Bonum Certa Men Certa

The Cheapening of the Programmer is a Threat to Human Rights of All Computer Users

Cheaper comes at a (hidden) cost

Putrajaya Night Scenes



Summary: From the era of computer experts (down to the low level of computing with transistors), mathematicians, physics gurus and respected technicians we've come to orders-following, user-apathetic engineers who are overworked, grossly underpaid, and way too fearful of raising ethical concerns (voicing disagreement can result in prompt dismissal, followed by perpetual unemployment) and this ensures digital oppression without checks and balances

THE really old computers were very expensive. They used to be the luxury of large universities, large research institutions, nuclear simulation facilities and so on (putting aside corporations and the private sector at large). At the very least one programmer/engineer was needed for each machine (an operator) and on-site repairs required whole teams, coordinating with off-site manufacturers and other suppliers. Many machines were leased, not owned, and real owners didn't just buy new components each time anything broke down (it was still cheaper to repair, not outsourced to cheap-labour markets or 'cheap labour' countries). Computers used to be large beasts (as big as whole rooms/entire buildings if not bigger... as in cross-building/site) and a real pain to maintain.



"Many things have changed over the past half a century."In 2020 one can buy a new computer for as little as a hundred bucks. A decent computer, not some bare-bones chip that's pluggable to a screen and keyboard/mouse (those cost a lot less than a hundred bucks or even fifty bucks).

Many things have changed over the past half a century. Computing generally evolves a lot faster than most scientific disciplines, both in terms of hardware and software (the latter typically evolves in line with quantity and speed of available hardware). Notice, for example, last year's video about UNIX inventors and what came before UNIX (obviously these predecessors perished). It's not a long clip and it's quite strictly copyrighted by the 'IP' sticklers. Hence YouTube:



UNIX deviated, shifting away from that time's norm. Blind obedience begets trouble and repressive societies (lack of scientific advancement). Brilliance starts/originates from divergence. We need 'rebels'.

As figosdev told me a few hours ago about Richard Stallman, "I still admire him a great deal (he's never not going to be the founder of all this, indeed he and Gilmore are the main reasons BSD is free as well. So that's TWO Unix-like operating systems he's helped free, and no, that's about it if you count stuff in production use. But it's two he's helped free and zero he hasn't helped."

The "mini-computer" (or minicomputer) they allude to in the video is PDP-7 -- so very "mini" that it was 'only' 500 kg (half a tonne) and cost as much as a house. "In a 1970 survey," as Wikipedia puts it. "The New York Times suggested a consensus definition of a minicomputer as a machine costing less than US$25,000 (equivalent to $165,000 in 2019), with an input-output device such as a teleprinter and at least four thousand words of memory, that is capable of running programs in a higher level language, such as Fortran or BASIC."

Back then, computers were a lot more expensive than their operators.

"A few years ago we started noticing the growing expectation -- as in job descriptions -- that sysadmins should be programmers and vice versa, with buzzwords like "DevOps" or various other nonsense (e.g. buzzwords with "AI" or "Sec" inserted in-between)."To be clear, the cheapening of computers since then isn't the fault of China. "Western" companies (as well as "Eastern" ones, notably those in Japan and South Korea) chose to outsource to mainland China for their own selfish interests. The abundance of low-cost computers then meant that more and more people had them, even since childhood. That presently persists and the trend accentuates. It meant, especially in recent decades, that low-income places (like India) had access to/capability of computer literacy and programming competencies.

A few years ago we started noticing the growing expectation -- as in job descriptions -- that sysadmins should be programmers and vice versa, with buzzwords like "DevOps" or various other nonsense (e.g. buzzwords with "AI" or "Sec" inserted in-between). The general idea is, you pay people less to do more work and handle/learn more tasks (steepening the training curve), in some cases handling more responsibilities for the same salary (e.g. programming in daytime, then being 'on-call' at nighttime, just in case of downtime-inducing incidents). You then hire fewer people. So much for "job creators"...

