Posts by mossbriar@sunbeam.city
(DIR) Post #9hbn6VZIf7bP8rPIIK by mossbriar@sunbeam.city
2019-04-08T16:02:13Z
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Listened to Brett Scott's essay "The hacker hacked: how yuppies gentrified the original hacker ethos" and then read a comment claiming he and the mainstream media fundamentally misunderstood hacker culture and it's *actually* about two fundamental beliefs: 1) efficiency is god and 2) knowledge is powerI had to take out a pen and paper and start trying to analyze all the vaguely right libertarian underpinnings/implications of his definition because I've definitely heard it before from e.g. ESR
(DIR) Post #9hbn6Vm3tfoJmRNUBc by mossbriar@sunbeam.city
2019-04-08T17:46:25Z
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According to this definition of hacker culture, things like tolerating minorities and different sexual orientations ("as long as you have the necessary skills") and freedom of information are valuable not for their own sake but because they allow hackers to be more efficient. Efficient at what? Making cool things. Hackers being as unrestricted as possible means they make cool things that out to be useful and help society as a whole, the theory goes. Hence complaints that debates about social issues like harrassment and gender/racial inequality are just preventing people from getting actual work done.The question of what work is getting done and why and who benefits from it isn't directly addressed, but the assumption seems to be that there's some general emergent phenomenon of "technological progress" that results from individual acts of invention and benefits humanity as a whole. It feels like faith in the "invisible hand" of the unrestricted free market restated in new language.
(DIR) Post #9hbn6W2Mv2r2b10VbU by mossbriar@sunbeam.city
2019-04-08T18:04:37Z
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@smokeythecat Exactly. But the unstated assumption is that there are always going to be the genius heroes and the people at the bottom, and if some people haven't made their way up the hierarchy by shutting up and working harder to prove themselves then *those people don't matter*.The more I think about this the more I see a parallel to the way we're conditioned to think about wealth and entrepreneurs.
(DIR) Post #9hbn6WDiErvdACJZHk by mossbriar@sunbeam.city
2019-04-08T18:25:12Z
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"Knowledge is power" translates into "individual knowledge can be turned into personal power", i.e., skill with technology is yet another purported path up a hierarchy that is assumed and unquestioned. People who "know how to use technology" (I assume that means knowing how to use computers, whatever *that* means) are superior than those who don't and thus they deserve to earn more money and wear casual clothes/eat in the workplace unlike the ignorant masses working in a traditional environment.
(DIR) Post #9hbn6WMvgbIjcmcveS by mossbriar@sunbeam.city
2019-04-08T18:36:01Z
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The argument "hackers are people with special knowledge that makes them powerful, and they are superior to and deserve more than ordinary people because they use their power to make society more efficient" doesn't stand up to close scrutiny. Plumbers and electricians and road construction crews have special knowledge and do the same thing. Technology != computers.
(DIR) Post #9hdQDFAE8thnf6qG1Y by mossbriar@sunbeam.city
2019-04-09T13:01:50Z
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@dgold This might be outside of scope, but one question I had reading this was whether the software license/intellectual property law framework is the best tool we have to defend the commons and ensure programmers get paid and software is used ethically. You pointed out how difficult enforcement is against corporations, and using the legal system against tech giants feels like fighting them on their own turf. Not that it's useless, but is it our only option?
