Enshittification by Cory Doctorow

I got Enshittification as a Christmas present.  When I saw that Cory wrote a new book that sounded interesting, I had to read it.

What I was hoping to see was some insights into why good things turn bad over time.

What I got was diversion, cover up and just plan Marxist propaganda. But I should have expected that from Cory who's a major leftist.

The first few chapters are case studies in how Facebook, Amazon and Twitter became enshittified. This was nice because it gives us some reference as to how and why this is happening.  But I felt something was missing.  I didn't realize what it was until I got to the Twitter chapter.

He left out one important reason: The Woke culture.

The Twitter chapter is larger than the others. Twitter enshittification was also because the Woke "content moderators" squelching the speech of what they didn't like, which makes many others simply leave the platform and intensifies the enshittification.

He also does not credit Musk's takeover of Twitter for the start of the de-enshittification of the platform.

I tried to get through the rest of the book, but it was just the usual "Companies are bad because they don't help the idiots and useless people" tripe that I get from all Leftists.

Now that doesn't mean that Cory isn't right sometimes.  He certainly hits the nail on the head many times through the book - but nothing that he writes was a surprise and was already pretty well known.

But he (purposely?) ignores the (negative) impact of the Wokies have and even credits the Elitists for helping to "fix" things (by making them worse) and, to no surprise, criticizes Trump for "making things worse" by fixing the problems caused by the Left.

This book is just typical leftist propaganda.

Orbital Space, Book 1 - Theft of Fire by Devon Eriksen

Wow.  It's been a bit.  I really should blog more, but I have little to say.

Anyway...

At the recommendation of Eric S. Raymond, I picked up a copy of "Orbital Space, Book 1 - Theft of Fire" by Devon Eriksen and got it into the eBook queue.

tl;dr;

It isn't working for me.  I'm about 1/3 into the book and my "1/3 rule" has kicked in.  I need to care about the characters and the story by this time or I end up slogging through, just flipping pages.  And with a backlog of 700+ eBooks to read, it's not worth my time.

Longer explanation:

I really don't have any other complaints.  Writing is good.  Characters are OK.  An AI, a "princess" and a "working class" man all cooped up in a spaceship.  Lots of potential here, but it's just not happening for me.

The "working class" man is portrayed as stupid and moral - which is good.  The "princess" is spoiled and not very worldly.  The AI is bland (but I consider that normal at this stage).  Not much chemistry except for some unnecessary sexual stuff that just happened in the story.

They've been cooped up in the spaceship, which the "princess" has taken control of and everyone's trying to do their thing.  Ya, I get it.  Character Development - and, really, I appreciate that.  I've had my share of shallow characters in stories.

But it's gone on for so long now that the story has stalled.  I no longer care about the story.  And while there was Character Development, I really don't care about any of the characters.  If the story ended on the next page with "and the fusion engine exploded vaporizing everyone", I wouldn't feel cheated.

So, sorry Devon.  I tried.  I can't say you are a bad writer, but this story just doesn't work for me.

VCF MW Post Mortum

After a long pause (mostly due to other events, the scamdemic, and the old venue being too small), we went to VCF MW this year.

tl;dr;  It was really nice.  The venue was really good.  The main room was at least twice (some people said three time) as large as the other venue.  It was crowded, but not "subway at rush hour" crowded.

Let's start with the bad:

1. Food poisoning.  We went to the "canteen" in the main room for a quick snack.  We only picked up a pack of peanut M&Ms to hold us until dinner.  Even though the date on the packs were 2025, it was obvious that they weren't stored correctly and the one M&M that we ate was certainly off.
2. Loud neighboring party.  There was a big wedding going on in the ballroom next to VCF and sometimes their "music" system intruded into the VCF panel room.  More of an annoyance, but someone should have told them to turn it down a bit.
3. The wedding also blocked certain hallways for a while.  This was a minor annoyance, though, as there were other (but less direct) routes from the con to the rooms.
4. The traffic!  It took me 1 day (each way), to physically recover from the drive.  Chicago area traffic is horrible.