"If the computer industry was meant to enrich life and provide job security, then it's certainly not doing that (not anymore)."Much has been said about the harms of computing, notably privacy erosion, addiction, misinformation and so on. Not much is being discussed in relation to professions of those crafting and maintaining computer systems. A lot of the argument boil down to unbridled nationalism (basically blaming the "other", as Donald Trump does so hypocritically with China). Within this context, free software (free-as-in-freedom) is mostly a side issue. Human and labour rights are of greater relevance and unless we start the dialogue about these matters, it'll continue getting worse each year. Wages have already stagnated, many more technical jobs have been deprecated (COVID-19 gave more excuses towards this outcome, long sought by greedy managers regardless), and stress is typically increasing while burden shifts from organisations to individual people. Under the flag of "AI" (pronounced "HEY HI!" -- how fitting) they introduce themselves at the door with pink slips, passing all the savings (on salaries) to heads of corporations and rich shareholders.

If the computer industry was meant to enrich life and provide job security, then it's certainly not doing that (not anymore). Ask some recent Computer Science graduates. People scrolling up and down Facebook "walls" isn't happiness and it does not enrich life. Facebook, it should be noted, sent many workers home. Many will never come back. Not on site, not offsite either. This predated COVID-19. As somebody put it last year: "Facebook laid off around 6% of the workforce and no one knows... omg FB management is awesome. How they did it.. for a WARN notice the threshold is 500 people... So they laid off 400ish for the past 4 months" (Microsoft did the same this past summer, laying off about 5,000 people in total, including in datacentres).

"The way things are going isn't sustainable, nor is it tenable if we rely on the digital equivalent of conscientious objectors to better steer technology towards benefit to users, as opposed to corporate overlords."The general trend is, technical professionals are treated as increasingly disposable as computers become growingly ubiquitous and the public mostly complacent about the whole thing. Nobody bothered thinking about the impact this can have on morality and ethics. when people are desperate to keep the scarce job they still hold they're a lot less likely to object to or dissent against immoral orders (or even polite instructions that are in principle open to debate). They tell us that we're overpaid and "expensive" (senior workers more so, hence they get thrown out earlier on in their careers), then they replace us with low-paid labour elsewhere. Again, not the fault of 'cheap labour' countries; for them those jobs may mean as much as literally putting food on the table.

The way things are going isn't sustainable, nor is it tenable if we rely on the digital equivalent of conscientious objectors to better steer technology towards benefit to users, as opposed to corporate overlords.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
This Saturday It's Gonna be 3.5 Years* Since Russia Invaded Ukraine. No Microsoft Protests Against Microsoft Having Provided Russia With Services.
Companies do not have consistent policies and enforcement of "corporate values" is somewhat of an egg salad
 
