Bonum Certa Men Certa

My Year as a Digital Vegan — Part II — Impact of a 'COVID Year'

By Dr. Andy Farnell

Series parts:

  1. My Year as a Digital Vegan — Part I — 2021 in Review
  2. YOU ARE HERE ☞ Impact of a 'COVID Year'


Line Check



Summary: Dr. Andy Farnell shares his experiences from this past year; he focuses on what it's like to be an educator in these troubling times with mass adoption of troubling new 'tech'

Setting reasonable limits



I've come to see tech-rights as including "digital self defence" of personal time/attention, not just networks and hosts. As well as Software Freedom, it's about defending against technologically-mediated abuse. So I wonder if my ostensible "survival" owes anything to Digital Veganism. I did hit burnout myself, but adapted and slowed down in time. As a freelancer/visiting professor for more than 20 years, self-management is wired in. Screen/ing against the tide of doom was as easy as setting some new keyword filters to pipe everything that smells funky to /dev/null. All those URGENT messages you sent were never read, and nothing of value was lost.

Dropping pointless make-work tasks and assertively advising people to revise their "expectations" of me wasn't hard. Some egos were bruised, but the upshot is that I'm still here to serve and fight another day. I wonder about the well-meaning but ultimately harmful 'pleaser' instincts we humans have against self-preservation, and how the system exploits that. Listen to the flight attendant who says "Please put on your own mask before attempting to help others".



"Technology is a tool to empower, and that means the right to use it to reverse implied power relationships."So I also noticed how some people allowed themselves to be bullied by technology they felt unable to control. Surprisingly, I disagree with the Portuguese governments move to make contacting workers out of hours illegal. I prefer a fluid, laissez-faire dynamic. Sometimes I am perfectly happy to respond as if on call, and will do extra work for a team. I am committed to those who depend on me, so long as time and mental energy allows. The flip side is that I'll tell people clearly when "that ain't happening", or even ghost them for a few days when I feel like it. The road runs both ways. Technology is a tool to empower, and that means the right to use it to reverse implied power relationships.



This year saw the emergence of abusive "bossware" and worker monitoring software. Four of my students wanted to investigate this and did brilliant projects delving into the psychology of control and productivity. In my own work, I took saying "no" and establishing firm boundaries against chaotic management one step further this year, by drawing up a "Personal Terms and Conditions". It's not iron-clad, or an excuse to be a jerk, just a statement of my values and where I draw the line on some things.



As a freelancer this is something I've always had, but only in my head, and rarely needed to explicitly discuss with clients. Now it's more formally written it's something all clients, recruiters and HR people are "deemed to have read and understood" when hiring me. That seems like a polite way to be clear in advance. It feels professional and avoids the embarrassing tedium of explaining the same points over, and hopefully carries some clout in the event of a dispute.



Inspiration came from friends in other professions who seem much more organised around creating contracts to supply analysis, legal advice, therapy, creative services, and construction work. Despite bodies like the BCS and IEEE I think in the "digital technology sector" we are rather bad as coders, trainers, developers and consultants at setting out firm expectations. I wonder whether organisations like the EFF and FSF have a role helping coders template-out ethical codes to protect creators in a similar way to how the GPL protects what we create.



I am interested in further investigating the legal force of tech workers creating their own written T&Cs as some workplaces become increasingly abusive and intrusive. Perhaps I'll set it as a project for some Law and Computing students next semester. As most individuals do, I suspect that institutions will tacitly sign-off without ever reading them properly, and so, at-will employee power relations notwithstanding, some semblance of symmetry can be reclaimed in that they are at least as effective as T&Cs written by an employer.



Remotely like learning

As the two-year mark of the pandemic approaches, I've revised my thoughts on remote learning. If you ask thirty or forty students their opinion of an online video session you won't get a straight answer. Exposed to group-think conformity pressure, while their comments are possibly being recorded… guess what they are going to say? Face-to-face the story is different. Obviously, the in-person group, who all elected to come on-campus, is selection biased too. However, what they actually tell me about remote teaching is that they hate it. And I've spoken to enough of them to know that universities are distorting the truth about this. From a tech-rights viewpoint this participation bias is interesting. A lot of mischief and misinformation is being made around it.



"From a tech-rights viewpoint this participation bias is interesting. A lot of mischief and misinformation is being made around it."The buzzword hybrid working hasn't really been thought out any deeper than "mix a little of this and that and we'll be fine". No real communication analysis, project management, data modelling or other theory seems to have been attempted in most scenarios. I appreciate it's early days, and for climate reasons a new age of highly flexible, mixed method employment is required. But we ain't there yet. Adding technology to teaching simply increases labour, and it is no substitute for human contact. I think we need to be honest about what we're valuing in edu-tech. I suspect uniformity, repeatability, and data gathering have usurped more important qualities. On reflection, hybrid teaching methods have been a good adaptation to get us though a period of crisis and ongoing uncertainty, but cannot be a "new normal".



