Every time news media report on overseas "investment" in Aotearoa, they need to also talk about the return the extractors making that "investment" expects on their capital.
I'm not a financial expert by any stretch of the imagination, but a quick web search suggests scAmazon usually aim for about a 15% return. So when news media report on scAmazon "investing" $7 billion here, the headline should read;
'Amazon hopes to extract $50 million from the NZ economy'
It did take effort. But look, seriously, you can do this. Anyone can do this and remain on the internet, still communicate. Take it seriously, build a process. Take the steps to drop each service or minimize exposure. Perhaps you cannot get there 100% but 95% is something.
We owe it to ourselves to make the effort.
Achieving data downlink speeds of more than 1 gigabit per second is a notable achievement for the nascent #Amazon #ProjectKuiper #broadband network, but this was just a test. Your mileage may vary when the service becomes commercially available. https://www.geekwire.com/2025/amazon-gigabit-data-speeds-project-kuiper-satellite-network/ #Space #Tech
Cautionary tale from a hacked book author at #Amazon:
@pluralistic might want to add this to the #enshittification files
🔥 Amazon has mostly sat out the AI talent war. This internal document reveals why.
"GenAI hiring faces challenges like location, compensation, and Amazon's perceived lag in the space," the document noted. "Competitors often provide more comprehensive and aggressive packages."
https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-ai-talent-wars-internal-document-2025-8
🔥 Amazon has mostly sat out the AI talent war. This internal document reveals why.
"GenAI hiring faces challenges like location, compensation, and Amazon's perceived lag in the space," the document noted. "Competitors often provide more comprehensive and aggressive packages."
https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-ai-talent-wars-internal-document-2025-8
"For instance, talking about all the different products AWS offers ..."
scAmazon Web Services don't offer products. There's not a single thing they sell that customers own after paying for it. What they offer is *services* (thus the name), not products.
I notice this euphemistic language around "financial products" too. Again, *not* products. They're not even service-as-a-product-substitute (eg SaaS). They're just services. Why call them products?
Breaking up with Big Tech: A human rights-based argument for tackling Big Tech's market power - Amnesty International
https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/POL30/0226/2025/en/
#privacy #bigtech #alphabet #google #meta #microsoft #amazon #apple
Breaking up with Big Tech: A human rights-based argument for tackling Big Tech's market power - Amnesty International
https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/POL30/0226/2025/en/
#privacy #bigtech #alphabet #google #meta #microsoft #amazon #apple
Le Big Tech o grandi aziende tecnologiche come #Meta, #Google, #Microsoft, #Amazon e #Apple influenzano il nostro modo di accedere e interagire su Internet. Controllano settori chiave come la ricerca, i social media, il #cloud computing, l'e-commerce e i sistemi di produzione di telefonia mobile. L'accesso a questi servizi è quasi altrettanto importante per i nostri diritti e il nostro sostentamento quanto servizi di pubblica utilità come acqua ed elettricità.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/08/why-are-big-tech-companies-a-threat-to-human-rights/
Cautionary tale from a hacked book author at #Amazon:
@pluralistic might want to add this to the #enshittification files
Uhm... Tavis Ormandy works for Google, that is responsible of some of the aggressive crawlers Anubis try to block.
Whatever he writes on his blog should be read within such cultural frame.
Maybe they will soon enable #JS execution in crawlers, but if Anubis get massive adoption, #AI crawling will becomes much more expensive. Consider they will also have to avoid smarter guys trying polluting their models. So all, in all, I still think Anubis is a good idea.
Also, if they enable JS in the crawlers, I'm going to turn them into #bitcoin miners.
That might the very first use case for a #cryptocurrency since 2008!
I'm notoriously a #blockchain mocker, considering the whole technology stack as a large-scale scam-factory framework.
But getting money out of #Google, #Amazon, #Facebook and similar #BigTech might be the very first legit and useful use case for a miner since bitcoin invention.
CC: @Scmbradley@mathstodon.xyz@lindsey@recurse.social
Uhm... Tavis Ormandy works for Google, that is responsible of some of the aggressive crawlers Anubis try to block.
Whatever he writes on his blog should be read within such cultural frame.
Maybe they will soon enable #JS execution in crawlers, but if Anubis get massive adoption, #AI crawling will becomes much more expensive. Consider they will also have to avoid smarter guys trying polluting their models. So all, in all, I still think Anubis is a good idea.
Also, if they enable JS in the crawlers, I'm going to turn them into #bitcoin miners.
That might the very first use case for a #cryptocurrency since 2008!
I'm notoriously a #blockchain mocker, considering the whole technology stack as a large-scale scam-factory framework.
But getting money out of #Google, #Amazon, #Facebook and similar #BigTech might be the very first legit and useful use case for a miner since bitcoin invention.
