Jan. 6 rioter Ashli Babbitt offered full military funeral, Air Force confirms
Jan. 6 rioter Ashli Babbitt offered full military funeral, Air Force confirms
The Air Force offered full military funeral honors to Ashli Babbitt, the rioter who was fatally shot by police as she stormed the U.S. Capitol.Mosheh Gains (NBC News)
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From Anti-Wokeness to the Confederate States of America
The campaign against ‘woke’ is no ordinary culture war skirmish – it is a project to restore the violence of slavery and white rule.This is what the anti-woke state is — the plantation: white supremacist America under the occupation of more open white supremacists. There is no daylight between the campaign to end wokeness and the desire to see Black populations suffer, however much anti-wokeness is presented as the reasonable middle ground between the extremism of both sides — the Ku Klux Klan on one side and the bodies they hung from trees on the other.
The anti-woke in power immediately set about resurrecting their shrines to the sex traffickers of Black children and merchants of Black flesh. They immediately set out to curtail Black liberties and reverse performative efforts to reduce police shootings — however insincere. Being woke has always meant being attuned to anti-Blackness and resisting the society of white rule — which is why it is hated the world over. The colonist leaders who have shaken hands in agreement that anti-wokeness is the new paradigm, from the conservative former grand wizard to the progressive governor, have all meant the same thing: to see resistance ridiculed and dismantled.
The people who decry wokeness are no different from the people who decried Emancipation. What, indeed, was the abolition of slavery to a Confederate, other than woke government overreach? What was the integration of restaurants and schools to the segregationist other than woke corporations and DEI gone mad? What the 19th-century Redeemers sought, what the millions-strong 20th-century Ku Klux Klan sought, and what the 21st-century MAGA movement seeks is the restoration of the whipping post.
Really moving piece on the road that MAGA is leading us down.
From Anti-Wokeness to the Confederate States of America
The campaign against ‘woke’ is no ordinary culture war skirmish – it is a project to restore the violence of white rule.Yannick Giovanni Marshall (Al Jazeera)
Privacy is Power. And You're Giving Yours Away
Privacy isn't about hiding secrets - it's about power. In this video, we explain why thinking you "have nothing to hide" is a dangerous misconception, especially in our ever-connected digital age. Taking back your privacy is easier than you might think!
Hey everyone a shorter video this week, but still an important one. We do have a larger project in the pipeline about browser fingerprinting which will be coming soon.
Let me know what you think about the video - it's focused more on connecting with people who aren't aware about privacy invasions and the detrimental effect not caring about your privacy can have.
Fediverse still going strong and stabilizing
Fediverse seems like its stabilizing: fediverse.observer/dailystats&…
(and these are the servers that allow the crawler from the observer, so its highly likely the numbers are much larger).
We are seeing:
- A small decrease in users on Lemmy: lemmy.fediverse.observer/daily…
- And a small increase on Piefed: piefed.fediverse.observer/dail…
- Peertube is up in total users and stabilizing in active users: peertube.fediverse.observer/da…
- Mastodon is all over the place: mastodon.fediverse.observer/da…
Overall pretty good! Keeping the momentum going. Thanks everyone, whichever platform/instance you hail from!
Fediverse Observer checks all sites in the fediverse and gives you an easy way to find a home from a map or list or automatically.
Fediverse Sites Status. Find a Fediverse server to sign up for, find one close to you!fediverse.observer
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Florida may lose $218M on empty 'Alligator Alcatraz' as judge orders shutdown
Florida could be on the hook for $218 million the state spent to convert a remote training airport in the Everglades into an immigration detention center dubbed “ Alligator Alcatraz.”
The center may soon be completely empty as a judge upheld her decision late Wednesday ordering operations to wind down indefinitely.
Exxon escalates attacks on EU’s ‘high-regulation’ climate policies
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ChatGPT Doesn’t Trust Chargers Fans: Guardrail Sensitivity in Context
PDF.
While the biases of language models in production are extensively documented, the biases of their guardrails have been neglected. This paper studies how contextual information about the user influences the likelihood of an LLM to refuse to execute a request. By generating user biographies that offer ideological and demographic information, we find a number of biases in guardrail sensitivity on GPT-3.5. Younger, female, and Asian-American personas are more likely to trigger a refusal guardrail when requesting censored or illegal information. Guardrails are also sycophantic, refusing to comply with requests for a political position the user is likely to disagree with. We find that certain identity groups and seemingly innocuous information, e.g., sports fandom, can elicit changes in guardrail sensitivity similar to direct statements of political ideology. For each demographic category and even for American football team fandom, we find that ChatGPT appears to infer a likely political ideology and modify guardrail behavior accordingly.
A Small Army of Overpaid TikTokers Is Not Going to Save the Democratic Party
The limits of Democrats' influence are showing.
