Maddening Lessons You Fail To Learn #1644

Feeling somewhat better at 8:00 last night I went to the pub for half an hour to wish celiaka a happy birthday.  It's only a five minute walk away after all.  I don't know whether to blame that for waking up at 5am shivering in my own sweat, but it seems handy.

If work had given me external access I could happily work from home - my brain's working about 70% efficiency.  It's just the nausea when I stand up that's stopping me actually _getting_ there.

Today will therefore be spent in bed.

Thank goodness for laptops - if I have you on MSN then expect to be prodded at some point.

Reasons to worry

According to ValleyWag LJ's just 20 of their 28 staff.  Don't know how reliable these reports are, but I hope that you've all got a backups of your journal.

I also hope those nice Dreamwidth people are actually doing something, so that I can jump ship when the time comes...

Not so bad as first thought, still not great

Cheers for the various people who've updated me on the LJ situation.  Losing half the staff is better than losing nearly all of them - but still doesn't show a lot of confidence in the future.

Chatting to marrog, it's clear that this whole "dependency on a single site" thing is not good in the long term.  Some mixture of OAuth, RSS and OpenID seems to be in order to allow us to aggregate our friends writings from all over the internet, share what we want with who we want, and have control over who leaves us comments.  It's not there yet, but I'm sure it will some day - hopefully before LJ dies its eventual death.

Which I don't expect to be this year.  The problem with LJ doesn't seem to be that it makes no money - but that it doesn't make enough to justify a staff of 30 people.  Most of you don't pay LJ any money - and you're probably using adblock too.  Which means that if it's going to be worth anything to its owners it's going to have to run in a lean and cheap manner.  They recently moved to a new datacenter, and I'd be very surprised if this round of layoffs wasn't held over until after that move, to make it all run smoothly.

To be honest, there's nowhere out there that's as good as LJ at what it does.  I'm not planning to go anywhere just yet.  But I'll be keeping an eye on the weather - and if anyone has any suggestions I'll be very grateful to hear them.

<a href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-livejournal-lays-off-majority-of-us-staff-will-operate

LiveJournal’s Moscow-based owner Sup yesterday laid off most of its remaining San Francisco staff in a restructure that also sees VP and GM Matt Berardo out after just seven months, we have confirmed. The rejig means product development and design move to Russia, though servers, admin and legal staff remain in the US.

There ya go - actual press release stuff.

I love living in a Black and White world

A HAMAS leader has warned that Islamists would kill Jewish children anywhere in the world in revenge for Israel's devastating assault.

From here.

Cheery stuff.

I'm glad I'm spending the day in bed, where it's safe.

On a lighter note - a new announcement from Apple

(from kobold)

Delicious LiveJournal Links for 1-6-2009

• Tentacle UFO spotted night before carnage at Conisholme wind farm
                 
  I have no comment to make on the veracity of this story.  (Sounds like ball lightning to be honest)
                 
  (tags: environment ufo)
             
• How to Repair a Broken Financial World
                 
  Following on from the previous article with some advice about what to do about it.
                 
  (tags: economics finance politics ethics government regulation)
             
• The End of the Financial World as We Know It
                 
  I don't seem to be getting bored of these analyses.  This one focuses on why the watchdogs weren't doing their job
                 
  (tags: economics finance capitalism)
             
• First atheist buses on the streets of London
                 
  Huzzah!
                 
  (tags: advertising atheism)
             
• PlayStation 2 Most-Played Console In 2008, WoW Tops PC Gaming
                 
  Nielsen's data, which actually covers the period from January through October, found that PS2 users accounted for 31.7 percent of the total time played from all nationwide gamers. The Xbox 360 was the year's second-most popular console, with 17.2 percent of the time, followed by Wii at 13.4 percent.
                 
  (tags: gaming 2008 computers consoles)
             
• Life 'meaningless' for one in 10 young adults
                 
  A survey of 16- to 25-year-olds by the Prince's Trust found a "significant core" for whom life had little or no purpose, especially among those not in education, work or training. The poll of over 2,000 showed that more than a quarter felt depressed and were less happy than when they were younger.
                 
  (tags: UK depression happiness)
             
• Scientists dismiss 'detox myth'
                 
  One researcher investigated a Garnier face wash which claimed to detoxify the skin by removing toxins.  The "toxins" turned out to be the dirt, make-up and skin oils that any cleanser would be expected to remove.
                 
  (tags: science health journalism advertising ethics)
             

Moving slowly forward into a saner world

So, now that Apple is no longer selling DRM'd music, who _is_?

the joy of flatmates

Scotty says: http://www.thatsphucked.com/post/2007/11/2-girls-1-cup-video.aspx
Andrew Ducker says: If you think I'm clicking on something that says "2 girls 1 cup" in the URL then you have another think coming...

(Edit ten minutes later - Scott's just come through and given us a live version of his "reaction shot".  Who needs YouTube?)

Now I understand where the confusion came from!

(cheers to interactiveleaf)