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1. Bernie (codewiz@mstdn.io)'s status on Friday, 06-Sep-2019 13:37:30 UTC Bernie

   • Henry Edward Hardy
   • Mark

   @hhardy01 @BarkMarnett 😞

   • Henry Edward Hardy (hhardy01@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 06-Sep-2019 13:41:07 UTC Henry Edward Hardy

     in reply to

     • Mark

     @codewiz @BarkMarnett

     What do you think, Bernie?

     You know how Nicholas is...

     "It was at this point that Negroponte said he would still have given Ito the same advice today... A woman in the front row began crying. Kate Darling, a research scientist at the MIT Media Lab, shouted, “Nicholas, shut up!” Negroponte responded that he would not shut up and that he had founded the Lab, to which Darling said, “We’ve been cleaning up your messes for the past eight years.”"

     https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614264/mit-media-lab-jeffrey-epstein-joi-ito-nicholas-negroponte-funding-sex-abuse/

     Bernie repeated this.
   • Bernie (codewiz@mstdn.io)'s status on Friday, 06-Sep-2019 13:44:37 UTC Bernie

     in reply to

     • Henry Edward Hardy
     • Mark

     @hhardy01 I commented on this just a few hours ago in response to @BarkMarnett:
     https://mstdn.io/@codewiz/102743300773294107

   • Henry Edward Hardy (hhardy01@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 06-Sep-2019 13:51:38 UTC Henry Edward Hardy

     in reply to

     • Mark

     @codewiz @BarkMarnett

     Yes and adding to that, as you know I was senior systems administrator of OLPC for a year. Many of us internally protested and spoke against the Microsoft deal, which I did know about to some degree.

     At the end of 2008, more than 50% of the FTEs were fired, and almost all of us let go just happened to be people who opposed the Microsoft deal. But Microsoft was only the tip of the iceberg. It was Nics old boy network and plutocrat greenwashing club all the way down.

     Bernie repeated this.
   • Henry Edward Hardy (hhardy01@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 06-Sep-2019 14:01:00 UTC Henry Edward Hardy

     in reply to

     • Mark

     @codewiz @BarkMarnett

     I was one of those OLPC employees who knew in general about the Windows deal(s). In fact, the week I started, I spoke out against any MS deal at an all-staff meeting, directly to Nics face. Went over like a lead balloon.

     I didn't take my employers trade secrets and publicize them.

     Having given my word of keeping the information confidential, per Systems Administrator's Code of Ethics. Also per the Code, I directly communicated to my employer and all staff, my concerns.

     Bernie repeated this.
   • Bernie (codewiz@mstdn.io)'s status on Friday, 06-Sep-2019 14:09:49 UTC Bernie

     in reply to

     • Henry Edward Hardy
     • Mark

     @hhardy01 @BarkMarnett I blew the whistle, and since I was just a volunteer, I couldn't be fired. Still, the intensity of those events broke something inside me. I couldn't sleep well for weeks...
     Even years later, I couldn't talk about OLPC without becoming bitter, like some form of PTSD.

   • Bernie (codewiz@mstdn.io)'s status on Friday, 06-Sep-2019 14:16:04 UTC Bernie

     in reply to

     • Henry Edward Hardy
     • Mark

     @hhardy01 @BarkMarnett Other people I spoke with were in complete denial: no, Sugar has not been canceled, you have misunderstood Nicholas' words! No, OLPC is not dying! Look, they announced the XO-2 with two screens! No wait, now it's the XO-3 which is just a tablet! We've been telling everyone that tablets are bad, but now they're good!

     It was such a painful slow death...

   • Bernie (codewiz@mstdn.io)'s status on Friday, 06-Sep-2019 14:17:09 UTC Bernie

     • Henry Edward Hardy
     • Mark

     @hhardy01 @BarkMarnett Other people I spoke with were in complete denial: no, Sugar has not been canceled, you have misunderstood Nicholas' words! No, OLPC is not dying! Look, they announced the XO-2 with two screens! No wait, now it's the XO-3 which is just a tablet! We've been telling everyone that tablets are bad, but now they're good!

     It was such a painful slow, death march...

   • Bernie (codewiz@mstdn.io)'s status on Friday, 06-Sep-2019 14:17:53 UTC Bernie

     in reply to

     • Henry Edward Hardy
     • Mark

     @hhardy01 @BarkMarnett We all worked very very hard to realize OLPC's dream of universal access to computation. It's a shame that greed, incompetence and, yes, pure dishonesty made it fail 😠

   • Henry Edward Hardy (hhardy01@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 06-Sep-2019 14:27:03 UTC Henry Edward Hardy

     in reply to

     • Mark

     @codewiz @BarkMarnett

     It only failed by the terms Nic set, of 100 million laptops for $100 each. But that was never a plan, it was BS which the press lapped up. They gave Nic a bye when the crank fell off at the launch w/ UN secretary general. Lol

     On its own terms, what we actually did do was great, and transformative for the maybe 5 or 10% of users who really embraced and fully adopted. If you think about Haiti Nepal Mongolia Peru Rwanda people who had nothing, now had a computer & internet.

     Bernie repeated this.
   • Henry Edward Hardy (hhardy01@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 06-Sep-2019 14:33:13 UTC Henry Edward Hardy

     in reply to

     • Mark

     @codewiz @BarkMarnett

     I laughed so hard when some business mag had Nic pose at my desk in the garden, with all the laptops up in the ceiling conduit and cords hanging directly down to my lovely black shuttle box and my two 24 inch monitors...

     I realized Bernie, that we are who NIc only pretends and aspires to be, and we know it and he knows it. :)

     Bernie repeated this.
   • Bernie (codewiz@mstdn.io)'s status on Friday, 06-Sep-2019 14:34:02 UTC Bernie

     in reply to

     • Henry Edward Hardy
     • Mark
     • Martín Abente Lahaye
     • rgs
     • Samuel

     @hhardy01 @BarkMarnett
     And don't forget Paraguay! I think it was a model deployment led by a really strong engineering team. @tchx84 @rgs @scg

   • Bernie (codewiz@mstdn.io)'s status on Saturday, 07-Sep-2019 02:57:22 UTC Bernie

     • Henry Edward Hardy
     • Mark
     • Martín Abente Lahaye
     • rgs
     • Samuel
     • nindokag

     @nindokag @hhardy01 @BarkMarnett After "quitting" the central OLPC, I spent the next 2 years working at deployments in Nepal, Paraguay, and Mozambique, and visiting many others.

     It became obvious that scaling OLPC was about creating local grassroots organizations and engineering teams. Paraguay was by far the strongest, with 4-5 skilled developers writing educational activities and managing a network of "schoolservers". They were also contributing a lot of upstream code.

     @tchx84 @scg @rgs

   • Bernie (codewiz@mstdn.io)'s status on Saturday, 07-Sep-2019 03:18:23 UTC Bernie

     • Henry Edward Hardy
     • Mark
     • nindokag

     @nindokag @hhardy01 @BarkMarnett sounds like typical OLPC :-)