When @benno calls for the elites to #GetInTheSea, I think this is not what he meant:

“AI Companies Look to the Ocean as a Place to Put Data Centers

“But moving servers into the ocean does not make other underlying environmental challenges such as energy consumption and carbon emissions disappear. And it creates new concerns about harm to the marine environment, as well as questions about how these data centers can be regulated – and how companies can maintain and expand them if needed. Whether underwater data centers can become sustainable alternatives to traditional data centers depends on solving these economic, technical and environmental problems.”

https://awful.systems/post/9583515

#AIBubble #ClimateWreckers

@cwebber:
“The term #GenAI points at exactly what it's worst at: generating things. If we want to talk about finding problems, it's a different story. But even leaving aside the quality issues of the growing and wavering tower, there comes the problem of lack of understanding of how it is built, constructed, and maintained.

“The worst part of all this is you can't opt out. A colleague or an open source contributor sends you a "generous contribution" that is absolutely #AISlop and certainly not understood by the person who submitted it. You're left sitting there, parsing whether or not you're going to be rude even to ask if this is #LLM generated, or to unwittingly become a user of vibecoding workflows yourself by indirectly interacting with the agent through trying to respond to the issue/PR.

“You can't escape.”

https://dustycloud.org/blog/faulty-towers-vibe-sickness-and-the-vibe-bobsled/

#FreeSoftware #ArtificialStupidity

@henry:
“#LLMs are the perfect tool for the capitalist because it doesn’t matter if it works; it threatens the workforce either way.

“Whether they mean to or not, owners of #capital have exceptional #ClassSolidarity, because they have the shared goal of reducing the cost of #labor. This, then, explains mass layoffs attributed to a technology like #LLMs, regardless of actual LLM “productivity gains”:

“If the technology causing all the layoffs does not actually replace #workers, then the workers will need to be rehired. Herein likes the rub — if large portions of the workforce have just spent 6 months or a year searching for jobs in an extremely employer-favored labor market, workers will take what work is available, and as a result wages, role quality, and benefits will nosedive.”

https://henry.codes/writing/it-doesnt-matter-if-it-works/

@pluralistic:
“Admitting machines to the "personhood" club is a *tactical* mistake, on par with the mistake we made when we admitted *corporations* to the personhood club. We should absolutely consider expanding personhood to incorporate living things, including animals and ecosystems, but at the same time, we *must* purge these dead, artificial constructs from the club.

“[…] if we thought that some activity was unique to humans, or to living beings, and we manage to get a machine to replicate that activity, we should revise our view of the activity – not our view of the machine.”

https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/05/defining-humanity/

#CorporationsAreNotPersons #DeadThingsAreNotPersons #LLMsAreNotAlive #LLMsAreNotPersons #ArtificialStupidity #LLM #HumanRights #CorporateDeathSentence

If you ignore the health, ethical, social, moral, financial, environmental, creative, cultural, privacy, quality, legal and geopolitical concerns, then this thing really has legs!!

“A world with #UniversalBasicIncome is more meritocratic than a world without one, because luck-based distribution — which is what we have now — throws away most of the talent in the room.

“A #UBI world isn’t a world that rewards laziness. It’s a world where the Einsteins and the Khns and the Kleks and the creatives you’ve never heard of yet actually get a shot at mastery that their talent deserves, instead of getting filtered out at age 19 because they couldn’t afford rent.”

https://www.scottsantens.com/the-angine-de-poitrine-argument-for-ubi/

Breyer concluded with an appeal:
“Today proves that our protest has the power to stop a totalitarian #surveillance system that has no equal in the free world. But the threat is not gone.

“The proponents of #ChatControl will use every trick in the book and will not give up easily. We will keep fighting until this proposal is defeated once and for all, and the #privacy of our digital lives is secure for everyone.

