing cycle...
If you’re employed as a coder
Who's employed as a coder? Mostly it's 'developer' and the development cycle involves a lot more than coding.
bensales
Free MemberApparently Twitter has around 7000 employees. For such a simple site, that’s a remarkable number of people. He’s trying to weed out the chaff.
Eh, simplicity of site doesn't have much to do with the staffing. They're not all backstage whipping the hamsters. The sheer number of users and amount of traffic means lots of human intervention, unless you want it to be a free-for-all of hate speech.
Which Musk does, or at least hate speech that he agrees with, so he's fine with culling the numbers.
Apologies @kerley
I miss read your “I” as “I’d”, which put your response into a different context 😁
No problem.
I see musk is tweeting out nonsense again
It's the paedo cave diver thing all over again...
https://twitter.com/aravosis/status/1586717524514799617?t=y1Fnr38iCjRYjcc9MZrm2w&s=19
The end of a bell.
Mid terms coming up in the usa too
Maybe **** features should print his tweets out and get someone to peer review them.
Excellent article, thanks 👍
I hope Twitter gets absolutely annihilated by the EU and governments if Musk carries on using it as his personal BS mouthpiece, before he does some serious damage. Would love to see his reaction to a few $multi-billion fines
Elon Musk tweeting far right conspiracy theories regarding the Pelosi break-in and assault, perhaps he'll get banned from his own site.
https://twitter.com/mollyjongfast/status/1586762017771323393?s=46&t=qiv0cin-SxM8kwLyTu-gWQ
At least now it’s easy to tweet him and tell him exactly what sort of ***hole he is, without, apparently, having your account canned for doing so. Allegedly. It’ll be interesting to see just how long the freedom to post anything lasts, when a lot of vitriol is aimed at him.
He’d be just the sort of ****er who’d get the developers to build him his own ban hammer. Despite having minions with minions you know he’ll just sit there getting arsey, banning people himself.
World's richest man begging for pennies.
https://twitter.com/punished_cait/status/1587395709459988480
Should have thought of that before blowing $44bn on the company?
Yeah, I'm no business genius, but even I can work out that you need to check that sort of shit out before buying a company for $44B
Elon is a helmet.
Haterz.
He's going to make everything amazing social media people said so.
I can't help but think he is having his very own Putin invading Ukraine moment here.
Putin has gone from being considered some sort of strategic genius to now being just an utterly ruthless tyrant that was in the right place at the right time.
This had just popped up on the BBC webby too.
Anyone else just deleted their Twitter account? Wasn’t that good before and I can’t see Musk improving it.
I think it's time for a genuine alternative to step up. I wonder what all those people fired and their CEO could do with $44bn.
No I'm enjoying the show too much, though it's a shame it's costing a lot of innocent people their livelihoods.
Wonder how strong the anti-compete clause is with the now jettisoned founders/employees? I can see an alternative springing up pretty quickly (doesn't feel like the technology build is that onerous tbh and outside of moderation not really sure why it would need a huge team?)
Wonder how strong the anti-compete clause is with the now jettisoned founders/employees? I can see an alternative springing up pretty quickly
There have been plenty of alternatives. Its the problem of getting that critical mass of users rather than technical issues (although running at that scale isnt going to be easy).
There is also the problem of making it profitable.
Be interesting to see if Mastodon can get anywhere.
I'm wondering a few things, if Elon thinks 4000 of his staff are 'fake staff'....?
Also how much of a saving a company that turns over 1.3 billion a year will make by removing half its wage bill?
Why the richest man in the world would buy a buisness that's never made any money, for an extortionate amount of money, would do so in the first place - but his recent tweets about neurons and cyber networks etc have kinda answered that for me, I just now think he is absolutely 100% completely nuts.
I just can't see a return on his investment.
So, again, he totally ignores employment rights over there. He should have given employees 60 days notice if carrying out a mass redundancy.
What a ****.
He is paper rich though.
Twitter was bought with a fair amount of high interest debt, so if he can't monetise twitter (which looks unlikely now as advertisers as pausing), either he burns the company or has to sell some of his stock to service the debts.
Either way it will be an amusing car crash
Just another sociopath I’ve added to the ‘world would be far better off without him’ list
Has he always been such an arsehole, of has all his wealth truely corrupted him that much. Either way he’s a horrific, dangerous human being.
Let's hope he turns Twitter into MySpace.
