Tootfinder

"Arduino wasn’t valuable because it was just a microcontroller company. It was valuable because it was a commons. And you can’t apply enterprise legal frameworks to a commons without destroying it"
You also can't buy a #commons, at least without destroying it as a commons. The key point about a commons is that it isn't property.

Did Qualcomm kill Arduino for good? | Molecularist
The maker community worried Qualcomm would kill the Arduino ethos. New T&Cs confirm the community's worst fears. Here's what's at stake, what Qualcomm got wrong, and what might still be salvaged.

Looking at "THE PARCHED EARTH OF COOPERATION: HOW
TO SOLVE THE TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS IN
INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL
GOVERNANCE", thinking:
Too bad we have no world governance really, so regulation does not work out. The second approach, privatization, actually *caused* a lot of tragedy-of-the-commons issues; see wastewater, climate change, labor exploitation, inflation, shortages, wealth distribution and all the corresponding collateral damage (non-exhausti…

Eko_Fisk & Gears in the Rain – Hang In There, It Gets Worse
https://www.zenapolae.com/zen321
https://www.

Because it's populated by cheshire cats.
https://qoto.org/@bibliolater/115600269765129742

Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋 (@bibliolater@qoto.org)
Attached: 1 image 🇳🇿 **Why does New Zealand keep disappearing from world maps?** _Cooper-Jones points out that even a New Zealand government 404 error page once displayed a world map missing the country entirely, with a cheeky message: "We’re sorry, something’s missing…"_ 🔗 https://www.rnz.co.nz/life/books/why-does-new-zealand-keep-disappearing-from-world-maps. #NewZealand #NZ #Maps #Cartography #Image attribution: See page for author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Common…

The world's longest-running lab experiment Is almost 100 years old https://www.sciencealert.com/the-worlds-longest-running-lab-experiment-is-almost-100-years-old

The fracturing of the Dutch far-right, after Wilder's reminded everyone that bigots are bad at compromise, is definitely a relief. Dutch folks I've talked to definitely see D66 as progressive, <strike>so there's no question this is a hard turn to the left (even if it's not a total flip to the far-left)</strike> a lot of folks don't agree. I'm going to let the comments speak rather than editorialize myself..
While this is a useful example of how a democracy can be far more resilient to fascism than the US, that is, perhaps, not the most interesting thing about Dutch politics. The most interesting thing is something Dutch folks take for granted and never think of as such: there are two "governments."
The election was for the Tweede Kamer. This is a house of representatives. The Dutch use proportional representation, so people can (more or less) vote for the parties they actually want. Parties <strike>rarely</strike> never actually get a ruling majority, so they have to form coalition governments. This forces compromise, which is something Wilders was extremely bad at. He was actually responsible for collapsing the coalition his party put together, which triggered this election... and a massive loss of seats for his party.
Dutch folks do still vote strategically, since a larger party has an easier time building the governing coalition and the PM tends to come from the largest party. This will likely be D66, which is really good for the EU. D66 has a pretty radical plan to solve the housing crisis, and it will be really interesting to see if they can pull it off. But that's not the government I want to talk about right now.
In the Netherlands, failure to control water can destroy entire towns. A good chunk of the country is below sea level. Both floods and land reclamation have been critical parts of Dutch history. So in the 1200's or so, the Dutch realized that some things are too important to mix with normal politics.
You see, if there's an incompetent government that isn't able to actually *do* anything (see Dick Schoof and the PVV/VVD/NSC/BBB coalition) you don't want your dikes to collapse and poulders to flood. So the Dutch created a parallel "government" that exists only to manage water: waterschap or heemraadschap (roughly "Water Board" in English). These are regional bureaucracies that exist only to manage water. They exist completely outside the thing we usually talk about as a "government" but they have some of the same properties as a government. They can, for example, levy taxes. The central government contributes funds to them, but lacks authority over them. Water boards are democratically elected and can operate more-or-less independent of the central government.
Controlling water is a common problem, so water boards were created to fulfill the role of commons management. Meanwhile, so many other things in politics run into the very same "Tragedy of the Commons" problems. The right wing solution to commons management is to let corporations ruin everything. The left-state solution is to move everything into the government so it can be undermined and destroyed by the right. The Dutch solution to this specific problem has been to move commons management out of the domain of the central government into something else.
And when I say "government" here, I'm speaking more to the liberal definition of the term than to an anarchist definition. A democratically controlled authority that facilitates resource management lacks the capacity for coercive violence that anarchists define as "government." (Though I assume they might leverage police or something if folks refuse to pay their taxes, but I can't imagine anyone choosing not to.)
As the US federal government destroys the social fabric of the US, as Trump guts programs critical to people's survival, it might be worth thinking about this model. These authorities weren't created by any central authority, they evolved from the people. Nothing stops Americans from building similar institutions that are both democratic and outside of the authority of a government that could choose to defund and abolish them... nothing but the realization that yes, you actually can.
#USPol #NLPol