Links 23/08/2025: onmicrosoft.com as Spam Cannon, The Cheeto-Intel Deal Is Official
Links for the day
Wired Complained About LLM Slop Only Days Before It Got Caught Doing That Itself
Never throw stones in a glass house
IBM "Value" Down 14.16% in a Month, Red Hat Layoffs Allegedly Discussed 12 Days Ago
"IBM is a dinosaur. Dinosaurs get extinct when the don't keep up."
We're Seeing More Countries Where Windows Isn't Even in Second Place Anymore (Third or Worse)
In a way, Microsoft can barely even hold onto second place anymore
The US Government is Now in the Business (Literally!) of Saving Microsoft and Intel
This means that President TACO/Cheeto now has grater financial incentive to also prop up Microsoft and Windows
Microsoft Workers on Canonical's Payroll
If you want something that's sort of like Ubuntu but is not controlled by Canonical, then look into Linux Mint, Debian, or LMDE
GNU/Linux Climbs to 4% in Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone isn't a very rich country (to say the least), but it's better off than some of its neighbours
The SLAPPS Run Out of Oxygen Because They're Abuse of Process
At the end of the day we plan to publish over 1,000 articles explaining what happened
The Register MS Gets Paid by the Employer of the Previous Editor in Chief to Promote the "AI" Ponzi Scheme, Which Does Considerable Damage to the Web and to Online Journalists
The Register MS can 'badmouth' slop all it wants; it gets paid to inflate this bubble. It's actively participating in it.
Soon It'll be Autumn, Time to Repair Things
Where they don't charge an arm and a leg
Doing Our Best to Cover Software Patents When the Mainstream Media Does Not
Even the FSF has its limits
Gemini Links 23/08/2025: August Questions and Network Solutions
Links for the day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, August 22, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, August 22, 2025
Microsoft Has Issues in Guyana
It's not just Guyana
About 25% of the "Linux" News/Results in Google News Today Are LLM Slop, Almost 20% From the Same Rogue Operators of Slopfarms
Google, which tries to market itself as an LLM giant, apparently fails to understand what's wrong with it
Harassing People on Holiday
There are "no-go areas"; but that assumes all laws firms have ethical standards
The Great, Undeniable Value of Paper Trail, Not Purely Digital Systems
Suppose you have nothing but bits on someone else's computer and "word of mouth"...
The Company Behind Ars Technica, Reddit and Wired Caught Publishing LLM Slop (It Also Admits It Now)
Condé Nast busted
Links 22/08/2025: Lagrange 1.18.8, Wired Magazine and Business Insider Caught Resorting to LLM Slop
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Sites Gone Rogue, Google Promoting Lies, and DDoS Attacks by Plagiarism Giants
Charlatans and frauds engage in a war against artistic industries, mislabeling plagiarism as "AI"
Links 22/08/2025: Cisco Layoffs, LA Times Says "AI Hype is Fading Fast"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/08/2025: K for Kentucky and Caddy Versus LLM Slopbots
Links for the day
The "End Software Patents" Initiative of the FSF Explains "WHY [to] ABOLISH SOFTWARE PATENTS"
We hope to cover patent-related issues more and more as the big anniversary of the FSF approaches
Freenode Sniffing
The grown-ups left the building
The Only Thing Worse Than Misinformation is Misinformation Sold to Everyone as "Intelligence"
Misplaced trust is worse than none at all
The Register MS Now Openly Admits LLM Hype Does Damage, But It's Also Being Paid to Participate in the LLM Hype (With Paid 'Articles' and 'Webcasts' for Paying Advertisers)
The Register MS gets paid to do this
End of the Smartphone Era? No.
Maybe the media should focus on producing accurate, factual news
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, August 21, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, August 21, 2025
Enshittification of Airports, Airlines, and Airplanes
If people are willing to tolerate standard declines and enshittification (nowadays sold as "pivot to AI" or "replaced by AI" or "AI layoffs") they will pay for it some other way
Latest Is Not Greatest: The Case of "Foldable" Tech
don't be shamed into abandoning old things just because the "fashion industry" of Apple and Samsung tells you to
Airlines and Their Tricks That Only Work in the 'Digital Age'
People sceptical of the direction technology has taken are not "Luddites"
Open Source Initiative (OSI), Which Became a Propaganda Front of Microsoft and "Hey Hi" (Hype, Misnomer), Wants You to Forget These Scandals
A lot of these issues won't be set aside until there's a resolution
The Culture of Overnight Coding
An industry-wise push-back is needed
Windows Down to New Lows in Guinea Bissau and Many Countries Around It
If Android is accounted for, Windows is down to about 10%
Gemini Links 21/08/2025: Modern Dating, Debian 13, and Apache
Links for the day
Microsoft Has Had About 10 Waves of Mass Layoffs So Far This Year (Not Two as Mainstream Media and Slopfarms Endlessly Claim)
Notice how the MSM (Mainstream Media) never mentions the debt of Microsoft. It is a conscious, deliberate decision.
Links 21/08/2025: Covid Cases on the Rise, "Social Media Trolls", Russia's Attacks Intensify
Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/08/2025: The Attraction of Back Alleys, Initramfs, and BSD ISPs
Links for the day
Links 21/08/2025: Stephanie Shirley Dies and "Groklaw Domain Hijacked?"
Links for the day
Search in 2025 (Age of DDoS Attacks Under the Guise of "AI" "Innovation")
One common concern when things go "live" is that any random bot out there can execute queries, pumping up RAM and CPU usage, as happened when we used MediaWiki and WordPress
Using Slop for Images Does Not Make Your Site Look Advanced or Witty, It Just Makes Your Whole Work Look Like Presumed Plagiarism
Lazy slobs and Serial Sloppers use the guise/excuse of "AI" to plagiarise and spam the Web
Financing of the "Hey Hi" (AI) Bubble by Those Who Profit From Planetary Destruction (Global Warming)
It's about personal gain, too
Richard Stallman Will Speak in Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress
it's good to see that the FSF pays considerable respect to it founder, who is moreover invited to speak at events
(At Least) Second Wave of Mass Layoffs in Microsoft This Month
This is not the first time this month that Microsoft has mass layoffs
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 20, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, August 20, 2025