@Techmeme@techhub.social2026-06-21 06:01:27
Investigation: Polymarket is paying creators to make deceptive videos about winning bets, targeting users in the US, where its primary crypto platform is banned (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/business/media/polymar…
@gwire@mastodon.social2026-04-21 10:09:45
I remember, many years ago, people complaining that it's unfair for people in the UK to be prosecuted for corruption and bribery when their actions were strictly in relation to countries where corruption is endemic and, arguably, necessary for conducting business.
@tiotasram@kolektiva.social2026-07-04 22:34:25
Kinda a subtoot, but I'm begging people to stop using the "civilization/barbarism" dichotomy, even if you're somehow applying it "in reverse."
From day 1, the notion of "civilized" nations contrasted against "barbarians" was propaganda for empire, and it still is.
When you observe that those who called themselves "civilized" were more violent and destructive than those they called "barbarians", or that the standard of living for their poor was much worse, or whatever other glimpse through the lies you want to share, if you do that by calling empires "barbarians" or their victims "civilized" you're demonstrating that you haven't yet moved beyond the idea of that distinction: that some folks are "civilized" and this superior to others in light of their "civility". But it's not civility that makes a society better; it's justice, happiness, peace, etc., and civility is often the enemy of those things, both in the "access to luxuries (without regard to their cost)" and the "avoiding strenuous disagreement (and thus shushing those attempting to hold power to account)" senses. The things that make empires bad are also easy to denounce: violence, oppression, corruption, etc.
@deabigt@universeodon.com2026-05-08 23:31:39
Makes building them in Texas look that much better, right?
Amazon’s cloud services were largely back online on Friday after overheating at one of its data centers triggered an outage that impacted companies including cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/amazon-cloud-unit-says-data-center-overheating-north-virginia-disrupts-services-2026-05-08/
@cdarwin@c.im2026-05-27 03:17:01
With Trump’s backing
scandal-plagued Ken Paxton
has won over John Cornyn
in the Texas GOP primary for senator
– but he might lose in November against James Talarico,
a Democrat with a groundswell of popularity
Paxton comes with significant political baggage,
National Republicans worry they will have to spend significantly more with him as the nominee.
Paxton was impeached in 2023 after being accused of corruption,
and reported to the FBI…
@Techmeme@techhub.social2026-06-30 12:05:46
An Indonesian court sentences Gojek co-founder and ex-education minister Nadiem Makarim to 10 years in prison for power abuses over a Chromebook contract (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/30/business/indonesia-trial-nadiem-makarim.html
@playinprogress@assemblag.es2026-04-29 15:08:07
@mgorny@social.treehouse.systems2026-04-23 10:21:17
#Gentoo is still one of the bright outposts in #FLOSS where human work is valued and #LLM contributions are banned. However, sometimes I feel that this matters very little.
After all, Gentoo is a distribution. While it has its own value, it cannot exist without all the software it is shipping. It makes no sense in isolation.
And let's be honest, I don't think you can avoid slop today. We are trying our best to sieve out the worst: the copywashing chardet, the vibecoded NIH Perl crypto packages… but it's just that.
As someone who bumps Python packages, let me tell you this: LLMs are omnipresent. I notice Claude in commit logs, I notice the blasphemy of agent instructions all over the place… and there's probably much more than I don't notice. With many core components giving in, you can't avoid it without literally freezing on old, vulnerable versions, or spending hours looking for alternatives or creating them.
FLOSS is dead. People don't care. They don't have conscience. All they care about is the sick idea of "productivity", i.e. generating more slop.
The few of us who do care can do very little. We will continue doing our best until they kill us (as they're literally slowly killing the whole humankind). But that's it. Maybe it will pass once the bubble pops, maybe it won't. Either way, the damage is beyond repair. We will never be able to trust one another like we did. We will never again be a community building a better world.
It's just like everything nowadays. It's hard to find a good washing machine (one that will actually be repairable), good shoes (that won't fall apart shortly after the warranty expires), good food. You need lots of money, and even then you have to sieve through all the scammers who just sell the same shit with higher profit margin. #OpenSource is just another branch of business where people are trying to "sell" you shit, and don't care anymore if it explodes in your face. They don't even care if they're actually making a profit.
#AI #NoAI #NoLLM #enshittification #AntiCapitalism