Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

If you spend any real time on Mastodon, you will discover that some people take their #AltText very seriously indeed, and some may wonder "Why?".

Mastodon tries to be a place for all people, where everyone can have a voice, connect with like-minded people, and catch up on news and current events, regardless of ability. There are many vision impaired people who follow me now, and I try to make sure that my #AltText serves it's intended purposes.

Here is my approach.
Imagine you are describing the image to a friend with perfect eyesight, but is sitting out of view of the picture, like a friend on the other side of your desk who can't see the screen. Tell them the point of the picture, why it's there, what it means in context to the toot.

This example photo may have alt text as follows: A colour photograph of a black Steinway Grand Piano, with lid open and keyboard of black and white keys exposed. The branding "Steinway & Sons" can be seen written in gold above the keys and on the side of the piano which sits on gold coloured wheels, off-centre in the photo to the right, upon a red wood herring bone patterned floor. A white cornice separates the floor from the grey wall behind the piano which only takes up about one third of the entire frame of the photo.

This kind of description is overkill if none of that description is relevant to the original toot, especially if you were explaining this toot to a sighted friend.

For what it's worth. ❤️

A protestor said out loud what #Canva needed to hear: #AI steals from artists.

I’m sad to see Canva embrace AI tools; it has been one of the very few places left on the Internet where amateurs can get non-AI templates and artwork. I’m very sad to see it go down the trash bin of #AISlop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRD93vcNenM

we've created a no AI notice that we'll be using to reassure people seeing our trailers and games, with hand drawn lettering and a relaxing cute sleepy fox, and it's also up on itch in multiple formats for anyone to use: https://eniko.itch.io/cute-fox-no-ai-notice

options include with/without fox, opaque/transparent, and 4k, 2160p, 1440p, 1080p, and 720p resolutions

Please don't scroll past. This is important.

I am being pressured by FreeBSD's reddit moderation team to censor the Omarchy #content_review or to remove it completely. They have began a harrasment campaign with the goal of removing me from this world.

the review: https://merveilles.town/@prahou/117501303459299869

The issue at hand is that a picture of a partial swastika appears in close proximity to the word FreeBSD - if you've seen a newspaper before, you might understand the principle of two separate unrelated articles appearing next to each other. You might also understand that I am reporting on common associations with the Topic of the review. These are not my inventions, and I am not calling anyone anything. I am reporting on the news. Nevertheless, as much as I am a journalist, I am an artistè, and if my audience sees in my work something I didn't put there, I am not going to take that experience away from them. This probably says more about them than it does about me.

While I am a man of principle, there is one thing I like more - money.

I will delete it for $,2000. For $5,000 I will apologize. For $10,000 I will use daemonarchy exclusively for 6 months on all my computers. For $25,000 I will kill a small animal of your choice. For $75,000 I will not post anything for a month.

https://analognowhere.liberaypay.com
https://ko-fi.com/analognowhere

To everyone who likes my work, this message is for you (from said freebsd moderator) [cw ableist slur]: https://beige.party/@fuzzy/117510032933612034

To everyone else who feels personally attacked by my art: send money, you can end this here and now.

Thank you for your attention.

pls boost

#runbsd #omarchy #fediverse #fediart #unix_surrealism #swastika #freebsd #news

@worik @argv_minus_one @wobweger @libreoffice @moskitokoenig Surveys and studies of coders say the opposite:

Generative AI is good at producing text that resembles code and may compile, but the code is unreliable and takes as much work to debug as it would to write it from scratch.

A lot of coders have your experience. Until they actually look at the code it produces.

Well this is eleventy-million kinds of Fucked Up. LA Times (who once contracted with me as a freelance reviewer and whom I struggled to get paid by) asserts that *merely reading its website* constitutes a permanent waiver of your right to sue it under *any circumstances*. This means that freelancers like me who read the website would lose the right to sue the company if we got stiffed. #consenttheater #bindingarbitration #dickovers

RE: https://neuromatch.social/@jonny/117510139272497507

I said something like this to my buddies this very day. The Anthropic IPO makes no goddamn sense to me. The numbers aren’t even CLOSE to adding up.

