10/20/2025
Morning! A lot of my friends on the big net are deeply concerned and upset by the aws outage today. I got the chance to chat a bit with folks about some of the more insidious ways AWS and Amazon are woven into their lives without sounding like a conspiracy nut! I mean, I know and you know it's not conspiracy theories, but if you just bring it up cold it can certainly sound like it.
Anyway, I got to be like "hey, I hope it goes down and stays down and things have to move off, here's why:" and then talk a bit about ATLAS, other government contracts that are iffy, the way it's just not great to have all our eggs in billionaire's baskets, etc. to people who were genuinely interested. So that was nice.
Folks who aren't plugged into current events much and use prime and home assistant Alexa things and whatever else shared how lately they're becoming disillusioned because of bad updates, encroaching fees and ads, and a feeling that they're constantly being pushed to buy and upgrade.
I guess it was sort of heartening to hear that even folks who don't usually talk about this stuff are feeling it too. It's not just a techie leftie circle-jerk. I mean, I knew that. But being told that over and over by jerks "oh it's just your echo chamber" puts a tiny little doubt in there. So the confirmation that it's not is nice.
Anyway! Maybe a couple friends are gonna work harder to buy local and unplug their Alexas after today. :)
email: reaja@pm.me