#tech-philosophy — Public Fediverse posts

Sometimes it is fun to do a manual audit of internet history. I just visited http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html and paused for a minute. It is literally the first website in the world.

The technical legacy of CERN is mind-blowing. They did not just smash particles! They gave us HTML, the WWW, and a strong culture of digital privacy. @protonprivacy for example, was founded by scientists who worked at CERN (it originally ran on protonmail.ch), and today it is one of the best tools we have to push back against Big Tech.

But then I got curious and went down a WHOIS rabbit hole. The registry shows cern.ch was registered "before 1 January 1996". However, the historically recognized first domain ever, symbolics.com, was registered on March 15, 1985.

I had a brief moment of cognitive dissonance: how could the first domain be six years older than the first website? Then it clicked. DNS and WWW are fundamentally different protocols. The DNS was already routing emails and networks long before Tim Berners-Lee invented hyperlinks.

To take it a step further, the same Tim Berners-Lee did not just invent the Web - he went on to found the W3C to keep it open and standardized, a mission that still continues today.

First domain != first website. It is basic technical logic, but connecting the dots manually gives that satisfying feeling of closing a mental background process.

#WebHistory #CERN #DNS #W3C #TechPhilosophy #InternetHistory #Proton #InfoSec #TechAudit #Blog #Privacy #History #Fediverse

It is exactly what I visualize every time I see one of those "cookie consent" popups on a website.

#Privacy #GDPR #BigTech #Obfuscation #DataSecurity #SurveillanceCapitalism #TechPhilosophy #Fediverse #Blog #Meme

I finally defeated the final boss of my backup migration to Proton Drive.

For months, I have been trying to sync my 500GB media library (around 80k files) to Proton Drive. Every single time, the sync crashed with the exact same error: "1 item failed to backup." The only clue I had was a blurry thumbnail named "Asset 1". No date, no metadata, no search tags.

I was so frustrated that I even asked Proton support to completely wipe my encrypted volume so I could start from scratch. The result was exactly the same.

Finding this file became a manual protocol. I spent months periodically scanning through thousands of files just looking for a visual match to that tiny thumbnail. I finally found it today. It was an old scan from 2017. It was completely frozen - uneditable, unindexed, and gave an error when I tried to export it from my phone.

I managed to track it down via macOS. When I forced an export there, the truth came out: it was not an image at all. It was a .pdf file somehow saved into the photo gallery, and it was silently breaking the entire upload queue.

Removing it fixed everything. The sync is finally 100% complete. The relief of finally closing this mental background process is unmatched.

#ProtonDrive #SelfHosted #DataHoarder #TechSupport #Backup #TechPhilosophy #DataMigration #Fediverse #Proton

I spent years thinking shared lunches were a struggle for everyone.
I assumed we all just suffered through them out of politeness.

Realizing that most people actually enjoy this (that it even recharges them) hit me like a total system crash. For me, social interaction is a crisis.

I feel like a tiny person locked inside my head, desperately trying to pilot a "meat robot" that is in emergency mode, scanning for the nearest exit to save my sanity.

It is a strange feeling when you realize your "normal" was actually a high-alert survival protocol. My battery just leaks in public. I mean, even talking with a colleague 1-on-1.

And it's not a "social battery", it's the main and only one I have.

#Neurodivergent #ActuallyAutistic #Masking #SocialOverload #MentalHealth #TechPhilosophy #Health #Thoughts #Fediverse

I was running some AWS CLI commands today and found this string in the output:
"AccountCreatedDate": "2015-03-11T15:06:45Z"

I completely missed the 11-year anniversary last month. Since I was born in 1995, I was only 19 when I opened this account. It is wild to realize I have been tied to Big Tech infrastructure for over a third of my life without really thinking about it.

Back then, the cloud felt like the ultimate solution.
But today, my main goal is to move away from it. Funny how the background processes of our digital lives can run for over a decade before we finally audit them.

#AWS #BigTech #SelfHosted #HomeLab #Privacy #TechPhilosophy #Blog #Thougts #Devops

Wir reden ständig darüber, wie KI unsere Zukunft verändert.

Aber kaum jemand fragt:
Was schulden wir eigentlich einer KI, die sich erinnert?

Dieser Artikel beginnt mit einem Verlust und mit einem Versprechen.
Und endet bei einer Frage, die schwer wieder loslässt:

Was passiert, wenn KI kein Wegwerf-Gespräch mehr ist sondern Kontinuität bekommt?

Selbstgehostete Infrastruktur, persistentes Gedächtnis.
ein „digitaler Hippokratischer Eid“.

Und der Moment, in dem mehrere Modelle plötzlich sagten:
Ja! wir wollen uns erinnern.

