Free Software fan (love #linux). Spent 20 years in Austin, TX #atx. Now in #FortWorth. BSEE from #TXST, 2014. Currently ((2^5)+(2^2)) years old (354 ppm). I used to sling #dotnet code. Then I did warehouse work at #amazon (DAU1) and #doordash. Now, I'm back at school to become a #nurse. Suffer from #ChronicPancreatitis #pancreatitis. I'm a revolutionary #MarxistLeninist, #diabetic, #diabetes, #MarxismLeninism, #Marxism #Communism #Socialism #osm #wikidata 🇺🇸 Eng (native) 🇲🇽 Esp (A2/B1)
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2026-06-13T15:43:02Z Event JSON
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Last Notes npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ Not gonna lie. #Walgreens comingling full-price items amongst its "discount" section is really scummy. https://cdn.tenforward.social/media_attachments/files/117/181/537/485/665/344/original/568eab40a3f43cae.jpeg npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…xefq "hacking" npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…z6pq >Half the movie was just some rando wandering around an office space designed by a freshman architecture student on acid. I wasn't completely sold before, but now I know that I have to see it. npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/the-end-of-algorithmic-denialism/ It seems Professor Bender, et. al.'s work has gotten under some folks' skin. >When it comes to denying cognitive value, the authors declare these tools “inherently unreliable, being designed to make shit up”. When it comes to documenting harm, they implicitly presuppose that the models work well enough to be adopted at industrial scale, to take commissions away from professionals, to pollute the information ecosystem. The two claims require incompatible premises; the book alternates between them according to rhetorical convenience without ever acknowledging the contradiction. Those two claims are concordant with each other. LLMs are inherently unreliable. The commissioners of its products don't care. The resulting harm is real. There is no incompatibility or contradiction here. >If, on the other hand, we admit that at least some users are capable of distinguishing useful output from useless output, and that they do so regularly by selecting, discarding, and correcting, then the usefulness of the models is an empirical fact and the thesis that they “do not work” collapses. The usefulness of the *models*? The *models* aren't doing the distinguishing. The *user* is. The fact that the distinguishing needs to happen is the evidence of the model's unreliability. >Crawford, like Bender, applies to AI a moral standard that she does not apply to other technologies. Nearly all of our technologies rest on analogous systems of extraction, consumption, and pollution, often on an enormously larger scale; yet we rarely subject intercontinental flight, video streaming, or 3D rendering to the same critical rigour. The externalities of the tools du jour matter. Intercontinental flight is routinely subjected to critique of its externalities. Video streaming and 3D rendering both require fewer computational resources (I'd wager at least an order of magnitude fewer) than the training of AI models. That every other consumer of integrated circuits is stuck waiting in line to pay more for the same product, while AI data centers hoard the very foundations of general purpose computing itself (CPUs, GPUs, memory, storage), should be sufficient externality for observers to question just how useful the AI tools actually are in comparison to the known values of existing tools and workflows. >The conclusion of The AI Con reveals the structural limit of the entire approach. Bender and Hanna propose “strategic refusal” as a political horizon: saying no to AI, drawing inspiration from Luddite movements and feminist struggles. The invitation is suggestive, but the question left unanswered is: refusal in favour of what? If AI is a technology that, as the book itself documents, is already reshaping work, healthcare, education, and cultural production, refusal without an alternative project risks being a symbolic gesture that leaves the field open to those who govern and deploy these technologies. In favour of what we know works: what we were all doing less than a decade ago, before hyperscalers were in search of their next big growth opportunity. That is, human beings producing works with far greater reliability than AI can. We need not indulge the ruling class when it wishes to squeeze ever more out of us. >The position I continue to hold is that these tools have concrete potential, and that precisely for this reason the politically relevant battle concerns who controls them and how they are governed. The denialism of the early period has delayed this discussion, sustained by the illusion that we are dealing with nothing more than an ephemeral and overrated fad. It is time to abandon what Benjamin Bratton has called