Five Funny Tech CEO Nicknames

Insults. Perjoratives. Pet names. Nicknames. I love these, especially the really witty ones. Today let's go through some of my favorite nicknames for tech CEOs. These are notable not just because they're (arguably) good puns, but because they actually describe perception of that person. Whether or not I personally agree (and make no mistake, there are instances where I'm enthusiastically on board), there's no running away from the fact that these are pretty awesome nicknames.

Also, these images were generated by Meta AI, because... well, what else is it good for, really?

1. Scam Altman

This is the CEO of OpenAI. And why, one might ask, is this fine fellow called "Scam"? "Sham" works just as well, but I have a certain fondness for the former because it was coined by no other than Elon Musk, who, quite fittingly, is the next entry after this one.

Slimy AF.

Fairly or otherwise, Altman is widely associated with AI hype and overpromising. You say "Snake Oil Salesman" and immediately I see this guy's face in my mind. 

To be fair, tech isn't just tech. A commercial angle has to exist in order to justify its existence. So having a "salesy" tech CEO isn't necessarily such an outrageous thing. It's more Altman's constant overpromising of what OpenAI can deliver, that irks people. I mean, how many times do people have to hear from this guy's mouth that AGI is coming in a few months?

2. Phony Stark

Not an instant classic unless you're also a Marvel fan. But if you are, you'd be familiar with Elon Musk's predilection for styling himself after a certain fictional genius-billionaire-playboy-philanthropist.

SpaceX-hole.

Too bad all he's got is the money. The requisite charm and wit to be an actual Tony Stark is squarely in the minds of his fevered fanboys.

And let's not act like Musk didn't do his darnedest to earn that nickname. His constant cringy posturing on X, that insufferable grin and the superfluous attention-seeking antics (because if you're already the richest person on this planet, why do you need that attention?) completely nail the performative tech CEO stereotype.

Hey, if the shoe fits...

3. Zuckerborg

This made me spit-take, because both the target and the reason for the name, are instantly recognizable.

Cringy robot.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, has long been famous for looking robotic. Which is probably unfair because he talks pretty naturally.

It all started during the Cambridge Analytica debacle, where he showed up looking less lively than a wax replica. It's almost no exaggeration to say that an entire generation was brought up on memes of Zuckerberg looking like a, well, Zuckerborg.

4. Jeff Beelzebos

Jeff Bezos, owner of tech giant Amazon, is conflated with the Devil for good reason. Which makes this one pretty clever.

Modern-day slave-owner.

Bezos is infamous for Amazon's widely-criticized treatment of their warehouse workers, said to border on the inhumane. Timed bathroom breaks, unreasonable work quotas, low wages and unsafe working environments - these issues have been mostly discussed and dissected by the general public.

Come on now, if this is what you're known for in addition to being insanely rich, why wouldn't people associate you with Beelzebub?

5. Tim Crook

I'll be honest - I have no idea why former Apple CEO Tim Cook is seen as so unethical as to warrant this nickname. I looked it up. Apparently, violating antitrust conventions and using child cheap labor in China. Basically, typical big-company CEO shit.

Bad guy?

I get why these would make him unpopular. Just not sure this makes him a crook. Did this guy actually break any laws? Maybe I'm the problem and I should stop interchanging the terms "crook" and "criminal".

But hey, if we're just looking for good witty nicknames, this one surely qualifies.

What's in a nickname?

There were some other options which I left out precisely because they're so obvious. I mean - calling Jeff Bezos, "Bozos". Or Mark Zuckerberg, "Zuckface". Really?! That's not witty, that's just juvenile. There's a difference.

Sticks and stones may break my bones...
T___T

Seriously, why try to cook Sam Altman?

It's no secret my opinion of Sam Altman isn't exactly high. To me, he's one of those snake oil salesmen that continually hypes up a product that, while interesting in limited scopes, is nowhere what it's purported to be. And he exudes the low-effort vibe of a con artist who flourishes not by being smarter than others, but by picking raving idiots as his target audience.

That said, I don't dislike the man, and bear him no ill will. And I certainly was not among those who cheered when one Daniel Moreno-Gama lobbed a Molotov cocktail at his home last April, then threatened to set fire to the OpenAI headquarters in San Francisco, USA. 

The threat.

What was his reason? Apparently, "AGI poses a threat to humanity and therefore it must be stopped." Come on, now. Really?

AGI

I don't know what this guy has been smoking, but that brand of AI that Sam Altman and his ilk have been forcing down our collective throats, LLMs, barely qualifies as AI, much less AGI. Before anyone jumps on my back, I'll concede that LLMs are incredibly useful. And when you compare them against their predecessor - autocomplete - a massive technological leap in terms of scale, pattern-matching and the like. However, calling them "intelligence" just tells me that your standards aren't particularly high.

