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Nvidia says it plans to invest $2B each in photonic product makers Lumentum and Coherent to support the companies' R&D and manufacturing operations in the US (Zaheer Kachwala/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/technology/nvidia-inv…

Trump fundraiser shares plans for 'Garden of Heroes,' golf course as takeover looms (Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2026/05/02/trump-garden-golf-east-potomac-plans/
http://www.memeorandum.com/260502/p41#a260502p41

My moment of clarity in the last few weeks was coming back to “Oh right, copyright is a hack, and one that is not serving us, particularly us on the margins”
The moral rights of authorship and the way we situate our legal process of ownership are, actually, kinda at odds. And it entirely misses the idea of a commons, both as community and as a cultural base to draw from.
I've long believed that we, collectively, should own our culture — to have modern myths be Copyright 1972 LucasFilm, the traditional songs we sing Copyright 1922, now owned by Warner/Chappell Music is one of the things I find repugnant about the situation we find ourselves in.
That said, reconciling that with the behavior of the AI companies, _particularly_ the American ones? It's hard. Google abuses its monopoly position; Microsoft has forced harmful and terrible tooling on people at every turn; OpenAI is run by someone who actively despises art and does not understand it; and Anthropic is run by a guy who is trying to make sure the apocalypse has a pleasant demeanor and doesn't offend any corporations on the way. All of the above have scraped the web with no active consent — and that's largely fine, that's what putting things in common _is_, that's the beauty of the open information world we have the remnants of — but also actively evading measures people put in place to stop it and with absolutely no willingness to engage with the process. Extracting from the commons _is_ the tragedy of the commons.
It does not mean that enlarging the commons with the resulting tools is bad. The doctrine of original sin is a Christian concept I do not subscribe to. The concept of 'fruit of the poisonous tree' is a legal tool to fix power relations not a moral stance. They're worth understanding, but they are not absolute moral stances that are self-evident.
These are not harmless tools, but so too putting hard regulation and corporate, legalistic scrutiny on everything has a vastly negative impact: it is a yoke on human creativity and community to the reins of capital.
And, so too, disruption has huge costs. We are, apparently, committed to doing things the worst possible way. One can just hope that we capture the good too, because the ride has started and it's rather late to get off.

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #Early
Lambrini Girls:
🎵 Cult of Celebrity
#LambriniGirls
https://open.spotify.com/track/2ptN3AC6mPNdtLrJaeOEQV

I realise on the fediverse this is maybe asking for a flaming, but yesterday out of sheer curiosity I tried Claude for a simpleish coding task that I'd been putting off (largely inspired by @… 's latest on #theclimatebrink). The performance of Claude was seriously impressive. I am convinced the AI cycle is more than hype (and have been for a while), the chatbots have been a huge attention hogger, misleadingly so, while the serious work has been done elsewhere. (We are developing ML tools to supplement parts of our climate model workflows).
Now I'm wondering if there is any serious EU competition to Anthropic? - Mistral's codestral perhaps?
Because this kind of performance changes everything and we can't afford to lag behind...
#AIcoding #ML
Edit: here is the climate brink post I mentioned
https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/the-ai-augmented-scientist

After 60 Days, Republican Patience for the Iran War Is Wearing Thin
Months into the operation and with midterms looming,
some lawmakers are calling for Congress to restrain the president’s war power
or set terms for bringing the conflict to a close.
https://www.

As Iran War Reaches 60-Day Mark, Republicans in Congress Grow Impatient With Trump
Months into the operation and with midterms looming, some lawmakers are calling for Congress to restrain the president’s war power or set terms for bringing the conflict to a close.

Apple übernimmt Photonik-Startup invrs.io
Apple hat ein Start-up übernommen, das Werkzeuge für den Entwurf optischer Bauteile entwickelt. Das Wissen könnte in VR-Brillen und Smart Glasses fließen.
https://www.

Sources: SpaceX has filed confidentially for an IPO, putting it on track for a June listing; it could reportedly seek a valuation of $1.75T and raise ~$75B (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-01/spac…

Shanghai-based Lightelligence, which makes photonics chips, surges by nearly 400% in its trading debut in Hong Kong after raising ~$310M in its IPO (Ann Cao/South China Morning Post)
https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/arti

Photonics chipmaker Lightelligence surges 400% in Hong Kong debut amid AI frenzy
Shanghai-based firm’s IPO reflects mainland China’s push for photonics chips as a fast-growing alternative to conventional semiconductors.