If you are up this late, maybe you want to stay up later. Go ahead, read my latest essay, What Did Vibe Coding just do to the Commons?
https://varnelis.net/works_and_projects/what-did-vibe-coding-just-do-to-the-commons/

What did Vibe Coding just do to the Commons? - varnelis.net
I write a lot about art and architecture, landscape, and the impact of technology on culture, but I haven’t written about coding since the 1980s, when I sold my first article to Creative Computing magazine. Back then I was a high school kid, spending hours working in both BASIC and 6502 assembler on the VIC-20. I ...

Heute vor 3 Jahren: Am 24. Januar 2023 stellte das "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" die #Weltuntergangsuhr auf 90 Sekunden vor 12 - nach 2020 neuer Spitzenwert. Die Gründe sind die russische Invasion in der Ukraine und dadurch schwindendes Interesse für den Klimawandel.

Good Morning #Canada
December 15th, 1964, the Canadian House of Commons votes 163 to 78 to approve the red Maple Leaf flag. The vote put an end to years of conflict over the Liberals proposing a new flag, and gave Canada a new symbol for its upcoming 100th birthday celebration. In 1960, Lester B. Pearson, then Leader of the Opposition, declared that he was determined to solve what he called “the flag problem.” To Pearson, this issue was critical to defining Canada as a unified, independent country. As the newly elected Prime Minister in 1963, Pearson promised to resolve the question of a new national flag in time for Canada’s centennial celebrations in 1967. Traditionalists fought for their beloved Union Jack while a younger generation wanted a new modern design to represent Canada. Thousands of designs, some truly ugly, were considered and rejected, including Pearson's preferred flag. I think we did OK in the end.
#CanadaIsAwesome #History
https://youtu.be/qTMdH9-kmDk?si=9G9ykcp7wpxihKQR

"Some are proud because they made a lot of money while cutting down a forest. Others are proud because they are planting trees that will produce the oxygen breathed by their grandchildren. What if success was not privatizing resources but instead contributing to the commons, to make it each day better, richer, stronger?" — @…
Why there’s no European Google?…

Why there’s no European Google?
Why there’s no European Google? par Ploum - Lionel Dricot.

In #Wikimedia land, I created my first #Lua module in #WikimediaCommons:

House of Lords backs legislation to ban social media for children under 16 https://therecord.media/house-lords-bans-social-media

Vibe coding is the single biggest transformation since ChatGPT 3.5, it is one of the biggest transformations since the dawn of computing. It will thoroughly transform Open Source. We are not ready. #VibeCoding #OpenSource

What did Vibe Coding just do to the Commons? - varnelis.net
I write a lot about art and architecture, landscape, and the impact of technology on culture, but I haven’t written about coding since the 1980s, when I sold my first article to Creative Computing magazine. Back then I was a high school kid, spending hours working in both BASIC and 6502 assembler on the VIC-20. I ...

