Do you use methods of participatory science to study AI? Are you curious about doing so? If so, join us Mon Jan 12 @ noon ET for a meet-up with others who do this work! Megan Price of @hrdag and I have been wonderfully overwhelmed by all the enthusiasm about a meet-up of researchers who are […]

I have no doubt that this analysis of the problem regarding teaching "how to write" is spot-on, having seen the same dynamics time and again in STEM disciplines. The problem is: Not a single academic institution in the world wants to (or can affort to) move away from the mass-"education" model […]

Today is ± the second birthday of this little gremlin (as we found her, the vet's best guess for her birthday is as good as any). In Peru one of our guides told us that her name, Nina, means fire in quechua and it's spot on for her personality. 😅 And once my […] [Original post on scholar.social]

I have no doubt that this analysis of the problem regarding teaching "how to write" is spot-on, having seen the same dynamics time and again in STEM disciplines. The problem is: Not a single academic institution in the world wants to (or can affort to) move away from the mass-"education" model […]

Today is ± the second birthday of this little gremlin (as we found her, the vet's best guess for her birthday is as good as any). In Peru one of our guides told us that her name, Nina, means fire in quechua and it's spot on for her personality. 😅 And once my […] [Original post on scholar.social]

Not that I think anyone here would be tempted but: obviously don't, this is a horrible idea. https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/857640/openai-launches-chatgpt-health-connect-medical-records

«nonconsensual sexual images of real people, including minors, is the cost of doing business with AI image generators. Some companies do a better job of preventing this abuse than others, but judging by the exploits I see on Telegram, when it comes to Grok, this problem will get a lot worse […]

The Democratic leadership of this country would walk out of the Wannsee Conference saying “I’m concerned this isn’t focused enough on the economy”

I'm sure you are all as tired as I am of Mozilla's bullshit. But this is a good look into the deceptive patterns they use in Firefox to please get anyone to use their "AI" stuff: «Architecting Consent for AI: Deceptive Patterns in Firefox Link Previews» How about that for a kill-switch […]

«Github Banned a Ton of Adult Game Developers and Won’t Explain Why» - keep in mind: 'adult' content and porn is generally a good canary in the coal mine for further oppression… https://www.404media.co/github-ban-suspension-adult-modding-games-illusion/

Another to add to the list of things ruined by sparkling autocarrot. A wedding. Well actually not legally a wedding anymore, cos sparkling autocarrot. https://nltimes.nl/2026/01/07/court-zwolle-rules-couple-married-chatgpt-written-ceremony

Reading that blog post feels like my guesses weren't too far from the reality. Thanks for sticking up for the iNat users and all your work @kueda, I know how hard it can be to walk away when the time has come!

What stuck with me: «I also think the board should follow Wikimedia’s lead and commit to a majority of community-selected members, instead of selecting their own membership from people like them. Users should have more power in the organization. Right now they’re barely even informed about what […]

Wow, iNaturalist co-founder @kueda goes into detail why he quit the project he started. The tl;dr is that the leadership and governance seem ill-equipped for the task at hand. https://kueda.net/blog/2026/01/06/why-i-left-inat/ #inaturalist #citizenscience

Wow, iNaturalist co-founder @kueda goes into detail why he quit the project he started. The tl;dr is that the leadership and governance seem ill-equipped for the task at hand. https://kueda.net/blog/2026/01/06/why-i-left-inat/ #inaturalist #citizenscience

I really feel like most people from ‘good countries’ shouldn’t try to justify their patriotism by saying ‘I went to (some Asian country), we are incredibly lucky here’. No, you are just a condescending fucker

«Maintainability isn't just a matter of hard-won experience teaching you where the pitfalls are. It also requires the cultivation of "Fingerspitzengefühl" – the "fingertip feeling" that lets you make reasonable guesses about where never before seen pitfalls might emerge. It's a form of process […]

«We used to be able to learn about our hobbies and interests from hundreds of experts on a wealth of websites whose only shared motivation was their passion. […] Now, Learning On The Internet often means fighting ads and endless assaults on one’s attention — it means watching […]

I need university administrators (and probably some other people too, but definitely university administrators) to understand something: you cannot motivate your faculty to do more research or better teaching. They are already maximally motivated people. They did not get the job by being […]

Trying once more with the right hashtag: Does anyone have have recommendation for a CLI/TUI RSS Reader that can tie into FreshRSS? Currently trying Newsboat, but would like to see if there's alternatives I'm missing out on! #rss #cli #tui

I wrote about the @CoMaps map distributor tool that I wrote to make it easier to download & serve map files in a local network - and also about why one would want to do that in the first place! https://tzovar.as/comaps-map-distributor/ #openstreetmap

That reddit thread about how delivery riders/drivers are exploited by Uber et al.? Sounds like it's likely a fake, based on the week evidence the "whistleblower" produced. But it's fascinating/depressing how much the writer of this article relies on "I asked another LLM if this was […]

We are looking for an experienced Android UI developer for https://github.com/deltachat/deltachat-android. Native Java, close to the system, with minimal deps and fluff. Networking/encryption/persistence is not part of the job as it happens in https://github.com/chatmail/core Remote collab is […]

After enjoying tooi that much (thanks @ihabunek!), I've started playing around with newsboat as a TUI RSS reader. Are there better/more modern alternatives I should check out?

