Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

A decade ago during a project, I was griping about the trouble friends of mine had been having with their landlord, who was controlling the thermostat remotely to save money (rent was inclusive of bills). This was a shit thing to do when you don't know a family's schedules or even the local weather…

But when I was venting about this, the other devs got defensive and angry.

Turns out they were both landlords who did exactly the same thing to their tenants

Even if the code quality hadn’t declined overall, LLM users would still make the worst collaborators.

That feeling when coworkers on a freelance project, who used to send nicely curt and to-the-point emails with clear questions, now send massive essays with vague questions on random things from the code base that are nonetheless marked as [URGENT]

UN warns of ‘narrowing window’ to restore world’s forests - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/sep/29/un-warns-of-narrowing-window-to-restore-worlds-forests we need more trees

Man based on the recruiter mails I get it is *astonishing* how many AI companies are looking for someone to secure their bare metal servers a significant period of time after they started selling product on them

“Inside the anti-climate campaign against researchers” by Chelsea Harvey, Lesley Clark and Corbin Hiar for @politico:

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/09/28/climate-science-conservative-documents-universities-01065669

Any social or technological innovation can be construed as 'useful', if you're either ignorant of the downsides or aren't held to account for them. History is littered with them.

New Kickstarter post on the upcoming free Zoom event on Sunday, October 4th.

Share! 🎉 🎉 #NoAI

Plus news about my book writing progress, and a call-to-action to late pledge to my successful Kickstarter campaign, because it's my only source of income. About $12 USD for an eBook.

https://t.ly/AfterAIBook

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kimcrawley/recovering-after-gen-ai/posts/4810752

Realizing I don't actually know how to ask for an introduction or recommendation.

All my previous successful job searches involved already knowing someone on the inside of a company I liked, and for whatever reason that's not happening this time. But I do see a few people that some ex-colleagues know.

Is it as simple as "Hey, I see you have a LinkedIn connection to so-and-so at Whatever Corp, would you be willing to recommend me to them?" or what? This feels like something I should already know but I've only worked at 2 places in the past 13 years so I don't have much practice. 😅

"Death by Data Centers"

dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/data-center-energy-pollution-cancer-alley/

> The data centers haven’t infiltrated the cancer statistics yet, but state politicians, including those at the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, already deny that residents of Cancer Alley face a higher cancer risk.

Or at least what we have observed, that people are using LLMs to replace search is a very real thing.

And I can point out that it was LLM spam that broke search in the first place, and I can be correct about that but it doesn't matter.

The power and control of information flows that is represented by running search engines may be changing hands and changing shape. Search engines have gotten worse, and LLMs do their job more effectively and people are changing their workflows accordingly.

Last chance to get 40% off all music titles with code MUSIC here: https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_list&c=149
Offer ends 10/1.

Two days in a row now the 80+ year old Trump voter I have morning coffee with has said something to the effect of, "capitalism has made everybody greedy, and it needs to go." I don't know quite what to make of this. His main news sources are whatever comes in over the air (CBS, NBC, PBS, I think), meaning not a Fox viewer, but culturally pretty conservative. But he sounds like he could be a radical socialist sometimes (he watched a Mamdani interview and didn't find anything to disagree with), and he's placing the blame for our social problems squarely on "capitalism." I don't know if this is a wide spread thing among the more conservative types, but so far I'm finding it rather encouraging.

🚨🇪🇺 The #ChatControl trilogue starts on Tuesday & the EU Council is trying to pressure Parliament into giving up its opposition. We must stop them once again! 💪🏼

And the proposed compromise isn't targeted policing, it is mass surveillance!

Because no matter the framing, the truth remains the same: There's no backdoor for the good guys only!

We at Tuta will continue to fight for your right to #privacy. Make your voice heard as well, today is the day!

➡️ https://fightchatcontrol.eu/

Parasocial media: why influencers really aren't your friend

https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2026/04-parasocial-relationships/

How the very design of social media supercharges misinformation and harm.

incidentally, I am still open to finding a job I enjoy more

1) I work from home in Amsterdam. If you are also in Amsterdam, I can physically appear before you on a regular basis.

2) I am not at this exact second a Dutch citizen but I'm working on getting that sorted and finally getting my US passport shredded. I came into the country on a skilled worker visa. I can read Dutch easily and speak it okay

3) I am an infosec expert with a lot of experience reviewing C/C++ source code but I am open to tangentially related roles like malware analysis or optimization analysis, I'd like something fresh

4) I am an intermediate reader of Chinese who is constantly studying, improving, and interested in a role where being able to read Chinese is helpful.

Humans Are Reading Copilot Prompts — And They're Horrified
https://www.404media.co/humans-reading-copilot-prompts-images/?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

Posted into 404 Media @404-media-404media

It seems both OpenAI and Microsoft have been hiring human contractors to manuall review (read and judge) verbatim prompts from users to "improve" the services.

YOU HAVE NO REASONABLE EXPECTATION OF PRIVACY WITH A HOSTED LLM!

These companies are reading chat logs, "improving" their models, and they will eventually try to mine them for additional products that they would like to sell while displacing their customers in the marketplace.

These thieves be thievin', y'all.

AI agents stole 600,000 credit cards for about $25 a target, Gambit says - https://thenextweb.com/news/ai-agents-600000-credit-card-records-gambit "used three open-source AI agents to breach 27 companies and steal more than 600,000 credit card records. A scan cost about $25."

RE: https://mastodon.social/@lobsters/117348316997310623

"There is no worthwhile career in AI-anything.

Simple as that. The AI industry is designed to dehumanise and commoditise labour. Everyone who has dedicated their life to token servitude has become a dull fungible meat proxy."