1w ago

now that's what I call fashtech, vol. 1

mas.to

[object Object] (@zzt@mas.to)

(adapted from a series of mastodon posts that somewhat blew up, so the format's going to be weird)

why not embrace fashtech! they’ve got:

terrible Fisher-Price CSS
the most toxic part of the Wayland ecosystem, and that’s saying something
the worst part of the X11 ecosystem, and that’s saying something
suckless tools and they all fucking suck
corporate control over the packages you wrote, for your own protection
distributed functional programming that doesn’t function or distribute
a non-working web browser moving to a proprietary language that only supports macs, which appears to exist purely to divert funding away from Servo (for anyone posting to tell me Swift technically isn't proprietary, here's how that's going)
a working chromium fork whose only business purpose is to push slop extruders and a scam cryptocurrency
a web browser which runs single-process so that if a single website freezes or crashes then the entire session freezes or crashes (credit: 2something)
“diverse sponsorship” but it’s all MilTech companies; you’re surrounded by a rich market! of drone and other murder manufacturers (credit: @froztbyte@awful.systems)
slop extruders
cryptocurrencies

if you're puzzled by the above vaguepost, I've written a little answer key:

got a favorite I didn’t list? comment with your receipts!

34 comments

Framework getting into the fashtech game.
They’re a gold tier sponsor of hyprland:
https://xcancel.com/hyprwm/status/1975917930576785581
Apparently they’ve been shilling omarchy on twitter too, though I’ve only found a guide on their website for now:
https://guides.frame.work/Guide/Omarchy+Linux+Installation+on+the+Framework+Laptop+13/564
After the revelation that their desktop machine was going to be aimed at ai bros and had soldered-on ram I was concerned that they might be abandoning the principles behind their laptops. Now I don’t think it matters how great or terrible their next offerings are going to be. What a disappointment.
(h/t to cari, https://sunny.garden/@cari/115336460488524197)
- Framework getting into the fashtech game.
  you_were_the_chosen_one.gif
  Framework had a perfectly good thing going - they were beacons of right to repair, they were making the best laptops on the market, and then they went and FUCKED it all up! Does working in tech destroy your moral compass or something?
  After the revelation that their desktop machine was going to be aimed at ai bros and had soldered-on ram I was concerned that they might be abandoning the principles behind their laptops.
  In retrospect, the fact they were happily aiming at AI bros should've been a major red flag - AI is arguably the ultimate fashtech, built to empower fascism and undermine democracy.
- dig the discussion and purchase accordingly
  https://community.frame.work/t/framework-supporting-far-right-racists/75986/31
Vercel/NextJS
https://www.middleeasteye.net/trending/developers-drop-vercel-call-boycott-after-ceo-posts-selfie-netanyahu
Unrelated note but why is fashtech even a thing and why did no one warn me about it before I made my career choice, I could've been a happy person
the fash papertrail for Ladybird really shouldn’t have to go much farther than them receiving money from fascists in a group that included other fascists but here’s more anyway
https://possum.city/notes/a504c0e7vwdj000h
That link goes to a post that links to 4 Twitter posts, the first one of which is just a screenshot of a PR (?); then a post "basically @BrendanEich right now", name I haven't heard before but apparently that's the guy that made Brave (how the fuck does that project still exist) so at least this one tracks; then there's a donation from ProtonPrivacy so I'd need receipts for them being fashy, I know they were doing that stupid AI bot but that's all; and finally some talk by a guy I've never heard of at a conference I've never heard of for FUTO which the only bell it rings for me is the university in Nigeria but that doesn't make sense
I need a fucking codebook to read these receipts, what is going on
- the first post is the ladybird guy personally welcoming one of the main hyprland transphobes to browser development because he landed a PR in ladybird
  Brendan Eich is the Brave guy but he was also Mozilla’s CEO (and he’s the guy who invented JavaScript and made it fucking suck) when he got caught making a donation to an anti-LGBT organization and got asked to step down. since then he’s used Brave as a vehicle for cryptocurrencies and LLMs.
  Proton’s CEO expressed support for the Republican Party in the US in a public post, and then most likely paid for some shithead to write a medium article unconvincingly arguing that he did nothing of the sort; both the original post and the shitty medium article have been discussed before in the Stubsack.
  lunduke is a far-right crank with a long history who’s currently ranting on Twitter about how open source projects need to eliminate all the wokes; FUTO has done free marketing for ladybird in the past and is now doing the same for lunduke
  
  the Eich controversy is dumber than that. His donation against gay marriage made international press in 2012! Somehow nobody on the Mozilla board realised this would be the entire story in 2014! jfc
  
