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  Interesting study on usability of low-tech designs The Experiential Trade-Offs of Low-tech Systems: Evidence from a Large-Scale Citizen Experiment "Taken together, these results point to a design paradox. Low-tech clearly aims to resist the narrative of convenience and comfort [...], yet it does not simply invert its logic. In our regression analysis, effort does not impact future use intent, but pragmatic quality does impact it. This phenomenon may be explained [...] by the idea that...

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  If you are interested to know more about Autistici Inventati, I can highly recommend their book +KAOS: Ten Years of Hacking and Media Activism It was translated to English by Institute for Network Cultures and is available for free as epub: https://archive.org/details/KaosTenYearsOfHackingAndMediaActivismAutisticiInventati #AutisticiInventati

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  Due to unfortunate life choices I have become one of the main yamlwranglers for the #Peertube @coopcloud@social.coop recipe. Thanks to the help of @3wordchant@social.coop we finally managed to update the recipe to the latest version. Please update your Peertube co-opcloud installs ASAP because doing so fixes a critical security vulnerability: https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/releases/tag/v8.1.8

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  New LTM article out, this one is for the #CarryShitOlympics crowd! https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2026/04/rediscovering-the-handcart/ #mobility #transport #cargo #urbanism

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  Studying materials by the JTC21, the joint technical committee of the CEN-CENELEC tasked by the European Commission to write the standards that go in to "Trustworthy AI" and the slide decks are like: Cybersecurity Protection Ai thodd ayirs, and trereat detsectors Frest Fretwark new evvarces and allugh seorwordss What even is this image why is there a candy wrapper floating why is a tree connected half in a cloud why does the man with the what what what what what what wa

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  Action Guide: Moving Away from Big Tech "This document aims to serve as a conversation starter [...] to consider a progressive move to more ecologically and ethically conscious digital tools. It is written in good faith and directly acknowledges the complexity of technology, IT services, the internet, and how challenging it can be to review one's digital practices." via @index https://climatejusticeuniversitiesunion.org/action-guide-moving-away-from-big-tech/

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  "It is one thing to value technodiversity and designs for the pluriverse; it is quite another to actually work towards it under intense political economic pressures towards homogeneity coming from all sides. Even research grounded in critical refusal of harmful data practices, beautifully exemplified by the Feminist Manifest-No, is not fully liberated from that which it refuses. Nor should it be: it is a reaction against, a response to. Imagine what STS scholarship might be like if we...

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  Last weekend I spent a day upgrading https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com from #Debian Buster to Debian Bookworm. It took some time, but everything went very smooth. Also the @olimex A20-Lime2 holds up well going in year 8 of the project. Its such a pleasure to work with that kind of reliable and stable tech.

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  @thin_line turned a #python script I wrote to calculate page and asset sizes for https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com into a #rust executable which is both more accurate, more complete and WAY faster. Perhaps it is of interest to people here: https://codeberg.org/Pontoporeia/webweigh

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  TIL the Ukrainian trident is a distant relative to the tamga. These symbols were used by horse breeding peoples from the steps as lifestock brands and clan symbols: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamga

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  Welcome to a Multidimensional Economic Disaster "Perhaps the clearest examples are advanced memory and training chips, which are among the most important—and are by far the most expensive—components of training any AI model. Currently, most of them are produced by two companies in South Korea and one in Taiwan. These countries, in turn, get a large majority of their crude oil and much of their liquefied natural gas—which help fuel semiconductor manufacturing—from the Persian Gulf. The...

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  Only in the Netherlands. From the new left fusion party: "Our movement always stands up for common people: the nurse, the garbage collector, the teacher, the volunteer, the startup entrepreneur." https://progressiefnederland.nl/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/PRO_manifest-brochure_accessible.pdf

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  I have a new article out together with @rwg : "What is 'alternative' about 'alternative social media'?" It is published in Résaux, in their special issue on Alternative Internets edited by Stéphane Couture and @guillaume https://shs.cairn.info/journal-reseaux-2025-6?lang=en The article is available in French (translated by Pauline Côté and edited by @guillaume) and English: https://shs.cairn.info/journal-reseaux-2025-6-page-183?lang=en 1/3...

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  In light of US tech oligarchy setting its sights on Wikimedia Foundation, a historical detail I did not know before: #Wikipedia became the non-profit it is today partly as the result of a labour strike of Spanish Wikipedia editors who disagreed with the proposed inclusion of advertisements. Initially, it was not clear what revenue model Wikipedia would get, and Wales moved towards a for-profit model already a year after launch. However, rather than working for free, so Jimmy Wales could profit f...

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  "Palantir CEO Alex Karp thinks his AI technology will lessen the power of “highly educated, often female voters, who vote mostly Democrat” while increasing the power of working-class men. “This technology disrupts humanities-trained—largely Democratic—voters, and makes their economic power less. And increases the economic power of vocationally trained, working-class, often male, working-class voters,” Karp said in a CNBC interview Thursday. “And so these disruptions are gonna disrupt e...

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  It turns out the #Fediverse can bring in more web traffic than Instagram, if you aggregate those decentralised sources. A thought experiment on how long-tail effects mean federated social media will always appear irrelevant as a traffic source, even when it isn't. https://test.roelof.info/log/how-federated-systems-dissapear/

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  Two of NL's most interesting journalism outfits, @FTM_nl and @decorrespondent announce a partnership to reduce dependence on big tech. https://decorrespondent.nl/16752/de-correspondent-en-follow-the-money-gaan-samenwerken-om-onafhankelijker-te-worden-van-amerikaanse-big-tech/39316897-5c2a-0d19-0313-0979543cb3b3 They are also hiring a freelance project lead for this: https://decorrespondent.homerun.co/projectleider/nl

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  "I would wager, in fact, that the most common left-liberal position is not that generative AI is just a stochastic parrot, but a product built by powerful profit-seeking firms that’s capable of serious harms. It’s not a semantic or philosophical critique the AI industry should be worried about, in other words, but a material one. AI is viewed, correctly, as a threat to jobs, education, mental wellbeing, the arts, child safety, the information ecosystem, and as possessing little upside f...