Notices by Anil Dash (anildash@me.dm)

Hey! If you care deeply about the open web, I hope you’ll consider joining our team at Fastly. We get to support open source and good internet projects ranging from Scratch to Kubernetes, Watch Duty to Mastodon, Python to Perl, Ruby to Rust, and many, many more. We’ve committed nearly $100M in resources to making the Internet better, and helping to build healthy, sustainable communities. And we haven’t wavered one bit in our inclusive hiring policies. https://www.fastly.com/about/jobs/apply?gh_jid=6523073

@timbray yeah, I’m skeptical of that too. But I think planting a flag in the ground on the larger goals is interesting and useful, and the larger sense of there being many projects pushing these parallel goals forward is great.

@jwz @codinghorror @SonnyBonds 🫡

@RnDanger Because it's an open, interoperable platform with millions of users and interesting apps being built on top of it

This is a monumental day for the future of the social web, though it might not be obvious for a while. Mastodon matures its governance model with a great, solid non-profit https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2025/01/the-people-should-own-the-town-square/ and a coalition of independents push to open up Bluesky's AT Protocol: https://freeourfeeds.com/ These two moves together put the most credible players on solid ground for years to come — and set up the open platforms to enable lots of innovation just when it's needed most.

We’ve been watching the Watch Duty team do absolutely *unbelievable* technical work all week (they’re members of the Fast Forward open source program that my team at Fastly works on), handling a surge of millions of people trying to see where the LA fires are in real time. Amidst the hopelessness of the fires causing so much destruction, there’s hope in seeing people taking care of each other in this way. There are still people who do such good on the internet. https://gizmodo.com/watch-duty-hits-1-on-apple-app-store-as-wildfires-rage-in-california-2000547740

I’m delighted to see @codinghorror step up to be a thing that’s sorely needed in tech right now: a leader. He actually *gives* half of his current net worth (it’s not just a pledge — he already cut the checks) to 8 organizations that are helping the most vulnerable. https://blog.codinghorror.com/stay-gold-america/ It’s an powerful move, right when it matters most. Over the years, I’ve called Jeff a friend, a huge pain the in ass, a sharp technical mind, and now it’s great to call him an inspiration.

@CrucialTK yeah I knew the lowest bidder part was reductive, and a couple of folks pointed out the GSA error. I’ll update soon! Thanks.

@CuriousMagpie and dogecoin predates Musk’s interest in that currency by years, fwiw

@CuriousMagpie I literally cover that in the second paragraph of the piece.

@kristinHenry @simon @timnitGebru she’s wonderful! And I’ve been amplifying her work for years. I think she does very different work than Simon does but yes, would happily say she’s absolutely the most credible person in her domain, which I think of as somewhat broader.

Here's a quick piece I wrote up on how to understand DOGE as a very blatant attempt at procurement capture, a simple way of making government spending corrupt to benefit the tycoons. Please do pass it along & share any feedback! https://www.anildash.com/2025/01/04/DOGE-procurement-capture/

I think everyone who has an opinion, positive or negative, about LLMs, should read how @simon summed up what’s happened in the space this year. He’s the most credible, most independent, most honest, and most technically fluent person watching the space. https://simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/31/llms-in-2024/

"Depending on the species, and the dimensions, each log in your fire might represent the equivalent of a full years' growth for that tree. All of its effort to capture the energy of the sun, for the entirety of an orbit around that star, reduced to the fuel in your hand, and gone before your eyes."

- @anildash

https://www.anildash.com/2024/11/30/making-fire/

@joeblubaugh @anildash@threads.net are you using a VPN or anything similar?

Oh I had so much fun with this one. After that Tyson fight had some trouble with the live-stream, I kept thinking of Beyoncé's "somebody's getting fired!" meme. So I wanted to write about what the smart folks at Netflix must be working on to make sure Beyoncé has a merry christmas. https://www.fastly.com/blog/how-to-save-christmas-for-beyonce

@ernie @grammargirl I never actually did it (lack of time) but I did fully research the project

(Which comes from @stop’s post here: https://stopdesign.com/portfolio/twitter-hover-cards )

@jgarber it’s actually thanks to @stop https://stopdesign.com/portfolio/twitter-hover-cards

As an enthusiastic WFP voter, it was fun to be in this little screenshot. https://mastodon.social/@WorkingFamilies/113653894902290918