{ "archive_path": "archive/1756166118.166829", "base_url": "ratfactor.com/tech-nope", "basename": "tech-nope", "bookmarked_date": "2025-08-25 23:55", "canonical": { "archive_org_path": "https://web.archive.org/web/ratfactor.com/tech-nope", "dom_path": "output.html", "favicon_path": "favicon.ico", "git_path": "git/", "google_favicon_path": "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=ratfactor.com", "headers_path": "headers.json", "htmltotext_path": "htmltotext.txt", "index_path": "index.html", "media_path": "media/", "mercury_path": "mercury/content.html", "pdf_path": "output.pdf", "readability_path": "readability/content.html", "screenshot_path": "screenshot.png", "singlefile_path": "singlefile.html", "warc_path": "warc/", "wget_path": null }, "domain": "ratfactor.com", "downloaded_at": "2025-08-25T23:55:19.933599+00:00", "downloaded_datestr": "2025-08-25 23:55", "extension": "", "hash": "XX4994T3ZKPNMQPRRPVS", "history": { "archive_org": [ { "cmd": [ "/usr/bin/curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--proxy", "socks5://tor-socks-proxy:9150", "--head", "--max-time", "60", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/128.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/{VERSION} (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/)", "https://web.archive.org/save/https://ratfactor.com/tech-nope" ], "cmd_version": "8.10.1", "end_ts": "2025-08-25T23:55:57.694611+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "ArchiveError: Failed to find \"content-location\" URL header in Archive.org response.", "pwd": "/data/archive/1756166118.166829", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2025-08-25T23:55:56.262296+00:00", "status": "failed" } ], "dom": [ { "cmd": [ "/usr/bin/chromium-browser", "--proxy-server=socks5://tor-socks-proxy:9150", "--disable-features=DarkMode", "--run-all-compositor-stages-before-draw", "--hide-scrollbars", "--autoplay-policy=no-user-gesture-required", "--no-first-run", "--use-fake-ui-for-media-stream", "--use-fake-device-for-media-stream", "--simulate-outdated-no-au='Tue, 31 Dec 2099 23:59:59 GMT'", "--headless=new", "--no-sandbox", "--no-zygote", "--disable-dev-shm-usage", "--disable-software-rasterizer", "--disable-sync", "--window-size=1440,2000", "--user-agent=Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/128.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/{VERSION} (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/)", "--user-data-dir=/data/personas/Default/chrome_profile", "--profile-directory=Default", "--dump-dom", "https://ratfactor.com/tech-nope" ], "cmd_version": "131.0.6778", "end_ts": "2025-08-25T23:55:33.354891+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "output.html", "pwd": "/data/archive/1756166118.166829", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2025-08-25T23:55:27.993769+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "favicon": [ { "cmd": [ "/usr/bin/curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--proxy", "socks5://tor-socks-proxy:9150", "--max-time", "60", "--output", "favicon.ico", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/128.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/{VERSION} (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/)", "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=ratfactor.com" ], "cmd_version": "8.10.1", "end_ts": "2025-08-25T23:55:23.392060+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "favicon.ico", "pwd": "/data/archive/1756166118.166829", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2025-08-25T23:55:20.280354+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "git": [], "headers": [ { "cmd": [ "/usr/bin/curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--proxy", "socks5://tor-socks-proxy:9150", "--head", "--max-time", "60", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/128.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/{VERSION} (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/)", "https://ratfactor.com/tech-nope" ], "cmd_version": "8.10.1", "end_ts": "2025-08-25T23:55:23.541389+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "headers.json", "pwd": "/data/archive/1756166118.166829", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2025-08-25T23:55:23.413391+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "htmltotext": [ { "cmd": [ "(internal) archivebox.extractors.htmltotext", "./{singlefile,dom}.html" ], "cmd_version": "0.8.5rc51", "end_ts": "2025-08-25T23:55:46.306957+00:00", "index_texts": [ "I'm an American software developer and the \"broligarchs\" don't speak for me - ratfactor (http://ratfactor.com/atom.xml) (Rat-Feed) (/css/main.css) (/apple-touch-icon.png) (/favicon-32x32.png) (/favicon-16x16.png) (http://ratfactor.com/humans.txt) (/) (vector ratfactor rat logo) (/) Home | (/about/) About | (/now) Now | (/repos/) Repos | (/cards/) Cards | (/contact-me/) Contact | (/atom.xml) RSS(rss feed icon) I'm an American software developer and the \"broligarchs\" don't speak for me (Or anyone I know.) Page created: 2025-03-19 Updated: 2025-03-23 Sometimes you just want to be understood. Here I am, a software developer in the year 2025. I look around at \"tech\" in\nthe news and in culture and I don\u2019t like what I see. Something has gone very,\nvery wrong with the Big Tech bros. I can no longer keep silent because it pains\nme to imagine these people representing ME. The broligarchs do not represent me. They do not speak for me. If all I can accomplish here is represent myself, that\u2019s enough. But I have a\nfeeling I\u2019m not alone. I have a feeling that there are a lot of other people in\nthe tech world who do not want to be thought of as the cold-blooded instruments\nof mad kings bent on destroying everything in order to remake the world as a\ndystopian techno-state. Actually, my distaste for Big Tech is nothing new. It\u2019s been building for\ndecades. First, little stuff like the inkjet printer that you invited into your house\nthat claims to need, \"Just a little more cyan, bro. I\u2019ll print your black and white\npage after I get my cyan. Come on, bro.\" Or that McAfee antivirus nagware bundled with the PDF reader by Adobe, one of the\nworld\u2019s richest software companies, that will be forcefully installed unless you play the\nfind-the-checkbox game every. Single. Update. Or how about the abusive question du jour: \"Would you like to use our new 'AI'\nfeature NOW or be asked again TOMORROW?\" Or bigger stuff like selling our data to third parties, increasing social media\n\"engagement\" by promoting the most contentious and conspiracy-oriented content\nin our social media. Or here\u2019s one: Stealing all existing human-created\nworks to feed into the aforementioned 'AI' systems, which, by the way,\nwill also be used to replace your job, deny your health insurance, flag your\nface for arrest, and also write the police report when they bring you in. Yeah, that was all plenty bad, but that was so last year. What we\u2019re seeing 2025 is breathtaking. Just look at the elites jockeying\nfor positions of power. They\u2019re like jackals licking their chops as they watch\nfences torn down around a daycare. Have you heard these people talk? Have you seen what they\u2019ve been up to lately? When did this become the face of tech? A line was crossed at some point. Maybe that happened around the same time the\ntech company announcements titled \"New Update!\" went from being fun and exciting to\nscary and nauseating. \"Tech\", as portrayed in the public eye right now is something I barely\nrecognize. It\u2019s almost universally negative: Social media, ad tech, blockchain,\n'AI'. I don\u2019t work on any of that stuff. Am I even part of the same industry?\n(I don\u2019t actually have an answer to that question.) Despite all of this, I\u2019m not some tech apostate. I still love computers. It\u2019s said that the lathe is the most universal tool in the machinist\u2019s shop, a\ntool that can be used to create all other machine tools, including other lathes. A computer goes even further. Any general-purpose computer can simulate any\nother other computer (albeit slowly) and can therefore run all the programs\nthat have ever been written, or, as far as we know, will ever be written.\nComputers are mind-blowingly cool tools. They are the most universal machines\nwe have ever created. Computers can be used to create things, connect people, assist the\ndisadvantaged, and inspire the young. We only barely know how to program these\nthings effectively and yet look at all we\u2019ve done with them. I\u2019m convinced our\nbest work has yet to come. To me, a programmable computer is a toy that never, ever stops being interesting. But, for all their infinite wonderful uses, computers can also be used to: Spy\non people; divide, frighten, and confuse with misinformation; advertise,\naddict, and automate mundane evils. They can be encumbered by digital locks\nenforced by bad laws. This later description is increasingly the face of these machines as seen by the\npublic. Machines that, by design, do not serve the user at all, but rather an\ninvisible master that wishes to trick them into giving up personal data, money,\ntime, or attention. This very unpleasant face leads to a public perception of\ntech that is understandably boiling over into a general distaste and distrust. Software alone does not account for this face of tech, of course. The most\nvisible and most rancid pieces of flesh plastered on tech\u2019s grinning skull are the\nmegalomaniacs behind each decision, the greedy scumbags that would turn our computers\nagainst us. Harvey Milk once gave a speech on the steps of San Francisco City Hall: \"The black community made up its mind to that a long time ago. That\nthe myths against blacks can only be dispelled by electing black leaders, so\nthe black community could be judged by the leaders and not by the myths or\nblack criminals. The Spanish community must not be judged by Latin criminals or\nmyths. The Asian community must not be judged by Asian criminals or myths. The\nItalian community must not be judged by the mafia, myths. And the time has come\nwhen the gay community must not be judged by our criminals and myths.\" \"Like every other group, we must be judged by our leaders\u2026\u200b\" What about the tech \"community\"? Who are our leaders? Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff\nBezos, and Elon Musk? Larry Ellison, Peter Thiel, and Marc Andreesen? The\nthought makes me want to weep, or throw a CRT monitor out the window. Or both. The most visible people in computing right now, the wealthy big tech elite,\nhave shown themselves to be voracious monsters. They have shown that they care\nnothing of humans. And if you\u2019re not in this industry, the thing that might\nsurprise you is, guess what? They don\u2019t care about computers either. These big tech bros may claim to want free markets and individual liberty but\nmake no mistake: What they seek is the \"freedom\" to take every single cent of\nwealth from every single market on Earth and the \"liberty\" to use their\nenormous wealth and also the law to pull the ladder up behind them to make sure\nno one can ever, ever follow them up. Oh, but, sorry, that was the tech-bros before. It\u2019s much worse now. The old\nhungry, hungry tech-bro caterpillar that munched all the leaves on the branch\nhardened into a chrysalis sometime recently. What hatched was not a butterfly,\nbut an even more enormous grub, the broligarch, which turns around with rage to\ndevour its branch, the tree, the forest. It eats the bodies of the living,\nleaving behind a trail of radioactive slime. It cannot stop because despite\nits outward appearance of invulnerability, it is weak with fear of its own\nmortality. Being wealthy beyond all possible imagining is no longer enough. Because now\nthe goal is to run the whole country or even the whole world like a business\nwhere \"like a business\" really means having the dictatorial powers of the\ncompany C-suite. (Aside: Having the wrong power structure is barely scratching the surface of\nwhy running a government like a business is an awful idea. Rural mail delivery\nloses money, so I guess that\u2019s out. A defense department \"for profit\" would be\na decent start to a scary movie, not a way to defend your country. But the\nbiggest reason is that \"like a business\" simply ignores the fact that there are\nvalues other than money: protecting people from harm, enforcing laws,\nsafeguarding our land and resources, and providing a social safety net. None of\nthose are business values. That\u2019s something I didn\u2019t understand when I was a\nlarval libertarian-leaning single guy living in an apartment, supporting no one\nbut myself.) These are the same people who want to make your car play an advertisement while\nyou\u2019re at a stoplight or have your TV harvest your viewing habits to sell to\nthe highest bidder or make it impossible to own any digital goods\nso you have to rent them for a monthly fee forever. Just think about what that\nsort of person would do with the kind of power they\u2019re attempting to take now. I don\u2019t understand how these people live with themselves. I suspect they\u2019re\npretty miserable. They already have everything and it\u2019s not enough. I like writing software because it\u2019s\nchallenging and interesting and I can make tools that automate boring and\ntedious stuff. For money, I work on tools that automate boring and tedious business stuff. If I have a repetitive task on the computer, I\u2019ll have way\nmore fun if I can write a little script to automate it. Even better is writing\na little script for somebody else: I get to solve a puzzle and make\nsomebody\u2019s day. I love that. I wish this were more accessible\nto more people. I will never, ever understand how someone can bring any amount of misery, big\nor small, to another person\u2019s life to make a buck. To quote Roger Ebert: \"To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all\ncrime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no\nmatter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I\ndidn\u2019t always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.\" The Big Tech situation is so bad that it often feels like commercial software was written\nexpressly to impede doing anything useful on the computer. This has been\ngoing on long enough that people are starting to accept a certain amount of pain as\na natural part of the computer experience. One explanation I\u2019ve seen recently is the mention of the military funding\nbehind much of our early computing technology. The implication is that we\nshould expect the worst, after all, because computers are just tools of\ndestruction. The part about military funding isn\u2019t wrong per se. But it\nreduces the history of computation to mere funding. It ignores the actual\npeople behind the innovations. It ignores the big thinkers that came before and\nafter the invention of the transistor or packet-switched networks. Computers\nhave ever been the tools of dreamers and misfits. People like me are not a product of DARPA, we\u2019re a product of the home\ncomputing revolution. I\u2019ve been very lucky, by the way. First, I had the fortune to be born into a\nmiddle-class family that through the influence of family friends, bought a used\nhome computer in the 1980s and then a PC in the 1990s. When my interest took\noff, I had the time, allowance money, and parental support to go to the\nbookstore and buy some books on the subject. (Shout-out to \"C For Dummies\" by\nDan Gookin!) As if that wasn\u2019t enough, I got my start programming \"professionally\" (as in\ngetting paid for it) in the late 1990s and, let me tell you, that was a golden\ntime of opportunity and adventure. Anyone who was savvy enough to teach\nthemselves some HTML and a little JavaScript could land a job \"making\nwebsites.\" The self-taught nature of the market suited my obsessive learning\nstyle perfectly. It wasn\u2019t until the Dot-Com crash of 2000 that I actually realized how\nfortunate I was as I watched the job market suddenly turn sour. Not only had I\nmanaged to turn a teenage hobby into gainful employment, I had secured my place\nin the job market just in time to weather out the crash. I remember thinking\nabout how unfair it was that other people who were like me, but who had the\nmisfortune to arrive just a bit later, were not getting the same opportunity I\nwas. (Possibly Related: Since I was a little kid, I always hated the phrase, \"Life\nisn\u2019t fair.\" As soon as I was old enough to put the ideas and words together,\nmy motto has been, \"Life may not be fair, but we should always be striving to\nMAKE it fair.\" This penchant for fairness and justice might also explain why I\nlike playing board games, which have rules and why I get along well with\ncomputers, which always follow rules.) I didn\u2019t dwell excessively on this unfairness, mind you. I was young and\ncould be shamefully egocentric. Shamefully. Egocentric. But it stuck with me\nnonetheless. And I have ever since been grateful for my good fortune. Another thing about the Dot-Com crash: It was clear to me and my cohort that\nwhile people weren\u2019t ready to buy pet supplies online yet , they inevitably\nwould. The eventual domination of the Web was just as certain to me as any law\nof physics. Like industrialization, only much more so. Software scales up like\nnothing in the physical world. A physical factory takes time and money to\ncreate, but in our world, we can make a perfect copy of a machine (program) in a split\nsecond and it costs essentially nothing. Heady stuff for a young person starting out. But in those days, I never\nimagined this would be a bad thing. Sure, getting rich sounded pretty great,\nbut obviously we were going to do that by building fun and exciting things\nthat people would love. I\u2019ve got lots of fun memories from the early days of my career: Usenet, Yahoo!,\nNetscape, Slashdot, and the greatest of all: zombo.com. Shelves of O\u2019Reilly\ntechnical books with the Dover print animal covers. Dial-up modem Internet\nService Providers. And yes, Google\u2019s arrival. Google had vastly superior search results,\na server made of Duplo blocks, and the motto \"Don\u2019t be evil\". To be sure, the big software companies were often stupid and greedy, but they\nseemed relatively harmless to me during that time because progress was so\nfast, everybody was racing just to keep up. Nobody could capture the market. It\nwas too quick and too slippery to hold. The early Web browsers were incredibly buggy and constantly in flux, but to the\nyoung developer, it was all just a another fun challenge to overcome and another\nobscure set of skills to add to the wizard\u2019s grimoire. Back then, I\u2019ll admit, I remember feeling like a little Master of the Universe.\nIt didn\u2019t hurt that every media outlet was talking about the \"revenge of the\nnerds\" and how us computer geeks were now taking over everything. People were\nimpressed and excited when I told them I was a software developer. It\u2019s a\nlittle embarrassing to say, but I do miss that golden glow. \"And honoured among\nwagons I was prince of the apple towns.\" I also remember the general sense that ours was a \"meritocratic\" field, which\nmeant that it didn\u2019t matter what you looked or sounded like\nso long as you had interesting ideas and skills. As the joke went, it didn\u2019t\neven matter what species you were, like the 1993 New Yorker cartoon that goes, \"On the\nInternet, nobody knows you\u2019re a dog.\" I always liked that idea. (Aside: It was only much, much later and with a fair amount of pain that I realized\n\"meritocracy\" has a dark side. There was a question I wasn\u2019t asking: Who,\nexactly, decides which ideas and skills have merit? And the scary answer is\nthat it turns out there are people in this field, people who would describe\nthemselves as \"rationalists\", who would say they have that answer. Sadly, we\nhave among us those who believe that you can quantify merit.\nIf you listen to those people and follow that train of thought too far, you end\nup in a very bad place, rubbing shoulders with eugenicists and other creeps.) Looking back, the early days of the Web really were a pretty\nspecial time. It would be easy to wrap up in that nostalgia like a warm and comfortable\nblanket and say that nothing will ever be as good ever again. So it might surprise you to learn that\u2019s not how I feel at all. In fact, if you\nask me, right now is the most amazing time to be in computing. I\u2019m serious. RIGHT NOW is, in a number of ways, far better than when I got started. Here\u2019s the facts: Hardware is unbelievably cheap and powerful and energy efficient. I can buy a\nused laptop computer for the price of a pair of pants. And that laptop would\nbe perfectly capable of word processing, cranking out spreadsheets, developing\nsoftware, writing email, surfing the Web, and just about anything else you can\nthink of doing short of playing the latest games. I have a computer in my basement that runs pretty much everything I do (I\u2019m\nwriting on it right now over an SSH connection) that uses, on average, less\nelectricity than a household LED light bulb. Current generation semiconductor manufacturing technology is simply incredible:\nLaser pulses vaporize microscopic tin particles to produce extreme ultraviolet\nlight with which we \"print\" components that are literally invisible to the eye.