Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

A publication (Videogamer) laid off their journalists who do video game reviews, started faking the reviews with AI agents pretending to be real people, got called out, and then banned from Metacritic and Opencritic entirely thus destroying their own revenue.

Well done, dipshit execs.

New article out about what a million satellites could do to our atmosphere. It's bad. https://theconversation.com/a-new-space-race-could-turn-our-atmosphere-into-a-crematorium-for-satellites-276366

Some folks at #FOSDEM tried to buy the makeshift hats one of our team members brought, so I arranged for this prototype of an official hat to be made. It's a fisherman beanie with our logo embroidered. I'm trying to gauge interest here. Is this something you'd buy? (Poll in follow-up post)

With all the discussion around detecting when a code repo contains commits authored by an LLM, I think it is important to note commits like the following in Mozilla Firefox from 2 weeks ago:

"Bug 2011195 - When an agent commits, don't add itself as author"

https://github.com/mozilla-firefox/firefox/commit/71cc24b6a400dbd434e4df37087960d94b764791

I don't think it's a good think that Mozilla seem to be explicitly encouraging unattributed LLM code in Firefox.

Minneapolis ALERT: #ICE trying to follow white people after grocery shopping, trying to follow them to hidden migrant families.

Neighborhood groups asking people NOT to enter addresses into navigation apps, which can be monitored by ICE or simply read from a phone captured whle not locked.

BREAKING: Billionaire Jack Dorsey fires 40% of Block staff to replace them with AI, over 4000 humans being kicked out -- Billionaire Dorsey says he thinks most companies will do the same soon.

Topia Coffee Co-Op Rebrands as Radical Bean Cooperative

https://www.cincinnatimagazine.com/article/topia-coffee-co-op-rebrands-as-radical-bean-cooperative/

So it looks like Larry Ellison's going to be pulling the puppet strings at CNN, not just CBS "News" -- another domino falling in the right-wing extremists' war on honest journalism.

Neither of those outlets has been remotely perfect in the past. But they're heading toward Fox Lite status now.

The Dutch gov: Considering the Cloud Act, we can no longer depend on American Big Tech.

The Dutch tax authority: Lol how about we let a US company handle our ENTIRE country's taxes 'as a service.' 🤦‍♀️

https://mastodon.nl/@bert_hubert/116137241938000063

"Even if you can find all the parts you need from Lowe’s, building your own tractor is still intimidating. But for some, the staggering price advantage is reason enough to take on the challenge: A GVCS tractor costs $12,000 to build, whereas a commercial tractor averages around $120,000 to buy, not including the individual repairs that might be necessary over its lifetime at a cost of $500 to $20,000 each"

@ClareBear We've seen this movie before:

Push a lot of statutory responsibility onto councils.

Don't fund them to do all the stuff they already do, let alone all the additional stuff.

Whip up anti-council sentiment among the gullible public because stuff's not getting done and rates are going up.

Force asset sales and privatisations so your wealthy mates can be rent-seekers delivering services at lower quality and higher costs. (in other words, profit!)

So you probably don't want to reject AI generated content not because "AI generated content Is incompatible with your license if it has no copyright" but because "whether or not AI generated content is subject to copyright is not a settled matter and ESPECIALLY NOT INTERNATIONALLY" (and not everywhere has a public domain). If you accept something, its status may not be the same internationally, and *legal decisions about AI output could change soon*, leading to an integration of something very hard to undo later.

And the OTHER reason to not integrate it is that most of AI generated output has subtle bugs and tends to result in an erosion of your community. So yeah, that too.

I've always been suspicious of Deepak Chopra. He's a businessman who presents himself as a spiritual teacher. A lot of what he says is quantum technobabble, designed to manipulate the unwary into thinking he has depths.

So OF COURSE he's in the Epstein files. And OF COURSE half the time he's emailing with Epstein he's repeating his mantra, "bring the girls."

May the news spread wide and far about this shyster. A fall from grace might make him a better person.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2026/02/23/deepak-chopra-jeffrey-epstein-emails/88821384007/

Hey, Oakland Folks! The Black Panther Party Freedom Run is this weekend. Celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Black Panther Party, on the 100th year anniversary of Black History Month.
https://freedom-run.org/?_kx=f2b2OPc8aAoXlBbgQ4wBSFSBCFjZI6Hni8EC23_uy80.YrtHDw

It's interesting working on a website for a long period of time because you get to see trends and hype come and go.

For example, there was a specific period around 2010-2016 where I was constantly asked when DistroWatch would gets its own mobile app. "Everyone should have their own app; the web is dying", I was told. No one has asked me about apps in years.
(1/?)

Biggest threat from AI is ppl believing the hype about it and making decisions based on the hype

Enforcing existing laws preventing tech oligarchs from lying openly about their products to inflate their stock value would be nice

At this point I would settle for governments not handing over astronomical amounts of money with essentially no expectations

We get our writing/art/etc fed into a model w/o compensation that we would have to subscribe to even use, & oligarchs get public money to do it

Given the #DigitalCoup and the urgency to transition to #DigitalAutonomy, we’re building up the https://DemocraticTech.Fund. It is a networked approach, aiming to increase our collective capacity, to discover the tech that is already available to us, to deploy it in ways that we can own it, to share learnings of the transition, to move there together, so we can overcome network effects.

It is our intention to identify together the gaps of what is needed to make the transition, to fund that collectively. This can be tech, media to raise awareness for the positive alternatives already out there, and federating our communities. We’re starting as civil society, and we intent to invite institutions – public and private – to chip in and multiply the contributions. Together we can make the impact that is needed.

#DemocraticTechFund #dtf

@thomasfuchs I don't think this is the entire story. Tools and techniques like RAD/OOP/Expert Systems/4GL can definitely save time when used correctly. Abstracting or automating boring parts leaves more time and headpsace for the complicated parts -- which are typically the business rules and the non-functionals.

The way LLMs generate code is the exact opposite: they make it harder to focus on the hard parts by trying to generate "everything".

@thomasfuchs The devs Ive worked with who think in systems never had to be forced. I think it's more about identity than discipline. Some people see themselves as "i write code" and some see themselves as "I solve problems". The first group will struggle with systems thinking regardless of skill level. The second group has been waiting for it.

An excellent explanation on why the hype about LNG and the claim from conservatives that 'renewables raise electricity prices"... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk0Zm_xpk3c Interesting to hear about this from the US side. And yeah, who's to blame? Yup. Private power corporations, power monopolies, and fossil fuel interests.