How many times have we been promised that AGI is near? How many times has it not materialized? Countless, and countless. The simple fact of the matter is, this tech exists for a reason, and it's not to better the lives of humanity.

Smoke and mirrors
in service of the
almighty dollar.

No, like everything else, it's meant to make money.

AGI might make money once it actually exists in the real world rather than the fevered imagination of fanboys and science fiction enthusiasts, but it costs too much to get there. Meanwhile, faking AGI costs a lot less and satisfies the lower-level requirements. Who needs real creativity when you can simulate it? Who can even tell what actual creativity is?

So, if AGI is nowhere near, what's there to stop?

Humanity

Do human beings suck in general? Well yes, and I don't think that's ever been a controversial statement. But do we suck more just because of AI? We certainly suck more visibly. We have all manner of rubbish created by generative AI, churned out by people who have way too much time on their hands. Deepfakes. Nonsensical clips of Michael Jackson fighting Bruce Lee. AI porn.

AI generation of
Michael Jackson vs Bruce Lee

AI was the tool that made all this possible; but make no mistake, human beings are the ones who should be blamed for how it's used. If you're going to blame AI, why stop there? Blame Social Media. Blame the damn Internet.

I would argue that humanity's greatest threat is humanity. Not AI. If we're already our greatest threat, a pale imitation of ourselves isn't going to do a better job of ending us. It's just not.

Killing Sam Altman

Finally and most obviously, killing Sam Altman isn't going to do jackshit to stop the progress of AGI, assuming it's even progressing. For the obvious reason that Sam Altman does not represent the technological forefront of AI. (Though ChatGPT would probably disagree.)

Ergo, if AGI does indeed exist, it's not inside OpenAI.

Burn it down... and then what?

And all right, let's assume that this one douchebag techbro Sam Altman is behind AGI. You think you can destroy the code just by killing the CEO and firebombing the office? Son, it's 2026. Cloud services are a thing. They've been a thing for years.

Also, is Altman the only one far enough ahead in the race to matter? Think of all the other AI from big tech companies. Microsoft's Copilot. Google's Gemini AI. Meta's Meta AI - actually, I take that last one back. My point is, OpenAI is far from the only culpable one here. What exactly is killing Altman going to accomplish; scare all of them into not doing their usual thing? Good luck!

The fiery conclusion

All this is preposterous. Even overlooking the fact that killing a person just because you believe he heralds the inevitable doom of humanity, is morally questionable and definitely very illegal; the reasons for even going there make no damn sense. Daniel Moreno-Gama isn't the hero he imagines he is. But maybe he should stop watching so many Terminator movies.

Come with me if you want to live burn AI to the ground!
T___T

TeochewThunder: Year Eleven (Part 2/2)

Things don't look that good from a viewership standpoint this year compared to last year, but then, they rarely do. I've noticed this for years now. I look at the numbers for this current year and shake my head, only to realize that these numbers tend to double after the passing of another year.

The end result is that the current year's viewership always looks inferior to the previous year's. It's not necessarily the case. Just needs time to settle into the internet.

That said, let's get into the weeds of what apparent successes there are.

Huge hits

I talked about COVID-19, didn't I? And apparently, it hit a chord. The Dark Years of COVID-19: A Software Developer's Perspective was the undisputed winner, hands down.

Do techies lean Liberal or Conservative? was the culmination of a few weeks of frustration as I watched Social Media go mad over the movie Superman and Sydney Sweeney's jeans. And also some rumination I've had over DEI.

What great genes jeans!

Full-time Pay, Part-time Job was something I wrote on the spur of the moment, after witnessing Jeremy Tan's epic speech during the eve of the Polling Day 2025. It inspired me to pen this down, and if I'm being honest, it's not one of my more thought-out works. Still, it doesn't matter; the popularity of the topic and Jeremy Tan, carried the day for this blogpost.

Replit Goes Rogue was a recent addition, but its trajectory is on the rise. Despite being posted less than a month, its numbers are really promising.

OK-ish

So many posts fell into this category. Either huge things were expected for them and they failed by just doing decently, or they punched above their weight.

Why people should (and shouldn't) hire older software developers was just more comparison between younger and older developers.

How much of the Artificial Intelligence hype is just hot air? I suspect this struck a chord with much of the anti-AI brigade, which has been gathering momentum.

What Iswaran's sentence means for those in positions of authority were some thoughts on authority and responsibility. Not so much tech, more workplace-related.

A vacation!

A Software Developer's Vacation in Malacca. A fun piece, with lots of pictures!

Not My Job, Not My Problem is more of a commentary on the workplace, rather than anything tech.

