Well, I contacted Proton support. My message opened with the 404 media report, and continued:

"It's difficult to express just how disappointed I am.

I signed up for Proton roughly a decade ago because I believed you were making the world a better place. I even subscribed at a higher tier than I needed, because I believed in you.

So-called AI is a cancer.

It guzzles resources at a ruinous pace. It can only function due to industrial-grade theft and plaigarism. It is ethically bankrupt technology.

And now you're being pushed to not only use it, but to use it to - frankly - fuck up everything you've built so far.

I will be considering my options now for moving to another service.

Why can't we just have nice things? Why can't some company just not turn out to be terrible, just once?

Sincerely
$fullname"

I got a response I consider the best I could ask for under the circumstances:

"Hello Len,

Thanks for getting in touch, and for being honest about how you feel.

We've seen the reporting this week about AI strategy and culture at Proton, and I understand why it's raised questions for you.

Although I can't provide you with any updates or answers right now, I can assure you that it's being discussed across the company, and once we're ready, we'll share a full response publicly.

I've passed your feedback on, so that it is accounted for in the conversations that are taking place.
Kind regards,
$supportPersonName
Customer Support
Proton Mail"

So there's that. Meanwhile I've downloaded all the documents I was keeping on my Proton Drive and stored them on my NAS, and I'm in the process of archiving my emails to same. They make an export tool for downloading and decrypting the files.

At this stage I don't know whether I'm preparing for a move (I don't know where to) or insuring against the services failing when the mad AI push inevitably breaks things.

#Proton #ProtonMail

If you voluntarily use so-called AI, then go ahead and block me. Save me the trouble.

Anyway, I've always kind of liked PHP.

My first paid job was actually some PHP work while I was still in uni. I don't know if it was particularly *good*, per se, as I was very much a C++ programmer at the time. A lot of functions returning error codes and checking those error codes - necessary for a robust C program, less necessary when you can simply have the webpage say "nup, an error occurred". This would have been PHP4, I think. At any rate it was before you could actually do anything object oriented.

I remember even back then PHP copped flak, but I liked it. It was a hell of a lot easier to use than Perl, at any rate.

#php

Is there anyone on here who does metal fabrication for a living, who wouldn't mind having a chat about what it's like?

Like, welding, machining, drill presses and routers and lathes and press brakes and whatnot?

(Boosts welcome)

Edit: oh wow, that's so many replies! Thank you!

I realised I should have asked my main questions in this post, and I think editing them in should ping people who replied. So:

1: How'd you get yourself hired in the first place? What are entry-level roles like?
2: Do you find you have to lift a lot of heavy stuff? I sort of have the impression from watching How It's Made that overhead chains and pulleys and motors get used a lot for moving around the thing being worked on, but I've also seen a job posting saying you need to be happy to lift 25kg.
3: what's the average day like?

Maybe this will help. I hope so...

A month or two I bought a new mattress. It was fine in the showroom.

It is not fine at home. Much harder, so hard that my hips get sore sleeping on my side. Worst, if I lie on my front or my back, I feel like I can't breathe.

This morning, it feels harder to breathe even on my sides.

Absolute hell.

Supposedly there's a break-in period. In the meantime my sleep has gone from bad to worse. I'm only just barely functional. Hanging on by my fingernails.

This suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks

Wait, why does KDE/Plasma think Monday is the first day of the week in Australia?

Wait... is it? When did that happen?

Fellow Australians! What day does the week start on?

https://www.news.com.au/news/northern-territory/behind-the-lens-of-the-australian-bushfire-crisis/image-gallery/d5b4ccc2392d75e42444f0019d663a4d

This has the photo I was looking for: a girl in a boat, everything orange, wearing a disposable respirator.

This was January 2020, apparently

https://www.news.com.au/national/victoria/victorians-urged-to-dig-deep-as-new-appeal-fund-launched/news-story/1f1f7344b04b24e761b51f02c659bba2

You can see a guy wearing a disposable in one of the photos. As it happens, that was also the reason I bought my respirator, that you can see without filters in my profile picture.

("Maybe it'll come in handy if I ever need to do some painting or something, and I can get the appropriate filters", I said to myself. And then we had a global pandemic.)

So, this might be worth mentioning for folks in fire/smoke affected areas: getcherself some covid masks. As in N95/P2 ones. Smoke is what they're originally intended to filter out.

Before the whole pandemic thing we had particularly bad bushfires, with similar city-blanketed-in-smoke and those masks sold out. They'll be a damn sight easier to find these days since production stepped up.

#fires #wildfire #bushfire

Just found out that the personification of justice as a blindfolded woman with a scales and a sword is literally the Ancient Greek goddess Themis.

It's not some popular modern poetic concept, it's literally, exactly Themis. That's how she was depicted. She was the goddess of justice.

That's absolutely bananas to me. Those statues outside law courts are, like, as if we has statues of Anubis outside graveyards, or Thoth outside libraries.

RE: https://mastodon.social/@alttexthalloffame/116767895883058878

Nice! Updated mine.

Holy shitballs. Trams backed up further than the eye can see, on Swanston Street. Literally, to the vanishing point.

#Melbourne

No, I don't "have a pile of Steam games I bought and forget to play", I'm a "patron of the arts"

"Free as in beer" has never made any sense to me; I don't think I've ever had a free beer in my life.

At work, our usernames are your first names plus the first letter of our surname (or as many as needed to disambiguate from existing usernames). The rationale is it's friendlier and more relaxed.

Apparently we have a Chris T at the company. And so:

Well... it's okay.

Missing a few quality-of-life features that one expects from a citybuilder these days, such as an intake-vs-expenditure screen (particularly worrying for food intake), and an ability to move buildings. It's also got a few bits of text that read a little strangely (ESL, I guess).

IDK. It hasn't grabbed me. Probably I'll warm up to it once I really get what it's trying to do and how it works. It's a little irritating that, for instance, you can build buildings on top of other buildings *even if the resulting doors will be unreachable*. Things feel a little awkward at the moment, and that's probably because I don't yet understand exactly how the systems work. But I expect I'll get there.

#Timberborn

Timberborn just came out!

I've been looking forward to this one for a while. Colony/factory sim, only it's intelligent beavers.

STRIKE THE EARTH^H^H^H^H^H^H TREES!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1062090/Timberborn/

#Timberborn

Putting it out there in case anyone has advice: how do I fix not sleeping well due to being physically uncomfortable in bed? What kind of profession do I need to consult to sort that out?

I don't trust salespeople. If I just go to a bed shop they'll talk me into buying some garbage that won't do the job (this has happened before).

I saw a sleep physician, who told me sorry he can't help with that particular problem. Would have been nice to know that before waiting months for the appointment. He said maybe try a chiropractor, and that's not fucking happening (chiro is pseudoscience).

I'm exhausted. I've been exhausted for years. I'm fucking sick of it.

Help.

There we go.