I stopped saying No. If management wants to push stupid decisions, so be it. They are getting payed for strategic decisions. If their strategy is bullshit, so be it. If they tank the company, so be it. I am not getting payed for that kind of work. And the more bullshit I hear from upper levels, the less I identify with my company.
I had gpt-5.5 translate microgpt.py into a C++ version recently. I had to steer/convince it to use data oriented design to avoid excessive pointer chasing, but the end result was as expected: Now 500 LOC instead of 199, but speedup was 100x. That speedup is definitely worth doubling the line count. And frankly, modern C++ can read very nicely, even compared to Python.
Ahh, are we there yet? Has non-deterministic computer use eroded your mind so much that you are starting to question the binary system? You know, the insight that computers are something that flips switches on and off is rather old, and I have heard it uttered (although slightly humorously) several times already, nobody ever raising any eyebrow hearing it.
anti-capitalism, while a bit strange a lable, is something I can sympathize with. But once we are talking anarchism and (intersectional) feminism in a computing context, I am definitely out. I miss the time when computing was a lot less political. It was nice hacking on projects without having to identify with something totally unrelated, or being forced to support idiologies just to be a part of it.
> I miss the time when computing was a lot less political.
Whether such a time ever existed is debatable.
Here's a test. Define the period that you're imagining. Then investigate this period as a point in the history of computing with its broader sociopolitical contexts.
Somewhere in the midst of that milieu I reckon or the politics you're likely to be fond to mix with your tech projects.
Most "conservative" opinions are basically "I miss when I was young and wasn't aware of all of the stuff happening around me and want modern reality to be like my incorrect perception of how things were in my youth"
That was the direction I was going to head in first before I was less confident in my assumption of the parent commenter's age based on their username.
It's a good direction to take and adds in the possibility, for example, that one may investigate the past and find themselves unintentionally and retroactively complicit in everything between the atomic bomb to US intervention in Libya.
And now I'm curious about the likelihood of a youth who will know no age better than our present, in the future.
You might like this thread from earlier this year:
Yes, that is a more honest assessment than longing for the time "when computing was much less political". It simply wasn't, and not recognizing that leads directly to the mess we have today and onwards towards bleak future.
That is quite a condescending take. I get that you are extrapolating from my post that I might be conservative. That needs more nuance, but I get it. But to assume I always was, and used to be ignorant, is too far reaching. In fact, I used to be a lot more progressive in the past.
>But to assume I always was, and used to be ignorant, is too far reaching.
Eh, it was only meant to be a little mean. You were I dumb kid, I was a dumb kid, everyone was a dumb kid. I'm assuming to be human involves being a stupid child who didn't have a very good picture of reality. It is extremely common for a person to have this innate belief that their perceptions of the world as a dumb kid to be true and have that be the basis of their desires for how things should be now.
I bet you also think the music you listened to roughly in your teenage years was the best music ever made and everything made before or after isn't as good. Again, nearly everyone feels this way.
>In fact, I used to be a lot more progressive in the past.
If middle-age had a slogan, this would be it. If middle-age was a movie, this would be the subtitle. Welcome.
I'm not talking about conservative the binary, 1-dimensional political stance. I'm talking the "I want things to stay the way they were in the past" conservativism which is broad, can be about anything, and is really common particularly as one gets a little order and hasn't really reevaluated the reality they may remember incorrectly.
When you're young you're naïve, when you're old you're cursed with a false nostalgia. It's the human condition and we're all kinda stupid like that. You'll have trouble pinning down which group I'm attacking and which I'm supporting.
> When you're young you're naïve, when you're old you're cursed with a false nostalgia
How convenient! So you can dismiss any comment on the basis of them being either to young or to old. I think you're overestimating the stupidity of others to fall for your simpleton attempt of manipulating people.
The web originally was way closer to anarchism and I really miss that. It was a cluster of self-organising communities, little to no intervention from the state, a lot was not profit driven.
Same with IRC.
And the Internet was state sponsored too, at the time though it was not even legal to create communication networks in a lot of countries. But that's the premises
But what it gave birth to was a form of anarchy. One doesn't go against the other, the same way a political regime can change within a country.
IMO it depends very much on how those positions are being forced on those attending. Since this is about permacomputing I suspect not all that much.