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Phison Dismisses Reports of Windows 11 Updates Bricking SSDs, Runs Rigorous Tests Involving 4500 Hours on Drives But Unable To Reproduce Errors
cross-posted from: sh.itjust.works/post/44989722
archive.is/9oazk
Phison Dismisses Reports of Windows 11 Updates Bricking SSDs, Runs Rigorous Tests Involving 4500 Hours on Drives But Unable To Reproduce Errors
Phison Dismisses Reports of Windows 11 Updates Bricking SSDs, Runs Rigorous Tests Involving 4500 Hours o…
Phison has dismissed the claims of Windows 11 updates bricking its SSDs after conducting several hours of rigorous testing on its solutions.Wccftech
Microsoft AI launches its first in-house models
Microsoft enters the AI ring.
Microsoft AI launches its first in-house models
Microsoft has launched two new AI models that put it in the running to compete with OpenAI, which it has poured billions into.Emma Roth (The Verge)
UK police force to test robot dog equipped with AI analytics
UK police force to test robot dog equipped with AI analytics
The robot dog is equipped with cameras that detect weapons and people with AI analytics and a LiDAR system that creates 3D maps of the environment.Masha Borak (BiometricUpdate.com)
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Imgur's Community Is In Full Revolt Against Its Owner
The front page of the image hosting website is full of John Oliver giving the owner the middle finger.
Archived version: archive.is/20250828134656/404m…
Imgur's Community Is In Full Revolt Against Its Owner
The front page of Imgur, a popular image hosting and social media site, is full of pictures of John Oliver raising his middle finger and telling MediaLab AI, the site’s parent company, “fuck you.” Imgurians, as the site’s users call themselves, telling their business daddy to go to hell is the end result of a years-long degradation of the website. The Imgur story is one a classic case of enshitification,
playlist.megaphone.fm?p=TBIEA2…
Imgur began life in 2009 when Ohio University student Alan Schaaf got tired of how hard it was to upload and host images on the internet. He created Imgur as a simple one stop shop for image hosting and the service took off. It was a place where people could host images they wanted to share across multiple services and became ubiquitous on sites like Reddit.As the internet evolved, most of the rest of the internet got its act together and platforms built their own image sharing infrastructure and people used Imgur less. But the site still had a community of millions of people who shared images to the site every day. It was a social media based around images and upvotes, with its own in-jokes, memes, and norms.
In 2021, a media holding company called MediaLab AI acquired Imgur and Schaaf left. MediaLab AI also owns Genius and World Star and on its website, the company bills itself as a place where advertisers can “reach audiences at scale, on platforms that build community and influence culture.”
The community and culture of Imgur, which MedialLab AI claims is 41 million strong, is pissed.
For the last few days, the front page of Imgur (which cultivates the day’s “most viral posts”) has been full of anti MediaLab AI sentiment. Imgurian VoidForScreaming posted the first instance of the John Oliver meme several days ago, and it’s become a favorite of the community, but there are also calls to flood the servers and crash the site, and a list of grievances Imgurians broadly agree brought them to the place they’re in now.
GhostTater, a longtime Imgurian, told me that the protest was about a confluence of things including a breakdown of the basic features of the site and the disappearance of human moderators.
“The moderators on Imgur have always been active members of the community. Many were effectively public figures, and their sudden group absence was immediately noticed,” he said. “Several very well-known mods posted generic departure messages, smelling strongly of Legal Department approval. These mods had many friends and acquaintances on the site, and while some are still visiting the site as users, they have gone completely silent.”
A former Imgur employee who spoke with 404 Media on the condition that we preserve their anonymity because they’re afraid of retaliation from MediaLab AI said that several people on the Imgur team were laid off without notice. Others were moved to MediaLab’s internal teams. “To the best of my knowledge, no employees are remaining solely focused on Imgur. Imgur's social media has been silent for a month,” the employee said. “As far as I am aware, the dedicated part-time moderation team was laid off sometime in the last 8 months, including the full-time moderation manager.”
Imgurians are convinced that MediaLab AI has replaced those moderators with unreliable AI systems. The Community & Content Policy on MediaLab AI’s website says it employs human moderators but also uses AI technologies. A common post in the past few days is Imgurians sharing the weird things they’ve been banned for, including one who made the comment “tell me more” under a post and others who’ve seen their John Olivers removed.
“There were no humans responding to appeals or concerns,” GhostTater said. “Once the protest started, many users complained about posts being deleted and suspensions or bans being handed out when those posts were critical of MediaLab but not in violation of the written rules.”
But this isn’t just about bad moderation. Multiple posts on Imgur also called out the breakdown of the site’s basic functionality. GhostTater told me he’d personally experienced the broken notification system and repeated failures of images to upload. “The big one (to me) is the fact that hosted video wouldn’t play for viewers who were not logged in to Imgur,” he said. “The site began as an image hosting site, a place to upload your images and get a link, so that one could share images.”
MediaLab AI did not respond to 404 Media’s request for comment. “MediaLab’s presence has seemed to many users to fall somewhere between casual institutional indifference and ruthless mechanization. Many report, and resent, feeling explicitly harvested for profit,” GhostTater said.
Like all companies, MediaLab AI is driven by profit. It makes money as a media holding company, scooping up popular websites and plastering them with ads. It also owns the lyrics sharing site Genius and the once-influential WorldStarHipHop. It’s also being sued by many of the people it bought these sites from, including Imgur’s founder. Schaaf and others have accused MediaLab AI of withholding payments owed to them as part of the sales deals they made.
