Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Recent leaks have undermined the kinds of lies that the drafters of the Constitution intended journalists to expose when they wrote the First Amendment’s press clause.

That’s exactly why journalist-source confidentiality needs protecting.

https://freedom.press/issues/recent-leaks-reinforce-why-journalist-source-confidentiality-needs-protecting/

"I believe this process has created a symbolic society — one where people are elevated not by any actual ability to do something or knowledge they may have, but by their ability to make the right noises and look the right way to get ahead. The power structures of modern society are run by business idiots — people that have learned enough to impress the people above them, because the business idiots have had power for decades..."
[link in previous toot]

Ed Zitron doing a pretty solid impression of a modern-day Veblen here.

https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-era-of-the-business-idiot/

This is probably obvious to everyone already, but I jotted down a brief note about why having a `robots.txt` matters when creating tarpits for LLM bot zombies scouring the web for content--even when, especially when, they don't read them.

https://inkdroid.org/2025/05/22/tarpit/

This week’s comic is now up on Daily Kos
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THE NEW SNEETCHES
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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/5/22/2323427/-Cartoon-Tom-the-Dancing-Bug-and-The-New-Sneetches

This is how our society ends: with the "smart" people committing voluntary intellectual suicide. Congratulations to all the AI bandwagon-hoppers out there - this is what your ignorant enthusiasm has helped to create. Oh well. I suppose it was only a matter of time.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/05/thinking-being-offloaded-to-ai-even-in-elite-medical-programs.html

Good news if you want to buy a house, bad news if you need to have a job.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/05/a-harbinger-tech-jobs-plunge-in-san-francisco-silicon-valley-brings-condo-prices-drop-back-to-2015-single-family-home-to-2018.html

With their votes in favor of a disastrous law giving the cryptocurrency crooks even more incentive to rip off the rest of us, these 16 Democratic senators demonstrated that they are as corrupt as Trump and the Republican party. Everyone's assets are about to be at huge risk.

https://prospect.org/politics/2025-05-21-democratic-senators-deserve-primary-crypto-bill/

#Google putting wrong medical advice in their #AI Overviews.

This is not funny. It is not acceptable. Today I saw someone who had asked a health-related question to Google Search. The AI Overview presented mixed-up, wrong information. I urged the person to ignore the AI Overview and use the regular site links.

They didn't know there were any regular site links, because the AI Overview filled essentially their entire window and they didn't know to scroll down. This is a common situation with busy, nontechie users.

They have depended on Google to point them at accurate information for so many years, and now Google Search spews out convincing looking AI garbage. This is not an anomaly.

Google's AI Overviews are full of wrong, partially wrong (even more dangerous!), and just plain misinformation. Answers that are completely reversed from supposed source pages because the AI didn't understand the wording. Measurements wrong. Math wrong.

It doesn't matter how often AI Overviews are correct, because you NEVER KNOW when they're going to be wrong, either completely or partly (again, mixing true with false -- like contaminating a well).

And now Google is trying to convince users to use "AI Search" instead -- "Hey Ma', no more list of blue links!" -- making it even harder to see that so many of their answers are, if you'll excuse the expression, bulls*it, sometimes dangerous as well.

This is unconscionable. Frankly, whether Google understands this or not, this behavior is uncaring and evil. Apparently Google's leadership no longer feels any shame at all. Disgusting.

Online headlines focus more on clicks than clear information, study shows. Researchers say digital news is changing, with headlines written to grab attention instead of just informing readers. 🤨

📝„Over the past 20 years, online news headlines have become longer, more negative, and increasingly focused on click-through rates—regardless of journalistic quality. This is the conclusion reached by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, who analyzed around 40 million headlines from English-language news outlets across the last two decades. Their study has been published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications."

https://www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/press-releases/headlines

#study #news #clickbait #negativenews #onlinenews #maxplanckinstitute #journalism

Wonder where it's going?

"i don't understand this economy when nursing homes are so expensive they bankrupt our grandparents but nursing home aides need to use food banks. daycare is so expensive it eats up one parent's entire paycheck and yet daycare providers only make $10/hr and need second jobs

college costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and puts students into debt for life and yet we have thousands of professors living in their cars.

everything we need is astronomically expensive and yet almost none of the money we pay is going towards the people actually doing the work and providing the services."

- @missmayn

#capitalism

🔴 This week’s comic is now up on Boing Boing
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THE NEW SNEETCHES
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https://boingboing.net/2025/05/21/tom-the-dancing-bug-the-new-sneetches.html

Who needs A.I. to make up fake books? I've been doing it for almost a quarter century. https://www.patreon.com/BrianMcFadden

If you design or build for the web, accessibility is part of your job. It’s not just for specialists. It’s not just something that a design system handles for you. Learn how to do your job or find a different profession.

Fake history is everywhere on the internet, from popular fake 'facts' to misinformation and AI generated videos. Historian Jo Hedwig Teeuwisse @fakehistoryhunter talks about fake history

FULL VIDEO AVAILABLE
YouTube: https://youtu.be/_SMU7R9rbI4
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4VQy8sD0XIwXgTQnrA5i25?si=HQeCXXn4R7OSPLtwcxZokg

Long read, short summary: AI is really bad for the planet.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1116327/ai-energy-usage-climate-footprint-big-tech/

Adam Levitin on the GENIUS Act: “[I]n regard to cash deposits, the stablecoin investors will have priority over the claims of ma-and-pa for their bank deposits (and thus over the FDIC's subrogation claim when it pays ma-and-pa). Yes, you read that correctly: Congress is about to put the claims of stablecoin investors ahead of ma and pa's bank deposits. That's just stunning. Now ma-and-pa's deposits are FDIC insured, so they'll be alright, but it means the FDIC's Deposit Insurance Fund is footing the bill. In other words, the GENIUS Act is subsidizing stablecoin issuance on the back of bank deposits. By subordinating the FDIC's subrogation claim in a bank insolvency to the claims of stablecoin investors, the GENIUS Act is effectively letting FDIC insurance leak out to cover uninsured stablecoins, without any insurance premiums paid.”

https://www.creditslips.org/creditslips/2025/05/the-genius-acts-insolvency-provisions-crypto-investors-come-ahead-of-bank-depositors.html

#crypto #cryptocurrency #USpolitics #USpol

@strlcat @martinl @StopTheSweepsPDX

1. there is an actual thing called quantum computing, where you program a problem into "qubits" and it reaches the solution.

2. this could be amazing! factor large numbers quickly! break public key encryption (that isn't quantum-resistant)! there's a pile of algorithms that can be implemented once this is a thing!

3. so far, at great effort, it can reliably factor numbers as high as 21. It can't manage 35 reliably.

4. this doesn't matter because the VCs, desperate for the next tech bullshit hype wave, are funding it anyway.

5. this means a lot of dumbass bullshit with the word "quantum" attached is being funded even when it's not "quantum computing" as such at all.

5a. I fully expect some bro to try to get funding for an ordinary computer cos transistors are "quantum".

👀 new book from @alex and @emilymbender just dropped 🎉

brb, bookworming
don't wait up
also buy this book, that is all

FBI Warning on Messaging Apps: Time to Rethink What "Secure" Really Means

The FBI recently urged Americans to switch from SMS to encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal.

Read More at: https://puri.sm/posts/fbi-raises-alarm-on-encrypted-messaging-apps-a-new-front-in-the-battle-for-digital-privacy-and-national-security/

#Cybersecurity #Privacy #Surveillance #Signal #WhatsApp