\nChips are made under conditions of cleanliness and elemental purity that is\nlike nothing that has ever existed before and is difficult to even fathom. This\ntechnology is the result of a fairly recent globe-spanning research and\ndevelopment project with a size and scope that reminds me of the space race of\nthe 1960s. And unlike a Saturn V rocket, there\u2019s a good chance the results of\nthat manufacturing process are in your pocket right now. How cool is that? I can buy a 32Gb USB flash drive for the price of a cup of coffee, store a\ncompressed copy of Wikipedia on it, and throw it in my pocket like it\u2019s no big\ndeal. That\u2019s incredible. Computers can be made so cheaply now that every single person on the planet\ncould have one, run it sustainably from solar power, and be enabled to learn\nand unlock its secrets. (I know that not everyone will love computers like I do. But everyone should have a\nchance to find out for themselves.) And that\u2019s just the hardware side. Look at where we\u2019re at with software! For\nyears now, I\u2019ve been able to use a free operating system and free applications\nfor everything I do from programming to drawing to editing video. I used to\nhave to pay for all of this stuff and it was often buggy and unfriendly anyway. Browser compatibility used to be AWFUL. (Either you lived through the IE6\nhellscape or you didn\u2019t.) I complain a lot of about the insane complexity of\nmodern browsers, but the truth is that with the slightest bit of care, you can\nwrite Web applications with a high degree of certainty that they will work everywhere with near-perfect backward compatibility into the foreseeable\nfuture. And that\u2019s amazing. In many ways, the browser has fulfilled the promise\nof a truly universal computing platform, and it\u2019s still relatively young. Or how about connectivity? It\u2019s not perfectly distributed or affordable for\neveryone yet. But for many of us, broadband access has made extremely high\nspeed downloads and streaming content as second-nature as water and power\nservice. (Hey kids, gather around and I\u2019ll tell you about when it took forever\nto download a tiny JPEG image over dial-up.) Now I can stream video on my phone\nover a cell network. And that\u2019s nothing compared to the fiber connection that\ncomes to my house. Amazing. It gets better. All of these hardware and software advances would be no fun if\nit weren\u2019t for people. And sure enough, right at this very moment, an untold\nnumber of people are making indie games, open-source applications, ad-free\nwebsites, and blogs. There\u2019s more new amazing stuff being created by awesome\npeople every single day than you could possibly keep up with. Way more than\n\"back in the day\". You just have to find it. Believe me, I\u2019m as nostalgic about the old Web as anyone, and yet a lot of\nthose old websites still exist. Many of them never went away (like this\nwebsite!). Plus now there\u2019s even more of them. Honestly, it\u2019s not even that hard to find them once you start exploring outside of the Google/Microsoft/Meta\nsilos. (Also, zombo.com still exists.) And here\u2019s another thing that\u2019s gotten even better: Access to knowledge about computers. An excellent computer science education awaits anyone who has the\npatience to read free material online, use free tools, and watch free video\nlectures from prestigious universities. (You just won\u2019t get a diploma, those\ncost money.) You can use the same tools used by top programming professionals\nright now, for free. Do you see where I\u2019m going with this? We should be able to celebrate this stuff every day. What a time to be alive.\nWe\u2019ve got all this great stuff! Everyone party all the time!!! But, yeah, it\u2019s really hard to celebrate when the face of tech, the face that most people see every single day, is user-hostile, ad-driven, opaque, and\nmorally bankrupt. It\u2019s hard to celebrate when just about every tech company seems hell-bent on\ngoing to warp speed to monetize (and in the process, destroy) every single\nthing we have. A lot of that manifests as surveillance advertising, but it also\ntakes form in confidence games like cryptocurrency, NFTs, and selling LLM\n('AI') services in increasingly desperate ways before the bubble bursts. (Aside: On that last item, Microsoft has to take the cake. Everything it owns from\nWindows to Github now pushes unwanted 'AI' tools into your face. They\u2019re even\npushing this stuff on children ! Microsoft has become one giant advertising\nmechanism for Copilot because they\u2019ve blown unthinkable amounts of money on\nthe gamble that this will be the next money-printing machine of endless\ngrowth if only they can get people dependent on it, lock them in, and then\nstart turning the screws on the subscription prices. No vampire was ever as\nthirsty. Their behavior is so outrageous that only deep lock-in on a personal\nand corporate level can explain why people put up with it.) It\u2019s hard to celebrate tech when the Web has been completely overrun with\n'AI'-generated slop. The quality of search results has gone off a cliff. It\u2019s\ndisgusting and even though it was predicted, it\u2019s still shocking how fast it\nhappened. And on top of that, Google has intentionally destroyed their search\nengine for the purpose of serving more advertisements and even more generated\nslop, often semi-digested from other crap-spewing machine-generated sites.\nIf you\u2019re getting a little nauseated at this point, you\u2019re getting it. Ed Zitron\u2019s (https://www.wheresyoured.at/never-forgive-them/) Never Forgive Them (wheresyoured.at), goes to cathartic length to describe just a fraction of\nthe everyday miseries perpetuated by modern big tech. I\u2019m telling you, it doesn\u2019t have to be this way. I know it can be better because I\u2019m living it. I want everyone to have the same computer experience I have right now. I run a\nfree operating system that serves no ads and does not update unless I\nexplicitly tell it to. I trust the software tools I use because they are\nwritten by fellow enthusiasts. I visit ad-free websites. My computer hardware\nis cheap and plentiful. The computer serves me, not the other way around and I\ncall the shots on everything. But, there\u2019s a catch. The reason I can have this utopian computing experience\nis because I\u2019ve made sacrifices. The first is a certain amount of\nconvenience (when I can\u2019t make something work without bending my principles, I\ndo without it). The second is that I\u2019ve put a lot of time into\nlearning how to use the free operating system and the free tools. So yeah, that\u2019s great for me. But that\u2019s not good enough. There is absolutely\nno reason my path should be so difficult or so rarefied. Everyone, regardless of skill level, money, or time, should be able to\nexperience computers the way I do. There is NO TECHNICAL REASON we can\u2019t have\nthat. There\u2019s only one thing standing in the way: The insatiable greed of Big Tech. The decisions of a few have made technology anti-user. And the computing experience is, unfortunately, just the tip of the iceberg. Garry Kasparov (yup, former World Chess Champion 1985-2000, Garry\nKasparov) says of our new era, \"The danger we face is of a new breed of\nideologically-motivated billionaires, ones who believe that democratic\ninstitutions have lost purpose in our world, and are ready to use their wealth\nand connections to advance their own alternative vision.\" I know this can come across as hyperbolic, but the big tech broligarchs can\nonly be fully understood in the context of techno-feudalism, \"The Network\nState\", \"Freedom Cities\", \"TESCREAL\", etc. Researching these topics is a lot\nlike reading a young adult dystopian sci-fi novel. Except it\u2019s not fiction. (https://www.thenerdreich.com/the-network-state-coup-is-happening-right-now/) The Network State Coup is Happening Right Now (thenerdreich.com) If you\u2019re new to this stuff, maybe it seems funny. Yeah, ha ha, except the true\nbelievers, the ones who are ACTING ON IT RIGHT NOW, are unbelievably wealthy\npeople. They\u2019re now in high-ranking positions in the federal government of the\nUnited States. They listen to Curtis Yarvin. They are not fans of democracy.\nThey have already built their underground bunkers. This is not a drill. (Aside: Hey, so, I know we\u2019re all used to hearing about\nbillionaires by now. But that\u2019s just a word. It\u2019s really, really hard for the\nhuman mind to comprehend this scale of wealth. If you haven\u2019t seen it yet, this\npage helps us get a sense for it by making you scroll and scroll and scroll\u2026\u200b: (https://dbkrupp.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/) https://dbkrupp.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/ ) A bunch of these guys are explicitly or implicitly\naccelerationists. They believe that removing regulations to allow unhindered\ntechnological \"innovation\" and growth will solve all of the world\u2019s problems.\nAnd if that happens to result in a techno-state and makes them powerful lords\nover that state, well, so be it. Certainly, there is no question that they\u2019ve\ncranked the throttle up to 11. Jeff Bezos\u2019s Amazon announced last month\nthat you\u2019ll no longer be able to download your Kindle book purchases. And just\nyesterday they announced that the Amazon Echo (\"Alexa\") will soon be sending all\nvoice recordings to Amazon for processing, even if you previously set it to\nlocal-only for privacy. Similar headlines from the other big players are coming eye-wateringly fast.\n(You\u2019ll see why I picked Jeff Bezos for these examples in a moment.) In a way, I\u2019m an accelerationist, too. Because I\u2019ve seen how people get used\nto increasingly hostile technology and allow themselves to get locked into\nservices they hate but can\u2019t stop using. The \"boiled frog\" approach is the one\nthat scares me. I honestly don\u2019t know if my fears are in the right place.