Yesterday at the @… conference, the Brücke-Museum Berlin presented its digitization project on Karl Schmidt-Rottluff’s collection of objects from colonial contexts. All objects have been published on #wikiCommons, allowing everyone to contribute and r…

Much thanks and heartfelt support to @… for writing up the kind of article that I, too, have been dreading to have to write: that absolutist OSS is bad and we protect the commons with fair licensing, non-commercial and otherwise

Open Printer | Crowd Supply
Open Printer will use the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 license for all of its files, including electronics and mechanical design files, firmware code, and the bill of materials.
https://www.crowdsupply.com/open-tools/open-printer

This week the Argentine Navy finally retired the S-2 Turbo Tracker after 63 years of service. I was able to see one of it's final flights last month. A beautiful aircraft made for another era, it was time to finally get some rest.
https://commons.gallery/@bugwarp/jornada-bapi

Thanks to The New World Paper, I'm listening to Mong Tong, a Taiwanese ambient band that uses a Creative Commons Licence, the album is Sun Moon Darkness.
It's very cool and rhythmic.
A long way from the romantic ballads of the early 90's in Piano Bars.
#Music #NewMusic<…

Coastal First Nations Call on Carney to Defend B.C. Tanker Ban in Pipeline Talks
Coastal First Nations President KΓšwšziɫ Marilyn Slett said she called on Prime Minister Mark Carney in a meeting Tuesday to maintain and protect the oil tanker moratorium in his government’s pipeline talks with Alberta, saying afterwards that “it would take just one spill to destroy our way of life.”
#bcpoli

<insert image of a Dickensian soot-stained child, with sixpence in hand, asking for half a stale loaf as pittance for working all week in the pipes and sewers, keeping the digital commons infrastructure running>
#opensource #sustainoss

Orchids are famous for specialized flowers that create species isolation by manipulating pollinators— but these ones don't have specialized pollinator relationships. Instead, they're isolated by pollen incompatibilities.
https://doi.org/10.1093/aob/mcaf271

The tragedy of the commons is not that it is wasted but that the beneficiaries don't band together to stop its unsustainable and unfair exploitation.

Just added a “Sign in with Mastodon” example to Kitten’s¹ examples:
https://codeberg.org/kitten/app/src/branch/main/examples/sign-in-with-mastodon
If I have time at some point, I might make it into a tutorial.
Enjoy!
:kitten:💕

I suspect that this could be the start of a (slow) turning point for government enthusiasm for AI. Embarrassment of a Chief Constable before a Commons Select Committee is going to lead to new questions about integrity of data in police reports in his force, and probably beyond.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c394…

Police chief admits misleading MPs after AI used in justification for banning Maccabi Tel Aviv fans
An intelligence report referred to a football game that never happened - Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood will make a statement later today.

Making Sense of Open-Source: Ideals, Reality, and What's on the Horizon
Hosted by the Sensemaking Scenius and featuring @erlend.sh, an online video gathering Dec 3rd
https://smokesignal.events/did:plc:ad5bwszsc5m5jpj2sfa6uzjk/3m62suufa7y2j

Finally done creating a bookmarklet that lets me do a series of three clean-up #Wikibase edits on #WikimediaCommons files for this notorious user that uploads thousands of files.
The edits replace a creator=<some value> statement into a known value referring to this user’s

File:04578jfRecoletos Church Bulletin Baluarte San Andres Landmarks Intramurosfvf 46.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

"To realize the vision of a truly digital commons in the European Union – one built on openness, participation, and resilience – we need the active support of public institutions, civil society, and developers for the #Fediverse."
Talk & video by @… :
https://www.sfscon.it/talks/from-open-source-to-open-spaces/

These butterflies pick host plants where the temperatures are more comfortable, even if they're less nutritious (but it's not clear from this data that the nutritional variation is biologically significant?)
https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.11.15.688506

"No Justice No Peas" street art on an alley off the Ithaca Commons
#photo #photography #art #streetart

BC Ministry of Transport...
Launching Gantry, 152 Street Station
The Surrey Sprinter launching gantry lifting an elevated guideway segment at 152 Street Station.Date taken: 10-06-2025
https://www.flickr.com/photos/tranbc/albums/72177720298782138

"I found these ads after I was targeted by one suggesting I join this ethnically ambiguous, dead-eyed family of generic blue hat wearers at the World Series to root on, I guess, the Dodgers."
#AI #generativeAI #meta #AIResearch

Sometimes I wonder what ministers do:
“The security minister, Dan Jarvis, confirmed the alert had been sent out in a lunchtime Commons statement.“

Gorgeous 𝐶𝑜𝑙𝑒𝑢𝑠 leaves spotted in a bed in the Ithaca Commons
#plants #photo #photography #ithaca …