onfocus

Tridgell has the right to run the rsync project his way, and nobody can tell him not to. But also, other people do have the right to say: this broke our stuff, it’ll keep breaking our stuff ’cos it’s vibe slop now, and so we’re moving, and everything about all this sucks.

Most of the Americans surveyed believe that datacenters are bad for the environment, home energy costs, and the quality of life of people living nearby and the numbers aren’t close. Only four percent of people thought datacenters were good for the environment, six percent good for jobs, and six percent good for people’s quality of life.

Chien added that we need a broader societal conversation about the looming environmental costs of using that much electricity for AI. Beyond carbon emissions, he pointed to hidden strains on water supplies, biodiversity, and local communities near massive data centers. Cooling alone, he noted, can consume vast amounts of fresh water in regions already facing scarcity. And because the hardware churns so quickly—with new Nvidia processors rolling out every year—old chips are constantly discarded, creating waste streams laced with toxic chemicals.

A lot of us know by now that Substack has a Nazi problem. It not only profits from fascist voices, it actively promotes their work and recruits them. And it's funded by Silicon Valley anti-democracy billionaires like Marc Andreesen — the same type of people who are, right now, raiding the US government to basically cut funding for social services and scientific research, and to steal money for themselves.

Let’s not leave unspoken the irony that the guy who basically is WordPress.com, and WordPress.org, and the WordPress Foundation, wants you to think the name “WP Engine” is confusing.