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1. Embed this notice
   Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 28-Mar-2026 04:33:31 JST Aral Balkan

   RE: https://social.heise.de/@heiseonlineenglish/116301661509651336

   If your stated goal is to make computing into a “utility” (aka subscription) you can only obtain from Big Tech tech and if your entire industry is comprised of rentiers, it makes perfect sense to also make actually owning a general computing device as expensive as possible.

   As far as Big Tech is concerned, this is a feature, not a bug.

   It’s capitalists acquiring capital and pricing it out of the reach of those they want to make dependent on them.

   Also: fuck these people.

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 28-Mar-2026 04:43:38 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     (It’s because of this shit that when we launch the Small Web this year, I’m not going to be able to price the servers as low as I would have wanted to (and could have done, say, last year). It’s not because of inflation but because of this shit raising the price of virtual private servers. Because fuck the small guy trying to make something that’s owned and controlled by people instead of owning and controlling people.)

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 28-Mar-2026 16:53:59 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Niels Abildgaard

     @nielsa Thanks, Niels :) Always happy to look at alternatives. (It would need to have an API, though, and almost instant provisioning.)

     Please feel free to DM details or ask for my Signal or email mail@ar.al – thanks again :)

   • Embed this notice
     Niels Abildgaard (nielsa@mas.to)'s status on Saturday, 28-Mar-2026 16:54:00 JST Niels Abildgaard

     in reply to

     @aral I might be able to hook you up with some cheap VPSes hosted in Denmark if interested... we are working with a publicly owned data center that is trying to break into the private sector and care about digital/data soverignty. Let me know if relevant...

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 28-Mar-2026 16:58:32 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • RichBartlett :donor:

     @RichBartlett Who knows 🤷♂️ Such a colossally wasteful and destructive system.

   • Embed this notice
     RichBartlett :donor: (richbartlett@infosec.exchange)'s status on Saturday, 28-Mar-2026 16:58:33 JST RichBartlett :donor:

     in reply to

     @aral is there any chance that when the AI bubble bursts there'll be data centres worth of hardware being sold cheap by liquidators? Doesn't help now but I heard someone say a good business plan for 2027 was "find a use for loads of cheap GPU servers"

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Sunday, 29-Mar-2026 07:16:02 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Niels Abildgaard

     @nielsa Once I have it working with Hetzner, maybe I can demo it for you and show you the code (it’s free software, of course). Would probably be easier :)

   • Embed this notice
     Niels Abildgaard (nielsa@mas.to)'s status on Sunday, 29-Mar-2026 07:16:03 JST Niels Abildgaard

     in reply to

     @aral Yeahh we don't fit those criteria (yet), but could maybe build something that fits if you can share the requirements

   • Embed this notice
     Niels Abildgaard (nielsa@mas.to)'s status on Sunday, 29-Mar-2026 17:16:15 JST Niels Abildgaard

     in reply to

     @aral deal

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Sunday, 29-Mar-2026 17:16:15 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Niels Abildgaard

     @nielsa 💕