Notices by Doug Belshaw (dajb@social.coop)

I've updated my /now page

https://blog.dougbelshaw.com/now/

Open models FTW https://blog.dougbelshaw.com/opencode-and-openrouter/

As I mentioned earlier today, after 10 years we'll be closing @weareopencoop on May 1st.

If we'd been shutting down this time *last* year, it definitely would have been for lack of work. But, weirdly, this year it's a confluence of factors.

https://blog.dougbelshaw.com/next-chapter/

(I'd better get my consultancy business, Dynamic Skillset, on the Fedi!)

RE: https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116097712856639117

Every so often, Cory Doctorow explains the way he works and I greedily gobble up the words as either proof that I'm on the right track, or as evidence that I need to rethink my approach.

This time, thankfully, there's more of the former and less of the latter:

"The AI bubble sucks. AI itself is a normal technology:
[...]
It's not "unethical" to scrape the web in order to create and analyze data-sets. That's just "a search engine"
[...]
There's plenty of useful things people can do with AI. There's plenty of useful things people *will* do with AI. AI is bad because it's an economic bubble and a grift, but not because we've created a bunch of utilities that would – under normal circumstances – be called "plug-ins"."

My mate Tom and I have been chatting for ages about what it really means to depend on US‑based tech when you are running an organisation in Europe.

We've now pulled those conversations into something concrete, called #TechFreedom. It is for organisations that want a clearer view of jurisdiction, business continuity, and 'quiet' surveillance in their stack.

Blog post: https://blog.dougbelshaw.com/techfreedom/

More info: https://techfreedom.eu

#TechFreedom #Fedi #DigitalSovereignty #BigTech

People complain, but then when organisations actually listen they don't share *that* story.

https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/02/firefox-will-soon-let-you-block-all-of-its-generative-ai-features/

After 11 years on Google Workspace, I’ve moved my consultancy business over to Proton.

https://blog.dougbelshaw.com/google-to-proton/

@christina @tommi @quillmatiq @bonfire

The 1.0RC announcement post: https://bonfirenetworks.org/posts/bonfire_social_rc/

...links to various options to install Bonfire: https://docs.bonfirenetworks.org/deploy.html

...or you can try the demo instance: https://campground.bonfire.cafe/

😊

@nicol @pfefferle That looks great!

Didn't realise this was an option in Micro.blog!

Have updated my DNS settings and pressed the appropriate button.

Stolen from elsewhere

(my house, every day)

Our response to the #ClimateEmergency in one image

*Please* CW your posts about US politics. The functionality exists so that people who are following you can selectively dip into rough / controversial topics and preserve some semblance of mental health.

I've got auto-filtering on based on keywords, but it can't catch anything 🥴

@Steve It's an incredible to do to paying business users

This Bluesky thread is wild. I use LLMs as part of my workflow, but I really *didn't* like having Gemini forced into my Google Docs, email, and everywhere else this week.

One person, who has written into their contracts that they're not allowed to use AI in their work tried to get it turned off...

https://bsky.app/profile/litbowl.bsky.social/post/3lfvlw656xs24

Well, here we are. I'm much more available for work than I'd like to be right now, and therefore would appreciate boosts of this post which links to my /work page 🙏

https://dougbelshaw.com/work/

This is very cool

https://www.bbc.co.uk/orbitmusic

I think I'm just going to switch to Ghost

Would be nice to see the same level of activity/concern for migrant boats

https://assortedflotsam.com/@NewsBot/112993932798589752

@kevie Thanks! They seem to be looking after him. There's some large physical specimens here!