AI proponents are quick to speed past the cost of what goes into making the tools because their ends justify the means. The wholesale pilfering of copyrighted works, the environmental and societal impacts, and now wider use by military in war. Seems like you should be able to draw a line in […]

@beep: “Imagine asking Northrop Grumman to summarize an email for you, or refactoring code with help from Boeing and Raytheon.” https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/propellant/

How to grow strawberries, Mike Monteiro. https://buttondown.com/monteiro/archive/how-to-grow-strawberries/

File under “we tried to warn you” https://www.404media.co/cbp-tapped-into-the-online-advertising-ecosystem-to-track-peoples-movements/

As a human being you have the right to be able to understand the world. That is why education is so important. Any technology that hinders your understanding (even if it seemingly gives you capabilities) is deeply in- and anti-humane.

RE: https://tldr.nettime.org/@tante/116165239429495379 I think that is actually the biggest problem with those systems. It's not losing some random skill that we have made superflous, it's about taking skills that are the foundation for your agency in this world and your ability to understand […]

The answer to problems in sociotechnical systems is not always "more software", "better software" or "open source software". A lot of the time the best solution is _less software_ and sometimes even _no software_.

"Friday afternoon, Anthropic learned that the Pentagon still wanted to use the company’s AI to analyze bulk data collected from Americans. That could include information such as the questions you ask your favorite chatbot, your Google search history, your GPS-tracked movements, and your […]

Where does the US Constitution cover LLMs?

News and culture is very rapidly being dominated by administration-aligned companies. It's actually astonishing how fast this has happened. And it's not stopping. Today will be a significant detail in the many, many textbooks that will be written about the era I fear we're still at the start of.

> DigiCert plans to transition our DNS Made Easy customers to the DigiCert DNS platform in phases. > ... Enhanced user interface ... I’ve been using DNSMadeEasy for years and it just works. Ugh.

RE: https://mastodon.thi.ng/@toxi/116137512849250997 Don’t get high on your own AI

My favorite thing about the Amazon wishlist address exposure thing people are talking about is they sent me the notification email after I’d deleted my Amazon account a year ago.

The American people are systematically deluded about their own country. We have worse health outcomes, more shootings, more people in prison, less vacation, less paid time off, less parental leave, higher childcare costs, higher infant mortality, lower social trust ... on & on & on.

Happy to say I’ve already read many of the Works Cited here. https://henry.codes/writing/a-website-to-destroy-all-websites/?ref=DenseDiscovery-376

@thomasfuchs This you? https://walkman.land/?ref=DenseDiscovery-376

Now THAT's a headline. "The U.S. spent $30 billion to ditch textbooks for laptops and tablets: The result is the first generation less cognitively capable than their parents" #edtech #education […]

“At this point it’s clear that we have experienced a fundamental change in the way our society works.” https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/billionaires-gone-wild

And yes, the orbital AI datacenter thing is real, and 2 companies that I know of have already filed with the FCC for over a million satellites for this completely untested, fucking stupid idea. Fuck you, especially SpaceX, for one million satellites and using pseudo-religious language in your […]

This is the product software engineers are rushing to make themselves dependent on? This is what you want on your computers, in your codebase? Pentagon threatens to cut Anthropic in AI safeguards dispute: Report https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/16/pentagon-threatens-anthropic-ai-safeguards-dispute.html

RE: https://mastodon.social/@jilleduffy/116082137245438732 Time to reread Subprime Attention Crisis? https://bookshop.org/p/books/subprime-attention-crisis-advertising-and-the-time-bomb-at-the-heart-of-the-internet-tim-hwang/14220504?ean=9780374538651&next=t&affiliate=100885

“…machines demand we become more like them—reducing human interaction to frictionless exchanges—while pushing digital substitutes for genuine social contact.” via @inevernu https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2026/jan/29/what-technology-takes-from-us-and-how-to-take-it-back

"If the problem is that we’ve painted our development environments into a corner that requires tons of boilerplate, then that is the problem. We should have been chopping the cruft away and replacing it with deterministic abstractions like we’ve always done. That’s what that Larry Wall quote […]

Totally not a bubble. “Algorhythm Holdings, a former maker of in-car karaoke systems turned AI company…” https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/feb/13/trucking-logistics-shares-ai-freight-tool-launch-semicab-algorhythm

This isn’t new news as such, but people keep being surprised by it, so it’s worth repeating. Substack hosts, profits from, and promotes explicitly Nazi content, and if you are adding value to that network, you are helping them to do so […]

Once again there are way better options out there than Substack. Which one works for you depends on your goals. But if you don't want to support the company that supports Nazis, there are plenty of options.

