Tootfinder

Like all the rest of the nerds, I did a bit of tech support on family computers.
They're all popping up windows from scam virus scanners lying that subscriptions need to be renewed or machines are unprotected. People don't know how to remove these things. Luckily they also don't really know how to pay the subscription.
Their phones are updating on them. Changing where buttons used to be. Removing options. Forcing people to register to use they things they have been doing for years.
They don't know how to register.
Things pop up asking for passwords and they have no idea who is asking or which password to use.
I tell them that I don't really understand why they keep using Windows now it is so shitty and awful. They say they don't know how to use anything else. The fact they don't really know how to use windows either doesn't seem to register.
The tech corporations have given up completely on being user friendly. They are all deliberately user hostile and exploitative now.
Corporate tech is terrible. The industry is failing it's users, abusing them. People don't even know there is any other way. They are just giving up on achieving their tasks until someone can fix the pop-ups and subscription boxes and passwords and 2fa for them.
Tech sucks now. Sucks hard.
#tech #christmasTechSupport

"How Batteries, Not Natural Gas, Can Power the Data Center Boom"
#Batteries #Energy #Technology

How Batteries, Not Natural Gas, Can Power the Data Center Boom
Tech companies are turning to natural gas to help power the growing number of A.I. data centers in the U.S. Jigar Shah, a former Energy Department official, explains how installing batteries instead can help balance the grid, lower electricity bills, and support renewable energy.

this was a good episode.
Oh look, chatbot ads | The Vergecast
#tech

Sure it's on linkedin, but I think this will resonate with everyone building internal tooling #tech #softwaredevelopment

The difference internal tooling makes
“The impact is harder to see.” This is what a fellow product manager once told me when I shared that I work on internal tooling.

Retrograde (n, v): An upgrade that makes things worse.
e.g., I retrograded to iOS 26 by mistake and now I’m stuck with this piece of shit.
#retrograde #tech

Oooch, schluchz:
Ein Gesetzesentwurf zur Einführung einer fünfprozentigen #Vermögenssteuer bringt Kaliforniens #TechMilliardäre in Aufruhr.
Namen wie Larry Page, Sergey Brin und Peter

Tech-Milliardäre drohen wegen Steuerplänen aus Kalifornien auszuwandern
Ein Gesetzesvorschlag für eine Vermögenssteuer in Höhe von fünf Prozent bringt das Silicon Valley in Aufruhr. Peter Thiel investiert drei Millionen Dollar in eine Gegenkampagne

How I Used #AI to #Audit 3 Years of #SmartHome #TechDebt (And Built a System to Prevent It From Happening Again)
<…

Seems worth posting this again:
#tech #ethics #DataEthics

Tech Pizza Monday is on, as usual, tomorrow starting at 6 PM, at the usual place, Victory Cafe at 440 Bloor St. W. #techmeetup https://luma.com/h9neb30z

I know all the bootleg phone cheat codes #tech #shanzhai

world's greatest speakers (this was preloaded on the phone BTW) #tech #shanzhai

"TikTok says users can’t upload anti-ICE videos due to technical issues."
The technical issue is that TikTok wants to block LICE videos but an implementation bug also blocks ICE videos. Or something like that. 🙄
#ICE #TikTok #censorship #technology #USA #sarcasm

The Authoritarian Stack.
This is brilliant – if you’re interested in human rights, democracy, and tech, and want to understand technofascism/corporatocracy bookmark and read this.👇
#AuthoritarianStack #tech

Why would we think that past performance was any guarantee of future performance, when there's such a thing as efficiency and innovation? Like this 100X (!) improvement? (What might a 100X more efficient data center look like?) #ai #tech #fyp

Was telling Pops about this and realized that prob more than a few people would be interested as well.
" How to break free from smart TV ads and tracking
Sick of smart TVs? Here are your best options. "
#DumbTVs #Tech

If you're in #tech and struggling to figure out what your career look like now — this piece is my answer. You've heard "it's here to stay" or "it's better than nothing."
Reject these frames.
Look at the system being built around you. Manufacturing validation for "inevitable" success. Rewriting our roles from human-centered creative to featu…

See what is happening, not what is supposed to happen
The stories we are telling around user research and LLMs have locked us into a doomed framing. Reject the very notion that it is "better than nothing."

This is your friendly reminder to start that backup you've been putting off :p #tech

Happy Everything Breaks Day! The day when all the major tech companies lift their change freezes and deploy to production for the first time in weeks.
#tech #software #programming

Low-maturity #tech orgs fetishize ideas.
Their process goes like this: a senior stakeholder has an idea, then the engineers build it. Only then can the team go and "validate" it.
The main outcome of this process is ANXIETY, because people know they are making a huge bet, but the risks aren't being acknowledged.
Subscribe to the Product Picnic, and be the first to rea…

The Product Picnic
Writing on UX and product management to connect today's discourse with classic insights that the industry forgot.

"AI boom has caused same CO2 emissions in 2025 as New York City, report claims"
#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Technology

Über die Gründung von Broadcom und deren Mitgründer Henry Samueli: #techhistory

Henry Samueli: Champion of Digital Broadband
In 1991, the few people who had Internet access at home mainly relied on slow dialup lines. Henry Samueli envisioned faster digital broadband. In research at UCLA and at Broadcom, which he cofounded in 1991, Samueli and his team revolutionized digital modems, enabling today's high-speed communications. Awarded the 2025 IEEE Medal of Honor, Samueli's journey from a curious middle schooler to a tech pioneer is inspiring.