But that's about all I have to complain about.

Lots of cool displays and loads of nice people.  Everyone was very polite and pleasant.

My goal was to git rid of stuff (and not accumulate more).  I succeeded.

All the stuff I brought to the auction sold for a good amount.  We "donated" at least $400 through the auction.  All of the stuff that I dropped off at the free table disappeared by Saturday morning.

So, what did we see:

1. Adrian from Adrian's Digital Basement on YouTube.

1. David from 8-Bit-Guy on YouTube.

1. Veronica, Geri Ellsworth, June (Nybbles and Bytes) - but they were there as more of con-go-ers, not to talk/display.

1. TexElec had a table.

1. A nice Osborne display.  An 01, Execute and even a Vixen!  All working!

Most of the talks were interesting, but not real useful to me.  They still had lots of good information, though.

One of the things I got from the YouTuber channel was the realization that most LLM AIs are really nothing more than high-powered versions of Eliza.

Sperry HT

The Sperry HT is done.  I finished refurbishing the keyboard today.

Pictures are here.

The computer pretty much worked fine when I got it.  The seller shipped it correctly and it arrived in the correct number of pieces - even the CGA monitor.

As expected, some parts were worn:

1. Clock battery was dead.  But it didn't leak.
2. Hard drive was dead.
3. The foam in the foam-and-foil keyboard was disintegrating.

So, complete disassembly and clean.  That was surprisingly easy.

Clock battery replaced.

So the Sperry HT was one of the first IBM clone systems that came with a real time clock.  The battery only keeps the clock running when the PC is off.  But that comes at a price.  You need to use the special Sperry MS-DOS 2.11 to have MS-DOS use the clock.  Some people wrote some drivers if you want to upgrade to DOS 3.x.  But the system came with the original DOS 2.11 disks.  I imaged them and uploaded them to the Internet Archive.

I pulled the hard drive and disassembled it.  I wanted the "cage" with the face plate so that I could reinstall it back in the case.  I pulled the XT-CF-IDE from the Sperry Portable and hooked up the light to the old hard drive cage.  So the old hard drive light will flash as the XT-CF-IDE access the "hard drive".

So my 1985 computer has a flash drive.  :)

I then ordered some foam-and-foil replacements from TexElec, but they were going to take a while, so I grabbed a "loaner" keyboard I had in the spare parts box and started to put the Sperry through its paces.  Once I saw it was working, I reinstalled DOS 2.11 from the Sperry disks to the CF card and set the clock.

When the foam-and-foil replacements shipped, I disassembled the keyboard and popped out all the old disks (see this video).  As expected, the foam was failing.  Some would work, but most would either not come back after being "squished" or they would disintegrate completely.

The replacements have to be installed individually and there are 101 keys on the keyboard.  I spread it out over several days so I didn't go insane.  :)  But it's done and the keyboard works fine.  I might need to lube the keys, though.

Misc. Updates

 I haven't posted an update for a while.

Kaypro 1 - It was giving me fits, so I sort of turned it into a "parts" machine and got a Kaypro 4/84 working very nicely.

I was finally able to acquire a Sperry HT.  The first computer I ever owned.

As expected, the hard drive is long toast, so I took the IDE-XT-CF card from the Sperry Portable and put it there.  Then fixed the DOS on it.  Explanation: The Sperry HT was one of the first to have a real time clock, but it requires a special version of DOS 2.11 to work.  So I installed that version.

Cleaned it up.  Lubed up the floppy drive and cleaned it.  Now working on fixing the foam-and-foil keyboard.  It's looking nice.

So some of the items that I was going to bring to VCFMW won't be going now (or will be on the free table), but I still have a good amount of stuff to bring and donate.

And I'm looking at downsizing a few other systems that I simply don't have table space for.  Goal: I have all computers available for use at any time and try to rotate through them to play with them every couple of weeks.  Also, to get rid of systems that I simply am no longer interested in anymore.

