@neil I’m putting money on at least one supermarket attaching an AI app to their loyalty card. It’ll build a shopping list for you based on previous purchases. It’ll also only recommend sponsored brands. There will be several slaps on wrists from regulators. Take that to the bank!

My local Co-op is empty this morning. Empty! The staff say there was a cyberattack and deliveries were stopped. Yay.

The quality of argument in my mentions and messages this morning is *terrible*. The shoddiest strawmen hot-glued overnight to defend, of all things, multi-hundred-dollar tech event tickets.

I simply believe that it’s bad for the community to pay five-figures for blowhard guest-speakers when you could have affordable tickets instead. I don’t know why that stand upsets the FOSS Bros, but it really does.

@joepie91 Right! Down here, it's "we'd love to attract more women to our events, but our survey said the rape jokes make them uncomfortable" or "we'd love to make the tickets more affordable, but our guest speaker cost us a couple of grand, plus their travel and hotel, so…"

(And I believe that was the year that the "guest speaker" presented a slideshow of clouds that look like penises. Y'know. At a tech conference.)

I'm absolutely raging against these folks' disinterest in obvious solutions!

@akareilly Ooh, you know what's worse? When they have a CoC, but it doesn't apply because "you could just talk to him so we don't need to make it official".

Mind you, this is the same guy who I promised, heart and soul, that I would promote the fuck out of his events if he ever booted out the psychopath who posted threats to break trans womens' legs.

Mumble mumble, he's a good guy really, mumble mumble.

I once knew a tech event organiser who said he wanted more minority rep at his events, but no-one ever applied for the financial aid.

My brothers in tech: no-one applies for your financial aid because you're making us write essays to explain why we should get the money rather than anyone else. "Explain your poverty"? Fuck you.

I don't know a single person who'd claim to be the most in need in a room full of people in need. Solidarity isn't a dirty word in my world.

Until something changes, you're never going to get the most interesting people at your events, and the wealthy will continue to network and hire the wealthy.

I'll bet you a full Bitcoin that there's a negative correlation between the folks who can afford a £200+ ticket to a tech conference vs the folks who are actually doing interesting things in tech.

I'll be doing #WritingMonth instead of #NaNoWriMo this year. You can follow me and my untitled romance novella at https://writingmonth.org/~cariad/.

Come and join in, y' dingus! You keep talking about wanting to write, so come and actually do it.

@Edent Oh crikey, I remember that. I was one of the original backers.

I desperately wanted an alternative to Twitter, and I wasn't ignorant of the paywall being problematic but (1) I couldn't imagine a way for social media to succeed without charging and (2) I was optimistic that barrier could be pulled down someday, somehow.

With hindsight, I was a dumbass.