Spend the evening setting up bookkeeping software for myself and the little freelance stuff I do on the side.
If that's what being a grown up is, thanks I hate it.
Don't get me wrong the fediverse ain't in a good state and momentum is ... lacking at best. Software, culture, grown-upness, all need a boost.
But I also don't fully get coming here all day telling people here how awesome Bluesky is. Like happy people like it. It has its qualities (though it also is a bit full of itself, but what isn't, not like this place wasn't).
But why come here yelling and ranting? It's a bit ... weird.
Replace "AI will be trained on your posts" with "someone will datamine your posts". Those actions are not passive, _someone_ is making choices that you might not agree with.
I wonder if in a few years we'll see that some state-level actor had spamed the Internet with code tutorials for certain libraries or toolchains that include a backdoor (maybe by just making sure their library gets included) to poison code assistants.
I understand why so much open source happens on GitHub (it is free after all) but given how Microsoft has bought themselves into basically all modern tech tool chains should make people very uncomfortable.
This is a good PR thing for Microsoft/GitHub on first glance but the more you look at the details the more it becomes clear that this is a simple solution that doesn't fit the issues that dominate the domain. Sure you can give Open Source maintainers access to GitHub people and GitHub Copilot but who are you helping? Worst case is more open source projects having to deal with the extra work of double checking and fixing the generated code.
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.
Since I saw a report about 1984 (because of a new audio version done for motherfucking Audible!) with the same talking points, here's the usual correction:
1984 is not a book about total surveillance. It's a book about how to ensure the middle class will never stand with the lower classes against power. It's about how to destroy solidarity. In 1984 only the middle class is surveilled, the lower classes (proles) and the upper class (inner party) are not. It's a book about power and class politics that is more relevant than ever - but not "because our phones surveil us".