\nI guess we\u2019ll find out, because the boiling pot has been replaced with a blast\noven. I\u2019m just hoping that once people get a load of where all of this is heading,\nthey\u2019re not going to put up with it. The biggest problem is just getting the word out in time. Billionaires own\ntraditional news media and they\u2019ve done a disturbingly good job of keeping this\nstuff out of the public eye\u2026\u200b \u2026\u200bWith a little help from the opinionless \"voice from nowhere\"\nschool of journalism. Again, let\u2019s focus on Jeff Bezos, also owner of the venerable Washington\nPost newspaper (the same Washington Post that broke the story of the Nixon\nWatergate scandal), who went from promising to never interfere with the paper (2013)\nto interfering (2024), to stating that they would no longer be publishing editorials\ncritical of \"personal liberties and free markets\" (2025). Again, we can see the accelerating timeline. Bezos is just one of the most obvious examples, but follow the money with the\nrest of the big legacy news sources and it\u2019s pretty stark. Mainstream news is\nshaped by enormously large and rich companies and people. But it\u2019s not like they\u2019re hiding what they\u2019re doing, either. They\u2019re on\npodcasts and they write articles and give talks. This isn\u2019t some hidden\nconspiracy. You can hear them say all of these things in their own words. From what I can tell, a lot of the tech billionaires enjoyed the same science\nfiction and fantasy genre books and films I did when I was growing up. But\nthose books and films usually had pretty clear messages. So they either didn\u2019t\nunderstand the message, or worse, they got the message and decided it would be\ncooler to be the bad guys . Listen to a big tech billionaire talk about any subject outside of their field\nof business. It\u2019s ridiculous to the point of parody. It pierces the idea that\nthese guys are geniuses. They\u2019re clever and utterly ruthless. They\u2019re willing\nto exploit things the rest of us wouldn\u2019t. But the idea that they\u2019re all\ngeniuses is a myth. (I\u2019m not a genius either, by the way.) Let\u2019s take Elon Musk, for example. I don\u2019t doubt that he has (or had) the\nmental aptitude to be considered \"very smart\" in a traditional sense. There is\nno doubt he has been really, really good at selling himself as a genius to\nthe public for many years. But sit him in a room with someone who has real\nexpert knowledge about a subject and let him talk. They\u2019ll tell you: he\u2019s full\nof crap. But you know what sealed the deal for me? When he was caught\ncheating on video games. Never mind how pathetic it is that a billionaire\ncheated at games. The question I\u2019ve gotta ask is: HOW STUPID DO YOU HAVE TO BE\nTO THINK YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH THAT? Did he really think he could fool actual\ngamers? Seriously? I mean, let that sink in for a bit. The more you examine these people, the more obvious it is that they\u2019re\ntech-adjacent business bros who have almost no interest in technology at all\noutside of being a means to control people and make absolutely ridiculous\namounts of money. A lot of them clearly have no idea how things work under\nthe surface and they don\u2019t care. This is why I can\u2019t celebrate tech at this moment. But I can tell you what I believe: I believe technology should serve people. I believe everyone can have fun with computers. I believe the next generation should have the same opportunities I\u2019ve had in technology. I believe a diversity of people and a diversity of thinking makes tech better.\nI believe usability matters. I believe technology should be inclusive, that\neveryone should be able to participate fully and feel welcome in tech and have an\nequal opportunity to succeed. I believe in fairness. These are my intuitive ethics. If you don\u2019t know about the diverse people who have contributed to the\nhistory of computing, you do not know the history of computing. And, sadly,\neven that history can only include the ones who managed to stick with it despite all the barriers thrown in their way. An untold number of brilliant people\ndidn\u2019t get past those barriers and we will simply never know what we\u2019re\nmissing. On that subject, now is the time to speak very specifically about\ntransgender people. The trans community is small and vulnerable, which is\nexactly why they are being targeted. Which is all the more reason attacking\nthem or attempting to erase them from history, like our government is doing, is\ngutless, spineless, brainless, and heartless. The transgender computer geeks\nare, by volume, some of the most creative, interesting, and prolific contributors we\u2019ve\never had. This is purely anecdotal and I\u2019m purposefully not going to list any\nnames, but if you know, you know. If I had to pick a single hill to defend in 2025,\nthis is the one. And you know what else I believe? I believe that in broad strokes, geek culture\nhas pretty much always been on the right side of this. (Nobody\u2019s perfect,\nespecially me, so I\u2019m painting with a big mop brush here.) Nerds and geeks\nknow about being the underdogs. It\u2019s in our mythology. Our stories have always\nbeen about a diverse group, often outcasts, banding together against evil\nforces. My heroes don\u2019t break or bend laws to make a buck, use their power to bully\npeople, or think it would be cool to be feudal lords over a frightened populace\nof vassals. My heroes create things and share what they know and they stand up\nfor others. The broligarchs are not techie culture. They are not our leaders.\nThey have nothing in common with us. They are vultures.\nThey don\u2019t speak for us. Okay, what can we do about it? Well, as I see it, their power comes from their platforms and their money.\nAnd our power is in our voices, our sheer numbers, and our wallets. Doing easy things is infinitely better than doing nothing. First, stop giving big tech your money. For example, I (amazon-1998-2024) canceled my Amazon account last year . Stop using big tech\u2019s social platforms. Consider a service in the Fediverse such as Mastodon. Use alternative search engines such as Viktor Lofgren\u2019s incredible (https://marginalia-search.com/) https://marginalia-search.com/ as a jumping-off point to start exploring the non-commercial Web. Support journalists. I\u2019ve ramped up subscriptions to a bunch of publications who are (in my opinion) doing good, brave work. Since I\u2019m specifically addressing tech here, I\u2019ll just list: (https://www.404media.co/) 404 Media (404media.co) - They\u2019ve been absolutely knocking tech journalism out of the park and they have an RSS feed. (https://www.2600.com/) 2600: The Hacker Quarterly (2600.com) - Defenders of free speech since 1984. No other tech publication has this pedigree. Get it in print or digital. (https://www.techdirt.com/) Techdirt (techdirt.com) - Has taken a strong stand for democracy. Quote: \"So, here\u2019s the bottom line: when WaPo\u2019s opinion pages are being gutted and tech CEOs are seeking pre-approval from authoritarians, the line between 'tech coverage' and 'saving democracy' has basically disappeared. It\u2019s all the same thing.\" (https://www.citationneeded.news/) Citation Needed (citationneeded.news) - Molly White\u2019s incredible coverage of cryptocurrencies and the madness of the blockchain bros. I was apparently foolishly optimistic when I thought we were already done with this stuff a couple years ago. Sigh. Thanks for your work, Molly White! Wired magazine - I\u2019ve re-subscribed because they\u2019re doing good work now . But I\u2019m keeping an eye on them. They were previously fawning over the worst big tech billionaires, featuring them on the front cover and giving them puff interviews. So this is not a strong endorsement yet . Consider buying physical media instead of streaming so you can buy rather than rent and curate your own tastes rather than letting a company feed you stuff. Donate to Wikipedia and the Internet Archive: (https://www.wikipedia.org/) https://www.wikipedia.org/ (https://archive.org/) https://archive.org/ Don\u2019t feel bad if you can\u2019t quit big tech services entirely. Shopping choices\nare often limited by financial or accessibility needs. Do what you can. Every\nlittle bit makes a difference. It\u2019s about our powers combined. Even small but\npersistent dips freak them out and send the message. Here\u2019s another one that\u2019s a little less obvious from a technology standpoint:\nMake use of your local library. Keep those institutions alive. Print books are\ngoing to just keep getting more valuable as a source of real information\nwritten by actual humans going forward. Remember: IT stands for \"Information\nTechnology.\" There\u2019s literally no point in having invented globe-spanning\nlossless communication network stacks if we\u2019re not transmitting actual\ninformation . To anyone outside the software development field: I can\u2019t actually speak for\nmost techies, but what I can say with confidence is that a non-zero amount of\nus, we who are actually at the keyboards making software every day, do not\nsupport the unethical tech-bro stuff. We do not want to be feudal lords. We do\nnot want to put everybody else out of work. Crappy and abusive software drives\nus absolutely up the wall too (but even more because we know it doesn\u2019t have to be this way). I wish I could just say, \"You know, it goes without saying that most techies\ndon\u2019t support this stuff.\" But to my great frustration, it does NOT go without\nsaying. Which is pretty much why this page exists. This is me saying it. To my fellow devs, here\u2019s a fact: We could collectively end the broligarch\nproblem right this very moment by refusing to work for them. No pitchforks or\ntorches would ever need be lifted. We wouldn\u2019t even need to leave our houses.\nEasier said than done, I get it. But at the very least, you need to have a line\nin the sand. I will NEVER intentionally write software that steals information\nfrom people or manipulates or hurts them. Where is your line? Postscript I\u2019ve never had such a hard time writing something as I\u2019ve had with this. I\nfeel like I\u2019ve somehow written too much and also not nearly enough. I\u2019ve\nstruggled to express myself. In the last couple months, the text has grown and\nshrunk until at least three times what you see above ended up in /dev/null .\nYou\u2019re not missing anything, believe me. While I was writing, deleting, and rewriting, current events have changed so\nrapidly that it felt like my writing was trivial and pointless.\nIt\u2019s still extremely unclear what the USA is going to look like in a month, let\nalone a year. Much of what I\u2019ve written here might seem like wide-eyed\ninnocence a short time from now. No one can say for certain. Still, I\u2019ve felt\ncompelled to keep going. There\u2019s a good chance this page wouldn\u2019t exist had I not read Timothy\nSnyder\u2019s powerful little book, On Tyranny . In particular, Chapters 8 \"Stand out\" , 19 \"Be a patriot\" , and 20 \"Be as courageous as you can.