Bonum Certa Men Certa

My Year as a Digital Vegan — Part I — 2021 in Review

By Dr. Andy Farnell

Series parts:

  1. YOU ARE HERE ☞ 2021 in Review


Small ducks



Summary: Dr. Andy Farnell shares his experiences from this past year; today we start with a short first part

For those wondering "What's it like to live as a Digital Vegan?", here's a quick review of my 2021, some of the pleasures and pains, wins and losses while taking a principled stand on digital technology.



My not-so-supermarket

2021 began with the minor annoyance of my local supermarket trampling on my privacy. They deployed face recognition in their stores and so convinced me to not shop there. I'd sometimes spend €£10 per week at Co-Op. A few friends joined me in a boycott. The company have not budged despite consumer backlash and concerns over the legality of their actions. Maybe you can help change their minds in 2022. People in the US may soon need a bio-metric shakedown to buy food, so if this isn't on your radar maybe take a closer look at where high-street shopping is headed. Papers please!



It made me think about the value of competition and diversity, and importance of small shops. I am lucky to live where there's a choice of 4 other main supermarkets, and dozens of independent stores. You're more vulnerable if you live in a rural area and your monopoly food-baron decides to go rogue. Supporting small shops, even if they cost much more is a long term investment, so when I can I buy more produce from the local butcher, greengrocer, bakery and hardware store. Commerce is about relationships, not just prices.



"It seems we need to develop a more mature model of public-private boundaries and "incidental harm" when, for example, a visitor is subjected to surveillance by "smart" TV or Siri type voice technology in your home."A friend of mine got locked into a miserable dispute over a shared driveway, and drawn into a technological arms race. Battles over camera doorbells got me thinking about the concepts of space and ownership. A hard dualism between private and public spaces seems to create some poor outcomes. The scourge of CCTV, alarm systems, Amazon Ring doorbells and other components of the Fear Machine is a growing problem.



It may be your shop or house, but your presence in my neighbourhood doesn't come without obligations. And the moment you invite me in, I essentially become a temporary stakeholder. Injurious man-traps protecting your drinks cabinet wouldn't be okay (you'd at least get sued if not subject to criminal prosecution). It seems we need to develop a more mature model of public-private boundaries and "incidental harm" when, for example, a visitor is subjected to surveillance by "smart" TV or Siri type voice technology in your home. Anyway, on the plus side, all of these ideas are feeding into some great chapters for my next book Ethics For Hackers.

Going back to school

I resumed face-to-face teaching in 2021. Earlier in the pandemic I wrote about the value of online teaching. It was a biased analysis, speaking for myself as a teacher without ever really asking my students for their side. Being less experienced they simply didn't know what they were missing until they came back into classes.



Many much-loved colleagues quit this summer. A university campus dominated by students with just a handful of lecturers feels strange - but somehow right, almost the antidote to Ben Ginsberg's "all administrative faculty". I fantasise that students might just figure out how to do their own degree-awarding and initiate an anarchist takeover of academia - the "all student university".



"Many much-loved colleagues quit this summer."The "great resignation" is an unknown factor. Is it really a thing? Are people just getting sick from Covid and too fatigued to bother any more? Or is it just changing age demographics mixed with a less mobile workforce? Or is it, as one colleague put to me, the productive classes "Going Galt" amidst final-stage surveillance capitalism with nothing left to extract? For my part, I'm really loving being back at real work, and the challenge to adapt and overcome (mostly piss-poor leadership) is pleasant.



I think we all just got burned out. But, crucially, technology misuse had a lot to do with that. It's not Covid itself, anti-vaxers, corrupt leadership, or the tide of doom (psychological warfare that's ground us down in this pandemic), it's the "pushers" - those for whom doom-scrolling, dehumanising isolation and forced intermediation is their cash cow.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Generation Chaff - Phase V: Censorship of Dissent (Painted as Harassment or Terrorism)
Censorship is all around us now
Generation Chaff - Phase IV: Apps Only Few Companies Decide On
Tools are being collectively confiscated, under the premise or false prospect of "security"
Why We Support Richard Stallman and You Probably Should Too
It's not about being "Richard Stallman fan", it is about maintaining the right to hold positions (on technology) like his
Some Large German Media Covers Richard Stallman's Talks in Germany Earlier This Week
LLM-based chatbots are just "bullshit generators" (as he has long called them)
Trouble in Red Hat/IBM and a Retreat to Ponzi Economics in Search of Wall Street Market Heist
Would you invest your life savings in this kind of crap?
Who Asked Software in the Public Interest (SPI) for a Refund? ($100,000, Resulting in Losses of $267,201 in 12 Months, Highest-Ever Losses)
The IRS does not reveal who or what's tied to this refund (or the cause/reason)
 