“Freedom is only as valuable as our willingness to fight for it. Now is the moment to support the #CivilRights organizations that made this victory possible, so we are prepared for the fight ahead.”

https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/citizen-protest-halts-chat-control-breyer-celebrates-major-victory-for-digital-privacy/

#SurveillanceCapitalism #StateSurveillance #PeoplePower

An Electric Arc Furnace (#EAF) in #Algoma, #Canada, begins producing steel without #CO2 emissions from #FossilFuels.

“Algoma's $880-million transition to electric arc furnace steelmaking has been the most costly building project in the city since building permits were issued.

“It will replace the blast furnace technology and coke ovens used to produce Sault steel for the past 124 years.

“The company expects its new Volta steel will reduce its #CarbonFootprint by up to 70 percent and help fuel growth of a low-carbon #economy.”

https://www.sootoday.com/local-news/algoma-steel-announces-historic-first-arc-at-new-electric-furnace-10924461

#WeHaveTheTechnology #ClimateAction #ShareGoodNewsToo

“The EU's new directive under the Energy Labelling and Ecodesign Regulation will take effect later this month, extending the overall product lifespan of smartphones and tablets.

“Starting 2025-06-20, smartphones and tablets sold in the European Union must adhere to the following design requirements: […]”

* Battery must retain 80% charge even after 800 cycles.
* Operating system upgrades for at least 5 years after last product on the market
* #RightToRepair: spare parts available within 10 working days, and for 7 years after last product on the market
* and no discrimination against any third-party repair for parts, firmware, or software needed

https://www.androidpolice.com/eu-new-rules-will-shake-up-android-update-policies/

#EUPol #MuscularRegulation #ShareGoodNewsToo

“#NSW Environment Minister Penny Sharpe said the department would now conduct further surveys on the [Leadbeater's Possum] population.

“"We are really hopeful that this means this possum that we thought was previously extinct in NSW, is actually making a recovery. […] We know there are many #ThreatenedSpecies, so to find one in New South Wales that we thought was extinct gives great hope to all our environmental programs that animals can return if we look after their habitat," she said.”

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06-01/endangered-leadbeaters-possum-found-in-kosciuszko-national-park/105363668

#Australia #conservation #ShareGoodNewsToo

Journalist #AntoinetteLattouf has won her case against online harasser Michael Dean.

“Dean pleaded guilty and, on Wednesday, Magistrate Georgina Darcy convicted him on the charge of using service to menace/harass/offend.

“He is required to stay on good behaviour for 12 months, as well as to provide security of $200 as part of being placed on the Commonwealth Recognisance order. If he complies with these terms, he will be released without sentence.”

“Lattouf said she feared that she would simply be told to “just log off” or that the abuse just “comes with the territory of a public job”.

““But my fear wasn’t minimised. I was supported,” she said.

““Online violence is real. It leaves scars. And women bear the brunt of it”.

“Women deserve to be safe. Online. Offline. Everywhere. And when they’re not, they deserve the full force of the law behind them,” Lattouf wrote.”

https://womensagenda.com.au/latest/journalist-antoinette-lattouf-wins-court-case-over-racist-online-abuse-from-61yo-man/

#ShareGoodNewsToo #Australia #NoRoomForRacists

“The discovery uses tiny micro batteries to break down the lithium, nickel, cobalt and manganese from a battery, before using an amino acid to extract the metals.

“The use of glycine as the amino acid avoids using harsh chemicals for the recycling process, [and avoids] the creation of toxic byproducts.

“The newly developed system is able to recover 99.99 per cent of the lithium, 96.8 per cent of the nickel, 92.35 per cent of the cobalt and 90.59 per cent of the manganese from old batteries in just 15 minutes.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/battery-recycle-lithium-ion-environment-b2713723.html

#ShareGoodNewsToo #GreenEnergy #ReduceRepairReuseRecycle #Recycling

This week @pluralistic wrote this article, in response to the murder of #BrianThompson and the clear similarity of this situation to his _Radicalized_ short story (2019).