Talking face-to-face, with pens and a board anyone can draw on is just self-evidently a vastly superior experience. Immersed in eye contact and non-verbal communications I found a much deeper connection with what students are thinking. That enables not just a denser and deeper knowledge transfer, but an inter-personal rapport regarding how much they are affected by the pandemic, by misinformation and propaganda, and how paranoia about overbearing technological social control is eating them up.

Recent Techrights' Posts

They Want Activists to Just Barely Walk and Eat, Not Do Activism Anymore
It's sort of like the ending of '1984'
Non-Free JavaScript Programs in Banks Aren't Even the Biggest Problem
Technology was supposed to make life easier; in practice, however, for most of us the opposite effect can be observed
IBM is Obliterating Fedora
"Fedora releases were shipping with an increasing number of bugs on launch day even while I was using it for a several year stretch."
Red Hat Layoffs Expected in 5 Days (Monday)
"They will announce and proceed with the cuts on 08/11."
 
Microsoft, Already Borrowing 3 Billion Dollars a Month, is Trying to Cause Many People to Resign
MSN (i.e. Microsoft) and others openly admit it
GAFAM 'Says' is Front Page "News"
The point of journalism is to check and assess facts, not parrot what people and companies merely claim
Links 07/08/2025: Apple Makes False Promises, More Trouble for Microsoft
Links for the day
OSS Didn't Always Mean Open Source Software
"oligarchs all the way down"
The Register MS Does More Microsoft Sez or GitHub Sez (Says) Pieces
60 minutes ago
Quit Perpetuating the Narrative of Gemini Protocol 'Dying' (It's False)
The "whisper campaign" against Gemini Protocol
Criticising Social Control Media in Social Control Media
Many people are quitting Social Control Media (fewer of them announce this in public)
Slopfarms Are Typically Fake News
Slopfarms typically relay falsehoods
Gemini Links 06/08/2025: Replacing a Pocket Watch and Buying in Bulk
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 06, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, August 06, 2025
August Hits Microsoft Hard: Dead Divisions, Dead Products, Layoffs Again (on Week 1)
Microsoft's debt is soaring
Slopwatch: Slow Day for LLM Slop, Serial Sloppers Still at It in Their Slopfarms
The Web would be better off if those sites went offline
Links 06/08/2025: Substack in Trouble, Slop Sceptic Shira Perlmutter Seeks Emergency Injunction Pending Appeal
Links for the day
Gemini Links 06/08/2025: Pinephone, Reverse-Engineering, and More
Links for the day
Links 06/08/2025: Faked Values of Slop Companies and Government Bailouts
Links for the day
FOSSY 2025 Conference Safety
The GAFAM-funded FOSSY 2025 is over
Microsoft's Favourite Pay-to-Say 'Analyst' Firm Has Just Collapsed
'Analysts' that helped propel Microsoft to fictional values akin to Ponzi schemes
Ask Google (Jeeves)
What does Google "know", not know, or would rather forget (or embellish)?
They Want You To Talk About Trump or 'The Other Bill' in Relation to Trafficking of Underage Girls for Sexual Exploitation
Just something we wanted to say...
How to Quadruple Your "Goodwill" Value and Grow Your (Wall) Street "Value" From $152B to $4000B Without Producing a Single Successful Product/Service
The longer it goes on for, the bigger the implosion will be
Staying Productive
Two very reputable institutions recently told us they now reckon Microsoft is somehow funding those SLAPPs against us
A Blow for Patent Ambitions of Bill Epsteingate
It's about money
66 Countries Where More People Use iPhones (or iPads) Than Microsoft Windows, According to statCounter Data
a list of countries where iOS now exceeds Windows
Apple's iOS Bigger Than Microsoft Windows in Many Countries
This ought to alarm Microsoft
The Mainstream Media Talks About Spotify Share Price and Price Hikes, Not Its Debt Increasing by About 33% in Just 12 Months
Spotify isn't a company in good shape
New "US Editor for The Register" is 80% Microsoft and Windows
they typically just treat Microsoft like the "Holy Grail" of "IT"
Microsoft is Apparently Sending Gag Orders or NDAs to Staff That Got Laid Off (“We were told not to post on LinkedIn. Not to say anything.”)
The main lies we keep seeing
Richard M. Stallman Has Published AI Memos Since 1980 (45 Years Ago)
Back when the term AI actually meant something
Gemini Links 06/08/2025: BitTorrent and Feedly Bots
Links for the day
Windows All-Time Lows, Android All-Time Highs in Kuwait
New lows for Windows can be found in many countries this month
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, August 05, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, August 05, 2025
