A shout out to librarians, libraries and library science -- and the practices of care, community and service which make up their democratizing force.

https://buttondown.email/maiht3k/archive/information-access-as-a-public-good/

Dear Hackers,

Public libraries, and libraries in general, are not your enemies. They are some of the last places in the world where people can go, hang out, and do things without any expectation of money changing hands. They are a physical manifestation of file sharing and a corporeal form of torrenting. That in mind, libraries are chronically underfunded and they're currently under attack by right-wing politicians and fascists, but I suppose I repeat myself there.

As such, they make lousy targets for ransomware attacks. Chances are, you're not likely to see any money because they have no money to pay you. All you've done is hurt those who are less fortunate than you, you've hurt children, you've hurt students, and you've made no progress towards "sticking it to the man" or whatever.

For god's sake, leave the library alone. Or maybe, come visit one sometime.

Thanks,
Cyberpunk Librarian

https://shelftalkblog.wordpress.com/2024/05/28/an-update-about-access-to-library-technology-systems/

The Inquirer building also housed, until the early 2000's, their printing plant, making it one of the last major dailies where it was at least theoretically possible for an editor to run downstairs and yell "stop the presses!" if a major story came in.

Oh, this is now my favorite shorthand

It’s a trap. More code is not your friend, it’s your enemy.

Don’t add the dependency. Don’t generate 8000 lines of JavaScript. Replace JS with CSS. Don’t accept the digital grey goo spewed out of tools such as Copilot.

Code is a liability. Anything that helps you make more, quickly, with no effort, is leading you down a very dark path.

(muting this now; sorry, but it’s too noisy)

I didn’t get any of the NYT Connections today 😮

@luckytran Pointedly, from the article: "Work on revising isolation guidance has been underway since last August but was paused in the fall as covid cases rose."

Soooo... the CDC's own work on addressing covid prevalence was delayed due to high covid prevalence, and their answer is to implement a policy that will only help to increase covid prevalence?!

🙄😠

I feel like this is the social media platform I *should* be using and it also feels like driving 54 mph on the highway

People like bringing up the fact that LLMs hallucinate but then leave out the fact that Google results are often straight garbage these days.

It’s to the point where there are classes of queries like the above that I don’t even consider trying in Google Search. The above example is one where I thought to myself “how bad could the Google results be?” and surprisingly they were quite bad.

Paramount+ is now entirely useless if you use a pihole to block New Relic, Doubleclick, and Braze. You literally can't watch the shows you paid for without providing minute-by-minute viewership data to multiple ad platforms.

#enshitification

It's some sort of Anarchist plot.

College Presidents Lampooned on Saturday Night Live’s Cold Open

https://www.openculture.com/2023/12/college-presidents-lampooned-on-saturday-night-lives-cold-open.html

Amaterasu - Japanese goddess of the sun.

Ama terasu - Cabo Verde Kriolu: love the sun porch.

Coincidence? Iye.

These particles coming from “empty space” are what we should all be talking about 🤔https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/nov/24/amaterasu-extremely-high-energy-particle-detected-falling-to-earth?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

"The German government has launched a new Open Source software project called openDesk, which aims to reduce the country’s dependency on proprietary software vendors and support transparency and interoperability.

openDesk is a collection of #OpenSource software modules that are important for day-to-day work in the public sector, such as text creation, file collaboration, project management, email, calendar and messaging."

#FOSS #government #overheid #DigitalSovereignty

https://opensource.net/governments-adopt-open-source-sovereignty/

From a data privacy perspective, cars are just cell phones on wheels now and I hate it so much.

Gmail accounts inactive for two years are about to be deleted by Google https://www.phonearena.com/news/millions-of-unused-gmail-accounts-to-be-deleted-by-google_id152407

New Haven restaurants https://www.nhregister.com/connecticutmagazine/food-drink/article/new-ct-restaurants-november-2023-18430980.php

My dislike for the term AI grows exponentially with each sales pitch that includes AI as a feature. Basic statistical analysis is not AI. A feedback loop is not AI. It’s gimmickery at its worst.

And DJ Mark he’ll always amaze me.
Simply superlative beat maker. Also a djs dj - it was a treat to see him rock a whole set with nothing but 45s. #RIP45king https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iy8tGbg7wLc