Eeyupp...

Either one has to sell their soul to some corporation or suffer...

No matter if it's #GigWork [#UberEats] , #GrindWork [Any fast food job] or whatever...

The big guys have their money printer with their politician amigos to decide who gets the monies.

techstartups.com/2021/12/18/80…

It goes into Corporation to bail them out or Investors and Startups to do nonsense ...and from their into the employee salaries too.

Independent peeps need to make their own money printer or suffer forever.
Do you have any alternative ideas how this will ever change?
Maybe vote for the right folks?

I was just joking with someone about this the other day. My software was used by movements all over the world to rally and organize for justice. I only was able to get out of debt and find some retirement savings when I took a left turn into VC-funded startups for a while.

And now here I am in non profit open source, and, well, those savings were fun to have while they lasted.

Not that I did it for the money. But still.

I think it’s the same in all industries, you can’t make good money simply by good will😮‍💨

Even in big NGO you can earn more than you do some good business to the poor

This hits incredibly close to home for me.

That's exactly why i quit my job. I want to build _something_ that gives people the opportunity to be creative without being beholden to an exploitative system rotten to the core.

I think it's possible. Perhaps i want to believe it's possible. But if its not, then it's still worth doing.

I am so fucking pumped to be in these conversations. ✊

When I talk about this problem with some of my (non-tech) acquaintances I can see them struggling to not yell at me something like "fucking spoiled brat, just suck it".

"Normies" are also clearly at fault for this clusterfuck when they not only do nothing to fix it or prevent it, but also prefer to attack those who oppose it.

it sucks, but that's life. If your goal is money, then you're forced to work with even greedier people.

Is there even any open source, human-right conscious tech companies that can guarantee you a nice house and the same level of stability as Google/Facebook?

we could have a conv about isms, but if we start with where we're at, we have to look at why there's no $ in this.

I believe these are contributing:

1. People aren't aware that things could be better.
2. People don't understand why they should care about these things.
3. People have been spread too thin to grow beyond anything but getting by.

I'm not sure if that last one is on purpose or an emergent property of a deeply sick society.

Fix these and I think you fix the problem.

one of the best career paths still is, and has been for the past few decades, is to start with IT consultancies of the world, get a good real world exposure, get beaten into some core SDLC processes, work with decent solutions and platforms (cloud, enterprise, foss, anything) and discipline, then go explore the world as you see fit.

Not sure what exactly you want to say and to whom with that message….

Hmm… if only we could crowdfund it somehow… you know, if we all agreed to pay a portion of our earnings so that they could be used for things that benefited us all. We could call it… I don’t know… faxes? No. Taken. Paxes? Nope, doesn’t sound right. Wait, I got it… how about taxes?

ar.al/2019/11/29/the-future-of…

The Future of Internet Regulation at the European Parliament

A brief write-up of my talk at the EU Parliament last week with embedded videos of my talk and a link to my slides.

^{Aral Balkan}

@aral@mastodon.ar.al @AudraTran@fosstodon.org

> if we all agreed

Well, generally people start having problems with taxes precisely because they DIDN'T agree to it.

Someone else decided to take their money.

Usually that's theft, but calling it that causes more people to resist the collection.

As I like to say, innovation is no longer by chance, but by finance.

#HumanRights #tech #surveillanceCapitalism

The market decides what's valuable. It's unfortunate, but so is nature. The fundamental unit of measurement in life is pain and suffering. Capitalism has managed to change that a great deal through innovation.

Life, nature, the world, the universe has never been fair. That's why we need cybersecurity professionals in ever vector.

my dream is to have Computer Science courses in colleges talk about a career as a tech activist, or a programmer in the civic society as a very reputable and viable career option.

I work as a programmer supporting journalists and activists exclusively. I've worked for the IT industry in the first part of my career. In my mind and, really, in my body, these two environments feel drastically different.

The humanity in tech keeps us sane.

No love for #Dawkins here!

My #Darwin is the phrase from his second paper "human morality evolved from the affection animals have for their young"

(Highly paraphrased)

From there: Kropotkin's Mutual Aid written to oppose so-called social darwinism. And shows a LOT of animal affection.

I’ve tried hard to find work that I believe in that still pays the bills.

I joined a cool company but it pivoted to adtech, then a cool company but it pivoted to crypto, then a cool company but it pivoted to AI. Each time leadership had to follow what could get funded. I’m looking again but I’m so cynical at this point…

Anyway, following these comments in hopes of an answer (or at least a good conversation).