Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Maybe #WSocial is a secret project by Big Tech to stop me and other activists from promoting the open social web... distracting us with daily rage bait instead.

Incredibly, the W Social folks are boasting that they received an innovation award at a glitzy ceremony (the award was just created, its website went live last week).

If you didn't know, W Social grabbed the ATproto codebase (developed by Bluesky PBC) and quietly went closed-source, à la Truth Social.

Enough with these 🤡 for today

Here’s another good article on the #subprime problem facing US car loans today.

Car owners are increasingly underwater (i.e. they owe more on their car than the car is worth). As a result, some people are driving their cars longer (not bad), but some are rolling their debt over into new debt as they buy newer cars and extending their loan terms to manage their monthly payments (very bad).

In 2026, more than 30% of issued car loans are MORE THAN TWELVE YEARS LONG. This is clearly unsustainable. Do these loans even have a chance of outpacing a car’s depreciation? Even comprehensive insurance won’t cover the outstanding balance of the loan if the car were totaled.

This is heading into very bad territory.

#cars #economy

https://www.breakingviews.com/columns/big-view/17-trln-auto-loan-market-heads-crash-2026-10-13/

Very happy to know that my Abandoned America trademark has been coopted by not one but two different AI slop "creators", both based out of Europe to circumvent my legal protections. I love this new world we live in.

@capnseasick "I would engage you in debate but but I don't want to put extra burden on your token budget."

“Polling reported by Politico found that 60 per cent of Canadians say they can “never trust Americans the same way again” while 63 per cent believe the U.S. creates more problems than it solves.” - “Canada could save millions by developing its own operating system instead of relying on Microsoft Windows” https://theconversation.com/canada-could-save-millions-by-developing-its-own-operating-system-instead-of-relying-on-microsoft-windows-294027

RT: @AssalRad Ms Rachel endorsing candidates: “I can’t stay silent as politicians vote to fund the genocide in Gaza with our tax dollars.”

@ludicity @drahardja @imclaren the bubble will IMO pop when two conditions are satisfied: 1) capital influx stops (either when the ROI is unmistakably shown to be miserable if not negative or more likely when capital simply runs out, which seems to be the case now as interest rates and bond yields increase significantly) and 2) when one major player (likely a compute provider) belly flops into bankruptcy, triggering a sell-off and the collapse of the whole edifice (and a big recession alas).

I already voted. Texts about the election should send an electric shock back to the sender.

slopped CNC and laser curring software is absolutely terrifying frankly. I may never update our CNC routers or lasers ever again just to be safe. this should sound like an absurd plan and yet. and yet.

RE: https://sfba.social/@drahardja/117465841363212163

Still thinking about this. It’s hard to see the stock market as anything but pure speculation and casino at this point, because almost all of the perceived value of a stock is now associated with its share price, not its dividend.

Because dividends are dead, share prices MUST go up for investors to make money. For share prices to go up, a company must grow its business, forever. Growth, not profitability, becomes the primary concern.

Contrast this with dividends, which yield a return on investment *without having to grow the business*. A mature business with a flat share price but yielding a 6% dividend returns the same money to the investor as a zero-dividend business growing its share prices by 6% per year, but the former is under no pressure to continually expand.

In case you missed it, read our original investigation: https://projects.propublica.org/american-citizens-detained-dhs-civil-rights/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mastodon-post

#Immigration #Immigrants #ICE #DHS #USPolitics #Law

Rep. Jason Smith’s targeting of BreakThrough News for views he dislikes shows a blatant disregard of the First Amendment.

People who themselves hold controversial political views should know the risk of normalizing fishing expeditions targeting dissent.

https://freedom.press/issues/congressional-threats-to-breakthrough-news-are-unconstitutional-harassment/

Is anyone ever going to make a good 7-8" android tablet again? (Rhetorical question...)

So how many FOSS orgs are choosing to not use genAI at all? Obviously I know @spritely takes that stance, because I work there.

But who else?

Godot, maybe? (They played with it for a bit then enacted a policy against it, IIRC.) The Document Foundation, though I am not sure by what degree? Zig, certainly.

But who else? The room seems to be shrinking, alas :\

Last week, Mobilizon was invited to a “free software design clinic.”

This clinic helped us redefine our priority: everyday users.

We receive feedback mainly from the open-source community and the Fediverse. This inevitably influences which issues we prioritize.

But the representatives of this community, who joined the clinic, want above all to bring more users onto Mobilizon.

So we’re going to reach out to people who aren’t familiar with nor interested in open-source (if there are ;)

Just published on FOSS Force: Open Standards: The Other Side of Open Source https://fossforce.com/2026/10/open-standards-the-other-side-of-open-source/

@fasterandworse What comes to my mind when I think of Firefox?

I've already made an illustration about that.

I keep seeing people describe the character.ai bankruptcy as the first AI bubble domino, so I’m glad to see some reporting on what’s *actually* going on here: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/10/disney-found-a-way-to-buy-character-ai-without-buying-its-lawsuits/

This is a way for Disney to buy the company without really buying the company, so they can avoid antitrust. It also gets them out of inheriting the active lawsuits. Character.ai has been through this once already - what’s left of the company is kind of a shell after Google hired key employees & licensed their tech.

Marc Andressen portrayal in Bloomberg's Business Week magazine shows him to be not just a nasty character but also a dishonest one. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-10-15/how-ai-crypto-and-dei-drove-marc-andreessen-to-maga?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc5MjQzNTg1MiwiZXhwIjoxNzkzMDQwNjUyLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUTVhZRElWVFRDWlAwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJBQjUxRjdCOUYxODk0NjBCOEE2RDU3NUM5QUQzOUUzQyJ9.gu59CBo0KsJrx_HiVBpLojho5OoOzWbDNq8934JPxk8

Excellent reporting...

Who woulda' thought Florida politics could be so swampy?

Gov. Ron DeSantis allegedly diverted $10m in taxpayer money to his wife's charity. It's been headline news for months.

Now the Florida GOP is suing TV stations, claiming it's a crime to report on records about the scandal.

https://floridatrident.org/florida-gop-lawsuit-hope-florida-ad/