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shashaleonard.com
shasha
@shashaleonard.com
47 followers 12 following 6 posts
singular IT person and resident goth @Slate.com
1/2 of @backroombooks.bsky.social‬
lover of birds, books, and baby miller high lifes
they/them
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shashaleonard.com
shasha @shashaleonard.com · Jan 31
taking my first plunge on bluesky to plug the piece I wrote for @slate.bsky.social about my spooky first hand experience trying to opt out of Google's AI for my company and the dangerous precedent it sets by big tech companies presuming user consent 😤
slate.com/technology/2...
Google Quietly Installed A.I. to My Workspace. Getting Rid of It Was Creepy.
Opting out should not be a premium feature. It’s a basic right.
slate.com
shashaleonard.com
G's mom being on JFK tarmac now for 3 hours because there is apparently no flight plan + his aunt's Amtrak to Boston being sent back to Penn station bc of downed power lines– she's Ubering with strangers to boston rn...is witnessing late-stage capitalism and infrastructure failure in real time right
June 6, 2025 at 1:06 AM
Reposted by shasha
nitishpahwa.com
second, I wrote about the myriad digital platforms immigrant advocates have been coding and launching to notify their neighbors of ICE raids, with a special focus on @joshua.stealingheather.com's new ICEBlock app: slate.com/technology/2...
Immigration Crackdowns Are Booming. So Is the Digital Resistance Fighting Them.
As immigrants face threats under Trump 2.0, a scrappy movement of techies is creating real-time tools to resist.
slate.com
May 16, 2025 at 3:38 PM
Reposted by shasha
midge.bsky.social
When the IT guy takes over my computer remotely
Picture of a translucent hooded, caped, skeleton wrapped around an alarmed looking man seeming to move him involuntarily
May 16, 2025 at 11:51 AM
Reposted by shasha
waldo.net
Hi, I'm the guy who used to oversee the federal government's agency IT telecommunications contracts. This is extremely bad. There is absolutely no need for this. Not only is it a huge security exposure, but the simplest explanation for this is that it is meant to be a security exposure.
Elon Musk’s Starlink Expands Across White House Complex
Trump administration officials said the company donated the internet service, saying the gift had been vetted by the lawyer overseeing ethics issues in the White House Counsel’s Office.
www.nytimes.com
March 18, 2025 at 2:53 AM
Reposted by shasha
nitishpahwa.com
I wrote about a major moderation change that Reddit announced last week, its immediate effect on the site's already-suppressed discussions around Luigi Mangione, and the backstory that involves Elon Musk, anti-Palestinian conspiracies, and right-wing tech media: slate.com/technology/2...
Why Elon Musk Is Attacking a Website That Used to Adore Him
The website is attacking the users that made it the front page of the internet.
slate.com
March 13, 2025 at 9:09 PM
Reposted by shasha
nitishpahwa.com
yesterday was a tough day for us. please send all love, support, and job opportunities to @methsaxon.bsky.social, @hashtagkatie.bsky.social, and @natalieshut.bsky.social, all of whom deserved so much better than this.
slateunion.bsky.social Slate Union @slateunion.bsky.social · Mar 11
On Monday morning, Slate was suddenly informed that six of its employees—including three editors, two of whom were members of the union—were being laid off, just months after four other staffers were also let go. The Slate Union's official statement reads as follows:
The Slate Union logo—the Slate S featuring upward fist and surrounded by pink and white stripes—is seen above a statement: We, the Slate Union, are united in our belief that management’s decision yesterday to lay off three editorial employees—along with three of our coworkers in other departments—was misguided, foolish, and cruel. The cuts are not these employees’ failures; they are the result of the failure of this company to follow its obligations to its workers. When you can’t find a way to make the most out of smart, talented journalists, that’s a failure of management—and Slate staffers are right to believe it’s incumbent upon management to find ways to solve that problem that don’t involve job losses. Otherwise, what are we investing in journalism for? What are we asking Slate Plus members to invest in us for? There are particular aspects of these layoffs that we in the union find particularly outrageous. Eliminating three editors with their hands on politics and business will put an unbearable strain on others in the department, at the precise moment when coverage of these two subjects is crucial to the magazine’s success. One of the laid-off editors had union-negotiated parental leave approaching—as did another union member who was laid off just months ago. Another one of the laid-off employees was about to go on a honeymoon, and yet another was about to meet the qualifications for their pension benefit. The affected worker will be paid out for their parental leave, but the timing of these departures appears to be designed to make other union members think twice before utilizing the leave they have the contractual right to take. Not to mention, that one of the laid-off editors was hired not even a year ago—after a protracted search—calls management’s strategy into question, to put it lightly. Slate has had two consecutive years of profitability. The fact that management views employees as chits to be discarded at any hint of trouble, instead of valuable people whose work makes our shop successful and profitable, is an enormous mistake. We insist that, in the upcoming contract negotiations, Slate commits to policies that treat layoffs not as a hair-trigger response to adversity but as an absolute last resort, one that will not be undertaken without consulting with the union and the employees in question. Simply paying out extra severance to a laid-off employee should no longer be a substitute for warnings about the state of our business and, more importantly, real attempts to save our staffers’ jobs. Anything short of this will demonstrate that Slate values the jobs of its executives more than its rank-and-file workers, and that good journalism by good journalists is no longer the north star of the magazine.
March 11, 2025 at 5:47 PM
shashaleonard.com
💗
nitishpahwa.com Nitish Pahwa @nitishpahwa.com · Jan 29
in case your company uses Google Workspace and is despairing at how Gemini A.I. is getting pushed into everything—fear not! Slate's indefatigable IT chief embarked on a successful journey to get it removed from our end and wrote a detailed guide for the curious: slate.com/technology/2...
Google Quietly Installed A.I. to My Workspace. Getting Rid of It Was Creepy.
Opting out should not be a premium feature. It’s a basic right.
slate.com
January 31, 2025 at 10:23 PM
shashaleonard.com
taking my first plunge on bluesky to plug the piece I wrote for @slate.bsky.social about my spooky first hand experience trying to opt out of Google's AI for my company and the dangerous precedent it sets by big tech companies presuming user consent 😤
slate.com/technology/2...
Google Quietly Installed A.I. to My Workspace. Getting Rid of It Was Creepy.
Opting out should not be a premium feature. It’s a basic right.
slate.com
January 31, 2025 at 10:17 PM