Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Everyone wants to build panopticon.

They're just claiming it's to "protect children" or for "antiterrorism" efforts or immigration screening or whatever bullshit they think you're most likely to swallow.

"AI" is about automating surveillance and if you think "AI" makes mistakes now, wait until it's what the government relies on when heavily armed masked men raid your home in the middle of the night.

A warning for Adobe #InDesign users. I recently updated my copy, and after preparing a document, the recipient of that document sent me the alt text that popped up on one of their figures. Apparently, by default, InDesign uses AI to generate (often hilariously wrong) alt text for images.

20 members of Congress are finally speaking out for Rodney Taylor, a disabled double amputee who’s now spent more than a year in an ICE camp.

He was days away from receiving new prosthetic legs when they detained him.

He’s been denied his prosthetics, placed in solitary & his health is declining.

Please make noise for Rodney. He’s suffered for so long.

It’s time to get him out.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/21/pramila-jayapal-ice-double-amputee-georgia

#abolishice #immigration #uspol #fascism #disability #ableism #eugenics #rodneytaylor

https://truthout.org/articles/the-black-anti-fascist-tradition-recognized-fascism-didnt-begin-in-europe/

Doing blizzard prep: Putting on all my winter gear, downing four tallboys of Cloud Candy, and wandering around Boston until a news crew interviews me.

Get a limited edition tote and 4 books for $30! You choose the category. We choose the books. There’s 25 of each design available. When they’re gone, they’re gone. (Indicate your design preference in the order comments)
Shop here: https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=2047

Today I tried looking up a medical bill with a date of birth and account number. A formatting issue prevented the system from locating the database record so I could pay the bill.

It took me four tries to figure out how to properly format the date in order for the record to be located.

The format which worked? `DD-MON-RR` (today is 22-FEB-26 in that format)

Ballerina Farm's back in the news, for raw milk problems this time.

The reporting has been a little sparse on details with exactly what happened. So since I have some professional food safety experience, I went through the reporting to fill in some of the blanks.

youtu.be/mdOyeNCkC0I

Ok, I'll disable my adblock, but only because you asked exactly 67 times

- do you want to use google to sign in?
- do you want to add a passkey?
- do you want to add a 2FA token?
- we know you have 2FA but we've sent you an email instead
- this login attempt seems suspicious we've sent you a text about it
- can you click on these buses?
- you failed to click on the buses click on these bicycles instead
- should we save these details for next time?
- do you accept these trackers?
- you can opt out but we've decided it's legitimate interest anyway
- would you like to see a list of our 847 partners we share your data with?
- can we send you desktop notifications?
- can we access your location?
- do you want 10% off for signing up to the mailing list?
- do you want me to translate this page?
- hi I'm your friendly chatbot how can I help?
- oh no you can't buy this, reach out to us for a quote!
- do you want—

I'm tired boss

The LLM discourse on the Fediverse has really irked me the last few days.

Refusing to read writing made with the use of LLMs and refusing to give time to writers who use, promote or justify the use of LLMs is not purity culture, it's a boycott. It's a political act of withdrawing my time, resources and support for something that I find deeply morally wrong. It's protest. I have a choice and I refuse.

LLMs are exploitative, destructive, biased, mediocre parroting machines. Using them has a negative impact on the climate, the arts, the quality of the internet, the job market, the economy, the accessibility of electronics, even on skill development, creativity and mental health. LLMs are made and trained on the unpaid labour of millions -if not billions- of people who didn't consent. Their generic output litter the path to finding anything by true human creators.

Wherever I can, for as long as I can, I reject LLMs and anything that is related to them. I'm boycotting.

@ludicity For the record, I work at a software company that employs ~10k developers.

Before LLMs, I'd encounter such engineers a couple of times a month, but I interact with a lot of engineers, specifically the ones that need help or are new at the company or industry at large, so it's a selected sample. Even the most inexperienced ones are willing and able to learn with some guidance.

After LLMs, there's been a significant uptick, and these new ones are grossly incompetent, incurious, impatient, and behave like addicts if their supply of tokens is at all interrupted. If they run out of prompt credits, its an emergency because they claim they can't do any work at all. They can't even explain the architecture of what they are making anymore, and can't even file tickets or send emails without an LLM writing it for them, and they certainly lack in any kind of reading comprehension.

It's bleak and depressing, and makes me want to quit the industry altogether.

Hacktivists tried to find a workaround to Discord’s age-verification software, Persona. Instead, they found its frontend exposed to the open internet, and that was just the beginning.

https://www.therage.co/persona-age-verification/

If you have to put up a sign asking cyclists to please use your shared pedestrian path, you've designed it wrong.

As a commuter cyclist, I want to get from point A to point B as fast as I can, without dying. Just like a car driver.

When given the option of riding on the road verge, or weaving in and out of people walking their dogs with headphones on and children walking to school and friends walking along chatting to each other, and giving way to cars at every little side road, then I choose the road verge. So do people on road bikes zipping past me at >30 km/hr.

I really like the separated cycleways that Christchurch city has built. They're safe and fast and well used.

I worry about the recent proliferation instead of "shared paths" in new road developments which combine cyclists with pedestrians and discourage bikes from being on the road at all.

Shared paths are useful for children on bikes, if we teach them how to ride around pedestrians, but they're impractical for an adult cyclist trying to travel 20–30 km/hr.

Please, let's keep investing in separated cycleways for cycle commuters. That's what will get more commuters out of cars, not shared paths.

#cycleways #bikeTooter #nz #biking

It seems like Medium has joined DEV in becoming a useless repository of slop and slop-related discussions.

This trash is destroying the places we used to share useful ideas, and it really is a loss.

What *is* true: if I go to the NZ Lenovo site, there're no laptops available with Linux right now. If, however, I go to the US Lenovo site, a 'Build your own ThinkPad L14 Gen 5 AMD (14")' laptop (the sort of thing I'd be interested in), you have the option of Ubuntu Linux pre-installed, with a price reduction of $140 vs. the default Windows 11 Home install.

Wow, Lenovo says they're losing money on every computer pre-installed with MS Windows due to it sucking. They are apparently moving to Ubuntu Linux installed by default. Windows will only be an extra-cost option... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8OMjEWOo_M No more default Windows Tax, no more bloatware & nagware. The world might just get slightly better as a result of Microsoft losing out.

Does anybody have any good artists that they follow here? I’m looking for unconventional stuff; thrift store artists.

@onepict the Homeless Workers Movement from Brazil has a technology chapter (I am part of it) and we have a short comic book in English: https://digilabour.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Other-Tech-Worlds-Are-Possible-Vol.-1-Homeless-Workers-Movement-in-Brazil-English.pdf

We also have a non fiction book released last year that probably will get translated into English as well.

Tiny reminder FediFriends to add alt-text
to your images and media so that your posts are accessible to all, and (bonus point) more people will boost them.

Thank you!

#Mastodon #Fediverse