For those struggling with democracy, here's how we do it (not perfectly but I think pretty fairly) in Australia.
1. Everyone is expected to vote. There is a small fine if you don't show up and get checked off the electoral roll. If you choose to vote by scribbling a dick and balls on your ballot paper, whatever. Campaigning is focused on issues not on "please go vote". Getting a call, text or email from a political party is pretty rare.
2. There is a government department tasked with making it easy and feasible for everyone to vote. Waiting longer than 5 mins is very rare. There is generally a polling place within walking distance. Pre-poll and postal voting are available for those who can't make it on the day (which is always a Saturday).
3. Voting is by ranked-choice. You cannot "waste" your vote, if your first preference comes last, your vote transfers to your second preferenace (and so on). This means independents and smaller parties get elected and can have influence.
4. After the election, parties receive a small amount of funding for each first-preference vote they receive. This means putting the Lazycrats *second* after the FreeKittensParty hurts the Lazycrats in their hip pocket, even if the FKP could never win.
5. Voting places are friendly. Usually they are a school or church where an impromptu jumble sale and barbecue happens. I have never seen a cop, soldier or even a display of anger at a polling place.
6. Campaign workers must stay a certain distance away from the polling place. Advertising must end the day before the election.
7. Election campaigns last about 4 weeks, not years.
You don't have to make this so fucking hard.
using pkg on #FreeBSD is so fast until it's time to update #rust...
For the first time in a long time I have some hope.
I want firings. I want trials. I want prison sentences.
#usa #elections #politics
Now watch AI/tech companies pivot hard left in the coming weeks. Don't let them get away with it. They bent the knee (gleefully). There are receipts.
#AI #uspol
We have published a report on a security incident on gitlab.alpinelinux.org. An attacker tried to exploit CVE-2026-97229. We found no evidence it succeeded but can't rule it out, so we rebuilt
GitLab from scratch.
Alpine packages and releases were not affected, and no signing keys were exposed.
All GitLab passwords have been reset. If you reused yours elsewhere, change it there.
https://alpinelinux.org/posts/GitLab-security-incident-CVE-2026-97229.html
#AlpineLinux #security
External Attachment: https://alpinelinux.org/posts/GitLab-security-incident-CVE-2026-97229.html
Fuck LA Taco!
https://memotorres.substack.com/p/what-happened-at-la-taco
#losangeles #fuckice
After a week of using this new Tactile Turn bolt action pen I can say that I really really like it. It took me a few days for my hands to adjust to the thickness of it but all good now.
Uses a simple Pilot G2 refill cartridge which I also like. Many others actually fit it just fine as well but I'm fine with the G2.
LOLOLOL. Apparently each Lunar Starship now requires *22* Starship tanker flights. That means you'd need to launch the world's largest rocket once a day for *more than three weeks* before each landing. And there's never three solid weeks of good weather on the Gulf.
All this is because 1) Musk forced SpaceX to propose a lunar lander that's way too big because he wanted NASA to fund his Mars fantasy, and 2) Starship has way less performance than advertised, due to requiring much heavier structures and heat shields than the initial optimistic design. This is at least partly due to its garbage aerodynamics, because Musk wouldn't let them optimize the shape.
In other words, Starship ain't never gonna land on the Moon. Not in '28, not never.
“Better HTTP/1 connection reuse” by Nicholas Husin and Damien Neil — https://go.dev/blog/http-connection-reuse
#golang
@nilix Well, my take is no giant leaps in productivity doesn't mean no value is provided. I also think LLM's are more useful to smaller companies who adopt them responsibly.
@ols Yup
The red-lipped batfish or Galápagos batfish (Ogcocephalus darwini) is a fish of unusual morphology found around the Galápagos Islands at depths of 3 to 76 m (10 to 249 ft).
(No, it’s not AI. Triple checked)
External Attachment: Fish walking on the bottom with sort of cute legs and a funny mouth with lips
I, reluctantly, began including LLM's into my coding workflow about a year ago. I felt gross about it but as the months went on I def could see gains in output, speed of development, etc. However I learned quickly that LLM code is half shit and so I often would write patterns first for it to copy or have to massage it to rewrite large chunks or completely change decisions. Most senior level engineers know all this already but really using these tools has turned into just being managers and the fun of creating is sort of gone. At least changed.
According to this video, Harvard U (using Jellyfish data) have proven that there is no real productivity output gain and also no reduction in staff (actually it's increased).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idTBm06d6hQ
I still feel kind of gross about it but accept that it will probably be part of the tool kit moving forward. I just worry about all these vibe coders and mediocre engineers putting out so much crap. I worry about where companies may be headed.
I don't know. This has been bugging me and just wanted to spew something to get it out.
