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

I never understood the "you need to push out a newsletter every week or people unsubscribe" thing. Like: If you don't send anything you are totally out of my attention and I don't think enough about you to hunt down your page and unsubscribe. What gets me to unsubscribe is some filler post that has a convenient "click here to unsubscribe" post at the bottom.

I built this cupboard with space to put in towels. I was so naive. As if it were up to me.

"AI is a tool (sorry!) that people who are bad at their jobs will use badly and that people who are good at their jobs will maybe, possibly find some uses for. People who are terrible at their jobs (many executives), will tell their employees that they “need” to use AI, that their jobs depend on it, that they must become more productive, and that becoming an AI-first company is the strategy that will save them from the old failed strategy, which itself was the new strategy after other failed business models."

(Original title: The Media's Pivot to AI Is Not Real and Not Going to Work)

https://www.404media.co/the-medias-pivot-to-ai-is-not-real-and-not-going-to-work/

The solution is not to open source "AI" but to resist it.

Systemd is one of the best things in moving Linux forward in a long time.

(Original title: systemd has been a complete, utter, unmitigated success)

https://blog.tjll.net/the-systemd-revolution-has-been-a-success/

Don't use the "Change my Mind" meme with Stephen Crowder for anything.

He is a racist and a homophobe who abused his ex wife while she was pregnant with their kids. Fuck that guy and find a better meme.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Crowder

"Whatever" is a brilliant essay on "AI" by @eevee:

"But I think the core of what pisses me off is that selling this magic machine requires selling the idea that doing things is worthless. Because if doing something has some value, then it must be somehow better than pushing a button and receiving Whatever for essentially no cost."

https://eev.ee/blog/2025/07/03/the-rise-of-whatever/

So many problems in this world might never have appeared if Mark Zuckerberg had gone to therapy.

Using "AI" is no longer optional at Microsoft. Reminds me how when Meta had to force their engineers to use their "Metaverse" product.

If your product doesn't even gain traction internally, maybe it's just ... shit?

(Original title: ‘AI is no longer optional’ — Microsoft admits AI doesn’t help at work)

https://pivot-to-ai.com/2025/06/30/ai-is-no-longer-optional-microsoft-admits-ai-doesnt-help-at-work/

I think one main issue I have with the whole "EURO Stack" stuff is that it is not looking for an alternative. It's "we want what we got just with EU companies". But the fact that the Internet and its services have been turned into a mall is the big fucking problem. I don't want a "European Facebook" built on the same logic of exploitation.

Google's emissions are up over 50%, Amazon builds huge data centers powered by 75% natural gas.

Remember all those posts telling us that "AIs climate impact isn't that bad" supported by some really funky math/perspective and/or numbers Sam Altman invented?

Here's the actual impact.

"AI" is a fossil fuel technology.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/24/technology/amazon-ai-data-centers.html?unlocked_article_code=1.SU8.2JRa.e3Ju6r_pL1Im

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jun/27/google-emissions-ai-electricity-demand-derail-efforts-green

From CreativeCommons with their "signals" to the OSI with their "open source AI" fiasco it seems that the stewards of the legal structures protecting the digital commons are not on the side of people actually wanting to contribute to the commons for humanity. (Maybe they never were.)
If those organizations don't reorient themselves to align with people's needs maybe we need to fork.

I think a misunderstanding is that people want to fight "scraping" or "automated systems". But my feeling is that the issue is with the _purpose_ of the scraping: It's not "that person is scraping my site" it's "that person wants to use my work to train their slop machine". The issue is the SLOP machine with all the negative externalities they have.
And that is a path worth exploring (that I have similarly argued for code): We want to contribute to the commons but there are specific uses that go against our values.
https://tldr.nettime.org/@tante/114754224933740471

Smarte Idee.
Soldat*innen dürfen ja umsonst Zug fahren, damit ist das militärische Infra, damit können wir da beliebig Geld drauf werfen.
https://chaos.social/@geheimorga/114744668728525045

"You can tell what happened — Google promised iNaturalist free money if they would just do something, anything, that had some generative AI in it. iNaturalist forgot why people contribute at all, and took the cash."

(Original title: Google bribes iNaturalist to use generative AI — volunteers quit in outrage)

https://pivot-to-ai.com/2025/06/19/google-bribes-inaturalist-to-use-generative-ai-volunteers-quit-in-outrage/

Teaching people how to use LLMs is not "upskilling", it's the opposite.

"AI bots that scrape the internet for training data are hammering the servers of libraries, archives, museums, and galleries, and are in some cases knocking their collections offline"

#AI is ruining our digital world

(Original title: AI Scraping Bots Are Breaking Open Libraries, Archives, and Museums)

https://www.404media.co/ai-scraping-bots-are-breaking-open-libraries-archives-and-museums/

In the end it seems to me that one of the main distinctions between people who see LLMs as good and those who don't is whether they see the digital part of the world as "content" or "people".

If it's all just content, LLMs make sense. If it's where people live LLMs become a somewhat dumb idea.

New study on the effects of LLM use (in this case on essay writing):

https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872

Quote:

"LLM users also struggled to accurately quote their own work. While LLMs offer immediate convenience, our findings highlight potential cognitive costs. Over four months, LLM users consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels. These results raise concerns about the long-term educational implications of LLM reliance and underscore the need for deeper inquiry into AI's role in learning."

The interesting thing is: People who used search engines (to find sources etc) did not show similar issues. This is an important antidote against the belief that LLM-based tools are just like search engines. Which they are not. They are massively degrading their users' mental abilities and development. Which is why these systems have absolutely no place even _near_ any school or university.

https://hails.org/@hailey/114691651497761523

If you are also annoyed by Firefox for some reason now trimming the protocol in the address bar you can fix that behavior by setting "browser.urlbar.trimURLs" in about:config to get URLs you can properly copy and use back.