  Isn't it insane that there is a separate special fapcircle of open-source contributors that are also untenable human beings?
I was always faintly baffled by ladybird… why, in this day and age, would you start a complex new project using a complex and deeply un-memory-safe language when you could just… not? I’m guessing kling is one of those rockstar devs who is certain that they never make mistakes.
Swift is a surprisingly OK language. It’s just a shame it is hitched to apple who seem to have real problems with making dev tooling that isn’t awful. Maybe in a few years the cross-platform experience won’t suck.
- as part of Syllable it was absolutely an interesting nerd project "yeah let's write a browser!!"
  then fashtech funding knocked on the door, Kling put on his red baseball cap and took ladybird out on the road
  
  Do you happen to be in the loop about qutebrowser? I've read good things about it (but from 2020).
Happy to contribute with a personal experience. If you're interested in self-hosting, stay well clear of https://ipv6.rs/
They've promoted and been active on https://soj.ooo/ , a project whose motto might as well be "self-host so (((they))) can't censor you!" The crowd is your typical "too antisemitic to be MAGA" fellas.
So if you want a static IP, go to your local ISP or buy tunnelling from Cloudflare.
- holy shit that site
- Lol at that soj site just being the same anti vax misinformation pushed by one account every 3 minutes.
- https://soj.ooo/p/offensive/post/637662a2b5b1c65dd8d61b8b7ec4ad4e/comment/84078
  what the actual fuck is this?
  
  If you asked me to produce a parody of what's wrong (sociopolitically) with today's world, I couldn't come up with something better than just a straight screenshot of that post.
- ffs Andrew Lee's Joseon has a space on soj.ooo
- @jaschop @self Grifters as usual. The claim only "works", because "they" don't exist. If "they" did, there would still be ways to take the stuff down.
  
  That's logically correct of course, but I think these people don't mean actual censorship and more like conspiracy nuts attributing every inconvenience to nefarious forces.
  People don't reply to you on Twitter? -> shadowbanned
  Moderator strike? -> you're being silenced
  Custody awarded to your ex? -> retribution for knowing too much
  PS: I'm not even sure about the economics here. IPv6rs are in it for the money, but the soj people might be authentic far-right activists. If they're not the same people, which seems likely.
I accidentally omitted the receipt for suckless so check that out in the answer key if you didn’t see it in there before
- suckless is what opened the door to an entire subculture of fascist racist FOSS enjoyers to me, a door I sincerely wished had stayed closed
there's a writeup to do of Bluesky and AT-protocol as fashtech, start from this one https://azhdarchid.com/delusions-of-a-protocol/
there's more detail to add for the explicit case for atproto as fashtech (including the bit where they're increasingly mask-off rationalists, coiners, neoreactionaries and transphobes), but yelling about decentralisation while keeping a pile of obscured but load-bearing points of central control is a good tell
- The author's done a follow-up, focusing on how Graber's actions have set back AT-Proto adoption: https://azhdarchid.com/jay-graber-confuses-the-gas-and-brake-pedals/
the defense contractor Anduril
Interesting to note that apparently Anduril is very bad at their job. Their shit doesn't even work properly. Source: https://bsky.app/profile/hypervisible.blacksky.app/post/3m2bzp4r4es2n
Brave
You are downplaying the shittyness of that one here as well. (Not blaming you or anything, I get the need for not dumping everything in one post. Just adding to the pile). And source, www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/1j1pq7b/list_of_brave_browser_controversies/ esp note the wikipedia clone, it was the one by Vox Day
- Interesting to note that apparently Anduril is very bad at their job. Their shit doesnt even work properly.
  doesn't matter if you can grift USGOV for money
  
  Indeed, and I think defense spending is not stopped when the gov shuts down right?
- Everything is touched by "It can't be that stupid" syndrome these days, isn't it?
Related post, about fashtech being a supply chain issue: https://buttondown.com/dorian/archive/supply-chain-risks-in-late-2025/
- that’s a very good post — framing fascism as a supply chain issue helps push back against the rhetoric that software is somehow apolitical by nature, and it’s a good response to the excuses given for the RubyGems takeover
  
  also dorian is a solid chap and that's in very diplomat mode
And the "open" decentralised chat app that only works on iphones.
ask me about Urbit, I have so many notes
Has anything interesting happened since Yarvis Curtin took the reigns of Tlon?
- god I hope not, I take sanity damage every time I deep dive these fuckers

34 comments