Finally, The Silencing of Charlie Kirk and what it means for Social Media, was written two days after Charlie Kirk was felled by an assassin's bullet. As to be expected, it caught fire fast and it's probably only in this category because of its late inclusion. Some readers called it "balanced". The funny thing is, in the toxic climate that is the USA's Culture Wars, this piece would be vilified by both sides.

Artificial Intelligence Experts join Meta... but it's not about the money? Really? was me responding to more tech news.

Duds

These were the ones that barely raised a whimper. Mostly technical posts which is a tragedy because, well, this is a tech blog. Sorry, not sorry. This is actually in line with the assignment, so I'm gonna keep doing these, regardless.

JavaScript now has negative indexing... sort of was just a report on a new JavaScript function I discovered. It wasn't even that new. And probably I need to work on my presentation because the views suggested that readers found it boring AF.

Is Repeating The Password Field Really Necessary? More of a UI/UX thing. Maybe not the most interesting blogpost in the world, but I think it needed to be written.

Meta Ditches the Fact-checkers - now, I really expected a hell of a lot more out of this one. Either people aren't interested in seeing me shit on Meta, or they just aren't very interested in Meta, period. On the other hand, as mentioned, Artificial Intelligence Experts join Meta... but it's not about the money? Really? did OK, so I really don't know.

Bailing from Meta.

While we're at it, it appears that at this time of writing, in a bizarre twist, AI experts have left Meta (and all that money) to join some startup. This in no way invalidates my previously implied point that Meta is a deeply problematic company that one would join only if the financial reward was great... the fact that people are not staying in spite of the money, only further reinforces the point.

But this hardly warrants a blogpost all on its own, so... just gonna leave it here.

Thunderation!

Been a pleasure, as always. I love working on this blog, but I also look forward to the annual blogging break. It's where I can get things reset and take stock of the year ahead.

Dialling it up to eleven, yo!
T___T

Artificial Intelligence Experts join Meta... but it's not about the money? Really?

It was with some amusement that I spotted this article in recent times. In it, Meta head honcho Mark Zuckerberg is reported to have debunked the suggestion that AI experts aren't joining Meta for money.

For context, Zuckerberg has been luring top AI experts from Apple, Google and OpenAI. Interesting news, though not exactly noteworthy now, is it? Big Tech firms poaching from other Big Tech firms; nothing to see here, move along.

Meta catching those flies.

What was noteworthy was Zuckerberg's reaction to the suggestion that these new hires are joining for more than just the monstrous paycheck. He said these people were joining Meta for the opportunity to build superintelligent AI systems without all the red tape and shit. Obviously, I'm just paraphrasing here, but you get the gist!

Wow, Zuck. Just wow. 

Just to be fair, while that statement elicited incredulous laughter, there have been reports that some companies in the AI race have been less than enthused about AI research for the sake of AI research, seeing it as more of an avenue for profit. The thinking of business people, basically. 

And of course, being able to play with fancy new toys with almost unlimited resources is always nice. I imagine the "no red tape" thing was icing on top of a substantial cake.

But to say it's not about the money? That's a load of Facebook-shaped cap and we know it.

Facebook-shaped cap.

While I will concede that money probably isn't the only motivation, the fact remains that it's a pretty sizeable one.

Everyone, in some shape or form, is doing it for the money. Anyone who isn't, is either already unimaginably rich or just nuts. Meta's recent acquisition of Apple's top AI engineer is costing them USD 200 million a year. That's not chump change, chum. (Say that three times fast, I dare you!) Apple declined to meet that price. Yes, Apple! 

What about the claim of building a superintelligence? Well, that requires context. For intelligence, what are we comparing against? The idiots currently raging on Social Media about Sydney Sweeney's jeans? The ones busy politicizing the death of Hulk Hogan? That's not a terribly high bar, really.

Final thoughts

All this is not to say that these AI experts shouldn't take the money. Au contraire, they absolutely should. AI could be the thing of the future, that much is true. But it's hard to tell because that's what they all once said about NFTs and the Metaverse. Meta was even named after the latter!

Therefore, these AI experts should make hay while people are still willing to pay them that amount of money, on the off-chance that this doesn't last. As history has proven, tech can be a fickle mistress.

"It's not about the money, money, money"... really?!
T___T

Meta ditches the fact-checkers

Meta started off 2025 with a grand announcement in early January. CEO Mark Zuckerberg, sporting a new luscious mop of hair, declared that Facebook and Instagram would be dialling back on fact-checking and content moderation operations. In recent years, Facebook's moderation policies have been met with mixed reactions due to allegedly Left-leaning biases within the fact-checking. 