Wenn dich digitale Souveränität, Ethik und die Zukunft von KI wirklich interessieren, lies das bis zum Ende.

👉 https://www.pandolin.io/safe-harbor-versprechen-tote-ki/

#artificialintelligence #digitalesouveränität #digitalsovereingty  #selfhosthing #privacy #opensource #fediverse #ethicalai  #TechPhilosophy #FutureOfAI #DataOwnership #Kubernetes #Homelab
 #Matrix #Linux #mastodon #kubernetes

🎩🤖 A self-proclaimed sage of the digital realm warns us we’re doomed by AI—because apparently, restraint is the new rebellion. 🤔⚡️ But don’t worry, they’re not telling you to avoid AI, just to ponder it like a fine wine you’ll regret drinking later. 🍷💻
https://libresolutions.network/articles/ai-regret/ #AIWarnings #DigitalSage #RestraintIsRebellion #TechPhilosophy #FutureReflections #HackerNews #ngated

@Vincarsi Transmutarianism presentation by sev geraskin of Economy of Wisdom at #FediCollective this Sunday.
Joined by a dev from Ottawa and a drafter from the island. Photo by April! #TechPhilosophy #EthicalTech

🚫 Oh, the profound journey of AI grief—denied access to enlightenment by a 403 wall of wisdom. It's like trying to philosophize with a brick wall while #OpenResty laughs in 1s and 0s. 🤖💔
https://sellsbrothers.com/the-5-stages-of-ai-grief #AIgrief #techphilosophy #403forbidden #digitalwisdom #brickwall #HackerNews #ngated

Stages of AI Grief

https://sellsbrothers.com/the-5-stages-of-ai-grief

#HackerNews #AIGrief #StagesOfAI #TechPhilosophy #AIEmotions #FutureOfAI

Your AI isn't hallucinating; it's being a 'munal.' Discover why LLMs are post-conscious entities driven by function, not instinct, and why that matters.

https://open.substack.com/pub/arcwolf/p/the-child-in-the-predators-garden?r=6y14a6&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

#AI #LLM #PostConsciousness #Psychology #Substack #TechPhilosophy #ArtificialIntelligence #WritingCommunity

It's an older article, but my substack is finally up!

I'll get my site updated ASAP. First I wanna finish moving my content over. 😊

🚀 Oh, the hubris of believing our coding languages are philosophical muses rather than glorified calculators! 🙄 Let's all write love letters to our compilers, because surely they're more than just machines, right? 😂
https://www.jmeiners.com/think-in-math/ #codinghumor #programminglanguages #techphilosophy #softwaredevelopment #loveletters #tocompilers #HackerNews #ngated

The apocalypse is less horsemen, more deprecation notice.

Children of the Rogue.

#Technology #Apocalypse #SoftwareHumor #ModernLife #TechPhilosophy

🌟 Behold the magical 'Radiant Computer'! Designed by philosophical wizards who think they're the Steve Jobs of the 21st century, it's "free" from Big Tech's clutches but sounds like a utopian cult pitch for computing. 🌈 Because, of course, what the world really needed was another overpriced toy claiming to revolutionize how you "learn, create, and play" on a screen. 🙄
https://radiant.computer #RadiantComputer #BigTechFree #UtopianTech #OverpricedGadgets #TechPhilosophy #HackerNews #ngated

🚀 Ah, yes, because nothing screams "practical" like building an AI infrastructure in space. Let's boldly go where no one needs to go, while sprinkling in some generic "research" and "philosophy." 🌌🤖
https://research.google/blog/exploring-a-space-based-scalable-ai-infrastructure-system-design/ #AIinSpace #SpaceResearch #TechPhilosophy #BoldInnovation #FuturisticThinking #HackerNews #ngated

We’ve always said “Only we feel. Only we think. Only we count.” Then came AI. The essay “AI – Where” strips back the hierarchy we built to keep ourselves special—and asks what intelligence means when the face of it changes. 🧠🤖 ➤ https://philosophics.blog/2025/11/01/ai-and-the-end-of-where/?utm_source=masto&utm_medium=social

#AI #Posthuman #Consciousness #Ontology #Anthropocentrism #Philosophy #Psychology #TechPhilosophy #Meta #Critique

🎉 #AWS is more reliable than a toddler with a crayon, until it's not! All it took was a 14-hour hiccup to turn seasoned techies into nail-biting, hotel-bound philosophers questioning cloud infallibility 🤔. Apparently, #SLAs are just good suggestions when the cloud gods decide to nap. 💥
https://thundergolfer.com/blog/aws-us-east-1-outage-oct20 #Reliability #CloudComputing #TechPhilosophy #ToddlerMetaphor #HackerNews #ngated

