Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

and again I’ll point out how fucking quick this shit is happening

torvalds posts a defense of AI slop in the kernel with a right-wing conspiracy theory as the reason

a bunch of other open source projects just go “well the kernel says it’s ok so we’re doing slop now”

barely a couple of weeks later the kernel is changing its release cadence and quality standards entirely and the man in charge is shrugging and literally going “what can you do”

you can cut the crap, asshole. it’s your literal job to cut the crap.

nobody requested this, nobody wants gigantic kernel updates with very low quality code in them. the kernel of all things needs a slower pace and more care, because it’s the fucking kernel.

so who do you imagine is holding torvalds’ feet to the fire on this? maybe it’s the LLM companies pouring fucktons of money into the Linux foundation? nah can’t be. must be all the downstream projects that are going to get fucked over by this, they surely want the worst possible version of Linux

Newsletter: Firms close up shop amid a continued crypto winter, a Trump venture ditches its crypto plans, and the crypto industry–friendly Clarity Act market structure bill fails to reach a vote before August recess — likely dooming it.

https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-108/

#crypto #cryptocurrency #USpolitics #USpol #CitationNeededNewsletter

To teach my students the fallacy of "I have nothing to hide", I simply ask them to tell the whole class about the last time they masturbated.

It is surprisingly efficient, they immediately grasp it. I never had someone argues with me on the subject after that.

ICE plans to spend $20 million tax payer dollars to give gloves that deliver electric shocks to their agents.

They’ve murdered three US citizens.

They’ve killed countless immigrants.

They’ve used excessive force to demean, terrorize, disable & harm.

They’ve traumatized entire cities.

They’ve forced people to hide in their homes for fear of being rounded up and disappeared.

They don’t need gloves that can deliver electric shocks, they need to be abolished and prosecuted.

They need to be stopped.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ice-shock-gloves_n_6a7bac5fe4b07b8d62257705

#uspol #ice #abolishice #immigration #fascism

Speaking to people in the 'conventional tech services' industry, I get the impression that *nearly all of them* hate the technologies - mostly from US Big Tech - they feel forced to push. Seems soul destroying. People talking about shifting gov't departments from IBM to Microsoft dependence to save $15million annually. When, in most cases, they could be saving almost all of it by using a local provider running libre software... Seems like an industry swamped with cognitive dissonance.

“We are constantly told that universal programs are unrealistic while enormous subsidies, tax breaks and giveaways to corporations are treated as the natural order of things.”

Francesca Hong talks democratic socialism, worker power and governing with Rep. Shaun Scott.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/francesca-hong-democratic-socialism-wisconsin

Hello Fediverse - I'm looking for libre/FOSS/open source Sysadmim, DevOps, & Dev contract work while our (with @isaac) new project, Magnificent.nz, is ramping up...
Capabilities https://davelane.nz/abilities
CV https://davelane.nz/CV
Repo https://forge.davelane.nz
Refs on request!
Any libre leads, worldwide, gratefully accepted!
#GetFediContracted #GetFediHired

@glyph I'm Danish. In my culture, if someone praises you like an LLM chatbot does, that means they're either 1. lying through their teeth and actually despise you, 2. trying to sell you something you both know you don't want, or 3. a tourist.

Put out of the cartoon business by actual photographs of our decaying mess of a President.

AI promises so much, but one of the things it truly delivers is fraud at scale. Example: https://www.404media.co/company-offering-100-human-written-never-ai-peer-review-is-entirely-ai/?ref=daily-stories-newsletter

I get the strong impression that there's broad disillusionment across the 'conventional' (i.e. proprietary) side of our industry - the feeling among practitioners that they've sold out, and are mercenary and largely uninvested in what they're doing. They're biggest wins appear to be 'making things slightly less bad', e.g. the move from IBM (obscenely expensive) to Microsoft (extortionately overpriced), as opposed to doing 'good'. Here's hoping https://magnificent.nz can help turn that around.

An appeals court just denied President Joe Biden’s attempt to block the release of his interviews with his ghostwriter.

This ruling is a victory for transparency — and establishes a powerful precedent.

If Biden’s interviews must be released in the public interest, that same standard must apply to Jack Smith’s findings on Donald Trump.

You cannot have one standard of secrecy for your political allies and another for your opponents.

Our friends at The Border Chronicle have launched Wall Watch, an interactive map documenting the growing infrastructure at the US-Mexico border, featuring surveillance data compiled by EFF. https://wallwatch.theborderchronicle.com

FL Attorney General James Uthmeier has been accused of corruption, including by a member of his own party.

Maybe he should open his books, instead of attacking the New York Times over its reporting.

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/10/florida-new-york-times-shareholder-01031142

A federal judge just killed DOE’s blanket “still interested” FOIA policy.

It’s diabolical for an agency to ignore FOIA requests for years, then close them if the requesters don't remind the agency that they still want the records.

Government delay shouldn’t be allowed to be transformed into a weapon against transparency.

https://federalnewsnetwork.com/litigation/2026/08/judge-throws-out-does-blanket-still-interested-foia-policy/

As Michigan moves toward the general election, Branko Marcetic says to expect two things: predictions of doom for the Left and enormous spending from AIPAC and other big-money groups to try to make those predictions come true.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/abdul-el-sayed-donovan-mckinney-michigan-bernie-sanders-left-aipac

FEMA obligated $11.1 billion to completely overhaul Puerto Rico’s electrical grid. Less than 25% has been distributed.

Coenia Sanchez reports on how federal restrictions have stalled the rebuilding of infrastructure people depend on to survive.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/puerto-rico-water-crisis-trump-congress

I work in #infosec and consider myself pretty well educated on what’s happening with #AI.

But I’m about 33% of the way through @emilymbender and Alex Hanna’s book, “The AI Con”, and I’ve really learned a lot more.

If you’re skeptical or curious about AI, this is a must-read. I’m recommending it to everyone I know.

#books #bookstodon #reading #AI #technology #nonfiction

I framed my book on generative models in terms of risks for a reason. Whatever you can say about their "productive value", their nondeterminism, manipulative UI, statistical mediocrity, and tendency towards unpredictable errors mean the risks—even if you're an asshole who disregards societal risks—outweigh the still largely hypothetical benefits