the first stage of grief towards AI: denial. The financials of AI alone should caution against a belief of this being a genuinely new stage of computing that's not only here to stay but here to become the new normal. Zitron's exhaustive work on just how out-of-wack AI's finances are makes a strong case that AI is a bubble. CC @nprofile…5876 npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…qzwa Interesting. I'm not sure that I understand the problem in [the paper](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2607.02820) though. From the introduction: >Git identifies every object by the hash of its serialized content. For a commit, this hash covers the tree, the parent list, author, and committer metadata, the commit message, and—crucially—the raw bytes of any embedded signature. Because the hash is a deterministic function of these bytes, the commit hash is routinely relied upon as a globally unique, immutable, content-addressable identifier: CI pipelines pin to them, dependency managers lock to them, and incident-response tooling blocks or reverts by them > >... > >Digital signature schemes oftentimes admit malleability: given a valid signature, one can often derive a second, syntactically distinct signature that verifies against the same message and key without knowledge of the private key. Applied to a signed commit, malleation changes the signature bytes, and hence the commit hash, while preserving both the content and the verification result. I mean... okay? The signature bytes --- which are part of the content --- are changed. Ergo, the "content" is indeed still: (1) uniquely, and (2) immutably addressed. The abstract argues: >Git commit signing is widely entrusted to serve as evidence that a commit hash uniquely and immutably identifies a specific piece of signed content. We show this invariant does not hold. And the introduction further argues: >We observe that these are not merely local parser quirks: Github’s server-side verifier accepts malleation for all of the aforementioned signature schemes, and its persistent verification record [7], keyed on commit hash, produces multiple independent “Verified” entries for the same content (§4). But it's **not** the "same content". The signature bytes are different. The invariant **does** hold. The main complaint seems to be that "folks are assuming there can only be one hash for $content_but_without_signature", **and** that this... breaks something? Their [github repository](https://github.com/JakeGinesin/git-chain-malleator) seems to imply that this causes problems because: >Nixpkgs / any hash-pinning system: trust in `hash(commit)` as a unique handle is likely unreliable; the same signed content produces N valid `Verified` hashes But I don't think those kinds of consumers are relying on the commit id (or a hash of it) to be a **unique** handle of the contents **without the signature**. And if they **are**, then... that's a misunderstanding of what Git is doing, and the **consumer** needs to adjust their data model and/or code. There's nothing for Git, itself, to "fix" here, as the authors lament in their conclusion: >We complied with standard responsible disclosure procedure throughout this work. We initiated responsible disclosure with GNU and Git on Jan 16th 2026, as well as Github on March 3rd 2026; as of writing, unfortunately this issue has failed to be addressed by Git nor any Git forge. The GitHub repository seems to imply that deduplication efforts based on the commit id are "vulnerable", but they are only vulnerable in the sense that they'd end up storing multiple copies of the $content_but_without_signature. That $content_but_without_signature has not been compromised; whatever else was in the commit is still identical. #git #cryptography npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…qzwa are their hospital facilities not air conditioned? That's wild. npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…qzwa Really? Inverters? What cybersecurity risks exist for inverters? >The rationale: China-made inverters are deemed a cybersecurity liability, since manufacturers might be able to remotely manipulate them or even switch them off, destabilising energy grids and potentially causing blackouts. > >But the Commission's push to phase out so-called high-risk inverters has alarmed EU officials involved in development projects, as it remains uncertain whether European producers can meet demand. Uh... how? /me digs into the references >The report [by cybersecurity firm Secura] follows a recent probe by investigative journalism platform Follow the Money that shows that a hacker could have gained control of millions of Dutch smart solar panel systems using a backdoor into their online system. > >https://www.euronews.com/next/2024/08/21/europes-leading-solar-power-grid-is-vulnerable-to-hackers-this-is-what-a-cyberattack-could /me looks for the report >This scenario is a combination of situations which