In my experience these self-given-labels just express the views of some founding members and are often used to clarify who they do not want (capitalist, misogynist authoritarians) and who is welcome (left leaning people, women, people who know how to treat women, people who can respect flat hierarchies).
I find it a bit edgy to self label an encouraging like that, instead of explaining the meat of it (we are anticapitalist, because..., we are feminist, so women are welcome, we are anarchist, so our organization is structured with a flat hierarchy). Since it is an anarchist space, that is anti-authoritarian you probably won't find much indoctrination.
> In my experience these self-given-labels just express the views of some founding members and are often used to clarify who they do not want [...] and who is welcome [...]
This is where I think the problem is.
Once you start appending political identifiers then the purpose of an organization becomes more than just about X, but X according to certain values to the exclusion of others. There's nothing wrong with that but I could see how it can be viewed as disingenuous when it's insinuated that the organization is more open/general than it is apparent.
Yes of course. But as I said the exclusion of misogynistic, capitalist authoritarians is seen as a feature not as a bug by most groups that self-label like that. If it is your private group you can decide freely which audience you want to target. Most groups do this in some way or another, be it with self-labeling or other less explicit ways.
And quite frankly, as someone teaching at the university level, I think people with these traits (misogynistic, capitalistic, authoritarian) are not the best to have in a group anyways if your goal is to cultivate a curious learning environment. Not because of ideological reasons, but if there are women in a group, having a misogynist in there is toxic and doesn't add any value. Capitalists would have the opposite goal of a permacomputing group (extracting wealth from their environment), so having them there is questionable. Authoritarians generally have problems with going new paths and like to hate on the minority their specific flavor of authoritarianism chose as the excuse for their bad behavior, that also doesn't add to a great learning environment.
That doesn't mean I would label my courses as anarchist or anticapitalist and it doesn't mean I select the participants of my courses based on their ideology (I am not even sure how I could do that). But if it was my afterwork book club maybe I'd like to keep people away that take more in society than they give.
Right. But "in the end" people who participate in "permacomputing" per the websites stated values represent a subset of nerds. I think the rebuttal we're commenting on oversimplifies this.
Well, yes, but no. Hacker Community projects increasingly force political agendas on participants. It gets harder and harder to just do tech stuff without having to align with some cabal.
Being apolitical just means your politics align with the status quo. Technology is inherently political in nature, because it affects society in material ways.
I'm fairly certain the word for that is "economical". Of course, the politics grows out of the economical relationships, but they are still different things: changes in technology may or may not change the political climate (I am fairly certain that an invention of e.g. a tin can opener did not have any noticeably political effects).
> (I am fairly certain that an invention of e.g. a tin can opener did not have any noticeably political effects).
The tin can certainly did though! "Can openers" are particularly distinct refinement of the cutting tool for a specific application, but not any kind of new technology.
"If you are not supporting us, you are the enemy" isn't a valid take. But it shows nicely the sentiment which turns me off regarding politics in tech. You can't even stay neutral, because someone will force you to align with their values. "My way or the highway" pretty much.
But we need to merge the humanities with technology because if both sides ignore the other than both sides will blindly walk into the worst out comes of the other side.
I don't disagree with you, I think we need both the humanities and technology. But this group hasn't listed "the humanities", but a rather reactionary and recent limiting subset of the humanities.
"With that said, permacomputing is an anti-capitalist political project. It is driven by several strands of anarchism, decoloniality, intersectional feminism, post-marxism, degrowth, ecologism."
Even for myself, an anarchist, that jumble of ideologies isn't appealing.
If thats true, I am sure some C-suite manager knows this already. Assuming management knows what they do, after all, they're getting payed for this. The time where engineer are trying to educate people above them should be over. Management gets payed for the big decisions. If they tank the company, so be it. I no longer care.
Its small, but there remains the hope that progressive enshittification of cars might convince a few people not to own one. Cities with useful public transport infrastructure already see a trend of young people not owning a car, which is good.
My city recently closed a load of employee parking, extended the paid parking zone, and simultaneously reduced the time covered by a bus ticket by 25% and displays adverts on the screens inside buses.
Democracy fans would say: "All you have to do is to thank them when the next vote comes up."
P.S.: I can't even imagine how much of a distraction ads in public spaces must be. I am blind. While that is clearly a disability, whenever I read things like what you just posted, I am reminded how blessed I am. Maybe there will be a time when 100% blindness is actually an advantage?
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