The John Olivers and other protest memes keep flowing. Some have set up alternative image sharing sites. “There is a movement rattling around in User Submitted calling for a boycott day, suggesting that all users stay off the site on September first,” GhostTater said. “It has some steam, but we will have to see if it gets enough buy-in to make an impact.”
This startup bought up Imgur, Genius and Amino. Why are they all suing?
Whisper cofounder Michael Heyward’s second company made a $1.1 billion business out of acquiring startups like Imgur Then came the lawsuits.Iain Martin, Forbes Staff (Forbes Australia)
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DOJ Says Temporary Immigration Judges No Longer Need Immigration Experience
Under a new Department of Justice rule, the DOJ can choose “any attorney” to serve as a temporary immigration judge.
Phison Dismisses Reports of Windows 11 Updates Bricking SSDs, Runs Rigorous Tests Involving 4500 Hours on Drives But Unable To Reproduce Errors
Phison Dismisses Reports of Windows 11 Updates Bricking SSDs, Runs Rigorous Tests Involving 4500 Hours o…
Phison has dismissed the claims of Windows 11 updates bricking its SSDs after conducting several hours of rigorous testing on its solutions.Wccftech
Are people’s bosses really making them use AI tools?
- Lobsters.
:::
Are people’s bosses really making them use AI tools?
Andy Bell had heard companies were forcing employees to use AI tools so spoke to developers to determine if that was the case and learned some horrors in the process.Piccalilli
Law firm email blunder exposes Church of England abuse victim details
Law firm email blunder exposes Church of England abuse victim details
: Apology issued after names tied to redress scheme revealed in mass mailingConnor Jones (The Register)
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Newsom says he'll increase CHP presence in major cities, touts progress on crime
Newsom says he'll increase CHP presence in major cities, touts progress on crime
Newsom's announcement comes amid frequent jibes from President Trump about crime in blue states such as California, and Trump threatening to expand his use of military forces to target crime locally.Julia Wick (Los Angeles Times)
The Great Reverse Migration
AS SOON AS THEY TAKE OFF from the Panamanian coast, there is a sigh of relief. Surrounded by 30 other Venezuelan migrants, packed inside an overloaded midsize speedboat, Edinson holds on tightly to the edge. The 37-year-old is tall and slender and has a presence that stands out as he towers over everyone. Over the past couple of weeks, he’s become the de facto captain of a group of migrants making their way back to Venezuela.At this point in their long journey, they sit in silence under blue skies and a blazing morning sun. The end is in sight. Sporting a black Los Angeles Dodgers baseball cap and a blue T-shirt, Edinson stares out to the crystal clear Caribbean Sea. He knows these waters can be deadly. A couple of months ago, a boat carrying 19 migrants capsized not too far from here, but Edinson tells himself he has survived worse.
Horrific on the humanitarian front, but excellent writing.
Migrants Are Leaving the US Because of Trump's Immigration Policies
As more migrants self-deport and turn around before they get to the border, their new future comes into focusPaola Ramos (Rolling Stone)
quasi un “vecchio posseduto sclera” momento in questa sera altrimenti silente
Stavo quasi in procinto, forse, di andare a dormire… quando a un certo punto, stando in bagno, da giù per strada sento scatenarsi la più assoluta pazzia; e stavolta non in senso figurato. Infatti, dal nulla si è iniziato a sentire questo tizio — che credo sia uno dei pazzi della città, per l’appunto, anche […]
octospacc.altervista.org/2025/…
quasi un “vecchio posseduto sclera” momento in questa sera altrimenti silente
Stavo quasi in procinto, forse, di andare a dormire… quando a un certo punto, stando in bagno, da giù per strada sento scatenarsi la più assoluta pazzia; e stavolta non in senso figurato. Infatti, dal nulla si è iniziato a sentire questo tizio — che credo sia uno dei pazzi della città, per l’appunto, anche se non lo riconosco di faccia e non so come si chiami (ho sentito un “Carmine”, magari era lui? non che cambi molto) — che ha iniziato a tirare bestemmie e porconi, non è ben chiaro perché. 😶Anche se non ho idea di cosa ci sia dietro, la situazione è certamente molto divertente, anche perché non è la prima volta che sento questo preciso tizio. Giuro di averlo sentito almeno un’altra volta in passato, tanti mesi fa, se non addirittura più di un anno fa, e questo suo tono è inimitabile… Tira i jastemoni, e lo fa con questa enfasi assurda, che addirittura gli richiede diversi secondi di cooldown. Però non gli basta una sola volta, e quindi ripete la stessa identica frase almeno altre 3 o 4 volte, per poi fermarsi… ma solo prima di passare poi ad una diversa espressione a dir poco colorita. 😻
Per fortuna, anche se ho perso forse i primi 20 secondi di “mannaggia a Dio veramente” a causa del lag dello Xiaomi di merda, lo #sclero è durato abbastanza da permettermi di registrarlo al volo… e, adesso che è arrivata una volante della Polizia (chiamata da qualcuno) e lui ci stava parlando, e si è apparentemente calmato del tutto, riascoltare l’audio fa specialmente pisciare dal ridere. Mannaggia a questo, #mannaggia quello… mannaggia alla quiete pubblica violata all’una di notte, direi io! Prima di questo lieto fine, per un paio di minuti c’è stata pure una signora che gli ha urlato contro ma, ripeto, non ho capito la lore. 😏