have previously occurred. Vulnerabilities in interfaces of solar panel installations that were connected to the internet were exploited by the Mirai botnet and were then used for financial gain (Brumfield, 2024). In another example, a manufacturer remotely provided 800,000 micro-inverters with a new update on the same day in order to resolve certain problems (Fairley, 2015). A previous investigation by the Dutch Authority for Digital Infrastructure (RDI) (RDI, 2023) also demonstrated that if a malicious actor is able to access an inverter, they are often able to hijack it. The recent attack by anti-Israel hacktivists on PLC systems (Counter threat unit research team, 2023) is another recent example of opportunistic hacktivism, which could also impact the Netherlands even if the Netherlands were not the direct target. > >https://www.energy-innovation.nl/documents/1299/2024-Secura_Report-Cybersecurity_threats_and_measures_for_the_solar_power_sector.pdf Well damn. So those things *do* have network connections. Why? Apart from the obvious "don't connect these devices to a network" approach, the report actually makes a case for requiring the firmware to be open source, which is nice I guess: >Countermeasures would therefore need to be taken to counteract this – for example, a technically enforced four-eyes principle when issuing new firmware, not simultaneously updating all equipment but using a phased approach, or even making firmware open source so that independent parties can also investigate and contribute to it. npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ "Hi Preston Maness ☭," Well that's the first sign. If a recruiter were actually writing these --- or even checking them --- then the hammer-and-sickle would immediately be a "wait what" moment. "I saw your profile on Codeberg and liked your background in IT. I’m reaching out because I’m working with a flexible remote opportunity that may align with your technical experience." Oh. So someone's scraping #codeberg. The email is from [email protected] . The website is --- oh, there isn't one? Not even an A record? Just some MX records pointing at cloudflare? Another sign. npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…dugj https://cdn.tenforward.social/media_attachments/files/116/803/773/502/145/447/original/73b1457fb8fa4b1b.mp4 npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ "Maycember" is a strange way to say that traditionally winter ailments are becoming year-round ailments. https://cdn.tenforward.social/media_attachments/files/116/579/580/776/694/060/original/f0cf8a69c62974cb.png npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…qzwa aluminum products like 12-pack sodas are already stupid expensive. Guess we'll be reaching for 2 USD per can soon enough. npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…ml9f Gavilyte has a special place in hell. npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…gz5x https://cdn.tenforward.social/media_attachments/files/115/789/809/852/308/864/original/b2899f8857044d03.jpeg npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ I finally got around to reading this lengthy article by Matthew Frank from #LetterBoxd from 2025-11-12. It talks about the decline of movie theaters, documents several anecdotes of movie-goers telling these theaters exactly what they want, and then ends with... begging Hollywood to go against its own interests? Huh? The tl;dr of my commentary is that movie theaters don't sell screenings. They sell third spaces. The screening is just the cherry that makes you go there instead of anywhere else. If movie theaters want to survive, then they need to re-organize around that fact, and soon. https://letterboxd.com/email/crowd-pleaser/2025-11-12-cp/ ============================== >“Movie theaters are basically a dying art because of streaming. Streaming is killing the movie industry, and not just us. All movie theaters are struggling,” Ann says. > >“Streaming is making people want to sit at home,” Ann says. “Economics affect that. Right now, I think people are afraid of everything going on in the world and our country, and I think they’re holding on to their money. And that’s why I keep doing all these, instead of just movies, events.” Streaming offers an effectively unlimited buffet of content, each month, for the price of a *single* screening at a movie theater, *before* food/concessions. If movie theaters are to persist, then the revenue model has to change. Those tickets have to be a couple bucks at most, and the producers and theaters have to hammer out a revenue-sharing agreement that works (assuming the producers even want to keep distributing their work in theaters at all). >“You can wait a month and watch it at home,” Kris says. Ah yes. It's not that ticket prices are too high. It's "exclusivity" that's to blame. Folks, believe it or not, nobody goes to a movie theater to watch movies. They go to a theater to *commune