It tends to be more “I want a thing that just works.” rather than no technology, but yes.
Self-hosting services that are reliable and don’t get in my way, not using cloud-connected smart devices, running Linux instead of Windows, etc.
It’s sad that self-hosting is apparently the path to having a solution that “just works”. You’d think that paying for a product would be more effective, but alas…
I’m starting to realise that a big part of why self hosting works is the customisability of it. There’s no financial incentive for Google or whomever to make sure process A has an interface to talk to process B because it’s a minority use case in their clientbase.
Self hosting - either someone has already had the same issue and made a plugin or I can create a shim of some description to make the two things talk to each other that wouldn’t be practical at scale.
i just want away from tech bro leadership and want star treck instead
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Was working on a PhD in CS focused on industrial cybersecurity, though current events involving the three letter agency that funded my research lead to me crashing out and now I’m trying to get into law school and do immigration law. Far too frail and pasty to buy a farm though
Good luck with getting into law school!
Thanks! Trying right now to figure out how to ask my former advisors for letters of rec without explaining my motivations, which heavily imply that I think they’re in denial about their work being “make tools for fascists”
Nah, I like PC gaming too much to want that. What I want is to be free of capitalism.
Yeah, same here honestly. I too wish to be free of avarice
I think a self sufficient farm is the closest you can get to escaping capitalism
The Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Soul of a New Machine, chronicling the development of Data General’s Eagle computer in the 1970s, one of the characters is a microcode developer, responsible for hardwired logic that runs the CPU.
Part of his job is managing electrical impulses that last for microseconds or nanoseconds. One day, the team comes in to find his workstation abandoned, with a note on the monitor saying that he is going to join a commune in Vermont, and never dealing with a unit of time smaller than a season again.
The tech may be ancient for us, but it’s a superb book.
Reminiscent of how Brian Eno spoke on creating the startup sound for Windows 95:
The thing from the agency said, “We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah-blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional,” this whole list of adjectives, and then at the bottom it said “and it must be 3¼ seconds long.”
I thought this was so funny and an amazing thought to actually try to make a little piece of music. It’s like making a tiny little jewel.
In fact, I made eighty-four pieces. I got completely into this world of tiny, tiny little pieces of music. I was so sensitive to microseconds at the end of this that it really broke a logjam in my own work. Then when I’d finished that and I went back to working with pieces that were like three minutes long, it seemed like oceans of time.
The issue isn’t the tech itsefl but the corporate world and its effects throughout society.
There is a lot of cool tech, but used for the most asinine products. 2015-2016 was especially terrible with the accessibility of IoT. Everyone and their mother had a Kickstarter with a common everyday item with wireless capability tacked into it.
No, my bottle doesn’t need Bluetooth.
The longer I work in tech the less I’m impressed by new tech. I don’t want the latest and greatest phone. I don’t need a crazy gaming PC. I don’t need or want a bunch of smart devices. I want a few useful things that I can manage myself, and the freedom to wake up to no alarm except the livestock.
Because tech should be boring. Just like politics.
But companies shove tech in our face with fancy bells and whistles to make us buy more.
I mean, just look at PC where RGB is everywhere. I want a silent PC that I don’t see.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s me getting old or if it’s tech being more and more about solutions in search of a problem. I feel like we had reached a “good enough” point for a while, but I can’t tell if the “good enough” judgement is just me getting old and stubborn.
Both can be true. You’re getting older and lots of products are a solution in search of a problem to solve
Well, it’s driven me to Debian.
The tech worker pipeline:
help desk > sysadmin > CISO > goat farmer
Honestly it’s just the Internet. Tech is fucking awesome, as long as it’s decoupled from anything and anyone else trying to control, monitor, impose, or otherwise fuck with the tech that’s mine, bought or built fairly. And also the untold psychological torture the Internet is just constantly inflicting on us.
As a long time tech user within about 5 years of retirement, I don’t quite agree with this for a couple of reasons. Tech is fine if its tech that serves me. I’m certainly not going to be doing JIRA updates in retirement, but I’ll absolutely use a web browser, word processor, and probably a coding environment for my own personal projects. Retrocomputing is much more appealing to me too.
Also, I think most folks in IT have no idea how hard farming actually is, both mental and physically. Farming is really hard work, and having to manage some of the same annoying things we deal with in IT such as following complicated regulations, dealing with asinine people in power over you, and delivery dates.
grass is always greener on the other side. …but, sometimes, it actually is, depending on who you are.
In my case, the forest was, and still is, the greener side. can’t really complain, and I don’t think I’ll be switching back to tech anytime soon.
Can confirm, though, a lot of people approach farming or homesteading with really unreasonable expectations.
Can confirm. I’ve been working in tech for 16 years. I now own a house in the forest.
I grew up on a farm, hell no. If you think farming is going to be any different you’re delusional. It’s also full of physical labor that takes a toll on you.
But give it a go if you want just don’t think farming or ranching is simpler it’s not. And now you alone take on the responsibility of managing many lives be they plants or animals.
Yes it’s rewarding keeping a baby calf alive in -30 weather but be prepared to wake up every couple hours to keep watch on the animals. Also say goodbye to vacations. Without a family member or 5 to help out it’s hard to take a vacation without worrying that coyotes got into the chicken coop or other shenanigans.
These people are “farming” in retirement, not for a living. Basically have a bunch of ducks and a couple mule.
Exactly. There’s a huge difference between being a hobby farmer and actually trying to make a living as a farmer or rancher. Without needing to support yourself off of it, you can raise only a small number of animals you can comfortably care for, grow what you want without concern for market prices, etc. It’s the difference between coding for a hobby and coding for a job.
I have a business plan ready for raising heirloom breeds of pigs and expensive ingredients and selling them to fancy restaurants. If I can get the right connections I can make it a pretty profitable business. Damn near broke even on four hogs last time, even with setup costs.
Nah. I can understand why someone would think that way, but the more I work with tech the more I want to mod or jailbreak my own stuff so it doesn’t suck
I can confirm. I learned real quick in college working a part-time help desk job for the University that I attended that I under no circumstances want to work in IT at any level or program because they are both thankless and stressful career paths – when tech works, then why do we need you and when it breaks, why do we have you is all the “leaders” ask in many companies because they do not have a basic understanding how any of the IT systems function, hardware lifecycles, etc.
Confirmed, although I’ve been looking at a live-aboard yacht instead of a micro farm. (not rich, but the housing market is so crazy that these things are in the realm of being cheaper than my house)
I love growing things and I also love tinkering, building, finding new gadgets.
Have been a techie all my life so far, will be a techie until I die.
People that get tired of tech jobs, might not be because of tech, rather the people they have worked with and the unrelenting pull of a capitalist society.
I have a tech degree but I more so would love to focus on open source and just enjoying tech other ways. Creating or contributing towards software for a large corporation that I only get a very small piece of the pie for and would drop me at any moment isn’t motivating to anyone I would imagine.
