Alex / catileptic

[she/they] Move slow and fix things. CTO @ apti.ro. Senior dev @ darc.li. Open-Source Dev, Human Rights Advocacy.   Queer, Relationship Anarchist 🏳️‍🌈

Public Key

npub1chfpr5jqvm0qu5a7w8gu7uc0j9mqqnxy3ulcu94dkdkdy9j95s9q9egd9a

NIP-05 Address

catileptic@chaos-social.mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsvt5s36fqxdhsw2wl8r5w0wv8ezasqfnzg70uwz6kmxmxjzez6gzspz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsh39638

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relay.damus.io

nos.lol

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npub1chfpr5jqvm0qu5a7w8gu7uc0j9mqqnxy3ulcu94dkdkdy9j95s9q9egd9a

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Last Notes

2026-10-26 09:27:11 UTC

automating tasks displaces anger and aggression && prevents the real issues from ever reaching those who can address them ( from a French text on automation of public services https://shs.hal.science/file/index/docid/635241/filename/machines_hostiles.pdf )
automating tasks makes auditing the final result take longer & the human auditors lack the mental context and the intuitive understanding of trade-offs made & mistakes can cascade and degrade the entire ecosystem & incentive is strong not to see this: https://freakonometrics.hypotheses.org/89367
#fuckgenAI

2026-10-25 20:46:13 UTC

Vučić admits that his party lost the elections in #Serbia to the Student List (a party consisting of students, professors, academics formed in 2025 after the protesters demanded early elections)
https://www.danas.rs/vesti/politika/izbori26/vucic-objavio-rezultate-izbora-nemamo-konacne-rezultate-po-ovim-rezultatima-smo-izgubili/

2026-10-25 20:41:26 UTC

the italians took katyusha and made it into a song for #antifascist resistance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7NPjOqAOkc
the french took katyusha and made it into a song calling for a general #strike
us romanians? we made a horribly undignified song about soldiers getting STDs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEz9FuILZkI
we can do better, we should do better, goddamn it!

2026-10-22 20:56:55 UTC

i teared up at the end of this #EMF talk (i think @nprofile…hqg6 linked to it)
Jo Franchetti talks with clarity and lucidity about how men actively, repeatedly chose not to confront other men who behave inappropriately towards women in tech. they chose to let it slide, laugh, whisper behind the backs of aggressors instead of being the ones to take a principled stand and call out abject behaviour
here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXL6K1lhvt0
(1/2)

2026-10-22 11:15:47 UTC

in #Romania, we're going through the red scare. there's a resurgence of paranoia in political debate. all arguments against capitalism or re-arming are perceived and treated as implicitly communist and authoritarian.
(keep in mind, i actually mean that any nuance, any critique of the status quo is treated this way! i don't only mean eg "argument against supporting Ukraine". i literally mean any discussion of HOW and WHEN we arm) (1/5)

2026-10-17 17:55:31 UTC

finally read "The Tyranny of Structurelessness", recommended by @nprofile…gcwq
https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm
in short
- every group has some structure
- if not acknowledged, it is informal
- if it is informal, it can't be held accountable
- acknowledged and publicly described structure is better, but not perfect & existing models can be exclusionary
- accountability is critical to accessibility
- allocate tasks according to abilities, allow people to learn, and rotate who does what
#feminism

2026-10-14 08:58:25 UTC

about the endless finger-pointing re: "bombing Yandex servers decreased / did not decrease coordinated inauthentic behaviour online":
some people talk about this trying to curb the enthusiasm of folx who celebrate a decrease in "disinfo", pointing out that "bots" also means crawlers, indexers, and pointing out that Russian services were the most disrupted. good takes. i'm happy to see @nprofile…qjgw quoted in an article stating as much: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/13/ukrainian-strikes-russian-datacentres-online-disinformation-bots
however...
(1/x)

2026-10-12 14:26:31 UTC

one thing i am grateful for, the day after #fnf26 ended: all the folx who took down notes, take-away ideas and resources in their respective sessions!