Every vibe-coding PM is baller until they are asked to take responsibility for maintaining that code.
#llm #ai #tech

Here's a live walking test of the Meta v2 AI glasses on the streets of New York City.
#newyork

i have been listening to these two chattering back and forth at each for the past two days and I realize now I had gotten very used to a very quiet desk. The sound of the HDDs was so odd to me that I thought it was the wind outside...
And yet it was a sound I had known near constantly from like 1990 to 2018.
weird how we quickly we can get unaccustomed to a sound.
#tech #hdd #harddrive #backup #sound #office

"Meta Wants Data Center in Sunny El Paso to Rely on Natural Gas"
#Meta #Facebook #Technology #Emissions

Meta Wants Data Center in Sunny El Paso to Rely on Natural Gas - Inside Climate News
EL PASO—In October 2025, local officials celebrated the groundbreaking of a 1-gigawatt, $1.5 billion data center for the tech giant Meta.  El Paso Electric had previously stated that existing infrastructure would support the data center and that Meta was looking to tap into a new solar farm. El Paso gets more than 300 days a […]

One other pattern that I kept experiencing last year when I was actually trying these tools in my work (because I had so many people pushing them on me I started to think I was crazy):
Them: “oh you are struggling with X? I have been using AI to solve it and it gives me the solution in less than 10 minutes! You HAVE TO try it!”
Me: “X is really annoying, I’d love to get help with it. I’ll try that, thanks!”
* I go and try to do X, spend hours prompting AI back-and-forth as it keeps messing up and doing things wrong. I give up and do the thing manually, spending 2-3x the time I would have spent if I did it myself from the start.*
*days / weeks later*
Me: “hey, person, I tried to do X with AI and it didn’t work. I kept getting issues like Y and Z. Did I prompt it wrong? This is what I tried.”
Them: *nods, maybe chuckles* “oh yeah, it does that. I still haven’t been able to figure out how to reliably do X. I tend to redo the output completely too. But sometimes it helps me do like this tiny part. Anyway, these tools will improve soon and we won’t have to do so many manual revisions. “
I kid you not, this stuff happened every other week.
#AI #LLMs #work #tech #AIBubble

It was my goal to enter 2026 with 2026 subscribers for my 100% free #ux #design and #tech newsletter, The Product Picnic.
Currently we are only in 1969, which while a great year is somewhat short of the go…

A fresh notepad, clean desk and coffee ready. Red hat 10 training will start soon.
#tech #RHEL #linux #coffee

Curious that whenever someone shows me “the cool #AI flow” they built that’s supposed to be impressive, the conversation goes the same way:
Stage 1: “But you don’t understand. You don’t like AI because you haven’t used it right. Let me show you how much you can do it with.”
Stage 2: “Here are the steps in the flow and the instructions I feed to this agent / custom GPT / Claude project. I tell it to do X, reference document Y, and aim for Z.”
Stage 3: “Now, let me show you the results it gives.”
*Writes task, presses to run the prompt.*
Stage 4: “Umm sorry it’s taking a while. It’s fast but not instant. And by the way, the prompt isn’t perfect, you can definitely make it better. I just threw this together real quick the other day. It makes some mistakes, but it’s really good.”
Stage 5: “Uuuuuuh actually don’t look at the output.” *scrolls or stops screen share or pulls device away.*
“You know it’s already doing so well, if I do more prompt engineering it will get really good but I need to give it better instructions. And it ran just fine last night, I don’t know what’s up with it. And this is a cheap model, if we use another model it will be better.”
Stage 6: “You know, you really shouldn’t judge this so much. The technology will improve, it will get there sooner than you know and then you’ll regret not trying it sooner.”
So curious that this keeps happening 🤷‍♀️
#LLMs #work #tech #AIBubble

"Ministers may cut green tech mandate from new homes regulations in England"
#UK #UnitedKingdom #England #Technology

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #StreetSounds
E‐40 feat. Tech N9ne & Brotha Lynch Hung:
🎵 Zombie
#E40 #TechN9ne #BrothaLynchHung
https://open.spotify.com/track/08yQRRz4xUUSK9gHgsPocT

#agile #scrum #tech #softwaredevelopment

amongst the various start-of-semester things to do today, I started a new backup 800gb of a Time Machine backup onto a HFS formatted disk image.
and also planted my "vegehome" with a fresh batch of little plant plugs. Look at their little plastic domes. 🥰
Once these lettuces and stuff run their course, I want to try something a little bigger... like maybe starting a little fruit tree.
#office #worklife #viu #garden #growing #backup #tech

This is how “delighted” and “helped” I feel.
and no, I still have no idea how to resolve my issue. #AI #chatbot #tech #CustomerSupportNightmare #CustomerSupport

Thanks, customer support #AI chatbot. So f**king helpful.
Bot: “Contact our support team”
Me: “How do I do that?”
Bot: “I can’t help you.”
(I want to scream so badly)
#chatbot #tech #CustomerSupportNightmare #CustomerSupport

"UK households bin 168m Christmas lights and ‘fast tech’ items a year"
#UK #UnitedKingdom #Technology #EWaste