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1. Embed this notice
   Andrew (Television Executive) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Sunday, 13-Oct-2024 00:53:47 JST Andrew (Television Executive)

   Today's software will not be sufficient, for the trials of the future.

   Most of the things we experience on a day to day basis cannot be solved with software, they are social problems that require social solutions.

   But some of the things that we're experiencing, and some of the things that are coming can absolutely be solved with, or at least have solutions which can only be realized by use of, technology.

   Our technology is insufficient to protect and facilitate our communities in the face of what is coming, no matter what happens next.

   • Embed this notice
     Andrew (Television Executive) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Sunday, 13-Oct-2024 00:53:45 JST Andrew (Television Executive)

     in reply to

     the Internet Archive is a wonderful, valuable, massive, messy, complicated Single Point of Failure for institutional and cultural memory.

     There are things that exist only in the archive and nowhere else.

     This is, in a word, Bad!

     I love (most of) the internet archive, what it tries to represent, what it does, the fact that it exists to push the envelope on what is legally permissible for a library and archive in the modern age (and it wins about as often as it loses, and that's also good.)

     But it is fragile in more ways than are obvious.

   • Embed this notice
     Andrew (Television Executive) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Sunday, 13-Oct-2024 00:53:46 JST Andrew (Television Executive)

     in reply to

     (Many of the people who are most significant to whom the above statement is most significant are saying "well duh" because they're already experiencing the shortcomings of our existing technology and/or working to build the future. )

     Mr. Bill, HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴 and Baessito :Ryyca:☭🇧🇷🇺🇳🇵🇸 repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Andrew (Television Executive) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Sunday, 13-Oct-2024 01:31:18 JST Andrew (Television Executive)

     in reply to

     As Sundog pointed out to me this morning, as long as the Archive is playing within the legal structure of the US legal system, it is *bound by* the legal structure of the US Legal system, and that structure is built by people who view the archive as an enemy.

     The laws are written by companies who want to see all archives destroyed, who want to destroy the very concept of ownership, of memory, of cultural commons.

     And we have to treat these entities as they treat us, as enemies.

   • Embed this notice
     Andrew (Television Executive) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Sunday, 13-Oct-2024 01:36:58 JST Andrew (Television Executive)

     in reply to

     That's why, in spite of all the things about the fediverse that are bad, I continue to support it and give my energy and attention to it.

     Because we're here doing an anticapitalism.

     We exist because people decided we should exist. We have a community because we decided to have a community.

     We're doing it without most of the major centralized players.

     We could do better, an outage at Digital Ocean would take out a lot of us. An outage at AWS would take out a lot of us. A coordinated effort from DNS providers or domain name registrars would fuck us up.

     But we're a blueprint for how a comms platform can exist outside of the control of Capital.

   • Embed this notice
     Andrew (Television Executive) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Sunday, 13-Oct-2024 01:36:59 JST Andrew (Television Executive)

     in reply to

     With world governments growing increasingly authoritarian, all centralized services represent unreasonable single points of failure.

     All centralized platforms represent unacceptably large targets.

     It was true of telegram, it was true of facebook, it was true of twitter, it is true of the internet archive, it is true of cable television, it is true of phone lines, it is true of the internet.

   • Embed this notice
     Andrew (Television Executive) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Sunday, 13-Oct-2024 01:36:59 JST Andrew (Television Executive)

     in reply to

     But this isn't new! The threats are bigger than just governments (and smaller!)

     We watch it play out with Wordpress.org, with etsy, with paypal, with patreon.

     Because the threat isn't just "authoritarianism" or "corruption" or whatever.

     The threat is capital.

     Kit Rhett Aultman and esmevane, sorry repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Andrew (Television Executive) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Sunday, 13-Oct-2024 01:37:00 JST Andrew (Television Executive)

     in reply to

     There's an election coming up in the US.

     It does not matter who wins, either candidate represents the potential for a dark and authoritative shift in the American legal system.

     Trump's reign would be more obviously domestically dangerous and violent, but it would also be more vocally opposed.

