Rocky 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (4365)

• On the post: Twitter Keeps Breaking In Dangerous Ways: Deleted Tweets Reappearing

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 26 May, 2023 @ 06:59am

  The loss of institutional knowledge over time is precisely what the system needs to be designed for. It’s an obvious risk that “smart” people will predict.

  So tell me, if someone fires a majority of the people having the institutional knowledge, can that be considered "loss of institutional knowledge over time"? Smart people may try to make things fool-proof but they can never proof it against a CEO that's a fool.

  That’s one reason why programmers write important comments directly in the source code, for example, rather than referring to external documentation or assuming later developers will have found it on their own.

  You'd be surprised how you run and care for systems today isn't about source code and its documentation but configuration and how systems are abstracted in multiple layers and topologies which makes "reverse engineering code" a futile exercise in understanding how a system actually slots together and work.

• On the post: Hugely Profitable And Consolidated Streaming Platforms Suddenly Too Cheap To Pay Residuals And Writers, Or Keep Niche Shows Online

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 26 May, 2023 @ 06:02am

  It's almost like you didn't read the article.

• On the post: Twitter Keeps Breaking In Dangerous Ways: Deleted Tweets Reappearing

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 26 May, 2023 @ 01:54am

  It's not as simple as that when we are talking about what is essentially a distributed system. What if moving a server and updating it's configuration means the shard it's running on think it's the one holding the most current data and starts replicating that data to other shards? You should really read up on the complexities of keeping distributed data in sync, it's not as simple as checking a timestamp.

• On the post: Twitter Keeps Breaking In Dangerous Ways: Deleted Tweets Reappearing

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 26 May, 2023 @ 01:45am

  In other words, this is probably a result of design failures that were present long before Musk got involved. But now the people who’d been papering over those problems are gone.

  Any solution that has been built over a decade and a half will have flaws and those who have been responsible for running it probably know of those flaws and how to mitigate them. In this instance, allegedly moving servers around without knowing all the little details are bound to produce problems. TL;DR: Institutional knowledge is damn hard to replace, no matter how smart someone think they are or how smart the system was designed.

• On the post: Twitter Keeps Breaking In Dangerous Ways: Deleted Tweets Reappearing

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 25 May, 2023 @ 05:31pm

  I'm assuming you haven't been near a software stack for a system that handles massive amounts of data that are spread all over the globe. You can't just plug'n'play the servers and expect everything to work without a hitch.

• On the post: Heritage Foundation Says That Of Course GOP Will Use KOSA To Censor LGBTQ Content

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 25 May, 2023 @ 08:19am

  Remember, doing it for the children and "doing it for the children" are entirely two different premises with the same outcome, although in one instance the collateral damage is an added bonus for its proponents.

• On the post: DC PD’s Head Of Homeland Security Intelligence Allegedly Warned Proud Boys Leader Cops Were Looking For Him

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 23 May, 2023 @ 03:44pm

  I repeat: more police defended the Capitol against the attacks on it and on the democratic structures of the U.S. republic than did attack them; and roundly blaming the defenders for the acts of the attackers is not doing them justice and is doing exactly what you pretend to decry.

  You can repeat all you want, but nobody is actually disputing that individual cops can distinguish themselves in certain situations but as a whole most of them can only be seen as bad apples. It's just simply that when everyone in a group behaves a certain way except for a few exceptions, those few exceptions just have to take it or leave it. TL;DR: If everyone around you are a goat fucker and you choose to fuck goats to blend in, you are also a goat fucker.

• On the post: Taco Bell Seeks To Liberate ‘Taco Tuesday’ For Itself, The Masses

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 18 May, 2023 @ 05:53am

  In what articles have Geigner said that trademark/copyright shouldn't exists? Feel free to give examples of this theme throughout all he has written.

• On the post: Taco Bell Seeks To Liberate ‘Taco Tuesday’ For Itself, The Masses

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 17 May, 2023 @ 06:52am

  You don't really understand rhetorical statements, do you?

• On the post: Taco Bell Seeks To Liberate ‘Taco Tuesday’ For Itself, The Masses

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 17 May, 2023 @ 12:19am

  Everyone knows why companies defends their trademarks, money. The problem is that some trademarks shouldn't have been approved from the beginning, especially when it comes to something that already exists in common vernacular speech. The absurdity of having a trademark on "Taco Tuesday" is that we then can also have a trademark on any day of the week as long as you have "Taco" preceding the name of the day, or any other word for that matter. It's clear you don't understand that criticizing how trademarks are issued and policed by companies isn't even remotely the same as not understanding why they do it.