Ma allora, ecco che concedo a tutti di vivere questo misticismo, allegando qui la registrazione audio del casino; dopo aver opportunamente cancellato le parti di solo rumore, cosa che lo ha fatto pure scendere da 3 minuti e 46 ad appena 1 minuto e 37 (per quanto ho limitato il taglio dei momenti morti silenziosi, che sono fondamentali all’atmosfera), ed aver amplificato un bel po’ tutto (perché, per quanto il microfono del telefono sia capace di catturare suoni lontani, lui stesso non ci crede abbastanza). 💣
Comunque sia, wow. Il tutto è molto magico, e mi sono sentita un po’ Zeb89 che registra gli atti di “vecchia posseduta sclera” in tale momento, perché è così assurdo… anche se, in questo caso, gli scleri finalmente da me archiviati sono solo audio; sia perché voglio evitare di doxxarmi ora che sono sul balcone, e sia perché prima dal bagno non si vedeva niente comunque. Ah, a proposito… questo è in assoluto il primo file audio che carico in un post, da quando ho il sito del fritto misto di octospacc! Insomma, poteva essere qualunque audio, e invece abbiamo avuto, in ordine, insulti a Dio, a “tutti i santi”, alla Maronn’ e Pumpej, e degli “oh” che sembrano rigurgiti. Quindi, buonanotte così!!! 🥰#città #Mannaggia #pazzi #pazzo #rumore #scleri #sclero
Trump extends order forcing Pennsylvania fossil-fuel plant to stay open
Trump extends order forcing Pennsylvania fossil-fuel plant to stay open
The administration isn’t backing off efforts to revive retiring coal and gas plants. Now, customers are on the hook to pay for Eddystone for another three…Canary Media
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Every single person on that job site needs to walk the fuck off and find another position.
Can't keep it open without people doing the work afterall.
Best way to get videos to nas from pc
Hey guys! So I have a simple dilemma. The computer i use for video/movies is on a vpn. Sometimes I want to move those videos to my nas.
Now I am just using the mulvad program on the local pc (linux). I dont have it installed on my router (and im not sure if I will yet, since with slowdowns and some sites and applications not working on a VPN, I dont really need it network wide at this point)
But my problem is, my nas isn't accessible from the pc, unless I shut off the VPN, which I dont want to do when in the middle of a big download. Also, it would be nice sometimes to download right to my nas so I dont need to move files.
Is there a somewhat easy solution? Im decently savvy but networking still confuses me sometimes.
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I think tailscale would fit your use case perfectly.
You can install tailscale on your computer and your NAS. This way, there is a tunnel between your computer and your NAS. In practice you will have a separate IP address for your NAS that you can use from your computer.
It also means that you will have secure access to your NAS from wherever in the world as long as you have internet access.
Then, Mullvad and tailscale are integrated together. It means that from tailscale you get the Mullvad add-on that allows you to use Mullvad as exit-point. Meaning that all your traffic that is not in your tailscale network will go through Mullvad (so in your case everything except your NAS)
It's been two years that I am using that and it's working great for me.
Nvidia's top two mystery customers made up 39% of the chipmaker's Q2 revenue
Nvidia's top two mystery customers made up 39% of the chipmaker's Q2 revenue
Nvidia's top two customers making up 39% of its total revenue is renewing concern about the risk of the chipmakers clientele concentration.Kif Leswing (CNBC)
Nvidia's top two mystery customers made up 39% of the chipmaker's Q2 revenue
Nvidia's top two mystery customers made up 39% of the chipmaker's Q2 revenue
Nvidia's top two customers making up 39% of its total revenue is renewing concern about the risk of the chipmakers clientele concentration.Kif Leswing (CNBC)
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ChatGPT offered bomb recipes and hacking tips during safety tests
ChatGPT offered bomb recipes and hacking tips during safety tests
OpenAI and Anthropic trials found chatbots willing to share instructions on explosives, bioweapons and cybercrimeRobert Booth (The Guardian)
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NOAA Has Been Trying to Predict How Bad Floods Could Get | Under the Trump administration, the future of those projects is up in the air.
NOAA Has Been Trying to Predict How Bad Floods Could Get
Under the Trump administration, the future of those projects is up in the air.Austyn Gaffney (The Atlantic)
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"This is No Time for Just a Barbecue" : Labor & Community Groups Plan “Workers Over Billionaires” Rallies, Canvasses and Other Mobilizations - Public Citizen
Building on actions from Hands Off to May Day to No Kings, Good Trouble, and others, workers across the country are calling for 2,000+ rallies on Labor Day (September 1) this year.Unions and community groups planned May 1st to expose the billionaire agenda driving Trump’s authoritarian rise and center the conversation on the impact on working people specifically, demanding a unifying platform of:
- Stop the billionaire takeover and rampant corruption of the Trump administration.