Openwashing Slop... Using Slop!
So get ready for "open" "hey hi" with its proprietary models to engage in openwashing, helped by serial sloppers who use the LLMs to produce fake 'articles'.
On "Tragedy of the Commons in the Production of Digital Artifacts"
There's a better way to do things. None of that should involve GAFAM.
Gemini Links 05/08/2025: Opel Zoo near Frankfurt and Alhena 5.2.5
Links for the day
The Inflammatory Influence of Social Control Media Giants
CPC's ByteDance says it's cool
Microsoft v Planet Earth
Is Microsoft profitable?
IRC Turns 37
Internet Relay Chat (short: IRC), which started in 1988, turns 37 this month
Shortly After a Microsofter Took Over The Register as Editor in Chief Microsoft Tim (Tim Anderson) is Back and It's Still Microsoft Propaganda, Sometimes Funded by Microsoft
Notice his focus
Stricter Enforcement of Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act is Sorely Needed
Who's keeping track anyway?
Calling Plagiarism "Intelligence" is Pure Genius, Brilliance!
One thing to "like" (or dislike) about LLMs is how they're falsely marketed using various buzzwords
Geminispace Promises Simplicity But Also Provides a "bunch of forums that get flood-filled by agitation against the very essence of Gemini itself"
claims of stagnation in Geminispace started because of a person who spent a long time agitating against GNU/Linux as well
Zimbabweans Aren't Into Windows or Microsoft
This cannot be good news for GAFAM
Microsoft's Washington Layoffs Aren't Everything, They're Definitely Not Happening in Just One State in the US
Washington is just more strict with WARN notices
Gemini Links 05/08/2025: Lagrange v1.18.6, No Stagnation in Geminispace, and Fake Coding (Slop)
Links for the day
The Register's Editor in Chief (Who Left for Google) Told Me "AI" Was a Bubble, But Now The Register Gets Paid to Participate in Inflating This Bubble
A lot of the online media is a scam
The Register is Desperate for Money, According to The Register
I decided to check how they're doing as a business
Some Cola Formulas Aren't Secret, But the Barrier is the Branding
That's the power of the channel/distribution, marketing, and brand recognition (accomplished through endless marketing)
Introducing Mission:Libre and FreeXR (and BreakXR)
efforts that accompany the foundations put there by the Free Software Foundation in 1985
Slopwatch: WebProNews, LinuxSecurity, and Some Success Stories
Google News still has a slopfarm issue
Links 05/08/2025: Hey Hi (AI) Passing Fads and GAFAM "Embracing the Military"
Links for the day
Links 05/08/2025: Samsung and Microsoft Layoffs
Links for the day
Rumours of Mass Layoffs at Red Hat Next Week (August 11th, 2025)
The eleventh means next Monday
IBM is Shutting Down (Piecewise)
IBM is basically being liquidated
The Debian Language Police Department (PD)
"there has never been complaints about anyone that was offended by this -off package"
Tesla's Debt More Than Doubled in 2 Years and the Company Will Operate in the Red (at a Loss) Quite Soon
If your first-quarter net income is $409 million and you borrow billions from banks, plus interest to pay on those loans, then you're not far from returning to losses
When The Register MS Says "Linux Backdoor" It Actually Talks About Malware
The leading story in The Register US/MS this morning is Microsoft
Microsoft Windows Fell to 19% "Market Share" in Montenegro
Microsoft must be well aware of this trend
Why We Also Include Gopher Links in Our Gemini (Protocol) Links
There are still many people who use Gopher to relay their messages (like blog posts). They're mostly technical people.
Shouting is an Indication of a Lack of Convincing Argument
Beware what they are attempting to distract from
Mongolia: Microsoft Windows at All-Time Low
in 2009 when Windows was at 99.45% in Mongolia the company was "worth" less than 200 billion dollars
About a Quarter of Today's "linux" News in Google News Came From One Domain and It's a Slopfarm
Not kidding!
Gemini Links 05/08/2025: Zombie Threat and Switching to NixOS
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, August 04, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, August 04, 2025
ChatGPT in Trouble
Watch out for the newer buzzwords
The Register MS Links to the Wrong statCounter Page
They link to older data
Dr. Andy Farnell Explains How Google Turned From "Librarian" Into "Oracle", Telling Us What to Think Instead of Where to Look
Google was always a lousy librarian
Microsoft Layoffs Continue in August 2025
If Microsoft is doing so well, how come about 10 rounds of layoffs in about 7 months in 2025?