2026-10-11 07:44:30 UTC

i am enjoying myself more than words can express at #fnf26
i love the communal organizing, i love the great, insightful chats, the constructive attitude, the jokes, oh, the jokes!
so happy i attended
@nprofile…hqg6 and i got some good feedback on our Trust and Safety methodology for @nprofile…mrp8
such a lovely space
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/117/421/146/932/773/922/original/eb605010e5a82bd9.jpeg

2026-10-08 12:43:03 UTC

i'm attending Freedom not Fear and Privacy Camp in Brussels
if anyone wants to say hi, i will, as always, have stickers with me, including some special, limited-edition stickers from @nprofile…83ta ^^ and @nprofile…mrp8 ^^
#freedomnotfear #fnf #privacycamp26 #PrivacyCamp

2026-10-07 10:45:39 UTC

Snoop (#Romanian investigative outlet) published an extremely detailed analysis of the smartphone app used by the fascist party, AUR, to "stay in touch" with its supporters & party members
https://snoop.ro/monitorizarea-de-aur-aplicatia-de-pe-telefoanele-a-sute-de-mii-de-romani-geolocalizeaza-culege-date-intime-si-mobilizeaza-proteste/
AUR is using gamification to incentivize people to participate in a pyramid scheme (recruitment); it's using dishonest UX to persuade people to hand over very sensitive data (under GDPR) such as their political affiliation; and representatives are lying about why
#fuckfascism

2026-10-04 14:21:42 UTC

i'm screening Machines in Flames, a movie by the Destructionalist International, with @nprofile…wu7v
the documentary follows the actions of CLODO, a group active in Toulouse in the 1980s, that would burn down computer companies; their critique and hostility can be read as being aimed at the use of computers in gov., police & the army
documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGVMu5OPu7E
interview with the director: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKX4V_atmMQ
the entire docu. is online, you can screen it, too! ;)

2026-09-25 06:35:59 UTC

"The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't"
that's Douglas Adams in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
and that's a semantic construction you can't get out of n LLM
refering to something through the absence of that thing is literally something "genAI can't do"
because genAI derives no meaning from absence. it doesn'r encode absence and thus can't retrieve / generate it
but we do. we sure do.
don't let the news cycle define what intelligence is. and #fuckgenai

2026-09-20 17:00:13 UTC

tiny #peertube related question: can someone recommend or link me to a person livestreaming on peertube?

2026-09-09 09:34:36 UTC

if you generate an image with Claude, the meta-data contains a label that it was generated or edited with Claude
if you send this image over Signal to someone, metadata is stripped, and the receiver no longer has access to the meta-data that it was generated / edited with Claude
...which is my way of saying, if we want to go down the path of pursuing AI Act article 50 (transparency), meta-data for image / audio / video is insufficient and trivial to remove
#AIA #AIAct #fuckai

2026-08-10 15:03:42 UTC

this week, i'll release something i've been working on with a team of two other great folx
i didn't mention it so far, but i'm part of this year's @nprofile…3h6g cohort ^^ we've been cooking up some tools for investigators and researchers
the first two tools we will publish have been designed to "federate" OpenAleph instances. one query goes directly to as many instances as a user has access to
i will appreciate feedback & improvements on our little experiments
#openaleph #darc

2026-08-08 09:46:21 UTC

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@nprofile…trls gorgeous :3 seeing this kind of serenity makes me want to be there, with two good poetry books, at sunset

2026-07-20 10:29:13 UTC

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@nprofile…jydu this thread has reached me via a recommendation from @nprofile…96qj
it was a very good read, thank you for sharing your thoughts (and the emotions these thoughts bring up!)
we had similar chats about how to build software during our collaboration in the current Prototype Fund round
it's interesting to be able to see the narrative thread that started with the chats in your collaboration and "carried over" to ours

2026-06-14 16:31:15 UTC

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@nprofile…h6sh why is it comical? :)

2026-06-14 12:27:34 UTC

in 2022, during the #Pride Protest in #Bucharest, the police asked me to throw away my banner that said "make love, not war" ("faceți sex, nu război")
this was an "offensive" message to "onlookers"
this year, i spotted what looked like a 3 meter long banner with the same message, at Bucharest Pride
some things got better since i left. but some things are still fragile. #Romania is still one coalition away from reliving its fascist past. one political gamble away from authoritarianism.

