I'm a software developer living in a haunted mansion in Chicago. I'm originally from Silicon Valley, a fact that I am both proud and ashamed of.
My pronouns are he/him/his; my website is evanhahn.com; my musical taste is embarrassing.
For all their problems, I'd like to thank computers for giving us a glimpse of a better world.
A bright and colorful world of overwhelming abundance. A world in which we all have superpowers.
A world in which we are free to be ourselves. A world in which we can find others we want to be with, and keep others who are toxic to us away.
The dopamine we get from interacting with this better world is not fake. A better world can be addiction-forming of course, like food. Who wouldn't want more?
"Asking Microsoft to resign from the RIAA over youtube-dl takedown demand" https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2020/oct/26/microsoft-github-riaa-youtube-dl/
"...the less you know about something, the less value it has to you, and the easier it is to destroy. And by easy, I mean: guiltlessly, remorselessly, foolishly, even righteously." https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/12/western-worldyour-civilisation-killing-life-on-earth-indigenous-amazon-planet
This article changed my opinion about individual climate change action: “All That Performative Environmentalism Adds Up” https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/your-tote-bag-can-make-difference/615817/
TIME wrote an article about where I work https://time.com/5893114/signal-app-privacy/
#USPol
Just took 5 minutes to call my senators about the Supreme Court. Sunrise Movement made it easy: https://sunrisemovement.org/scotus
"Such under-the-radar PR efforts underscore the [pharma] industry’s determination to protect its pricing power in an era when expensive new drug therapies are increasingly under fire for their role in soaring U.S. healthcare costs." https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-drugpricing-lobbying-special-repo-idUSKBN2621IQ
"How to Actually Get Your Vote Counted in This Hellscape of an Election" https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/4ayp9p/how-to-get-your-vote-counted-2020-general-election
"This Crisis Team Has Handled Mental Health Calls Without Cops for 30 Years" https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pkywg7/this-crisis-team-has-handled-mental-health-calls-without-toronto-cops-for-30-years
(The article says they "may, rarely, involve the police", but the spirit of the headline stands.)
Just finished my first week on the Desktop team for #Signal (the messaging app)!
"I’m here to prove that operating as a non-profit is viable, better for everyone involved, and should be the default way to do business." https://ziglang.org/news/announcing-zig-software-foundation.html
"...what is really at work here is the default prejudice against bottom-up self-organization without a profit motive." https://write.as/eloquence/why-mastodon-and-the-fediverse-are-doomed-to-fail
"It’s easy to conflate having a strong sense of personal justice with understanding how to create an equitable environment for others, but in practice they’re not very interchangeable. You simply cannot succeed if you privilege conviction over research." https://lethain.com/stuff-learned-about-dei-2020/
Edward Snowden: "Engineers like to believe that they’re like scientists, what they do is something that is pure, and they’re just trying to get the rocket up. Where the rocket comes down is not their department." https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxqx8q/snowden-tech-workers-are-complicit-in-how-their-companies-hurt-society
"Markets, discrimination, and 'lowering the bar'" https://danluu.com/tech-discrimination/
"Farewell to privacy: Lindsay Graham unveils a bill that would make encryption useless" https://www.salon.com/2020/06/25/farewell-to-privacy-lindsay-graham-unveils-a-bill-that-would-make-encryption-useless/
"Facebook creates fact-checking exemption for climate deniers" https://heated.world/p/facebook-creates-fact-checking-exemption
"Renewables surpass coal in US energy generation for first time in 130 years" https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/03/renewables-surpass-coal-us-energy-generation-130-years
I'm a programmer who loves a good panini