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baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

You'll start to see small delays. Then big delays, projects postponed or cancelled, and high levels of employee burnout and stress, all causing increases in a variety of issues such as mistakes, product defects, missed deadlines, and a decline in sales. Long term, aggregate productivity suffers 12/

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

So you might boost productivity as measured individually on both sides of the queue, but the safe capacity of the queue might drop from 70% to 35%. At the same time you've reduced your headcount, which increases the amount of work that's going to be waiting in queues throughout the org 11/

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

But, as I mentioned above, queues are highly sensitive to variability. If your queues can run safely at 70% capacity without causing delays, adding a highly variable "productivity" intervention will dramatically lower how much capacity you can safely use before delays kick in 10/

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

Non-deterministic automation with high variability can't be left unattended, so they don't increase capacity directly: you still need the worker. Unless the output doesn't matter, but in that case it's wasted effort in its entirety and you'd get more gains from finding ways to avoid it completely 9/

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

This is the "AI" gamble. These CEOs are betting our economies on the idea that "AI" somehow increases an organisation's capacity for work despite a reduced headcount, but this is unlikely because "AI" automation is not deterministic and has high inherent variability along multiple axes 8/

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

Each department, group, and employee has work queues waiting on work and the curious thing about queues is that they are strongly affected by variability. The higher the variability the less you can use of the capacity connected to the queue before delays skyrocket and work collapses 6/

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

This works temporarily because most organisations don't run at full capacity, but they don't run at full capacity for a reason. Even the most efficiently run factory will only be run at 80-90% capacity, for example, and it's all down to queues. Orgs are a network of interconnected work queues 5/

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

When companies do mass-layoffs and adopt "AI" one quarter and report a productivity increase the next, that's not because of the "AI" but because their productivity is an aggregate measure divided by headcount. They reduced the headcount while customer lock-in keeps the aggregate measure up 4/

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

It's also a bit misleading as an aggregate measure. If you lay off 10% and shift the work they were doing to those remaining, you'll get a bump in productivity, because it's usually a function of an aggregate value and overall headcount. Everybody's working harder while customers are locked in 3/

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

Business productivity is hard to both measure and act on because of its aggregate nature. You can try to measure it individually but that's usually counterproductive as those metrics, like number of emails sent or lines of code written are disconnected from the actual work 2/

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

People keep talking about "AI" impact on individual productivity but productivity is by its nature usually an aggregate measure affected by multiple variables. It's almost always a high-level measure. Most "AI" studies I've seen are pretending that it can be measured in detail for each person 1/

db@social.lol ("David Bushell ☕") wrote:

blogged: AI Policy and The Inevitable
https://dbushell.com/2026/01/26/ai-policy-and-the-inevitable/

(if anybody still cares.)

chipotle@mstdn.social ("Watts Martin") wrote:

Okay, I get that much of the country/world would say “a week of lows just below freezing, no big deal,” but this is FLORIDA.

Boosted by ChrisWere@toot.wales ("Chris Were ⁂🐧🌱☕"):
ChrisWere@toot.wales ("Chris Were ⁂🐧🌱☕") wrote:

Me, Jenny, and Max have a chat about the first episode of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. We really enjoyed it and made a little podcast to share our thoughts.

Attachments:

• audio: A podcast discussion about the very first episode of A knight of the Seven Kingdoms.

fribbledom ("muesli") wrote:

We spent decades building beautiful, opinionated, deeply optimized native UX toolkits, obsessing over font rendering, input latency, accessibility, window management, IPC, power usage...

...and then went: "Yeah, but what if we just shoved everything into a sandboxed document viewer pretending to be an OS?"

fribbledom ("muesli") wrote:

Electron is proof that given enough RAM, any mistake becomes a platform.

Boosted by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻"):
bottled_o_taki@blackqueer.life ("takii <- thinking abt life arc") wrote:

hey #askFedi , does anyone know of any programmes, internships, or funding looking to support African artists? Preferably queer and trans inclusive.

At this point it really doesnt hurt to just ask around :cat_tired:

#BlackMastodon #FediHire

Boosted by andreu@andreubotella.com ("Andreu Botella :verified_enby:"):
servo@floss.social ("Servo") wrote:

📣 Servo at FOSDEM 2026

This weekend at FOSDEM 2026, @regocas Chair of the Servo TSC, will present:

“The Servo project and its impact on the web platform ecosystem.”

