“‘AI’ is not your friend. Nor is it an intelligent tutor, an empathetic ear, or a helpful assistant. It can not ‘make up’ facts, and it does not make ‘mistakes’. It does not actually answer your questions.”
techpolicy.press/we-need-to-ta…
We share a responsibility to create and use empowering metaphors rather than misleading language, write Emily M. Bender and Nanna Inie.Emily M. Bender (Tech Policy Press)
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Südlich von Leipzig werden 4000t Kartoffeln verschenkt. Transport nach Berlin wird übernommen. Mindestabnahme: 1t.
morgenpost.de/berlin/article41…
Die Kartoffeln lagern südlich von Leipzig.Peter Schink (Berliner Morgenpost)
Zu der Kartoffelaktion: mögliche Verteilstellen (z.B. Schulen, Kitas, Kirchgemeinden) sollen sich bis übermorgen melden, Lieferung ist dann nächste Woche Donnerstag oder Freitag. Die Verteilstellen geben sie dann an die Bevölkerung weiter.
Anmeldung: 4000-tonnen.de/
Kartoffeln kostenlos für Berlin. Eine Aktion von Berliner Morgenpost, Ecosia und Osterland Agrar GmbH.www.4000-tonnen.de
hey all o/
for the coming #FOSDEM edition, the new matrix space is ready matrix.to/#/#fosdem2026:fosdem… 
You're invited to talk on Matrix. If you don't already have a client this link will help you pick one, and join the conversation. If you already have one, this link will help you join the conversationmatrix.to
Quebec public servants push back against return to office mandate
ctvnews.ca/montreal/article/qu…
Beginning Jan. 26, Quebec government employees will be required to work three days a week in the office instead of two, a move that is drawing pushback from one of the province’s largest independent unions.Swidda Rassy (CTVNews)
> The union believes this may be part of the province’s strategy to meet its target of cutting 5,000 public sector jobs by March 2027.
It's never about "productivity"
This was a fun read. I burst out laughing at this statement from Bosch after criticism of their products from @pluralistic
‘Worst in Show’ CES products include AI refrigerators, AI companions and AI doorbells
"earning and keeping trust with our consumers, especially in the areas of privacy and cybersecurity, is at the core of our company’s values.
according to coffee geography magazine:
> Prior to Alexa Plus, issuing a voice command for a pre-programmed coffee routine via standard Alexa was a relatively reliable affair. Now, the more advanced assistant has shown moments of confusion, failing to consistently execute a basic coffee order. This hiccup underscores a broader industry challenge: while next-gen AI assistants boast vast potential for complex, conversational interaction, they can ironically stumble over the straightforward, programmed commands that defined earlier smart home tech.
When I was young, we even had coffee makers without Alexa functionality.
They were rather ingenious, they had 'buttons', little surfaces connected to mechnical levers and an electronic switch.
As user, you would touch the 'button', and the coffee machine would then execute the associated command.
I dont know how it worked internally. I suppose they had a little speaker inside next to the Alexa microphone, and it would sound out the command at inaudible volume
@Zauberlehrling @Cory Doctorow
the fridge that also uses computer vision to track when food items are running low and can advertise replacements.
"Advertise"!? That's not how this was supposed to go. The smart fridge is supposed to remind you, maybe add your preferred product to your shopping list or next groceries order, not take this as an opportunity to spam you with ads.
Lately on the blog: Web Excursions for January 9th, 2026
brettterpstra.com/2026/01/09/w…
An irregularly-scheduled roundup of Brett’s favorite web discoveries.BrettTerpstra.com
We are very well aware of the fact that X for Grok is now offering a spicy mode showing explicit sexual content with some output generated with childlike images:
📌 A detailed request for information on Grok has been sent to X, and we are reviewing the company’s responses.
📌 X has been ordered to retain all internal documents and data concerning Grok’s features until the end of 2026.
The Digital Services Act is very clear:
In the EU, all platforms have to get their own house in order.