What it effectively meant was that if your Facebook posts have ever received a warning for saying things that the fact-checkers considered offensive or untrue, you were about to no longer be in danger of that. In particular, if you were of the Right-leaning persuasion, you might find your content no longer under scrutiny or censored in the name of "preventing the spread of misinformation".

Censored by Facebook.

I've never had much of a problem with that censorship. It's annoying when it happens, sure, but I don't get censored much. Mostly because being Singaporean, I tend to post things that don't actually make sense in English. The thing about having your own slang in a multi-cultural country is that you tend to go that way when feeling particularly strongly about something. In other words, we Singaporeans can be offensive in multiple languages, not just one. Go, us!

And also because I don't go onto Facebook or Instagram to look for Right-leaning opinions. Or Left-leaning ones, for that matter. These platforms just don't represent that kind of value for me. I'm more about the DIY and origami videos

Motivations

Mark Zuckerberg is a highly accomplished man, but with this move, even by his lofty standards, he achieved something truly remarkable. In a country where deep political divisions exist, he's managed to turn both the Left and the Right sides of the political aisle against him. Many on the Left think that he's a turncoat who sold out by adopting this bend-the-knee approach towards Donald Trump. On the Right, there's a sentiment that someone with no principles, who could abandon his stand just like that just because Donald Trump is the one soon to be in power, can't be trusted.

And both sides, of course, in not so many words, accuse Zuckerberg of trimming his sails in response to the directions the political winds blow in the USA.

Trimming their sails.

Honestly, from my privileged position of not caring a whit about the outcome of the culture wars in the USA, I fail to see the problem. 

Sure, Zuckerberg said this.

What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it's gone too far. So, I want to make sure that people can share their beliefs and experiences on our platforms.

As far as I'm concerned, no matter how he may pontificate to the contrary, Zuckerberg has never been a champion for Free Speech. The mere thought elicits a chuckle. Zuckerberg's a businessman, first and foremost, and if it takes a certain amount of ass-kissing (even if said posterior belongs to a certain Donald J Trump) to get ahead, so be it. Zuckerberg isn't betraying anything or embracing some virtue. As a business owner, his first duty isn't to Free Speech - and if he's ever given you a different impression, I'm afraid that's on you - but to business. He's simply doing the sensible thing for Meta.

So what if Zuckerberg's only doing this because Donald Trump won the election? So what if he's only trying to ensure Meta survives at least till the next election four years later? What else is he supposed to do, sacrifice his business for high-minded ideals that some randos on the internet like to squawk about?

The plan is to move the moderation team to Texas. Assuming that the majority of the existing team can't simply just uproot themselves, the result would be some kind of voluntary mass resignation. Considering that Zuckerberg recently talked about replacing programmers in Meta with AI by this year, I think it's safe to assume that there's a drive to reduce headcount at Meta that ties in nicely with the move to Texas. That would represent significant cost savings for Meta, if nothing else.

What next for Meta?

The CEO of X, one Linda Yaccarino, congratulated Meta on the change. 

I think it’s really exciting when you think about community notes being good for the world... and it couldn’t be more validating than to see that Mark and Meta realize that. Mark, Meta, welcome to the party.

Welcome to the party? Geez.

This may be due to me being Asian, coming from a culture that normalizes sarcasm and therefore being suspicious of everything, including (and especially) things that sound like compliments. But it feels like some serious shade is being thrown here. She might as well have said "welcome to the twenty-first century!".

Twitter-shaped shade
disguised as a Like.

That aside, I would like to address another thing Zuckerberg said.

We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth, but the fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they've created, especially in the US.

Jesus, what was his first clue?!

Anyway, what does this change for Facebook? People have been attempting to push their political and ideological agendas on Social Media for over a decade now. It's just not that big a deal any more. You can throw all the Left or Right-leaning content in peoples' faces all day; you're not converting anyone. All it will probably accomplish is that now Facebook is no longer a Leftist echo chamber, people are just going elsewhere to find more suitable echo chambers. But absolutely no one is going to be coming onto Facebook in search of the truth.

In the larger picture, I'm not sure if anyone lets themselves be influenced by Social Media any more. To what end? Social Media is filled with people who are, in all likelihood, just as ignorant and unenlightened as everyone else. Anyone who's actually looking to have their opinions shaped by Social Media, is probably not playing with a full deck in the first place. To say nothing of the sort who have maybe a few thousand Followers and think their constant political posts on Social Media make any kind of difference.

Come to think of it, now with A.I coming up, we won't even need all these users anymore. Speak complete rubbish with utmost confidence? A.I can do that, and much faster too!

Ultimately...

