Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

The challenge of our democracy is that... participating in it actively takes time. Not many people can do that, thanks to system that our democracy has slowly manifested. Now, aside from a few fortunate people whose obligations allow them enough time to stay abreast of things, the only ones with sufficient spoons to participate... is those with a vested interest, i.e. lobbyists who're getting paid. Their work is seldom in the public interest. But their influence is wildly disproportionate.

Whoa, have just had a flood of inspiration (and, at the same time, discovered forgotten inspiration from the past in my notes)... leading to a flurry of new blog posts. https://davelane.nz

Microsoft's new version of Recall appears to still capture sensitive data like credit card numbers, even with the "sensitive information" filter enabled (Avram Piltch/Tom's Hardware)

https://www.tomshardware.com/software/windows/microsoft-recall-screenshots-credit-cards-and-social-security-numbers-even-with-the-sensitive-information-filter-enabled
http://www.techmeme.com/241212/p41#a241212p41

The effect of AI is to reduce the cost of •generating code• by a factor of X at the cost of increasing the cost of •thinking about the problem• by a factor of Y.

And yes, Y>1. A thing non-developers do not understand about code is that coding a solution is a deep way of understanding a problem — and conversely, using code that’s dropped in your lap greatly increases the amount of problem that must be understood.

3/

I feel another blog post coming on: we're good (as humans) at feeling appalled by individual acts of violence & death, but we're really bad at judging & feeling similarly appalled at lower levels of misery & suffering among the masses - sometimes short of death - caused by 'official' forces, i.e. 'The System' (e.g. late-stage capitalism & corporatocracy).

https://yewtu.be/watch?v=QxIZoAdewsk or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxIZoAdewsk

“The most important issues in AI right now are its use to inform decisions about people’s rights,” EFF’s @prilkit told @AlJazeera, such as predictive policing and deciding who gets health benefits, housing, and jobs. https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/12/12/the-trump-administration-could-reverse-progress-on-ai-regulation

Say it with me now

ABSOLUTE F**KING BULLSHIT

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12-13/coalition-says-nuclear-option-cheaper-than-renewables/104720926

We need more sensible conversations about how non-free firmware is treated while we promote and advance free software. We should also acknowledge that FSF’s current approach with RYF is less than ideal. This post by @mjg59 is an example of a sensible discussion of the issues:

https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/70895.html

If you are interested in how these issues impacted a real company who tried to make freedom-respecting hardware, check out a talk I gave at SCALE20x:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xbvMtFLOmE

#FOSS #firmware #RYF

When it comes to non-free firmware I think there's two reasonable positions - treat it like non-free code running on a remote system (suboptimal, outside the scope of current free software priorities) or treat it like software running on the primary CPU (all code on the local system should be free software, no matter where it's running). I think the FSF's position is unreasonable: https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/70895.html

"In some small plants, fewer than half the workers are documented. More than half are hired through a contractor who brings in undocumented people. They don’t get the same benefits, like holidays and overtime pay, and they’re paid less while enduring the same risks."

https://www.labornotes.org/blogs/2024/12/poultry-bosses-benefit-trumps-threats

Call to Action against the #PRGT #Pipeline

https://north-shore.info/2024/11/13/call-to-action-against-the-prgt-pipeline/

One of the things I've been gradually realizing is that so many people have wrong, backwards ideas about how the world works because they had such "normie," privileged experiences growing up and into adulthood to where they actually believe the talking points our society uses to justify its constant bullshit. They live in a fairy-tale land because they've so rarely been required to think and defend themselves.

@lwriemen @dajb our tao of tech can explain that one https://blog.weareopen.coop/the-tao-of-wao-55ffe5f80395

@niedlichenacktschnecke @coolbean
it's kind of a long story but if I have to shorten it, long time ago an insufferable nerd called Yudkowski created a blog about the power of logic and reason.

2 minutes later they had all proven with facts and Bayesian statistics that some people (themselves) just had innate high IQ thanks to their superior genetics. 3 minutes later they had proven with facts and logic that their school bullies, the feminists who scare them, and Black people as a whole have genetically inferior IQs.

5 minutes later they had proven with facts and logic that an AI God was inevitable and nigh upon us as the biggest existential threat to humanity and... (do I want to explain acausal punishment and the Basilisk? I said I was going to shorten it...) ... you'll go to super hell unless you give them money to code the AI God be a good God. I assure you there's a genetically fit, very logical argument about why this is real.

if this feels familiar to you, yes. the AI doom cult that we were mocking back in 2009 is mainstream now. their asinine Effective Altruism concept is mainstream now. like a lot of repentant ex-techies I was adjacent to this subculture once, but luckily I saw where it was going with "human biodiversity" (racist pseudoscience) and jumped ship long ago, curing myself of any faith in logic and reason in the process. like a lot of people who read too many of their blogs, I kinda kept tab on these weird rich dorks all along. it's kinda bizarre to see the AI apocalypse nerds hit big time repeatedly like this. at least Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality never went mainstream.

no no monkey paw jokes please, I can't take it.

then they started polyamory houses for the improvement of facts and logic (=cult organising with systemic abuse of women) and then a lot of them started realising that they don't actually like freedom for inferior people, completing the metamorphosis of technolibertarians to technofeudalist neoreactionary fascism. then leaked emails showed that influential community leaders had been fascist sympathisers from the very start and were hiding it in order to recruit more nerds to the cause of breeding the smartest white babies. gasp.

"that's the short version?" you should see their blog posts. by which I mean no, you definitely should not. there's absolutely nothing of value in This Part Of Twitter. that is not a place of honour. what is there is dangerous and repulsive to us

If only her were directly related to Biden, he'd be home free. Unfortunately for him, he's just a environmental lawyer who successfully sued Chevron. Alas.

https://zeteo.com/p/democrats-press-biden-pardon-steven-donziger

Do you want to report on California’s most pressing environmental issues? Mongabay is looking for a Staff Writer to produce stories on high conservation value landscapes, natural resource governance, and development pressures. Join our team to help tell these critical stories.

https://mongabay.org/opportunity/staff-writer-california-biodiversity/

#News #Conservation #Environment #JournalismJobs #JobOpportunities #ConservationJournalism

Moved by local paper article about a new, super niche art book, I wanted to contact author/artist because reasons. No contact info on the website. Hell, I was surprised there is a website . Still the only possible connection point is Instagram, which I still will never use. It's getting harder and harder to support local businesses and artists online...