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Joined 8 months ago
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Cake day: March 20th, 2025

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  • It’s an art installation. The idea is that the machine slowly leaks hydraulic fluid. So it works to squeegee it back up towards its base, so it can remain operational.

    At first, it was a cute little art installation. The machine worked well and barely leaked. It would take time in between scoops to dance for the crowd or rest. But over time, as the machine aged and the leaks got worse, it had to shift more and more towards scooping up the hydraulic fluid. It changed from a cute dancing robot to a haunting metaphor. It desperately worked to keep the fluid contained, all the way up to the point that it broke down.

    When it finally broke down, it was revealed that it ran on electric stepper motors, and didn’t even need the hydraulic fluid.







  • Yeah, the primary reason people end up exposing things to the internet is because of friends and family. I can call my tech-illiterate “anything more difficult than logging into Facebook has her throwing up her hands in defeat, saying it is too hard, and tech is just too complicated these days” mother-in-law and walk her through setting up Plex… But that only works because Plex is exposed to the internet. If I had to walk her through setting up Tailscale on her living room TV before she could connect, it would be a non-starter.









  • Elizabeth Holmes, the former CEO of Theranos. She was sentenced to prison for defrauding investors. She started making claims that she could do exactly what the headline says. She claimed that current blood panels (which usually require a vial of blood for each test) were insufficient and outdated, and that her company could predict or diagnose a ton of diseases and disorders with only a pinprick of blood. She said that her company was already in the final stages of the research, and used those claims to entice investors. She said that her company was going to be on the forefront of a medical revolution, and investors were clambering to get in before they hit the market.

    It turns out she was full of shit, was lying through her teeth, the technology didn’t exist, and they couldn’t diagnose anything with the tiny amount of blood she claimed. Medical professionals had been screaming about the fraud for a long time, but techbros and billionaires were happy to continue jumping on the bandwagon because she kept promising results in the near future. When the fraud finally came to light, Theranos’ valuation went from ~$9B to $0 basically overnight. It was a massive “she stole from billionaires, so we’re making an example of her and actually prosecuting the white collar crime that never gets prosecuted” court case that started way back in the mid 2010’s. It only recently wrapped up a few years ago (I think in late 2022 or early 2023?) and she’s still serving time.