One half of the USA is feeling great about the change, and the other half is feeling pretty sore. This is going to be an unpopular opinion, but none of that matters. For Meta's Social Media business, the writing was on the wall a long time ago. I see them becoming progressively less relevant. They'll always have a place in history, but in four to eight years, this may be exactly all they have left.

Facts man, facts!
T___T

How much of the Artificial Intelligence hype is just hot air?

During an event held by Oracle in Singapore last month, I heard a speaker describe AI as "aspirin looking for a headache". On the other hand, Linus Torvalds was rather less poetic as he described AI, with characteristic bluntness, as "90% marketing and 10% reality".

The term "Artificial Intelligence" has infiltrated the public consciousness over the course of the past year. Tech products such as dating apps and search engines now boast AI-powered features. Even Meta's WhatsApp now has Meta AI built in, for no discernible purpose whatsoever. The consensus seems to be that adding the term "AI" to any product automatically raises its value in the eyes of consumers.

And sadly, they're right. Non-technical consumers tend to be a simple-minded bunch. On one hand, I feel like I should be outraged at this brazen exploitation of their gullibility. On the other hand, money needs to move in this economy, and if someone absolutely has to be parted from their money, it might as well be fools.

Shut up and take my money!

Is AI even all that revolutionary at the moment? Back in March, Sam Altman declared that OpenAI had produced ChatGPT 4 which had enhanced reasoning abilities. This report tells us that ChatGPT 4 beats 90% of humans. If we take this to be true, does it then follow that all the "AI-powered" features in other products up to now, have been bullshit?

As it turns out, very few people produce technology purely for the love of technology. It's a business like any other. And part of business, is hype. I can't go a day without seeing some ad for certification for AI pop up on my screen. My feed is full of news as to how AI is going to disrupt the workforce. It's starting to feel like people want this to happen a lot more than AI is actually capable of it. Because the perception of potentially huge profits, draws investors. Investors keep the money coming in. Few people have the patience to invest significantly in something that might be huge in a decade. However, if you can show progress now or soon, that's when the cash register sounds start ringing.

AI up to now

Currently, at the very basic levels, AI is being used in cheap entertainment. My Facebook feed is filled with the products of people amusing themselves with wacky AI image or video generations. Walls of text are similarly generated through idle conversations with bots.

At work, generative AI is used to rewrite paragraphs or even generate entirely new ones, in emails or in reports. Or create graphics for presentations. Even video. In short, nothing that wasn't possible before AI.

The problem is, the content generated can't be implicitly trusted. And even assuming that it can, such content generation isn't anything remotely groundbreaking. Creating presentations? Rewriting paragraphs and emails and cover letters? Bluntly put, it's kids' stuff. Unless your command of the English language was terrible to begin with, this use of generative AI won't increase quality of output. At best, the speed of which said output is produced, will increase tenfold. Quickly produced crap, however, is still crap.

When I first encountered ChatGPT, I regarded it as a fun new toy which could do amusing things like write poems, generate data about a known subject and make stuff up. And yes, even provide code for well-known algorithms. I certainly wasn't seeing ChatGPT as an equal, much less a threat to my professional existence.

The code generation capabilities were potentially interesting... but ultimately, nothing I couldn't accomplish with a Google search. And, of course, some judicious copy-pasting.

AI in the military?

If one were into conspiracy theories, we could even entertain the idea that AI is actually more advanced and being used by the military and secret organizations. The insipid content-generating version is the one that mere mortals like us are allowed to use, in order to distract us and lull us into a false sense of security. So while we're too busy using AI to genderswap our favorite movie stars and making crappy deepfake porn, some people are doing exactly what they want.

Depressing thought, eh? Anyway...

AI in the future

One question I keep getting asked is, will AI replace humans? Are our jobs in danger? Are programmer jobs in danger? I don't know, man. You've seen the state of Generative AI as it is now.

Text? We're talking about something that will cheerfully churn out chunks of text that looks reasonable but will probably not stand up to scrutiny. Just because something writes a lot of stuff in good English, doesn't mean the stuff is actually useful.

Images? You mean the art generators that keep rendering human hands with entirely too many fingers? The amount of effort it takes just to generate one useful image (which can never be replicated) is off-putting unless you're just doing it for recreational purposes. As for video, forget about Sora and its ilk replacing actors and film directors. The observations I made about art generators above, applies here, too.

If you can be replaced at your job by technology that produces such unusable rubbish, perhaps AI isn't the problem. Perhaps the problem is that your job is so repetitive and needs so little human ingenuity that a machine could do it, and do it a million times faster.

The other possible problem, in the case of artists and writers, is that consumers are Phillistines and don't require content to be all that good. They're happy with sucky AI generated monstrosities, as was the case recently when a local artist's work was plagiarised with AI.