\" I wish I could say\nthat I was able to lean heavily on Chapter 5 \"Remember professional ethics,\"\nbut\u2026\u200byeah, software development isn\u2019t exactly winning any awards in that area,\nis it? My final push to the finish line came in the form of Joan Westenberg\u2019s (https://www.joanwestenberg.com/the-case-for-embracing-cringe/) The Case for Embracing Cringe (joanwestenberg.com). \"The powerful benefit from your aversion to the cringe. They feed on your\nsilence. Every time you bite your tongue, every time you shrink back, every\ntime you let the fear of embarrassment hold you hostage\u2014they win.\" This page was last generated 2025-04-23 10:48:16 -0400Using anything on this website to train large language\n models (LLMs) is strictly forbidden.All content \u00a9 Copyright Dave Gauer " ], "output": "htmltotext.txt", "pwd": "/data/archive/1756166118.166829", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2025-08-25T23:55:46.264258+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "media": [ { "cmd": [ "/usr/local/bin/yt-dlp", "--restrict-filenames", "--trim-filenames", "128", "--write-description", "--write-info-json", "--write-annotations", "--write-thumbnail", "--no-call-home", "--write-sub", "--write-auto-subs", "--convert-subs=srt", "--yes-playlist", "--continue", "--no-abort-on-error", "--ignore-errors", "--geo-bypass", "--add-metadata", "--format=(bv*+ba/b)[filesize<=750m][filesize_approx<=?750m]/(bv*+ba/b)", "--skip-download", "--cache-dir=/data/yt-dlp-cache/", "--cookies=/data/yt-dlp-cache/cookies.txt", "--proxy=socks5://tor-socks-proxy:9150", "--no-playlist", "https://ratfactor.com/tech-nope" ], "cmd_version": "2024.10.7", "end_ts": "2025-08-25T23:55:56.222514+00:00", "index_texts": [], "output": "media/", "pwd": "/data/archive/1756166118.166829", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2025-08-25T23:55:50.227738+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "mercury": [ { "cmd": [ "/home/archivebox/.npm/bin/postlight-parser", "https://ratfactor.com/tech-nope" ], "cmd_version": "2.2.3", "end_ts": "2025-08-25T23:55:46.194787+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "mercury/", "pwd": "/data/archive/1756166118.166829", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2025-08-25T23:55:42.244340+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "pdf": [], "readability": [ { "cmd": [ "/home/archivebox/.npm/bin/readability-extractor", "/tmp/tmp0dhe5fid", "https://ratfactor.com/tech-nope" ], "cmd_version": "0.0.11", "end_ts": "2025-08-25T23:55:36.270010+00:00", "index_texts": [ "(Or anyone I know.)\n \n \n \n Page created: 2025-03-19\n \n \n Updated: 2025-03-23\n \n \n \n \n\n \n Sometimes you just want to be understood.\nHere I am, a software developer in the year 2025. I look around at \"tech\" in\nthe news and in culture and I don\u2019t like what I see. Something has gone very,\nvery wrong with the Big Tech bros. I can no longer keep silent because it pains\nme to imagine these people representing ME.\nThe broligarchs do not represent me. They do not speak for me.\nIf all I can accomplish here is represent myself, that\u2019s enough. But I have a\nfeeling I\u2019m not alone. I have a feeling that there are a lot of other people in\nthe tech world who do not want to be thought of as the cold-blooded instruments\nof mad kings bent on destroying everything in order to remake the world as a\ndystopian techno-state.\nActually, my distaste for Big Tech is nothing new. It\u2019s been building for\ndecades.\nFirst, little stuff like the inkjet printer that you invited into your house\nthat claims to need, \"Just a little more cyan, bro. I\u2019ll print your black and white\npage after I get my cyan. Come on, bro.\"\nOr that McAfee antivirus nagware bundled with the PDF reader by Adobe, one of the\nworld\u2019s richest software companies, that will be forcefully installed unless you play the\nfind-the-checkbox game every. Single. Update.\nOr how about the abusive question du jour: \"Would you like to use our new 'AI'\nfeature NOW or be asked again TOMORROW?\"\nOr bigger stuff like selling our data to third parties, increasing social media\n\"engagement\" by promoting the most contentious and conspiracy-oriented content\nin our social media. Or here\u2019s one: Stealing all existing human-created\nworks to feed into the aforementioned 'AI' systems, which, by the way,\nwill also be used to replace your job, deny your health insurance, flag your\nface for arrest, and also write the police report when they bring you in.\nYeah, that was all plenty bad, but that was so last year.\nWhat we\u2019re seeing 2025 is breathtaking. Just look at the elites jockeying\nfor positions of power. They\u2019re like jackals licking their chops as they watch\nfences torn down around a daycare.\nHave you heard these people talk? Have you seen what they\u2019ve been up to lately?\nWhen did this become the face of tech?\nA line was crossed at some point. Maybe that happened around the same time the\ntech company announcements titled \"New Update!\" went from being fun and exciting to\nscary and nauseating.\n\"Tech\", as portrayed in the public eye right now is something I barely\nrecognize. It\u2019s almost universally negative: Social media, ad tech, blockchain,\n'AI'. I don\u2019t work on any of that stuff. Am I even part of the same industry?\n(I don\u2019t actually have an answer to that question.)\nDespite all of this, I\u2019m not some tech apostate. I still love computers.\nIt\u2019s said that the lathe is the most universal tool in the machinist\u2019s shop, a\ntool that can be used to create all other machine tools, including other lathes.\nA computer goes even further. Any general-purpose computer can simulate any\nother other computer (albeit slowly) and can therefore run all the programs\nthat have ever been written, or, as far as we know, will ever be written.\nComputers are mind-blowingly cool tools. They are the most universal machines\nwe have ever created.\nComputers can be used to create things, connect people, assist the\ndisadvantaged, and inspire the young. We only barely know how to program these\nthings effectively and yet look at all we\u2019ve done with them. I\u2019m convinced our\nbest work has yet to come.\nTo me, a programmable computer is a toy that never, ever stops being interesting.\nBut, for all their infinite wonderful uses, computers can also be used to: Spy\non people; divide, frighten, and confuse with misinformation; advertise,\naddict, and automate mundane evils. They can be encumbered by digital locks\nenforced by bad laws.\nThis later description is increasingly the face of these machines as seen by the\npublic. Machines that, by design, do not serve the user at all, but rather an\ninvisible master that wishes to trick them into giving up personal data, money,\ntime, or attention. This very unpleasant face leads to a public perception of\ntech that is understandably boiling over into a general distaste and distrust.\nSoftware alone does not account for this face of tech, of course. The most\nvisible and most rancid pieces of flesh plastered on tech\u2019s grinning skull are the\nmegalomaniacs behind each decision, the greedy scumbags that would turn our computers\nagainst us.\nHarvey Milk once gave a speech on the steps of San Francisco City Hall:\n\n\n\"The black community made up its mind to that a long time ago. That\nthe myths against blacks can only be dispelled by electing black leaders, so\nthe black community could be judged by the leaders and not by the myths or\nblack criminals. The Spanish community must not be judged by Latin criminals or\nmyths. The Asian community must not be judged by Asian criminals or myths. The\nItalian community must not be judged by the mafia, myths. And the time has come\nwhen the gay community must not be judged by our criminals and myths.\"\n\n\n\n\n\"Like every other group, we must be judged by our leaders\u2026\u200b\"\n\n\nWhat about the tech \"community\"? Who are our leaders? Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff\nBezos, and Elon Musk? Larry Ellison, Peter Thiel, and Marc Andreesen? The\nthought makes me want to weep, or throw a CRT monitor out the window. Or both.\nThe most visible people in computing right now, the wealthy big tech elite,\nhave shown themselves to be voracious monsters. They have shown that they care\nnothing of humans. And if you\u2019re not in this industry, the thing that might\nsurprise you is, guess what? They don\u2019t care about computers either.\nThese big tech bros may claim to want free markets and individual liberty but\nmake no mistake: What they seek is the \"freedom\" to take every single cent of\nwealth from every single market on Earth and the \"liberty\" to use their\nenormous wealth and also the law to pull the ladder up behind them to make sure\nno one can ever, ever follow them up.\nOh, but, sorry, that was the tech-bros before. It\u2019s much worse now. The old\nhungry, hungry tech-bro caterpillar that munched all the leaves on the branch\nhardened into a chrysalis sometime recently. What hatched was not a butterfly,\nbut an even more enormous grub, the broligarch, which turns around with rage to\ndevour its branch, the tree, the forest. It eats the bodies of the living,\nleaving behind a trail of radioactive slime. It cannot stop because despite\nits outward appearance of invulnerability, it is weak with fear of its own\nmortality.\nBeing wealthy beyond all possible imagining is no longer enough. Because now\nthe goal is to run the whole country or even the whole world like a business\nwhere \"like a business\" really means having the dictatorial powers of the\ncompany C-suite.\n(Aside: Having the wrong power structure is barely scratching the surface of\nwhy running a government like a business is an awful idea. Rural mail delivery\nloses money, so I guess that\u2019s out. A defense department \"for profit\" would be\na decent start to a scary movie, not a way to defend your country. But the\nbiggest reason is that \"like a business\" simply ignores the fact that there are\nvalues other than money: protecting people from harm, enforcing laws,\nsafeguarding our land and resources, and providing a social safety net. None of\nthose are business values. That\u2019s something I didn\u2019t understand when I was a\nlarval libertarian-leaning single guy living in an apartment, supporting no one\nbut myself.)\nThese are the same people who want to make your car play an advertisement while\nyou\u2019re at a stoplight or have your TV harvest your viewing habits to sell to\nthe highest bidder or make it impossible to own any digital goods\nso you have to rent them for a monthly fee forever. Just think about what that\nsort of person would do with the kind of power they\u2019re attempting to take now.