     Harris's presidency would likely be as violent internationally (we're still funding a genocide, and she has given no indication that she plans to stop), but less obviously violent domestically. However, under this less obviously violent domestic policy, there would be less mobilized resistance for things like KOSA and other surveillance state policies. Harris is a cop, a prosecutor, and we should fully expect that a Harris presidency would be as devastating for digital security and privacy as a Trump presidency.

     The thing people forget is that a "lesser" evil is still evil.

   • Embed this notice
     Andrew (Television Executive) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Sunday, 13-Oct-2024 01:37:01 JST Andrew (Television Executive)

     in reply to

     Everything we are facing today, every good thing we want to do, every victory we try to win...

     All of it is fragile in the same way. The laws are written by the powerful to protect the powerful. If they also protect or instead protect regular people that is either an accident or a result of lots of regular people banding together to remind the powerful that the alternative is solidarity, and with solidarity comes Consequences.

     The laws of this country, of most countries, exist to protect capital.

     Every time we do something that is a threat to capital (such as to dare to remember our own history, to demand access to the books our grandparents read, to talk to one another without paying someone in the middle, to print, to publish, to distribute literature, to tell our own stores, countless other things) our ability to do so persists only so long as it is convenient for the capitalists.

   • Embed this notice
     Andrew (Television Executive) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Sunday, 13-Oct-2024 01:37:02 JST Andrew (Television Executive)

     in reply to

     But this extends well beyond The Internet Archive!!!

   • Embed this notice
     Andrew (Television Executive) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Sunday, 13-Oct-2024 03:30:21 JST Andrew (Television Executive)

     in reply to

     Also, this thread may make it seem like I'm against single points of failure.

     I'm not. I think SPOFs are great.

     I think more things should be built with SPOFs. "Sorry guys, power's out at my house, you'll have to use someone else's [THING] tonight"

     The lights don't always have to turn on, the weather isn't always going to be good, flexibility is the key to happiness and success.

     Human scale software, anti-capitalist software, is going to be full of SPOFs.

     But, if we do it right, it'll also be federated and distributed such that any single point of failure, any node, any provider, can die and the network will heal around it and keep going.

     feld likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     Andrew (Television Executive) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Sunday, 13-Oct-2024 03:30:22 JST Andrew (Television Executive)

     in reply to

     The internet is wonderful! but it's also a potential point of failure.

     It's not the most pressing threat vector for us to attempt to solve for, but it should absolutely be on the radar.

   • Embed this notice
     Andrew (Television Executive) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Sunday, 13-Oct-2024 03:30:23 JST Andrew (Television Executive)

     in reply to

     But the technology that we have today, so much of it is shaped to the whims and wills of capital.

     So many of the things in Mastodon in particular are Capital shaped.

     We have to build our own tools that are shaped to our needs, rather than the needs of capital.

     Hat tip to gotosocial for being a prime example of the kind of anit-capitalist software we should continue to build.

   • Embed this notice
     Andrew (Television Executive) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Sunday, 13-Oct-2024 03:30:23 JST Andrew (Television Executive)

     in reply to

     One of the things I was working on before I got entrenched in the fedi was a dirt simple set of scripts for federating data over point to point/peer to peer connections without the internet.

   • Embed this notice
     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Sunday, 13-Oct-2024 03:31:18 JST feld

     in reply to
     @ajroach42 We have been brainwashed into thinking websites need to be working 24/7/365
     
     Tech culture was healthier when we had monthly/quarterly maintenance windows.
     
     "Sorry the joke website is down for updates, come back in a few hours"
     
     We survived.
   • Embed this notice
     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Sunday, 13-Oct-2024 03:37:40 JST feld

     in reply to

     • feld
     @ajroach42 This is also how we got to Kubernetes. Everyone needs Kubernetes now.
     
     ZERO DOWNTIME UPGRADES
     
     but also
     
     ZERO WORK/LIFE BALANCE BECAUSE YOU'RE ALWAYS FIXING KUBERNETES
     Another Linux Walt Alt likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     Mx Autumn :blobcatpumpkin: (carbontwelve@notacult.social)'s status on Sunday, 13-Oct-2024 03:52:47 JST Mx Autumn :blobcatpumpkin:

     in reply to

     • feld

     @feld @ajroach42 that’s the whole point of https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com which is also an idea I love.

     feld likes this.