- “Fake AWS Packages Ship Command and Control Malware In JPEG Files”. Malware has a long history of really inventive obfuscation.
- “So you want to compete with or replace open source”. “The simple truth of open source is that if you design your business model with an eye towards competition, in which you are the only entity who can exclusively monetize the software product, you must eschew the collaborative aspects of open source – and thus its greatest strength.”
- “The graying open source community needs fresh blood • The Register”. ‘There was only one little problem with it. To quote Ruth Ikegah, a young Nigerian open source project manager, “We need more young people here because I see a lot of old people here."’ The software industry is built on a foundation of junior developers being tasked to extract value by building on free code maintained by older people effectively working for free. But it’s also both phasing out those junior developers in favour of a dude with LLMs, burning out the OSS maintainers at a record rate, and exceedingly prejudiced against older workers. This does not bode well for the future.
- “Knowledge workers | A Working Library”. “Taylor’s model of workplace productivity depended entirely on deskilling, on the invention of unskilled labor—which, heretofore, had not existed.”
- “Why genre hopping is good for you as a writer”. I found this to be a really hopeful read as I’ve spent much of my career as, effectively, a generalist pretending to be a specialist.
- “Adactio: Journal—Ad tech”. “But the idea that behavioural advertising works better than contextual advertising has no basis in reality.”
- “Make kin not nets | everything changes”. “But I think all of this elides the real and justified reasons for feeling icky about networking: the act, as it’s usually discussed, distills human relationships into resources to be mined. It translates caring and caretaking for one another—one of the most meaningful and sacred acts any of us ever performs—into a utility, a “value-add,” an exchange of capital.”
- “Google Now Defaults to Not Indexing Your Content - Vincent Schmalbach”
- “HeHealth’s AI app that screened ‘dick pics’ for STIs has shut down - The Verge”. “but now it’s shut down after an inquiry by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).” As I’ve mentioned several times in the past, AI companies have a history of fraud and false promises and are sometimes so blatant they get shut down by the FTC. Tech companies usually don’t get shut down by the FTC.
- “FOSS funding vanishes from EU’s 2025 Horizon program plans • The Register”. “Funding for free and open source software (FOSS) initiatives under the EU’s Horizon program has mostly vanished from next year’s proposal, claim advocates who are worried for the future of many ongoing projects.” I’ve been hearing anecdotally about DEI efforts and organisations losing funding, and about some open education getting funding only with an “use AI” caveat. I’d assumed something similar was happening for FOSS so this isn’t too surprising.
- “Lessons learned in 35 years of making software – Jim Grey”. “The software we are building right now will one day be decommissioned and not be used anymore, probably before your career is over.” So much this. Hardly anything I’ve worked on in my career is still being used. Pretty much only the stuff I’ve worked on in the past 2-3 years is still in production.
- “Canon’s Big Day | Sans Mirror | Thom Hogan”. “I’ve written the following for almost all my career: when companies cut back on key knowledgable personnel that were effective in creating things or working directly with customers, they lower the quality they provide their customers. Lower the quality, and over time you’ll lower your sales. Lower your sales, and you’ll be downsizing again in the future. It’s a death spiral if you think this is the plan to execute ad infinitum.” The thing to note: most people outside of tech recognise that mass layoffs are likely to trigger a company death spiral.
- “Google Is Mind-Bogglingly Bad – On my Om”. My only disagreement with this is that Google has always been this bad, but everybody just kept giving its garbage a pass just because search and Gmail were sort of functional.
- “You probably dont need HTML imports | Go Make Things”. You could even implement this in a service worker if you wanted.
- “Fascism Creeps in from Silicon Valley”. “Calling these people fascist is sometimes derided as scare tactics or alarmism, but I don’t know in what world accuracy is alarmist.” Pretty sure that fascism runs deeper and is much more common among people in tech than is commonly accepted outside of tech
- “Climate Change Actions Are Far More Popular Than People in U.S. Realize | Scientific American”. “66 to 80 percent of people in the U.S. support major climate mitigation policies. But participants in the new study estimated that only between 37 and 43 percent do so.”
- “A Book Apart, About”. When did A Book Apart close completely? I saw the March notice that they weren’t publishing new books but were still selling their back catalog. Now they’re closed completely but the page has no date on it.
- “Reacquired. — Ethan Marcotte”. In related news, Ethan Marcotte is now selling his books—previously released by A Book Apart—directly. They’re all great. Go check them out.