While generative AI tools are what we push this onto, the culture of taking is something humanity needs to address in a larger scope. Techbros claim we need to move fast and break things. Well they broke things alright and fixing this one is far overdue. It's a conversation we can have without even involving AI (although that needs reckoning and restorative measures!!). We must repair our culture of sharing even if it's just in small pockets of the world at first.

You could be exploring something you find valuable for years or even most of your life and then some guy comes by and thinks, "I want that so I'll take it" and walks away with no conversation, attribution, or contribution (at least none in good faith). The entitlement to take makes sharing our labor/art/insight so painful.

Thinking back to Strange Loop (conf). How so many of the great talks would not happen in today's world? For example, talk to knitters about technology and they'll talk about how much they hate slop. The exchange of things we personally find inspiring was a critical aspect of what made that conference feel magical. Now, so many have closed that door because of the gross abuses that scrapers and plagiarism have brought to these communities. There is so much MORE friction to sharing now, not less.

Posting while these thoughts are still bouncing around in my head: I think a lot is lost in group chat formats. Mailing lists, private email chains, uucp message log sync are still good. Sure, there are problems to solve but I think we prematurely left email and related tech for IM and everything branching off that. Likewise, the fediverse could really use more blogs and fewer threads. 🤔

The other aspect of this becomes geopolitical. Sourcing things from various parts of the world has become a complicated set of risks. While some parts from NXP are nice, Rockchip also has some very light parts too (I've got an RV1103 sitting on my desk that is *cheap*, 64MB might actually be enough if using a lightweight compiler, ran debian ok but I'd probably strip it down). In the end the harder part becomes sourcing the chips consistently enough for people to reproduce a build.

I spent too many hours today looking at spec sheets to imagine possible BOMs for a PC that was both super affordable yet powerful enough to build 100% of the software (including the OS and compilers) on the device itself. It's a tricky balance but also worth noting that C compilers used to require megabytes of ram not gigabytes. My first C compiler ran off a floppy disk a neighbor lent me. Obviously we can do better than the minimum spec but we obviously don't need even 1GB to accomplish this.

Out with Linux as it is today, the modern web, probably most rust projects (what a mess of dependencies and compiler waste), giant compiler suites (ever try to build llvm?), and beyond that things which refuse to evolve to better fit the mission of computing for people not computing for corporations.

And sure you can tell me how long Gentoo used to take to emerge world or whatever but once that got out of reach so did our priorities. We need to make this kind of thing practical and even trivial. Software we use now has unsustainably complex supply chains, build resource requirements, lack of coherent structure, and egregious build resource requirements (ever try to build a "modern" web browser, what a tire fire).

What we have now aren't personal computers. They're not even purpose-built appliances because many aren't even repairable or documented. These are in some category that has no name beyond consumerist trap.

A personal computer should have the capacity to rebuild its own software within itself. I should be able to read, modify, and run everything ... unfortunately we have firmware which we can work to minimize but even then, so few machines these days pass this test and its an entirely avoidable failure. Documentation should be included in some form as well.

It also seems that this discourse is causing discomfort of many over at lobsters. Tech's moral rot has a long history and spaces built upon the idea of apolitical interaction will get a rude awakening. It’s an oxymoron to treat computing as apolitical. Neutrality is anything but.

Certain people seem to love telling anti-fascists that pointing out fascists and their bad behavior and keeping receipts when they double down on it, is itself fascist behavior. This paradox of tolerance is such idiotic bullshit and clearly why we should keep these lists. A culture of remembrance of the past should also include remembrance in the present or we'll social norms standing by, doing nothing while humans repeat that evil cycle.

I have no money to fund this so it's just me and what I can put together as I find focus for it. I am currently running down my personal savings though so I will need to find ways to balance cost and attention with paying work. Still, knowing people are interested in this kind of thing at all is highly motivating. So I want to start posting a bit more on what is brewing and see how I can get help to grow this into something bigger than a side project eventually.

While I've been working on things, I've been collecting ideas of how I might construct space both online and in person to be conducive to these goals. I had originally bought glitchwitches.org as domain meant to serve a community of like-minded individuals with a focus on learning and teaching but it was just a bit of glue to gather people in person, or so the idea went. I think I want to expand it and make something slightly broader which should still serve much of it's original intent as well.

I've been stuck feeling like I have *a lot to say* but *so little time and energy to do*. I've been quiet partly because I'm working towards things I hope at least help protect personal computing from my own perspective of what that entails. I hope this means sharing more eventually too but I'm trying to prioritize *doing not just saying*. I have scrapped a few ideas in the last month after trialing things but this is still progress: I've come away with sharper ideas and clearer motivation.

I am more and more certain I don't want my desktop or UX to be "modernized" if it means what these designers keep saying it means.

Give me borders, boxes, structure, bars (scroll bars too), handles to grab onto that aren't paper thin, less animation, less flatness (including flat icons), less transparency, less invisible scrolling content (doubly so if its endless) and please stop rounding everything, it's *good* if pixels have sharp/crisp edges.

Given me a little skeuomorphism as a treat!

Good song to play if you want to reread this tiny thread again. https://youtu.be/EuOzaWnZZPA?is=EIVosgXzXqUxEhLb

Oh, this is just a thing for straight white men? Sorry, I guess women in tech and trans people peeing was too revolutionary for society that believes computers can think.

Otherwise, maybe trans people can use this one weird trick when they go try to use the WC. Urination is apolitical after all. Surely the UK won't have an issue with them peeing. They can just tell people who get worried that they are there on entirely apolitical grounds. "My bladder is 100% free of politics and 100% full of urine, I swear." That will surely work wonders.

The only people who call politics bad are those who want to be unaccountable for the impact their actions have on the rest of the world. This is a very *political* choice called libertarianism and is closely aligned with tech oligarchs breaking laws, attacking democracy, destroying personal computing, etc. It's bullshit and they know it but they don't care, because they ... aren't accountable after all.

Never believe someone when they say their work is apolitical.