Intel cofounder Gordon Moore proposed Moore's Law, the observation that the transistor count in a computer chip doubles every two years. He died two years ago today at 94. https://dfarq.homeip.net/gordon-moore-and-moores-law/ #TechHistory #RetroComputing #Innovation #TransistorTechnology #SiliconValley #ComputerScience
My “not a book review” of Careless People – the book Facebook doesn’t want you to read.
With highlights on Ireland’s complicity and the lengths people farmers (as I call them) will go to to appease authoritarian regimes like China.
https://ar.al/2025/03/21/careless-people/
It’s clear from this that Ireland should be stripped of the authority to enforce GDPR and, really, people farmers – and the business model of people farming in general – should be banned in the EU.
(Don’t hold your breaths.)
SAN FRANCISCO - The giant chipmaker has transformed its annual developer conference from an academic even... - https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/18/technology/nvidia-gtc-conference-ai.html #conventionsfairsandtradeshows #computersandtheinternet #artificialintelligence #siliconvalley(calif) #enterprisecomputing #nvidiacorporation #computerchips #huangjen-hsun #innovation
@ZhiZhu@newsie.socialThe dystopian "freedom cities" dream fueling Elon Musk's destruction
Tech's plans for billionaire-rule expose why #Musk wants to end #government by the people
https://www.salon.com/2025/03/17/the-dystopian-freedom-cities-dream-fueling-elon-musks-destruction/
"what the #SiliconValley billionaire class considers "freedom cities" is simply neo-feudalism, a plan to end the concept of #citizenship & make every working person a serf whose entire life is controlled by the whims of their boss. "
Coming soon, "Silicon Valley & Tech Regions".
It's a topic we've found fascinating for years, not just in its mapping, but in the phenomena itself. We've heard Silicon Valley described as a example of "emergence" where components come together and in the right circumstances, at the right time, wild growth, interaction & change occur.
The last segment of my working life was doing technical writing for software companies in #SiliconValley. Understanding the software was easy, I had been a programmer for a long time before becoming a #techWriter.
The hard part was trying to put things into terms my audience would 'get' and I really admire people who can do that.
That’s why I devour everything @Daojoan sends out.
She got me to #Vivaldi and #Joplin and helped me see that privacy and software freedom is more than #LibreOffice and #ProtonMail.
Go read her stuff. You won’t be disappointed.
Tech bros are living, breathing embodiments of the false authority facility; claiming that their professed understanding of basic logic qualifies them to reason expertly upon every conceivable topic while conveniently ignoring a fundamental maxim of their purported core area of expertise: garbage in, garbage out.
We’re not going to get out of this simply by voting with our wallets, but still, we might at least try and hurt the fuckers in the only place they feel any pain…
https://www.buy-european-made.eu
(And don’t get me started on “European Values”. No, we don’t get a gold star while letting refugees drown off our coasts and being complicit in the Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people. We’re just not fully fascist yet and might just avoid it… maybe. It’s a pretty fucking low bar.)
The Camera Panopticon
How did we end up in technofascism? Watch this talk I gave over a decade ago warning of the dangers of Silicon Valley and Big Tech and urging us to embrace alternatives.
https://small-tech.org/videos/the-camera-panopticon/
(Transcript available in English, Español, and Nederlands, thanks to the community.)
“Mozilla doesn’t sell data about you (in the way that most people think about ‘selling data’)”
– Mozilla
;) ;)
(At least Mark Zuckerberg had the good grace to call us “dumb fucks” to our faces.)
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/update-on-terms-of-use/
Anything you say or do in Firefox may be used by Mozilla against you. You have the right to use a different browser. If you cannot find a browser that doesn’t fuck you over one way or another, one will not be provided for you because capitalism is working exactly as designed.
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-terms-of-use/
@Lazarou@mastodon.social@augieray sadly, the UK Government won't listen, they are fully in the Tech Bros pocket.
Hopefully people will get the message though, we have rejected the AI hustle.
"There Is No AI Revolution"
@wdlindsy@toad.socialMore on the "do something" front (I'm referring here to /3):
Marcy Wheeler notes how town-hall meetings have Republican legislators back on their heels now, and demonstrate that we can, indeed, do something to push back. She says,
"This kind of politics is not sufficient to reverse the fascist trend in America, but it is an irreplaceable part of any effort to try."
#Musk #Trump #broligarchy #SiliconValley #technoauthoritarianism #surveillance #fascism
/4
https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/02/23/no-kings-around-the-partisan-bend-on-doge-sic-and-ukraine/
@wdlindsy@toad.social"This week represents a hinge of history. Everything has changed. America and Russia are now allies. Ukraine has been thrown to the dogs. Europe’s security hangs in the balance. On the one hand, there’s nothing any of us can do. On the other, we have to do something."
On the "do something" front, see Cadwalladr's valuable suggestions from Nov. 2017, republished here — and listen to her podcast.
#Musk #Trump #broligarchy #SiliconValley #technoauthoritarianism #surveillance #fascism
/3
@wdlindsy@toad.social"This is technoauthoritarianism. It’s tyranny + surveillance tools. It’s the merger of Silicon Valley companies with state power. It’s the ‘broligarchy’, a concept I coined in July last year though I’ve been contemplating it for a lot longer."
#Musk #Trump #broligarchy #SiliconValley #technoauthoritarianism #surveillance #fascism
/2
@wdlindsy@toad.socialCarole Cadwalladr is, to my mind, one of the most insightful, prescient commentators on what our culture and political sphere have made of themselves at this point in time. Today, she writes,
"Just after Trump’s re-election in November 2024, I wrote a column headlined ‘How to Survive the Broligarchy’ (reproduced below) and in the three months since, pretty much everything it predicted how now come to pass."
#Musk #Trump #broligarchy #SiliconValley
/1
https://broligarchy.substack.com/p/how-to-survive-the-broligarchy-d8b
@lauerhahn@sfba.socialFeb. 28 - mass protests to defend our communities against Musk and Trump!
#SanJose #PaloAlto #SiliconValley #BayArea #organizing #democracy #musk #50501
The women who made America’s microchips and the children who paid for it
The US wants to bring back domestic chipmaking. But America’s first generation of Silicon Valley factory workers endured unsafe manufacturing conditions and never got answers about kids born with birth defects.
