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  Apple won't say tata to Tata over this, but it is for sure a Big Deal. The info revealed will aid their competitors. And their suppliers in negotiating better deals. For those of us who care about society, and good computer design, it's an open question what kind of political economy might yield the benefits of integrated hardware & software design, without handing too much power to one company. Centralized power, even under vaguely benevelont oligarchs, is precarious. h...

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  The best time to end the genocide would have been decades ago. The second-best time would be now, today. Every day, Israel has the opportunity to change course. Every day, the US, the Arab oligarchies, and Iran, could each/all shift gears take up in earnest opportunities they are missing to move in more fruitful directions. There are civil actors working hard for this, I'll try to post about them more. https://www.nbcnews.com/world/gaza/shooting-gaza-un-report-israel-targeting-children-...

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  The US federal government has wasted a ton of money trying to violate our first amendment rights here in Eugene, which I'm sure is multiplied across many other parts of the country. Here, private actors managed to fight back and win, no thanks to our city government which rolled over for it. Much thanks to @CLDC for taking this on, and winning! https://solidaritynews.org/2026/07/01/government-must-start-taking-down-federal-building-fence-tonight-judges-say/ #Eugene

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  RE: https://mastodon.world/@OpenSexism/116848074881856737 Even things that are quite terrible, such as AI, can be ruined even further by patriarchy. (One has to wonder as well if the dominant AIs, all trained with vast quantites of patriarchal content, simply do a worse job when working on a woman's resume?)

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  RE: https://universeodon.com/@Edmonds_Scanner/116852782605582876 #mosstodon #monsterdon #crossover #halloween #metamorphosis #audio #community

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  The official local Pride march was canceled by its organizers, but an independent march got organized almost immediately. The community had been through a lot with the police this year and did not want to work as closely with them as they had in recent years. One of several issues: Bodycam footage outing the deeply misogynistic & racist attitudes of a seven-year veteran. Many calls for Chief Skinner to resign, but the city does not seem to be listening. https://lookouteugene-springfield.com...

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  The final season of Strange New Worlds is apparently going to do a puppet episode. The series has had fun with episode idea bingo, drawing on Star Trek history and TV in general. They did the musical, the undercover-as-another species bit (not written well), the crossover, the Federation courtroom. Hopefully they pull off the puppets, Angel's was fun. I continue to enjoy most of the SNW actors, and sounds like this will be the finale of the era? But the reasons to care have largely eva...

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  Last night DHS/ICE & Eugene's police came out in big numbers downtown while workers set up to build a fence around ICE's federal building. At least 2 workers quit. They had been contracted without being told they'd be building a fence to protect ICE. Good-hearted locals even got one who needed it a place to crash and more. Cops' eagerness to escalate with critics on the scene increased tensions, & lead to multiple detentions and at least one arre...

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  Why Haven't We Seen a Photograph of the Whole Earth Yet? 'It was so enjoyable, conducting street-clown seminars on space and civilization, that I kept returning to Cal. Then I branched out to Stanford. And then to Columbia, Harvard, MIT. “Who the hell’s that?” asked an MIT dean, watching hordes of his students buying my buttons. “That’s my brother,” said my brother Pete, an MIT instructor.' https://longnow.org/ideas/why-havent-we-seen-a-photograph-of-the-whole-earth-...

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  I see you, doing things to make life more wonderful for yourself &/or other people. Thanks for doing that. #LifeReminder

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  The acceleration of more and more bots hitting websites more and more often has made life miserable for sysadmins everywhere, and boosted the businesses who offer defenses against such exploitation of people's digital goodwill. Big companies will ultimately use this as an excuse to stop offering public access to anything outside of their app (or maybe signed-in web page), if it is allowed to continue. A sort of Internet Kessler syndrome, if you will. #AI #Internet #web

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  @tante One thing I'd love to hear more about from you, and @pluralistic, @simon and others is which of these models are doing the best, most interesting things to mitigate harms? Some are being trained with thought about & limits on the inputs, and the public interest in mind in general. To at least some degree. (e.g., Apertus) Who's reviewing, comparing models with that lens? If someone understands most companies are part of the problem and asks for alternatives, what do you offer...

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  May Day has been a big deal elsewhere. This May 1 (Friday), for a growing number us in the United States of America, normal day-to-day business stops and we come together to remember a tragedy — the Haymarket Massacre. We celebrate and make visible the power of the labor movement, all of the people's movements the massacre helped inspire. Here are a few of the events happening on May Day in cities & towns around Oregon: https://www.daywithoutanimmigrantor.com/events #MayDay #ev...