Sven Slootweg @joepie91@pixie.town

"There is a way through this. But we have to remember who actually cares for us, and who is responsible, who we can trust, and who is trying to profit off of false solutions."

A poem, i think.

https://petergelderloos.substack.com/p/there-is-a-way-through-this

"Here’s the real, ugly truth: This is just how every major climate disaster is going to unfold online from here on out. There will be criticisms and expressions of fury, some more fair and reasoned than others, But in an ecosystem where social media outlets have purposefully hobbled their ability to provide real-time, reliable updates to users, the people affected by those disasters are literally left in the dark." https://slate.com/technology/2025/01/california-los-angeles-palisades-wildfire-conspiracy-theories.html?ref=organizingmythoughts.org

me in 2010: yeah windows and google services are not perfect but pretty damn good but let's just fiddle around with linux and self hosted stuff for fun

me in 2017: can't be bothered anymore, i just use mostly windows and let my stuff float around in the cloud, it's probably fine

me in recent years: god no your questionable ai can not have my data let me self host everything sensitive and use mostly linux again

Have you had that "Upcoming price change for your Microsoft 365 subscription" email yet? They want to charge you an extra ~60% for AI features, and they do *not* make it easy to find the way to turn it off. It took me minutes of searching - this is a particularly evil dark pattern.

"Switch plan" just lets you pick between annual and monthly billing. You want "Turn off recurring billing" and then "Current subscription without AI".

You're welcome. Please boost for others.

idk if this has been shared yet by others here but like, beyond just what Meta’s “transparency center” already describes publicly, the leaked internal documents are Insane.

full article: https://theintercept.com/2025/01/09/facebook-instagram-meta-hate-speech-content-moderation/

@NOS journaal brengt het bericht dat we vorig jaar officieel door de 1,5 graad opwarming zijn gegaan. Het was een record-warm jaar. Er worden een paar redenen gegeven, el nino kan invloed gehad hebben, maar toen kwam er een gekmakend zinnetje:

"Er werd nog nooit zoveel co2 uitgestoten als vorig jaar."

...

Hoe de fuck kun je dat zo neutraal en mat zeggen?! Hoe kun je niet die camera grijpen, eraan schudden en met bloeddoorlopen ogen brullen als je die zin op de autocue ziet?!

We weten al bekant een halve eeuw dat schijt de ventilator gaat raken, als we niet snel minderen met de mest hoger en hoger smijten. Jaar na jaar gaat de hele teringwereld door met smerigere en smerigere drollen in steeds ingenieuzere katapulten proppen. En nou flapt de bruine drek tegen de eerste wieken aan, waardoor iedereen en diens ouder/verzorger aan ziet komen dat de stront over ons allemaal heen gaat spetteren.
Het wordt godverdomme tijd dat we kappen met doen alsof groeiende co2-uitstoot een natuurwet is. Het is een keuze die gemaakt wordt door kapitalistische machthebbers, een misdadige keuze die alleen geld verdienen als drijfveer heeft. Geld waar je geen fuck aan hebt als je villawijk in de fik staat (kijkt sarcastisch smalend naar LA). Blijkt je strontparaplu toch lek te wezen.

Ik heb een tijdje niet lopen fulmineren hier op de socials. En het zal nou ook wel weer geen zin hebben. Maar van dit bericht werd ik wel zo godentyfus cynisch. Kan ik vegan zijn en leuke circulaire huizen bouwen wat ik wil, als de rest door blijft gaan met diarree richting draaiende objecten spuiten dan kan ik niet anders dan wanhopig loeien hoe uitgesproken dom het allemaal is.

As if scraping free content to train #AI models wasn’t enough (and #Meta already has plenty of free content created by billions of users on its platforms), as if refusing to pay a fair share to those content creators wasn’t enough, imagine working in a place where AI engineers send emails asking for clearance to use LibGen or BitTorrent in the office, in order to download GBs of pirated copyright work that can be fed to those models, and getting thumbs up from the CEO himself.

The next judge who harshly punishes a teenager for downloading his favorite movie or TV series deserves to be hit with a rubber hose under his feet. No single user of pirated content ought to be punished until the tech giants that in the past couple of years have played all kinds of dirty games with user content in order to get the best AI model are punished.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/10/meta_libgen_allegation/

So far the majority of the submissions for #FluConf2025 have come from demographics that are over-represented in tech and especially open-source.

While that doesn't necessarily have any bearing on the quality of the sessions, and there are some great ideas being proposed, we are painfully aware of the disparities that are common at tech conferences (gender, race, and many more).

We encourage all those who are typically underrepresented at such events to consider applying. FluConf is largely about challenging the status quo and imagining a future that includes more voices.

Before applying please consider checking if any of your underrepresented colleagues would like to present or co-present your team's work.

#FOSS #openSource #openScience #lgbtq #software #solidarity

i really think we need to acknowledge the existance of „network pain“. the pain of leaving connections behind. social networks are not just tools or apps, but means of connecting to other people, thoughts, information we care about. it actually hurts to lose that. https://mas.to/@meganL/113794498411810949

Hashtag threat model

some guy is gonna be here between 10 and 12 to check the heating, so now i'll be cycling my idle animation while waiting next to the door for two hours

Ask people for the calendar date they think the pandemic ended and show them the wastewater charts spanning 2020–present challenge

how do people remember names of ppl irl when like. there's no nametag floating above their head at all times

Hearing about a young hacker whose being extorted by the University of Washington, not cool UW.

The student claims they built an app to help kids get the course schedules they want, a hack as old as time, and the university decided to expel him until he ports his app to the university's internal systems.

This would be unpaid labor.

Until then his class registration is on hold and he can't register or attend his last few classes. 🥴

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jdkaim_github-jdkaimhuskyswap-huskyswap-project-activity-7282891503142641664-nA8Y

#UW #Seattle #HuskySwap #CS

Gone is the clause saying you cannot compare women to "household objects or property." Also removed is a prohibition on claiming that there is "no such thing" as a trans or gay person.
Added in to the policy are new clauses apparently designed to explicitly allow common anti-trans arguments, such as advocating for trans people to be banned from public bathrooms, school sports, or certain jobs.

"We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation," reads one exception. The same section previously said that users couldn’t call protected groups “freaks” or “abnormal”.

Meta also replaced language banning “generalizations” about a protected group’s “inferiority” on the basis of “intellectual capacity”. Now the new language merely bans “unsupported comparisons” between protected groups’ on the basis of their “inherent intellectual capacity” — seemingly opening the door to scientific racism.

Fucking awful. Absolutely do not want to hear "good thing I don't use Facebook" etc. Because your parents probably do and most of the people you grew up with do too.
https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/facebook-fact-checking-hate-speech-meta-b2675311.html