Notices by Neo-Rodneyite ✍🏿📖 (jalcine@todon.eu), page 2

In better news! https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/video-game-workers-in-north-america-now-have-an-industry-wide-union-130024730.html

#union #gaming

It's definitely the latter re: winning hearts and minds. It's more about notoriety at the point (the underlying techno libertarian nature of the space)

https://nondeterministic.computer/@mjg59/114181272264853419

The concept of an invasion of Canada is unfathomable. And it's so much easier to hold that as an emergency (because of its position). This energy isn't held for Puerto Rico (which, if it was folded deeper into the US, it would become even more repressive for PRians in favor of American hegemony). Just ask the other non-white-led countries that the United States has conquered.

https://www.jacky.wtf/essays/2025/sovereignity-nations/

Need to find research on the psychological impacts of smartphone use, specifically in the United States/Canada/(insert country of Western power here) between 2007 and 2017.

Reading about the "melting" of the device as an appendage makes me definitely believe this is by design (and we'll never get that information from the companies directly: that's like Microsoft opening source NT tomorrow or Apple open sourcing everything under a MIT license).

I know about the "pinky finger" adjustment that my generation and later have now adjusted since we're given these things so young that there's a dimple in one's pinky (due to prolonged use of holding in one's hand).

Nah ChatGPT is a brain flattener. If you take it as is, as most people will (we've conditioned people to ignore terms and conditions, why the fuck do tech people think that the phrase "experimental" means anything if you put it everywhere??), it and other AI chat tools will defend white supremacy to the T.

Grok is an extremely poignant example of this because it's incapable of understanding discrimination and Gemini operates just like Google Photos: it'll come right up to the nose and ignore research around misogynior (in hopes of keeping the more "conservative" userbase and alienating those who feel forced to stay with Google).

The more folks keep digging their wheels in advocacy of LLM tech, the more they need to own that this shit is a collective cognitive failure.

https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/10/bluesky-is-weighing-a-proposal-that-gives-users-consent-over-how-their-data-is-used-for-ai/

This is like one of those FEPs on how content can be shared (for example, on Mastodon, imagine how you can toggle your profile to make posts unlisted by default, this could allow for that kind of demarcation).

IMO if one marks content for no AI use, we gotta make it have teeth. And AI vampiric companies will be fighting the same way archivists are around consent to be captured or seen.

It would suck if Canada was forcibly made into a state, its government cancelled and people forcibly conscripted into American empire.

https://jacky.wtf/essays/2025/sovereignity-nations/

"Are you angry enough?" https://www.patreon.com/posts/122093872

Social Web developers need to take note: the "social" part is the most ignored, underdeveloped and unexplored part of all of the work we do and if it can't do the work of helping address things that Trudy mentioned (if technology can live to its title of "helping people"), it might be best to cede these platforms to journalistic outputs only.

If we can't center people, we shouldn't create micro nexuses of hell.

I would totally pay for anti-LLM protections on the Web. I pay for "ethical" tracking via https://plausible.io/ and VPS hosting from an American based company; someone out there has to have this.

I guess I need to make a new version of https://jacky.wtf/essays/2024/one-over-other/ because protocol worship is inevitable anywhere one goes

It's about to be a decade since this happened.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/06/google-dev-apologizes-after-photos-app-tags-black-people-as-gorillas/

Who is free software for? https://jacky.wtf/links/2025/Mar/tante-foss-objective/

A response to @tante's post at https://tante.cc/2025/03/03/who-is-free-software-for/

I guess now I can point it to the genAi diehards. https://www.404media.co/microsoft-study-finds-ai-makes-human-cognition-atrophied-and-unprepared-3/

Hey, anyone in the know!

https://teamster.org/2024/12/teamsters-launch-largest-strike-against-amazon-in-american-history/

What's the best way to support this strike? Not purchase from Amazon to show solidarity? Or specifically buy from Amazon to make sure they feel the pressure of the withheld labor?

I feel like the answer is "don't buy", which I'm already doing, but as far as I could see the press release doesn't say anything specific about how to show solidarity and support and help.

Thank you!
#labor #strike #strikesolidarity #teamsters #amazonStrike #amazonStrikes

It’s become a cliche, but hardware is hard! One reason why hardware is harder than software is that the time between revisions is often longer. We need to wait for new PCBs, or for components to be delivered. Or for more new PCBs after we realise we got it wrong!

Tech workers are not the most paid people in a company. The executives are _and_ the company's coffers are at their disposal, especially when the CFO is hyper-obedient.

I can't just say I'm moving to another country, change policy to allow transnational work and give myself a bonus to offset that cost.

Nor can I change the wages of the workers who are underpaid.

Executives and leadership can. With a union, workers have a change to put the needs of the people who *do the ground work of keeping the company alive* to make sure they don't burn out in the process.

Next time a white person (especially a white guy) tries to harass you about voting: ask them if they successfully converted 20 other white men first.

Because THEY ARE THE Problem. Like the Origination of the Problem since this country was created.

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/black-men-will-vote-for-harris/

I will always be a drop for many reasons (localized state violence that keeps population counts low due to poverty, lack of resources, etc) so blaming me for something I can't even control (like closed party voting in a Republican controlled state) is the most respectable way to tell me "do what I say" with a very hard R.

Electoral work doesn't end. It starts in your community and requires deep building. Not passing out flyers people will throw in garbage in two weeks.

Not donating half a million dollars to endorsers of cryptocurrency and genocide.

But getting to know the people in your neighborhood so you can fight book bans, fight for bike lanes, fight for a safer space that *escalates* into better representatives that are actually accountable to the community *and* knows the people to some pedigree.

Representatives who exist solely because they say shit you like is why things like stop and frisk, the Patriot Act and all of this violence happened: folks weren't concerned about politics but with presentation.