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Besides the things other comments mentioned: There is a longstanding sentiment that "It can't happen here". The wider public in America more or less blocks out

Besides the things other comments mentioned: There is a longstanding sentiment that "It can't happen here". The wider public in America more or less blocks out the risks involved. "They're not actually going to blow up the power grid." Hell, just look at the tech industry. Endless whining about not needing to be regulated, and what have they done? Built an enormous surveilance machine, lead by executives who preemptively kowtow to any authoritarian leader. Europe's attempt to regulate this is still angrily opposed by heaps, even on this very site.

toss1 2y ago
Yup Normalcy bias — it's an absolute killer. The same cognitive failure that has people in a fire thinking it's "just part of the show", or "just something in the kitchen", until it is too late, and panic overtakes everyone. I've never seen a story of a fire where someone in the situation said "I wasn't sure what was going on, but it didn't seem good so I left early, I'm alive because I did!". Normalcy bias can kill us all if we aren't careful.
refulgentis 2y ago
Thanks for writing this: things are quite askew right now for various reasons, and it was unexpectedly affirming to hear someone say it loud. Until now I would have said this is an extreme minority view, even though it's quite obvious and aligns with the core values I've seen on this site over the last 15 years, and thus presumed were tech in general's view. Maybe I just need to get off X, the Everything App™, 90% of my news consumption and commentary is through there.
- rcruzeiro 2y ago
  Come to Bluesky. It’s not perfect, but neither was twitter 10 year ago. Bluesky feels a bit like that.
  - jajko 2y ago
    As somebody who successfully avoided twitter stuff my whole life - whats the lure of this? Following some folks reading some random brainfarts is not how I imagine spending my time, and that's all I can see on this. Maybe I have just different type of personality than target audience. Or is it so addictive like social networks seem to be?
    - mongol 2y ago
      I have left X / Twitter now, but while there it gave me good insights, to an extent. If you follow the right people, you get news without intermediate interpretation by journalists. Who the "right people" are is hard to answer, but basically, select people you trust the judgement of. But.... I am no longer there. Too much noise and distraction drowns the sane voices. And I can't stand Musk any longer.
    - godelski 2y ago
      I went into twitter for the academic side. Transition to baky has been nice. It's often like RSS feeds but I get to interact with my peers. I tink it totally depends what your niche is. What bugged me about Twitter is that after Musk took over it was no longer mostly RSS feed-like but all the politics came in. That all ranked higher even when not from accounts I don't follow (now I get notifications from Musk even after muting him) > Or is it so addictive AFAIK the ranking is simple. But since everything is open you could filter as you wish. I'm not aware of anyone doing it but I'd like to see this.
  - jazz9k 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - decremental 2y ago
      [dead]
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - NooneAtAll3 2y ago
    I don't get the point of bluesky if mastodon already exists... why switch one megacorp for another?
    - tekknik 2y ago
      people on this site get angry when you ask this question. apparently we need more microblogging sites.
- daveguy 2y ago
  Yes, you should definitely leave X. It is a cesspool of rage bait.
