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@chrisshank.com

Also can @bsky.app have a post editor that doesn’t randomly goes blank (ios safari)… i had to write this thread like 3 times. Thanks

January 12, 2026 at 8:06 PM

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@chrisshank.com

Free Software/Open Source have always partook in such labor dynamics

"In loose alliance with the public domain advocates like Lessig are the widely networked ranks of high-tech workers and cognoscenti who rally behind the umbrella term FLOSS, or FOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software).10 The production credo of these workers, who are opposed to most proprietary restrictions on the use of information and information technologies, is cooperative in nature, with deep roots in the hacker ethic of communal shareware. The labor ethos of these IT communities leans heavily on volunteerism and mutual support. Because they are generally ill-disposed to state intervention, FLOSS engineers, programmers, and their advocates have not explored ways of providing a sustainable infrastructure for the gift economy they tend to uphold. Nor have they made it a priority to speak to the interests of less-skilled workers who lie outside of their ranks. For the most part, labor-consciousness among FLOSS communities (whether in the relatively distinct “free software” or “open source” subcultures) seems to rest on the confidence of members that their expertise will keep them on the upside of the technology curve that protects the best and brightest from proletarianization. There is little to distinguish this form of consciousness from the guild labor mentality of yore that sought security in the protection of craft knowledge."

$"In high-tech industries, where job-hopping is endemic among valued employees, managers have learned to build into the cost structure the risk of workers walking off with the company’s IP. Yet the perception that they are the true, “dispossessed” authors of corporate IP helps to explain why engineers in these sectors are often the most zealous participants in FLOSS projects during their downtime.25 In FLOSS’s cooperative nonproprietary mode of production, they do not see the product of their labor as alienated. More to the point, free or open source software is a product that reflects their class consciousness; it is a flattering tribute to their collective labor, and the philosophical zeal for it to be used by everyone, with only minimal restrictions, endows the claim to universality to which any rising class must aspire. For that reason alone, the much-lionized history of shareware and its maturation into the dual-track ethos of free software and open source can be seen as the narrative of a distinctive class fraction—a thwarted technocratic elite whose libertarian worldview butts up against the established proprietary interests of capital-owners.26 While they see their knowledge and expertise generating wealth, they chafe at their lack of control over the property assets. Their willingness to work against the proprietary IP regime is directly linked to their entrepreneurial-artisanal instincts, but, more important, it is a powertest of their capacity to act upon the world. The class traitors in their midst are engineer innovators who go over to the dark Gatesian side of IP monopoly enforcement."$

January 9, 2026 at 6:47 PM

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@chrisshank.com

Accordingly, it’s to no surprised that legal scholars in the mid 80’s correctly predicted that the first digital copyright/IP laws would cause software products (mainly apps) to have massive network effects, incentivize incompatible standards, and fail to meet the heterogenous needs of users.

January 9, 2026 at 9:35 AM

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@chrisshank.com

The fact that the US has banned central bank digital currency for individuals while banks can use equivalent systems is a quintessential example of trickle-down computing.

paulkrugman.substack.com/p/has-brazil...

“ If this sounds outlandish, you should realize that we already have what amounts to central bank digital currency — but only for financial institutions. Banks maintain accounts at the Fed and can transfer funds to each other via an electronic payments system. Why shouldn’t comparable facilities be made available to individuals and nonfinancial companies?”

January 7, 2026 at 8:01 AM

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@chrisshank.com

Now you just have to do this

Screenshot of an HTMl file that has a custom HTML element for bluesky posts

January 5, 2026 at 8:18 PM

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@chrisshank.com

Embedding bluesky posts via embed.bsky.app/static/embed... is unnecessarily more complicated than it needs to be, gonna simplify it.

JavaScript code for a react component that embeds bluesky posts via an iframe

Source here: https://github.com/pfrazee/pfrazee.com/blob/main/components/post-embed/BlueskyPostEmbedInner.tsx

January 5, 2026 at 6:46 PM

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@chrisshank.com

It’s also interesting to note the Xerox Star, the first desktop OS, had a very different conception of files and applications

www.lri.fr/~mbl/ENS/FON...

January 2, 2026 at 5:24 AM

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@chrisshank.com

“ In its current form, the manifesto doesn't offer clear actions in service of the principles it defines. While they are evocative, the document doesn't yet specify pathways for practice, governance, or accountability. More importantly, the document doesn't meaningfully foreground marginalized people or communities. Plurality without intersectional awareness risks being hollow at best and self-undermining at worst. And the manifesto never names power or what redistribution of power would be required for ‘resonance’ to be possible. For these reasons, I found reading the Resonant Computing Manifesto to be somewhat dissonant.”

December 17, 2025 at 4:14 AM

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@chrisshank.com

This is reflected in the calls not to the average person but to those "building, funding, and championing products and companies". These are the people already in power, and this manifesto is seeking their recognition in a similar way the hackers of the PC "revolution"

"Characterized by ambivalence toward the authority that had kept marginal individuals away from centers of power and privilege, adjustment strategies appearlikely to reproducethe very values they criticize. The hacker's critique of the institutionally-controlled mechanisms of prestige in computing-the rejectionof age, sex, education, corporate status, and other statuses as prerequisitesfor entry into the computing world-does not disguise the hacker's deeply-felt desire for recognition from the central authority, recognition that could only serve to reproduce its place in society."

December 17, 2025 at 2:58 AM

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@chrisshank.com

"Disability is not a personal health condition. Disability is a mismatched human interaction." We all benefit from investments in accessibility.

inclusive.microsoft.design/tools-and-ac...