| Homepage | https://www.blazestar.net/ |
| GitHub | https://github.com/periodic/ |
When did the American tech industry flip to thinking the default mode of starting companies is through venture-backed startups? It feels like everything is get-rich-quick. How did scaling become everything?
https://www.anildash.com/2025/08/20/moving_money_ain%E2%80%99t_building_a_business/
Small tech companies are born everyday, but we do ourselves a disservice by distorting the narrative. There are more options than just start-ups and big tech. It's so hard to see that front the inside.
Things are heating up. Millions of people are taking to the streets against Trump's rising authoritarianism. Communities around the US are organizing to defend against ICE raids, to protest Israeli genocide, for mutual aid, and for other forms of fighting fascism. Signal can help people safely organize in all of
I decided to get a blog started as part of contributing to the internet instead of just consuming.
As I was setting it up I realized that using an LLM hadn't even crossed my mind, despite so many around me telling me it's the future. There's something about building and learning where AI just gets in the way.
I'm looking into hosting my own #mastodon instance to embrace #federation and shift my identity into a domain I control and continue my #selfhost journey.
Any experiences to share?
Major drawbacks?
Recommendations for software to run?
Any you want to try but haven't?
Promising up-and-comers?
Issues to watch out for?
I was inspired when I saw that @blainsmith is using SNAC.
I just spent 15 minutes trying to figure out why a service on my home-server wasn't accessible on my public IP. I was double-checking all the firewall rules, busted out my rusty nmap skills.
Then I remembered I also have to update my router to actually forward the port to the home-server so that it can forward the connection to the correct container on the server.
It's times like this I consider enabling UPnP.
Wow, a massive wealth of information on arbitration as a practice used to evade legal accountability. I can only imagine how much research went into this.
https://arbitrationinformation.org/
Arbitration has been one of those things that is terrible but I have little choice in. There aren't practical alternatives. It's like using Facebook, Amazon or Uber.
I've fantasized about striking these clauses from contracts, but rarely am I in a position to negotiate.
Introduction # Mandatory arbitration is a controversial practice in which a business requires employees or consumers to agree to arbitrate legal disputes with the business rather than going to court. Although seemingly voluntary in that the employee or consumer can choose whether or not to sign the arbitration agreement, in practice signing the agreement is required if the individual wants to get the job or to obtain the cellphone, credit card, or other consumer product the business is selling. Mandatory arbitration agreements are legally enforceable and effectively bar employees or consumers from going to court, instead diverting legal claims into an arbitration procedure that is established by the agreement drafted by the company and required as a condition of employment or of doing business with it. 1
I was just reading @cadey's post about the craft and it echoes a lot of fears I have about the direction of society and the tech industry. But what really hit me was the emotion. It's just so exhausting to deal with the dehumanization that AI is bringing on to of everything else.
https://xeiaso.net/blog/2025/rolling-ladder-behind-us/
I have a hypothesis that community and cooperative are the antidote. We need to be humans first and foremost.
AI has already taken over many domains, but that doesn't mean it can or should take over all of them.
It's all about real value.
Bruce Schneier has a short post clearly outlining where AI makes sense and where it doesn't. I particularly like that it's not even really about LLMs but includes all the AI we have been forgetting like autocomplete, image upscaling and ad targeting.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/06/where-ai-provides-value.html
If you’ve worried that AI might take your job, deprive you of your livelihood, or maybe even replace your role in society, it probably feels good to see the latest AI tools fail spectacularly. If AI recommends glue as a pizza topping, then you’re safe for another day. But the fact remains that AI already has definite advantages over even the most skilled humans, and knowing where these advantages arise—and where they don’t—will be key to adapting to the AI-infused workforce. AI will often not be as effective as a human doing the same job. It won’t always know more or be more accurate. And it definitely won’t always be fairer or more reliable. But it may still be used whenever it has an advantage over humans in one of four dimensions: speed, scale, scope and sophistication. Understanding these dimensions is the key to understanding AI-human replacement...
When we throw up our hands and say none of it matters, we're doing the fascists’ work for them. They don't need to hide their corruption if they can convince us it's pointless to look. They don't need to silence truth-tellers if we've already decided truth is meaningless.
When we throw up our hands and say none of it matters, we're doing the fascists’ work for them. They don't need to hide their corruption if they can convince us it's pointless to look. They don't need to silence truth-tellers if we've already decided truth is meaningless.
Micah Lee
Molly White