The Document Foundation (TDF) is the non-profit entity behind the LibreOffice project. It collects donations from users, and employs a small team to support and coordinate the worldwide community that makes the software.Mike Saunders (The Document Foundation)
I'm in the 1%. The 1% of all #FOSDEM 2026 speakers named Daniel. (13 out of 1021)
Here's to all the open source developers who put hours and hours of their lives into a project they built, put it out into the world, and now it sits with approximately zero users.
Thank you for putting labor into the world to try and help others, even if it's never been recognized.
Brag about your project here if you'd like!
Edit: if you saw this earlier, come back and check out all the cool projects people have shown off since!
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One of my favorite new productivity hacks is building little bespoke Nix environments for various things I'm working on. They can be packaged in a single flake.nix and easily moved between projects, are automatically activated when entering a directory with direnv and a 1-line .envrc, can package shell scripts and automatically install any commands those scripts run as package dependencies just by calling them in the script with the ${pkgs.coreutils}/bin/sleep} syntax, can build and install custom git repos into your system, etc. Some examples:
I have a Godot dev environment which automatically builds and installs my heavily patched Godot tree while I merge PRs upstream. It also has a couple shell scripts for working with audio--normalize converts audio to wav if needed and normalizes it, while loop lets me specify a start/duration/fade duration and either previews or saves loopable audio with the configured duration cut from the end and faded in at the beginning. This is most of what I would have used Reaper for before, but packaged in a setup I can drop into any Godot project. And if I need more sox simplifications, I can make scripts for those as well.
Today's hack: an open source plain text business stack. I absolutely detest how just about every business app out there doesn't care about accessibility, because why would a blind person run a business? Now we have recutils for plain text data manipulation (likely CRM), HLedger for accounting, Himalaya for injesting email into and updating the recutils CRM, etc. Now if I work with an accountant, I'm done managing my own stuff in the inaccessible QBO--just figure out what they need, write a shell or Python script to do the conversions, and package it in the environment. As of now the whole thing is in one flake.nix, along with Pandoc and a few other nice-to-haves. I can clone the repo in any Linux/mac environment running Nix and Direnv and the whole reproduceable setup gets installed automatically. Wish I'd found this years ago.
Look, this is really simple. Any politician who still uses Twitter is telling their constituents that they are OK with child sexual abuse.
Any voters who disapprove of child sexual abuse may wish to take note when they next get the chance to vote.
bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c99kn5…
It comes after government urged Ofcom to use all its powers – up to and including an effective ban – against X.Liv McMahon (BBC News)
The repository provides code for running inference with the Meta Segment Anything Audio Model (SAM-Audio), links for downloading the trained model checkpoints, and example notebooks that show how t...GitHub
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#XSF Announcement
Join the 28th #XMPP #Summit taking place in #Brussels, #Belgium from 29th January.
xmpp.org/2025/11/xmpp-summit-2…
And visit the #FOSDEM 2026 were you can find the #Realtime Lounge, too!
#jabber #chat #interoperability #rtc #opensource #decentralization #federation #messaging
The XMPP Standards Foundation (XSF) is exited to announce the 28th XMPP Summit taking place in Brussels, Belgium next year - just before FOSDEM 2026. The XSF invites everyone interested in development of the XMPP protocol to attend, and discuss all …xmpp.org
Today one more talk for #FOSDEM was accepted: What translating Thunderbird taught me.
It's in the #translation room at Sunday.
Hey @kueche lass uns das @Sattmobil holen und in Berlin bis Leipzig was warmes zu essen zubereiten!
morgenpost.de/berlin/article41…
Die Kartoffeln lagern südlich von Leipzig.Peter Schink (Berliner Morgenpost)
We have reached peek. The Canadian slop minister post about how we shall fight CSAM and deepfake on the deepfake CSAM generator formerly known as Twitter.
Somebody, rightful so, criticise the move.
Someone dared to reply "but he must post on that verified account to reach his target audience"
Update: the Canadian slop minister said they have no intention to block the apps/website that are use to generate CSAM.
Keep that in mind when they want to "regulate" the Internet. They can't even follow up on the basic law.