Fidium Fiber Internet can burn in hell for a) using a billing phone number for unsolicited marketing text messages (redundant to unsubscribed emails) and b) offering *no* means of opting said phone number out of billing text messages that are redundant to emails, nor being able to change the […]

FFS, partnering with Spotify isn't the answer. https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/spotify-will-sell-physical-books-in-expansion-beyond-audio-6962540/

And the third book is More Everything Forever by @adambecker.bsky.social https://freelanceastrophysicist.com/ Goes more deeply into the techbro culture and religion that seems to think that AI will save us all and that we have a duty to destroy our planet and go to the stars. (Also the best way […]

I feel like this is a good time for everyone to go read "More Everything Forever" by @adambecker.bsky.social because that completely unrealistic and awful techbro mentality/religion the only way to explain this FCC filing (and that book explains this very clearly!) Time to go outside and listen […]

If you write about the messy reality behind "free" internet services: we're seeing #OpenStreetMap hammered by scrapers hiding behind residential proxy/embedded-SDK networks. We're a volunteer-run service and the costs are real. We'd love to talk to a journalist about what we're seeing + how […]

👏🏻 “Since 2017, the cost of a family health plan has skyrocketed from roughly $17,000 to over $40,000 — a 135% increase in just eight years. We are paying double-digit premium hikes annually before we even buy a single book or hire a single teacher. This is a healthcare cost problem masquerading […]

Just looking at the amount of work that went into this thing trying to sell something the core audience isn't buying shows how badly Mozilla chose when it comes to the new CEO https://bsd.network/@dch/115968952449549217

"CBP stays at the border" might sound like a win, but keep in mind that this is what "the border" means to them www.aclumaine.org/know-your-ri...

As a company that has long boasted about its commitment to principles, Apple has had a bad several months. It removed ICE Block from the App Store. It let X remain, empowering its users to create child porn, which is apparently “free speech” now. After two American citizens were killed by ICE […]

#ice Asks Companies About ‘#adtech and Big Data’ Tools It Could Use in Investigations https://www.wired.com/story/ice-asks-companies-about-ad-tech-and-big-data-tools/ #privacy #politics #surveillance

These AI companies are really different. - OpenAI: Used to be true believers but now mostly cynical scam - Microsoft: How garbage can we make office and people still pay any markup? - Google: Sure we can throw AI everywhere as well. No we still don't have product management or strategy - […]

Alex Pretti "used to tell people off when they made sexist comments to female physicians. He bought me coffee when I had a really bad day as an intern...I laughed alongside him daily. He made a point to teach medical residents without judgement, but with a smile on his face and a joke."

I am the joker now.

@marcamos Happy birthday!

RE: https://mstdn.social/@aworkinglibrary/115577764911445062 “I must be vigilant towards a screen, always on alert, suspicious.” 💯

Finished reading The Nineties: A Book, by Chuck Klosterman. “No stories were viral. No celebrity was trending. The world was still big. The country was still vast. You could just be a little person, with your own little life and your own little thoughts. You didn’t have to have an opinion, and […]

The “school shooting industry” is one of the most depressing term I’ve ever heard. https://n.pr/42gMe1N

A year ago I started to rebuild the front steps on our porch. Piece by piece, I’m finishing up. Today I got the balusters on, allowing me to remove the year-old “temporary” 2x4 railings. Next: caulk to cover my many mis-measured angles and reduce water penetration.

New low for CNN. If that were possible. Unbelievable.

“All my misgivings about AI really are to do with the fact that it’s owned by a group of people that I don’t trust at all. I don’t trust their taste, I don’t trust their morals, and I don’t trust their politics, and that’s a problem for me — that the whole technology is in the hands of the wrong […]

Engaging with what should be legit businesses—my dentist or my bank—only to have my contact information plugged into bullshit third party platforms to nag me for feedback or follow through on a link I happened to click is getting pretty tiresome. Where are the ethics?

🎵They paved paradise, to generate more AI slop🎵

Finished reading Apple in China. The scope of this thing that we’re all complicit in... https://bookshop.org/a/100885/9781668053379