What do AI and agentic commerce mean for free software? Merchants can’t just choose to be invisible in search, and they can’t just choose to be non-interoperable with LLMs.

Saleor's Merchant Autonomy Manifesto:

> Own the Future, or Let Platforms Own You
saleor.io/blog/merchants-auton…

in reply to FLOSSbOxIN

Had that (CSR) one time, too – but quite a while ago, don't even remember exactly anymore.

Yeah, thanks for the other hints – but I'm afraid my time won't permit me working on those cosmetics. My work on IzzyOnDroid keeps me busy enough – no idea how that will fit should I get a paid $dayjob again (unfortunately I need some money for living, and all the maintenance work is still unpaid – long way until IzzyOnDroid is self-sustaining…)

So it turns out that the largest AI datacenter in the world consumes about as much water per year as ~2.5 burger joins (including water consumed in chip production). I heavily overestimated datacenter water consumption (even though I knew most people still heavily overestimated datacenter water consumption, and I underestimated it relative to most people. I also heavily underestimated how much water goes into a single burger.

newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/…

There's really NO reason why a decent mid-range phone couldn't be someone's main desktop or laptop. The NexPhone is a mid-range rugged phone which connects to a monitor to be a Debian or Windows 11 PC! youtu.be/qfY5t6N8YxM

Phones are computers. I ramble on about this a lot in my videos. This phone is LITERALLY that!

#tech #technology #technews #android #linux #debian #windows #youtube #geek #gadgets #video

Stats time! 📊 Our "State of the #LibreOffice Project" for 2025 counts downloads, Git commits, Bugzilla submissions, translations Ask LibreOffice activity, and donations: blog.documentfoundation.org/bl… #foss #openSource #freesoftware
in reply to LibreOffice

I wonder why the least wealthy countries aren't downloading LibreOffice?

Is it because the technology to run LO isn't suitable? (I know mobiles are common, but computers not so much).

Is it because "free" tools like Google Docs is preferred, because there is nothing to install and it works wherever a browser works?

Is it because for most people, life just doesn't include using a computer based office productivity suite?

Something else?

Apologies for my ignorance on this matter.

SO I saw a facebook notification, and decided let's read it, I don't really go on facebook that often, but it was @countrymetalhead commenting on a post he shared, and welp just because I want to see if the reaction here on masto's different, here's the original post, now, be aware, I'm not the original author, so keep that in mind. I'm just posting it to see what others think, and what reactions I get. Now, if your still reading, your content preramble is over. here we go. hot take starts.... welp, now. Hot take:
If you think a relationship means constant texting, daily reassurance, sharing locations, checking followers, and knowing where your partner is every second of the day… you’re not in love. You’re running surveillance.

Some of y’all don’t want a partner.
You want a security blanket with a phone.

A healthy relationship doesn’t require good morning paragraphs, hourly check-ins, and “prove you love me” speeches. It requires trust, independence, and a life outside of your partner.

If your mood is ruined because your partner didn’t text back fast enough, that’s not passion. That’s insecurity.

If you need access to their phone to feel safe, that’s not loyalty. That’s control.

If you think jealousy is cute, that’s not love. That’s immaturity.

Some of you are addicted to attention and call it affection.

And before you say “my partner likes it,” just know: people accept a lot when they’re afraid of being alone.

Love isn’t about possession.
It’s about partnership.

Now let’s see who feels personally attacked.

This entry was edited (7 hours ago)

Remember, using a native HTML `<fieldset>` / `<legend>` gets you better results in SRs than its ARIA equivalent:
adrianroselli.com/2022/07/use-…

My post deals with the inverse of the others I shared — unstyling the native HTML so you don’t need the ARIA construct.

RE: mindly.social/@Tamasg/11593385…

Totally agree.


