Bonum Certa Men Certa

More Technical People Recognise the Importance of Being Offline Sometimes (and the Covert Dangers of Technology)

Video download link | md5sum 63f768f69464807407eeb1d90d67bda4 Staying Offline When Away From Keyboard Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0



Summary: There's growing recognition that "high-tech" isn't this Utopian thing that improves lives in perpetuity and there's more to life than being online and getting "likes" from strangers (or people not seen in person for many years); in fact, a lot of technology has gradually been warped and turned against the users (because exercising control over them can be seductive and even profitable)

THE most resistance (or antagonism) to supposedly "modern" technology tends to come not from people who fail to understand it but from people who understand it the most or grasp it best. That's why many Facebook employees outright refuse to allow their kids to use Facebook. They know the 'sausage factory' all too well; they see the gore and hear the screams. They also see the bad ingredients going into finished and well-presented "products".



It would be wise to refrain from "Luddite" analogies because the motivations of Luddites were vastly different and inherently based on productivity/distribution, not "ethics"; a lot of people like yours truly oppose voting machines because those aren't trustworthy and we've seen ample evidence of how they can be tampered, ruining democracy by just flipping a few bits here and there. Speaking of democracy, the next video (after this) will discuss Social Control Media, which is all about manipulation and increasingly about control. See this new article by Manuel Matuzović.

"Technology stopped improving a long time ago, maybe decades ago."My wife and I decided a long time ago not to have mobile phones and certainly none of those "Smart" gadgets for the home, including "spy meters" that the energy suppliers already sent us about 30 nags/reminders about, in turn charging us extra (de facto penalties) for not having these. Technology needs to have limits/boundaries and we need to look back at how we lived before we had 24/7/365-connected machines at all corners of lots of "modern" homes. They like to tell us this digitalisation makes "green" (less paper), conveniently omitted the cost of producing gadgets and keeping them charged. In a lot of ways we have not progressed. "Dumb" homes (or "dumb" cities) were OK. Stress levels were lower, it was harder for the boss the bother the employee, and dignity of people (or their family) could be preserved rather easily. Looking back at my childhood, firstly the PC was always local and not portable (1980s, no spying/"telemetry"), then the PC became temporarily connected, i.e. online over dial-up (surveillance becomes possible). When I started university and we had Ethernet my PC was almost always connected (before surveillance capitalism flourished) but sometimes turned off. In the past decade we saw more and more of these "Smart" phones, i.e. always-on always-connected spies in the pocket. Never do that last one. Don't accept fashionable consumerism, even if there's peer pressure or a 'gift' from the employer.

The video above, recorded before writing this text, talked about Luke's video from yesterday (borrowed from IRC). He basically suggests people stay offline, and don't mistake him for a technophobe; he's very tech-literate.

"Technology is like medicine; in moderation it is beneficial, but don't turn it into a religion."Technology stopped improving a long time ago, maybe decades ago. Any recent "developments" are mostly superficial or based around renaming for hype's fake (like "Hey Hi" and/or clown computing, in effect trying to use up the available CPU capacity... 'crypto' 'coins' have shown us how desperate people are to waste this 'untapped power'; CPU scaling works better than constant churn).

30 years ago computers got a lot of things done, as many tasks were even 100% comparable to what we do today. IRC was probably the first thing I used when I got a connection at home (browsers were very, very primitive at the time... the type that fits onto a single floppy disk... akin to some Gemini clients). I still use IRC and it's more or less the same as in the 1990s (even fully compatible).

Technology is like medicine; in moderation it is beneficial, but don't turn it into a religion. Don't live inside a sleeping bag in the church (to feel closer to a deity), not even if you pursue a lifetime as a nun.