\nI don\u2019t understand how these people live with themselves. I suspect they\u2019re\npretty miserable. They already have everything and it\u2019s not enough.\nI like writing software because it\u2019s\nchallenging and interesting and I can make tools that automate boring and\ntedious stuff. For money, I work on tools that automate boring and tedious\nbusiness stuff. If I have a repetitive task on the computer, I\u2019ll have way\nmore fun if I can write a little script to automate it. Even better is writing\na little script for somebody else: I get to solve a puzzle and make\nsomebody\u2019s day. I love that. I wish this were more accessible\nto more people.\nI will never, ever understand how someone can bring any amount of misery, big\nor small, to another person\u2019s life to make a buck.\nTo quote Roger Ebert:\n\n\n\"To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all\ncrime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no\nmatter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I\ndidn\u2019t always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.\"\n\n\nThe Big Tech situation is so bad that it often feels like commercial software was written\nexpressly to impede doing anything useful on the computer. This has been\ngoing on long enough that people are starting to accept a certain amount of pain as\na natural part of the computer experience.\nOne explanation I\u2019ve seen recently is the mention of the military funding\nbehind much of our early computing technology. The implication is that we\nshould expect the worst, after all, because computers are just tools of\ndestruction. The part about military funding isn\u2019t wrong per se. But it\nreduces the history of computation to mere funding. It ignores the actual\npeople behind the innovations. It ignores the big thinkers that came before and\nafter the invention of the transistor or packet-switched networks. Computers\nhave ever been the tools of dreamers and misfits.\nPeople like me are not a product of DARPA, we\u2019re a product of the home\ncomputing revolution.\nI\u2019ve been very lucky, by the way. First, I had the fortune to be born into a\nmiddle-class family that through the influence of family friends, bought a used\nhome computer in the 1980s and then a PC in the 1990s. When my interest took\noff, I had the time, allowance money, and parental support to go to the\nbookstore and buy some books on the subject. (Shout-out to \"C For Dummies\" by\nDan Gookin!)\nAs if that wasn\u2019t enough, I got my start programming \"professionally\" (as in\ngetting paid for it) in the late 1990s and, let me tell you, that was a golden\ntime of opportunity and adventure. Anyone who was savvy enough to teach\nthemselves some HTML and a little JavaScript could land a job \"making\nwebsites.\" The self-taught nature of the market suited my obsessive learning\nstyle perfectly.\nIt wasn\u2019t until the Dot-Com crash of 2000 that I actually realized how\nfortunate I was as I watched the job market suddenly turn sour. Not only had I\nmanaged to turn a teenage hobby into gainful employment, I had secured my place\nin the job market just in time to weather out the crash. I remember thinking\nabout how unfair it was that other people who were like me, but who had the\nmisfortune to arrive just a bit later, were not getting the same opportunity I\nwas.\n(Possibly Related: Since I was a little kid, I always hated the phrase, \"Life\nisn\u2019t fair.\" As soon as I was old enough to put the ideas and words together,\nmy motto has been, \"Life may not be fair, but we should always be striving to\nMAKE it fair.\" This penchant for fairness and justice might also explain why I\nlike playing board games, which have rules and why I get along well with\ncomputers, which always follow rules.)\nI didn\u2019t dwell excessively on this unfairness, mind you. I was young and\ncould be shamefully egocentric. Shamefully. Egocentric. But it stuck with me\nnonetheless. And I have ever since been grateful for my good fortune.\nAnother thing about the Dot-Com crash: It was clear to me and my cohort that\nwhile people weren\u2019t ready to buy pet supplies online yet, they inevitably\nwould. The eventual domination of the Web was just as certain to me as any law\nof physics. Like industrialization, only much more so. Software scales up like\nnothing in the physical world. A physical factory takes time and money to\ncreate, but in our world, we can make a perfect copy of a machine (program) in a split\nsecond and it costs essentially nothing.\nHeady stuff for a young person starting out. But in those days, I never\nimagined this would be a bad thing. Sure, getting rich sounded pretty great,\nbut obviously we were going to do that by building fun and exciting things\nthat people would love.\nI\u2019ve got lots of fun memories from the early days of my career: Usenet, Yahoo!,\nNetscape, Slashdot, and the greatest of all: zombo.com. Shelves of O\u2019Reilly\ntechnical books with the Dover print animal covers. Dial-up modem Internet\nService Providers. And yes, Google\u2019s arrival. Google had vastly superior search results,\na server made of Duplo blocks, and the motto \"Don\u2019t be evil\".\nTo be sure, the big software companies were often stupid and greedy, but they\nseemed relatively harmless to me during that time because progress was so\nfast, everybody was racing just to keep up. Nobody could capture the market. It\nwas too quick and too slippery to hold.\nThe early Web browsers were incredibly buggy and constantly in flux, but to the\nyoung developer, it was all just a another fun challenge to overcome and another\nobscure set of skills to add to the wizard\u2019s grimoire.\nBack then, I\u2019ll admit, I remember feeling like a little Master of the Universe.\nIt didn\u2019t hurt that every media outlet was talking about the \"revenge of the\nnerds\" and how us computer geeks were now taking over everything. People were\nimpressed and excited when I told them I was a software developer. It\u2019s a\nlittle embarrassing to say, but I do miss that golden glow. \"And honoured among\nwagons I was prince of the apple towns.\"\nI also remember the general sense that ours was a \"meritocratic\" field, which\nmeant that it didn\u2019t matter what you looked or sounded like\nso long as you had interesting ideas and skills. As the joke went, it didn\u2019t\neven matter what species you were, like the 1993 New Yorker cartoon that goes, \"On the\nInternet, nobody knows you\u2019re a dog.\" I always liked that idea.\n(Aside: It was only much, much later and with a fair amount of pain that I realized\n\"meritocracy\" has a dark side. There was a question I wasn\u2019t asking: Who,\nexactly, decides which ideas and skills have merit? And the scary answer is\nthat it turns out there are people in this field, people who would describe\nthemselves as \"rationalists\", who would say they have that answer. Sadly, we\nhave among us those who believe that you can quantify merit.\nIf you listen to those people and follow that train of thought too far, you end\nup in a very bad place, rubbing shoulders with eugenicists and other creeps.)\nLooking back, the early days of the Web really were a pretty\nspecial time.\nIt would be easy to wrap up in that nostalgia like a warm and comfortable\nblanket and say that nothing will ever be as good ever again.\nSo it might surprise you to learn that\u2019s not how I feel at all. In fact, if you\nask me, right now is the most amazing time to be in computing.\nI\u2019m serious. RIGHT NOW is, in a number of ways, far better than when I got started.\nHere\u2019s the facts:\nHardware is unbelievably cheap and powerful and energy efficient. I can buy a\nused laptop computer for the price of a pair of pants. And that laptop would\nbe perfectly capable of word processing, cranking out spreadsheets, developing\nsoftware, writing email, surfing the Web, and just about anything else you can\nthink of doing short of playing the latest games.\nI have a computer in my basement that runs pretty much everything I do (I\u2019m\nwriting on it right now over an SSH connection) that uses, on average, less\nelectricity than a household LED light bulb.\nCurrent generation semiconductor manufacturing technology is simply incredible:\nLaser pulses vaporize microscopic tin particles to produce extreme ultraviolet\nlight with which we \"print\" components that are literally invisible to the eye.\nChips are made under conditions of cleanliness and elemental purity that is\nlike nothing that has ever existed before and is difficult to even fathom. This\ntechnology is the result of a fairly recent globe-spanning research and\ndevelopment project with a size and scope that reminds me of the space race of\nthe 1960s. And unlike a Saturn V rocket, there\u2019s a good chance the results of\nthat manufacturing process are in your pocket right now. How cool is that?\nI can buy a 32Gb USB flash drive for the price of a cup of coffee, store a\ncompressed copy of Wikipedia on it, and throw it in my pocket like it\u2019s no big\ndeal. That\u2019s incredible.\nComputers can be made so cheaply now that every single person on the planet\ncould have one, run it sustainably from solar power, and be enabled to learn\nand unlock its secrets.\n(I know that not everyone will love computers like I do. But everyone should have a\nchance to find out for themselves.)\nAnd that\u2019s just the hardware side. Look at where we\u2019re at with software! For\nyears now, I\u2019ve been able to use a free operating system and free applications\nfor everything I do from programming to drawing to editing video. I used to\nhave to pay for all of this stuff and it was often buggy and unfriendly anyway.\nBrowser compatibility used to be AWFUL. (Either you lived through the IE6\nhellscape or you didn\u2019t.) I complain a lot of about the insane complexity of\nmodern browsers, but the truth is that with the slightest bit of care, you can\nwrite Web applications with a high degree of certainty that they will work\neverywhere with near-perfect backward compatibility into the foreseeable\nfuture. And that\u2019s amazing. In many ways, the browser has fulfilled the promise\nof a truly universal computing platform, and it\u2019s still relatively young.\nOr how about connectivity? It\u2019s not perfectly distributed or affordable for\neveryone yet. But for many of us, broadband access has made extremely high\nspeed downloads and streaming content as second-nature as water and power\nservice. (Hey kids, gather around and I\u2019ll tell you about when it took forever\nto download a tiny JPEG image over dial-up.) Now I can stream video on my phone\nover a cell network. And that\u2019s nothing compared to the fiber connection that\ncomes to my house. Amazing.