Never mind that they lost 25% of their consensus valuation within…a few days? Down from $2T to $1.5T. That’s $500M down, for nothing. This isn’t a serious investment.

in the runup to the 2024 election, Trump tripled down on the most vile misogynistic anti-trans outright fascist rhetoric... and it helped him

(some)people were like HELL YEAH women shouldn't have the vote & made sure to get their rancid ass to the poll

Just in case you're thinking of staying home

Growing body of evidence demonstrates that Trump was an active participant in Epstein’s sexual abuse of young women and "DOJ and FBI are doing everything they can to keep the American people in the dark about it." - House Judiciary Democrats https://democrats-judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/democrats-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/2026-10.hjc-dems-staff-report-epstein-and-trump.pdf

It occurs to me that a casual observer could infer that I see food purely as a vehicle for chili-based condiments.

Go to a factory pub and talk about how much you made from shutting the local factory down, you're going to get punched in the teeth. The witnesses will all think you deserved it

Brag about "AI" near people who know illustrators, translators or copywriters and you'll get the social media equivalent

And the witnesses will all think you deserved it

RE: https://werd.social/@ben/117508703588325577

capitalists #ai dream is to get rid of the people who hold together their companies, with their expertise and institutional knowledge. that way, they can depress the wages of perennially n00b workers, while keeping skeleton crews of managerial bootlickers.

“early retirement” means all GenXers and some older Millennials ―the people who literally created most of the digital economy as we know it.

Nadella is going full Mike Myers on Microsoft’s software development culture, in time for Halloween

Happy every day I did not migrate my email to Proton. After the Trump posiitve statements now pushing people out who are not sloppy enough ... just great
https://mastodon.social/@404mediaco/117509377339919227

RE: https://floss.social/@josch/117507580019985725

The collapse of the #Debian project is going faster than I thought it would.

I was disappointed and horrified by the earlier vote to allow LLM use, but even then, I had no idea it was going to get this bad this quickly.

Forcing all package maintainers to jump through an LLM hoop to upload their packages is scary reminiscent of companies forcing job applicants to jump through LLM hoops to keep their job applications from being ignored.

At this rate Debian will soon be gone.

@paelnever

#Linux

RE: https://floss.social/@josch/117507580019985725

Consequences for the recent LLM vote seem to have arrived for Debian... automated slop reviews: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2026/10/msg00263.html

And we see here that at least one Debian developer, @josch, has been lost due to this change.

This is INCREDIBLY sad IMO. If you're an MNT Reform family computer user, @josch is basically a folk hero for making those machines *work*.

I am still feeling vindicated in my Vibe Bobsled blogpost, having seen both what's happening to the Linux Kernel and now to Debian, where we see the dismantling not only of individuals coding, but also communities, as everyone rides the icy chute down the hill https://dustycloud.org/blog/faulty-towers-vibe-sickness-and-the-vibe-bobsled/

"I'm the most productive man on earth!" I yell, waving and pointing to my tamagotchi powered by 72 GPUs.

Microsoft are offering 25% of their employees redundancy https://www.reuters.com/technology/microsoft-is-offering-buyouts-around-60000-employees-business-insider-reports-2026-10-26/

RE: https://mstdn.social/@hkrn/117508777933827733

criminal

A high performer at Microsoft (200/200 means they got 200% of target bonus and stock compensation) was advised by their manager to take the voluntary retirement program.

Assuming the previous 30% acceptance rate, Microsoft needs 18,000 people to leave the company. There will be layoffs otherwise.

"Why work hard when you're going to be laid off anyway?" is an increasingly popular mantra in big tech.

@BlackAzizAnansi no, because we also got what they voted for