It feels like we’re at the endgame of the corporate mentality in technology. “Tech” used to imply expertise, craft, and a commitment to quality; now it’s mostly a buzzword for raising capital and PR.

Real progress these days mostly comes from enthusiasts and small teams, not hierarchical, ego-driven organisations that prioritise the share price over their human talent. Not “startup bros” racing to get another Node.js app funded, but the freaks and weirdoes staying up until sunrise reading obscure 1990s whitepapers and translating them into Python to fix a random Blender ticket because they actually care.

I often wonder what would happen if we funded those passionate weirdoes who just want to help. Pay them an income to go around the neighbourhood, setting up cloud backups for everyone, organising systems, and building solutions that actually work. This rigid adherence to a classist, centralised society built around wealth isn’t just obscene and inhuman, it’s making us dumber and blocking the kinds of solutions that should already exist.

Is that why the company is becoming more thuggish? Desperately searching for scapegoats?

Go back to IBM OS/2 Warp 4! Back when there was still actual choices in desktop computing…

Here in Australia we measure the flow of electricity in Kangaroo Hops per Hour.

MAGA are busy creating and watching Child Sexual Abuse Material on Elon Musks X.

I wish it were merely that. I think Y Combinator, and the culture it promotes, is part of a much deeper problem in the IT industry: digital colonisation (or astroturfing, if you will). Vast amounts of capital are used to blitzkrieg entire markets, not to build better services but to erase alternatives and own the only platform.

That’s how companies like Uber Eats gained dominance. They didn’t become market leaders by being better, they swung enormous capital at every problem, undercut local business until they were driven out, then jacked up prices and degraded service once competition was gone. Uber Eats is just one example of this pattern.

This astroturfing phenomenon has spread everywhere: business directories, event planning, community platforms, even the ways people in a local area connect and share prosperity. What looks like “innovation” is often just foreign investors capital overwhelming local ecosystems that were working just fine.

Google is the clearest case study. They gave us genuinely useful tools, Gmail, Maps, Android, and wrapped it all in “Don’t be evil.” Once everyone was locked in, the mask was removed. Surveillance, enclosure, rent-seeking, supporting a fascist government regime. The evil didn’t suddenly appear, it was always there. That’s where the initial capital came from in the first place!

Y Combinator didn’t invent this, but it systematized it: scale first, destroy competition, extract later. The startup business model of tech bros seeking capital was exported overseas and countless idiots today try to ape it at fake tech conferences that are about seeking investor funding, not innovation or a brighter future. The damage isn’t just economic, it’s cultural and social, and it hollowed out entire local and digital communities in the process.

Oh no, exploitative capitalists don’t wanna fuck over Canadians. Must suck for them…

I’m in Australia so I can definitely relate to a lot of that!

I think populists have been extremely clever to conflate historical issues relating to poverty and rural areas with trending topics like immigration and “wealthy inner city elites”.

Ironically, it’s the people like Trump and other right wingers who are most likely to create poor outcomes for the worst off among their own followers, but as long as those people are fuelled by rage, bigotry and a carefully constructed narrative they will remain none the wiser.

Honestly, I can’t believe it’s taken this long for Americans to start rioting. Just the fact your entire life can be upended by illness should be enough to make society break out in a rage.

I think the backlash to LLM is already hurting all AI projects and will be especially bad when that bubble pops.

Everyone’s going to think all AI, and AGI, projects are LLMs and scoff at them.

The magic that used to be tied to the term AI is dead by fraud.

In 2008, Iron Man had just come out and blown everyone’s minds. iPhones were still quite new, so was Facebook. Obama got elected and everyone was excited by the first black president, even here in Australia.

1. I have never regretted ignoring the unsolicited advice of others
2. I have regretted, sometimes for years, trying too hard to please others

The worst part is all our data is stored on American servers run by megacorpos. ID information scanned by venue terminals is one, but even private health records and sensitive government documents are being chucked into Amazon S3, Azure/OneDrive and Dropbox.

The government should be prioritising secure, independent digital infrastructure but they’re too busy giving our tax dollars to foreign consulting firms so they can build bad websites.

As an Aussie, I’m grateful for everyday that the LNP is not back in government. Labor might be inadequate and sometimes infuriating, but they’re not outright evil bastards like the opposition.

There’s no risk you will develop a sense of humour, of that I am sure!

My bad! I’ve fixed it up so both are available. Thank you for pointing it out <3

Firefox extension here - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/microslop/

Chrome extension link here - https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/microsoft-to-microslop/hlkljlkdinjnbfmclionhbefbnefcgll?pli=1

Is there a Patreon for this?

That’s why they hate the yearly Pornhub report.

IIRC there’s a pattern of greater interest in trans porn in all red states.

It’s the same model across the western world. Two party systems dominate because it’s the easiest model for the oligarchs to control us with.