Discussion
In 1962, the NSA had a computer so secret the world didn't even know it existed. It was called Harvest, and for 14 years it processed America's most sensitive intercepts—faster, in its time, than any machine on Earth. 🧵 (1/8) https://spectrum.ieee.org/cold-war-codebreaker-nsa-ibm
#OtD 3 Sep 1945 President Harry Truman approved and expanded Operation Paperclip, a secret plan to bring over 1500 Nazi scientists and war criminals to live in the US where they worked on the space program as well as biological and chemical weapons https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10255/operation-paperclip
Apple Sued For $2.7 Billion Over App Tracking Transparency Rules https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/09/03/2015253/apple-sued-for-27-billion-over-app-tracking-transparency-rules?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon
@pho4cexa I want an antifascist software movement
@grajohnt that is SMOL
@andypiper and unusually has pads that you can actually solder to!
You're doing open source in 2026, choose your fighter:
- AI guy whose only remaining skill is racist tweets
- PhD whose only project documentation has a DOI
- Just some guy™, handle is probably realname1234
- Incredibly burnt out transfem
@grayhaven Thanks for the response. It's really not my intent to suggest the arguments are invalid. It's more that there should be some nuance in this discussion and the folks that keep on with the Proton is fascist narrative are over simplifying the damage being done by the worst companies and the benefits to users who switc from the worst options to much better options that may not be perfect but are far better (both in terms of privacy and ethics) and doable.
What I'm really trying to suggest is that the discussion would be better if folks took more time to consider the details of the bad actors and to weigh the options. Part of that is to also consider the context and technical skills of users, etc.
I'd rather see non-techies move from Google to Proton because it provides them the services they need and is actually technically doable for them. A lot of tech folks seem focused on a kind of purity that seems impossible while also ignoring what regular folk can handle.
@bss the purity thing is a problem. another problem is that many people, both techies and non-techies, don't have the time or energy for a ton of nuance and for digging into the details of every single one of the 10-100 tech tools they use. i want to hear about any remotely fascist thing involving any of my tools, even if the critic doesn't have alternatives in the same statement.
one of the reasons the world is so shitty is because people keep accepting options that are slightly better than others but still bad. yes, it is also a huge problem to be stuck with the worst of the bad options because anything else is too hard. i just think it's not very anarchist to go so hard in defending any corporation in so many various conversations. i'll recommend proton to my non-techie friends directly, sure, with caveats. but i'm gonna assume that any general critics i see in the wild have already considered the nuance and the regular folks, or are specifically not directing a post towards non-techies.
MAY COUNTERREVOLUTIONARY #FEMINISM DIE TODAY
know her name: DOMITILA BARRIOS CHUNGARA. she’s the one who radicalized me as a feminist with this little book
»Let me speak : Testimony of Domitila, a woman of the Bolivian mines
https://archive.org/details/letmespeak00domi_0/mode/1up
it’s not just that Domitila looks like my maternal nana. she had the audacity to organize a labor union of wives and STAY AT HOME MOMS of miners in Bolivia to fight against their husbands’ wage slavery & their communities’ lack of social services
Everything that's happening in computers today is evidence to me that the free software movement failed.
It's not so much that the free software movement has failed. It's like saying the antifascists failed in fascist Italy. Like duh, right? But is the reason that they opposed fascism? Is the reason that they were designed to fail, or that they were never a good idea? No the reason is they got shot and killed in the streets.
Similarly, when it looks like the free software movement is failing, adjust your scope a bit broader. Software is failing, because society is failing. Once society stops failing, all the AI bros making it fail will be pushing up daisies, and free software movements will work just fine. We have to form a better society, not shit on open source and talk about what a loser that fat bearded man is.
You're selling toys. That does more to bring light back into the darkness of society than any fork of Linux ever will. Both are good ideas IMO, but keep your sights on what really matters. Fucking over the exploiters, and supporting each other.
@refactoredd it’s a bug on iOS 27 and it’s fixed when building with Xcode 27 but we can’t release builds from beta Xcode yet, so you’ll have to live with it for another week or so
@BenRiceM For sure, I’m excited to see polls were added too. Thanks!
Experimentally making a casual presentation (about the history of image formats, kind of) by researching through Claude evolving an outline. (To be vetted ofc.)
Didn’t expect it to feel this much like a learning artefact, in that follow-up questions lead to refinements etc.
E.g. had Claude approximate the two different-threshold scans making up Kirsch’s First Digital Image, since I only found the composite online.
Blaise Pascal started a horse-drawn bus service in Paris in the 1600’s and it was super popular amongst commoners until it was basically banned by the aristocracy. Bus service didn’t come back until well after the French Revolution. I had no idea the struggle over public transit was so long.
Sometimes, when I upload a picture and I see the draft "What's on your mind?" text waiting to be replaced above, I think "I just DO NOT know."
This is one of those times 😁
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