"Anna’s Archive Loses .Org Domain After Surprise Suspension" - Still up in .li, .se and some other domains. https://torrentfreak.com/annas-archive-loses-org-domain-after-surprise-suspension/

How my students taught me that Github’s monopoly is hurting the Open Source ecosystem even more than I thought. https://ploum.net/2026-01-05-unteaching_github.html #github #floss

Wish I had seen these before placing an order for stickers on the weekend! 🤣 https://bitbang.social/@NanoRaptor/115828881875398663

I wrote about the @CoMaps map distributor tool that I wrote to make it easier to download & serve map files in a local network - and also about why one would want to do that in the first place! https://tzovar.as/comaps-map-distributor/ #openstreetmap

This morning we can feel like we're in the big city in our village of 3,000 people: The power outage already lasted long enough to deplete our UPS batteries. It's basically like we'd be living in Berlin 😅 https://www.dw.com/en/germany-power-back-for-some-berliners-but-others-freeze-on/a-75382671

I looked at exactly two pages, in a single PR, on GitHub before being hit by "You have exceeded a secondary rate limit. Please wait a few minutes before you try again; in some cases this may take up to an hour". The irony of a company that pushes LLMs based on scraped code so hard putting this […]

[global pol] «If we condemn Putin for trying to depose governments that fall outside of his “sphere of influence,” how can we tolerate a president who does the same? Why should any government around the world not just invade countries when it wants their assets? Trump’s actions will take us […]

overly in-depth (i love it) explanation of why usb-c audio dongles/headsets hit USB-FS bandwidth limits https://epenguin.imalone.co.uk/2025/06/audio-dongles-and-ghost-of-usb-1.html

Ah yes, "World ‘may not have time’ to prepare for AI safety risks" says dude who is a crypto-bro and for some reason is now allowed to cosplay as an 'expert' at the UK's 'Advanced Research + Invention Agency'. If anyone still had doubts about how deep the UK's rot in academia & politics is. If […]

The idea that other countries should take in Americans as refugees, other countries that are rejecting most refugees at this time, is as problematic as all the people calling themselves ‘Twitter refugees’

Gobernantes del mundo analizando qué declaraciones dar para no perder su acceso a sus correos y datos en Microsoft 365

Trying out tooi, a cute TUI (terminal user interface) client for Mastodon! https://codeberg.org/ihabunek/tooi

This is so amazing: In 1970, the city of Paris organised a photography competition, splitting the city into more than 1700 squares of 250 meters length. Now you can browse the images taken in 1970 in this super cool/simple map, square by square! I already checked out my old neighborhood ❤️ […]

Para mejorar mi español estoy escuchando a episodios de Radio Ambulante. Creo que este episodio sobre #wikipedia es perfecto para la gente de Mastodon 😉 https://radioambulante.org/transcripcion/guerra-de-ediciones-transcripcion

With 2025 being over: Ended up contributing to #openstreetmap on 355 days last year, making ~3,300 change sets!

And another super interesting #39c3 talk, about bluetooth headphone exploits: Bluetooth Headphone Jacking: A Key to Your Phone https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-bluetooth-headphone-jacking-a-key-to-your-phone#t=0

Great piece by @mpe about shadow libraries like Anna's Archive, their metadata and what it means for creating successors after takedowns: «The Lineages and Inheritances of Shadow Libraries and their Documentation» […]

Can't believe that this sleepy sweetheart is already turning 6 today!

New blog: The Next Thing Will Not Be Big https://blog.glyph.im/2026/01/the-next-thing-will-not-be-big.html

«Hersh’s reporting only got attention because there was a public willing to care. If atrocities are reported and nobody is shocked, what then? We don’t just need new Hershes, but a public that appreciates and demands the kind of work that Hersh has done.» In the age of slop that seems harder […]

Can't believe that this sleepy sweetheart is already turning 6 today!

«Given that the amount of money banks make from the average sale of one vial is approximately $1,200, the industry has less than zero interest in voluntarily putting a halt to their less-than-ethical practices. It’s been proven time and time again that, without anything reining them in, they […]

Released a small update to my early-stage @CoMaps map distributor for locally hosting map files. It now has a small comfort function for updating map files, based on the ones you already got downloaded from a former release. This helps not having to specify your map files of interest for each […]

Rewatched Casablanca tonight: «If it's December 1941 in Casablanca, what time is it in New York?»

Released a small update to my early-stage @CoMaps map distributor for locally hosting map files. It now has a small comfort function for updating map files, based on the ones you already got downloaded from a former release. This helps not having to specify your map files of interest for each […]

Next #39c3 talk I watched: «Pwn2Roll: Who Needs a 595€ Remote When You Have wheelchair.py?» About how an assistive medical device maker software-locks existing hardware features behind a paywall ­– and how to circumvent it. This is generally a despicable business model, but even more so when […]