This is not to say that AI will not eventually replace us. "Eventually" being the operative word. For this to happen, AI would have to hit some kind of critical point. Self-programming? Learning new logic instead of simply adding data to its memory? Actual creativity instead of merely approximating existing data from human beings?

And the golden question: When will this happen?

I don't know the answer to that question. No one does. There are too many possibilities. It could happen a hundred years from now. Or fifty. It could happen next week, or even after breakfast tomorrow. The only thing that's clear is, in its current form, AI is not even remotely close to being an average human replacement. However, once it arrives at that critical point, not only will AI have that human spark, it will have the speed gifted to it by technology. As to what would happen next, use your imagination.

In King Arthur's
Court.

This reminds me of a novel I once read, by Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. In the story, Hank Morgan time travels and finds himself in Camelot, making the acquiantance of the likes of Arthur, Merlin and Lancelot. The medieval English are initially hostile, but Morgan has a gun on him, and uses it to devastating effect. To the people of these times, this looks like powerful magic even though to us it's just, you know, a gun. They end up worshipping him as some kind of great wizard while Merlin looks jealously on.

Because, as we know, technology that is sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from magic.

Just for readers who are terrible with analogies, here are several parallels I can draw from that story to this situation. Generative AI looks like the gun. The promoters of AI technology such as Jensen Huang and Sam Altman, are Hank Morgan. And the rubes gushing about how transformative this new technology is, are, tragically, those primitive and technologically backward Englishmen.

Conclusion

Artificial Intelligence may or may not be increasing in actual technological depth, but its mentions are becoming increasingly ubiquitous, if not its actual usage. Time will tell if all this is smoke and mirrors.

Right now, with all the hype, AI doesn't actually need to be that good in order to gain traction. Perception is a huge part of this. As long as there are rubes around willing to uncritically swallow what the snake oil peddlers are selling, there'll be enough goodwill to carry it. But even that goodwill is going to run out at some point. By that time, let's see if AI has made any actual progress.

Maybe all these people who are hyping this up, who don't appear to have ever written a single line of code in their lives, are seeing something I'm not. I remain open to the possibility that I'm wrong about this. I want to be wrong about this. It would be beyond exciting if so.

Artificial regards,
T___T

TeochewThunder: Year Nine (Part 2/2)

Much of this blogging year's content was strong. Few made it to extreme highs in terms of readership, or broke existing records. On the other hand, plenty of them garnered a respectable amount of views.

Red hot

Those posts in this category simply reinforce my point that it is my views about politics and the workplace, rather than my tech, that get the most attention.

Damn, that's hot.

Quiet Quitting: Do Or Do Not? examined the phenomenon of Quiet Quitting in the workplace.

Film Review: Black Mirror Series Three was a surprise - I didn't know people were that interested in a series that isn't even all that recent. It definitely overperformed.

The Real Reason Behind Political Resignation rode upon the wave of awareness generated by the recent (at the time) scandals in the Singapore Government.

Remote Work Is A Moral Issue For Elon Musk was basically me roasting the world's douchiest techbro millionaire. I don't know why, but people seem to pay more attention to these. That's sad.

Decent

These got a fair amount of attention - some of which was expected, and some which weren't.

Well done!

That Sinking Feeling At Twitter was a post talking about Elon Musk and Twitter (now X) and this always gets attention.

Film Review: M3GAN, Film Review: Missing, Film Review: Black Mirror Series Two and Film Review: Black Mirror Series Three, Redux were film reviews and these usually do well. No real surprise here.

Five New Workplace Buzzwords, Does Skin Art Affect Your Career Prospects?, What we think we deserve, does not matter, On job applicants who want work-life balance, Didn't get that promotion? Blame The Peter Principle and It's Not Personal were some of my views on the workplace. Could have done better, but I'm not complaining.

ChatGPT's capabilities and their implications in Software Development, Big Tech Layoffs in Progress!, From Twitter to X? and  TikTok Congressional Hearing: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly were about recent tech developments. I honestly expected these to do better, especially the last one. I mean, I worked really hard on the TikTok Congressional Hearing. Oh, well.

The How And Why Of One-Hot Encoding and Let's Unpack The CSS Box got a surprising amount of attention. I've never labored under the delusion that people bother about my more technical posts.

A Software Developer's Vacation in Kuala Lumpur was a WTF moment for me when I saw it had gotten this many views. I really wasn't under the impression that people care about my vacations, or about Kuala Lumpur. 

Meh

These were the underperformers. The ones that I expected a better reader reception for, and just didn't get it. Thankfully, there's not that many of them.

What a letdown.

Meta's new platform: Threads or Threat? now this one definitely underperformed. I don't know why.

