Notices by Ellie, Witch of Hardware (ellied@sleeping.town)

And yes, even if the job were like "tech ethicist" or "ethics moderator" or whatever the fuck. There's no changing a capitalist death machine from the inside, no matter how much anyone says you can.

I'm not going to work for a big corporation or insidious government agency in any capacity. I'm just not going to fucking do it. If we ever want anything to get better in this world, people like me have to stop actively working to make it worse. At this stage, I feel like going off to work some job at Amazon or Google or Microsoft or Bloatass Bank or whatever the fuck, no matter what the job actually is, would be an act of surrender to late capitalism, and I haven't even started fighting yet.

I'm absolutely fucking sick of the way commercial software vendors are treating updates in 2018. They are always opaque packages with poor (or sometimes nonexistent) changelogs, which include security patches, user interface changes, and new anti-features all wrapped up in one non-negotiable box.
Any user expecting to maintain a secure and reliable system absolutely requires fine-grained control over updates, including full changelogs, separately distributed security-related and non-essential updates, and the ability to roll back unwanted changes.

over 3 years old, but showing no signs of going out of date

https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/blog-posts/issues/527
here we have an issue opened on GitLab from someone who is mad about the AGPL, featuring our favorite lies and fish:
- "the AGPL is not an open-source license"
- "the AGPL is unfair to companies because it makes them publish code instead of being able to charge consulting fees"
- "open-source/free software is synonymous with software that is licensed in a way that is convenient for my company"

"are you a 1337 h4x0r?"
"no, I'm a 1773 h3x4r."
"a what?"
"we're like the 1337 guys, but instead of being all edgy and leaking people's private data, we help people modify their equipment so it behaves how they need it to behave, and install solar-powered wifi hotspots in poor neighborhoods"

halloweenposting

every time I tell certain people in my life about the latest thing I'm working on, the *first* thing they ask me is "are you going to sell it?"
to which the answer is always: NO
- marketing is hard and stupid
- it's not useful or novel enough to possibly be worth selling as an entrepreneur
- that would mean trying to do a Startup, which is Right Out
- what gave you the impression that I was doing this for money anyway

Bodily autonomy should override intellectual property in all cases. If it can be shown beyond reasonable doubt that a piece of tech is essential to your continued survival (e.g. pacemakers, artificial hearts, insulin pumps), then you should be the only one who gets to say who can and can't audit its software and read the full technical documentation. The ability to access it yourself shouldn't be something you can waive by signing any contract, it should be fundamental and non-negotiable.