Yeah, this post started as a reassurance that Tailscale wouldn’t enshittify. But it turned out to just be an argument about how to avoid enshittification that boiled down to two principles:

1. You shouldn’t make your product worse because it’ll eventually harm the company; and
2. Founders are magic and need to never turn over control of the company to others (be it new CEOs or VC) to resist enshittification.

Both are partially right and partially wrong.

For #1: Yes, making your product worse eventually harms the company. No, you can’t expect CEOs to accept that as a reason to not make their product worse because even if it harms the company, short-term incentives that lead to enshittification are eventually going to become irresistible. His comment about reaching “zen” with leveled growth and profit will never stop VCs from calling in demands and favors.

For #2: Yes, founders typically “get it” more than their VC- or failure-initiated replacements. No, that doesn’t mean founders are uniquely resistant to enshittification. This is your point too, and it’s why I don’t believe this person - they lose credibility here because they don’t acknowledge they aren’t special. Every tech bro out there thinks they’ve cracked the code to permanent tech hegemony. That exceptionalist thinking turns into enshittification, since the product-worsening or overcharging is easier to justify as temporary/necessary/not-a-big-deal (until it isn’t).

And all of this doesn’t explain why Tailscale specifically gets immunity if the principles are true.

So interesting post, and a lot more self-awareness than most founders which is still a little reassuring, but a lot of warning signs too.

Edit: clarity

That’s some quality conspiracy thinking!

But there are too many people who could have been early adopters and have any number of random motives for this to be “likely.”

Heck, I was watching Bitcoin when it was like $0.002 a coin and someone spent 10,000 (presumably home-CPU-mined) BTC to buy a pizza. There were a ton of people there at the beginning, the barrier to purchasing a ton was very low, and unlike me, a lot of them certainly had $20,000 to spare and believed in it enough to buy.

Is it just me, or is this graph (first graph in the article) completely unintelligible?

The X-axis being time is self-explanatory, but the Y-axis is somehow exponential time but then also mapping random milestones of performance, meaning those milestones are hard-linked to that time-based Y-axis? Then individual models are mapped onto it, indicating that the Y-axis is some abstract performance metric, but none of it makes sense in relation to the property of time? What?

Don’t forget to bathe in raw sewage.

Thanks, this was a fun read.

I do think the GBA and DS Castlevanias (since I’ve been replaying them lately) have distinct/unique gameplay mechanics - the most impactful of which involve collecting souls/etc from enemies to junction in new abilities - but until I replayed them I would have said the same thing. I started my replays of them by picking them at random because I couldn’t remember anything except “that was pretty good!”

Don’t worry, I’m sure the FTC will investigate this obvious and pernicious false labeling bait-and-switch scheme!

I switched to Rust Desk after I got repeatedly flagged for commercial use of Team Viewer and access disabled. I was doing nothing of the sort, but it happened after I accessed my personal computer on my personal phone while at work. They must have IP address checks that are extremely aggressive.

I followed their process to “verify” I was non-commercial, which was invasive and insulting, and then was flagged again.

Rust Desk works great, no problems, never using Team Viewer again.

I’m like, “Is this what normal people in 2025 watch?” I feel like an alien on earth, except the planet changed and not me.

Tried this on a private window, and yes, that’s what it looks like. Thought I’d click on Shorts and let the first 3 seconds of the opening auto-play video play. Then back to the home page and wow, full of absolute trash.

All very good points.

He keeps trying. He seems to think that can be done by just putting his thumb on the system prompt, and then we end up with obvious nonsense like that South African white genocide preoccupation. It’s fortunate the Musk isn’t smart enough to figure out how to do it subtly.

I spent months tweaking a retropie image and basically learning all the Linux config file issues and arcane knowledge to adapt retropie’s outdated Emulationstation fork.

… And then I built the next system with Batocera and wow, night and day. Save state UX and configs that work right out of the box, clean interface theme options, customization galore without needing a keyboard. I just wish Ruckage’s SNES Classic theme worked on it.

The article says an iOS app was released to testers.

I mean, I know it’s a meme, so what. But before getting the pitchforks out: does anyone have a link to Henry Cavill saying this? Just curious.

I searched and it’s all memes and reaction videos. Maybe true, maybe true but sarcastic, or maybe false. My guess is it has all the making of a quote that nobody fact checks because it’s too good for engagement.

Yup, the entire culture of Google has nearly changed. It used to be coder- and innovation-driven, and open-source was a natural thing to support. Make more money by growing the pie, creating markets with new tech.

Now it seems it’s middle managers and MBAs calling the shots, and their strategy is generic business zero-sum mindset - lock down, restrict, extract. They still see the PR value in open-source, but that’s it.

Just becoming 1990s Microsoft or 1980s IBM.

Finally, the DNC can get back to the important work of aiming the gun at its foot.

The Xitter post cheering the speech caught my attention, so I clicked through to the X user, “iAnonPatriot” and just have to say, wow.

It starts off with his bio image being literal hands goatse’ing through the virtual Matrix grid, and it only gets worse from that level of basic. Just a red-pill Nazi fever dream in feed form. 610K followers.

Videos of protestors getting abused are his favorite, apparently. One top one is police firing gas into apparently peaceful protestors. The protestor kicks it back, walks back and is just standing there doing nothing threatening, and then apparently gets shot with a rubber(?) bullet and lies motionless for a moment before someone picks him up and he walks off. The caption this guy gave is “HOLY SH*T Perfect shot… 🤣🤣🤣”. Anti-LGBTQ posts feature as well. General concentrated bile into a convenient feed.

So I guess this “influencer” is what Gen Z is getting fed by algorithms and told is normal day-in and day-out?

Trump’s team sees these numbers and rejoices. Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon know that the metric isn’t approval or disapproval. It’s “Is anyone gonna stop us?”

The polls - showing that not even 50% of Americans even care enough that the military is being deployed against peaceful protests, in peacetime, for literally no reason - confirm nothing is going to interfere, a-ok to keep dismantling democracy.

Is it powerful enough to use the more complex GB shaders in retropie?

I don’t think Trump is the only reason they’re stopping. I think this is an example of where social media engagement algorithms - specifically, outrage driving views - made it a rational choice to stop. They were damned if they did (“rainbow-washing” and other accusations from the left, making more and more demands for authenticity under threat of boycott and bad PR), and damned if they didn’t (“gay agenda” and other accusations, threat of boycott from right-wing crazies who are now a significant demographic). Trump just gave them cover to throw up their hands and stop trying.

To be clear, they were rainbow-washing, they were pandering. But I think there may have been a path where the loudest voices didn’t fence in the entire PR conversations, and I wish we were on that path.

Because let’s be reasonable: it is objectively better that Target et al gives free PR to Pride and LGBTQ causes, even if yes, we all know they are a corporation and don’t mean it. That act of putting rainbow flags on t-shirts, of normalizing it in areas where it isn’t normalized, is itself an act that creates a safer space for LGTBQ people. It reinforces the social expectation and pressure to be tolerant, even if you’re a bigot.