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The classic XKCD dependency stack cartoon, but relabeled. The image shows a huge pile of boxes representing "all modern digital infrastructure" precariously balanced atop each other. A label at the right (ha!) says "A project led by a guy <br />who then turns out to be a fascist" and arrows point from that to boxes all over the diagram.

2026-08-28 02:41:03

James Smith 💾 via MostlyTato

Floppy@mastodon.me.uk

Modern Dependency Problems (with apologies and thanks to XKCD)

Probably needs more arrows, tbh

2026-08-28 02:56:13

KungFuDiscoMonkey

kfdm@social.tsun.co

@Floppy I wish I could downvote this, but the frequency in which this has been happening lately is very sad. I mourn being able to (naively) believe that tech was more altruistic than this 😢

Even worse somehow is the hill that people are willing to die on. Sure, it's painful to our pride to admit mistakes, but are we all so bad at learning how to empathize and improve 😭

2026-08-28 03:00:00

xenogon

xenogon@sunny.garden

@Floppy

yep this is peak 2026 zeitgeist.

2026-08-28 03:02:31

honkhonkhonkhonkho.bsky.social

honkhonkhonkhonkho.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy

The "turns out" is rather load bearing since anyone with basic social competencies has usually gone "whoah that guy is an asshole" decades before he does the roman salute, but get told "nooo it's just his special way of working you have to respect his skills" by nerds.

2026-08-28 03:05:01

Gutmensch.

impooortant@mstdn.io

@Floppy Decentralize everything.

2026-08-28 03:06:43

Wilhelmus

vvilhelmus@mastodon.social

@Floppy
Isn't putting labels on contributors fascism in itself?

2026-08-28 12:46:50

Ferret

ferret@hub.workersofthe.world

@Wilhelmus No, that is not what fascism is.

2026-08-28 03:29:01

nadja

dequbed@mastodon.chaosfield.at

@Floppy damn I fucking hope the readline guy doesn't turn out to be a fascist.

2026-08-28 04:03:32

JdeBP

JdeBP@mastodon.me.uk

@Floppy

It does sometimes seem like this, doesn't it?

However: One of the several real world cases that have cropped up over the years with that picture has been ntpd, and in fairness I don't think that the world knew what David L. Mills's politics were at all, or knows now.

There are a lot of quiet people like that. We've no idea what Herbert Xu, maintainer of the shell (dash) that runs much in Debian and Ubuntu, believes politically, for example.

#ntp #dash