Notices by Matthew Lyon (mattly@hachyderm.io), page 2

I decided against using a program tonight based on the author's email address, with a domain of an email service associated with a white supremicist

twice this week I've decided not to purchase stuff from online stores because they're using a platform owned by someone in who made it to round 2 of that “Worst Person in Tech" poll that was going around

I miss not having to care about these things, yet, I must care about them

Hey. Hey. Y'all def need to tune in to this. For reasons. 👀

https://bsky.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:6mno3ymqhc67co5yx5bh3f5y/post/3m7sgzj3bu22f

apparently there's a thing going around about how "the media is pushing anti-AI so that leftists don't use it to build their own drones"

and "why should we care about all these data centers? who's using all that water anywaym

and my partner was telling me about how an acquaintance is falling for this stuff and taking classes by someone pushing it and my immediate thought is:

this is an op. they're falling for a fucking op.

There’s a lot to be said about that story beyond just “Spotify sucks:” how internships can be exploitative, how creators in general do not receive (and historically long have not received) proper compensation for their own work, how orgs especially treat women and especially Black women as disposable free labor. Details left as an exercise for the reader.

2/

Come use The Cloud™, we have
- loading screens
- can’t use your computer because AWS is down
- handing your data over to whatever government wants it
- your private info was compromised
- we sold your private info
- we’re shutting the product down, here’s one hour’s notice to get your data before we delete it
- subscription fees
- “maybe later"
- CAPTCHAs
- and more!

don’t miss the exciting opportunities of The Cloud™

A study by Dayforce shows 87% of executives use AI for work, compared to 57% of managers and just 27% of employees.

I think this explains the massive disconnect we see in how CEOs talk about AI versus everyone else. It also raises the question of how useful it truly is for frontline work?

https://www.businessinsider.com/executives-adopting-ai-higher-rates-than-workers-research-2025-10

I would like there to be ONE FUCKING PLACE on my computer where I can say “this is the shit I want backed up. If it’s here, it’s important” and apparently this is impossible because software developers are fucking morons

"Oh, the many indignities of programming." - My son after putting a semicolon in the wrong place.

no I don’t want to install your app for something that used to be a button or putting a coin in a slot
no I don’t want to join your discord simply so I can file a bug on your project and idle on the server for three weeks until someone replies
no I don’t want to rate my experience, it took 20 seconds and it’ll take longer than that to form an opinion
no I don’t want to create an account to save my information for a future interaction, and your demand that I do decreases the likelihood there will be one
no I don’t want to do whatever thing you’re only offering a “maybe later” for; my stubbornness is stronger than your belief in eventuality
no I don’t want to connect to the internet something that, twenty years ago, wouldn’t have had a computer in it
no I don’t want to use your javascript compiler extension’s custom file format, in a better language that could have been a macro or a data format
no I don’t want to install the copy protection for your audio plugin, no matter how good you claim the plugin is, nor how unobtrusive you claim the background process is
no I don’t want your new AI thing, I want you to fix that bug I filed five years ago

what part of no don’t you understand?
the part where I’m claiming self-determination or the part where it’s less convenient for your assumptions?
I didn’t want to be a grumpy old man, but the internet and capitalism had other plans
I didn’t want to become so defensive, but I need my technology to serve me, not the other way around

yeah, that dishwasher isn’t so “smart” now, is it?

Gentlemen if you - are at this exact second - dressed like you would blend invisibly into the Old Navy Kids' Department and you are reacting to a feminine-coded fashion product intruding into your precious computering like this maybe take a moment to look in the mirror and then much further inwards before the typing.

it’s entirely reasonable to tell a recruiter “your bootlicking client can fuck off and die” when they’re asking you to come help build surveillance tech

Here’s the problem with a purely economic focus:

If you only talk about hardship, without explaining why some groups are hit harder, people go searching for someone to blame.

And in that vacuum, populist racism thrives.

/2

🧵 Morning after, a meditation on economic issues v woke

I keep seeing analysis that we should focus on “bread and butter” issues (jobs, wages, healthcare) not “wokeness.”

But when politics talks only about the money and never about justice, something ugly fills the gap.

/1

@jepyang it’s looking like a local workers’ rights proposition passed :)

@puppygirlhornypost2 domino meme:

small domino: Let’s put HTML in email!

large domino: four companies basically control the internet

Ideally, the abstract is valued in equal measure to the contextual. Just as abstractions can help make the contexts of our individual lives better, so can feedback from individuals and contexts about issues with the abstractions make the abstraction better.

But we do not value abstraction and context equally. And so the forests die.

One muddle-headed way of looking at this is “oooooo Wikipedia is wooooke blah blah.”

The better way of looking at it is that Wikipedia lets people jump in and say “What?! No, you are totally missing something important!” It actually •does• the thing the radical centrists (falsely) claim they want: it opens itself to different perspectives.

6/

Going to add some pretty things to this thread.

Because today is Quirks and Quarks interview day(!!!), and at this point I'm about equal parts INCREDIBLY EXCITED to be on that show, and SUPER PISSED OFF that instead of getting to talk about cool astronomy research, I have to talk about a fucking stupid terrible techbro idea.

We're in a time when one tiny awful company in California can change the night sky for everyone in the world. The only tool I have to fight this is public opinion.

I gotta play with Tides more often