Rust is Very Secure
If only Rust itself is secure
Who Will be Held Accountable for Breaking Ubuntu by Imposing Rust on Otherwise-Functional Programs, in Effect Replacing GNU With Proprietary Microsoft (GitHub)?
they're practical people who merely point out that a bunch of buffoons not only ruin Ubuntu but also every future distro based on Ubuntu
Generation Chaff - Phase VIII: In Summary
Like "Science" with a capital "S", what we see here commercial interests usurping everything
Generation Chaff - Phase VII: Curtailing Alternative Media
There was always an obligation - a collective duty of sorts - to uphold independent journalism
Generation Chaff - Phase VI: Centralisation of Information (X, Cheetok/Fentanylware)
Would you trust information when controlled by such people?
Generation Chaff - Phase III: Slop and Plagiarism
A lot of the current so-called 'economy' is built upon false valuations
Generation Chaff - Phase II: "Cloud", Blockchains and Other Hype
For those of us who turned down those propositions there was a struggle; we needed to justify not having skinnerboxes or "social" accounts in some site run by a private company
Generation Chaff - Phase I: Social Control Media
IRC predates the Web
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 23, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 23, 2025
More Clues Shed on Collapse of Microsoft XBox
XBox is basically circling down the drain as Microsoft implements 2-3 waves of layoffs each month
'Vibe Coding' Doesn't Work
In a lot of ways, so-called 'Vibe Coding' is already considered vapourware or a passing fad promoted in the media by managers who try to justify mass layoffs, especially ridding companies of "very expensive" software engineers
Links 24/10/2025: Microsoft's Killing of XBox Connected to Revenue/Profit Problems, "How Elon Musk Ruined Twitter"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 24/10/2025: 86,400 Seconds and "Society's Task"
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Google News and Slopfarms That Relay Nonsense From LLMs
Google News, which once prioritised or used to care about provenance and quality, is feeding slopfarms
Links 23/10/2025: More Health Concerns Over Dumb Chatbots (LLMs) and "Talking Cars" as Latest Buzz
Links for the day
Gemini Links 23/10/2025: Daylight Savings Time and Duration Shorthand
Links for the day
Links 23/10/2025: LLM 'Hallucinations' (Defects) in Practical Code 'Generation', China Becomes More Economically and Technologically Independent
Links for the day
Linux Foundation Uses LLM Slop to Promote Microsoft in Linux.com (Again), Rendering It a Linux-Hostile Slopfarm
Openwashing with slop by "Linux.com Editorial Staff", which basically seems to be a bot
Links 23/10/2025: Windows TCO Galore and "The Internet Is Going to Break Again"
Links for the day
Social engineering attack: Debian voted to trick you on binary blobs
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Techrights Will Always Stand for Women's Rights
We even invest money - personal savings that it - in our principles
Certified Lawyers Should Know Better (Than to Intimidate Us With Man Who Drives on Motorcycle Through a Really Bad Storm Between Distant Cities, Then Collects Photos of Our Home)
Mentioning someone was in prison for bad things isn't a crime, it's a public service
The "AI" (Slop) Bubble is Already Imploding
"ChatGPT Usage Has Peaked and Is Now Declining, New Data Finds"
The So-called "Sexy" Buckets (AI, Quantum) Cannot Save IBM From Reality, Shares Tank
"No matter how much financial hocus-pocus they use to reclassify revenues to land in the "sexy" buckets (AI, Quantum), it still smells old and musty - just like this company."
Paul Krugman is Wrong About the Scope of Mass Layoffs in the United States
A few years ago society was accelerating its journey towards feudalism, boosted by COVID-19
Links 23/10/2025: Proprietary Blunders and CISA's Latest Disclosure of Holes
Links for the day
Gemini Links 23/10/2025: Fast Past (F1), 99.9% Uptime
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 22, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 22, 2025
Slopwatch: Google News is Promoting Fake 'Articles' About Fake Xubuntu, Fake Articles About Replacing Windows With GNU/Linux
The quality of the Web deteriorates and unless someone cleans up the mess, real sites will lose an incentive to produce anything
When "AI Layoffs" Mean Layoffs Due to the "AI" Bubble Popping
many people that are laid off by Microsoft claim to be specialists in "AI"
Mysterious grant forfeited, $100,000 from Software in the Public Interest accounts 2023
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Evidence: bullying, student union behaviour: Armijn Hemel's FSFE resignation
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Evidence: psychological abuse, stalking, Galia Mancheva, Susanne Eiswirt ignored by FSFE judgment for Matthias Kirschner
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Helping FSFE scam victims and conference organisers
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Nigerian fraud in FSFE constitution
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Worrying and Amusing Stories of "Clown Computing" Gone Awry
Many of these disasters could be avoided
Links 22/10/2025: Amazon Plans to Replace Workers With Robotics, AWS and Clown Computing in General Ridiculed
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/10/2025: Niri Completely Changes Multitasking and Overview of Diff-ers
Links for the day
Links 22/10/2025: Study on Misinformation by Slop and Heavily Debt-Sabbled Microsoft OpenAI (ClosedSlop) Uses "Browser" as Gimmick/Distraction
Links for the day
They've Already Spent Close to a Million Dollars on Lawyers and Sent Us About 50 KG of Legal Papers (Sponsored by Mysterious Third Party) to Try to Censor Techrights, Without Success
They try to overcompensate with sheer volume for a lack of solid, clear arguments (we are the victims here)
12 Months Ago the 'Hulk Hogan of UEFI' Officially Went 'Tag-Team'
We're actually sort of flattered or proud that such despicable people are so desperate to censor us
"Cloud Computing" Was Always a Joke, But This Week Was the Punchline
Maybe stop following tech trends and fashions
"Cloud Computing" Does Not Mean Safety
Fault tolerance is related to the notion of software freedom
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 21, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 21, 2025
The Fall of Windows: From Something to Nothing
Of course Microsoft will pretend everything is fine and "just trust the hey hi" (AI)