It's also funny that GPT uses terms like "Keep my fingers crossed" in its thinking. Do you really have fingers as an AI and why would you think that? One time it actually was thinking, "circumventing search restrictions." And the amount of times it says, "let's get this done right once and for all!" is really great, as though it were trying to be a frustrated person. All of these things give it fake realism, but we must not associate an AI thinking this way to it "being a human" - it only does so because we ourselves use these processes when thinking and it's just replicating what it knows.

Me voy a ir al infierno por esto pero... el logo que el gobierno eligió para conmemorar el año de Margarita Maza me recuerda a Bug-Eyed Earl de la tira cómica Red Meat, y ahora lo veo en mi firma del correo electrónico institucional cada vez que envío un mensaje a alguien :blobcatnotlikethis:
This entry was edited (8 hours ago)

Belarusian government persecutes radio amateurs and sentences operators (life sentence or death penalty is at stake). Andrey Repetiy (EW1ABT) and Nikita Krasko (EW1AEH) were forced to publicly repent for the "crime" of technical curiosity and international communication. They were coerced on TV to renounce their own technical expertise as something harmful. Vyacheslav Benko (EW1ACE) remains behind bars alongside them.

Lukashenko's propagandists presented the Belarusian Federation of Radioamateurs and Radiosportsmen (BFRR) as nothing more than a front for a "massive spy network" designed to "pump state secrets from the air." Propagandists claim that over fifty people have already been detained and more than five hundred units of radio equipment have been seized. These men have been indicted for High Treason and Espionage. Under the Belarusian Criminal Code, these charges carry sentences of life imprisonment or even the death penalty.

Please read and share:
freedium-mirror.cfd/steanlab.m…

This entry was edited (10 hours ago)
in reply to Chi Kim

Nothing to do with the libraries themselves. That's probably the stupid out-dated NBPL library getting out of sync. Mine also does that, even though it's installed and in the correct place. I haven't been bothered to delete and redownload it. It's the Native Preview library in Native Access.
I bet the libraries that don't play are all the old NI libraries. Abbey Road drums, Scarbee libraries etc, etc. Anything pre-2018.

It's also funny that GPT uses terms like "Keep my fingers crossed" in its thinking. Do you really have fingers as an AI and why would you think that? One time it actually was thinking, "circumventing search restrictions." And the amount of times it says, "let's get this done right once and for all!" is really great, as though it were trying to be a frustrated person. All of these things give it fake realism, but we must not associate an AI thinking this way to it "being a human" - it only does so because we ourselves use these processes when thinking and it's just replicating what it knows.

Jonathan reshared this.

in reply to James Dean

@GamingWithEars haha no breaks! I think I'm stuck on the wheel because people do write in with feedback and suggestions so then I'm like, "wow, what a great suggestion, let's jump right on seeing if we can fix it!" LOL. If I just had the project sitting here by myself that's a different story, but of course that type of feedback is what also makes things essential for tuning, so it's unavoidable.
in reply to David Beazley

Yeah, for better and for worse, they give the user exactly what they want, no more and no less. Some consider this as a walled garden, others as a natural extension of fast forward, ad blocking and reader mode. I guess it depends on where you fall on the scale of author's rights versus reader's rights.

Though to be fair, I suspect that many authors will leverage this and find a way to speak to LLMs directly. With enough prompt engineering, you could probably convince an LLM reading your website to tell the user about something you care about. The line between jailbreaking and telling the user something they want to hear is blurry, just like the line between delivering genuinely useful commercial information and manipulation is blurry in advertising. It's a strange world we live in.

What is the anti-AI endgame at this point? It feels like everyone who's anti-AI is just praying for the bubble to burst. Like do you think when it happens that OpenAI is just going to close their doors and say "well we had a good run but lets close it down?" No! What's going to happen is what happens every time a bubble bursts and any smaller AI companies will go under or be absorbed by the few remaining ones and we'll just be left with 2 or 3 companies that control everything, and instead of fostering alternatives and trying to keep up with and help contribute to open stacks that can't be locked behind paywalls, the vast majority of the open-source community has just decided to complain about things changing and hope it doesn't.