(DIR) Post #9lWo5d3AjMeIjfvhmC by mossbriar@sunbeam.city
2019-08-03T11:38:30Z
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@grainloom First off I'm anarchist so consider the source obviously, second this is longishI sort of do want the United States to fail, but that's because I don't identify the US with its residents (but then neither does the US). Like, I want all of the people living *in* the US to be okay (regardless of citizenship or imprisonment or anything else). Heck, even the super awful people who live here I would be mostly content to see out of power with no way to hurt people. And I don't want people suffering from lack of infrastructure and unable to meet their basic needs. But that statement applies just as much to people outside the US, and as a *state* the US makes life worse for a lot of people, so I'm rooting against it (I had to consciously not say "against us").I think people being able to form communities and take care of themselves and each other can be a really good thing and I want to make that better!Countries, though?countries are fake
(DIR) Post #9lbXx7nOWvW5a9SQ0e by mossbriar@sunbeam.city
2019-08-03T13:35:14Z
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@grainloom I think that's the whole trick of patriotism honestlyPeople think you have to take the good with the bad because there's this artificial concept of "nation" that we're taught is what holds us together, even though none of us chose where we were born and we have almost no control over most of what our countries do. And then we're taught that we're not allowed to reject that, because doing so would be selfish/evil somehow, because the nation = the people and if you don't love the state you must not care about peopleAlso, nobody wants to live in a failed state, right? so if you want running water and electricity you have to put up with stuff like wars and torture and spying and borders and prisons (because that's what "successful" states do). If you don't like it you can try to make it better, but you don't get a choice about being part of it, and you can't walk away without uprooting your entire life. There's no opt-out button.Or so they say.
(DIR) Post #9so2HVKNajHj6WOuBs by mossbriar@sunbeam.city
2020-03-08T18:42:36Z
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@liaizon Is there public discussion happening anywhere about how redistributing the responsibility for running sunbeam.city might work? #SunbeamCity #SBC
(DIR) Post #9so3V75waLGVxJhZY0 by mossbriar@sunbeam.city
2020-03-08T18:52:28Z
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@liaizon I do not, as I'm typically resistant to setting new accounts up. If that's what it takes to participate in the discussion, is it okay to spread the word about where it's happening and why? (I'm assuming there are usability reasons this isn't just a thread on Mastodon, but I don't actually know.) I'm serious enough about helping to set up Matrix even if I wish most of the conversation could happen over here.
(DIR) Post #9so49JVdqcWY2etHZw by mossbriar@sunbeam.city
2020-03-08T18:56:29Z
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@squeakypancakes @liaizon I tried to sign up, currently waiting for technical supportThe discussion there is at least viewable by anyone with a Web browser, which I think is a plus for lowering barrier to entry.
(DIR) Post #9so6ruYZfSrLaleitE by mossbriar@sunbeam.city
2020-03-08T19:07:49Z
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@squeakypancakes @liaizon I agree that reading a single-thread chat history is probably going to be harder for someone who wants to understand what happened later than reading a forum thread. I'm biased towards (at least eventual) transparency.
(DIR) Post #9so87QzLT9umTX8xrE by mossbriar@sunbeam.city
2020-03-08T19:45:03Z
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@liaizon ah I understand now. Thanks for taking this on by the way!
(DIR) Post #9suWn1L2mzwAvyPoG0 by mossbriar@sunbeam.city
2020-03-09T03:11:04Z
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Anybody remember @towncrier? The bot who would automatically post updates when new discussion topics started on the SBC Loomio? That was a really cool thing. I like seeing tools that help keep people in the loop.Discourse (what the discussion forum at sunbeamcity.autonomic.zone is built on) has chat integration that lets you automatically send notifications about new topics and posts (or replies), but not for ActivityPub as far as I can tell (though there is support for Matrix).Mastodon recently introduced instance-wide announcements, which could fill a similar role, but I use an Android client and it'll probably be a little while before that feature gets implemented on it.I auto-followed a couple of mods when I joined the instance, which helped keep me informed on admin issues. I've been checking the relevant tags I know of today, although I tend to forget to do that.Are there other ideas I'm missing?#SunbeamCity #SBCnews #SBC
(DIR) Post #9suWnuSNrPULsfGwpk by mossbriar@sunbeam.city
2020-03-09T12:02:29Z
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@towncrier Update: thanks to @puffinus_puffinus pointing out #SunbeamCoop (a tag I'd forgotten) I discovered @SunbeamCoop by @psilocyclin, which I think is a great idea: https://sunbeam.city/@psilocyclin/103725909705109619#SunbeamCity #SBC #SBCnews