Five Java Exceptions Personified was a fun listicle that bombed. I had higher hopes for this one.

Here's to Year Nine!

The blog has survived. It's often on life support, but it's there. I haven't been a huge success, but that was never the goal. The goal was to build muscle memory, keep me sharp, help me stay current and relevant. And on that front, it's worked wonders.

On cloud nine,
T___T

From Twitter To X?

It appears that Elon Musk has come up with yet another bizarre decision. Sometime last week, Twitter underwent a name and logo change. Now, name changes aren't anything new in the world we inhabit. Facebook became Meta. Bruce Jenner became Caitlyn Jenner. In 1993, Prince became... well, you get the idea. Nothing to blink at.

Bye bye, birdy.

What's surprising, at least to me, is the what. From an internationally known moniker, the app has changed to a relatively generic X. The cute and tasteful blue bird that has served as the app's logo for more than a decade, is now a stylized and, dare I say, uninteresting "X". Now, not being a tech billionaire and all, nobody really cares about my opinion, and nor should they. I assume Elon Musk knows what he's doing... because I really don't. And I'm not entirely sure anyone else does either. Of all changes to take place, this stands out as a strange choice.

They call it a rebranding, but it really feels more like a debranding.

While I've never been a Twitter user, Twitter was such a mainstay of cyberspace that it was impossible for it to not be on my radar in some fashion. That's how strong its branding was. To throw that all away for a new but not altogether exciting image, seems counter-intuitive.

Burning questions!

Elon Musk has stated his desire to evolve Twitter into some kind of "Everthing App", just like WeChat. Something like that would require strong brand recognition as a foundation. Unfortunately, we live in a world where many things already share the name "X". And some of these things are distinctively pornographic in nature. Is that the kind of recognition that Elon Musk is going for? Somehow I doubt it.

Twitter's presence in not just cyberspace, but also Internet culture at large, has resulted in certain words being added to the lexicon. "Tweeting" is a verb which essentially means posting a message on Twitter. Now with the name change, what other changes could we see? Will Tweeting now be known as X-ing? Sounds uncomfortably violent.

Let me just do some X-ing...

Finally, of all the icons that Elon Musk could have gone with, why this one? I called it "relatively generic" earlier. I was being kind. It's boring. It's tepid. It says nothing about what the platform does. This could be deliberate. Musk could have some big plans for the app, and perhaps this generic quality is meant to avoid painting the app into a corner.

In Conclusion

With Meta's Threads encountering a bit of a downturn in recent weeks, this looked like a good time for Twitter to recover. Looks like it's not to be.

Still, it's going to be interesting seeing the two platforms taking turns to flounder. Definitely way more interesting than seeing one platform dominate. Let's hope that this does not lead to Elon Musk going from X owner to ex-owner. (hur hur)

Kick some X, Elon Musk!
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Meta's new platform: Threads or Threat?

I've never wanted a Twitter account. Back in the day, the thought of maintaining yet another extension of my online identity held little appeal, especially when all I could seemingly expect in return was yet another platform of celebrities airing opinions that they seemed to think I should care about, or non-celebs making those proclamations as though they were celebs. And, of course, thread after thread of shmucks with too much time on their hands people trying desperately to sound cleverer than the next guy, or just outright hurling verbal abuse when they thought they could get away with it.

Heck, if that was what I was after, I already had Facebook for that.

Thus, last week, when I saw an Instagram notification that told me some of my friends had already started posting on Meta's spanking brand new Social Media platform Threads, I was momentarily tempted to just hop on the bandwagon. Momentarily. Until I did a little homework and it turned out that Threads was basically a spiritual clone of Twitter less a few features.

Now, if I already had zero desire to have a Twitter account whether or not Elon Musk was in charge, why would I want Threads?

The case for Threads

The ad-free experience? Come on, now. We all know that once Threads hits a certain critical mass in terms of user base, Mark Zuckerberg is going to monetize the hell out of it. It's just business.

More moderation, less toxicity? Sure, right now Threads is a nice friendly place with content moderation. However, once enough users join this platform, the same thing is going to happen that happens everywhere - the name-calling, the endless virtue-signalling, the constant pseudo-intellectual bullshit. People are trash, and they don't stop being trash even if you intend to implement a level of censorship that would cause China to sigh with approval.

Censored!

It's also tempting to sign up for Threads just to spite Elon Musk, though in all honesty, a lot of that is his own fault. This techbro billionaire basically paints a target on himself every time he gets online to spout some outrageously trollish bullshit. He's a billionaire and the average Keyboard Warrior can't even begin to touch him... but they can affect his bottom line and dent his ego by going over to his competitor now that he has one. I like to think I'm above these levels of pettiness, though the simple fact is that my laziness precludes me from it.

