Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

“The stock market is at an all-time high.”
“But groceries are—”

Alex Hood illustrates an economist who tries to excuse sky high grocery prices with stock market performance, ignoring the realities of our lived experience.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/itt-comics-alex-hood-bloodless-quant

Tariffs are the leverage. Public health rules, climate policies and protections from Big Tech are the targets.

Last year, Sarah Lazare examined how Trump turned trade policy into a global protection racket.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/trump-creates-liberation-day-expanding-corporate-power-global-trade

If you agree with @Codeberg 's decision over banning LLM-generated code, why not support them financially with a membership?

https://join.codeberg.org/

For €2/month you can support an important organisation taking a stand against AI, providing a #FOSS alternative to big corporate GitHub. Many nerds here can afford that.

As an active member of the Codeberg e.V. nonprofit, you also get a voice and a vote in how Codeberg is run. It was the members who voted to support the resolution against slopcode.

#Codeberg #git #NoAI #FuckAI

I don't get why people who want to use LLMs to generate code are grumpy because Codeberg doesn't want to host it.

Surely they can just use their LLMs to generate a replacement for Codeberg, which they can operate on whatever basis they choose?

RE: https://wikis.world/@bvibber/116975416333847858

I support Wiki Workers United, and I encourage others to do the same.

Its all about "free markets" and "let the market decide" until you have competition that shows how full of bullshit you are and then you run to daddy Trump saying to stop these bad Chinese models from entering our market.

The irony of OpenAI and Anthropic running to the government to save them whenever there’s competition and it’s this government that complains about “handouts” and communism.

According to Jack Ohman, Trump is sleeping through the war in Iran that he started. https://inthesetimes.com/article/trump-is-sleeping-through-his-war-on-iran-comics-jack-ohman

It's been a HUGE week in diarrhea news!

Between an FDA false positive, the Taylor Farms lawyer lyin' about the false positive, & CDC is slow because DOGE fired too many of the poop nerds who worked there?

It's been one of the juiciest weeks in diarrhea history. Time for a deep dive 🏊 So I'm doing a livestream at 5pm US eastern time today (Friday), on "What HAPPENED this week!?"

https://youtube.com/live/K_cPtOYa81E?feature=share

Whatever benefits LLMs/AI have given us have to be weighed against the absolutely catastrophic effects it's had on just about every aspect of society.

Like, congratulations on writing your software tests with marginally less effort, I guess. All it cost was complete economic ruin and the destruction of basically all standards and norms. I'm glad for you, though.

The biggest issue with the current trend towards tech mass surveillance is that it doesn’t necessarily have to be codified into law for it to be effective.

Even if the UK doesn’t manage to pass a law that bans VPNs, even if Chat Control doesn’t pass, even if the EU puts stringent regulation around user data collection, mass surveillance can still de facto be implemented above the law.

Sure, VPNs may not be illegal. But what if my website has a daily updated database of known VPN servers offered by the major providers (it’s just a few thousands of servers, after all), and I prevent you from accessing it unless you turn off your VPN or Tor?

And what if many websites start sharing that approach?

And what if connections from IPs on those lists started being classified in Cloudflare’s highest risk category, so you have to solve 5 CAPTCHAs to find cars and bikes before you can access the content?

Sure, the law may not require you to have a genuine Android or iOS device in order to verify your identity. But what if, when you access a website, Cloudflare puts under your nose a CAPTCHA with a QR code to be scanned from your mobile device, creating a link between you as a person and your visit to that website?

Sure, the EU may impose heavy fines over Google for its abuse of dominant position and unrestricted access to people’s information. But what’s the point when most of the apps start anyway using the new Google Integrity API to verify user access, and when the EU itself considers using that API for identity verification on its side?

Sure, Chat Control may not pass. But what if Facebook simply silently removes E2EE from its chat services, ending up with people’s conversations stored overnight in clear text, ready to be handed out to the best buyer?

The tech industry has reached such a level of power concentration that laws don’t matter anymore.

All it takes is Cloudflare to add a new challenge to their CAPTCHA, or Google to add a new control to their Integrity APIs, and thousands if not millions of websites and apps become suddenly inaccessible to those who want privacy.

Those tech companies and the decisions they take during their closed-doors meetings have become the law.

RE: https://dair-community.social/@emilymbender/116974840056295473

Also available as video on PeerTube:
https://peertube.dair-institute.org/w/23g3vAkBsgQM1svfo3hhRD