Notices by tante (tante@tldr.nettime.org), page 11

Tether is the biggest financial scam of history. But also very important for criminals.

The purpose of a system is what it does.

(Original title: Tether Has Become a Massive Money Laundering Tool for Mexican Drug Traffickers, Feds Say)

https://www.404media.co/tether-has-become-a-massive-money-laundering-tool-for-mexican-drug-traffickers-feds-say/

"EA is doing harm, in an increasingly global manner, to the work of activists for liberating causes.

Despite the liberating intentions of many of its advocates, EA is, irredeemably conservative. It favors welfare-oriented interventions that increase countable measures of well-being and both neglects and diverts funds from social movements that address injustices and agitate for social change, particularly in marginalized communities both in the US and in the Global South."
https://blog.oup.com/2022/12/the-predictably-grievous-harms-of-effective-altruism/

I understand why so much open source happens on GitHub (it is free after all) but given how Microsoft has bought themselves into basically all modern tech tool chains this should make people very uncomfortable.

This is a good PR thing for Microsoft/GitHub on first glance but the more you look at the details the more it becomes clear that this is a simple solution that doesn't fit the issues that dominate the domain. Sure you can give Open Source maintainers access to GitHub people and GitHub Copilot but who are you helping? Worst case is more open source projects having to deal with the extra work of double checking and fixing the generated code.

https://fosstodon.org/@donmccurdy/113512775802077660

The fact that we start to have the same conversations about crypto again makes my soul want to leave my body.

Yes. It's still all scams. A socially destructive set of technologies and attached belief systems.

https://tante.cc/2021/12/17/the-third-web/

Since I saw a report about 1984 (because of a new audio version done for motherfucking Audible!) with the same talking points, here's the usual correction:

1984 is not a book about total surveillance. It's a book about how to ensure the middle class will never stand with the lower classes against power. It's about how to destroy solidarity. In 1984 only the middle class is surveilled, the lower classes (proles) and the upper class (inner party) are not. It's a book about power and class politics that is more relevant than ever - but not "because our phones surveil us".

"Justine's views in unrelated areas are not relevant to this article."

And that is a problem Tech (corporate and Open Source/Free Software!) needs to fix: It absolutely matters that Justine Tunney uses antisemitic and racist dogwhistles as project names, that she publicly argued for fascist government by tech CEOs. I don't care about her technology at all if her existence is about destroying democracy. (It's still a stain on Mozilla to pay for for her llamafile shit). And Tunney isn't the only character that this logic is applied to.

We don't want tech build by racists, fascists, LGBTQ*IA-phobes and whatever shitlord we can find in some basement dungeon.

https://circumstances.run/@davidgerard/113520250162734614

(Original title: They Walk Among Us)

https://leftycartoons.com/2024/11/20/they-walk-among-us/

The reason OpenAI is starting to release "How to use ChatGPT in schools" material is not because they care about the damage they do. It's about pretending their tool can be responsibly used in schools to get access to large, public subscriber bases.

Silicon Valley hates government regulation and paying taxes. But government contracts? It _loves_ them.

Here's the thing: "AI" is stories and tales of magical gains in the future. It needs massive critique.
There also is "machine learning" which is a field of computer science that does sometimes produce relevant work and can be useful.
But those things are basically distinct.

"We constrain our imaginations when we subordinate our creations to names owned by fascist tycoons. Imagine the author of a book telling people to "read my Amazon". A great director trying to promote their film by saying "click on my Max". That's how much they've pickled your brain when you refer to your own work and your own voice within the context of their walled garden. There is no such thing as "my Substack", there is only your writing, and a forever fight against the world of pure enshittification."

(Original title: Don't call it a Substack. - Anil Dash)

https://www.anildash.com//2024/11/19/dont-call-it-a-substack/

So if you use Matrix I just opened a small "Luddites Unite" Channel on my Matrix Server. Dunno what it will become yet but setting up a "Luddite Slack" felt like it was the dumbest thing on the planet.

https://matrix.to/#/!RjZTZaZdcUlIsCWJcf:tante.cc?via=tante.cc

(all runs on my dedicated server, no 3rd party cloud stuff)

"Remember that nobody has yet worked out how to make an actual profit from AI. So what if — God forbid — number stops going up?

There’s a plan for that: large data center holders will go public as soon as possible and dump on retail investors, who will be left holding the bag when the bubble deflates."

(Original title: Pumping the AI bubble: a data center funding craze with ‘novel types of debt structures’)

https://pivot-to-ai.com/2024/11/19/pumping-the-ai-bubble-a-data-center-funding-craze-with-novel-types-of-debt-structures/

It's time for the myth that #AI can summarize things to die.

"Apple Intelligence notification summaries are honestly pretty bad

Summaries are often wrong, usually odd, sometimes funny, rarely helpful."

(Original title: Apple Intelligence notification summaries are honestly pretty bad)

https://arstechnica.com/apple/2024/11/apple-intelligence-notification-summaries-are-honestly-pretty-bad/

You can also just read it like a normal blog in your feed reader using https://lefttoourowndevices.blog/feed/
https://indieweb.social/@emilygorcenski/113471342037661599

@pettter @parismarx I do agree, we probably didn't make that clear enough.
But for a long time many people pretended that the OSI was something different (I pointed that out in the article that sparked the conversation but I think it was way too much in the weeds for the podcast https://tante.cc/2024/10/16/does-open-source-ai-really-exist/ )

@molly0xfff do you draw directly on the lino or do you draw on paper or digitally and then copy it over?

@janl that has lists sure but they are
not integrated into clients for simple usage. And starter packs are special because people can make them themselves easily. The challenge isn't "building lists" it is creating a safe but useful way for people to offer curated lists of people for others to follow.

@janl yeah. I keep being a bit annoyed that Mastodon has no plugin/API that allows to extend it without having to wade through byzantine Ruby cruft. Like this could be a great plugin thing that admins could add of they wanted

Yes, please help Mozilla find their way. Make absolutely sure to tell them to stop dicking around with AI. Like fill in all the optional fields with that info.

Also telling them not to keep hands off of advertising might make sense (even though the questionnaire is from the foundation not the corporation, but that distinction is mostly BS)

https://mamot.fr/@Siltaer/113487305585943186