2026-06-02 07:18:25 UTC

Meta "fixed" the security "vuln" that allows people to trick the "support" chatbot into changing the password for any account via asking nicely and using a VPN that puts them in the same geographical region as the target of the hack (as per @nprofile…0jjs )
https://www.404media.co/hackers-simply-asked-meta-ai-to-give-them-access-to-high-profile-instagram-accounts-it-worked/
god knows what the "fix" is, because if it's anything less than removing all chatbot access to any API path, database and other infra, it isn't a fix, it's a new coat of paint on top of a wide-open door
#fuckgenai

2026-05-29 06:34:43 UTC

a #russian #drone hit an apartment in Galați, #Romania, exploded and wounded 2 people
romanian press describe this as a drone "falling", whereas foreign press describe it as a drone "hitting"
there was no attempt to shoot down the drone. Romania still doesn't have a clear, legal accord on shooting down drones. responsibility is being passed around.
Ursula von der Leyen posted a message of solidarity, before our President, before any Romanian minister
i am fucking appalled

2026-05-27 14:52:19 UTC

"TLDR: In ten days last month, the Wikimedia Foundation fired the longtime lead developer of MediaWiki and disbanded the team whose entire job was to listen to volunteers. Most of the people they fired were union organizers. Wikipedia’s editors are now threatening to strike in solidarity. The Foundation is sitting on $296 million in reserves and a freshly profitable AI revenue stream. This is a confrontation with global implications"
https://medium.com/@jakeorlowitz/wikipedia-is-doing-the-capitalist-thing-56a393232943

2026-05-25 14:15:34 UTC

to mark the sudden spike in temperature this last weekend:
a picture of myself hanging out, leaned up against the open window of a moving train, as it passes through a forest in germany
photo by @nprofile…3ahk :3
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/116/635/633/796/050/734/original/e769390f866c06b2.jpg

2026-05-20 11:51:41 UTC

i penned a piece on Relationship Anarchy for Harbour, the lovely collection of essays, short stories and poetry put together by @nprofile…ypmy
https://en.scrappycapydistro.info/harbour
@nprofile…njay and @nprofile…ttpd have their own contributions in this issue
"It was never about time. Scheduling can never be equal. Nor should it. Desire can’t be measured in seconds. Or centimeters. Longing doesn’t care about your calendar."
#relationshipanarchy #microfiction

2026-05-10 15:54:50 UTC

why is it not a friend if it is friend-shaped? :(
#corvid #bird #photography #photo
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/116/551/089/478/926/778/original/2aa61c0cca10fc32.jpeg

2026-05-03 16:48:03 UTC

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@nprofile…rl6x that is such a horrible thing to do, i'm sorry you're getting this reaction time and time again :(

2026-04-29 10:08:36 UTC

late last night i suddenly got the enthusiasm to run an #agate server and make my first little #gemini capsule
i under-estimated how much setup it takes and how much of a rabbit hole reading the docs will be. i do love verbose docs, though <3
could anyone link me to a blog discussing the security risks of running a webserver to serve gemini pages? it's a little unclear to me whether i should be taking any extra precautions here
any adjacent resources are also welcome ^^

2026-04-28 14:13:46 UTC

ok, i just fucked-up in a very shameful way
i sent @nprofile…udj6 an article and got back the question: "Since when do we already have #Django v7 and #Pydantic v3?"
...which, upon closer inspection, we don't.
the article describes these two software versions, complete with "new features", how to install them and how to use them (lots of code samples!)
except these things don't exist
but the article looks so believable!
but it's all nonesense
i truly and utterly hate the #genAI infested web

2026-04-27 12:31:08 UTC

dear #python folx
does anyone have experience writing #django apps using async views and async ORM operations? doesn't have to be production stuff, can be a personal project.
any take-aways, lessons learned you'd like to share? is using #async in #django 6 feasible now? or are we still better off maybe using #fastAPI?
if someone knows of a good discussion on this written by humans, ideally from lived experience (not platitudes or docs), i'd also love a link!