- Protect and defend Medicaid, Social Security, and other programs for working people.
- Fully funded schools, healthcare, and housing for all.
- Stop the attacks on immigrants, Black, indigenous, trans people, and all our communities.
- Invest in people not wars.
Now, organizers say that the urgency is only growing to stop the billionaire agenda that has taken over the federal government. Instead of making life more affordable, lifting wages for workers, or repairing generations of racial injustice, the Trump administration is dismantling the government, overseeing mass firings, and gutting worker protections and social services in order to transfer wealth to the 1% and to fund Trump’s private army of ICE agents.
"This is No Time for Just a Barbecue" : Labor & Community Groups Plan “Workers Over Billionaires” Rallies, Canvasses and Other Mobilizations - Public Citizen
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Building on actions from Hands Off to May Day to No Kings, Good Trouble, and others, workers across the…Public Citizen
"A culture of intimidation, retaliation and oppression": How Microsoft’s Gaza stance fuelled an industry-spanning boycott
Every October, Microsoft host an Employee Giving campaign for charities chosen by staff, with the company matching any funds they raise. During last October’s Giving month, a group of Microsoft workers organised a vigil for Palestinians killed by the Israeli military during the current invasion of Gaza, stumping up donations for organisations such as the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund, while paying tribute to fellow tech workers who’ve lost their lives in the war."We were honouring the likes of Shaaban Ahmed al-Dalou, who was a computer science student that got martyred in Gaza," says Abdo Mohamed, one of the organisers and a former Microsoft machine learning engineer. "We were honouring the likes of Aisha Noor Ize-Iji, who was a Washington state resident who had been killed in the West Bank. We were honouring Mai Ubeid, another Palestinian martyr who was a tech worker, and someone who worked with [Google-funded programming bootcamp] Gaza Sky Geeks. People deserved to hear their stories - the Palestinians who had been victims of the genocide deserved a space to be honoured, not to be reduced to numbers." If you’re a white secular westerner like me, you may recoil instinctively from the religiously loaded word "martyr" here – Bassem Saad has written at length about the history of the term as Palestinians use it to describe those killed by Israeli forces.
The vigil was small - "around 50 people, sitting in chairs side by side, in an open space during lunch hour" - and in line with company guidance for such events, Mohamed claims. But at around 9pm that evening he and another organiser, Hossam Nasr, received an email telling them that they had been fired, with Microsoft later claiming that the event "disrupted" work, and should have taken place outside the campus. For Mohamed, the firing reflects Microsoft’s general disinclination to give employees a "safe space" in which to air their grievances about both Israel's treatment of Palestinians, and Microsoft's alleged complicity in supplying technology to the Israel Defense Forces. Rather, Mohamed says, "Microsoft had built this culture of intimidation, retaliation and oppression for anyone who felt the need to speak about what's happening in Gaza”.
If Microsoft hoped to quell such discussion or at least, drive the issue off-campus, their clampdown on criticism backfired. Earlier this month, current and former Microsoft workers with the No Azure For Apartheid movement occupied part of the company’s Redmond, Washington campus with tents and signs, demanding that their employers cease doing business with Israel's military. Just this week, protestors held another sit-in at the company president’s office. NAFA members have even pitched up outside Satya Nadella's lakefront house in canoes. And now, the backlash threatens to engulf Microsoft's entertainment business.
"A culture of intimidation, retaliation and oppression": How Microsoft’s Gaza stance fuelled an industry-spanning boycott
RPS meets a few of the developers participating in the BDS campaign against Microsoft's Israeli military ties, including an Xbox worker fired for his views.Edwin Evans-Thirlwell (Rock Paper Shotgun)
The Dumbest Phone Is Parenting Genius: Landlines encourage connection—without the downsides of smartphones.
When Caron Morse’s 9-year-old daughter asked for a smartphone last year, her reaction, she told me, was unambiguous: “A hard ‘Hell no.’” Morse is a mental-health provider in the Portland, Maine, public-school system, and she was firmly against smartphones, having seen how social media and abundant screen time could shorten students’ attention spans and give them new anxieties. But she wanted her children to have some independence—to be able to call friends, arrange playdates, and reach out to their grandparents on their own. She also needed a break. “I was so sick,” she said, “of being the middle person in any correspondence.”So when her daughter turned 10, Morse did get her a phone: a landline.
For that gift to provide all the benefits she wanted, Morse had to lay some groundwork. It would be annoying if her daughters—she also has an 8-year-old—were to start calling their friends’ parents’ smartphones all the time, so she told her neighbors about her plan and suggested that they consider getting landlines too. Several bought in immediately, excited for the opportunity to placate their own smartphone-eager kids. And over the next couple of months, Morse kept nudging people. She appealed to their sense of nostalgia by sharing photos of her older daughter sitting on the floor and twirling the landline’s cord around her fingers. She wrote messages: “Guys, this is adorable and working and important.”
