1% of all electricity goes to one data centre in NL https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2026/07/13/datacenter-microsoft-gebruikt-1-procent-van-alle-nederlandse-stroom-google-wil-geen-inzage-geven-in-verbruik-a4932273
The real news here is that Microsoft have complied with the law and actually published the figures. All the other major players are still refusing... so for all the rest we still don't know how much water and electricity they use.
Goodbye Google Translate/Lens.
https://f-droid.org/packages/dev.davidv.translator/
Direct camera overlay image translation, and the rest. Offline,. Open Source.
Firefox translation models, Wiktionary, PaddleOCR. Just share an image, or alink, or a document with it. Or open the camera or doc in it directly.
If you made it up they'd say it was unbelieveable:
The former director of Milieudefensie (Friends of the Earth NL) who got a job at Tata Steel (yep, really) has been sacked after one day. For, nope, not that, for... not disclosing that he was the leader of an extreme right group in South Africa when a student.
https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2026/06/02/donald-pols-vertrekt-bij-tata-steel-a4929182
#cablesofresistance immediate thoughts:
So many people came, from so far, and from such different groups. Highlighting that the excessive power of Big Tech has become locus.
Issues about climate, environment, warfare, migration, repression, workers rights, sexism, racism, imperialism all intersect. The experiences, and knowledge, shared in sessions could be overwhelming.
The problems with climate and environment that looked like they might at least be alleviated have in the last years instead become critical. Poorer communities as ever on the frontline.
Recent military, immigration and police actions have revealed use of big data and AI to fatal consequences.
Workers, particularly the more vulnerable, have had to do quite shocking work. While others have their livelihoods made more precarious.
I longed for more sessions, and diversity of ideas, for the future. We know throughout history power, and the technologies use by it, have been challenged.
The focus of the problem is clear: Big Tech. Now for a diversity of tactics, and movements, working together, alongside and apart each other, to contest, prefigure, avoid, negotiate and resist.
No, it is not a technical problem.
RE: https://indieweb.social/@alineblankertz/116302955566128469
The film about CLODO mentioned in the thread (Machines in Flames) is worth watching for the insight into the group and the times they were operating in; but do so with the right mindset, it 's really slow and meditative.
Talarico said Republicans “ran against cancel culture, and now they’re trying to control what we watch, what we say, what we read. And this is the most dangerous kind of cancel culture, the kind that comes from the top.”
Cables of Resistance
Movements Conference against Big Tech
Berlin, Germany | April 10-12, 2026
This is a conference for anyone involved in organising against big tech - activists, students, researchers, hackers, artists, or if you are just generally interested. The programme will not require previous knowledge. There will be plenty of opportunity to connect and combine struggles and ideas.
I do believe the NL State Prosecutor just confirmed that confrontational calls to political action are part of punk.
'oproepen tot activisme en politieke betrokkenheid, die passen binnen de expressieve en confronterende stijl van het punkgenre'.
It's part of their statement why they are not prosecuting any of the complaints about a Bob Vylan gig in Amsterdam.
https://www.at5.nl/artikelen/235352/uitspraken-bob-vylan-in-paradiso-niet-strafbaar-alle-35-aangiften-door-om-geseponeerd
We truly have given up on caring about energy consumption haven't we:
"If you consider that the total compute capacity in the UK is estimated to be around 1.8 gigawatts, with I’ve read ambitions to reach six gigawatts by 2030. Well, that is about the same as one single data centre being built by my former employer Meta in Louisiana."
- Nick Clegg
Yep one data centre consuming more electricity than the whole of London. And this is a good thing. Which we need to be chasing, "... these really are crumbs from the Silicon Valley table,"
What happened to those people were talking about how dark mode on websites would save some fraction of electricity only a couple of years ago?
So Google's Notebook LM fed the manifestos of the PVV and VVD for the upcoming Dutch General Election gets the two mixed up. It's not very clear how that's going to help you 'Understand Anything'.