Years ago, Doctorow was wondering at the fact angry gunmen, frequently made financially desperate because of denial-of-care industries like #ForProfitHealthInsurance, somehow don't turn that rage against the industry profiting from their suffering:

“This is an industry that is practically *designed* to fill the people who interact with it with uncontrollable rage. I mean, if you're watching your wife or your kid die before your eyes because some millionaire CEO decided to aim for a $10 billion stock buyback this year instead of his customary $9 billion target, wouldn't you feel that kind of murderous rage?”

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/09/radicalized/#deny-defend-depose

The violent response to #BrianThompson, a CEO who profits obscenely from the torment and suffering of millions of customers.

It didn't need to happen. Those CEOs have had plenty of warning that oppressed people will be pushed only so far before seeking a violent response.

The title short story from collection _Radicalized_, by @pluralistic, details how people are corralled by the physical suffering of family members, exploited by an insurance industry deliberately designed to extract wealth while denying health care, and finally resort to violent terrorism in the absence of any other effective option.

CEOs have had this, and for decades many other, warnings that they must stop the ghoulish practice of denying health care to those who need it, while extracting wealth. A reckoning is coming.

https://craphound.com/radicalized/

#EndWealthCare #HealthCareIsAHumanRight #PolicyFailure #Radicalized

“The opening of Moderna’s manufacturing facility in Victoria makes #Australia one of very few countries in the world, and the only country in the Southern Hemisphere, with an end-to-end mRNA manufacturing capability.

“The facility will have the capacity to produce up to 100 million vaccine doses each year for respiratory diseases including influenza, Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), and #Covid19.”

https://www.health.gov.au/ministers/the-hon-mark-butler-mp/media/world-leading-moderna-vaccine-facility-opens-in-victoria

#ShareGoodNewsToo #Manufacturing #Resilience

@davidgerard among others, have long been warning that the #GenAI giants are running out of content to consume for “training”, and they're getting desperate for more.

No surprise at all: #SamAltman, being the kind of person who's so contemptuous of human #culture they think an #LLM can do it, proposes the robots will just generate more training data themselves! What could go wrong?

“Prof. Sammut says generative AI systems have big limitations because chatbots lack critical thinking.

““These systems are based on doing pattern matching, they are very good at that, but they can’t do any sort of logical sequential reasoning.”

“A chatbot can only tell you 1+1=2 because someone told it so, not because it learned how to do arithmetic.”

https://newshub.medianet.com.au/2024/11/a-synthetic-solution-for-ai-as-chatbots-run-out-of-road/78949/

#ArtificialStupidity #HabsburgAI #Ouroboros

> The siege of #Gaza is part of Israel’s broader system of what even mainstream international observers now liken to apartheid. Through its military occupation of the #Palestine #WestBank, the Israeli government and military supports establishing illegal, Jewish-only settlements, evicting Palestinians, bulldozing homes, and carrying out pogroms. Israel pushes Palestinians into ghettos and builds infrastructure for exclusive use by Jewish people.

> “Standing with #Israel” as it massacres Palestinians is unconscionable. We should instead stand with humanity, Israeli and Palestinian alike, in seeking to stop the violence.

https://jacobin.com/2023/10/gaza-israel-apartheid-war-crimes-us-solidarity-war/

@KathyReid
https://aus.social/@KathyReid/110856572534085835

> OMG EVERYTHING [in the Windows OS] IS GEARED TOWARD COLLECTING AND TRACKING YOUR DATA.
> The OS wants to track my browsing, my geo-location, my telemetry data. Everything.

It infuriates me that MS Windows *probably for this very reason*, is beloved by "enterprise" organisations, that want to impose detailed surveillance over all workers.

In the span of one job (since last year) MS Windows has blithely expanded this to *also* say "oh and also we're feeding everything you do on this machine into our AI engine, good thing we never had to ask permission for that hahaha"

No option at all for the user to reject this and still do their job. When do we make that illegal?