Hi!

As I wrote in the title I'm looking for people interested in such an endeavor. I already tried creating such a project but due to internal disagreements it didn't pan out, still I am very interested in trying this out. Game dev is very susceptible to exploitation from capitalists which is very unfortunate given that means of production are essentially socialized already - we have FOSS software like Godot that is enough to create very elaborate projects and we can collaborate remotely so no land is needed either. This makes it I think a very fruitful direction to go, because costs of game dev are not very big and returns can be big if the game is successful. I know that there is a huge competition in game dev, but given that in worker cooperative nothing is siphoned by capitalists at the top I think it's not impossible to get to the level of subsistence on game dev, while being able to affect the culture and promote cooperativism among the general population and among video game creators. I don't have a specific game dev experience but I like solving complex problems and I am interested in doing a worker cooperative, I already did quite a bit of research during my previous attempt at this type of worker cooperative and I would for this coop to get inspiration from Igalia, Motion Twin and Sociocracy. At my last project people had issues that I am fine with anti-foundationalist philosophies so please consider that I like those and I like to discuss from those lenses. I am very good at self-directed learning and I could especially do stuff like coding, design, writing plot and characters, I could research some more legalistic side of cooperative but it would be nice certainly to have someone who has some expertise here. That still leave places for people interested in audio and graphics and I am very fine with redundancy in some aspects of the required "expertise", still I am a big believer in learning by doing and getting feedback and improving based on this feedback so I am mostly looking for people willing to learn, explore and collaborate to hopefully create something cool. I would like to create games such as Planescape Torment, Disco Elysium, Hotline Miami, FTL: Faster Than Light, Spec Ops: The Line, Portal 2, Undertale, Getting Over It, The Talos Principle, Vampire the Masqurade: Bloodlines, KOTOR 2. If you are interested in this project please get in touch, we may correspond a bit and see if we would like to collaborate! 

I somewhat wonder about trying to release those games on FOSS licenses (still with asking for “paying” for them to support the creators), that would be “purer” from anarchist perspective than using proprietary license but this is not something I have thought about that much. The pro would be it being impossible to get the license stolen how almost happened to Disco Elysium creators.

Ask questions about programming that may have nothing to do with socialism here, or share some of your knowledge with comrades.

Ask all of your questions that you don't feel warrant their own post. Be polite when answering and discussing, and do not fall back on sectarian slurs.

This includes general questions about socialism, not just those related to programming.

Ask questions about programming that may have nothing to do with socialism here, or share some of your knowledge with comrades.

Ask all of your questions that you don't feel warrant their own post. Be polite when answering and discussing, and do not fall back on sectarian slurs.

This includes general questions about socialism, not just those related to programming.

mods let me know if this isn't appropriate for this sub and I'll delete it asap.

going to get a new computer soon. very interested in home labs / home servers but don't know where to begin or more importantly, what my goals are. I do music production and also an audiophile, so maybe mass storing FLACs and mp3s on a server could be cool , and being able to stream them from my phone? don't know if that's possible. would also like a general back up configuration for my new computer.

additionally would like to help the socialist cause via technology in anyway I can. but again I am a beginner who doesn't know how to program. probably more interested in the all ecompasssing IT ecosystem side of things than purely programming.

so music enthusiasts as well as everyone else , what did you first use your home lab for? I would appreciate it if you tried to use as non technical verbage as possible , as I am a total dumbass. or if you do use technical verbage it would be nice to have a bit of context. I was reading stuff about nodes and VM containers in another thread and I got lost quickly.

specs for my current old computer that I plan as utilizing as a server or to benefit me in information technology -

amd ryzen 7 2700 w stock prism cooler msi mobo with wifi 16gbs of ram 512 add and 2tb mechanical hd windows 10 currently installed GPU is 1660ti 6gb but I'm guessing GPU isn't very important, correct me if I'm wrong.
600 or 650 w power supply not sure which.

edit - beginner resources such as YouTube and free courses recommendations welcomed as well.

Ask questions about programming that may have nothing to do with socialism here, or share some of your knowledge with comrades.

Ask all of your questions that you don't feel warrant their own post. Be polite when answering and discussing, and do not fall back on sectarian slurs.

This includes general questions about socialism, not just those related to programming.

Hello comrades

Coversation around tech both in public media and often workplaces tend to be very one sided and it can be hard to find good resources critizising or challenging the usual narrative around technology.

I want to put together a list of resources that offer a more socially concious, ethical and left leaning or critical perspective on technology and current events so we can arm ourselves with knowledge and perspectives that can make those conversations less one sided or can inspire workplace action and organizing.

I'd like to hear from the collective here, which books, podcasts, movies or other kinds of media / literature you have found informative?
As I'm collecting my own list I'll share / update below.

I'd also like if we could have either a sticked post or wiki where we can collectively update resources, perhaps a mod can organize something like that.

Podcasts:

• Tech Won't Save Us
• Better Offline

Books:

• Future Ethics - Cennydd Bowles
• Ruined by Design - Mike Monteiro
• The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation - Brian Merchant
• Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World - Malcolm Harris

Movies / Documentaries:

• The Great Hack
• Coded Bias

Magazines, Articles, other:

• https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/

Ask questions about programming that may have nothing to do with socialism here, or share some of your knowledge with comrades.

Ask all of your questions that you don't feel warrant their own post. Be polite when answering and discussing, and do not fall back on sectarian slurs.

This includes general questions about socialism, not just those related to programming.

Ask questions about programming that may have nothing to do with socialism here, or share some of your knowledge with comrades.