- linuxhansl 2y ago
  I dropped of Twitter, and Facebook in 2014 (or around that time); and I have not missed a single important event since then. People think they need Facebook, X, whatever to stay up to date. Not so. I have a few online newspapers/sites I scan a few times a week, and that's it. IMHO (and it's really just MO), Twitter, Facebook and alike are a 100% useless waste of time. (Maybe Facebook had some use in the beginning for staying in contact with more "friends" than I could have by other means.) I feel better for it. And as I said, I will guarantee you that won't miss anything important going on.
  - lgbrandon 2y ago
    This people would be 100% better off. Not consuming the garbage. I tried to just follow tech peeps on X. Now it is nonstop propaganda even just following a niche.
    - refulgentis 2y ago
      +1, that's what switched. I made a decade long transition from dropout waiter => startup founder => exit => Google thanks to getting to soak in all the tech stuff on Twitter, without having the formal education. It's hard to say without being reductive, but TL;DR it's turned into a very know-nothing atmosphere, to the point it certainly swamps the prior positive effects. Good example yesterday: OP is excited about Elon newly announcing a new interest in non-regretted user-seconds. Elon's talked about it a bunch, so some people gently correct OP. Some other people gently point out this...isn't something you can metric. Everyone's being polite and pointing out indirectly the excitement is irrational: it's an old idea, and not an actual metric you can optimize for OP half-rolls-back that its a new idea, but is still excited about the implications. Someone tells him directly "non-user-regretted-seconds" isn't a metric, he doubles down and says its standard in industry. I reply saying it's Elon-invented, not a good or bad thing, but certainly not a traditional metric. OP replies saying that's not true, OP saw it in use at Google a decade ago. It's a day later and it's completely unclear to me: A) if this is an actual phrase that was used prior to Elon B) if it is a phrase, how it could be a metric and C) if OP is right that it was in use before Elon, given our time at google overlapped by 7 years and I've never, ever, heard of anyone having a metric like that (could someone have used it as a term of art in a meeting? sure! but generic "amount of time people enjoy using our thing" isn't worth noting as a distinct term, unless you actually collect info on it) The only way I can think of to even engage is to say pretty much the above, but it's too aggro and "cares too much" for the level of current discourse, especially since the premise is we should be excited Elon cares about this. A more factual approach, like trying to find the first instance of "unregretted user-seconds" isn't convincing. I'm not sure how you'd prove the first use was after a certain date. Even if I try searching for refs between 2000 and 2020 only, there's ~3 pages of obviously re-dated results, i.e. referring to Elon as Twitter owner with a date of "2013" Then, just because it wasn't on the internet at a certain date, doesn't mean it wasn't in use regularly at Google before that date. Then, the clunky pseudo-scientific phrasing makes it impossible to debunk there wasn't another form of "unregretted user-seconds" I should be checking. There's only 8 pages of results for "unregretted user-seconds", all tied to Elon/Twitter, but that means nothing because again, clunky phrasing means maybe there's another form I should be checking, and maybe it was a phrase that had been locked inside companies until Elon used it publicly. So what was the point of even reading, thinking, replying about this? Nothing. Waste of time.