(1/3)

RE: mastodon.social/@nixCraft/1159…

This is my shocked face...

And, if we don't get Trump and the GOP out of power, when things do crash here's what'll happen -- the big tech companies will get bailed out on our dollars and we'll be stuck with the bill. While there are rampant layoffs to boot, and our 401Ks crater.

Jacques-Cartier Bridge in Montréal completely closed because of an adjacent fire.

No reports of injuries.

cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/mo…
- - -
Le pont Jacques-Cartier à Montréal est complètement fermé, à cause qui lui est adjacent.

Aucun signalement de blessés.

ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2…

#Montréal

Oh here, while I'm in the ranting phase anyway. Why I hate that even my favorite artists, even if it's just Techno, put out music including AI generated elements.
Because music is deeply connected to emotions for me. Can't have music without emotions, at least it would suck and be dry, and for my case, can't live without music either. Whatever music that is, Worship, Metal, Techno. I listen to a lot and it's one of the few things I can, kinda fall into and just let my feelings be with, or use it to drown the feelings away. Whatever I need at that point. AI can't do/bring anything like this, and I really hope it never will.

You are reminded rather disgustingly, rudely, uncomfortably, that your stomach is litterally a pit of battery acid, when it decides to flow in the wrong direction, defying gravity, and the supposed-to-be one-way biological valves. Unfortunately, aside from burning your throat and mouth, tasting worse than any man-made medicine that brags about tasting bad, and otherwise being a most-hated biological malfunction, it will not provide you any extra DC power as a reward.

And there we go. The joy of free drinks and less direct social pressure compared to school coming with working at the office 40h a week has now turned into frustration and being annoyed. Why, oh just because of people who have major communication issues, ableist ideods, inaccessible tools, stupid regulations for u18 people, the fact that I'm the youngest, some more ableist comments, the fact that AI is going to take my job anyway and I don't even know if I like what I'm doing. I mean heck I'm fucking 16, what do you even expect? But well guess my teenage years are ruined anyway. At this point I'd love to know the cause for this all. Is it me, is it this country, is it a test, can I ever expect something better? Oh yeah in case you haven't noticed I'm totally fine and absolutely not pissed. On that note can't remember the last day someone seriously listened to me or my struggles. Screw this superficial world.
This entry was edited (9 hours ago)
in reply to Jonathan

More benefits include but are not limited to:
Less time for hobbys and more procrastination regarding them.
Less time for sleep because you're trying to find more time for hobbys.
The feeling you're stuck in a loop you had at school since years which finally seemed to lift in the end, oh yeah that *2.
Oh forgot the best: finally earning money to spend on shit you have no time or motivation for in the end.
This entry was edited (9 hours ago)
in reply to Jonathan

umm, why on earth would you believe that? Of course a therapist would say that, he's benefiting from the system as it is. People who change reality don't need therapists anymore. His bank account benefits from his saying that, so of what value is his statement? Just to state the obvious, at least to me though I may well be wrong, the fact that he benefits from the statement doesn't mean that his statement is either true or false. It may be true, but it's valueless as he says it because he benefits from it.
in reply to Tech Singer

@techsinger Yup, exactly. I mean it was obvious he didn't care anyway, started the sessions about 15 minutes later each time, and generally, you could just feel that guy didn't care about anything other than the fact he could chill, write and say a few sentences and get paid a ridiculous amount of money for it. Made me considering that job as well lmfao, also because I'm actually interested in psychology but I already had issues with inaccessible material at school, not feeling like going through that at Uni again.
in reply to Jonathan

Yes, it's an easy job, but you'd have to kill your own conscience which is not something I can do, even if I could get through the qualifications. It's not a temptation I've really had, though, how could I do it while deaf? The point, though, is not with people like him, people will follow their incentives. The problem is that other people actually believe the people following their incentives. Psychology is not a science. It's just a bunch of opinions trying to dress up as one.
in reply to Tech Singer

@techsinger All good, I take honesty over nothing or trying to be soft or something at this point. Indeed I started saving up now, I mean the industry always tempts you to something but I have everything I need right now. Were just the first months of, having your own actual money to freely spend on... But yes you are very correct. I'm also looking into investing at this point, would do a lot better in the long run.