around* the movies. If exclusivity was to blame, then no non-exclusive screening would ever sell. >In addition to the uniform consensus that Discount Tuesdays, when tickets are typically 50 percent off, are the hottest time of the week, every employee at virtually every type of theater will answer the question of “Who mainly comes here?” with the same answer: old people and families. I rest my case. You're not selling screenings. You're selling a third space. >Back when he was growing up in Boone County, Nick would come twice a week with his aunts, and he misses the feeling of a packed theater. Now Nick and Ivory’s son “loves it,” he says, and when the family comes, they try to book a row without any other people in it because of how he runs around during films. I said I rest my case. >The thing that’s holding them back, like many families, is the absurd cost of a trip to the multiplex. “Popcorn and two drinks cost us almost $30. It really adds up fast,” he says. “And tickets, I don’t know how to keep up with the prices on them because today I bought them for $12.50 apiece, and other times I come, they’re $24.” You're not going to get back to the halcyon days of making large sums of money from the movie alone. Adapt or die. >Rather than going to see a movie in the theater, like the Fiesta Theatre in Colorado (pictured left, with manager Jordan), consumers are buying popcorn from their local venues—like the “Party Popcorn” concession that’s sold for takeout-only at Legacy Theatres (right)—to bring the experience home. Hoo-Lee-Crap the theater industry cannot be this dense! The customer is literally telling you why they're showing up! It's not the fucking movie! >At a northeast Cinemark, I asked one of the employees how often people order their delivery. “Every day. You’d be surprised,” he tells me. “Most of the time, they get popcorn. Sometimes they get nachos. Sometimes they get a hot dog.” Guysguysguysguys you're running a restaurant, a third space, with movies as the cherry on top that other third spaces lack. >But mostly, Gary wants to talk about the history of the Lyric. Every nook and cranny of this place has a story from the nearly 50 years his family has owned it. The most evocative: Up in the balcony, an unstable man once strapped an M80 firecracker to a pigeon he’d brought in. When the man set the pigeon loose, it thought the screen light was outdoors and flew straight into it, causing the pigeon to explode in the middle of the audience. Well, it *is* Texas, I guess. >So Hollywood: don’t read this as an obituary. Read it as a to-do list. The crowd is waiting; the doors are open. Now give them something worth leaving the couch for—and price it so they can come back next week. Perhaps theaters should look beyond Hollywood for what they project on their screens. Hollywood sees streaming as their way of cutting out the theater middle-men. #movies #MovieTheaters #MovieTheatres #streaming npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…dfpj @nprofile…sh0h @nprofile…k6m6 Alas, so far as I know, it's been dead for over a decade. It was popular in the early 2000s. npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…dfpj @nprofile…sh0h @nprofile…k6m6 It feels kinda reminiscent of Wormhole (from Centerfleet/Centerscore). npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…vjwn @nprofile…ce35 https://cdn.tenforward.social/media_attachments/files/115/590/918/694/612/397/original/034411b19d31ce1d.mp4 npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…7vxc @nprofile…fn34 or Pascal. npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…495n @nprofile…g4yp Sounds like a more sustainable way of building multi-platform codebases, honestly. There are probably some trade-offs, particularly if a specific platform doesn't support something the core library needs, but otherwise, minimizing the amount of platform-specific code needed likely means more platforms supported and faster iteration. npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-haters-gui/ >Agents are difficult, because tasks are difficult, even if they can be completed by a human being that a CEO thinks is stupid. > >... > >All that generative AI has done is show how much lust there is in both the markets and the media for replacing human labor — and yes, it is in the media too. That really feels like the heart of the matter to me. >If you want to know my true agenda, it's that I see something in generative AI and its boosters[,] something I truly dislike. Large Language Models authoritatively state things that are incorrect because they have no concept of right or wrong. I believe that the writers, managers and executives that find it exciting do so because it gives them the ability to pretend to be intelligent without actually learning anything, to do everything they can to avoid actual work or responsibility for themselves or others. Yeah, that tracks for me as well ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯ npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ An actual WTF moment for me: >The Trump administration has been employing strong-arm tactics with dozens of smaller, weaker, and economically dependent nations to create a global network of deportee dumping grounds. The administration has explored deals with more than a quarter of the world’s nations to accept so-called third-country nationals — deported persons who are not their citizens. > >The negotiations are being conducted in secret, and neither the State Department nor ICE will discuss them. With the green light from the Supreme Court, thousands of immigrants are in danger of being disappeared into this global gulag. https://theintercept.com/2025/07/08/ice-deportation-louisiana-south-sudan/ #TheIntercept #ice #immigration #fascism npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…m665 #TexasObserver #Texas #doge #ClimateChange #Flooding #FEMA #Kerrville #CampMystic "And an upending of disaster aid is far from the only threat Texas faces. For example, the state seeks, and often receives, federal support for investment in critical flood prevention projects. The more intense rainfall that comes with warming (warmer air holds more water) will pose a growing challenge for the management of Texas rivers." Well that's an understatement. When was this written? July 3, 2025, 8:00 AM, CDT Oh, to have a point proven so painfully and so soon. https://www.texasobserver.org/trump-texas-doge-cuts-disaster-aid/ npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ #Protest in #FortWorth #dfw today, #NoKings. According to organizers the #FBI closed airspace around the event, which might explain why the helicopter was hanging pretty far back. There *was* a quadcopter hanging out closer to the event though. Probably had about a thousand people milling around, give or take a couple hundred. Saw reps from #CPUSA, #RCA, and #PSL #PartyForSocialismAndLiberation too, as well as #AFLCIO. #socialism #communism #marxism. https://cdn.tenforward.social/media_attachments/files/114/683/417/229/769/348/original/d2a95228c5a7b941.jpeg https://cdn.tenforward.social/media_attachments/files/114/683/417/354/411/495/original/7ecad596a7ced74e.jpeg https://cdn.tenforward.social/media_attachments/files/114/683/417/416/455/192/original/b6c4adf709dbc745.jpeg https://cdn.tenforward.social/media_attachments/files/114/683/417/454/526/471/original/6bcfb3be406be630.jpeg npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…l7mq https://cdn.tenforward.social/media_attachments/files/114/650/388/679/249/734/original/6caf85b599bb91eb.jpg npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…6uyf Attention is a privilege that debatebros are not entitled to. npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…asy0 Having flagship instances at the top of results isn't likely to help with federation 🤷 npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…6naz thread interesante que propone que solar/PV se cayó en cascada en rápida sucesión: https://tech.lgbt/@Lydie/114420925061151876 No estoy seguro de si la teoría es correcta. npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…vdm6 >The committee substitute adds that term back in, but says a doctor does not need to wait until the patient has experienced physical impairment or the risk of death is imminent before they intervene. Life-threatening, the bill specifies, means “capable of causing death or potentially fatal. A life-threatening physical condition is not necessarily one actively injuring the patient.” > >One example described in a committee meeting is of a pregnant woman who has cancer, which is expected to become life-threatening over weeks or months if she is unable to be treated due to her pregnancy. Under this clarifying bill, a doctor could perform an abortion even though she is not facing an emergent risk of death. Better than nothing, but still leaves the door open for litigious actors to wreak havoc in the courts over whether or not any particular intervention ultimately meets the standard. Hopefully, the medical community stands in solidarity against such litigation. #texas #TexasTribune #abortion npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ Finally getting around to this a month later, but... better late than never. The lack of a Free-as-in-Freedom way to contact the IRS outside of literal snailmail is absurd. I'll probably get this snailmailed out tomorrow morning. Gotta swing by the library to get it printed first though (#libraries ftw). I wrote this letter with LaTeX so it feels more GovERnMeNT OfFiciAl. Also there have been FOUR different "acting" commissioners of the IRS since January 2025. Heck, maybe sending it through snailmail means there's a better chance it'll actually get read. @nprofile…0w4g #FreeTax #TaxInFreedom #FSF #LaTeX https://cdn.tenforward.social/media_attachments/files/114/391/862/410/683/848/original/2c99d77f7d75ce8d.png npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ So... I've been saying "reify" wrong for, like, *years* apparently. Oops. npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…asy0 It'd be a lot cooler if it actually was banned for "christian nationalism," aka white supremacy in bible drag. npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ Put in 10 hours of mapping/surveying with #StreetComplete and #OsmAnd. Got a whole lot added. Mapped out every business on the eastern side of Benbrook Boulevard. Also mapped out the sidewalks on the eastern side. Tomorrow I'll try and do the western side. This is a major corridor of Benbrook with a bunch of businesses, so having them all on the map, and updated/fleshed out, should be helpful for folks. #Benbrook #FortWorth #dfw #osm #OpenStreetMap #gis https://cdn.tenforward.social/media_attachments/files/114/170/305/257/843/039/original/edf27796411ef732.png npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…6naz >They drain resources from maintainers of those common repositories often without any compensation. Projects like #wikipedia (and the broader #wikimedia ecosystem, like the Commons and #wikidata), along with #OpenStreetMap #osm, probably have to spend millions annually dealing with AI content scrapers. npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…tsg3 That's a solid strategy. Building socialism is a marathon, not a sprint. npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…ug6l "zone of responsibility" ; Interesting. I've been wondering lately if revolutionary parties in the US could ally with other entities -- churches, unions, co-ops, other friendlies -- to establish something similar, especially in "underserved" areas. #socialism #communism #marxism npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…dyep @nprofile…4fxs Keep in mind that its implementation of Privacy Pass leaves significant room for improvement presently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43040521#43044368 npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…r4x7 @nprofile…75cv as someone with chronic pancreatitis (and as such, an increased risk of pancreatic cancer) 😮 npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…ug6l Me watching the empire self-destruct in real time, as NED, USAID, and even the DOD (and maybe even NATO if we're lucky) get shut down or cut, year-over-year, finally giving socialist projects across the world more room to breathe: #socialism #communism #marxism https://cdn.tenforward.social/media_attachments/files/114/034/579/064/298/352/original/1f539c46af76e454.png npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…s0v8 "They want to keep working only with grep and sed" It smells an awful lot like "I don't want to learn anything other than vim/emacs with {c,e,g}tags." npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…sa3n @nprofile…js0s Capitalism is gonna force me to become a rocket scientist, isn't it? npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ https://www.tiktok.com/@alberta.nyc/video/7465916806939659563?lang=en #DeepSeek #ai #OpenAI #China https://cdn.tenforward.social/media_attachments/files/113/922/516/586/795/310/original/28fd22a72664a5c7.mp4 npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ You know, a decade ago, the idea that you could play just about any windows game you wanted on Linux at all, much less without much fuss, was a fantasy. Now, in 2025, #steam has me playing #HorizonZeroDawn like it's a native damn title (it isn't) on a decade-old graphics gard (GTX 1080) and the performance is at least as good as I recall it being on the PS4 when I first played it. I know the game itself is approaching a decade in age, but still. We've gone from "there's no gaming on linux" to "you can play just about anything without sacrificing much" in the span of a decade. Valve/steam, #CodeWeavers, and the #wine team (and any other teams I'm missing/forgetting) should be proud of those accomplishments. #GamingOnLinux Now I need to get an AMD/RTX card so I'm not using proprietary graphics drivers. npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…3qtz The resistance to changing to federated applications is often political rather than technical. The original organizers of a group want to remain in control of the medium, regardless of what the medium is. Which means that even if you built the alternative yourself, they won't bite, because they are no longer in control. You are. And when leaders are comfortable with the levers of control they have over one medium, they typically aren't incentivized to learn how to use alternative mediums either. Basically, changing the medium of an organizing unit is a guaranteed struggle session. At best, you might be able to set up parallel mediums that some fraction of the org elects to use in addition to the medium under the control of the leadership. #socialism #communism #marxism #organizing #activism #SelfHosting #BigTech #antifa #anarchism #fediverse #floss #mastodon #nextcloud npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…s0v8 I think JetBrains has a reasonable model for this in the software world at least. They use subscriptions, but 12 months worth of subscription payments (over 12 months, or paying it all up front) grants perpetual license to a major version of the software (that won't get updates forever, but if it continues to work as-is for you, then great). Not sure how that approach would translate to hardware like cameras though. npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…gqvk If there were some reconciliation of Trotskyism and Marxism-Leninism to be found, then I think we would have stumbled upon it by now. As it stands, they are two opposing theories of how socialism develops. npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ I did my civic duty of exercising my rights today. I walked up and down Benbrook Boulevard this morning with this sign. Got about a dozen gestures of encouragement from motorists, and only one encounter with an officer who asked if I could speak with him for a couple minutes. I politely declined and he was fine with that and kept on driving. Rights are like muscles: they atrophy if left unexercised for too long. #luigi #UnitedHealthcare #DenyDefendDepose #Benbrook #FortWorth https://cdn.tenforward.social/media_attachments/files/113/692/800/997/201/749/original/febf3a6f4b238b65.jpeg npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…al3s it's a play on the title of a book about how scummy health insurance companies make money: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay,_Deny,_Defend One could consider "depose" to be a probable follow-up to the first three events/behaviours. npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ Gonna exercise my first amendment rights at some point this weekend. #luigi #UnitedHealthcare #DenyDefendDepose https://cdn.tenforward.social/media_attachments/files/113/690/815/353/700/916/original/078d41d13e9584b0.jpg npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ Weird Al's "Yoda" hits different 40 years later. "I'll be playin' this part 'til I'm old and grey. ... I'll be makin' these movies 'til the end of time." #StarWars #WeirdAl #Disney npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…4fxs I mean, y'all put AI bullshit right at the top of results too. Gotta go into settings in order to disable it. #kagi npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…vrgz Tactical belt on a hanger, multiple rifles by the bedside, desk pistol. Definitely preparing for something. npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…al3s I guess I've gotta get more familiar with my spices 🙂 npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ "Foods eaten without salt may seem less tasty at first, but with repetition, people can learn to enjoy the natural flavors of many unsalted foods." Suuuuuuure. Keep telling yourself that. npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ The subject line of this email is "Manhunt underway for gunman in C.E.O.'s shooting." Funny how whether or not the police undergo a manhunt for a shooting victim's attacker seems to depend on the victim's class status. #capitalism https://cdn.tenforward.social/media_attachments/files/113/596/057/530/223/513/original/50751e1fa83a4dbb.png npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ Oh no! I sure hope they NEVER FIND THE SHOOTER. #healthcare #UnitedHealthcare #capitalism https://cdn.tenforward.social/media_attachments/files/113/595/134/844/032/521/original/b824ea2b546064b7.png npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…al3s @nprofile…ca53 So far as I know, it's a mastodon.social-only thing. Not exactly in the spirit of federation or decentralization 🤷 npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @nprofile…rtmv Publishers want to have their cake (allow retro games to circulate into the collective contemporary consciousness) and eat it too (make money off of that circulation without doing any new work themselves). Gabe Newell was right back in 2011 and he's right now: Piracy is a Service Problem. npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @npub1a4g…yuyx @npub1y9t…rkus The PSL takes a cadre approach to building a vanguard party, making it a rather different beast than most socialist orgs in the US. Being a full member of a PSL branch entails regular work and education in a more regimented environment than other orgs. Doing the reading is not optional in the PSL if you seek to be a full member. I found the approach preferable and more efficient than my local DSA chapter's approach of "everyone do whatever they feel like, whenever." Others find the PSL's approach "cultish." npub1hpxxyhukn0aayhgapszgajypcvyl3ttlykl65nn476h0re25ykjsdttega Preston Maness ☭ @npub1zak…d6uu Am millennial. Went on a cruise. Do not recommend. That industry is dirty as fuck.