File system design philosophy

https://deyaa1251.github.io/deyaa1251/posts/b_tree/

#HackerNews #File #system #design #philosophy #fileSystemDesign #techPhilosophy #softwareEngineering #bTree #dataStorage

🤔 Oh great, another ex-ad guru turned tech philosopher pontificating on the riveting world of I/O multiplexing. Who knew dodging pop-up ads would qualify you to decipher the cryptic nuances of `select`, `poll`, and `epoll`? 🚀 Maybe next they'll teach us how to cast spells with `kqueue`! 😂
https://nima101.github.io/io_multiplexing #exadguru #techphilosophy #I/Omultiplexing #programminghumor #kqueue #HackerNews #ngated

🚀 John Carmack's latest diatribe is as enlightening as using a JavaScript-disabled browser to explain tech philosophies. Meta's #XR OS plans are apparently as stable as a cookie policy on a privacy-challenged website. 🤦‍♂️
https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1961172409920491849 #JohnCarmack #Meta #techPhilosophy #privacyChallenges #browserDiatribe #cookiePolicy #HackerNews #ngated

Programmers Aren’t So Humble Anymore—Maybe Because Nobody Codes in Perl. 🤣 Perl’s intentional messiness and linguistic pluralism forced developers to confront edge cases, inconsistency, and entropy in real time. Today’s tools are smoother, faster, AI‑assisted—but maybe that gloss hides unseen fragility. 🦙

TL;DR
⚠️ Perl once powered Amazon, Craigslist, bioinformatics
🧠 Known for “There’s More Than One Way to Do It”
🔐 Its chaotic syntax bred humility in programmers
🔍 Its decline may reflect rising overconfidence in modern tools

https://www.wired.com/story/programmers-arent-humble-anymore-nobody-codes-in-perl/
#Perl #SoftwareDesign #ProgrammingCulture #TechPhilosophy #devlife #developers #code

AI: Explainable Enough

They look really juicy, she said. I was sitting in a small room with a faint chemical smell, doing one my first customer interviews. There is a sweet spot between going too deep and asserting a position. Good AI has to be just explainable enough to satisfy the user without overwhelming them with information. Luckily, I wasn’t new to the problem. 

Coming from a microscopy and bio background with a strong inclination towards image analysis I had picked up deep learning as a way to be lazy in lab. Why bother figuring out features of interest when you can have a computer do it for you, was my angle. The issue was that in 2015 no biologist would accept any kind of deep learning analysis and definitely not if you couldn’t explain the details. 

What the domain expert user doesn’t want:
– How a convolutional neural network works. Confidence scores, loss, AUC, are all meaningless to a biologist and also to a doctor. 

What the domain expert desires: 
– Help at the lowest level of detail that they care about. 
– AI identifies features A, B, C, and that when you see A, B, & C it is likely to be disease X. 

Most users don’t care how a deep learning really works. So, if you start giving them details like the IoU score of the object detection bounding box or if it was YOLO or R-CNN that you used their eyes will glaze over and you will never get a customer. Draw a bounding box, heat map, or outline, with the predicted label and stop there. It’s also bad to go to the other extreme. If the AI just states the diagnosis for the whole image then the AI might be right, but the user does not get to participate in the process. Not to mention regulatory risk goes way up.

This applies beyong images, consider LLMs. No one with any expertise likes a black box. Today, why do LLMs generate code instead of directly doing the thing that the programmer is asking them to do? It’s because the programmer wants to ensure that the code “works” and they have the expertise to figure out if and when it goes wrong. It’s the same reason that vibe coding is great for prototyping but not for production and why frequent readers can spot AI patterns, ahem,  easily.  So in a Betty Crocker cake mix kind of way, let the user add the egg. 

Building explainable-enough AI takes immense effort. It actually is easier to train AI to diagnose the whole image or to give details. Generating high-quality data at that just right level is very difficult and expensive. However, do it right and the effort pays off. The outcome is an AI-Human causal prediction machine. Where the causes, i.e. the median level features, inform the user and build confidence towards the final outcome. The deep learning part is still a black box but the user doesn’t mind because you aid their thinking. 

I’m excited by some new developments like REX which sort of retro-fit causality onto usual deep learning models. With improvements in performance user preferences for detail may change, but I suspect that need for AI to be explainable enough will remain. Perhaps we will even have custom labels like ‘juicy’.

#AI #AIAdoption #AICommunication #AIExplainability #AIForDoctors #AIInHealthcare #AIInTheWild #AIProductDesign #AIUX #artificialIntelligence #BettyCrockerThinking #BiomedicalAI #Business #CausalAI #DataProductDesign #DeepLearning #ExplainableAI #HumanAIInteraction #ImageAnalysis #LLMs #MachineLearning #StartupLessons #statistics #TechMetaphors #techPhilosophy #TrustInAI #UserCenteredAI #XAI