Notices by tante (tante@tldr.nettime.org)

Die Tatsache, dass konservative Steuersenkungspläne nicht gegenfinanziert sind ist nicht aus Versehen: Den Staat explizit unterzufinanzieren um dann aus scheinbarer "Notwendigkeit" heraus Sozialleistungen und Investitionen ins Gemeinwohl zu kürzen, ist der Kern neoliberaler Strategie.

Show me a person claiming to be a libertarian and I'll show you a grifter https://indieweb.social/@web3isgreat/114008852836729549

The belief that digital technologies and the Internet are leaning towards democratic values is as naive and as much semi-religious as economists' belief in the free market. TBH both beliefs share a lot more properties.

Fucking Wordpress Multisite Stupid Bullshit Fuckking FUCK

You don't compromise on people's fucking humanity.

(Original title: If Not Now, Then Never)

https://leftycartoons.com/2025/02/11/if-not-now-then-never/

BBC tested AI assistants for summarization and concluded: "91% of AI responses had at least some issues. 51% had “significant” issues."

(Original title: AI chatbots are still hopelessly terrible at summarizing news)

https://pivot-to-ai.com/2025/02/11/ai-chatbots-are-still-hopelessly-terrible-at-summarizing-news/

Google are fucking cowards
(I am in Germany, like the rest of the world we call it the Gulf of Mexico).

Any #mastodon devs here who know where .well-known/nodeinfo gets their response from? (Our server has a wrong response which confuses a few clients)

(Issue is that `nodeinfo_schema_url`in https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Amastodon%2Fmastodon%20schema_url&type=code points to the wrong url)

Microsoft is one of the main companies pushing #AI assistants into business and education contexts.

Let's ask Microsoft Research for the consequences:

"Moreover, while GenAI can improve worker efficiency, it can inhibit critical engagement with work and can potentially lead to long-term overreliance on the tool and diminished skill for independent problem-solving."

So Microsoft research agrees (and shows in a study) that usage of GenAI assistants have a significant negative impact on cognitive skills, especially when it comes to critical thinking and problem-solving abilities.

How does anyone think that this should have a place in schools or universities, areas where the development of critical thinking and problem-solving abilities are the core task?

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/the-impact-of-generative-ai-on-critical-thinking-self-reported-reductions-in-cognitive-effort-and-confidence-effects-from-a-survey-of-knowledge-workers/

People ask why we are not removing the changing mat in our apartment with our son not having needed it for a year or so.

Well. I would. It's just occupied.

With increasing attacks on trans people in many places of the world collecting and providing information about potential escape routes is becoming more and more important. @transworldexpress is collecting that crucial information. #transrightsarehumanrights

https://milliways.social/@transworldexpress/113965359832546952

There will probably never be full automation. The goal of the corporation ist to automate as much high level shit as possible and use cheap - if possible illegally cheap - labour to serve as "physical work adapter". People get reframed as "sensors" to make the physical work accessible to machines. Software can't eat the world without human labor.

https://mastodon.social/@tess/113957974972654069

Just as a small step to stop normalizing current fascists:
Do not ever - even ironically - title anything "Make X Y again". Don't give further power to those memes and (TBH inherently conservative) modes of thinking about the world.

I cannot imagine how it must feel to live in the US right now.

Like things aren't crumbling, they're destroyed with a level of malice, aggression, inhumanity and lack of respect for people's lives that it's incomprehensible.

"my gut feeling is that we need 0 innovation to tackle at least 90% of the problems that challenge our societies, us as individuals and mankind as a whole. We just need to grow up and start doing the actual work."

(Original title: Innovation is a distraction)

https://tante.cc/2025/02/03/innovation-is-a-distraction/

If you are part of a #Mastodon server admin team here's a thing I hacked together yesterday: mastomsg https://codeberg.org/tante/mastomsg/

mastomsg allows you to send a DM either to a list of people or to all accounts younger than a certain timedelta (think: everyone who joined in the last 3 weeks). It's intended use is for example to send welcome DMs to people who just joined your server.

Nothing big but maybe it helps a few people. You can also install it via pip
`pipx install mastomsg`

For those interested I posted the full interview with all questions and my full answers to my blog:

https://tante.cc/2025/01/28/quoted-in-ars-technicas-article-on-tarpits-for-ai-crawlers/

I hate the ideology of #gamification so much. It's most often just manipulative, paternalistic shit.

Life goal achieved:
""It's a great sign to see that people are challenging the notion that we all have to do AI now," Geuter said. "Because we don't. It's a choice. A choice that mostly benefits monopolists.""

I am quoted quite extensively in this Ars Technica article
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/ai-haters-build-tarpits-to-trap-and-trick-ai-scrapers-that-ignore-robots-txt/

This is basically the point at which every civilized state should grant asylum to every trans person. It feels like there are so few states that are not trying to kill them all.

When conservatives say "trans men/woman are not men/woman" what they mean is "because I want them to be a corpse".

https://bsky.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:m65ifh7vn5zdgs7izcmht4gy/post/3lgthupw73s22