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tante

The fact that we start to have the same conversations about crypto again makes my soul want to leave my body.

Yes. It's still all scams. A socially destructive set of technologies and attached belief systems.

tante.cc/2021/12/17/the-third-

tante

"We constrain our imaginations when we subordinate our creations to names owned by fascist tycoons. Imagine the author of a book telling people to "read my Amazon". A great director trying to promote their film by saying "click on my Max". That's how much they've pickled your brain when you refer to your own work and your own voice within the context of their walled garden. There is no such thing as "my Substack", there is only your writing, and a forever fight against the world of pure enshittification."

(Original title: Don't call it a Substack. - Anil Dash)

anildash.com//2024/11/19/dont-

"We constrain our imaginations when we subordinate our creations to names owned by fascist tycoons. Imagine the author of a book telling people to "read my Amazon". A great director trying to promote their film by saying "click on my Max". That's how much they've pickled your brain when you refer to your own work and your own voice within the context of their walled garden. There is no such thing as "my Substack", there is only your writing, and a forever fight against the world of pure enshittification."

Paguro

@tante Great quote! I'll write that down. Hand me a post-it please!

Glyph

@tante just want to say that I clicked on the article to see if it had a “been here for years” subtitle and was not disappointed, A+ @anildash

tante

Since nobody wanted to pay for Copilot Pro, Microsoft is now leveraging their Office365 monopoly, adding it to the service and raising prices there.

Luckily Nadella did bend the knee to Trump so there won't be any repercussions.

(More importantly: We see again that #AI isn't economically sustainable)

(Original title: Microsoft is bundling its AI-powered Office features into Microsoft 365 subscriptions)

theverge.com/2024/11/7/2429026

Sven

@tante seems to be the standard approach of Microsoft (and basically any other tech company), when they build something nobody likes (I'm getting flashbacks to the 90s wrt Internet Explorer...)

tante

For those who don't know: This is the CEO of Vercel, a major player in the JavaScript ecosystem. hachyderm.io/@joelanman/113437

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HdE

@tante Nimmt "Meins" auch, soll gut sein. Gehöre selbst eher zur "Hopfen und Malz"-Fraktion, quasi "Give a little BIT"

tante

I was a guest on two podcasts this week. And while they both are very tech related and the current issue is way bigger than that I still think both got more important given the election results.

A lot the infrastructures we depend on depend on the goodwill and support of a bunch of people who just helped a fascist rapist become president again or at least did not have the guts to push back. Even a bit.

And as people interested in the commons we need to rethink our approach.

tante

My main point is that "Open Source" no longer cuts it.

tante

What's going on over at Bluesky?

Oh they fundraised and got a whole bunch of money from a blockchain investor who has money in basically ever fucked up scam you have heard of.

Great.

bsky.social/about/blog/10-24-2

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JeffWalkerBooks

@tante Honestly, there isn't a social media company that isn't getting looking for funds one way or the other. Let's not forget the whole AI aspect slipping in to many of these social apps as well.

Benjamin Reed

@tante I saw a bluesky dev respond to someone asking about this and they said, basically, "yeah we had some blockchain companies in the last round too, luckily being a public benefit corp will give us protection”

I mean, Public Benefit Corporations *do* generally have some actual enforceable stuff (as opposed to B Corps just being a pinky swear) but that's putting a *lot* of faith in it being enough to hold off the money people.

tante

When logging into Wordpress.org (login.wordpress.org) you have to confirm that you are not affiliated with WPEngine.

While this looks petty and childish it's another sign the Wordpress is in the hands of people who can't find less destructive ways to handle their fucking midlife crisis.

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Troy

@tante is expect this from one of Elons companies. Absolutely childish.

Dawid Rejowski

@tante

Reminds me of the recent draw.io licence change. Very immature.

David Dorward

@tante I wonder if they have actually put that in their terms and conditions … and gave sufficient notice of the change to their customers … and refunded the customers who they now do not allow to log in.

