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‘Libbing out’ is the latest irony-fueled coping mechanism

“Libbing out" is an ironic embrace of mainstream Democratic politics, often by disillusioned young progressives. It is the process of abandoning all cynicism and wholeheartedly accepting the elitist, corporate-owned, deeply out of touch Democratic party, even if only for a moment.

Today, we are all Rachel Maddow.

The Misery Index of Little Treats:

The more miserable the situation gets out there, the more expensive our little treats become in here.

Inside the U.S. Government-Bought Tool That Can Track Phones at Abortion Clinics:

The demonstration, performed by a group of privacy advocates that gained access to the tool and leaked videos of it to 404 Media and other journalists, shows in the starkest terms yet how Locate X and other tools based on smartphone location data sold to various U.S. government law enforcement agencies, including state entities, could be used to monitor abortion clinic patients.

The Very Real Scenario Where Trump Loses and Takes Power Anyway - POLITICO:

He will try to ensure Harris is denied 270 votes in the Electoral College, sending the election to the House, where Republicans are likely to have the numbers to choose Trump as the next president.

“Three-year-old young lady.“ is diabolical.

x.com/AlanRMacL…

Convinced that the average editor has no idea what the reader experience is like on their own websites.

I’m in the middle of an engaging article—swatting away pop-ups, and adjusting for the constant skipping—and the site just reloads, tossing me to the top of the page again.

The Internet Archive and its 916 billion saved webpages are back online - Ars Technica:

Last week, hackers defaced the Internet Archive website with a message that said, “Have you ever felt like the Internet Archive runs on sticks and is constantly on the verge of suffering a catastrophic security breach? It just happened. See 31 million of you on HIBP!”

Shocking revelations about teens in redacted TikTok documents : NPR:

Officials at TikTok discovered that there was “a high” number of underage streamers receiving a “gift” or “coin” in exchange for stripping — real money converted into a digital currency often in the form of a plush toy or a flower.

(8) Updates LIVE: Deadly fire rips through tents after Israeli attack on Gaza hospital:

Footage from the scene shows a raging fire tearing through tents, with the bodies of other victims being engulfed by the flames.

Heard about this from a TikTok mutual. When I went to search the source, I had to check dates because there were multiple hospital bombing stories.

TikTok knows its app is harming kids, new internal documents show : NPR

TikTok determined the precise amount of viewing it takes for someone to form a habit: 260 videos. After that, according to state investigators, a user “is likely to become addicted to the platform.”

This whole article is damning.

Tesla’s Beer-Serving Optimus Robot Was Controlled By A Human The Whole Time:

Robert Scoble, an AI enthusiast in attendance at the event, posted a video to Twitter of Optimus pouring drinks and waving to attendees. A second video, in which Scoble has a conversation with the bot’s operator and directly addresses the question of whether Optimus did anything autonomously at the party. The answer appears to be a resounding no.

The Project 2025 Refugee Who Slid Into Your Socials | The New Republic:

Carmack’s arrival at Meta also coincides with the company’s restrictions on “political content” on Instagram and Threads instituted earlier this year, which limit the reach of accounts that post about politics and social issues.

Project 2025 bad. Meta guiding the social web, good? Okay.

Kamala Harris Keeps Cozying Up to Big Business | The New Republic:

Two finance executives who spoke to the Times said that Harris told them that they expect her to make appointments to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission who weren’t as tough as the agencies’ current respective heads, Gary Gensler and Lina Khan.

This is fucked. Khan is the only one holding big corporations accountable.

Last Week in Fediverse – ep 86 – The Fediverse Report:

A 15 minute delay is a long time in microblogging, and significantly impacts things like breaking news, and live-posting sports events. It also meaningfully impacts the ability to have a back-and-forth conversation with people in a comment section.

The fact that this was first reported by #TechCrunch but you wouldn’t know it because they burried the lede under rosy coverage.

We’re at War With Iran - Ken Klippenstein:

One can stand on the parapet with binoculars searching for Iranian tanks to come rolling across the desert to signal what everyone is insisting is something more to come. But reality should have set in today. Only the American people seem unaware because of secrecy and because of the lockstep narrative of the mainstream media, which is not to accept this fundamental reality. 

Threads users can now see who follows them from other fediverse servers | TechCrunch:

Mosseri noted that if you have connected your account to the fediverse, your Threads posts will be shared to the fediverse 15 minutes later, after the edit window is closed. 

For breaking news, you leave Mastodon and head to Threads or be five fifteen minutes behind. #Threads

Introducing User Magazine - by Taylor Lorenz - User Mag:

User Mag is founded on the belief that the real story of technology lies with its users. Instead of focusing on corporate earnings and boardroom conflicts, User Mag will cover how people are actually using technology. 

I like Taylor Lorenz. I hope this works out.

Has Social Media Fuelled a Teen-Suicide Crisis? | The New Yorker:

Haugen, who also released thousands of the company’s internal documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission and to the Wall Street Journal, claimed that the company knew about the harmful effects of social media on mental health but consistently chose “profit over safety.”

Mark Zuckerberg: “Ship the app” - Internal Tech Emails:

If Instagram continues to kick ass on mobile or if Google buys them, then over the next few years they could easily add pieces of their service that copy what we’re doing now, and if they have a growing number of people’s photos then that’s a real issue for us.

Computational Power and AI - AI Now Institute:

“It enables dominant firms to extract rents from consumers and small businesses dependent on their services, and creates systemic harms when systems fail or malfunction due to the creation of single points of failure. Most concerningly, it expands the economic and political power of the firms that have access to compute, cementing the control of firms that already dominate the tech industry.”

Easily one of the most accessible, straightforward assessments I’ve read of Artificial Intelligence and the companies that harness the computational power it requires.

Hyperscalers tying up the world in submarine cables • The Register:

Over the past decade, the amount of international subsea capacity used by the four hyperscalers increased from 10 percent to 71 percent, causing the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) to conclude that their influence “hasn’t yet been fully recognized or seriously considered.”

I like to call these four companies GAMM (Google Amazon Microsoft Meta)

The Bitter Lesson:

We want AI agents that can discover like we can, not which contain what we have discovered. Building in our discoveries only makes it harder to see how the discovering process can be done.

The Californian Ideology (1995):

Individual freedom is no longer to be achieved by rebelling against the system, but through submission to the natural laws of technological progress and the free market.

My oh my, how nothing has changed.

Drama at OpenWeb, as a new CEO is announced – and the founding CEO says he’s staying | TechCrunch:

OpenWeb’s chairman, Tim Harvey, sent an email to employees, saying he’s becoming CEO and thanking longtime CEO Nadav Shoval for his “incredible passion.” Soon after, Shoval shared his own message to employees, claiming the “board has falsely stated that I am stepping out of my role as CEO . . .that is not true and not my intent.” Shoval further accused the board of breaching his contract.

Openweb’s mission is to end online toxicity.

Israeli podcasters are laughing about genocide.:

If you gave me a button to just erase Gaza, every single living being in Gaza would no longer be living tomorrow. I would press it in a second.