#computerswereamistake — Public Fediverse posts

I've grown up with computers since before my teen years even, I got my first Internet account in 1993, I've watched decades of corporate rot and political corruption of U.S. high-tech culture, and I must say: there's a white-hot core of rage inside me over how computing and geek culture got taken over by all the fuckin' NARCS. Tech and programming got coopted by all the snottiest, fashiest, bootlickiest dweebs, ice-cold neo-fascist minions like John Carmack and Roko Mijic, people who see no higher purpose for technology than serving the whims of the police state and figuring out new ways to slaughter people at a safe distance. I remember in the 1990s when you started to see crap like the NSA openly headhunting for ambitious programmers, and the U.S. Army trying to make war seem like slaying a dragon in a videogame, and gawd I remember laughing and my friends laughing but the joke was on us! Geeks responded to that shite. The money was too good, the power too intoxicating, and heaven help us all, there really and truly exist geeks who can make themselves feel like slaughtering [insert slurs here] with some drones is heroically equivalent to being a Knight of the Round Table.

~Chara of Pnictogen

I know little about the tedious turf-wars over licensing terms which seems to be a major preoccupation of the "open software" community; I've always been dubious about such wrangling over terms because (to my naïve eyes) it has something of the same delirious and Kafkaesque quality as (say) arguing over whether it's possible to be a "sovereign citizen" with some sufficiently arcane combination of legal maneuvers that will almost certainly not survive a serious court challenge, but which isn't really intended to survive such a challenge. I suppose that the occasional open-source licensing mudfight has occasionally been argued in civil courts (i.e. the separate court system chiefly for wealthy persons' complaints against each other) so the squabbling over this versus that open-source licence isn't completely unreal. I guess. It's just about as real as anything else pertaining to civil law, i.e. it's all part of the same unending bureaucratic nightmare from which Joseph K. and the rest of us seem condemned never to wake.

That was a very long introductory paragraph, wasn't it? Suffice it to say: I don't know one open-source licence from another, but I'm sure someone who was deeply into FOSS legalisms could tell me that there's a VERY important reason why someone would want to play the elaborate trick that Dan Blanchard played with the chardet library. I'm guessing that Blanchard has some ulterior motivations involving commercial monetization of his work that he'll never be totally honest about. I will accept for the purpose of my own blithering that there's a good reason why he did what he did.

I wish only to point out the following: the premise of what he did requires his "AI tool" not to be intelligent. Blanchard did not want an exercise of intelligence. If he had, he would have simply hired someone to do a refactor, applying their intelligence to the matter of how to change things in just such a way as to anticipate the inevitable disputes about whether it was really acceptable to rewrite a code base for the sole purpose of wriggling out from under a particular set of licensing terms. But then he would have to cut this person in on the deal—that's the important thing. A genuinely intelligent henchperson would have needed to be a PEER to Blanchard, someone whose own business interests needed to be accommodated, and that is plainly not what Blanchard wanted. He simply wanted a box that he could put his codebase into, and then with some tinkering and fiddling it would transform his codebase into something unique enough to re-licence, and basically…he didn't want any troublesome thoughts and reflections about what he was doing, which is what inevitably would have happened if he'd involved another person, someone with actual intelligence.

He wanted a witless machine, to do one witless job. And gosh, doesn't that basically sound like what the entire technology sector REALLY wants from "artificial intelligence"?

~Chara of Pnictogen

I know little about the tedious turf-wars over licensing terms which seems to be a major preoccupation of the "open software" community; I've always been dubious about such wrangling over terms because (to my naïve eyes) it has something of the same delirious and Kafkaesque quality as (say) arguing over whether it's possible to be a "sovereign citizen" with some sufficiently arcane combination of legal maneuvers that will almost certainly not survive a serious court challenge, but which isn't really intended to survive such a challenge. I suppose that the occasional open-source licensing mudfight has occasionally been argued in civil courts (i.e. the separate court system chiefly for wealthy persons' complaints against each other) so the squabbling over this versus that open-source licence isn't completely unreal. I guess. It's just about as real as anything else pertaining to civil law, i.e. it's all part of the same unending bureaucratic nightmare from which Joseph K. and the rest of us seem condemned never to wake.

