For IoT stuff I think graceful degradation software is needed. Linking to the cloud needs to be optional and not a necessary and functionality breaking feature. Same for the dependency on apps to control IoT stuff, that often goes hand in hand with it.
this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024
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Permacomputing
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Graceful degradation sounds nice. Is that the proper term for "re-stupidifying" smart appliances? Where would I start if I wanted to learn how to exorcise a printer and make it accept non-brand cartridges and connect only to LAN? I did some 3d printer stuff years ago, I guess real printers (and possibly other appliances) are somewhat the same?
No, it is more about keeping partial functionality when things break or become unavailable.
One could argue that the printer's unavailability due to its unwillingness to eat common cartridge is a sign that it's broken 😅
I'm not in the security area, but I can understand why it's all the rage at the moment. We are replacing legacy applications that were built with zero security oversight, and were built in the last 10 years. Externally facing web applications that are running on servers that have never had security updates after the original vendor left, are running software that is many versions behind with known security exploits, and where no one ever considered what might happen if someone decided to trick the system with multiple accounts, or by submitting something 1000 times with a bot.
Security is probably all the rage because there's a lot of catching up to do.
And I feel like the type of role you have in IT isn't the important part of being ethical. I feel it's the place you work that determines if your job is ethical or not.
Everything from doing taxes to registering your car to all sorts of civil stuff can be done online here, also every public website runs you through a half-hour captcha marathon, and most sites are old and really strange. I'm always torn between cheering the system on as it crumbles, and help making it work again.
Almost everything can be done online here too, and it's amazing seeing how many fancy looking front ends are hanging on by threads in the backend.
Do work to:
Decrease: electricity usage, user tracking, dark patterns, walled gardens, data hording, harassment/abuse, rage bait and conflict
Increase: privacy, security, openness including open source, user control, decentralization
I really like this, it's short and to the point!
I have been fine with my work. Sys admin generalist initially and sorta fell into monitoring specialist. My monitoring work is internal though for ticketing purposes so no ethical issue that I see. My job has always been to make things work and fix them if they stop working.
I guess it depends who or what you make things work for - a small group of clients or a faceless multinational that does who knows what on a global scale.
Two places I worked were companies but they were not multinational and were b2b and im not concerned about the product we made or anything.
I've worked for smallish companies that did serve multinationals. I ended up doing a potentially honest freelancing job feeling like a dirty scam artist. And I still find it hard to avoid multinationals, they seem to have encroached everything.
companies that buy our product are sometimes multinational but I don't really see how it can be used for something nefarious.
Smart fridges are one thing but there are many innocent folk relying on internet services to do normal and important things involving sensitive data - talk to family and friends, access healthcare, attend work, do their banking, school and childcare enrolments, even insurance. Should these things be replaced by rooms full of filing cabinets? Maybe, I dunno, that's a big call. Short of substantial collapse that renders the internet unavailable, these sort of things will continue to be online and ordinary people deserve all the security they can get. If you're working in cybersecurity to help people like this, then that is totally ethical in my view.
If you're lucky maybe you can land a role with some direct permacomputing aspects - reduce hardware requirements, simplification of systems, maintaining old hardware to maximise lifespan. But just avoiding roles where you or your organisation is encouraging people to view more ads or buy more stuff would be a good start.
rooms full of filing cabinets
These used to work great only a few decades ago - even a few years ago in my native country. And some of the people working in them were actually really friendly and helpful, even in non-standard cases. They just added another paper to the physical file, add a stamp, there it's official! But I've also met unhelpful and biased people, as we probably all have at some point. Now I am using mostly online and digital services. It has been captcha hell recently (probably because of the legacy applications @[email protected] mentioned in another comment. I think they used this country as an alpha version test country for all sorts of online government services and some of the stuff is very dated. It's actually great when it works, no running or waiting around with physical documents.
I think both systems can work and can be good. After careful rethinking I would wager a guess that in the computing version (developing and maintaining well functioning and safe public service websites) we end up operating more sustainably because everybody can handle their stuff remotely. Although I don't know enough about communication infrastructure vs a well run public transport system/walkable town setup to really be sure.