toss1 2y ago

Yup Normalcy bias — it's an absolute killer. The same cognitive failure that has people in a fire thinking it's "just part of the show", or "just something in the kitchen", until it is too late, and panic overtakes everyone. I've never seen a story of a fire where someone in the situation said "I wasn't sure what was going on, but it didn't seem good so I left early, I'm alive because I did!". Normalcy bias can kill us all if we aren't careful.

refulgentis 2y ago

Thanks for writing this: things are quite askew right now for various reasons, and it was unexpectedly affirming to hear someone say it loud. Until now I would have said this is an extreme minority view, even though it's quite obvious and aligns with the core values I've seen on this site over the last 15 years, and thus presumed were tech in general's view. Maybe I just need to get off X, the Everything App™, 90% of my news consumption and commentary is through there.

rcruzeiro 2y ago
Come to Bluesky. It’s not perfect, but neither was twitter 10 year ago. Bluesky feels a bit like that.
- jajko 2y ago
  As somebody who successfully avoided twitter stuff my whole life - whats the lure of this? Following some folks reading some random brainfarts is not how I imagine spending my time, and that's all I can see on this. Maybe I have just different type of personality than target audience. Or is it so addictive like social networks seem to be?
  - mongol 2y ago
    I have left X / Twitter now, but while there it gave me good insights, to an extent. If you follow the right people, you get news without intermediate interpretation by journalists. Who the "right people" are is hard to answer, but basically, select people you trust the judgement of. But.... I am no longer there. Too much noise and distraction drowns the sane voices. And I can't stand Musk any longer.
  - godelski 2y ago
    I went into twitter for the academic side. Transition to baky has been nice. It's often like RSS feeds but I get to interact with my peers. I tink it totally depends what your niche is. What bugged me about Twitter is that after Musk took over it was no longer mostly RSS feed-like but all the politics came in. That all ranked higher even when not from accounts I don't follow (now I get notifications from Musk even after muting him) > Or is it so addictive AFAIK the ranking is simple. But since everything is open you could filter as you wish. I'm not aware of anyone doing it but I'd like to see this.
- jazz9k 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - decremental 2y ago
    [dead]
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- NooneAtAll3 2y ago
  I don't get the point of bluesky if mastodon already exists... why switch one megacorp for another?
  - tekknik 2y ago
    people on this site get angry when you ask this question. apparently we need more microblogging sites.
daveguy 2y ago
Yes, you should definitely leave X. It is a cesspool of rage bait.
linuxhansl 2y ago
I dropped of Twitter, and Facebook in 2014 (or around that time); and I have not missed a single important event since then. People think they need Facebook, X, whatever to stay up to date. Not so. I have a few online newspapers/sites I scan a few times a week, and that's it. IMHO (and it's really just MO), Twitter, Facebook and alike are a 100% useless waste of time. (Maybe Facebook had some use in the beginning for staying in contact with more "friends" than I could have by other means.) I feel better for it. And as I said, I will guarantee you that won't miss anything important going on.
- lgbrandon 2y ago
  This people would be 100% better off. Not consuming the garbage. I tried to just follow tech peeps on X. Now it is nonstop propaganda even just following a niche.
  - refulgentis 2y ago
    +1, that's what switched. I made a decade long transition from dropout waiter => startup founder => exit => Google thanks to getting to soak in all the tech stuff on Twitter, without having the formal education. It's hard to say without being reductive, but TL;DR it's turned into a very know-nothing atmosphere, to the point it certainly swamps the prior positive effects. Good example yesterday: OP is excited about Elon newly announcing a new interest in non-regretted user-seconds. Elon's talked about it a bunch, so some people gently correct OP. Some other people gently point out this...isn't something you can metric. Everyone's being polite and pointing out indirectly the excitement is irrational: it's an old idea, and not an actual metric you can optimize for OP half-rolls-back that its a new idea, but is still excited about the implications. Someone tells him directly "non-user-regretted-seconds" isn't a metric, he doubles down and says its standard in industry. I reply saying it's Elon-invented, not a good or bad thing, but certainly not a traditional metric. OP replies saying that's not true, OP saw it in use at Google a decade ago. It's a day later and it's completely unclear to me: A) if this is an actual phrase that was used prior to Elon B) if it is a phrase, how it could be a metric and C) if OP is right that it was in use before Elon, given our time at google overlapped by 7 years and I've never, ever, heard of anyone having a metric like that (could someone have used it as a term of art in a meeting? sure! but generic "amount of time people enjoy using our thing" isn't worth noting as a distinct term, unless you actually collect info on it) The only way I can think of to even engage is to say pretty much the above, but it's too aggro and "cares too much" for the level of current discourse, especially since the premise is we should be excited Elon cares about this. A more factual approach, like trying to find the first instance of "unregretted user-seconds" isn't convincing. I'm not sure how you'd prove the first use was after a certain date. Even if I try searching for refs between 2000 and 2020 only, there's ~3 pages of obviously re-dated results, i.e. referring to Elon as Twitter owner with a date of "2013" Then, just because it wasn't on the internet at a certain date, doesn't mean it wasn't in use regularly at Google before that date. Then, the clunky pseudo-scientific phrasing makes it impossible to debunk there wasn't another form of "unregretted user-seconds" I should be checking. There's only 8 pages of results for "unregretted user-seconds", all tied to Elon/Twitter, but that means nothing because again, clunky phrasing means maybe there's another form I should be checking, and maybe it was a phrase that had been locked inside companies until Elon used it publicly. So what was the point of even reading, thinking, replying about this? Nothing. Waste of time.