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

I guested on a podcast and we talked about why "Open Source" no longer cuts it for our digital infrastructures.

(Original title: Podcast: “Digital Infrastructure and Why Open Source Is Not Enough Anymore”)

https://tante.cc/2024/11/06/podcast-digital-infrastructure-and-why-open-source-is-not-enough-anymore/

For those who don't know: This is the CEO of Vercel, a major player in the JavaScript ecosystem. https://hachyderm.io/@joelanman/113437102479692781

Today more than on most days remember:

When people show you who they are, believe them.

Those who lick fascist boot today will never support you.

My main point is that "Open Source" no longer cuts it.

I was a guest on two podcasts this week. And while they both are very tech related and the current issue is way bigger than that I still think both got more important given the election results.

A lot the infrastructures we depend on depend on the goodwill and support of a bunch of people who just helped a fascist rapist become president again or at least did not have the guts to push back. Even a bit.

And as people interested in the commons we need to rethink our approach.

Silicon Valley and the other billionaires got their president.

Now realize that those guys are not, not ever, on your side.

Holy fucking shit.

It's cute that this software supply chain attack on NPM directly targets Ethereum users who are supposed to check every smart contract they want to interact with to protect themselves but don't seem to use the same rigour when checking code they include.

(Original title: Hundreds of code libraries posted to NPM try to install malware on dev machines)

https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/11/javascript-developers-targeted-by-hundreds-of-malicious-code-libraries/

"Disposable vapes are indefensible. Many, or maybe most, of them contain rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, but manufacturers prefer to sell new ones. More than 260 million vape batteries are estimated to enter the trash stream every year in the UK alone. Vapers and vape makers are simply leaving an e-waste epidemic to the planet's future residents to sort out."

(Original title: Guy makes “dodgy e-bike” from 130 used vapes to make point about e-waste)

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/11/disposable-vapes-from-a-music-festival-can-power-a-beefy-e-bike-20-miles/

The worst thing is that car manufacturers will make a lot of money replacing those cars (probably with ICE cars as well)
https://goblin.band/notes/a074puyna25yduic

Academic publishing is basically fucked up beyond all repair but this is really gonna push down the quality.
https://hachyderm.io/@ethanwhite/113425751885998744

Perplexity are not just pushing their stochastic parrots into newsrooms, they are scabs helping publishers to disenfranchise their workers.

If you are not a multi-millionaire, they are not on your side and you are a sucker for using their product and paying for it.

(Original title: Perplexity AI Offers to Help New York Times With Tech Union Strike)

https://www.404media.co/perplexity-ai-offers-to-help-new-york-times-with-tech-union-strike/

"The "growth mindset" is Microsoft's cult — a vaguely-defined, scientifically-questionable, abusively-wielded workplace culture monstrosity, peddled by a Chief Executive obsessed with framing himself as a messianic figure with divine knowledge of how businesses should work."

(Original title: The Cult of Microsoft)

https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-cult-of-microsoft/

With Universities now rolling out "Vice Chancellor of AI" roles I wonder who's left to keep the #AI industry in check and who's supposed to build a new scientific system after the current crop of academics have outsourced their thinking and writing to stochastic parrots?

Should especially Universities have a different standard? The assumption that students "will use AI in their jobs" and therefore they should get to acquire the actual skills themselves is such a bleak case of epistemic injustice.

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/first-pro-vice-chancellor-artificial-intelligence-appointed

I thought a bit about what Google's "25% of our code is AI generated" actually tells us: I am afraid not much.

https://tante.cc/2024/11/01/what-do-25-mean/

One thing that I hate about MacOS is that CMD+Tab does not cycle through windows of an application. Navigating windows is so fucking clunky on this machine.

(Please do not tell me about your favourite Window manager, my personal machines have run different flavours of Linux for more than 20 years now, I am speaking about the laptop I have to use for my job)

Thinking about the OSI "Open Source AI" Definition and how to proceed. Like say they changed their definition to demand that all training data was "available" (right now you only need to describe it) meaning there are URLs that you can access. Think YouTube Videos or social media posts or whatnot. But not all content is under a free license, some explicitly copyrighted with "all rights reserved".

Would you consider a machine learning system trained on that data still "open source" in the intention of the Open Source definition (https://opensource.org/osd)?

"Still, it’s unclear whether “Just Go Independent” is a sustainable career path for the number of journalists who we need to have a functioning society. But I do know that relying on the passing interest of billionaires to keep journalism alive is not sustainable. And I know that 250,000 subscribers could fund a lot of independent journalists."

(Original title: The Billionaire Is the Threat, Not the Solution)

https://www.404media.co/the-billionaire-is-the-threat-not-the-solution/

"Matt Mullenweg says Automattic is ‘very short-staffed’ amid WordPress vs. WP Engine drama"

MAYBE THAT IS THE CONSEQUENCE OF YOU DIPSHIT FIRING EVERYONE WHO'S NOT A FUCKING SYCOPHANT?

Goddammit. What a dumbass.

https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/30/matt-mullenweg-says-automattic-is-very-short-staffed-amid-wordpress-vs-wp-engine-drama/

Another Masto Instance going down. But not because moderation or something but because running bigger instances on Mastodon gets really expensive.

I think this is an issue that we need to put more work into: Not just finding better ways to sustainably fund the operation of instances but also the technical means to make running it on smaller hardware easier. This includes mechanisms to maybe push certain data into "archives" as to not have it in the live database/asset store.

(Original title: RIP botsin.space)

https://muffinlabs.com/posts/2024/10/29/10-29-rip-botsin-space/