That was a very long introductory paragraph, wasn't it? Suffice it to say: I don't know one open-source licence from another, but I'm sure someone who was deeply into FOSS legalisms could tell me that there's a VERY important reason why someone would want to play the elaborate trick that Dan Blanchard played with the chardet library. I'm guessing that Blanchard has some ulterior motivations involving commercial monetization of his work that he'll never be totally honest about. I will accept for the purpose of my own blithering that there's a good reason why he did what he did.

I wish only to point out the following: the premise of what he did requires his "AI tool" not to be intelligent. Blanchard did not want an exercise of intelligence. If he had, he would have simply hired someone to do a refactor, applying their intelligence to the matter of how to change things in just such a way as to anticipate the inevitable disputes about whether it was really acceptable to rewrite a code base for the sole purpose of wriggling out from under a particular set of licensing terms. But then he would have to cut this person in on the deal—that's the important thing. A genuinely intelligent henchperson would have needed to be a PEER to Blanchard, someone whose own business interests needed to be accommodated, and that is plainly not what Blanchard wanted. He simply wanted a box that he could put his codebase into, and then with some tinkering and fiddling it would transform his codebase into something unique enough to re-licence, and basically…he didn't want any troublesome thoughts and reflections about what he was doing, which is what inevitably would have happened if he'd involved another person, someone with actual intelligence.

He wanted a witless machine, to do one witless job. And gosh, doesn't that basically sound like what the entire technology sector REALLY wants from "artificial intelligence"?

~Chara of Pnictogen

I know little about the tedious turf-wars over licensing terms which seems to be a major preoccupation of the "open software" community; I've always been dubious about such wrangling over terms because (to my naïve eyes) it has something of the same delirious and Kafkaesque quality as (say) arguing over whether it's possible to be a "sovereign citizen" with some sufficiently arcane combination of legal maneuvers that will almost certainly not survive a serious court challenge, but which isn't really intended to survive such a challenge. I suppose that the occasional open-source licensing mudfight has occasionally been argued in civil courts (i.e. the separate court system chiefly for wealthy persons' complaints against each other) so the squabbling over this versus that open-source licence isn't completely unreal. I guess. It's just about as real as anything else pertaining to civil law, i.e. it's all part of the same unending bureaucratic nightmare from which Joseph K. and the rest of us seem condemned never to wake.

That was a very long introductory paragraph, wasn't it? Suffice it to say: I don't know one open-source licence from another, but I'm sure someone who was deeply into FOSS legalisms could tell me that there's a VERY important reason why someone would want to play the elaborate trick that Dan Blanchard played with the chardet library. I'm guessing that Blanchard has some ulterior motivations involving commercial monetization of his work that he'll never be totally honest about. I will accept for the purpose of my own blithering that there's a good reason why he did what he did.

I wish only to point out the following: the premise of what he did requires his "AI tool" not to be intelligent. Blanchard did not want an exercise of intelligence. If he had, he would have simply hired someone to do a refactor, applying their intelligence to the matter of how to change things in just such a way as to anticipate the inevitable disputes about whether it was really acceptable to rewrite a code base for the sole purpose of wriggling out from under a particular set of licensing terms. But then he would have to cut this person in on the deal—that's the important thing. A genuinely intelligent henchperson would have needed to be a PEER to Blanchard, someone whose own business interests needed to be accommodated, and that is plainly not what Blanchard wanted. He simply wanted a box that he could put his codebase into, and then with some tinkering and fiddling it would transform his codebase into something unique enough to re-licence, and basically…he didn't want any troublesome thoughts and reflections about what he was doing, which is what inevitably would have happened if he'd involved another person, someone with actual intelligence.

He wanted a witless machine, to do one witless job. And gosh, doesn't that basically sound like what the entire technology sector REALLY wants from "artificial intelligence"?