#ai #llm #code
Quick and very cool read about the magic that we take for granted every day.
https://ordinaryabundance.com/
All the items in this room were once out of reach; some not yet invented, others too rare or costly for the vast majority of people. Today, most of us lucky enough to live with them walk past without a second thought.
It is to humanity’s credit that we remain restless in the midst of all of this progress. We continue to look forward, pushing the frontier further with new treatments, new tools, and new institutions that will help future generations in ways we can’t even picture yet.
But our lives today are a gallery of past generations’ heroic efforts to do the same. It serves us, and honors them, to recapture whenever possible the old sense of awe at these wonders that have long since become commonplace.
@frank As if I didn't have enough to worry about. I hadn't heard of this trick before. Pretty neat actually. Thanks for the heads up.
Been cooking something up for a few weeks
It is clarifying to think about LLMs as **an emerging tool for mind control**.
From this perspective, LLMs are a big step forward: from mass media broadcasting what to think, to online media manipulating what you see, to a tool that manipulates you conversationally.
The weakest minds are the first to fall under its spell. (See: Steve Yegge's "manic Fox News grandpa" energy.)
This also explains why those interested in mind control (Chinese gov't, Big Tech billionaire class) are SO invested.
A+ work happening.
I know the dollar is in the toilet but it hits different when you return home from 6 weeks in Europe and finally review your bank account. 
Every person who boosts this toot will get a check for $5,000
You’re paying 4× more for RAM because memory that hasn’t been made has already been bought with money that doesn’t exist.
The GPUs haven’t been built. Neither have the data centers. The infrastructure to power them may never exist.
All to satisfy demand that doesn’t exist and generate profits that are mathematically impossible.
Hablando con otras personas en internet, año 2026.
Another brilliant idea!
THIS is what the great John Lewis would call “GOOD TROUBLE” — Protesters in Minneapolis have reportedly been dressing up in jeans, body armor, and masks, and then walking into groups of ICE agents and accusing one or two of them of being imposters until they all start fighting each other, and then the protesters sneak away.
And now, it’s happening nationwide!
A tale in three screenshots
🎉 Go 1.27.1 and 1.26.8 are released!
📡 Announcement: https://groups.google.com/g/golang-announce/c/QiTRm-HGGtI/m/cpfkLlpMAQAJ
⬇️ Download: https://go.dev/dl/#go1.27.1
#golang
DOJ comes out to support OpenAI’s defense against massive copyright infringement.
Meaning it’s OK to steal from others as long as you’re training LLMs. Duly noted.
If OpenAI wins, someone *please*please* use this as a defense when Hollywood sues them for torrenting a movie.
ping @eff
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/09/02/open-AI-copyright-case-justice-department
Hey kids! It's the start of the Fall semester, and I'm again teaching "Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment".
The syllabus and all course materials including all code examples are available here:
https://stevens.netmeister.org/631/
As usual, we'll be using #NetBSD as our main platform. All video lectures are public and available for free on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0qfF8MrJ-jxMfirAdxDs9zIiBg2Wug0z
I'll be posting individual lecture videos and related links in this thread throughout the semester.
#programming #unix #apue
External Attachment: https://stevens.netmeister.org/631/
@ols @dave same!
Kentucky Middle School Sends Students Home on First Day of Class With AI-Generated Educational Materials Full of Inexcusable Hallucinations, Including a Map Labeled With “North Dahota” and “Olkchoma”
"Planetary distance are temporatory earth, equater the elenonts and regnestiom org toed dishlign."
[Well, duh. 🙄]
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/kentucky-middle-school-ai
Fun update. They sent the bag to Nicaragua! Even though the report clearly says to send it to her hotel in Amsterdam. Supposedly it will be sent back to Europe and arrive at the hotel tomorrow morning, just in time for the wedding. We'll see.
PSA: Apparently google trains or indexes their AI on your PRIVATE Google Drive Documents:
https://www.reddit.com/r/IndieDev/comments/1vfwuf5/a_player_found_out_the_actual_name_of_my_games/
(TLDR; Indie dev had their audience ask Google highly specific questions about future content of their game, and it spat out an exact name of an upcoming enemy type. Furthermore it listed scrapped ideas and ideas that *only* existed in their *private* Google Docs.)
@Skoop hah. Well at my old age I think using these clients is great, exactly because I'm lazy. I guess that's always been the reason why. To me they're so much easier to use than a gui client.
By any chance do I know anyone, or maybe you do, who works at Iberia airlines? I've got an issue with a lost (and was found) bag but we've heard nothing for days about it and no clue when it will be returned.
We have a wedding soon and need the bag as many items for the wedding are in thr bag. Not to mention my wife's entire wardrobe haha.
If you can help, or know someone who can, please reach out to me here or email me pjs@petersanchez.com
Please boost.
#iberia #spain #help