Recent Techrights' Posts

"Many of the Red Hat Employees Are Still Looking for Work"
Shame on IBM's CEO
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, September 04, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, September 04, 2025
Microsoft Started With Code Literally From The Trash, Nothing Has Improved Since
The reality is, there are systems and code that are reliable. But they're not Microsoft's.
BASIC Predates Microsoft by Over a Decade, Microsoft-Controlled Sites Like The Register MS Don't Want You to Know This
The state of the media is really bad when it relies a lot on oligarchs' money and is appointing editors who are working for oligarchs
Hypothesis That New McKinsey/Microsoft Executive Inside Red Hat Will Outsource Research and Development Operations to India (Like They Do in IBM)
IBM is floundering
Slopwatch: Scams, Fake Articles About "Linux", Plagiarism, and Worse
Perhaps some time soon the LLMs or the "Big LLMs" will run out of money (to borrow) and go offline, leaving those slopfarms in a tough place
Gemini Links 04/09/2025: Means of Production and Rusting Out
Links for the day
Links 04/09/2025: Science, Hardware, and Eyes on China
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/09/2025: Digital Minimalism and Social Control Media
Links for the day
IBM's GNU/Linux Divestment, Based on Hard But Anecdotal Evidence (IBM Fails to Recognise How Much Money It Made and Can Still Make From "Linux")
Love us or hate us, a lot of what we've been saying about Red Hat under IBM turns out to be rather accurate
Links 04/09/2025: Massive Microsoft Staff Cuts (Barely Reported), "Strange Conspiracy Theory Is Reportedly Spreading Inside OpenAI"
Links for the day
Activists Can Win, But Keep an Eye on the Ball and on the Trophy
GitHub is dying, it was a loss-making trap, not free hosting
Gemini Links 04/09/2025: Katrina Remembered, Distracted Driving, and Virtual Economics
Links for the day
At This Point It's No Longer Matthew Garrett But People Who Fund Matthew Garrett (or Companies That Fund His SLAPPs Against My Wife and I)
The only thing worse than misogynists are misogynists who fail to respect other people's right to go on holiday
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, September 03, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, September 03, 2025
The UEFI 9/11 - Part VI - This Serious Harm Was Planned for Over a Decade, Not an Accident or Merely Some Misfortune
The term "Serious Harm" is legally meaningful here
GNOME Unfit for Diversity and Inclusion
GNOME's leadership is using "bad words"
Brodie Robertson Addressing the Recently-Discovered Comments
Most people probably knew nothing about this until he wrote a response
Red Hat QA Team "Had Shrunk by Half Over the Past Year." (After IBM Divestment)
If Red Hat's workforce is being moved to the East, then RHEL can become a national security problem
Slopwatch: "Open Source" and "Linux" News Faked, Made by Bots and Entered Into Google News
Spam combined with slop about "Linux" has entered Google News
Links 03/09/2025: Microsoft Causes Mass Layoffs Outside Microsoft Also, "Google Can Keep Paying for Firefox Search Deal"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/09/2025: calendar.txt, Alhena 5.3.1, and ROOPHLOCH
Links for the day
The Theory That the Man From McKinsey, Whom Red Hat Took From Microsoft a Month Ago as Executive, Wants 'Efficiency' (Lower Salaries)
So far... no "official" word
When Your Site's Articles Are Being 'Cheapened' by Slop as Feature Images
Dr. Farnell should become an advisor to The Register MS
Certificate Authority Let's Encrypt Drops to Only Half a Dozen Capsules and 0.2% of the Whole in Geminispace, Self-Signed is the Way to Go
It used to have hundreds, according to Lupa
Doing to Red Hat What They Already Did (and Still Do) to IBM
there seems to be a drive to hire cheaper staff, and it may be led by somebody Red Hat hired from Microsoft
Links 03/09/2025: Salesforce's Latest Mass Layoffs, 93% in Large Poll at The Register MS Say UK Government Should Dump Microsoft
Links for the day
Preparations for Our 19th Anniversary Have Already Begun
When we get back we'll probably sort out some balloons and venue for the next party
Pleased After 2 Years With team.blue
Moving from a Content Management System (CMS, dynamic) to a Static Site Generator (SSG) was a wise decision that made life so much easier
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is Being Attacked by Organisations Jealous of Its Principled Stance and Longevity
Nobody is perfect, but imperfection does not instantaneously imply sinister intent
If You Reject the Google Verdict in the US, Then You Should Also Reject the "Modern" Web (Do Something About It)
Gemini Protocol is still open; it cannot be hijacked or subverted because it's frozen by design and by intention
Open Source Initiative IRS Filing: Almost All the Money is Corporate, Stefano Maffuli (Executive Director) Takes About a Quarter of That Money for Openwashing of "AI" Ponzi Scheme
OSI is currently little but a PR/marketing agency of Microsoft
Many People Are "Leaving" Red Hat, Even High-Level Managers
Something is definitely going on at Red Hat
Techrights Has Been Subjected to Calls of Violence (and Death Threats), It Never Condoned Violence
I have no sympathy for people who call violence "free speech" and then get in trouble
Condoning Violent Behaviour and "Free Speech"
perhaps Microsoft Lunduke lost touch with what constitutes violence
Takeaway From the Google Verdict: GAFAM Has Too Much Control (Even Over the US Government and Courts With Government Appointees)
Many people feel disappointed but hardly surprised by the verdict
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Turns 40 in One Month
As noted a few days ago, several times in fact, many people now recognise the importance of the FSF's mission, even if most people don't know what the FSF is
Many Microsoft "Assets" Are Fabricated Baloney (to Game the Numbers)
At times it seems like what we deal with are many weak patents (on algorithms), valuations or speculations based on hype ("hey hi"), and stocks held by Microsoft and its own staff
"Voluntary" Layoffs at Microsoft (to Game the Numbers, Sugar-Coating a Crisis)
"Employees interested have until the end of October to volunteer."
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 02, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 02, 2025