\nIt gets better. All of these hardware and software advances would be no fun if\nit weren\u2019t for people. And sure enough, right at this very moment, an untold\nnumber of people are making indie games, open-source applications, ad-free\nwebsites, and blogs. There\u2019s more new amazing stuff being created by awesome\npeople every single day than you could possibly keep up with. Way more than\n\"back in the day\". You just have to find it.\nBelieve me, I\u2019m as nostalgic about the old Web as anyone, and yet a lot of\nthose old websites still exist. Many of them never went away (like this\nwebsite!). Plus now there\u2019s even more of them. Honestly, it\u2019s not even that\nhard to find them once you start exploring outside of the Google/Microsoft/Meta\nsilos.\n(Also, zombo.com still exists.)\nAnd here\u2019s another thing that\u2019s gotten even better: Access to knowledge about\ncomputers. An excellent computer science education awaits anyone who has the\npatience to read free material online, use free tools, and watch free video\nlectures from prestigious universities. (You just won\u2019t get a diploma, those\ncost money.) You can use the same tools used by top programming professionals\nright now, for free.\nDo you see where I\u2019m going with this?\nWe should be able to celebrate this stuff every day. What a time to be alive.\nWe\u2019ve got all this great stuff! Everyone party all the time!!!\nBut, yeah, it\u2019s really hard to celebrate when the face of tech, the face that\nmost people see every single day, is user-hostile, ad-driven, opaque, and\nmorally bankrupt.\nIt\u2019s hard to celebrate when just about every tech company seems hell-bent on\ngoing to warp speed to monetize (and in the process, destroy) every single\nthing we have. A lot of that manifests as surveillance advertising, but it also\ntakes form in confidence games like cryptocurrency, NFTs, and selling LLM\n('AI') services in increasingly desperate ways before the bubble bursts.\n(Aside: On that last item, Microsoft has to take the cake. Everything it owns from\nWindows to Github now pushes unwanted 'AI' tools into your face. They\u2019re even\npushing this stuff on children! Microsoft has become one giant advertising\nmechanism for Copilot because they\u2019ve blown unthinkable amounts of money on\nthe gamble that this will be the next money-printing machine of endless\ngrowth if only they can get people dependent on it, lock them in, and then\nstart turning the screws on the subscription prices. No vampire was ever as\nthirsty. Their behavior is so outrageous that only deep lock-in on a personal\nand corporate level can explain why people put up with it.)\nIt\u2019s hard to celebrate tech when the Web has been completely overrun with\n'AI'-generated slop. The quality of search results has gone off a cliff. It\u2019s\ndisgusting and even though it was predicted, it\u2019s still shocking how fast it\nhappened. And on top of that, Google has intentionally destroyed their search\nengine for the purpose of serving more advertisements and even more generated\nslop, often semi-digested from other crap-spewing machine-generated sites.\nIf you\u2019re getting a little nauseated at this point, you\u2019re getting it.\nEd Zitron\u2019s\nNever Forgive Them\n(wheresyoured.at), goes to cathartic length to describe just a fraction of\nthe everyday miseries perpetuated by modern big tech.\nI\u2019m telling you, it doesn\u2019t have to be this way.\nI know it can be better because I\u2019m living it.\nI want everyone to have the same computer experience I have right now. I run a\nfree operating system that serves no ads and does not update unless I\nexplicitly tell it to. I trust the software tools I use because they are\nwritten by fellow enthusiasts. I visit ad-free websites. My computer hardware\nis cheap and plentiful. The computer serves me, not the other way around and I\ncall the shots on everything.\nBut, there\u2019s a catch. The reason I can have this utopian computing experience\nis because I\u2019ve made sacrifices. The first is a certain amount of\nconvenience (when I can\u2019t make something work without bending my principles, I\ndo without it). The second is that I\u2019ve put a lot of time into\nlearning how to use the free operating system and the free tools.\nSo yeah, that\u2019s great for me. But that\u2019s not good enough. There is absolutely\nno reason my path should be so difficult or so rarefied.\nEveryone, regardless of skill level, money, or time, should be able to\nexperience computers the way I do. There is NO TECHNICAL REASON we can\u2019t have\nthat.\nThere\u2019s only one thing standing in the way: The insatiable greed of Big Tech.\nThe decisions of a few have made technology anti-user.\nAnd the computing experience is, unfortunately, just the tip of the iceberg.\nGarry Kasparov (yup, former World Chess Champion 1985-2000, Garry\nKasparov) says of our new era, \"The danger we face is of a new breed of\nideologically-motivated billionaires, ones who believe that democratic\ninstitutions have lost purpose in our world, and are ready to use their wealth\nand connections to advance their own alternative vision.\"\nI know this can come across as hyperbolic, but the big tech broligarchs can\nonly be fully understood in the context of techno-feudalism, \"The Network\nState\", \"Freedom Cities\", \"TESCREAL\", etc. Researching these topics is a lot\nlike reading a young adult dystopian sci-fi novel. Except it\u2019s not fiction.\n\nIf you\u2019re new to this stuff, maybe it seems funny. Yeah, ha ha, except the true\nbelievers, the ones who are ACTING ON IT RIGHT NOW, are unbelievably wealthy\npeople. They\u2019re now in high-ranking positions in the federal government of the\nUnited States. They listen to Curtis Yarvin. They are not fans of democracy.\nThey have already built their underground bunkers. This is not a drill.\n(Aside: Hey, so, I know we\u2019re all used to hearing about\nbillionaires by now. But that\u2019s just a word. It\u2019s really, really hard for the\nhuman mind to comprehend this scale of wealth. If you haven\u2019t seen it yet, this\npage helps us get a sense for it by making you scroll and scroll and scroll\u2026\u200b:\nhttps://dbkrupp.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/)\nA bunch of these guys are explicitly or implicitly\naccelerationists. They believe that removing regulations to allow unhindered\ntechnological \"innovation\" and growth will solve all of the world\u2019s problems.\nAnd if that happens to result in a techno-state and makes them powerful lords\nover that state, well, so be it. Certainly, there is no question that they\u2019ve\ncranked the throttle up to 11. Jeff Bezos\u2019s Amazon announced last month\nthat you\u2019ll no longer be able to download your Kindle book purchases. And just\nyesterday they announced that the Amazon Echo (\"Alexa\") will soon be sending all\nvoice recordings to Amazon for processing, even if you previously set it to\nlocal-only for privacy. Similar headlines from the other big players are coming eye-wateringly fast.\n(You\u2019ll see why I picked Jeff Bezos for these examples in a moment.)\nIn a way, I\u2019m an accelerationist, too. Because I\u2019ve seen how people get used\nto increasingly hostile technology and allow themselves to get locked into\nservices they hate but can\u2019t stop using. The \"boiled frog\" approach is the one\nthat scares me. I honestly don\u2019t know if my fears are in the right place.\nI guess we\u2019ll find out, because the boiling pot has been replaced with a blast\noven. I\u2019m just hoping that once people get a load of where all of this is heading,\nthey\u2019re not going to put up with it.\nThe biggest problem is just getting the word out in time. Billionaires own\ntraditional news media and they\u2019ve done a disturbingly good job of keeping this\nstuff out of the public eye\u2026\u200b\n\u2026\u200bWith a little help from the opinionless \"voice from nowhere\"\nschool of journalism.\nAgain, let\u2019s focus on Jeff Bezos, also owner of the venerable Washington\nPost newspaper (the same Washington Post that broke the story of the Nixon\nWatergate scandal), who went from promising to never interfere with the paper (2013)\nto interfering (2024), to stating that they would no longer be publishing editorials\ncritical of \"personal liberties and free markets\" (2025). Again, we can see the accelerating timeline.\nBezos is just one of the most obvious examples, but follow the money with the\nrest of the big legacy news sources and it\u2019s pretty stark. Mainstream news is\nshaped by enormously large and rich companies and people.\nBut it\u2019s not like they\u2019re hiding what they\u2019re doing, either. They\u2019re on\npodcasts and they write articles and give talks. This isn\u2019t some hidden\nconspiracy. You can hear them say all of these things in their own words.\nFrom what I can tell, a lot of the tech billionaires enjoyed the same science\nfiction and fantasy genre books and films I did when I was growing up. But\nthose books and films usually had pretty clear messages. So they either didn\u2019t\nunderstand the message, or worse, they got the message and decided it would be\ncooler to be the bad guys.\nListen to a big tech billionaire talk about any subject outside of their field\nof business. It\u2019s ridiculous to the point of parody. It pierces the idea that\nthese guys are geniuses. They\u2019re clever and utterly ruthless. They\u2019re willing\nto exploit things the rest of us wouldn\u2019t. But the idea that they\u2019re all\ngeniuses is a myth. (I\u2019m not a genius either, by the way.)\nLet\u2019s take Elon Musk, for example. I don\u2019t doubt that he has (or had) the\nmental aptitude to be considered \"very smart\" in a traditional sense. There is\nno doubt he has been really, really good at selling himself as a genius to\nthe public for many years. But sit him in a room with someone who has real\nexpert knowledge about a subject and let him talk. They\u2019ll tell you: he\u2019s full\nof crap. But you know what sealed the deal for me? When he was caught\ncheating on video games. Never mind how pathetic it is that a billionaire\ncheated at games. The question I\u2019ve gotta ask is: HOW STUPID DO YOU HAVE TO BE\nTO THINK YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH THAT? Did he really think he could fool actual\ngamers? Seriously? I mean, let that sink in for a bit.