Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

I was recently invited onto the Dead Code Podcast by @jardo, who blessedly allowed me to complain about Scrum like the good 'ol days instead of the usual AI stuff. Give it a listen if you long for our old problems.

https://shows.acast.com/dead-code/episodes/dragged-into-done-with-nikhil-suresh

Molly Crabapple’s work goes where the fight is: the strike, the ICE raid, the border.

Now she’s In These Times’ first-ever Artist-at-Large.

Come celebrate our 50th anniversary with Molly and the In These Times community in New York next week.

https://www.allyoufascistsboundtolose.com/calendar/protect-free-speech-support-independent-media

As the United States marks 250 years, Liz Sullivan-Yuknis and Anna Canning look toward the next 250 and the communities already building democracy from the ground up.

Their focus: co-governance, and a vision where “We the People” truly means all people.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/cogovernance-american-democracy-250

“Any claims that this company is providing family safety is in direct conflict with their business practices, which are endangering people by violating their privacy,” EFF’s Daly Barnett told Kidsburgh. https://www.kidsburgh.org/life360-bought-an-advertising-company-in-january-heres-what-parents-need-to-know/

Social media bans and other age-based restrictions deny young people their rights to access information and speak online, EFF’s @davidgreene told @TheGuardian. Non-governmental alternatives – such as parental control tools provided by the companies – are better options. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/aug/18/meta-pays-influencers-teen-social-media-ban

Become a monthly sustainer of In These Times and receive Sonali Kolhatkar’s #BreakingICE: Community Defense Against State Terror and MAGA Fascism.
Plus every print issue of In These Times and a Seven Stories Press discount.
Support journalism documenting resistance to fascism.

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/breakingicenew?recurring=true

Anyone surprised at charities hiring union busters.. I hope you understand that many charities are run by people who are even more sociopathic than your sociopathic bosses.

🇪🇺 🎙️ We've engaged in various EU Consultations to encourage an Open Web Data Infrastructure for Europe

Public Consultations enable citizens and businesses to share their views on new EU policies and existing laws. The Commission analyses the contributions and takes them into account for fine tuning its initiatives.

👉 Find out about the consultations we provided feedback in right here: https://openwebsearch.eu/remaining-active-we-provided-feedback-for-various-european-commission-consultations/

Become a Friend of PM, and support independent radical publishing. We’ll send you books monthly, and you'll get 50% off of everything on our website year-round. You’ll also receive this 5 panel Sockin' Suckas Hat free! Offer ends 9/1. https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_list&c=139

If anyone wants (for free) boxes and boxes and boxes of old books that our library does not have space for (obviously, not for LLM training) let me know. Seriously, we've been trying to give them away forever and they just keep piling up. You'll have to come collect them, though.

GitHub Actions users when they learn about GitHub Consequences

Has anyone tried out a #LilyGo? ...

https://meshcore.ninja/device/lilygo-tdeck-pro/

#Meshtastic #Meshcore

Every eugenicist with an opinion column looks like a sickly Victorian child suffering from something like "milkthrop."

This shit writes itself. This is so beyond parody at this point I can't write about it.

I had an author friend gush, for paragraphs, about how amazing my editing was. It was funny. It was honest. It was developmental juice that didn't have any trouble asserting it's flavor. He begged me to know what LLM I was using because he had other editors use LLMs and they weren't nearly as good or funny or sincere and they didn't seem to understand the work the way I did.

this has got to be the shortest email I've ever written. I replied,

“I used my fucking brain.”

#AI #NoAI #LLM

I've worked with and spoken to hundreds of developers over the last year, and my best guess is that the true extent of AI use in software development is being massively exaggerated.

I'm determined to get to the bottom of this before the year's out.

“Anthropic watermarks AI output — and the AI bros yell – Pivot to AI”

https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/08/17/anthropic-watermarks-ai-output-and-the-ai-bros-yell/

Watching all of this unfold has been kind of funny.

Phosh 0.56.0 and Linux 7.2 on PureOS Dawn. Getting there.

...and speaking of the kernel, the latest LTS (6.18) is now available for testing on Crimson: https://forums.puri.sm/t/kernel-6-18-available-for-testing/31104

#pureos #crimson #dawn #gnu #linux #phone #librem5 #linuxphone #linuxphones #mobilelinux #linuxmobile #phosh #linuxonmobile #mainline #kernel #shotonlibrem5

Meanwhile, #Google #AI Overviews are lying about the continuing global Google Home outage

The outage has continued for hours. And while Google has admitted it is still in progress, questions about it to Google Search get this response:

"There is no widespread or global outage currently affecting Google Home services. Tracking platforms like Downdetector US show normal operation levels, meaning issues are likely localized to your specific device, app, or home network."

In fact, Downdetector shows a very impressive big red graphed outage in progress for Google Home.

Thanks for the misinformation, Google AI Overviews!

@davidrevoy @ozzelot the linux foundation receiving a fuckton of money from multiple AI corporations (including Palantir) and paying Torvalds a $1.5 million/year paycheck is almost certainly the reason why Torvalds instituted an AI policy in the kernel that requires maintainers to use LLMs for review and encourages slop in the kernel. he evoked a right-wing conspiracy theory while doing it.

a lot of people have told you the Linux Foundation isn’t Linux, that they don’t matter, that you should keep contributing. that doesn’t make any sense if you think about it, does it. this is capitalism, and the person at the head of a project receiving large amounts of money certainly affects everyone who’s part of that project.

the Linux Foundation posting slop is a symptom of a sickness, but keep your eye on what matters. the kernel is rapidly becoming slop and it’s run by someone who very loudly dislikes you and me and everyone else who doesn’t like LLMs. you can do better with your time.

@zzt "I'm glad we learned the lesson from that bizarrely overengineered juice squeezer which did the same job as a simple juicer just with a whole bunch of vendor lock in and pollution" I think, as I rub the lamp one more time in the hopes that I can persuade a genie to perform a boolean search.