Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

#Grok exfiltrates user data when malicious instructions are encrypted - https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/08/grok-exfiltrates-user-data-when-malicious-instructions-are-encrypted/ " Cryptographic Context Injection is only the latest way to break an LLM safety guardrail. " #privacy #surveillance

AI was supposed to win people over by now — it hasn’t - https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/19/ai-was-supposed-to-win-people-over-by-now-it-hasnt/ #awkward

The dorm room is becoming another front in the tenant movement.

Lily Seltz reports that from Vermont to Michigan, students organize over unsafe housing, soaring rents & weak tenant protections. “These are our homes,” says Emma Rehac. “This is how we protect each other.”

https://inthesetimes.com/article/why-tenant-unions-are-spreading-across-college-campuses

Some countries have made traffic fines proportional to income. It’s not a perfect system, but it means getting caught going 30 over the limit costs you the same fraction of your income if you make $20k/yr or $2,000,000.

I believe we need this system for corporate fines.

This week’s Quellasiĩk Tom the Dancing Bug:
A News of the Times Special Report: Y2K COMPUTER GLITCHES (from the millennium-anxious year, 1998)

https://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2026/08/20

World’s Largest Worker Cooperative Network Seeks New Allies
#WorkerCoops #Mondragon

https://geo.coop/articles/worlds-largest-worker-cooperative-network-seeks-new-allies

As a welcome counterweight to the waves of negative commentary on Jason Arday before his death (and indeed in some quarters after his death), here is a testament to 'Everything Good About Jason Arday' put together by his students & others....

If nothing else this is a humane & compassionate response to a human tragedy....

#JasonArday #politics #universities #racism

https://leilacancode.github.io/everythinggood-about-jasonarday/

#PearlsBeforeSwine by #StephanPastis for August 20, 2026 | GoComics

https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2026/08/20

#Humour #Cartoon

Never mind the fact that the US government marks a quadrupling in price of a TV as deflation 😬

One of the ticking time bombs in the "AI"-driven price hikes for electronics are hedonics. Basically, many inflation calculations rely on electronics to downplay real inflation: they expect the price to only go down and new hardware features are marked as deflation

An electronics industry that isn't delivering new hardware features and raises prices is going to hit inflation indexes with a double punch

https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/questions-and-answers.htm

“Memory prices are up 500% in the past year — because of AI – Pivot to AI”

https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/08/19/memory-prices-are-up-500-in-the-past-year-because-of-ai/

If you ever wondered why many gamers are vehemently anti-"AI", it isn't entirely down to the fact that generated art looks like shit. It's also destroying their hobby by making everything unaffordable.

Turn every lawn into a community garden?

Hello! A wee group of us are running an experiment to see if there’s any curiosity for this idea. It’s called Alot, and it pairs people who love to garden with people who have land but are too busy to garden it.

If you like growing things but lack space, or if you dream of a garden but don’t have the time, Alot matches gardeners with people who have space to grow, in the same neighbourhood.

You both get fresh flowers and seasonal vegetables, help the bees, take care of the soil, and meet passionate growers in your area. All the ingredients we need for our community to support each other through climate change.

If you’re interested, sign up here: https://alot.vercel.app/. Alot sends out matches every week. Our aim is to get 10 sign ups by the end of the month!

I'm not on Facebook or any other socials, but if you're in Ōtepoti and fancy helping me out by posting on any local (trusted) community pages, that would be awesome.

@SimonCHulse @simplicitarian @zeborah see if you can boost it now - I did a whole new post via phone app…

#Forgejo 16.0.3 and 15.0.7 were just released! They are security releases.

We recommend that all installations are upgraded to the latest version as soon as possible.

Check out the release notes and download it at https://forgejo.org/releases/. If you experience any issues with this release, please report to https://codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo/issues.

#forgejorelease

TIL that a 'bellwether' is a neutered sheep (a whether) with a bell around its neck that leads the flock where the shepherd wants it to go...

RE: https://flipboard.com/@euronews/russia-s-invasion-of-ukraine-89mnilrcz/-/a-TT489V_fSLupa5Z6NHRpnw%3Aa%3A89340020-%2F0

Remember folks, we absolutely must have war and billionaires but we can easily do without bread and pasta.

I guess now it's a bit late to warn people not to update the firmware on their #framework laptops, but here is what somebody did to fix them, when the company didn't help. at all.

quantum5.ca/2026/08/16/fixing-…

spoiler: it ends well, but not thanks to framework

also, the ending of the article is *epic*.

Wow. "AI adoption raises homework scores by 18% and reduces completion time by 30%, but lowers monthly exam scores by 20% within six months. High-stakes entrance-exam scores fall by 18 and 24%, with the full penalty emerging only after about two years. " https://mastodon.social/@gvwilson/117123155597432737

"Trump Should Have an Age-appropriate Flunky," by Harriet Miers.

After working as a housekeeper, a nursing aide, a home cleaner, a server, and more, [Barbara] Ehrenreich wrote that “The first thing I discovered is that no job, no matter how lowly, is truly ‘unskilled.’ "

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0q_-bDnz4sw