I suspect this is grounds for at least some people to sue them.

tante

“Empty Innovation” at Re:Publica 2024 #rp24

Under the motto "Who Cares" Re:Publica gathered a few thousand people in Berlin and I got to give a talk continuing the path I started out on with my last two talks in 2022 and 2023. Titled "Empty Innovation" I tried outlining my understanding of the patterns of the weird technological hypes we've gone through in the last years, why they happen and also what this mode of "innovation" does to us as people, communities and societies.

tante.cc/2024/05/28/empty-inno

“Empty Innovation” at Re:Publica 2024 #rp24

Under the motto "Who Cares" Re:Publica gathered a few thousand people in Berlin and I got to give a talk continuing the path I started out on with my last two talks in 2022 and 2023. Titled "Empty Innovation" I tried outlining my understanding of the patterns of the weird technological hypes we've gone through in the last years, why they happen and also what this mode of "innovation" does to us as people, communities and societies.

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Tilman

@tante Great talk, thanks a lot! 👍

Oli

@tante
Ich möchte nicht weiter radikalisiert werden, aber was will man machen... ✊

tante

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".

newrepublic.com/article/180487

tante

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 lists.riseup.net/www/info/berl .

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.

Thanks fellow travelers.

Mullana

@tante
Too bad Berlin is so far away from me! 🥲
But good luck with your meetings!

Nick

@tante do you know of anyone in London doing this?

tante

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.

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Michael Edlund

@tante @dlx My personal Mount Rushmore is Ada Lovelace, Hedy Lamarr, Grace Hopper, and Margaret Hamilton. But your toot made me realize I don’t have a recent hero on that list, so it’s a good reminder to also stay current and not settle.

enoch_exe_inc

@tante Kathleen Booth, who wrote the first assembly language.

tante

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...

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beaiouns :verified:

@tante I know! Instead of react, I'll make a static page in node.js!

Aeon.Cypher

@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.

tante

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.

Software complexity is a scam by big tech.

mastodon.social/@tcurdt/111839

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.

tante

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.

Konrad

@tante Decentralization creates way more governance issues than it ever can solve.

Karl Heinz Häsliprinz

@tante The big question is what "Democracy" even means in a programmable environment with few paper legacy dependencies.

benni

@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.

tante

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?

developer.chrome.com/en/blog/r

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?

developer.chrome.com/en/blog/r

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Dale, The Cornflower

@tante As a former techie, I latched onto Firefox fifteen years ago and never looked back.

It also says something about Firefox when TOR uses it as the base for its browser.

jexner

@tante did it three weeks ago, can recommend. #Firefox

AutisticMumTo3 She/her 🌈

@tante
Already don't use Chrome. Currently using Firefox Nightly.

tante

"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.

tante

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.

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Wren Reilly

@tante I had a Jolla phone and was happy with it aside from the fact that I couldn’t use Signal. If you don’t 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 can’t do is make the damned thing smaller. That’s 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.

Blaze "wertercatt" Marshall

@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.

Simon π man ⚛️🇬🇧🇺🇸🇺🇦

@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.

tante

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.

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Schiffskatze

@tante für unsere (Haupt/Real-) Schüler ist Internet Recherche jetzt over. Sie lesen keine Artikel mehr, sondern kopieren nur das erste Ergebnis ihrer Suchanfrage mit Copy und Paste. Ist auch völlig unmöglich, 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. 🤷‍♀️

Jared Davis

@tante worldcat.org and multiple friendships with (borrowing) privileges is the answer.

Let’s coin a new term: call it #polylibrarious ?

Karl Voit :emacs: :orgmode:

@tante You're just using the wrong search engines. 🤷

tante

"AI" is short for "automated imitation".

JollyOrc

@tante read as "automated irritation". Still made sense.

Becca Reese

@tante @don vielleicht beruhigt das deinen Puls etwas. 😂

(wegen "Don't call it AI!")

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