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wslack.bsky.social
Decatur GA native, prev USDS/18F & hospital tech around the US. Opinions mine; RTs/likes/follows ≠ endorsements. 🆇: @wslack 🐘: [email protected]
162 posts 204 followers 132 following
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Posts 22 Comments 27

The ideal tech company consumer is a person who never stops looking at their phone, experiences severe isolation as a result, and then hires a robot on their phone to address the mental anguish caused by that isolation

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

The measles outbreak in Texas is reminding me of the public letter Roald Dahl wrote about losing his daughter to measles in 1962, just before the vaccine was publicly available.

submitted 17 days ago • 413 comments

A basic rule: - In the government, unless the law allows it, you can't do it. - Outside government (for citizens/companies), unless there's a law disallowing it, you can do it. Our system constrains government and defaults to freedom for everyone else. That's healthy.

submitted 17 days ago • 0 comments

NEW — In an alarming email last night reviewed by me, Coast Guard members learned that 1,135 members' direct deposit account routing information was compromised due to a data breach from unauthorized access. It was only discovered because an officer “reported anomalous activity” on their account.

submitted 18 days ago • 417 comments

Spoke to a person today who seemingly can't answer a single question in their life without going to ChatGPT first and honestly this is starting to creep me out - what would compel you to surrender your whole mind to this thing

submitted 20 days ago • 23 comments

The most important thing I can tell everyone that I've learned from being a YouTuber who explains how stuff works is that each and every time I thought "this is common knowledge and doesn't need to be explained" I was wrong.

submitted 29 days ago • 458 comments

I cannot emphasize enough how stupid it is to publicly threaten DOGE employees with violence. You might think it's fun to blow off steam, but trust me: the FBI raiding your home at 5am is not fun. A federal criminal case will bankrupt you and ruin your life and career.

submitted 28 days ago • 5 comments

I think if your appliance needs an app to fully function it's a failed product.

submitted 37 days ago • 11 comments

A lot of people have been asking the smart and fair question why Twitter let Vine die when it was clearly the pre-cursor to TikTok. So as a former Twitter employee who had a front row seat, I thought it would be helpful to spill some tea. A 🧵

submitted 40 days ago • 6 comments

www.johnwalker.nl/posts/escape...

submitted 43 days ago • 0 comments

In all seriousness: the last 2 weeks of TikTok posturing and Zuck grovelling, combined with the X insanity of the last year, should show you that an app with a feed that you don’t control serves *other people’s interests* - not yours.

submitted 44 days ago • 84 comments

I disagree. I think that TikTok and Bytedance purposefully ignored the option of divestiture as a tactic and treated the law as if it was simply a ban because that strengthened their entire First Amendment argument.

submitted 46 days ago • 3 comments

Applications for the 2025 cohort of the U.S. Digital Corps are opening this Tuesday (Jan 7)! I strongly encourage interested candidates to apply on Tuesday as there will be a 400 applicant cap per track. More info and RSVP for an upcoming info session: digitalcorps.gsa.gov/apply/

submitted 58 days ago • 1 comment

Legacy software is software that hasn't changed. User needs change and technology changes and laws change and budgets change and policy changes and leadership changes, and if the software cannot change along with those things, then it becomes bad because the world has changed around it.

submitted 60 days ago • 1 comment

Great piece by @pahlkadot.bsky.social on how broken US government hiring is. Someone needs to fix it, and I'll give full credit to Republicans if they get to it before Democrats do. www.eatingpolicy.com/p/dear-mr-ku...

submitted 70 days ago • 1 comment

since it is Muppet Christmas Carol time, let us revisit this wonderful interview with Michael Caine, who loves it as much as the rest of us “People say to me, Have you ever sung? I say, Yes, I sang in a movie. They say, Who with? I say, Kermit the Frog.”

submitted 69 days ago • 52 comments

Here's the biggest reason that custom software for government costs hundreds of millions of dollars: government simply doesn't know better. Government employees have spent decades looking into a funhouse mirror, and have lost sight of normalcy. "Sure, $100M is an OK price for a computer program!"

submitted 75 days ago • 11 comments

New from 404 Media: nearly a *dozen* aircraft near New Jersey/JFK have reported people shining lasers at them Tuesday during ongoing drone panic, according to ATC audio we listened to. Serious danger to people "We are getting lasered" Audio here: www.404media.co/we-are-getti...

submitted 75 days ago • 40 comments

“In the United States … our elite class has basically decided that they don't want to work on any of the problems that matter. They want to make monkey JPEGs. And that's really annoying.” This is a great interview. www.statecraft.pub/p/how-to-reb...

submitted 78 days ago • 1 comment

I love the Irish electoral system: assets.gov.ie/111110/03f59...

submitted 79 days ago • 0 comments

It’s amazingly considerate of the Iranians/Aliens to adopt the FAA’s approved lighting scheme.

submitted 79 days ago • 9 comments

Since everyone’s finding old and new friends, take a moment to read my story, I’m a 32yo polio survivor because I was not vaccinated. Pass on my story, repeat it, tell it to any vaccine hesitate parent. No kid deserves vaccine preventable diseases www.voicesforvaccines.org/as-a-polio-s...

submitted 113 days ago • 72 comments