In the new season of Autocracy in America, I will ask how the Trump White House is rewriting the rules of US politics.
First episode: How ICE and the National Guard are being used not just to enforce immigration, but to project power
open.spotify.com/episode/4Baji…
Autocracy in America · EpisodeICE and the National Guard Are Acting with Impunity (Spotify)
said in the IRC channel earlier
"curl is a sticker and image compression project that happens to release network software"
Bose is ending cloud support for its SoundTouch speakers, but they’ll remain functional now thanks to an open-source API and local controls.Stevie Bonifield (The Verge)
They are not "open sourcing" anything. All they are doing is publishing an API which should have been public forever. They are doing nothing to help people maintain these devices when they fail.
It's a huge contrast with how hifi manufacturers used to behave. My Quad amplifier from the 1970s came with a user manual which included the circuit diagram. As a result, it's easy to repair and still works exactly as well as it did when it was new. It is extremely rare that present day companies support their customers so well, and while what Bose is doing with these speakers is welcome, it is certainly is not helping customers so well as was common 50 years ago.
In other news, Twitter has turned off the image generator for the Grok AI system to all except paid subscribers.
theguardian.com/technology/202…
This follows the headlines and investigations by multiple national regulatory bodies about Grok stripping clothing off in images of women and children.
So in other words, Twitter has said it will only allow their AI service to make CSA images and revenge porn, if you agree to pay them.
It's overdue now. Ban Twitter.
Editing function to be limited to paying subscribers after X threatened with fines and regulatory actionHelena Horton (The Guardian)
RE: mastodon.social/@lashman/11586…
Please stop worshipping John Carmack
May 2026 be the year we can finally use some #Markdown for our posts on #Mastodon. 9 years since it was first discussed [1], never really rejected nor endorsed by @MastodonEngineering – It is about time to finally add it now. Boost if you agree ;)
[1] github.com/mastodon/mastodon/i…
Basic markdown formatting in toots would be nice, you know; bullet points numbered lists italic bold strikethrough !Z͙A̮̥̳̹͉̙L͕̝̦̭̹ͅGO̭̲̩̘͝!̭̩̲͚̀ ̶̰̲̳H̭͔́e̗̯̪̲͔̫̗͘ ̰̩̯̲̰̘̩c̣̺̬o͏̣̞m̤͟e̹͈͇͉̺s͔͕̙!͏!Aethylred (GitHub)
1. Don't prepare for snow so you can save money
2. Wait for snow
3. When snow comes, declare total inability to deal with it
4. Make sure no one takes the phone to help stranded passengers on flights you sold them. Tell them that you are busy. Don't book them hotels or give them any comfort like food, drinks or beds.
5. Raise prices for the few seats on flights you do operate
6. Profit!
KLM and Schiphol explained.
nltimes.nl/2026/01/08/plane-ti…
Airline ticket prices are skyrocketing due to the chaos at Schiphol, the Telegraaf reported. Some 3,500 flights to and from Schiphol Airport have been canceled since January 2 due to snow.NL Times
Seems there's an up-tick of drinking idiot juice in Saskatchewan? The Saskatchewan RCMP Operational Communication Centre has released a list of 2025's most ridiculous emergency calls, to warn people to stay off the lines
unless there's a serious situation. It comes as its 911 call-takers and dispatchers fielded more than 422,000 calls last year, 15 per cent more than the
year before.
Some alleged emergencies from last year: a friend had cooked one caller's pork chop without consent. A family member's loud snoring was keeping another
awake. A restaurant was taking too long with the lunch order of still another. And, perhaps most dire, someone had lost their phone and wanted an officer
to call it so they could hear it ring.
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I don't use JAWS but FYI, Doug Lee's free scripts that defo do work with the new app are here:
use original OCRAStd.otf glyph exports for characters (exported via FontForge). use native SVG shapes. use all-integer coordinates. retain existing shapes losslessly. rework/simplify minimization s...GitHub
Sherlock: You have mud on your shoes Watson.
Watson: No, shit Sherlock.
Borris
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