Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

@_elena in the front of online age verification this might be, however, a Pyrrhic victory.

> Safety features Meta will need to introduce include limiting access for children during school hours, stronger parental controls and **robust age verification for underage users**.

Now that we all know Amazon is cheating all of humanity by hoarding and destroying rare books, is this enough to get us to stop shopping there?

Amazon is causing irreparable harm.

Trump is Being Confronted by his Worst Nightmare - https://emptywheel.net/2026/08/25/trump-is-being-confronted-by-his-worst-nightmare/ great timing, too...

@niklasnisbeth @david_chisnall @kevin 2026 consumer software experience is an iterative exploration of just how shitty you can get away with making your software

Friends, have you seen the investigation on UK students, including those at Oxford and Cambridge, hiring Kenyans to write their papers and dissertations?

I assume it wasn't cross Atlantic news as the media only seems to be interested in laundering eugenics into the mainstream.

Think about the audacity of them telling Black people that we're subpar DEI hires and frauds such and these students hiring Black people to do their work for them and pass it off as their own.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/sep/14/kenya-shadow-scholars-paid-to-write-essays-for-uk-students

If you're interested in the design of agentic workflows, remember this formula:

R = 1 - (1 - P)(1 - C)

The Supreme Court Thinks You Are Stupid

This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at Balls and Strikes. A key...

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/supreme-court-mail-in-voting-opinion-2026-midterms

AP, Reuters call for accountability on anniversary of Gaza strike that killed journalists

https://www.ap.org/the-definitive-source/announcements/ap-reuters-call-for-accountability-on-anniversary-of-gaza-strike-that-killed-journalists/

Wall Street expects cannabis to become a $100 billion industry by the end of the decade. Meanwhile, people with marijuana convictions remain shut out of housing, food assistance and employment.

Kojo Koram on capitalism’s search for its next fix.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/cannabis-is-capitalisms-next-fix

Two planned #datacentres will have higher #UK #CarbonEmissions than #ExxonMobil, analysis finds | Datacentres - UK | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/aug/25/planned-datacentres-carbon-emissions-uk-exxonmobil

#Environment #GreenhouseGases #GlobalWarming #ClimateChange

Here’s a question for you folks. I think it’s getting to the time that my current #Linux #Laptop needs to go into retirement and so I will be looking for a new one. What are your experiences with #AMD #Processors rather than #Intel #CPUs? I mean for things like software performance and overall satisfaction. I use my machine for normal tasks like editing and browsing/entertainment but also scientific/numerical computing.

#GNU

here's the magnet link for the Amnesty report on transphobes that they're now actively issuing DMCA notices against, because they've moved from victims to being active collaborators

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:7645b71edaf7418aec5a8ed8147579fac6cd31f4&dn=amnesty-uk-2026-anti-rights-reports&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fbt.ktrackers.com%3A6666%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fdiscord.heihachi.pw%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fexplodie.org%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fopen.demonii.com%3A1337%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fopen.stealth.si%3A80%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fopentracker.io%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker-udp.gbitt.info%3A80%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.opentrackr.org%3A1337%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.torrent.eu.org%3A451%2Fannounce

Grades exist to produce a metric which is used to certify your worth to people which gatekeep your right to life. What on earth did you think would happen? People wouldn't game the system? That the metric wouldn't replace the practice? If that's the case, students aren't the only one losing the ability to think critically.

Become a new monthly sustainer of In These Times and receive a free copy of Sonali Kolhatkar’s #BreakingICE, which documents how communities nationwide are organizing against raids, surveillance and deportation.

You’ll also receive every print issue:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/breakingicenew?recurring=true

New bootloader lets you take the "Meta" out of the original Meta Quest

Privilege escalation attack grants "full control" and freedom from Meta's servers/apps.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2026/08/new-bootloader-lets-you-take-the-meta-out-of-the-original-meta-quest/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

Today marks the anniversary of the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest labor uprising in U.S. history, fought in Logan County, West Virginia. Explore related titles at pmpress.org.

An undercover DHS agent attended a meeting of ICE protesters at Prince of Peace in February. The agent captured the license plates of people there and then compiled dossiers including their names, addresses and information about their families and jobs. https://www.npr.org/2026/08/25/nx-s1-5941135/dhs-surveillance-minnesota-ice-surge

RE: https://beige.party/@Lana/117151861219500149

Cory Doctorow, inventor of "enshittification": This machine that eats kittens to produce often incorrect answers is terrible! I have such great ideas about that in my new book. I'm so smart! I am *the* most important tech critic!

Oh, I use the kitten eating machine to check my writing for typos. Which is totally not a part of the editing process! And it's my own local kitten eating machine! So it's okay! Facts don't care about your feelings, Kim!

(Yes, Cory Doctorow really said that to me, I have proof.)

#NoAI

@davidgerard this is where a lot of people in tech are right now and the cognitive dissonance is incredible

“oh I’d never do slop because I” type lgtm in all the PRs, type the code myself on the chatbot’s instructions, only use it for tests, only use it for docs, blah blah blah

and meanwhile the project is broken in ridiculous ways and they haven’t noticed because the slopbot says it’s fine and they’ve cognitively offloaded all validation to the LLM. I haven’t met anyone who uses the slopbot and doesn’t cognitively offload to it; all of them do the glass-eyed “here’s what claude said” more and more til that’s the only thing making decisions and driving conversations in the project.

@JennyFluff @davidgerard

"hey, claude you must guarantee you don't make the code worse when refactoring"

I find this absolutely mind boggling. If you know how an LLM works, it's obviously nonsense, sure.

But if you buy into the marketing that ascribes intelligence to these machines: what does that even mean? How are you defining 'worse'? And why would you need to explicitly state that? And these are people who, apparently, have experience using formal language to instruct machines built around systems of logic!.