@Techmeme@techhub.social2025-12-22 11:30:37
Sequoia, a16z, and other VC firms invested $1.2B into police and public safety tech startups over the past year, following the success of Palantir and others (Abram Brown/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/a
@cdarwin@c.im2025-10-22 14:55:28
Trump Dismisses Another Inspector General,
Fueling Oversight Concerns
With the firing of Parisa Salehi,
the Export-Import Bank’s inspector general,
the president has sidelined around two dozen of the watchdogs who seek out fraud and mismanagement in federal agencies.
Even among Republicans on Capitol Hill, Ms. Salehi’s firing is prompting some backlash.
Senator Charles E. Grassley,
Republican of Iowa, raised concerns that the termination was illegal, …
@pre@boing.world2025-11-22 10:39:50
Despite much opinion to the contrary, the government money we use is crappy.
I'm at bitfest in Manchester to find out if Bitcoin could be a better money.
It could hardly be worse.
The mood is still good, people are joking about recent devaluation rather than crying. Those who aren't all in are trying to buy more at the discount.
After an introduction by Mad Bitcoins, Joe Bryan explains the problem with government money.
He imagines an island on which two types of money are tried, with a dividing wall between them.
When economic problems hit, government can just print more money on the fiat side. Everyone now using money which is worth less. Distorting prices, inflating asset prices, making the rich (who hold assets) richer and the poor (who have to pay inflated prices) poorer. Driving wealth inequality.
On the hard money side, government must tax properly. Take in more from the rich rather than inflating to take it from the poor. Reducing wealth inequality.
On the government money side, the wealthy monitize houses, stocks, resources. Saving in money is impossible, its inflated away. So they save in assets and hording resources. Capital is misallocated. The youth can't afford houses. Poverty traps are caused. The only way out is printing more for benefits. Making it all worse. More economic crises, more printing. More government debt.
Eventually, the wall is broken. Government money people can save in the hard money instead. It reduces the value of government money further. More printing. More inflation.
Eventually, war. Funded by printed money.
The dollar is the best of a bad bunch all other government money is falling in value even faster.
I wonder, is bitcoin really this better money though? It's limited, hard, and can't be printed without energy investment.
I'm still unsure that fixing money fixes the world.
--
Note: "crypto" is mostly more like government money than bitcoin. It can be printed indefinitely by it's makers, does not cost it's makers to print. Crypto is usually just a scam people to get more bitcoin. Bitcoin is not crypto.
#bitfest #bitcoin
@hex@kolektiva.social2025-11-21 10:08:16
It's Interesting today that the popularization of @…'s concept of "enshittification" is leading us to really think hard about how various methods of vendor lock-in enable corporations to abuse users. We see how first there's lock-in then quickly abuse follows, and recognize that the only way out of this trap is to build systems where users can leave at will.
But it's interesting that in this time of rising fascism no one is making the connection to fascism, as both increased lock in and enshittification of government. And no one is making the connection between the need to make systems optional to avoid enshittification, and libertarian socialist arguments against the systemic lock-in (and following abuse) of capitalism and the state.
@hex@kolektiva.social2025-12-18 19:13:23
The #IWW #GDC as an antifascist organization was always kind of a hack. It was a beautiful hack and it worked well for what it did.
In 2016, as Trump was rising, I found info from the Twin Cities GDC. They were super organized, building an amazing community defense organization. When we (Seattle) went to set up our chapter, following their lead, they were extremely supportive. When I got shot, Twin Cities folks were at my house keeping my partner safe. They literally flew people out to support us. They very much remain in my mind when I think about what mutual aid looks like.
Unionism is an important strategy of a larger fight. But it's important to realize that it's not the other way around. The GDC was built to defend the union, because there wasn't something larger to do that work. It filled a gap.
When we organized against Trump, we tried to make the GDC the greater thing. We tried to make the GDC into the vehicle for social revolution against the fascist threat... And it sort of worked. We were able to do a lot.
But that was never what it was built to do. It was always built as an appendage of the IWW. This contains its own problem. If Unionism is the revolutionary movement, then it becomes impossible to build a truly revolutionary society. Unionism centers "workers" which implicitly decenters those who can't work in the traditional sense (the young, the elderly, those physically or mentally able to work). It also decenters care labor that hasn't yet been widely commodified. Sure, there are all types of hacks to patch the holes, but the fundamental construction starts from the wrong assumptions.
It felt, for a while, like things could go another way. Like that our ability to bring members in could shift things a bit, maybe set the GDC on more equal footing with the core focus of the IWW. But that was always an illusion, far less important to think about than the crushing terror of the regime we were fighting.
Now, I will absolutely trash talk the IWW on occasion but in the end I do think they're doing good and important work. Any criticism I have should be taken with a grain of salt... And I know I do have a lot of salt. Again, Unionism is an important strategy. It's useful both in improving immediate material conditions and as part of the most powerful weapon we have against the capitalist system: the general strike. It's important, I can't say that enough. But it's not sufficient.
I've been thinking about this a bit recently, and I wonder if there are any other GDC organizers or former organizers who might be feeling the same. Feel free to DM me. I'd like to get some more perspectives and see if my understanding from several years ago deviates significantly from what other folks are feeling right now.
I'd also like to bounce some ideas around that come from my own organizing experience.
@fgraver@hcommons.social2025-10-17 08:45:27
Great thread. https://mstdn.social/@Remittancegirl/115388249276371636
@raiders@darktundra.xyz2025-11-08 05:52:35
Colin Cowherd Makes Feelings Clear on Raiders’ Geno Smith https://heavy.com/sports/nfl/las-vegas-raiders/colin-cowherd-feelings-clear-geno-smith/?adt_ei=[email]
@stefan@gardenstate.social2025-10-03 13:02:28
@Techmeme@techhub.social2025-09-30 13:10:51
Chipmaker Cerebras Systems raised a $1.1B Series G from Fidelity, Trump Jr.'s 1789 Capital, and others at an $8.1B post-money valuation ahead of its planned IPO (Rebecca Szkutak/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/30/a-year-…
@cdarwin@c.im2025-12-09 02:51:12
A leaked memo by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi
directs the Justice Department and FBI to ❌compile a list of groups that may be labeled
“domestic terrorism” organizations
- based on political views related to immigration, gender and U.S. policy.
The memo was obtained by independent investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein,
who joins us to discuss how it expands on Donald Trump’s "NSPM-7 directive" following the assassination of Charlie Kirk,
--…
