Alex Vranas @Alex@vran.as

Key points:

1. Use of link shortener is suspicious.
2. Shouldn't require X account for government comms.
3. Ads on a missing child alert is distasteful.
4. Linked X account is not listed on the WSP website.
5. "Deputy Scaggs" account is "verified", but also not listed on the WSP website.
6. Missing child not listed on WSP website's missing child list.
7. Asking everyone to drive to the scene of the abduction is not helpful.
8. Tweet was deleted, so the emergency alert now links nowhere.

So I wrote an email to the WSP asking for clarification on all of this. I don't like writing phrases like "the twitter link included in the emergency alert" or "the advertisement before you can see the missing child report" in an email to the government, and hope I don't have to do it too often.

@Obdurodon I don't know of any site, but there needs to be one. I am really getting tired of the government entrenching itself in for-profit platforms like this.

I wish I had the web dev skills to do it myself, there are so many examples of this. Advertisements on a members-only Amber Alert is especially disturbing.

Just got an Amber Alert from the Washington State Patrol that includes a bitly link to a Twitter thread. The details of the alert are included in an image with no alt text.

After logging in, I had to see an ad for dog poop before I could see additional info from law enforcement.

This is the official way we do Amber Alerts in Washington State.

They read my toot over the weekend I bet.

The lightning port on my @system76 laptop died 11 months in. 💔

Not mad, things happen, and I've opened a ticket with them already.

Now to see if their customer service matches the stellar reputation that I've read about. I've never had a more seamless Linux software experience before, but I am jaded with a bad history with companies like Dell that offer sub-par hardware support. The lack of a domestic support team is usually a contributing factor, so I'm optimistic here.

Just watched Bing #AI endorse a random third party web security tool, citing microsoft.com as a source, confusing it for Microsoft's own Windows Defender software.

This is fine, I'm sure.

@hollowleviathan @mmasnick @ygalanter @krans @vincent @davidgerard They also don't speak of BS and AT Proto as if they will exist outside of "the company", which is really rich coming from a supposedly "decentralized" product. They certainly intend it to be financially centralized.

All they're really saying is that the future company ethos might be at odds with the current one. I read that as a promise of enshittification as this for-profit startup tries to monetize their creation.

Once I delete my remaining X accounts, as I plan to, I'll be cut off entirely from any government communications over X, and there aren't always alternative sources of this information.

I shouldn't have to generate ad revenue for Elon Musk and agree to his terms to see these communications. My taxes pay for them, give me them somewhere that is publicly visible, and stop hiding anything behind a membership wall.

Once X starts charging everyone subscription fees, this will only be worse.

I've been thinking about how much of my local government uses X for official communications, and how I now have to have an account for a site known for spreading disinformation and hate speech just to be able to see posts by my elected officials.

I wonder if there's a legal path, at least in my state, towards legally challenging government use of X.

@ernie I'm thankful I never signed up for Google's equivalent "Pixel Pass" program that promised a new phone every 2 years, and then cancelled the program after 23 months without ever fulfilling a single upgrade.

We need to talk about Sam Altman's sanpaku eyes.

@nearhat@tech.lgbt You get lesser specs for more money, but having S76 engineer the laptop, bootloader, and OS makes it worth it. Everything works.

One typo in an installer script, and I completely wiped out a system directory when uninstalling a program. Didn't realize it until weird things started happening, and a reboot revealed that I had rm'd way more than the program I was trying to delete.

I just rebooted, held the spacebar, clicked "Refresh Pop OS", and I was back in in about 60 seconds.

My wife and I are celebrating our 10 year anniversary today. It's been a wild decade, but we're making it.

Did something stupid as root and completely bricked my laptop. Really seeing the engineering from System76 pay off as I recovered my OS is less than a minute using the recovery wizard.

I've never recovered from this big of a fuck up so fast before on Linux. I'm having to reinstall a few things, but I lost absolutely nothing.

@calicoday Apparently it's a reference to the Kal Kan pet food company, whose president used to eat dog food at shareholder meetings to prove that he stood by it's quality.

Then Microsoft ran with it, which makes sense because their marketing during the 80's and 90's was regularly unhinged.

Disappointed in tech media for not using the term "dogfooding" to describe Apple's Scary Fast keynote event produced entirely with iPhones and Macs.