Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

https://kolektiva.media/w/wfzLtwhG9nVeLHqawUFYRc

We invite you to join in organizing festivals of resistance on the weekend of January 18, immediately before Donald Trump takes office.
https://crimethinc.com/festivalsofresistance

By organizing ahead of Trump’s inauguration, we can seize the initiative and set our own timeline rather than being caught flat-footed and forced to react. We need to welcome new participants into these struggles and foster a revolutionary perspective that can orient us through the challenges ahead.

In collaboration with @CrimethInc

Taught this in a class on "ghosts in the machine" in Science Fiction, in order to supply some "real-world" ghosts and displace the hype-based idea of "AI" students are carrying around at present. Found this because one of the Internet's Great Sages, Cosma Shalizi, recommends Mitchell's writing on the subject. No surprise, I liked it; also (in hindsight) no surprise, Mitchell was Douglas R. Hofstadter's graduate student. She has a "fluid analogies" kind of perspective on intelligence, and writes well, in the popular-science mode, about developments in the field from the earliest days. Her examples of the failure modes of the various breakthrough neural nets are entertainingly compelling—and made a real impression on some of my initially AI-happy students. However, in the way of such things, some of her failure modes have since turned into (apparent) LLM successes, like Winograd schemas. She also maintains a level of calm in writing about "the Singularity" (while shredding the arguments about it) that I truly admire. Recommended for your students and/or your aggressive relations who want to tell you over the holiday table that the humanities are obsolete now.

(comment on Artificial Intelligence)

In response to a thread by @flancian, I just wrote a long rant about the value technoskepticism as applied to generative AI:
https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/item/e3e54544-956e-4ca8-99a3-21fa999a0331

I think it might be more digestible in thread form, so I'm also transcribing it as a thread here.

(1/?)

Happy Winter Solstice to all who celebrate.

Sovereign Tech Fund Invests in OpenStreetMap

Sovereign Tech Agency (@sovtechfund) has decided to invest €384k over two years to ensure the stability, growth and modernization of OpenStreetMap’s core software.

read more: https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2024/12/20/sovereign-tech-fund-invests-in-openstreetmap/
#OpenStreetMap #OSM #Funding

Huh, looks like Google's made another attempt to ratchet up their war against ad blockers on YoutTube... now Firefox isn't playing vids with uMatrix installed, giving a 'turn off your ad blockers'... but Brave still is playing them. Interesting. Sorry Google, but I'm not gonna play along.

“We are thrilled to announce that the @openstreetmap Foundation has been selected by the @sovtechfund for a service agreement in the amount of 384,000 EUR over two years to ensure the stability, growth and modernization of OpenStreetMap’s core software.”

https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2024/12/20/sovereign-tech-fund-invests-in-openstreetmap/

#OpenSource #FreeSoftware #FOSS

🔔 Heads-up: There is currently a #phishing campaign targeting #Codeberg users.

If you receive a notification that insults you and your project for poor code quality, combined with an offer to "fix" the problems when you send some money, please ignore and report to us: Mention "@moderation" in response to the issue or forward the email to abuse@codeberg.org.

We are trying to stay ahead of the noise before the notifications are sent.

I stopped listening to the news, and instead, started listening to the Collapse of Civilizations podcast. I can barely tell the difference.

Have been reading some of Yevgenia Belorusets' work since the start of the war. Always moving, always on the edge of my own reality. This piece is about what happens when water is used as a weapon.

"this demonstration of the capacity to destroy life seeks to be a worldwide spectacle and a media phenomenon."

https://www.isolarii.com/yevgenia-belorusets/mykolaiv-in-autumn-2024

Bankruptcy filings reveal newly reported info on a large shareholder of Donald Trump's Trump Media DJT stock. Filings also reveal entities affiliated with the DJT investor allegedly conducted naked short selling (a practice prohibited in US) causing tens of millions in losses to partners, my latest:

#Trump #DonaldTrump #DJT #DWAC #PatrickOrlando #TrumpMedia #TMTG

https://newstracs.com/bankruptcy-filings-reveal-new-info-on-a-key-trump-media-djt-shareholder/2024/12/19/

Stay safe out there, CEOs. https://brianmcfadden.org/2024/12/13/c-e-o-safety-with-big-business-brain/

So I'm suggesting a solarpunk, open-sourcy, cooperative, web-based thing. Probably run from an existing FOSS cloud like OVHCloud, because cracking the cost of entry for a data center is... for later.

With the right group of people, the product or service is open to debate. A business needs to solve some problem out there, and there's lots to choose from.

I'm not asking for money, and I don't have much myself. I'd like to hear what people think, is any of this interesting at all?

We made some more improvements to our docs, and had a great conversation with a new community member about mutuals, credit unions, and project governance. Join us next Thursday 26 at 1900UTC, or the following week at the same 12 UTC time 🤙 –3wordchant

You want to understand US politics? Listen to Tom Ferguson.

https://www.phenomenalworld.org/interviews/thomas-ferguson/

With all my random thoughts about worker cooperatives, I haven't specifically mentioned what I have in mind.

I'm kind of a broken-down old sysadmin. I can't really code and I'm not an engineer, and a lot of the intermediate-level type of work I was doing has been offshored or has morphed into SRE/DevOps.

Most of the clouds now in use, AWS, Azure, VMWare and even Google, are proprietary, and I loathe what they stand for.

#coop #workercoop #FOSS #Linux #sysadmin #genx

Thought of the morning: When trying to predict the future of #ActivityPub federation by #Facebook / Meta / #ThreadsDotNet, and the effect it will have on the independent Fediverse, what can we learn by looking at the history of RSS functionality on Facebook?

In particular, might this be a better example than focusing on the fact that Facebook killed interoperability XMPP/Jabber interoperability for their chat system?

I'd love to hear others' thoughts on this.

(boosts welcome)

If you are working on Free and Open Source technologies that improve the digital landscape for everyone, know that NGI0 offers financial & practical support.
We offer grants between €5k - €50k, open to everyone.
Calls currently open:
NGI0 Commons Fund: Reclaim the public internet
NGI TALER: Privacy-preserving digital payments
NGI MobiFree: More ethical mobile software
NGI Fediversity: Creating the hosting stack of the future
Deadline February 1, 2025
https://nlnet.nl/news/2024/20241201-call.html
#FOSS #NGI #NGI0

Does anyone even know what "traditional family values" *means*? Because it cannot possibly mean heteronormative, patriarchal and/or religious systems of familial oppression, right? Oppression isn't a "value" https://www.salon.com/2024/12/18/going-no-contact-with-maga-parents-crucial-self-care-or-the-unraveling-of-america/