Sociotechnologist, writer and speaker working on tech and its social impact. Communist. Feminist. Antifascist. Luddite. Email: tante@tante.cc | License CC BY-SA-4.0 tfr
Balaji Srinivasan is the spearhead of the new fascist movement establishing itself in Silicon Valley.
It's easy to dismiss him as a clown given how bad, inconsistent and dumb his ideas are but he's a clown with a lot of followers in tech who listen to his visions of "ethnic cleansing".
A few weeks ago I asked around for interest in #luddite events here in Berlin.
While everything takes longer than one likes (work and stuff) I did set up a mailing list for announcements/etc. If you want to get an email as soon as things are set up you can add your email address to https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/berlinluddites .
I can't fully commit to a date/schedule yet, but I am working on it. Forward the address to whoever you think might be interested.
Ada Lovelace was cool, sure. But in the year 2024 maybe find a second woman to name your "women in tech" or "diversity in tech" thing after. Otherwise it looks as if you know exactly one woman.
@tante@dlx My personal Mount Rushmore is Ada Lovelace, Hedy Lamarr, Grace Hopper, and Margaret Hamilton. But your toot made me realize I donโt have a recent hero on that list, so itโs a good reminder to also stay current and not settle.
As someone in software for a while that has been the most surprising thing that Open Source did: In massively increased complexity even for small projects because "that's how Google/Amazon/etc do it".
Yes Amazon does Microservice architectures. They also have a few people for every service that knows the ins and outs. You have a team of 5 that now not only has to understand the problem but juggle dependency chains from here around the moon and back so your React App that should have been plain HTML doesn't fail while showing a basically static page.
You won't grow to Google/Amazon scale. It's fine. Just build a simple solution you can maintain.
Working on React/K8s or whatever is mostly you training yourself on your own dime and time to be a potential hire for some Big tech company that will fire you to juice the numbers at he end of the next quarter.
As someone in software for a while that has been the most surprising thing that Open Source did: In massively increased complexity even for small projects because "that's how Google/Amazon/etc do it".
Yes Amazon does Microservice architectures. They also have a few people for every service that knows the ins and outs. You have a team of 5 that now not only has to understand the problem but juggle dependency chains from here around the moon and back so your React App that should have been plain HTML...
@tante Frequently leadership at orgs are composed of people that never really had to get their hands dirty. So, they make decisions based on a cargo-cult mindset.
Most open source projects are understaffed, especially given their relevance within the whole software ecosystem.
For projects such as k8s it's of course even worse because their target audience is basically Google/Amazon etc (if you are a normal company it's probably a massive overhead for you) who outsource that relevant work hoping the community likes to work for free while learning the skills Google/Amazon/etc need.
Most open source projects are understaffed, especially given their relevance within the whole software ecosystem.
For projects such as k8s it's of course even worse because their target audience is basically Google/Amazon etc (if you are a normal company it's probably a massive overhead for you) who outsource that relevant work hoping the community likes to work for free while learning the skills Google/Amazon/etc need.
For 2024 I hope we can talk less about decentralization and more about democratization.
Decentralization sounds nice, is sometimes the right approach but is also tech's version of "the market is gonna fix this". Way more interested in finding more robust ways of doing democracy on, with and to the platforms we inhabit.
@tante democracy needs decentrality. decentrality enables democracy. no need to put them against each other. the problems arise if you think you can have one without the other like with bitcoin or with centralist nation states.
I fully switched to Firefox a few months ago when Google kept on pushing their "Manifest V3" Chrome policy, now that they continue to push it and remove V2 (and with it meaningful adblockers) from Chrome in 2024 maybe you want to start migrating as well?
Don't go to Brave btw. It's a shit company that keeps doing shady stuff and is run by a homophobe. There are so many browsers, just pick one. (Whether other Chromium-based browsers will keep an interface for effective customization for users around is for you to research. Just use Firefox TBH).
I fully switched to Firefox a few months ago when Google kept on pushing their "Manifest V3" Chrome policy, now that they continue to push it and remove V2 (and with it meaningful adblockers) from Chrome in 2024 maybe you want to start migrating as well?
"Here's an AI to write Alt-Text for your images" is exactly what @danmcquillan argues is the "management of austerity" at the core of current "AI" systems: Marginalized (in this case blind) people get a shitty version of the real thing because we can't be bothered ("can't afford") to give the real thing.
Writing alt text is not some annoyance that you should automate half-assedly. Write the fucking description of you post an image. It's just part of what you do when posting a fucking image.
Giving Fairphone shit because while trying to build a long-term viable, sustainable and socially and economically fairer device they also think about the people in the real fucking world who are supposed to use them and offer them the software most of them rely on (like Google Apps) is more toxic purism than I can stand.
People who are willing to suffer in their life by using something different, something slightly incompatible to what the rest of the world uses already do install roms and run whatever on their machines.
Getting real actual people to buy a phone that's not built to be thrown away in a year of two, that highlights the values of sustainability is a huge win.
And making the medicine ("your phone might not be as fancy as your peers' phones") taste sweeter ("for 8 years you have access to all the applications you need for your life to function within a digital society") is just a smart move.
Giving Fairphone shit because while trying to build a long-term viable, sustainable and socially and economically fairer device they also think about the people in the real fucking world who are supposed to use them and offer them the software most of them rely on (like Google Apps) is more toxic purism than I can stand.
@tante I had a Jolla phone and was happy with it aside from the fact that I couldnโt use Signal. If you donโt care about the networks your friends, family, and coworkers use, you can be a purist.
I can put a ROM without nasty nasty evil Googles on a phone. What I canโt do is make the damned thing smaller. Thatโs the thing I will give Fairphone shit about. Phones are too damned big. Make a smaller phone and more people would buy it and use it longer.
@tante This is my take too. And it's not like there aren't options for degoogling a Fairphone, I'm planning on installing CalyxOS when I get mine and it's great to have that choice. But it's also great to have the choice to use normal Google Android if that's what people need. It's like being pissed that you can install Microsoft Windows on a Framework laptop, it's just an option you can pick if it works for you.
@tante I wish the Ubuntu project for phones (and other devices) had been successful. Quite apart from the software and apps just having a good enough sustainable (both business and environmentally speaking) hardware platform would be huge win. If you look at what % of all phone users are on the latest flagship ~ $1000 a pop phones I'll bet its < 10%. The rest of us can use something like Fairphone. And if it's a hardware spec then like "the PC" it can be cloned and mass produced.
First it was: "Search is bad now, I'll just use Reddit to find answers.". Now Reddit is trying to kill itself while the search engines inject falsehood generators into their pipelines for weird reasons. Finding information is gonna get a lot harder.
@tante fรผr unsere (Haupt/Real-) Schรผler ist Internet Recherche jetzt over. Sie lesen keine Artikel mehr, sondern kopieren nur das erste Ergebnis ihrer Suchanfrage mit Copy und Paste. Ist auch vรถllig unmรถglich, da etwas einzuordnen, weil ihnen das Vorwissen fehlt. Ich stelle jetzt im Unterricht wieder auf Buchrecherche um oder drucke die relevanten Artikel auf Papier aus. ๐คทโโ๏ธ
@tante
@tante
Anyone remember an old TV series called WILD PALMS?
@tante โWhat Iโm really calling for is something like tech Zionism,โ ๐