Now this is ridiculously catchy.

And yes, I bow to my socialist vampire overlords 🙇‍♂️

TLDR; The PSF has made the decision to put our community and our shared diversity, equity, and inclusion values ahead of seeking $1.5M in new revenue. Please read and share. https://pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/10/NSF-funding-statement.html
🧵
https://www.python.org/sponsors/application/

I can somewhat empathize with wanting to "keep tech free of politics":

Many of us were drawn to tech because of a strong feeling of agency, and something that (for all it's emergent properties) is feasible to comprehend.

Alas.

As we grow up and mature, I think that's not a position that can be held to without appearing either negligently or intentionally naïve.

Any non-trivial tech is build by (and for) communities.

How we form those - and with whom - *is* political.

Sorry.

Worth your time:

https://terminal.ahumanfuture.co/posts/2025-10-17/the-world-is-something-that-we-make/

(can't recall link source; apologies if it was you!)

All modern digital Infrastructure

Thank you #xkcd

"Worse still, the techno-fascist assault on universities increasingly comes from within. In recent years, the AI industry has captured university administrations, co-opted faculty unions, and even enlisted individual teachers and researchers to promote its tools to colleagues and students."

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/ai-will-not-save-higher-education-but-may-destroy-it-by-olivia-guest-and-iris-van-rooij-2025-10

@projectsyndicate.bsky.social @Iris

The Milky Way over Monument Valley
Credits: Tom Masterson
#nature #space #astrophotography

This is the Big Lie of #OpenSource.

(It is also bizarre for DHH to be quoting an LLM in this matter, but I digress)

Tech communities are *already* fractured. There is no "big tent". Instead, what happens is a slow brain drain. Troll-friendly spaces built on top of offensive edgelord culture inherently degrade over time…a shrinking pool of expertise as those with diverse perspectives & backgrounds go silent.

DHH is king of a noisy yet dying world. And ultimately the ecosystem always suffers.

Newsletter: Anatomy of a crypto meltdown

October 2025 brought the most dramatic crypto flash crash of all time, but it was only a dress rehearsal for the systemic crisis the industry is building toward.

https://www.citationneeded.news/anatomy-of-a-crypto-meltdown/

#crypto #cryptocurrency #USpol #USpolitics

Hacker gets annoyed at Amazon’s Kindle apps, reverse-engineers the Kindle web reader’s protocol (which basically sends each page as a set of glyphs in a deliberately broken variant of SVG). Such obscurity, much security.

https://blog.pixelmelt.dev/kindle-web-drm/

Today I learnt that a German complained that #cyberpunk2077 used the wrong manhole standardisation. It's beautiful.

Journalist: "So what do you think long-distance air travel is going to look like in 2050?"

Climate Scientist *laughs derisively*: "By 2050, most long-distance holiday destinations will be uninhabitable, so I expect the majority of long-distance air traffic to be non-existent by 2050."

Phew. Hadn't heard it THAT bleakly during a live interview yet.

This is a Kodeviser. A code generator for the Danish 2FA system. It is free. You activate it on a website. You do not need an app or smartphone to access digital services in Denmark.

This is a Rejsekort. You tap it to pay on buses & trains. The new ticket system will include a card. You do not need an app or smartphone to travel on Danish public transport.

I keep seeing a viral toot that says you’re excluded from 2FA & public transport in Denmark if you have no app or phone. This is not true.

It's fine if you are struggling with the hard problems. Lord, we all are!

But the nihilistic assumption that NO ONE ELSE knows how to create change? Yeah that's gonna be a no from me.

If I listened to voices like this I would have given up years ago. Years ago. Every single step of my career people have said that's impossible, no one will care, no one will care about what you're doing, Cat, no one will care about the truth, or data, or evidence.

And they have always. Been. Wrong.

Facts 😅

I agree with this bloke, I regularly give donations to Wikipedia. I get a lot of use out of it. Obviously you have to be cautious about its accuracy, but that's the same for everything on the Web - especially in the AI era. It's often a useful starting point.

"It was a Melbourne International Comedy Festival show at Trades Hall and revolution must have been in the air, because when the performer on stage started to complain about receiving unsolicited donation emails from Wikipedia, I had to speak up.

"Who would ever donate money to an online encyclopaedia, she asked? My family members tensed up, knowing they couldn’t stop the train-wreck about to ensue."

#Wikipedia https://www.smh.com.au/national/a-comedian-mocked-me-for-paying-200-for-this-free-service-but-you-should-stump-up-too-20251006-p5n0ce.html

Microsoft wants 2025 to be the "year of the Windows 11 PC refresh." They want up to 400 million perfectly good computers running Windows 10 to become e-waste. Why? So Microsoft can have their cake ($140-$200 for a Windows 11 license) and eat it (your data) too

It's time to switch sides, and break away from this cycle of endless upgrades. Our new guide walks you through installing a Linux-based operating system—keeping your computer secure long after Microsoft walks away

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/How+to+Install+Linux+on+a+Windows+PC/196722

The king frowned severely. "We are in a crisis," he said. "If we cannot discover what is draining all the water from our kingdom, I fear for the safety of my subjects!"

"Then I have good news, your Excellency!" replied the head wizard. "For I have created a great Artificial Brain to solve complicated problems like these! I have tested it for the last year, and now it is ready to aid us!"

The King smiled. "Amazing! What powers this marvelous device?"

"Water, my Liege!"

#microfiction

The technical consensus is clear: you can't create a backdoor that only lets the "good guys" in. However they're dressed up, these proposals create cybersecurity loopholes that hackers and hostile nations are eagerly waiting to exploit. 6/

Periodic self-repetition: As a data librarian I can say that "AI" is not a matter of personal preference -- whether you like it or not, or whether you have found some use that you think is useful. It actively destroys organized knowledge, and therefore it actively destroys civilization.

Whenever someone looks for a human written text and can't find it because statistical near variants have been created and indexed, whenever "AI" "hallucinates" a reference, knowledge has been destroyed.