He s turning off account privileges on staff accounts now
This will make things clearer:-
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/musk-to-burns/idipbnhifibemlbkiljhdnibgodoieli
He always reminded me of that other famous rocket man; Wernher Von Braun.
Though he seems more interested in dishing out the orders rather than following them.
Why the richest man in the world would buy a buisness that’s never made any money, for an extortionate amount of money, would do so in the first place
You telling me you never got drunk and clicked "Buy It Now" without checking how many zeroes are in the price tag before?
What is in it for him?
He's making himself look like an even bigger **** than we all thought he was.
It would have been cheaper for him to write ELON MUSK IS A KNOB on the moon and would have saved a few people from getting laid off.
Why the richest man in the world...
Because he want's to be a Big Hitter, a poster, he wants more than anything else to be known for his wit and repartee, he wants folks to laugh at his jokes and pay attention to his thoughts...And they don't, because he doesn't understand people. He bought the company because he's essentially a needy twerp with no friends, and he doesn't know how to make any
Because he want’s to be a Big Hitter, a poster, he wants more than anything else to be known for his wit and repartee, he wants folks to laugh at his jokes and pay attention to his thoughts…
Oh, but they do! I've mates that hang on his every word and regurgitate his tweets to Facebook.
Why the richest man in the world would buy a buisness that’s never made any money, for an extortionate amount of money, would do so in the first place –
"People on Twitter are mean about me / to me"
[lightbulb moment]
"If I buy Twitter, I set the rules and then no-one can be mean to me..."
He's a dangerous sociopath who's somehow managed to convince a sizeable number of people that he's a genius who could save the world but the world won't let him do that.
Present wild technological "solutions" (like unworkable min-submarines, hyperloops, etc) and when they're turned down, throw all your toys out the pram at how everyone is too stupid to see your genius.
throw all your toys out the pram at how everyone is too stupid to see your genius.
I wondered for a bit whether he believes his own hype or whether he's just playing along, and then I watched the Netflix thing, and the shots of his (mad as a box of frogs) mum demanding that the school pay attention to the "genius that is her son", and suddenly I had a light-bulb moment.
Musk hasn't made it until he joins STW; having said that some recent posts on various threads cause me to think he already has and is using a pseudonym.
He put up $27bn of the $44bn purchase price (in cash, apparently) with the balance coming from middle eastern sovereign wealth funds and US investment banks.
Have they seen something others have missed or have they cocked up or do they want to stay onside with musk for possible future opportunities.
EDIT: they might just want to be aligned with a sociopathic arse who reminds them of themseĺves.
Have they seen something others have missed or have they cocked up or do they want to stay onside with musk for possible future opportunities.
If you control the information, you control the narrative.
I wondered for a bit whether he believes his own hype or whether he’s just playing along, and then I watched the Netflix thing, and the shots of his (mad as a box of frogs) mum demanding that the school pay attention to the “genius that is her son”, and suddenly I had a light-bulb moment.
Oh he absolutely believes that he is the saviour of the world, an unrecognised genius.
Colonies on Mars, 500mph hyperloops, rockets and satellites and self-driving electric cars everywhere...
But the mean people won't let him do it cos they have planning regulations and rules and stuff. He's not unlike Trump or even Johnson in that respect - believe that you are God's gift to the world, that you are destined to be PM / President / King of the World and then act all surprised and huffy when people make you play by the rules.
Much like Sunak with his multi-millions - he doesn't need to be PM, he could swan off and live a nice luxurious life, never really have to worry about much but no, he NEEDS the power, the authority, the recognition.
Musk is the same - he has more money than he could possibly spend in 10 lifetimes but rather than quietly do some philanthropic things, he has to be front and centre. The more outlandish the scheme the better. Johnson contented himself with Garden Bridges and tunnels to Ireland; Musk has settled on Mars Colonies and Tesla Tunnels.
Musk hasn’t made it until he joins STW; having said that some recent posts on various threads cause me to think he already has and is using a pseudonym.
oooh, that is a conspiracy theory I could be on board with.
EDIT: they might just want to be aligned with a sociopathic arse who reminds them of themseĺves.
There were a bunch of messages released as part of the "make him buy us" lawsuit between Musk and various rich people all kissing his arse and just offering him cash.
The middle eastern sovereign wealth funds were already heavily invested in twitter. I am not sure if they have actually increased their holdings or just retained their share from before.
The investment banks are almost certainly cursing the entire thing. They would have been intending to sell the debt on but given the change in market conditions since they signed up they would face serious losses so best to hold and hope things improve.