CC: @Scmbradley@mathstodon.xyz@lindsey@recurse.social
A political appeal by a democratically minded European based on the dramatically changing situation and its consequences in the field of technology and IT:
Guys, if for whatever reason you are still working with Windows (or Apple, Google...), I can only urge you to take the current circumstances as a reason to switch to Linux and free software! Never has such a switch been more appropriate and important!
The end of Windows 10, Microsoft's coercion towards MS accounts and cloud compulsion, all the advertising spam from MS within Windows 11, the artificial hardware requirements for it, the AI compulsion in Windows, the data exploitation including data sales and telemetry behavior, the integrated spyware, and so many other negative and bad things!
And on top of that, there are the current political developments in the fascist states of America. Uneducated idiot, fascist, anti-democrat and narcissist with a severe minority complex – and best friend of child molester Epstein – Trump is turning the country into a fascist dictatorship, and the big American tech companies are bowing to the convicted criminal, most recently Tim Apple– ready to hand over all the data he demands and install surveillance tools, and not even stopping at Europe and Europeans.
Trump's hatred of Europe is well known, as is his admiration for war criminal and mass murderer Putin. Who knows what other brown crap will spill over the Atlantic to us.
That's why, dear people, and especially those outside the US (unfortunately, we can't help the good and decent people there, but they elected the brown problem in the White House themselves): Linux and free software now!
#linux #opensource #freesoftware #windows #endof10 #microsoft #google #apple #bigdata #bigtech #surveillance #fascism #trump #europe #eu #meta #amazon
If you like audiobooks, or if you dislike Amazon and how predatory it is, please check out this petition to try to get Audible to change their new proposed payment model to pay authors fairly. Robin Sullivan, wife and business partner of fantasy author Michael Sullivan, does a good job of explaining the new system and showing how bad it will be for authors not in the "Plus" program. Daniel Green just did an interview with Robin on YouTube that does a deep dive into the changes, that's where I found the petition. It's also linked below. Please share the petition with your reader friends!
#Bookstodon#Audiobooks#Audible#Amazon#Books#Authors#WritingCommunity
https://www.change.org/p/convince-audible-to-revise-it-s-new-royalty-model/actions
If you like audiobooks, or if you dislike Amazon and how predatory it is, please check out this petition to try to get Audible to change their new proposed payment model to pay authors fairly. Robin Sullivan, wife and business partner of fantasy author Michael Sullivan, does a good job of explaining the new system and showing how bad it will be for authors not in the "Plus" program. Daniel Green just did an interview with Robin on YouTube that does a deep dive into the changes, that's where I found the petition. It's also linked below. Please share the petition with your reader friends!
#Bookstodon#Audiobooks#Audible#Amazon#Books#Authors#WritingCommunity
https://www.change.org/p/convince-audible-to-revise-it-s-new-royalty-model/actions
A political appeal by a democratically minded European based on the dramatically changing situation and its consequences in the field of technology and IT:
Guys, if for whatever reason you are still working with Windows (or Apple, Google...), I can only urge you to take the current circumstances as a reason to switch to Linux and free software! Never has such a switch been more appropriate and important!
The end of Windows 10, Microsoft's coercion towards MS accounts and cloud compulsion, all the advertising spam from MS within Windows 11, the artificial hardware requirements for it, the AI compulsion in Windows, the data exploitation including data sales and telemetry behavior, the integrated spyware, and so many other negative and bad things!
And on top of that, there are the current political developments in the fascist states of America. Uneducated idiot, fascist, anti-democrat and narcissist with a severe minority complex – and best friend of child molester Epstein – Trump is turning the country into a fascist dictatorship, and the big American tech companies are bowing to the convicted criminal, most recently Tim Apple– ready to hand over all the data he demands and install surveillance tools, and not even stopping at Europe and Europeans.
Trump's hatred of Europe is well known, as is his admiration for war criminal and mass murderer Putin. Who knows what other brown crap will spill over the Atlantic to us.
That's why, dear people, and especially those outside the US (unfortunately, we can't help the good and decent people there, but they elected the brown problem in the White House themselves): Linux and free software now!
#linux #opensource #freesoftware #windows #endof10 #microsoft #google #apple #bigdata #bigtech #surveillance #fascism #trump #europe #eu #meta #amazon
Even better, what sort of nonviolent property destruction bleeds wealth from the hoards of the 1%, returning it to the population at large? Eg Attacking the security systems in corporate supermarkets so people can fill their pantries for free.
I'm taking inspiration here from wildcat strikes by public transport workers, where they kept the services going, but refused to charge passengers for riding them.
(3/3)
"Amazon is among the most notorious abusers of blue-collar labor, the workplace where everyone who doesn't have a bullshit laptop job is expected to piss in a bottle and spend an unpaid hour before and after work going through a bag- and body-search."
@pluralistic, 2025
https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/27/rancid-vibe-coding/#class-war
(1/?)
A space for Bonfire maintainers and contributors to communicate
