sad but reality

tiktokers create cring content and earn lots of money.

open source contributors create technology which is maintaining world but earn far less.

how can we expect bright future?

The trick is, we don't.

I remember one dude experimented with running a paid advertisement in the install script of his npm package (so when you install the package a little message runs by your terminal advertising Linode servers).

He got a lot of backlash though and had to stop. Real shame.

future is a gimmick invented by humans. there's no future

@justamuslimguy yeah, polluting the npm install output log with a postinstall script is simply something you should never ever do

@justamuslimguy Fucking ads.

@justamuslimguy the CLI is holy, if even that gets polluted by ads then what's the next one? Ad logs? Ad monitoring? Looking through logs and finding thousands of ads sounds like a nightmare

@alexbrooklyn Fucking ads.

Fucking ads!

I was thinking cyber-terrorism. The world will hear us when it blacks out.

@Inxentas Not really. The average idiot just blames their phone when something stops working.

Not all tiktokers make money. Top ones do.
Top devs also make good money. See how Microsoft and Facebook and Apple pay their main devs. (can we even see that?)
Also, govts pay very good money even to substandard devs. So there's that.

@Jilano the hentai/furry artists you mean?

@alexbrooklyn Your application crashed. This error is brought to you by RAID SHADOW LEGENDS

It's not just software though.

To make something pay well, it must appeal to the majority of people. That majority has varying interests, their only common denominator is cheap entertainment.

I mean, I would be lying if I said I wasn't TEMPTED to click if I see a video called "drunk student running through glass door" -- but that temptation is not all I am, that's not what defines me.

I mean, compare the YouTube channels from Applied Science (0.6M subs) to LTT (11.8M), to PewDiePie.

Applied Science is obviously the more "interesting" channel, with videos about DIY electron microscopes, mass spectrometers, photochromatic glass, a teardown of an xray fluorescence scanner, etc

But it also has the highest entry threshold. People at the coffee machine at work might have seen an LTT video. Your nephew probably knows Pewdiepie.

He might also watch videos about kite building which YOU are not interested in.

Common denominators.

FOSS dev is much like the Applied Science channel.

@frogstair OMG YES! Let's add advertisements IN IDEAS AND THOUGHTS!

Brilliance.

@alexbrooklyn The moment this happens, I turn into a serial killer targeting sales and marketing execs.

@alexbrooklyn @root

When will Neuralink start selling devkits?

Would actually be interesting to develop an RL adblock, which recognizes advertisement images, videos and sounds entering the visual & auditory cortex and replaces them with pictures of bunnies and elevator music.

The lawsuits would be even more interesting... Are you allowed to filter/alter your own senses? Who owns the intellectual property in your brain? Do you break copyright if you replay a memory of a movie? 🤔

@bittersweet Anyone that interferes with or rules against my own autonomy is another target.

@iiii I've heard furries have really deep pockets

@bittersweet oh shit 😱🤣

@alexbrooklyn sounds like you invented a new layer of hell.

@GXGOW if thats not an xkcd it should be.

@Root I can provide you a network of safehouses, vehicles, burner phones, the bat cave, a secret decoder ring, a battle buttler, and a patridge in a pear tree.

when can we start?

@bittersweet anyone that develops ads for that, works as a lawyer for companies that make brain ads, or otherwise partipates in such creations, deserves a bad end.

What kind of Comparision is that?

We have different target audience, People don't watch open-source projects for entertainment.

How many tiktokers does it take to change a lightbulb?

@bittersweet I really what to pretend I didn't read that...

Um yeah... I’m working like 16 hour days and have been for a year, and spending the money in dry goods and ammunition.

We’re totally and completely utterly fucked.

Shits going to be Cormack McCarthy’s “The Road” inside two decades and probably sooner... much sooner.

I’m going to be a fletcher and stiller and run a small trading post in the afterworld.

@HiFiWiFiSciFi if you want muscle id be up to keep you company in the wilderness retreat. zero problems with using force as necessary. never lose any sleep under bad circumstances.

put it this way: im always the first guy running to put out a house fire or disperse a crowd.