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Charles U. Farley

@freakazoid@retro.social

mastodon 4.2.20

They/them. Professional pond pisser. Queer, neurospicy GenX Irish-American parent of two kids living in #Pittsburgh #Pennsylvania USA. No gods, no masters, nobody with >1000 follows. Have a profile and some posts or have interacted with me before requesting to follow.

#anarchism #retrocomputing #amateurradio #space #electronics #c64 #rc2014 #zig

#nobot (including any unsolicited bot interaction) #noarchive #noindex #noscrape #nobridge #noAI

0 Followers

0 Following

26 Posts

Joined May 17, 2018

Avatar alt text:

A pixel art front view of a tracked robot in gray on blue with black outlines. It shows the width of the robot as 1.0m. From the game "Hacker II".

Header image alt text:

A screenshot from Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970). It shows a ceiling-mounted multi-sided scrolling text display with two lines. The top line sys "WARN" and the second line says "THERE IS ANOTHER SYSTEM" scrolling across the two sides that are in view

Blocked instances:

mastodon.social, mstdn.ca, hachyderm.io, vivaldi.net, and several other large/techbro instances

Posts

Charles U. Farley @freakazoid@retro.social · Jun 10, 2026

Replying to @DJGummikuh@mastodon.social

@DJGummikuh@mastodon.social @cstross@wandering.shop @david_chisnall@infosec.exchange Fingers crossed!

Charles U. Farley @freakazoid@retro.social · Jun 10, 2026

Replying to @cstross@wandering.shop

@cstross@wandering.shop @DJGummikuh@mastodon.social @david_chisnall@infosec.exchange I think it's more likely Google know their court filings are never going to hurt their public image, because the number of people whose minds might possibly be changed by them is tiny. There is not much daylight between "See! Google admit their AI is useless!" and "Google will say whatever they need to to win a case, just like every other corporation out there."

Charles U. Farley @freakazoid@retro.social · May 22, 2026

Replying to @aka_pugs@mastodon.social

@aka_pugs@mastodon.social I like that the cable is even yellow just like every thicknet cable I've seen. Do you suppose they were a standard color so people wouldn't sink their vampire tap into the wrong cable?

Charles U. Farley @freakazoid@retro.social · May 04, 2026

Anyone know a good way to bulk-buy lithium battery packs to charge phones in the US? Unhoused folks need them since opportunities to charge are limited, as is the battery life of the kinds of phones they can afford. Quantity 10-ish, but if anyone in #Pittsburgh wants to go in on a bigger buy I'd be down.

Charles U. Farley @freakazoid@retro.social · Apr 21, 2026

Replying to @thomholwerda@exquisite.social

@thomholwerda Anything new or still their "big tent" bullshit around sponsoring DHH?

Charles U. Farley @freakazoid@retro.social · Apr 18, 2026

Replying to @freakazoid@retro.social

(Network effects don't require that the network provides positive net value to its members, only that being a member of the network provides less negative value than not being a member of the network. It says nothing about the value relative to nobody you know being a member of the network.)

Charles U. Farley @freakazoid@retro.social · Apr 18, 2026

Replying to @freakazoid@retro.social

(The circular reasoning in this case being "humans don't do things that provide negative value to them" which completely ignores the fact that they *started* in the hole because the service exists in the first place. So sure, using it provides short term value; but the fact that their friends are there provides negative value because if they weren't they'd interact with their friends in some way that wasn't being exploited by surveillance capitalists.)

Charles U. Farley @freakazoid@retro.social · Apr 18, 2026

Replying to @freakazoid@retro.social

(Libertarians would of course come up with some excuse for why FOMO by definition provides some kind of value, because libertarians are experts at circular reasoning.)

Charles U. Farley @freakazoid@retro.social · Apr 18, 2026

Replying to @ajroach42@retro.social

@ajroach42 Not to mention that most ad-supported services are scientifically proven to provide *negative* value to their users (they'd pay to make their friends stop using them), who only stay because they're optimized to exploit FOMO.

Charles U. Farley @freakazoid@retro.social · Apr 01, 2026

Replying to @freakazoid@retro.social

@artemis@dice.camp "When we said think for yourself we didn't REALLY mean for you to actually think for yourself! We meant for you to let us think for you while you told yourself you were thinking for yourself."

Charles U. Farley @freakazoid@retro.social · Apr 01, 2026

Replying to @artemis@dice.camp

@artemis@dice.camp Reminds me a bit of my own journey to anarchism, which came from following the values I was raised with that I was told were "western", "American", and "Christian". Turns out you can follow the values or you can follow the state/church, but not both. I chose the values.

Charles U. Farley @freakazoid@retro.social · Mar 29, 2026

Let's all take a moment to reflect on what a blatant example of either willful ignorance or outright lying "If you use X against fascists they'll use it against you" turned out to be, since they will use X against you anyway.

And then remember every single person who ever said it to you.

Charles U. Farley @freakazoid@retro.social · Mar 16, 2026

Replying to @TheSunnyOne@eldritch.cafe

@TheSunnyOne@eldritch.cafe Thanks for the reminder.