• On the post: Taco Bell Seeks To Liberate ‘Taco Tuesday’ For Itself, The Masses

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 17 May, 2023 @ 12:05am

  That's just a reflection of how fucked up some things are, especially when it comes to the laws pertaining to "intellectual property".

• On the post: How Bluesky’s Invite Tree Could Become A Tool To Create Better Social Norms Online

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 06 May, 2023 @ 02:43pm

  Way to talk up and promote Bluesky, created by the same guy who created the Twitter mess and then helped the new owner make it an intolerable cesspool of hate.

  What Twitter mess are you referring to? And how did Dorsey help Musk run Twitter into the gutter?

  Is TechDirt aware of developments at other platforms that are shaping up to be decent Twitter replacements Post.news and Spoutify?

  Are you aware that TechDirt has such articles that mention alternatives to Twitter?

  Or maybe the staff here is comprised of cis white guys who can’t grasp the harm Dorsey has done to marginalized communities.

  Maybe you are an idiot who says a lot of stupid things without substance? Oh, and what harms have Dorsey done?

  Whatever the reason, this completely uncritical enthusiasm is messed up..

  So tell us what's wrong with Bluesky, give specific criticisms based on facts.

• On the post: On Social Media Nazi Bars, Tradeoffs, And The Impossibility Of Content Moderation At Scale

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 06 May, 2023 @ 12:15pm

  The people involved with Bluesky are veterans of introducing new stuff in an organised way, so I expected better.

  Where you invited to Bluesky and have been part of the test? If not, what information are you then using to base your opinion on and was that information complete?

• On the post: Trying To Monetize Bigots Is A Great Way To Go Broke

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 05 May, 2023 @ 04:50pm

  in spite of the valiant efforts of the Federal Society and the GOP and other entities who understand that might makes right more thoroughly than anything else in the long run.

  I guess that's why domestic terrorism is mostly perpetrated by the above right-wing nutters then.

• On the post: Elon Whines That He’ll Give Away NPR’s Twitter Account If They Won’t Start Using Twitter Again

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 04 May, 2023 @ 12:52pm

  If they were really going to recycle accounts, shouldn’t realdonaldtrump be on the chopping block first?

  Not really because we now have a new "Lords and Peasants" system curtesy of Musk.

• On the post: Cord Cutting Trend Cable Execs Once Called A Fad Keeps Breaking Records

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 04 May, 2023 @ 12:49pm

  Just curious: Have you actually seen what's in the cable-bundles many operators force upon you? Also, false equivalence.

• On the post: Stupid Patent Of The Month: Trying To Get U.S. Patents On An AI Program

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 04 May, 2023 @ 06:54am

  One thing this leaves me wondering: in attempting to patent something attributed to an AI, and in the process publishing the idea but leaving it unpatented, has he now made it “prior art” that would also foreclose any future patents?

  Depends on if a jurisdiction is using first to invent or first to patent and how they handle prior art. TL;DR: YMMV

• On the post: Netflix Loses A Million Subscribers In Spain After Greedy Password Sharing Crackdown

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 04 May, 2023 @ 03:30am

  Guess what ad-revenue is based on. It's not subscribers, it's the average amount of viewers, ie users. Advertisers pay ~$65 (cost is also usually dependent on length of ad and when it's aired) per 1K impressions, if they lost 1 million users they also lost $65,000 per ad on average. Note: The $65 may vary, but it's the latest reported cost I could find.

• On the post: Montana’s Governor’s Changes To TikTok Ban Bill Would Ban All Social Media Entirely

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 04 May, 2023 @ 03:14am

  So what did you find wrong with the particulars in the quote provided?

• On the post: Disappointing: Sweetgreen Changes Name Of Burrito Bowl, Bowing To Chipotle

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 03 May, 2023 @ 03:12am

  I'd expect someone commenting on an article and saying that the writer doesn't know his shit to actually have a factual basis for that. If someone can't even be bothered to look up the facts before opening their trap, that's quite telling isn't it?

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