📅 Saturday, Jan 31
🕑 14:00–14:30 CET
📍 Browser and Web Platform Devroom
🎥 Live stream

The talk will cover Servo’s recent evolution, its transition to Linux Foundation Europe, and how the project contributes to web standards, interoperability, and the long-term health of the web platform.

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/LXFKS9-servo-project-impact/

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:

Yes, It’s Fascism - The Atlantic:

"For another, the term has been overused to the point of meaninglessness, especially by left-leaning types who call you a fascist if you oppose abortion or affirmative action."

Framing their very late and muddled epiphany that this is fascism as some heroic act, while still somehow blaming leftists for being alarmists, I mean 🤌 chefs kiss. Centrists really are on a whole other level ... https://micro.fromjason.xyz/2026/01/26/yes-its-fascism-the-atlantic.html

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
PatrickOBeirne@mastodon.ie ("Patrick O'Beirne") wrote:

From @gerrymcgovern

99th Day: A Warning About Technology
https://gerrymcgovern.com/books/99th-day/

"An epic, pulling together the many huge challenges facing our generation."
Fidelma O'Kane, Save Our Sperrins

"This is a masterful book, brilliant in its clarity and beguiling in its argument."
Tim Unwin, University of London

"Essential reading for anyone who cares about our planet. Prepare to be disturbed, enlightened
and inspired."
Justine McCarthy, Irish Times

#tech #technology #green #environment

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
w3c@w3c.social ("World Wide Web Consortium") wrote:

"EPUB and HTML - Survey results and next steps" by Wendy Reid, co-Chair of the Publishing Maintenance Working Group and Susan Neuhaus, co-Chair of the Publishing Maintenance Working Group

The Publishing Maintenance Working Group (PMWG) ran a survey in the publishing community to ask a question about a topic that has been lurking in our backlog for several years: should we allow HTML in EPUB? Read about the results and what's next.
https://www.w3.org/blog/2026/epub-and-html-survey-results-and-next-steps/

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
aral@mastodon.ar.al ("Aral Balkan") wrote:

Folks, our very own @gerrymcgovern has his new book, 99th Day: A Warning About Technology, coming out next Monday.

https://gerrymcgovern.com/books/99th-day/

“99th Day is essential reading for anyone who cares about our planet. Prepare to be disturbed, enlightened and inspired.” – Justine McCarthy, The Irish Times

And, if you’re in Ireland, Gerry has a book tour in February. If I’m in the country, I’ll be at the Dublin event on the 9th. Hope to see some of you there :)

https://gerrymcgovern.com/tour/

💕

#99thDay #books #environment #climateChange #capitalism #technology #BigTech #technoSolutionism #fascism #ireland

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

“Pledge week: Pivot to AI needs your support! – Pivot to AI”

https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/01/25/pledge-week-pivot-to-ai-needs-your-support/

Boosted by ratatui_rs@fosstodon.org ("Ratatui"):
orhun@fosstodon.org ("Orhun Parmaksız 👾") wrote:

2026 is going to be the year of TUIs 🔥

🗺️ **tmmpr** — A terminal mind-mapping tool.

💯 Create notes, move them freely, draw connections & brainstorm visually.

🦀 Written in Rust & built with @ratatui_rs

⭐ GitHub: https://github.com/tanciaku/tmmpr

#rustlang #ratatui #tui #terminal #productivity #brainstorming

Attachments:

• gifv: bb2c8dd7a4ba3f97.mp4

db@social.lol ("David Bushell ☕") wrote:

reading: The end of the curl bug-bounty
https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2026/01/26/the-end-of-the-curl-bug-bounty/

Boosted by jwz:
agitprop_n_absurdity ("🔻agitprop & absurdity🔻") wrote:

Boosted by jwz:
binford2k@hachyderm.io ("Ben Ford :grinchsmile:") wrote:

Boosted by jwz:
gregolear.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy ("Greg Olear") wrote:

One of the best things I’ve read in a while:

Boosted by jwz:
catbus.phd@bsky.brid.gy ("Catbus") wrote:

PSA

Boosted by jwz:
qasimrashid@threads.net ("Qasim Rashid") wrote:

Much love to Alex Pretti and Renee Good—but remember—ICE has killed 9 people in 2026. You know the names of the 2 white people they've killed.

ICE has also killed a Black man named Keith Porter, a Cambodian named Parady La, and five Latinos named Heber Sanchaz Domínguez, Victor Manuel Diaz, Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz, Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres, and Geraldo Lunas Campos.

ICE is on pace to kill more than 100 people this year. Abolish ICE. Impeach Noem. Prosecute those who committed these crimes.