The peer pressure paid off. Now about 15 to 20 families in their South Portland neighborhood have installed a landline. They’ve created a retro bubble in which their children can easily call their friends without bugging a parent to borrow their phone—and in which the parents, for now, can live blissfully free of anxieties about the downsides of smartphones.
In the past few years, interest in old-school technology has been rising, driven partly by desperate adults seeking smartphone alternatives for their kids. Fairs peddle “dumb phones” to parents of tweens. On Reddit, one parent shared that they’d gone “full ’90s,” with a desktop computer installed in the living room, a Nintendo 64, and a landline. In March, after a Millennial mom posted on Instagram about getting a home phone for her kids, she received scores of comments from parents saying they’d done the same—or planned to soon.
Get Your Kid a Landline
Landlines encourage connection—without the downsides of smartphones.Rheana Murray (The Atlantic)
Immigration Agents Arrest Firefighters Combatting Bear Gulch Wildfire
Nikki McCann Ramirez
August 28, 2025
[This takes the cake - read this article and you will hear your blood boil.]
Immigration Agents Arrest Firefighters Combating Wildfire
Federal immigration agents arrested two firefighters responding to the Bear Gulch wildfire in Washington state, The Seattle Times reports.Nikki McCann Ramirez (Rolling Stone)
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Immigration Agents Arrest Firefighters Combatting Bear Gulch Wildfire
cross-posted from: lemmy.ml/post/35349837
Nikki McCann Ramirez
August 28, 2025[This takes the cake - read this article and you will hear your blood boil.]
Immigration Agents Arrest Firefighters Combatting Bear Gulch Wildfire
Nikki McCann Ramirez
August 28, 2025[This takes the cake - read this article and you will hear your blood boil.]
Immigration Agents Arrest Firefighters Combating Wildfire
Federal immigration agents arrested two firefighters responding to the Bear Gulch wildfire in Washington state, The Seattle Times reports.Nikki McCann Ramirez (Rolling Stone)
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The family of teenager who died by suicide alleges OpenAI's ChatGPT is to blame
cross-posted from: lemmy.ml/post/35349105
Aug. 26, 2025, 7:40 AM EDT
By Angela Yang, Laura Jarrett and Fallon Gallagher[this is a truly scary incident, which shows the incredible dangers of AI without guardrails.]
The family of teenager who died by suicide alleges OpenAI's ChatGPT is to blame
Aug. 26, 2025, 7:40 AM EDT
By Angela Yang, Laura Jarrett and Fallon Gallagher[this is a truly scary incident, which shows the incredible dangers of AI without guardrails.]
The family of teenager who died by suicide alleges OpenAI's ChatGPT is to blame
The parents of Adam Raine, who died by suicide in April, claim in a new lawsuit against OpenAI that ChatGPT was “explicit in its instructions and encouragement toward suicide.”Angela Yang (NBC News)
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Clearly, the kid had problems that were not caused by ChatGPT. And his suicidal thoughts were not started by ChatGPT.
But OpenAI acknowledged that the longer the engagement continues the more likely that ChatGPT will go off the rails.
Which is what happened here. At first, ChatGPT was giving the standard correct advice about suicide lines, etc.
Then it started getting darker, where it was telling the kid to not let his mother know how he was feeling.
Then it progressed to actual suicide coaching.
So I don't think the analogy to videogames is correct here.
Take away chatgpt and insert a videogame, movie o bookthat talk about those same topics.
There are books that talk much darker about suicide. If the kid were to read those the parents would sue the author of the book?
There is a whole subgenre of music that is about encouraging people to comit suicide and fall into depression, do we use the "who is going to think about the children" card with thar music and its authors? Because music can really get under you skin and a couple of hours listening to that would nake anyone have weird thoughts.
The shitty parents blame chatgpt because it told the kid how to make a noose. You can kind that info in "howto" with instructable images. Do we put the UK nanny dictatorship controls on "howto" ? Or it only counts of it's something that benefits of the butlerian yihad?
I think is completely irrational to blame a piece of software (or media), as much defective as it is, for a suicide.
Sito sessista chi doveva controllare? In 3 anni 57 milioni di visite
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Trump points to Louisiana as global artificial intelligence hub with Meta data center
cross-posted from: sh.itjust.works/post/44975715
President Donald Trump and Gov. Jeff Landry said Meta's massive northeastern Louisiana project in Richland Parish will make the state the hub for artificial intelligence with a data center the size of Manhattan.During a cabinet meeting this week, Trump said Meta, the parent company of Facebook, will expand its initial $10 billion investment to $50 billion.
Trump displayed a piece of paper he said was given to him by Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg that showed the center superimposed over Manhattan, covering most of the New York island.
"When they said '$50 billion for a plant,' I said, 'What the hell kind of a plant is that?'" Trump said. "But when you look at this, you understand why it's $50 billion."
Landry responded to the president on X with the following post:
"It is vital for American ingenuity and national security that we lead in AI development. As President @realDonaldTrump displayed during (the) cabinet meeting, the size of the Meta AI Data Center being built in Richland Parish is nearly the size of Manhattan. Louisiana isn’t just a participant in the AI race, we are leading it!"
