@Techmeme@techhub.social2026-01-26 06:30:41
Entropy, a decentralized crypto custodian that raised a $25M seed led by a16z in June 2022, is shutting down after "several pivots, and two rounds of layoffs" (Zack Abrams/The Block)
https://www.theblock.co/post/386942/entro…
@tiotasram@kolektiva.social2025-11-27 18:02:38
Just finished round 1 of #Thanksgiving cooking.
I have extremely mixed feelings these days about a holiday founded on genocide (seriously, official Thanksgiving #1 was "hooray we killed these natives, let's celebrate" which is deeply ironic/horrific given that the whitewashed origin story also did happen years earlier). But I'm a big fan of cooking and feasting, so that's what I focus on.
I'm vegetarian so no turkey.
I made "chiraji sushi" in my heavily bastardized personal style, as well as vegetarian stuffing. Both were pretty successful, although I truly regret forgetting to put nuts in the stuffing. I ended up using "smoky chipotle" flavor "better than bouillon" for the stuffing soup base, which pairs surprisingly well with the chopped persimmons. I tried doing microwave -> pan fry -> bake for the potatoes and carrots, and while they turned out good, they weren't as amazing as I'd hoped for.
The sushi (with stir-fried carrots, onions, mushrooms, and peas, plus fried tofu chunks and fresh cucumber and canned corn) turned out excellent.
Now I just need to decide what to have thirds of.
@cdarwin@c.im2025-12-25 18:21:56
Society should learn to celebrate and capitalise on its
“massive cohort of healthy, active, older, creative adults”,
a leading population expert has said.
While pundits and pressure groups have raised concerns over falling fertility rates, highlighting the challenges for the economy and healthcare,
others are more upbeat, arguing the rise of the “silver economy” brings new opportunities for growth.
Prof Sarah Harper, director of the Oxford Institute of Populatio…
@kubikpixel@chaos.social2026-01-23 15:05:14
Fediverse Punk Month — We can grow something better!
We invest too much of our culture in centralized, for-profit, corporate social media platforms. These platforms enrich billionaires, expand surveillance, and fund the cult of capitalist war, all while trapping us with addictive algorithms that feed us mindless content. […]
— by @…<…
@pre@boing.world2026-02-26 20:29:42
The federal government’s revenue base is essentially a tax on human time. People work, firms pay them, the government takes a cut. Individual income and payroll taxes are the spine of receipts in normal years.
Indeed. Collapse in the labour economy causes a financial state collapse when the state is funded by a tax on labour.
Productivity is surging, but the gains are flowing to capital and compute, not labor.
Which would ideally mean you tax compute and capital but how's that work when compute and capital own the government already?
The output is still there. But it’s no longer routing through households on the way back to firms, which means it’s no longer routing through the IRS either.
@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
@tiotasram@kolektiva.social2025-12-23 14:48:43
Making this a subtoot so I don't come across as smug or condescending...
My decision to stop using github when they started providing services to ICE back in ~2016 felt awkward at times but has been feeling really good in hindsight right now.
I see a bunch of people now saying "why boycott X company over some "minor" transgression or political capitulation (or over a "neutral" stance on LLM code). The answer is: it shows what their values are, which predicts their future behavior, especially under the tilted playing field of capitalism. I'm by no means perfect at this and I don't think shouting at people to boycott is a good idea for several reasons. People should boycott what they want to, for their own reasons. But I am posting this to try to help others be aware of the upsides of taking action when confronted with "subtle" evidence of corporate unvalues.
@hex@kolektiva.social2026-02-20 20:34:38
Is building an LLM inherently problematic? Not necessarily, but there's no good way to do it under capitalism. Is using an local LLM funding these evil companies? No. It's not.
Spelling and grammar checking is one of the few uses of LLMs that is not based on fundamentally failing to understand what an LLM actually is. A statistical model is gonna be *really good* at flagging things that are probably typos (low probability areas). There will be false positives, which is fine if you're actually paying attention...
@Mediagazer@mstdn.social2026-02-13 16:51:01
@cdarwin@c.im2026-02-11 06:11:38
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are accusing the Justice Department of
covering up the names of co-conspirators of the deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein
as fallout from the Epstein files grows across the globe.
Millions of pages remain unreleased.
As many prominent U.S. figures evade accountability following mentions in the Epstein files,
a number of European figures have resigned for their relationships with Epstein.
“The most extraordinary and worrying …
