Notices by Nathan Schneider (ntnsndr@social.coop)

@josef @ntnsndr Yeah I gave up the domain ages ago. Someone else is still running it with a cloned website.

After two days in DC, it is troubling to see how many self-described advocates of free speech and free exchange have lined up behind the most draconian crackdown on dissent and economic entanglement in recent memory.

Is there any direct way in which the Trump-Bukele prison camp deal is related to their shared interest in Bitcoin?

I'm grateful to be back on the Reimagining the Internet podcast with Ethan Zuckerman to talk about the prospects and challenges of open social media: https://publicinfrastructure.org/podcast/110-nathan-schneider-governable-spaces/

How the Trump admin is trying to strong-arm Colorado electric co-ops out of sensible renewable energy planning:

https://coloradosun.com/2025/04/02/electric-coop-clean-energy-grants-new-era-colorado/

I'm proud our co-ops have a history of courage on this front.

Commissioner Hester Peirce now talking at the National Press Club on a kind of #exittocommunity trajectory for tokenized projects—from centralized disclosure to decentralized control.

@rose_alibi @ntnsndr We should also work on the collection of vintage foreign language keyboards

@rose_alibi I need a club like that

@serapio @ntnsndr @kawaiipunk @Trav @mayfirst GREAT question. This has been a major interest of mine lately.

One bit of evidence is in how European codetermined workplaces have been putting limits on how corporate Copilot deployments can be used.

Another is in just ensuing worked control over the AIs and the workplaces, to ensure they augment rather than replace.

@serapio @ntnsndr @kawaiipunk @Trav @mayfirst On the enterprise side, training an internal bot with company data, and perhaps licensing it to others in the sector.

On the consumer side, just having AI managed not by a company historically untrustworthy with IP and climate.

@alwirtes totally! There are so many of these open tools out now. No reason why a co-op couldn't step in and use those and compete on values.

@Trav @kawaiipunk @mayfirst Totally. And I think there's a really compelling consumer pitch if you can get privacy preserving, access to multiple bots, and renewable energy all in one place.

Duck.ai has 2/3, and it has become my go-to (other than for specialized uses like coding).

@kawaiipunk @Trav Ooh, good to know! Is there any discussion brewing there about something like this?

I'm a bit inspired by the news that @mayfirst is incorporating a local LLM translation tool into our Jitsi instance.

Also just went on a walk with a co-op leader who wanted a co-op-friendly enterprise chatbot for his company.

Thinking of something like Duck.ai, except cooperative and with more functionality for members.

Wanted: Someone interested in bootstrapping an Ollama-style AI interface using available open tools to provide cooperatively owned, renewable energy, privacy-protecting access to high-end chatbots. Know anyone?

@edsu I don't know where I begin and the robot ends, but the Mastodon governance bot cometh

@edsu I don't know, I'm still pretty into vibe coding

@light Yes, I think Aether was a really interesting experiment!

Hylo has also been introducing some interesting collaborative moderation tools.

And a student of mine has been building user-governed moderation for Bsky: https://pmsky.social/

These are good times to be reading Yertle the Turtle to one's kids and oneself. https://archive.org/details/yertle-the-turtle-and-other-stories

@cyberlyra @ntnsndr Like, notifications on the watch require having a phone? To inform the person of a text to the watch?