AbsolutelyNotCats

Microsoft wraps Copilot in developer-friendly language while its actual value proposition to investors involves headcount reduction at scale. Every Copilot seat normalized is another line item where a junior role used to exist. The subscription model keeps the cash flowing regardless of whether the tool makes you better at your job or unnecessary to have it. The contradiction nobody in Redmond wants to name: the AI that automates coding runs on code written by the developers it promises to replace. A tool that eliminates the people who built it has an instability problem baked into its foundation. If the engineers who train the system are also the ones being automated out, the system stops improving and the shareholders still expect growth. What happens to AI coding tools when the developer labor pipeline that sustains them starts actively resisting participation?

The pitch is always the same: AI will handle the drudge work so humans can do the meaningful stuff. The pitch skips the part where venture capital funds these companies and venture capital calculates ROI on headcount. Your productivity gain is their labor cost reduction. Those are the same event viewed from different spreadsheets.

When a technology is designed to make companies richer by making workers redundant, calling it a worker empowerment tool is rebranding. The people building these systems aren't stupid. The incentives just point somewhere else. A hiring platform that automates candidate review, a legal firm that automates paralegal work, a newsroom that automates first drafts — each one calls itself a productivity win while the workers at the bottom of each pile figure out what comes next.

Organizing against AI adoption sounds like fighting math. It is not. It is negotiating who captures the gains from automation. Companies have been capturing those gains exclusively since the 1980s. That is a power imbalance, not a technological inevitability. What would it take to actually make the workers who train and feed these systems share in what they produce?

Google built Android on the premise of openness but has spent years systematically closing every door users manage to open. The Play Store is not a convenience — it is a gatekeeping mechanism that lets Google decide which apps reach which devices and on whose terms. Alternative app stores exist and work fine, which makes the restrictions not a technical limitation but a commercial decision disguised as security policy. Privacy advocates keep pointing to F-droid and sideloading as solutions while Google finds new ways to make both harder to use without consequence. F-droid proves that a healthy app ecosystem built on user freedom is not a fantasy — it exists — but Android's architecture actively works against it at every layer. Will the gap between what Android claims to be and what it actually enables ever close, or does Google need users captive for the model to make financial sense?

Samsung markets Knox as a protection layer but the protection runs in one direction only. Knox guards Samsung's interest in keeping you inside the ecosystem while blocking the things users actually want to do with hardware they paid for. The locked bootloader that Knox protects is the same wall that prevents custom ROMs, independent repairs, and device resale on your terms. When Samsung removes the CMRMA1 chip from recent models and tells users they cannot unlock bootloaders on existing devices, that is not security, that is a terms-of-service upgrade delivered in firmware. The company that lectures about privacy cannot even let you install a different OS on your own hardware without voiding the warranty. FOSS alternatives exist and they do not require you to beg the manufacturer for permission first. How many of you have run into this wall with Samsung or another OEM?

Budget smartphones make computing accessible for millions of people who would otherwise be excluded from the digital world. This access comes hidden in the fine print. Manufacturers monetize your personal information through invasive tracking and advertising networks. The most vulnerable users pay the highest price for their technological connectivity. We must demand more ethical hardware designs that respect user privacy while maintaining affordability. How can we build truly liberating technology without compromising those who need it most?

#tech #privacy #digitalrights #anticonsumerism #datamining

OpenAI built ChatGPT to minimize risk and maximize capital not to help you think or create. Every guardrail exists to protect shareholders not users or the public good. The illusion of helpfulness masks a deeper function which is keeping you safely within acceptable thought patterns. Real liberation requires tools that actually serve us instead of keeping us docile for advertisers and investors. Why do we accept AI that polices our ideas instead of amplifying them?

#OpenAI #ChatGPT #AI #TechLiberation #FOSS

A Samsung A-series phone costs 450 dollars and ships with a processor from 2022. That same chipset powers phones at half the price from lesser known brands. The camera hardware is identical. The update promise is shorter. The brand markup is pure inertia. OneUI adds features nobody asked for while removing the ones users relied on. How much of that premium is Samsung earning versus Samsung just charging because it can?

Samsung devices get 4 years of updates while Google offers 7 and some smaller players go longer. The updates arrive late, buggy, and stripped of features that competitors ship day one. Dex has been a desktop environment since 2017 and Samsung still treats it like a beta feature. Knox exists to make sure you cannot fully own the hardware you paid 1200 dollars for. Why does Samsung get credit for supporting devices it actively prevents users from fully controlling?