~Chara of Pnictogen

I know little about the tedious turf-wars over licensing terms which seems to be a major preoccupation of the "open software" community; I've always been dubious about such wrangling over terms because (to my naïve eyes) it has something of the same delirious and Kafkaesque quality as (say) arguing over whether it's possible to be a "sovereign citizen" with some sufficiently arcane combination of legal maneuvers that will almost certainly not survive a serious court challenge, but which isn't really intended to survive such a challenge. I suppose that the occasional open-source licensing mudfight has occasionally been argued in civil courts (i.e. the separate court system chiefly for wealthy persons' complaints against each other) so the squabbling over this versus that open-source licence isn't completely unreal. I guess. It's just about as real as anything else pertaining to civil law, i.e. it's all part of the same unending bureaucratic nightmare from which Joseph K. and the rest of us seem condemned never to wake.

That was a very long introductory paragraph, wasn't it? Suffice it to say: I don't know one open-source licence from another, but I'm sure someone who was deeply into FOSS legalisms could tell me that there's a VERY important reason why someone would want to play the elaborate trick that Dan Blanchard played with the chardet library. I'm guessing that Blanchard has some ulterior motivations involving commercial monetization of his work that he'll never be totally honest about. I will accept for the purpose of my own blithering that there's a good reason why he did what he did.

I wish only to point out the following: the premise of what he did requires his "AI tool" not to be intelligent. Blanchard did not want an exercise of intelligence. If he had, he would have simply hired someone to do a refactor, applying their intelligence to the matter of how to change things in just such a way as to anticipate the inevitable disputes about whether it was really acceptable to rewrite a code base for the sole purpose of wriggling out from under a particular set of licensing terms. But then he would have to cut this person in on the deal—that's the important thing. A genuinely intelligent henchperson would have needed to be a PEER to Blanchard, someone whose own business interests needed to be accommodated, and that is plainly not what Blanchard wanted. He simply wanted a box that he could put his codebase into, and then with some tinkering and fiddling it would transform his codebase into something unique enough to re-licence, and basically…he didn't want any troublesome thoughts and reflections about what he was doing, which is what inevitably would have happened if he'd involved another person, someone with actual intelligence.

He wanted a witless machine, to do one witless job. And gosh, doesn't that basically sound like what the entire technology sector REALLY wants from "artificial intelligence"?

~Chara of Pnictogen

Well, not the best start to my year...

Been sick with bronchitis since Christmas, and then this.

Something malfunctioned with the logging container and we pushed nearly a Terabyte of nonsense logs over a 4 day period to the logging service, resulting in a $625.92 bill.

Yay 🎉😖

Foolishly, I didn't have usage limits set, because "we hardly use any data".

#ComputersWereAMistake #StupidTechnology #Arghhhhh

Well, not the best start to my year...

Been sick with bronchitis since Christmas, and then this.

Something malfunctioned with the logging container and we pushed nearly a Terabyte of nonsense logs over a 4 day period to the logging service, resulting in a $625.92 bill.

Yay 🎉😖

Foolishly, I didn't have usage limits set, because "we hardly use any data".

#ComputersWereAMistake #StupidTechnology #Arghhhhh

Well, not the best start to my year...

Been sick with bronchitis since Christmas, and then this.

Something malfunctioned with the logging container and we pushed nearly a Terabyte of nonsense logs over a 4 day period to the logging service, resulting in a $625.92 bill.

Yay 🎉😖

Foolishly, I didn't have usage limits set, because "we hardly use any data".

#ComputersWereAMistake #StupidTechnology #Arghhhhh

Well, not the best start to my year...

Been sick with bronchitis since Christmas, and then this.

Something malfunctioned with the logging container and we pushed nearly a Terabyte of nonsense logs over a 4 day period to the logging service, resulting in a $625.92 bill.

Yay 🎉😖

Foolishly, I didn't have usage limits set, because "we hardly use any data".

#ComputersWereAMistake #StupidTechnology #Arghhhhh

Well, not the best start to my year...

Been sick with bronchitis since Christmas, and then this.

Something malfunctioned with the logging container and we pushed nearly a Terabyte of nonsense logs over a 4 day period to the logging service, resulting in a $625.92 bill.

Yay 🎉😖

Foolishly, I didn't have usage limits set, because "we hardly use any data".

#ComputersWereAMistake #StupidTechnology #Arghhhhh

"Battlestar Galactica was right: we should airgap every system"

[5 days later, a disk arrives in the mail]

"Nope nope nope, turn them off, turn them ALL off."

#CyberInsecurity
#vulnerability
#ComputersWereAMistake