Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

“There's nothing stopping libraries from not accepting [the Big Five’s] terms right now."

The Big 5 have shown their cards, threatening to pull out of the library ebook market completely rather than pull up to the negotiating table in good faith.

I think it's time to call their bluff.

https://www.wordsandmoney.com/in-the-library-ebook-market-can-librarians-learn-to-just-say-no/

If you are now, or have ever been, an employee of the State of California, you should be paying attention to this:

"CalPERS has continued in its shameful tradition of grossly overpaying Marcie Frost via unwarranted annual compensation increases. And by “unwarranted,” we mean not just the total amount but also the fact that the lofty bonus amount is not justified under her existing compensation structure.

"Her total 2026 award was a $1.149,836 bonus. that plus her salary of $601,398 results in total pay of $1,751,234. That brings you to a record of 18.33% in publicly disclosed pay increases over her nine-year tenure at CalPERS.

"And those figures are not the sum total. Frost also received a non-disclosed long-term compensation award.

"Frost’s new salary for 2026/2027 is $641,250. Pray tell, since when are public officials entitled to salary increases that meaningfully exceed the rate of inflation?"

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2026/09/calpers-awards-marcie-frost-nearly-1-8-million-total-compensation-for-18-33-cagr-in-increases-since-hiring-in-violation-of-her-pay-parameters-board-dissenters-punished.html

Does anyone else work a software job where you have to pretend that LLM code generation tools are better than they are if you want to get paid?

Have been instructed to hammer them so that the person who bought them into the company will like our department more.

I’m laughing now but can you imagine how vicious the publish or perish parts of academia are going to get once having your name on some shit like “can large language models feel pain”, a sequel to the paper “can large language models feel fear”, is rightly seen as a poison pill for your career as a researcher

RE: https://mastodon.social/@LupertEverett/117307968590378431

> -1 on my side for mentioning environmental concerns; I don't think it's the LLM contribution policy's job to cover that at all.

> To the best of my understanding of the data, AI usage is one of the least environmental impactful choices a person can make

yeah, KDE's going full slop

“I’m Not Afraid of AI Overlords— I’m Afraid of Whoever’s Training Them To Think That Way | A Future Worth Thinking About”

https://afutureworththinkingabout.com/?p=5600

> For one thing, we may have to accept that, ultimately, some technological interventions might just need to be stopped, as a whole, until we can seriously reckon with their implications and consequences.

From 2021. Still relevant.

“The System From Nowhere”

https://mail.cyberneticforests.com/the-system-from-nowhere/

> But the first question to ask isn't "why did the model do that?" The question is: what human decisions optimized the model to do that?

Hi! Ich bin Johanna, 20 Jahre alt und suche momentan (immer noch) nach einem Job in IT, Anwendungsentwicklung, DevOps oder Sysadmin (linux).
Ich habe:
- Einen Abschluss der mittleren Reife und
- Eine 3 jährige Ausbildung als Fachinformatiker hinter mir
- 1 Jahr "richtige" Berufserfahrung
- ~8 Jahre Erfahrung rundum Entwicklung (Gitlab admin, DevOps, Ansible, etc)
Ich würde gerne Hybrid aus Karlsruhe arbeiten.

Schreibt gerne wenn ihr da was kennt :)

#getfedihired

RE: https://mastodon.social/@StopKillingGames/117305012378113374

The EU Kids Act is a concerning proposal. It fails to adequately protect children and instead prioritizes the commercial interests of major tech companies like #Facebook (Meta), and #Google (Alphabet). These corporations have already captured the surveillance and advertising markets, and this legislation risks granting them even regulatory control—at the expense of free speech and open-source.

If you're an EU citizen, please sign the petition to oppose the KidsAct: 🔗 https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/initiatives/details/2026/000011_en

Additionally, contact your representatives to voice your concerns about this harmful legislation.

#KidsAct #StopEU #SurveillanceAct
#euKidsact #privecy #EUpol #killinginternet

#GDPR & #AI - Irish EU Presidency proposes that "AI trumps the GDPR" in new leaked documents. This is nothing but the #DigitalExpropriation of Europeans on behalf of Big Tech.. 😣

https://noyb.eu/en/ai-eu-member-states-plan-digital-expropriation-europeans-interest-ai-companies

Which is your favourite Linux phone,
and why do you like it?

#Linux #Phone #AskFedi

Thinking about the selling point of "AI" supposedly "freeing up time" to do important things. Beyond devaluing the tasks that we can supposedly offload to software systems, it occurs to me that this is kind of opposite of mindfulness/being in the moment.

A short thread >>

@dangillmor Don't forget that in the US the gov't can access, without a warrant or notice, emails left on a mail service's server for more than 180 days.

This is a worthy essay about the "This isn't who we are" trope, involving a white Texas businessman who suddenly awoke -- when it affected him and his fiance -- to our fascist reality. (The piece is somewhat repetitive, but I recommend it anyway.) https://www.the-reframe.com/this-is-us/?ref=the-reframe-newsletter#/share

RE: https://mastodon.social/@UnicornRiot/117305935258429539

This is a crime. I knew Amy Klobuchar was a piece of shit, but I had no idea that she would torpedo efforts to let innocent people that she directly harmed rebuild their life just for electoral gain.

What a terrible person she is.

“Responding to a user who wrote that ‘every year I’m sad to learn that next season won’t be the book where he kills his way through a white supremacist militia camp,’ Ritchson explained that the novel (titled ‘Die Trying’) is his ‘favorite book.’ ‘Fun fact: I had it approved until someone got re-elected.’”

https://variety.com/2026/tv/news/alan-ritchson-jack-reacher-novel-die-trying-1236870453/

well over 90% of projects in the computering fields fail due to the misidentification of computering as the correct solution space for the actual problem to be addressed.

Having Opinions about specific versions of LLMs feels a lot like Knowing Your IQ. Like, I understand that you believe it's important, but it's telling me much more about you than you think it is, and not in any kind of good way

Republicans are still figuring out their midterm strategy (Besides "We'll kill you all.") https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/9/18/800099004/cartoon/republicans-midterm-messaging/

I have a question for linguists, teachers of English, language nerds.

In my first language (Croatian) copulative verbs (such as "to be" or "to become") reset the case of what follows to nominative.

"To sam ja" - "It is me", literally "It is I". It is not like that in English, and it is an ongoing joke in "'Allo 'Allo!". Guess it is a direct translation of French. I do not know any French.

Why are the pronouns (because English has no cases for nouns left except genitive) following copulative verbs in English in the objective case?

Bonus question: subject in a sentence is supposed to be in nominative case. "I am going to school." But "Me and you are going to school.", "You and I are going to school." Which of these are even correct?

#English #language