Post by @mhoye@cosocial.ca

RE: https://toot.majorshouse.com/@majorlinux/117201800086029619

My hard-won experience is that when Computer People like us say "does anyone still use these systems", the answer is _always_ "millions of Not-Computer People are locked into these systems via corporate mandates or enterprise contracts they despise and can never complain about because they have no say at all and pointing out how much these things suck the joy out of you just gets you fired."

It's easy to forget that for most people most of the time this is The Actual Experience Of Computer.

Marcus "MajorLinux" Summers

@majorlinux@toot.majorshouse.com 6 hr. ago

Does anyone still use Dropbox?

Dropbox breach seemingly caused by egregious authentication failure - 9to5Mac

https://9to5mac.com/2026/09/01/dropbox-login-breach-seemingly-caused-by-egregious-authentication-failure/

#Dropbox #Breach #Security #Authentication #Cloud #Storage #Tech

5 Replies

13 Boosts

mhoye

@mhoye@cosocial.ca 5 hr. ago

I mean no disrespect to @majorlinux, clearly being sarcastic, just that... in some total accounting of my life, most of my success has come from my parents having the resources and foresight to put an Apple ][c in front of me at just the right time of my life, at just the right time in the history of the computing industry.

It's frankly a ton of work all the time to remember that if I've made good computing choices, it's because I had good choices to make, that I had choices at all.

mhoye

@mhoye@cosocial.ca 5 hr. ago

... and I think frankly a lot of us forget that.

Some of us forget it pretty goddamn hard, so hard we give up on the whole idea of a we or an us and start getting weird, fucked-up delusions about genes or politics. When literally the only special, exceptional thing about them is falling ass backwards into one good idea after lucking into shelter and nutritional security for the first two decades of their lives, plus enough left over to have a PC at home while they were learning to read.

mhoye

@mhoye@cosocial.ca 5 hr. ago

I wish I'd internalized maybe 20 years earlier that the only way free software could be liberatory, rather than merely, selfishly libertarian, is if the goals became not to secure our own freedoms, but to grant and guarantee them for other people. Today almost nobody can change the software they use, and as a measurable fact almost nobody who can the change software the use does. But even so: having those choices matters; securing the fact of them, evangelizing and defending that fact, matters.

mhoye

@mhoye@cosocial.ca 5 hr. ago

So, hard pill to swallow, but I think there are a class of AI enthusiasts who got that way because computing fundamentally failed them, for whom getting a computer to do anything _for them_ not being a whole-ass bullshit ordeal still deserve our empathy and solidarity. We, computer-people we, can’t escape responsibility for abandoning user empowerment in favour of corporate consolidation and vending machine interfaces decades ago, now that we’re reaping the whirlwind of mechanized capitalism.

Andrew (making toys)

@ajroach42@retro.social 1 hr. ago

@mhoye Completely agree.

People who were alienated from computers can easily see AI as empowering, demystifying.

This is much the same problem as a lot of people who get brought into right wing populism, when you really get down to it. There are real, actual problems (that have complicated long term solutions that no one is pursuing very actively) and far right populist movements provide easy scapegoats, promising to solve those problems, promising empowerment and understanding.

In both cases, it's fake, but in both cases it sure does feel real for the people who get caught up in it.