Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Extraordinary journalism from Dave McKenna at Defector about a long-ago killing in Virginia, where local authorities refused to follow the obvious evidence, engaged in an ongoing cover-up, and left a victim's family endlessly damaged in the wake of undone justice. https://defector.com/the-killing-that-wont-let-go?utm_source=defector.beehiiv.com&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=microblogging-services-down-try-big-blogs-instead

"Stop New York's Attack on 3D Printing"

"New York's proposed 2026-2027 budget currently includes provisions that will require all 3D printers sold in the state to run print-blockingcensorware—software that surveils every print for forbidden designs."

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/stop-new-yorks-attack-3d-printing

#Privacy

> RTM is part of a larger, international tech federation called Co-op Cloud. It’s a collective of tech-based organizations committed to building and sharing tools based on libre software, which users can use and distribute freely

@rtm gave a shoutout to Co-op Cloud in the Guardian! (US, not the transphobic bin-fire that is Guardian UK) Congrats, and thanks!

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/16/big-tech-breakup-parties

Invisible labor is labor.
Get 40% off all labor titles and 20% off select merch thru 5/1 with code MAYDAY.
Shop here: https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_list&c=50

The world’s leading #cancer charity to stop funding #openaccess publishing because of hybrid journals - https://walledculture.org/the-worlds-leading-cancer-charity-to-stop-funding-open-access-publishing-because-of-hybrid-journals/ sadly, unlikely to be the last to do this #copyright

Since the Snowden revelations, more than a decade ago, it's been clear that those big American tech companies have colluded with the US federal government against their own American and overseas users. The reelection of Donald Trump in 2024 has put this even more in the spotlight.

This week's comic is now up on Daily Kos
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DEMENTIA DONNIE IS BACK, and he's pissed!
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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/4/16/800020143/cartoon/tom-the-dancing-bugs-dementia-donnie-brilliant-strategies-in-his-war-against-his-roommate/

@aral

The late great David Graber had it right. The value of someones work should be defined as the amount of care a person does at work.

For example:-

I work in IT for a massive multi-national corporation. I have what Graber famously described as a Bullshit Job. Hardly anything I do has any impact on the rest of the world. I certainly don't do anything that could be described as care as part of my job. My salary puts me in the top 5% of earnings in the UK.

My wife works in a council owned day center for people with many different disabilities both physical and mental. She basically makes people happy for a job. This means that she gets paid a tiny fraction above minimum wage.

Under Graber's formulation our pay rates would be reversed. Or my job would be deemed entirely unnecessary and I would be made redundant (yet again)

I think Graber would have said that so called "AI" is useless as it cannot care for humanity. The people running the AI dog-and-pony show certainly don't care for humanity.

#DavidGraber #care #CareBasedEconomics #BullshitJobs

Italy to stop sending arms to Israel because of Lebanon

Italy is the third-biggest arms exporter to Israel, according to figures from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr71184ex91o

At least 88 of the largest corporations in the USA paid $0 in federal corporate income taxes in their most recent fiscal year.

Corporate tax avoidance is the biggest in decades because of Donald Trump, who deliberately made it much easier.

These companies collectively made $105 billion in profits--tax free.

Don't ever call Trump a populist. He's a grifter who lies. Not someone on the side of the people.

https://itep.org/88-profitable-corporations-paid-zero-income-tax-in-2025/

If you are using or touting LLMs, you are supporting the destruction of the environment, the loss of jobs, transfer of money from regular folx to the rich.

You are betraying humanity. There is, however money to be made, so that's probably just fine.

The Psychology of Code Reviews: Why Smart Developers Accept Bad Suggestions

by Eleftheria Drosopoulou

https://www.javacodegeeks.com/2026/01/the-psychology-of-code-reviews-why-smart-developers-accept-bad-suggestions.html

#programming #codereview #SoftwareDevelopment

In a world where random non-AI things are labeled AI and AI is not always clearly labeled, I hate that I have no way to know if I'm burning down a rainforest every time I click a button on a website.

Quite a few folks - a couple credible developers - trying to convince me that 'AI' code generation is great. They fail to realise that my issue isn't whether it's good at writing working (or 'pretty') code. It could be both (it isn't) but that misses my concern: to me conferring power to those without the understanding to the implications of different uses of that power creates a system inevitably prone to disaster - whether smallish now or colossal later. Another contemporaneous example: 1/2

I'm skeptical to this explanation. AI tools also make it easier to find vulnerabilities in proprietary compiled software. I wonder whether the real reason is that AI tools also make it much easier to "clean room" clone open source software?

#ai #foss

https://www.zdnet.com/article/ai-security-worries-force-company-to-abandon-open-source/

Heartening news from one of America's reddest states: Citizens in a data-center-invaded town tossed out city council members who voted for the disruptive project that was a secret until it was too late to stop.

This issue crosses party lines.

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/04/13/missouri-city-council-data-center-00867259

I have a weird feeling, as shit gets more and more real, that stuff like our international trade deals will have to be abandoned out of self-preservation (most were entered into to benefit not NZers, but the wealthiest NZers - a form of implicit TrickleDown). I wonder which political party will have steel enough to point it out.