@mmeier How bad? There are two tents outside the entrance of the place we just moved to bad. (When things start back up, Iām planning on getting involved locally so we can find the people there proper accommodation. You cannot call yourself a civilized society while you allow people to languish in tents in winter. Itās unconscionable.)
āA number of staff at the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin are commuting from Spain and Germany because it is more affordable than living in Ireland, according to the master of the hospital.ā
Whatās sad is realising you live in a world where every exaggerated analogy you used to make a point is actually happening:
Having Google in schools is like having McDonalds in nutrition class. (I find out that McDonalds does, in fact, sponsor nutrition classes in US schools.)
Having a surveillance capitalist sponsor a conference on free and open source/human rights is like having an oil company sponsor a climate conference. (Forget sponsoring, turns out head of #Cop28 runs an oil firm.)
@ninavizz@opensourcedesign@simulo@fosdem So hereās the thing, I couldnāt take money from surveillance capitalists even if I wanted to because they rather dislike being called surveillance capitalists. So the only way I could take money from Google is if I said āHey, guys, I was wrong, Google arenāt a threat to human rights or democracy.ā (And actually, that would be worth *a lot* of money if I did that. But then I wouldnāt be me.)
@ninavizz@opensourcedesign@simulo@fosdem So yes, itās hard. Damn hard. Pick between your principles and afford having a family hard. But I canāt do anything else. Iād rather starve than legitimise a bloody people farmer like Google or Meta. And we havenāt gotten a single bloody cent from the EU or grants (not for lack of trying). Going forward, my goal is to hopefully make us sustainable by being one of (hopefully many) Small Web hosts.
@ninavizz@opensourcedesign@simulo@fosdem To answer your question: we did a round of crowdfunding ten years ago (mistake; not the way to fund ongoing work), then I sold two apartments my family had in Turkey. That kept us going for a while. Then I made a tracker blocker and sold licenses to that on Appleās platforms. Then we ran out of money so Laura started contacting so I could continue building the Small Web. And thatās where we are.
@bohemianchic There are no big names, just names written big :)
Seriously, though, meeting the ābig namesā have been some of my most disappointing experiences. Think of it this way: you know the system is fucked/corrupt; what does it take to get (& stay) ābigā in such a system? At the very least, to not make waves. At the worst, to be a card carrying member of the boysā club. Either way, Iād be very surprised if the ābig namesā have even half your integrity and humanity.
@ianbetteridge I do hope Boris stretches this out for as long as he can. Not only because the schadenfreude is so damn delicious but also because every minute he does so damages the Conservatives even further. Then again, fuck knows whatās going to change even if Blair 2.0 ends up taking the reins but I guess at least nothing can be worse than this shitshow. (Cue Murphyās Law as Mogg becomes PM.)
@Haydar Yes and you can be stabbed to death if you're not wearing body armour. And yet we have laws against stabbing people and we treat those who stab others as criminals and understand that the person getting stabbed is the victim here so we don't go around blaming them for not taking steps to ensure their flesh is harder to stab. About time we stopped victim blaming in tech too. The blame here lies with one entity alone: the trillion-dollar faceless corporation we call Microsoft.