\nThe more you examine these people, the more obvious it is that they\u2019re\ntech-adjacent business bros who have almost no interest in technology at all\noutside of being a means to control people and make absolutely ridiculous\namounts of money. A lot of them clearly have no idea how things work under\nthe surface and they don\u2019t care.\nThis is why I can\u2019t celebrate tech at this moment.\nBut I can tell you what I believe:\nI believe technology should serve people.\nI believe everyone can have fun with computers.\nI believe the next generation should have the same opportunities I\u2019ve had in technology.\nI believe a diversity of people and a diversity of thinking makes tech better.\nI believe usability matters. I believe technology should be inclusive, that\neveryone should be able to participate fully and feel welcome in tech and have an\nequal opportunity to succeed. I believe in fairness. These are my intuitive ethics.\nIf you don\u2019t know about the diverse people who have contributed to the\nhistory of computing, you do not know the history of computing. And, sadly,\neven that history can only include the ones who managed to stick with it despite\nall the barriers thrown in their way. An untold number of brilliant people\ndidn\u2019t get past those barriers and we will simply never know what we\u2019re\nmissing.\nOn that subject, now is the time to speak very specifically about\ntransgender people. The trans community is small and vulnerable, which is\nexactly why they are being targeted. Which is all the more reason attacking\nthem or attempting to erase them from history, like our government is doing, is\ngutless, spineless, brainless, and heartless. The transgender computer geeks\nare, by volume, some of the most creative, interesting, and prolific contributors we\u2019ve\never had. This is purely anecdotal and I\u2019m purposefully not going to list any\nnames, but if you know, you know. If I had to pick a single hill to defend in 2025,\nthis is the one.\nAnd you know what else I believe? I believe that in broad strokes, geek culture\nhas pretty much always been on the right side of this. (Nobody\u2019s perfect,\nespecially me, so I\u2019m painting with a big mop brush here.) Nerds and geeks\nknow about being the underdogs. It\u2019s in our mythology. Our stories have always\nbeen about a diverse group, often outcasts, banding together against evil\nforces.\nMy heroes don\u2019t break or bend laws to make a buck, use their power to bully\npeople, or think it would be cool to be feudal lords over a frightened populace\nof vassals. My heroes create things and share what they know and they stand up\nfor others.\nThe broligarchs are not techie culture. They are not our leaders.\nThey have nothing in common with us. They are vultures.\nThey don\u2019t speak for us.\nOkay, what can we do about it?\nWell, as I see it, their power comes from their platforms and their money.\nAnd our power is in our voices, our sheer numbers, and our wallets.\nDoing easy things is infinitely better than doing nothing.\n\n\n\nFirst, stop giving big tech your money. For example, I canceled my Amazon account last year.\n\n\nStop using big tech\u2019s social platforms. Consider a service in the Fediverse such as Mastodon.\n\n\nUse alternative search engines such as Viktor Lofgren\u2019s incredible https://marginalia-search.com/ as a jumping-off point to start exploring the non-commercial Web.\n\n\nSupport journalists. I\u2019ve ramped up subscriptions to a bunch of publications who are (in my opinion) doing good, brave work. Since I\u2019m specifically addressing tech here, I\u2019ll just list:\n\n\n\n404 Media (404media.co) - They\u2019ve been absolutely knocking tech journalism out of the park and they have an RSS feed.\n\n\n2600: The Hacker Quarterly (2600.com) - Defenders of free speech since 1984. No other tech publication has this pedigree. Get it in print or digital.\n\n\nTechdirt (techdirt.com) - Has taken a strong stand for democracy. Quote: \"So, here\u2019s the bottom line: when WaPo\u2019s opinion pages are being gutted and tech CEOs are seeking pre-approval from authoritarians, the line between 'tech coverage' and 'saving democracy' has basically disappeared. It\u2019s all the same thing.\"\n\n\nCitation Needed (citationneeded.news) - Molly White\u2019s incredible coverage of cryptocurrencies and the madness of the blockchain bros. I was apparently foolishly optimistic when I thought we were already done with this stuff a couple years ago. Sigh. Thanks for your work, Molly White!\n\n\nWired magazine - I\u2019ve re-subscribed because they\u2019re doing good work now. But I\u2019m keeping an eye on them. They were previously fawning over the worst big tech billionaires, featuring them on the front cover and giving them puff interviews. So this is not a strong endorsement yet.\n\n\n\n\n\nConsider buying physical media instead of streaming so you can buy rather than rent and curate your own tastes rather than letting a company feed you stuff.\n\n\nDonate to Wikipedia and the Internet Archive:\n\n\n\nhttps://www.wikipedia.org/\n\n\nhttps://archive.org/\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDon\u2019t feel bad if you can\u2019t quit big tech services entirely. Shopping choices\nare often limited by financial or accessibility needs. Do what you can. Every\nlittle bit makes a difference. It\u2019s about our powers combined. Even small but\npersistent dips freak them out and send the message.\nHere\u2019s another one that\u2019s a little less obvious from a technology standpoint:\nMake use of your local library. Keep those institutions alive. Print books are\ngoing to just keep getting more valuable as a source of real information\nwritten by actual humans going forward. Remember: IT stands for \"Information\nTechnology.\" There\u2019s literally no point in having invented globe-spanning\nlossless communication network stacks if we\u2019re not transmitting actual\ninformation.\nTo anyone outside the software development field: I can\u2019t actually speak for\nmost techies, but what I can say with confidence is that a non-zero amount of\nus, we who are actually at the keyboards making software every day, do not\nsupport the unethical tech-bro stuff. We do not want to be feudal lords. We do\nnot want to put everybody else out of work. Crappy and abusive software drives\nus absolutely up the wall too (but even more because we know\nit doesn\u2019t have to be this way).\nI wish I could just say, \"You know, it goes without saying that most techies\ndon\u2019t support this stuff.\" But to my great frustration, it does NOT go without\nsaying. Which is pretty much why this page exists. This is me saying it.\nTo my fellow devs, here\u2019s a fact: We could collectively end the broligarch\nproblem right this very moment by refusing to work for them. No pitchforks or\ntorches would ever need be lifted. We wouldn\u2019t even need to leave our houses.\nEasier said than done, I get it. But at the very least, you need to have a line\nin the sand. I will NEVER intentionally write software that steals information\nfrom people or manipulates or hurts them. Where is your line?\n\nPostscript\n\nI\u2019ve never had such a hard time writing something as I\u2019ve had with this. I\nfeel like I\u2019ve somehow written too much and also not nearly enough. I\u2019ve\nstruggled to express myself. In the last couple months, the text has grown and\nshrunk until at least three times what you see above ended up in /dev/null.\nYou\u2019re not missing anything, believe me.\nWhile I was writing, deleting, and rewriting, current events have changed so\nrapidly that it felt like my writing was trivial and pointless.\nIt\u2019s still extremely unclear what the USA is going to look like in a month, let\nalone a year. Much of what I\u2019ve written here might seem like wide-eyed\ninnocence a short time from now. No one can say for certain. Still, I\u2019ve felt\ncompelled to keep going.\nThere\u2019s a good chance this page wouldn\u2019t exist had I not read Timothy\nSnyder\u2019s powerful little book, On Tyranny. In particular, Chapters 8 \"Stand out\", 19\n\"Be a patriot\", and 20 \"Be as courageous as you can.\" I wish I could say\nthat I was able to lean heavily on Chapter 5 \"Remember professional ethics,\"\nbut\u2026\u200byeah, software development isn\u2019t exactly winning any awards in that area,\nis it?\nMy final push to the finish line came in the form of Joan Westenberg\u2019s\nThe Case for Embracing Cringe\n(joanwestenberg.com).\n\"The powerful benefit from your aversion to the cringe. They feed on your\nsilence. Every time you bite your tongue, every time you shrink back, every\ntime you let the fear of embarrassment hold you hostage\u2014they win.\"" ], "output": "readability/", "pwd": "/data/archive/1756166118.166829", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2025-08-25T23:55:33.868022+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "screenshot": [], "singlefile": [], "title": [ { "cmd": [ "/usr/bin/curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--proxy", "socks5://tor-socks-proxy:9150", "--max-time", "60", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/128.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/{VERSION} (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/)", "https://ratfactor.com/tech-nope" ], "cmd_version": "8.10.1", "end_ts": "2025-08-25T23:55:33.441592+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "I'm an American software developer and the \"broligarchs\" don't speak for me - ratfactor", "pwd": "/data/archive/1756166118.166829", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2025-08-25T23:55:33.420065+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "wget": [] }, "icons": null, "is_archived": true, "is_static": false, "latest": { "archive_org": "ArchiveError: Failed to find \"content-location\" URL header in Archive.org response.", "dom": "output.html", "favicon": "favicon.ico", "git": null, "media": "media/", "pdf": null, "screenshot": null, "singlefile": null, "title": "I'm an American software developer and the \"broligarchs\" don't speak for me - ratfactor", "warc": null, "wget": null }, "link_dir": "/data/archive/1756166118.166829", "newest_archive_date": "2025-08-25T23:55:56.262296+00:00", "num_failures": 1, "num_outputs": 8, "oldest_archive_date": "2025-08-25T23:55:20.280354+00:00", "path": "/tech-nope", "schema": "Link", "scheme": "https", "snapshot_abid": "snp_01K3HTGPSWAE0880E7018DWH78", "snapshot_id": "7d2b274d-c897-4b69-baa7-78b350de44e8", "sources": [ "/data/sources/1756166117-import.txt" ], "tags": null, "tags_str": "", "timestamp": "1756166118.166829", "title": "I'm an American software developer and the \"broligarchs\" don't speak for me - ratfactor", "url": "https://ratfactor.com/tech-nope" }