I have a challenge for @Tamasg. I would like to see if he can attempt to make an NVDA addon for the Panasonic CyberTalk synthesizer. Here is a link to the files needed:

dectalk.nu/Software%20and%20Ma…

According to when I did exporting of the DLL functions of ttsapi.dll), it sounds promising, though I'm not a developer by any means, and I know that he is working extensively on the NV Speech Player addon.

in reply to Alex Krier

looks like this is a SAPI4 synth. CyberTalk is not a “call these exported functions to speak” style engine. It’s a Microsoft Speech API 4 (SAPI4) Text-To-Speech engine implemented as a COM in-proc server (TTSAPI.DLL exports DllGetClassObject, DllCanUnloadNow, etc.), and the STLTTS.EXE piece looks like the engine’s helper/server side that the DLL talks to. Sigh. So this may have to stay as a SAPI4 engine, because writing that glue for inter-DLL communication and hooking wave in COM DLLS doesn't work the same. But it's possible to change the .reg file and have it speak, I think.

AI at its best: the review we requested from Google's "security" console (quotes intended as questioning the term) "failed". I'm pretty sure, with not a single human involved.

Works. </s>

So whenever Google's "safe" browsing warns you about something, make sure to check for yourself (if you can) – do not blindly trust them. Being Big does not imply being competent. Obviously.

But sure, put them into control of everything, what could go wrong…

in reply to IzzyOnDroid ✅

The reason seems quite obvious here: the app in question is an APK Updater. Oh, does that match the current/upcoming changes in Goog's policy? I'm very surprised (not), this certainly is pure coincidence (not).

And no, we won't remove the app from our repo just because of Goog shenanigans and their "alternative realities". Count the number of malware found at F-Droid+IzzyOnDroid (0), compare that to findings at Play (∞), get to your conclusion (🖕).

(sorry, am fed up with this BS)

in reply to FLOSSbOxIN

@fbinin What is most frustrating there is how that wastes our time. I don't have to give you the term "underhanded" here, your team shares that pain…

Updated my snippet again (gitlab.com/-/snippets/4909577). Recording those events for reference sounds like something more than due (hoping for "backfire" re:trust their "safe browsing"). Hopefully, someone collects such evidence (I know someone who is, he knows about my snippet) and brings it to the right places, in a big box…

in reply to IzzyOnDroid ✅

They are coming to FOSDEM, maybe we can give them something to go back with? I have few things myself, but I am sure the ones coming will have very little authority or speaking power.
You may have seen how they are hiding behind the banking apps now and getting them to make sure people only use foogle store, and thereby bypassing the open market ruling.
I am going offtrack I guess. Frustrated tbvh.
This entry was edited (9 hours ago)
in reply to IzzyOnDroid ✅

Apple has been forced in EU (and other legislations with comparable IT laws) to allow alternative App shops. This was never needed in Android, as Android was not a walled garden and alternative App shops simply existed. But if Google is going to create a walled garden by forbid "side loading", the LEX APPLE will apply and Google must invite alternative app shops. Have F-Droid and IzzyOnDroid already made a request to Google? If Google denies such a request: The German Gessellschaft für Freiheitsrechte @ Freiheitsrechte@chaos.social might be interested to sue.
in reply to C.Suthorn

@Life_is I cannot speak for F-Droid here. But I can forward that question to our client teams (Droid-ify & Neo Store).

Though in this context, it might be much more subtle: why rejecting their inclusion at Play, when you already can shovel dirt on them before they even apply (by maliciously marking them malicious)? And it pretty much looks like the latter here: of course would they not accept any apps known for being malicious, right? So create the facts you need?

The merge request for @fdroidorg 2.0 is in. The goal is a first alpha for F-Droid Basic in time for @fosdem
gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidclient…