Josh's harp
@joshsharp.bsky.social
Tech person in Melbourne/Naarm, AU. By now we should know that corporations cannot be trusted to have our best interests at heart. Maybe the solution doesn't involve capitalism at all. He/him
More active on mastodon: https://aus.social/@Joshsharp — come!
More active on mastodon: https://aus.social/@Joshsharp — come!
Pinned
Josh's harp
@joshsharp.bsky.social
· Oct 23
That photo of Kurt Cobain, except his tshirt says "Corporate social media still sucks"
Reposted by Josh's harp
Tech CEOs are existential risk to our societies and democracies.
OpenAI and Microsoft admitted LLMs are predatory tech built on “an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions,” and the “largest theft of labor in human history.” An internal Microsoft document said AI has created a “doom loop” that is killing “the entire web.” www.404media.co/doom-loop-op...
‘Doom Loop’: OpenAI and Microsoft Admits LLMs Are Destroying the Web and Built on Theft
"Millions of people around the world will soon consider large models ‘hoovering up’ all their work to be an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions."
www.404media.co
September 18, 2026 at 4:27 PM
Tech CEOs are existential risk to our societies and democracies.
Reposted by Josh's harp
there are SO MANY WEBSITES where you can publish sentences now
There is just absolutely zero reason to **volunteer** to lock yourself into an explicitly fascistic, far-right-aligned network for any website where the service is "we host your sentences for you"
There is just absolutely zero reason to **volunteer** to lock yourself into an explicitly fascistic, far-right-aligned network for any website where the service is "we host your sentences for you"
September 17, 2026 at 8:28 AM
there are SO MANY WEBSITES where you can publish sentences now
There is just absolutely zero reason to **volunteer** to lock yourself into an explicitly fascistic, far-right-aligned network for any website where the service is "we host your sentences for you"
There is just absolutely zero reason to **volunteer** to lock yourself into an explicitly fascistic, far-right-aligned network for any website where the service is "we host your sentences for you"
Reposted by Josh's harp
Some folks will claim that this is hyperbolic, but what I wish people would understand is that tech initiatives like this serve as a means of eroding consent and lower the barrier for the persistent capture of people’s image, voice, data, or whatever else a gadget can glean.
Apple's New Siri Recap Turns Every Apple Watch Into a Mass Surveillance Nightmare
Apple's always-listening AI feature promises neat summaries of your daily conversations, but it forces everyone around you into a nonconsensual recording experiment.
www.pcmag.com
September 10, 2026 at 8:33 PM
Some folks will claim that this is hyperbolic, but what I wish people would understand is that tech initiatives like this serve as a means of eroding consent and lower the barrier for the persistent capture of people’s image, voice, data, or whatever else a gadget can glean.
Reposted by Josh's harp
now, more than ever, I think people should make their own websites and do weird stuff on them
September 9, 2026 at 7:18 PM
now, more than ever, I think people should make their own websites and do weird stuff on them
Reposted by Josh's harp
A fun thing about LLMs is once you learn even one fucking thing about how they work, you understand they don't think. They don't reason. They don't understand. They do math with letters to make words.
This is the crux of the debate, right? Whether it's doing mimicry or reasoning. I struggle to see how you could view it as purely mimicry. It has to tie together multiple novel thoughts in a logical construction to create its responses.
September 7, 2026 at 7:58 PM
A fun thing about LLMs is once you learn even one fucking thing about how they work, you understand they don't think. They don't reason. They don't understand. They do math with letters to make words.
Reposted by Josh's harp
our entire global financial system is currently leveraged to the hilt on the premise that it was good and right for a small cadre of US companies to steal all of the intellectual work ever produced by humanity and sell its back to us without credit or remuneration to the authors (plagiarism)
August 14, 2026 at 10:10 PM
our entire global financial system is currently leveraged to the hilt on the premise that it was good and right for a small cadre of US companies to steal all of the intellectual work ever produced by humanity and sell its back to us without credit or remuneration to the authors (plagiarism)
Reposted by Josh's harp
Hello I have made this due to a mutual having issues with some folks on here forgetting this fact and shouting at him for it. Feel free to use it as a handy PSA x
August 2, 2026 at 12:56 PM
Hello I have made this due to a mutual having issues with some folks on here forgetting this fact and shouting at him for it. Feel free to use it as a handy PSA x
Reposted by Josh's harp
While I understand old books get destroyed all the time, I also think it's fine to get mad at the AI guys for doing it. You can get mad at the AI guys for any reason. It's allowed
July 30, 2026 at 2:09 AM
While I understand old books get destroyed all the time, I also think it's fine to get mad at the AI guys for doing it. You can get mad at the AI guys for any reason. It's allowed
Reposted by Josh's harp
everyone seems to be responding positively to this and i hate to burst anyone's bubble, but i recently went to a Luddite festival in NYC and this is something organizers specifically warned about: don't let capitalists sell your hatred of capitalism back to you
Hatred of AI now reaching the level of cultural consensus that becomes attractive to advertisers
July 15, 2026 at 1:48 PM
everyone seems to be responding positively to this and i hate to burst anyone's bubble, but i recently went to a Luddite festival in NYC and this is something organizers specifically warned about: don't let capitalists sell your hatred of capitalism back to you
Reposted by Josh's harp
People here just really hate adding alt text huh
November 11, 2025 at 2:36 AM
People here just really hate adding alt text huh
Had lunch next to Helen Garner today and apparently middle aged ladies just cannot get enough of the Mushroom Tapes
May 24, 2026 at 12:43 PM
Had lunch next to Helen Garner today and apparently middle aged ladies just cannot get enough of the Mushroom Tapes
@haraiva.bsky.social Just played the demo for dawn chorus and loved it. Really beautiful vibes.
May 13, 2026 at 5:08 AM
@haraiva.bsky.social Just played the demo for dawn chorus and loved it. Really beautiful vibes.
Reposted by Josh's harp
folx, I’ve been working on AI "ethics" for almost a decade now & hate to tell you there’s no such thing as "ethical AI"
the only "ethical principle" that works is regulating the shit out of the industry & to take back control of our autonomy, fundamental rights, freedoms & right to exist w/out AI
the only "ethical principle" that works is regulating the shit out of the industry & to take back control of our autonomy, fundamental rights, freedoms & right to exist w/out AI
May 12, 2026 at 7:02 PM
folx, I’ve been working on AI "ethics" for almost a decade now & hate to tell you there’s no such thing as "ethical AI"
the only "ethical principle" that works is regulating the shit out of the industry & to take back control of our autonomy, fundamental rights, freedoms & right to exist w/out AI
the only "ethical principle" that works is regulating the shit out of the industry & to take back control of our autonomy, fundamental rights, freedoms & right to exist w/out AI
Reposted by Josh's harp
Had convos w/ multiple people in the past 4 days who DID NOT KNOW that
1. AI doesn't "think" or know anything; it's a probability machine
2. It was created using massive amounts of work stolen from actual people including me
3. The environmental costs are astronomical
Spread the word, every time!
1. AI doesn't "think" or know anything; it's a probability machine
2. It was created using massive amounts of work stolen from actual people including me
3. The environmental costs are astronomical
Spread the word, every time!
May 8, 2026 at 1:17 PM
Had convos w/ multiple people in the past 4 days who DID NOT KNOW that
1. AI doesn't "think" or know anything; it's a probability machine
2. It was created using massive amounts of work stolen from actual people including me
3. The environmental costs are astronomical
Spread the word, every time!
1. AI doesn't "think" or know anything; it's a probability machine
2. It was created using massive amounts of work stolen from actual people including me
3. The environmental costs are astronomical
Spread the word, every time!
Did you know? I make an app called Foreground that's for tracking your productive and distracting time in apps and sites on your Windows PC. Totally offline and private and no subscription required. If that sounds useful please give it a try foreground.computer
Foreground — productive time tracking for Windows
Foregound is a programme for your Windows personal computer that tracks your time in applications and web sites.
foreground.computer
May 7, 2026 at 3:42 AM
Did you know? I make an app called Foreground that's for tracking your productive and distracting time in apps and sites on your Windows PC. Totally offline and private and no subscription required. If that sounds useful please give it a try foreground.computer
Please pay for my no-vc non-public small business made software btw
I think my call to action here is to pay for no-vc non-public small business made software and cut them a little slack on downtime because it’s where your favorite expensive big guys are headed anyway
April 29, 2026 at 3:53 AM
Please pay for my no-vc non-public small business made software btw
@digs.bsky.social hey, I noticed the nest cam has been down for a few days, do you know what's happening and when it'll be back? :)
April 20, 2026 at 3:13 AM
@digs.bsky.social hey, I noticed the nest cam has been down for a few days, do you know what's happening and when it'll be back? :)
Reposted by Josh's harp
To my non tech normies, PSA: when you share a link, everything after the ? is tracking. Those “query parameters” tell companies exactly how you arrived, what app you clicked, which ad or email sent you, sometimes a unique identifier tied to you. You can delete everything after the question mark.
April 13, 2026 at 4:10 PM
To my non tech normies, PSA: when you share a link, everything after the ? is tracking. Those “query parameters” tell companies exactly how you arrived, what app you clicked, which ad or email sent you, sometimes a unique identifier tied to you. You can delete everything after the question mark.
Reposted by Josh's harp
Kill the fan inside you. Corporate platforms aren’t worth defending
March 5, 2026 at 9:31 PM
Kill the fan inside you. Corporate platforms aren’t worth defending
Reposted by Josh's harp
Who cares what anyone thinks about BlueSky. Of course it’s shit, all the platforms are shit. Unless you’re an investor why would you go into bat for a platform whose managers also seem pretty shit
March 5, 2026 at 9:30 PM
Who cares what anyone thinks about BlueSky. Of course it’s shit, all the platforms are shit. Unless you’re an investor why would you go into bat for a platform whose managers also seem pretty shit
Reposted by Josh's harp
Australia needs to not be a US ally.
February 28, 2026 at 8:52 AM
Australia needs to not be a US ally.
Reposted by Josh's harp
for folks who are active on x, threads, etc and feel bad about it bc of its stewards but have a hard time letting go: sometimes your behaviors overpower your values online because tech companies hire psychologists & sociologists to come up with ways to put you in that position
February 25, 2026 at 7:17 PM
for folks who are active on x, threads, etc and feel bad about it bc of its stewards but have a hard time letting go: sometimes your behaviors overpower your values online because tech companies hire psychologists & sociologists to come up with ways to put you in that position
Reposted by Josh's harp
Once, technology solved problems. People liked having problems solved, so they liked technology.
Tech execs started to think of that sentiment as their due. So when they stopped solving problems, and people stopped liking them, they became outraged. "How dare you not love whatever we give you?"
Tech execs started to think of that sentiment as their due. So when they stopped solving problems, and people stopped liking them, they became outraged. "How dare you not love whatever we give you?"
I am a luddite and to me there is a lot of joy in technology. In technology that we deploy for all our wellbeing. Solar panels and vaccines, high-speed rail and wikipedia.
But they joy stems from the feeling of being able to be part of humanity in an embedded, meaningful way. Not from buying shit.
But they joy stems from the feeling of being able to be part of humanity in an embedded, meaningful way. Not from buying shit.
February 19, 2026 at 4:22 PM
Once, technology solved problems. People liked having problems solved, so they liked technology.
Tech execs started to think of that sentiment as their due. So when they stopped solving problems, and people stopped liking them, they became outraged. "How dare you not love whatever we give you?"
Tech execs started to think of that sentiment as their due. So when they stopped solving problems, and people stopped liking them, they became outraged. "How dare you not love whatever we give you?"
Reposted by Josh's harp
My doomer-worry about AI is not that the LLMs become omnipotent and take over the world but that the wealthy and powerful use it as a means to consolidate power and marginalize or lay off skilled workers and also everything about our technological and political and social life gets worse
February 11, 2026 at 8:20 PM
My doomer-worry about AI is not that the LLMs become omnipotent and take over the world but that the wealthy and powerful use it as a means to consolidate power and marginalize or lay off skilled workers and also everything about our technological and political and social life gets worse
Reposted by Josh's harp
I'm convinced AI is our generation's radium - a discovery with genuinely useful applications in specific, controlled circumstances that we stupidly put in everything from kid's toys to toothpaste until we realised the harm far too late where future generations will ask if we were out of our minds.
February 8, 2026 at 10:23 PM
I'm convinced AI is our generation's radium - a discovery with genuinely useful applications in specific, controlled circumstances that we stupidly put in everything from kid's toys to toothpaste until we realised the harm far too late where future generations will ask if we were out of our minds.