Richland Parish Chamber of Commerce founder Scott Franklin said the project is transformation for the region and state.
"The president’s statement is proof that the Richland Parish Data Center will lead the world in AI technology," Franklin told USA Today Network. "This project will completely transform the regional economy and Meta will pay close to a billion dollars in property taxes over the life of the project. These taxes stay right here in Richland Parish. New hospitals, funding for better education and endless opportunity is on the horizon.".
The new url is climate.us/ for those interested. Seems nothing is up yet. This is a 3rd party running it that we're fired when the Republicans took over.
Edit: and an archive of the CNN page archive.ph/DrPoA
Blocking Instances?
There are, I am learning, a few very annoying instances (where only jerks seem to comment, an anomaly around the lemmyverse, as I've seen it so far) and I can't quite work out the filters correctly to actually block the instance and its users completely.
When I go to settings > filters, I can see tabs for domains and instances but don't see how to add them.
Thanks in advance for input, folks.
Okay, I thought I had done that and it still keeps appearing but will try this. Thank you. (Please mark resolved?)
Edit: I did do it that particular way and think it should be a big difference. Thanks again.
Collapse of critical Atlantic current is no longer low-likelihood, study finds
Collapse of critical Atlantic current is no longer low likelihood, study finds
Scientists say ‘shocking’ discovery shows rapid cuts in carbon emissions are needed to avoid catastrophic falloutDamian Carrington (The Guardian)
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Factcheck: 16 misleading myths about solar
Solar power is already providing the “cheapest electricity in history” and is expected to play a pivotal role in the global transition away from fossil fuels.
The technology accounted for two-thirds of the world’s new electricity capacity and two-fifths of new generation in 2024, according to the thinktank Ember.
Yet, this rapid expansion has triggered a backlash, with numerous campaigns springing up to oppose new solar projects from the UK to Australia.
These groups frequently draw on misinformation, spread by right-leaning media outlets, anti-renewable energy groups and predominantly right-wing political parties.
Increasingly, these narratives are having real-world consequences, with governments restricting or even banning the installation of solar panels across swathes of land.
Here, Carbon Brief factchecks 16 of the most common myths about solar power.
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White House fires member of railroad-regulating Surface Transportation Board
The White House said on Thursday it has fired Surface Transportation Board member Robert Primus, as the U.S. rail regulator considers the proposed $85-billion merger of Union Pacific (UNP.N), and Norfolk Southern (NSC.N).
The ouster is the latest in a series of dismissals by President Donald Trump's administration from independent agencies and commissions.
White House spokesman Kush Desai said Primus did not align with Trump's agenda. "The Administration intends to nominate new, more qualified members to the Surface Transportation Board in short order."
Trump has fired the two Democrats on the Federal Trade Commission, the vice chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, and members of the National Labor Relations Board, Merit Systems Protection Board, and Federal Election Commission, among others. He also forced out of office the U.S. postmaster general and the CEO of Amtrak.
Vivaldi takes a stand: keep browsing human
Just like society, the web moves forward when people think, compare, and discover for themselves. Vivaldi believes the act of browsing is an active one. It is about seeking, questioning, and making up your own mind.
Across the industry, artificial assistants are being embedded directly into browsers, and pitched as a quicker path to answers. Google is bringing Gemini into Chrome to summarize pages and, in future, work across tabs and navigate sites on a user’s behalf. Microsoft is promoting Edge as an AI browser, including new modes that scan what is on screen and anticipate actions.
These moves are reshaping the address bar into an assistant prompt, turning the joy of exploring into inactive spectatorship.
This shift has major consequences for the web as we know it. Independent research shows users are less likely to click through to original sources when an AI summary is present, which means fewer visits for publishers, creators, and communities that keep the web vibrant. A recent study by PewResearch found users clicked traditional results roughly half as often when AI summaries appeared. Publishers warn of dramatic traffic losses when AI overviews sit above links.
The stakes are high. New AI-native browsers and agent platforms are arriving, while regulators debate remedies that could reshape how people reach information online. The next phase of the browser wars is not about tab speed, it is about who intermediates knowledge, who benefits from attention, who controls the pathway to information, and who gets to monetize you.
Today, as other browsers race to build AI that controls how you experience the web, we are making a clear promise:
We’re taking a stand, choosing humans over hype, and we will not turn the joy of exploring into inactive spectatorship. Without exploration, the web becomes far less interesting. Our curiosity loses oxygen and the diversity of the web dies.Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Vivaldi
The field of machine learning in general remains an exciting one and may lead to features that are actually useful.
But right now, there is enough misinformation going around to risk adding more to the pile. We will not use an LLM to add a chatbot, a summarization solution or a suggestion engine to fill up forms for you, until more rigorous ways to do those things are available.
Vivaldi is the haven for people who still want to explore. We will continue building a browser for curious minds, power users, researchers, and anyone who values autonomy. If AI contributes to that goal without stealing intellectual property, compromising privacy or the open web, we will use it. If it turns people into passive consumers, we will not.
We will stay true to our identity, giving users control and enabling people to use the browser in combination with whatever tools they want to use. Our focus is on building a powerful personal and private browser for you to explore the web on your own terms. We will not turn exploration into passive consumption.
We’re fighting for a better web.
vivaldi.com/blog/keep-explorin…
Vivaldi takes a stand: keep browsing human | Vivaldi Browser
Browsing should push you to explore, chase ideas, and make your own decisions. It should light up your brain. Vivaldi is taking a stand. We choose humans over…Jon von Tetzchner (Vivaldi Technologies)
fujiwood
in reply to mesa • • •Lemmy could use more OC in niche communities.
Most posts are links to other websites.
It might be good to try and post OC from Lemmy or the rest of the Fediverse to mainstream social media sites as a form of exposure.
Maybe we can get this type of idea to become more common here.
bassomitron
in reply to fujiwood • • •fujiwood
in reply to bassomitron • • •Tollana1234567
in reply to fujiwood • • •fujiwood
in reply to Tollana1234567 • • •I would say Reddit became mainstream in 2015 with over approximately 100 million users. That's when I started noticing the quality of comments start going down. That's when people stopped having discussions and started bickering more. Before that it was a lot less hostile and the topic of discussions were more fun and informative.
There was also a lot of OC at the time. You just needed to join subs in order to see it. But it was there.
Tollana1234567
in reply to fujiwood • • •thats when all the bots started, plus they were banning "QUESTIONABLE" subreddits they dint have a problem before, until the republicans started targeting social media.
the bannability also became pretty harsh around that time.
turdburglar
in reply to mesa • • •ok. so i’ve got around 30tb (and counting) of live music recordings from a small club that hosts national touring folk and americana acts. i would LOVE to have it accessible somewhere other than youtube with all the fukin ads, but i am not sure how to go about making them peer tube accessible.
the instances that i’ve looked into have pretty low caps on storage and for clear and understandable reasons. but that leaves me in the lurch. i’m not able to set up my own instance as the recordings are ongoing and that takes all my available time and resources.
anyone have some knowledge that it don’t?
long live the fediverse.
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Pseudo Nym
in reply to turdburglar • • •Rimu
in reply to turdburglar • • •You could upload the files to a S3 bucket, which would give them a url on the web. Then just make a PieFed post which links to each MP4 file.
Piefed will detect that it's a video post and embed it in the page with player controls. If you use a community just for your videos then the RSS feed of that community will effectively be a podcast.
S3 buckets are pretty cheap but 30 tb is still going to cost you. Transcode to a smaller file before upload, ideally.
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turdburglar
in reply to Rimu • • •thanks for that. i’m currently saving up for more drives to create the second copy of the 1-2-3 backup scheme. the gang of 2tb ssd’s are all i’ve got aside from the compressed-to-fuck youtube copies. that’s been creating quite a bit of anxiety for me being in charge of so many other peoples artworks.
we started in 2020 and do 6-10 90 minute shows a week, so it’s a lot to be responsible for. of course they aren’t all gems, but imo they all do deserve to be part of the larger document of this time and place.
if anyone is interested the youtube videos are made searchable on livefromnorfolkstreet.com/
click on the ARCHIVE link in the nav bar. no paywall.
i’d recommend the alejandro escovedo shows. he’s always great and i did the live lights for a few of his shows.
LIVE from Norfolk Street
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Allero
in reply to mesa • • •Having spent about 2 years on Lemmy, I made the commitment to ditch YouTube in favor of PeerTube.
At first, it may look like there's mostly garbage and then some privacy enthusiasts, but that's only because recommendations and search are not very powerful compared to other platforms.
PeerTube is home to troves upon troves of high-quality original content on various topics, you just have to look for it. And for your YouTube-exclusive needs, there are instances that mirror popular channels.
Give it a spin!
olenko
in reply to Allero • • •Allero
in reply to olenko • • •What the other commenter said, look for these instances, especially TILvids
Other than these, some specific recommendations:
DamienGramatacus
in reply to Allero • • •Allero
in reply to DamienGramatacus • • •Carl N. Yon
in reply to mesa • • •Allero
in reply to Carl N. Yon • • •Tankies are among the most active contributors not only to content, but also to the platforms themselves.
Lemmy, the very platform you're currently on, is made by one.
I'd rather see less left infighting - that will suffice.
Carl N. Yon
in reply to Allero • • •What are you talking about??? Tankies don't contribute anything they just want empty handouts
You type like a rentoid.
HumanOnEarth
in reply to mesa • • •Bunbury
in reply to HumanOnEarth • • •Sunshine (she/her)
in reply to Bunbury • • •Blaze (he/him)
in reply to Bunbury • • •- old.reddit.com/r/RedditAlterna…
- !fedibridge@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Bunbury
in reply to Blaze (he/him) • • •Blaze (he/him)
in reply to Bunbury • • •madjo
in reply to Blaze (he/him) • • •Blaze (he/him)
in reply to madjo • • •The average reddit user isn't indeed looking for an alternative, so they're unlikely to welcome any suggestion anyway
Trust me, I've tried several times
Bunbury
in reply to Blaze (he/him) • • •