The "Con Vibe" - A little more explanation

Re-reading my last entry, I think I need to explain a little more about the "Con Vibe" issue.  Let me try to equate this to an experience I had in college.

So, freshman in college.  I discover that there is a Sci-Fi/Fantasy club.  Great.  I've always liked that and it would be nice to talk to others about that.  So I go to one of their meetings.

Now, I have to say that I was "welcomed" in that people talked to me and no one gave me a vibe of "go away."  But as the meeting started, there was a great deal of "in jokes" and such.  Initially, I took that in stride because I was new to the group.  But the "in jokes" were to obtuse and related to past club events that I simply couldn't relate.

If I experienced this today, I would equate it to the Star Trek: TNG Darmok episode.

The end result left me feeling like I would always be an outsider in this group.  As a result, I decided that they weren't worth my time.  Over the next few years, I would meet up with members as part of my education.  They would try to get me to attend their meetings and I would explain why I don't go - yet they never really "got" it.

As time went on, members graduated and weren't replaced by new people (hence current members trying to get me to go) and the club dwindled.  By the time I graduated, the club was no more.

This is how I felt at Tandy Assembly sometimes.  I can't assess whether there are more or less people going each year, having only gone once.  But I really hope this doesn't happen to them and that they become more aware of how "outsiders" feel when attending.  It's nice to see old friends getting together, but they need to be more aware, and a little more accommodating, to new people too and not assume that "everyone" knows.

Tandy Assembly

So this year, we did Tandy Assembly.  This has been on my list for a few years, but the scamdemic sort of derailed that for a bit.  It finally got high enough this year.

It's quite a drive (5 hours of driving, 6 when you factor in rest stops and a meal), so we took some extra days off so that we could arrive early and be fresh for the tech talks, and to recover afterwards.

Overall: It was worth doing once, but I don't think I'll do it again.  It cost a good amount of time, energy and money to go.  I don't regret it, but I don't think it's worth it to me to do it again.  Maybe if they get someone really special to speak.  Like one year, they had Don French, who was one of the father's of the TRS-80.

So let's focus on the good first.  Great speakers on interesting topics.  Lots of cool equipment.  Some Model II/12/16/6000s as well as the expected Model I/III/4 systems, and CoCo's, plus some extra stuff (like a DT-1).

But we also have to talk about the bad, and I don't like doing this, but it needs to be said.

Venue: First off, the hotel and the staff were wonderful.  They got a perfect score.  The problem with the venue is location.  There's 1 coffee shop near by that was... OK.  Not Herman's Boy that's for sure.  The area was not nice, especially at night.  So that limited us to where we could go and we like to walk.  Most other restaurants were a need to drive and that's hard with all the construction even with GPS.

Next, the normal "Con Vibe" wasn't there.  Normally at a convention, there's a bunch of geeks who don't know most of the people there.  What ties us together is a common like of whatever-the-con-is-about.  Tandy Assembly is more like a meeting of old friends and "outsiders" are not accommodated.  That's not to say that were weren't made to feel welcome by some.  But we weren't "in the know" and we were kept in the dark a bit.

For example, on Friday night, after the tech talks, we headed to the hotel restaurant for dinner.  We didn't know that Tandy Assembly had a buffet.  It wasn't written anywhere. We weren't told about it.  We didn't see anything about it until later when we brought in our auction stuff.  Normally, such a thing is for the show "guests of honor" and the people who work to put it on, but it seemed it was open to all attendees Friday night.  It would have been nice to know about it before we went off to dinner.

Unlike many cons, we didn't take over the hotel.  I was rather surprised at the lack of attendance Friday, but we figured that it was a work day and we'd get a lot more people on Saturday, but we didn't.  Now, this is a good/bad thing.  Personally, I like the lack of crowds (ex: we won't be at VCFMW until they get a bigger venue), but there were so few people that we didn't get to meet many people - because there weren't that many to meet with.

To close on a upbeat note:  It was nice to meet Ian, Jeff Birt, and a few others that I've only seen on YouTube.  So, like I said, it was worthwhile to go.  I don't regret the time/energy/money we spent.