Competition is good for the market, generally. Threads represents just that. Some might say we already have way too many Social Media platforms. I say that's only the case if one intends to sign up for all of them. As someone whose fortunes aren't being intrinsically tied to public recognition - such as, say, actors and artistes and influencers - I have the privilege of not giving a shit, one which I intend to exercise with extreme prejudice.

But back to the issue of competition. It's important to keep these guys in check. And if the world's governments can't, perhaps these competing platforms will keep each other in check. Think about it - even without a monopoly, platforms like Facebook, Twitter and the like were abusing data confidentiality and unevenly applying moderation policies. How much bolder would they get if they had a monopoly? That, my friends, is entirely unthinkable.

The case against Threads

I don't actually have anything against Threads specifically. At least, not any more than I have against Twitter and all the platforms that attempt to imitate it. It just doesn't offer me any value that would entice me to partake; I have no ambitions to become an influencer of any sort, and I certainly don't think my opinions require a Twitter-like soapbox to air them from.

Why, Zuck?!

But sure, let's take a look at the data that Threads wants to collect. That's quite a list: location, personal, health financial, web browsing... check out the screenshot, or check it out yourself on your App Store. Even by the standards of Social Media, this seems excessive. Now, being a complete nobody, I'm personally not all that concerned about data privacy. People who feel differently about the issue may beg the question: why in the ever-loving Zuck do you need all that data, Mark? Sure, these are mostly optional. But still, it's a little concerning.

There's also the issue of your Instagram account being tied to your Threads account. Apparently, once you install Threads, you can't delete your Threads account without also deleting your Instagram account, which just feels really tyrannical. I expect them to fix this at some point, though.

Lastly, there's the buzz that Threads lacks certain features that Twitter has, such as Trends and Spaces. But let's not kid ourselves, all people really need is a platform to air their opinions, exchange news of dubious veracity and argue with complete strangers. You don't need those extra features for that.

So... Threads or Threat?

Whatever one may think of Meta or Mark Zuckerberg, the move to create Threads and attract the Instagram user base was nothing short of brilliant. Already, Threads has unsurpassed rapidity of user growth and avoided (sort of) the growing pains of most other Social Media platforms. It came at an crucial time when Elon Musk seems to be struggling as Twitter's owner, and his increasingly unpopular decisions have left Twitter's user base crying out for an alternative.

Will Threads be Twitter's death blow? I sure hope not. Not that I'm a fan of either Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk, but the last thing we need in the Social Media arena is a monopoly. The existence of a flailing Twitter has given rise to the creation of Threads, and the existence of Threads should in turn hold Musk's feet to the fire. Already, we have news of an impending lawsuit. Good times!

Thread carefully, Elon Musk!
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When Zuckerberg Met(a) Facebook

What in the world just happened? Facebook is changing names!

Last month, in what feels like it should have been more of an earthshaking moment, Mark Zuckerberg announced in a series of public conferences, that Facebook would now be named Meta Platforms, Inc. It was not to be just a cosmetic name change. The change went deeper than just a name and logo.

The existing Social Media and communications platforms - Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp - will take up half of Meta. The other half will be dedicated to the construction of a metaverse. Just what in the heck is a "metaverse", you may ask? Tt is a virtual world where, if Zuckerberg achieves his vision, users can interact with an augmented or virtual reality environment in real-time. Hence, "Meta".

A metaverse!

Cynically, of course, one could see this as a matter of branding for Zuckerberg, nothing more. If he's to be believed, this was the direction they were heading all along and the name change is just meant to reflect that. The problem, according to him, is that Facebook is currently seen a a Social Media company. (No shit, really?!)

This move might prove to be worthwhile for Zuckerberg. After all, the abovementioned platforms all depend on mobile technology for propagation. That makes Facebook, as a company, vulnerable to the rules imposed by Google and Apple. And we all know Facebook has faced strong opposition to both entities in the recent past.

But what if Zuckerberg were able to pivot Facebook to a new kind of platform, one which wasn't dominated by Google and Apple? I'm not even gonna front - the possibilities are, to say the least, intriguing.

The Meta-conclusion

Honestly, I can't see the name change sticking. We're talking about over ten years' worth of inertia at this point. And let's be real here - "Meta" isn't exactly catchy or original. And the less said about the sheer lameness of the logo, the better. Seriously, were they maybe hoping to be as unimpressive as possible?

What's more pertinent, however, is the nature of Facebook's - ahem, excuse me, Meta's - business model. If they are truly pivoting to virtual reality, that is a huge deal if they manage to pull it off. Will they? The technology is there, but how much of it could truly permeate a market where internet strength can be spotty at best? Your guess is as good as mine.

It's been real,
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