Ask all of your questions that you don't feel warrant their own post. Be polite when answering and discussing, and do not fall back on sectarian slurs.

This includes general questions about socialism, not just those related to programming.

I'm and embedded systems guy. I worked with a product development consultancy before and I was also involved with a housing cooperative.

I feel it deeply in my bones that the cooperative model is perfect for a technology consultancy. Many others agree - I mean, it's not exactly a new idea. There is plenty of fairly successful technology cooperatives out there - where the workers are co-owners and decisions are made democratically. That said, most of them seem to be focused on web, apps, DevOps or IT. As an embedded products guy I don't really have an existing organisation I could obviously join. So I thought I might try to play a part in starting one.

So here it is. A very vague post, with not a huge amount of specifics - it's meant to be a broadly cast net to see if there is any interest in people with relevant skillsets (i.e. electronics, embedded software, industrial design, and also very importantly business development) to band together and freelance collectively on projects of our choosing.

I'm currently based in Scotland (not sure for how much longer) and would love to be able to work with people with some degree of face-to-face, but that said in the current day and age a distributed company (even across continents) can work just as well.

Ask questions about programming that may have nothing to do with socialism here, or share some of your knowledge with comrades.

Ask all of your questions that you don't feel warrant their own post. Be polite when answering and discussing, and do not fall back on sectarian slurs.

This includes general questions about socialism, not just those related to programming.

So, speaking as someone who isn't a programmer but does know a decent amount about these issues, there's a lot of horrors involved in the production of computers/servers, from the atrocities in the extraction of raw materials both on a human and environmental level, to the pollution and worker mistreatment involved in production, to the extreme water and power costs of running servers that make the net tick.

And, I see a depressing amount of eco-leftists and third-worldists say that this means we can't have a liberated sustainable world and have accessible personal computing even under socialism, that it'd be impossible to get the raw materials without wrecking the environment, that if the people extracting the minerals and building the hardware were paid properly it'd become unaffordable, that it would be impossible to maintain water/power needs for servers sustainably, ect.

And I think that possibility, pardon my french, fucking sucks. And, I figured since y'all are programmers and socialists, you'd probably have a better idea of the logistical side of these issues/problems from a socialist perspective, so I'm wondering, what's your perspective on how all those problems with personal computer production could be dealt with under a socialist system; in a way that might allow it to expand universally even?

I mean, aside from obvious things like "Don't build your water-hungry servers in fucking deserts, Jesus H Christ" and "End the locked down, unrepairable planned obsolescence model of smartphones," stuff that's not evident or often overlooked in this conversation. And, more to the point, what's your views on how we get to there from here?

Ask questions about programming that may have nothing to do with socialism here, or share some of your knowledge with comrades.

Ask all of your questions that you don't feel warrant their own post. Be polite when answering and discussing, and do not fall back on sectarian slurs.

This includes general questions about socialism, not just those related to programming.

Ask questions about programming that may have nothing to do with socialism here, or share some of your knowledge with comrades.

Ask all of your questions that you don't feel warrant their own post. Be polite when answering and discussing, and do not fall back on sectarian slurs.

This includes general questions about socialism, not just those related to programming.

Imagine pouring your heart and soul into months of hard work, only to have the opportunity to showcase your efforts at a major conference stripped away from you. How would you feel? I wrote it all here.

It's a bitter pill to swallow when the conference management team, instead of standing by its members and advocating for them, chooses to discard them at the first sign of trouble. This isn't the supportive and inclusive environment we all strive for; it's a betrayal of trust and a disheartening reminder of the power dynamics at play.

#KubeCon #kubecon2024 #kubeconeu #cncf

Ask questions about programming that may have nothing to do with socialism here, or share some of your knowledge with comrades.

Ask all of your questions that you don't feel warrant their own post. Be polite when answering and discussing, and do not fall back on sectarian slurs.

This includes general questions about socialism, not just those related to programming.

Hi all, new to post but unsure where else to bring up these concerns.

I got into programming from creative and service work as a way to maximize my earnings from my labor. I got myself into a situation where I had to switch jobs a few times to get out of my financial situation involving credit card debt I acquired over the pandemic before I got into coding as a profession. Now fast forward I’ve been busting my butt working as the sole internal developer for a super disorganized brand and the working conditions are not great. Poor management cutting corners, siloed departments discovering fundamental issues after years of being ignored, being included on so many unnecessary threads and meetings irrelevant to my role causing me to have to work late to get my actual work done. There’s a lot more I can add but I won’t. I worked so much overtime this past year I had a few mini mental breakdowns wondering if I’m just trapped in this situation now. I don’t feel excited or any joy going to work anymore.

Even after the company did the best it ever did in terms of revenue for our direct e-comm channel , I got a small bonus of 5k and small salary 5% pay raise which is basically just a Cost of Living adjustment in 2024. I hate to think I contributed so much to this company’s success the past year with the awful conditions I’ve had to work in just to get a tiny reward. Not to mention I’m now also managing a new employee that has been super helpful but should have been here the entire last year as there were previously two devs and external devs for a long time.

Anyway, I started with programming as a creative tech venture (previously made A/V art and am involved in music) and now ended up here. I feel trapped like I took the job because I was desperate for money even though I knew it had the potential to be rough. I can’t really foresee working here long term and feeling happy and am curious if anyone has successfully made a switch out of working in corporate/web/brand side programming into more creative avenues like live programming / creative technology? Im considering even going back to school to get my MFA to have an exit point.

I feel like my heart is very much not with AWS/Google platforms and any of these big SaaS vendors I have to work with everyday. HELP!