escape-big-tech

With Farbfeld, it's possible to further reduce the size of image data to be 24 bytes, or 16 if you're ok with your image not being displayable

    Magic Number: 66 61 72 62 66 65 6c 64 (identifies the file as a Farbfeld image)
    Width (in bytes): 00 00 00 01 (specifies the image width)
    Height (in bytes): 00 00 00 01 (specifies the image height)
    First Pixel Data: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff (represents the color data for the first pixel)

Kelley and Cro argue that bounties foster competition at the expense of cooperation. But isn’t it through competition that we Escape Big Tech’s clutches? Without competition, we’d all be slaves to the monopoly of Big Tech, a corporate monolith driven by surveillance capitalism. Competition brings innovation and diversity, giving each of us the tools to fight against centralized power. Bounties create an environment where developers are incentivized to solve problems creatively and help users Escape Big Tech through faster development and better solutions. Cooperation and competition can coexist. In fact, they must coexist if we are to Escape Big Tech. The FOSS community is not a utopia; it’s a battleground. And in a battle, we need all the weapons we can get. Bounties are one of those weapons. The FOSS space thrives when there is a race—not just against time, but against mediocrity. Bounties create an environment where developers are incentivized to push their boundaries, leading to faster development cycles and better software solutions. To argue against this is to undermine the essence of free-market capitalism, a realm devoid of governmental intrusion and packed with individual liberties.

But also, one aspect largely absent from the original blog post is the financial sustainability of being an open source developer. While the love for the craft and the mission to Escape Big Tech might be enough to fuel initial enthusiasm, the reality is that developers need to eat, pay bills, and sustain their lives. If someone aspires to be an open source developer as a primary occupation, financial backing becomes non-negotiable. Bounties, donations, and sponsorships serve this very purpose—they are not just incentives for competition, but also a means for livelihood. Rejecting these financial channels out of an idealistic vision of cooperation is not just impractical but dismissive of the economic pressures that developers face. Let’s not forget, FOSS is an open market where both ideas and resources should flow freely. Monetary incentives can co-exist with the altruistic goals of the community. It’s a balancing act, but one that serves both the ideological and material needs of the FOSS world. For those of us aiming to Escape Big Tech, these financial pathways are not just welcome; they are essential.

I think I need to rethink the way I wrote this article, because the wrong message is being understood. Clearly I have done a bad job at writing it. I should rewrite this article entirely. Thank you for the feedback

the point of immich and photoprism is that you host them on your computer, on your own network and it never goes through those centralized entities in the first place.

I've actually been looking for a good self hosted solution for pictures, that allows me to automatically upload pictures from my phones (I use both ios and android). I've been using nextcloud photos but honestly the experience of the photos app for nextcloud has always been bad for me.

I've been looking at immich and photoprism; how do the two compare, what are the advantages of immich over photoprism, and vice versa?

it says a lot about the state of society when I actually cannot tell if you're being sarcastic or not. I think it's sarcasm, I'm almost convinced it is, but at the same time it's an argument that I'd expect Big Tech companies to make.

gitea is also a great self hosted alternative!

often people point out how unreliable self-hosted services are, well, hosted services are just as unreliable if not more.

this, ladies and gentlemen, is why you should always self host critical infrastructure

Neeva did only one thing right: they cared about privacy, but otherwise they really did not do a good job. Their search results were worse than google, their load times were even slower than google, they tried making too much money too quickly, and they jumped towards fads too quickly.

This is also my experience. I was ok in rust after using it for 2 weeks, I still had the weird issues here and there, sometimes but after just using it for as little as one month I started feeling confident enough in it where I could develop anything given enough time. Now after almost a year, there is no language i'd rather use than rust

absolutely disgusting, you're telling me that you don't want to be stalked 24/7? that you don't want the whole world to know everything you're doing? how dare you imply that you're a human being and that privacy is one of the most important rights you have? now dance monkey, dance /s

to quote professor farnsworth: I don't want to live on this planet anymore

couldn't have said it better myself!

GDPR was a good start.

Honestly, I agree with you, but GDPR is barely a start, it does little to actually protect people's privacy. It needs to expand a lot to be an actual weapon against surveillance

While historical precedent is informative, it should not constrain our conceptualization of fundamental rights. The context and needs of society evolve over time, and so should our understanding of what constitutes a fundamental right.

Privacy, has grown in importance with the surge of digital communication and mass surveillance.

Regarding privileged communication, it is impossible to define the boundary between what should be private and what should not. Just because some information might seem mundane doesn't mean it lacks potential misuse by bad actors.

By fostering a culture of respect for privacy in our day-to-day lives, we strengthen protections against more significant intrusions.

The mind-reading stuff is still a fantasy and will be so also in the future.

Haha, of course they don't literally read our minds, but with enough data, it's possible to gather a lot about the way a person thinks

I find that the software industry is one of those industries where all role names are made up and change meaning all the time. As you said, just a few years ago (ok maybe a decade) a "Software Engineer" was a person who built Software, now it's a frontend developer that has a basic understanding of the backend.

Despite the terminological thefts and oversimplifications, I'm still proud to be a part of this industry. We're like the James Bonds of the digital world; we go by different names, but the substance of our work and our contributions are what truly define us. So, let them call us whatever they want... They may not always understand what we do, but they sure as hell need us to do it!

Agreed. If the risks were real they would just outright stop working on their AI products. This is nothing more than a PR statement