2026-04-24 12:38:49 UTC

finally bought myself a (brother) sewing machine after having used the machines of people i live with
it's really difficult for me, as a shorter, fat person, with wide hips, to find pants that fit me properly. i'm giving up on trying to find a brand and style that fits.
if anyone knows #sewing #patterns for full-length, high-waist pants (either with an elastic band or zipper + buttons), i would love recommendations
or youtube videos that explain how to draft such a pattern, that also works

2026-04-20 20:50:03 UTC

Anthropic secretly installs spyware when you install Claude Desktop (on MacOS)
https://www.thatprivacyguy.com/blog/anthropic-spyware/
#nogenai #fuckclaude #fuckanthropic

2026-04-19 08:46:58 UTC

More Perfect Union put out a great video essay on Polymarket and the utter atrocities that they are enacting
basically, this industry is just gambling, force-fed to the most economically and emotionally vulnerable, protected by bribes and buying off kleptocratic politicians
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A654vzQTGbQ
"some markets just shouldn't exist" - and there are multiple ways to act in line with this thought. one of them is legislation. but it isn't the only one. we can't only wait for the kleptocrats.

2026-04-18 21:03:00 UTC

"How does one achieve eternal bliss? By saying dada. How does one become famous? By saying dada. With a noble gesture and delicate propriety. Till one goes crazy. Till one loses consciousness. How can one get rid of everything that smacks of journalism, worms, everything nice and right, blinkered, moralistic, europeanised, enervated? By saying dada. [...]
The word, gentlemen, is a public concern of the first importance."
Hugo Ball. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/hugo-ball-dada-manifesto
#dada #dadaism

2026-04-16 15:56:27 UTC

looking for recommendations for essay-length contextualizations of the #dada movement in the political context that gave birth to it
i have a lot of book-length materials (as in: books!) on my list already
i'm hoping fedi can feed me some aperitif: essays that give a sense of that dada achieved, what it wanted to achieve, or anything along these lines

2026-04-14 14:52:53 UTC

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@nprofile…l7em interesting idea. my email address contains eastern european names on top of this one, so there's very little chance i am in someone's test data :) sorry to hear about your inconvenience, though!

2026-04-14 14:47:03 UTC

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@nprofile…l7em interesting idea, thanks for checking :)
i sent them an e-mail saying that i never consented to my data being processed in this way and that their processing might be a GDPR violation and they sent the order on the same day

2026-04-14 07:59:30 UTC

i ordered some electronic equipment from telecomshop [dot] nl and received an e-mail signed by something named an "AI Agent"
in this e-mail, my purchase is being analyzed and questioned
i'm asked to confirm that i "really want" the objects i already bought and paid for, because they "don't seem to go well together".
words cannot describe how furious i am at having an algorithm delay a delivery and analyze my purchase data
...and we want to water down (pardon, "simplify") the GDPR for this?!

2026-04-12 07:32:06 UTC

#Hungary is voting today, and all i wish for it is a Monday without Orban
16 years have been 16 too many

2026-04-11 11:08:02 UTC

spontaneous and exciting: i'm doing a session at Cables of Resistance called "How can we use the law to advance a vision of the world we want?" at 5pm in Seminar 2
come say hi, i have stickers :)
#cablesofresistance #digitalrights

2026-04-04 17:21:32 UTC

i read one good quote from anarchist Hakim Bey and immediately wanted to read his TAZ book / zine / collection
the essays quickly name-drop elevating the aesthetics of child exploitation as something liberating and radical
a quick internet search brought me to: "The issue I find worth discussing is that for over twenty years, Wilson/Bey has used anarchist arguments to promote pedophilia in his published work"
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/robert-p-helms-paedophilia-and-american-anarchism
...and this is why we can't have nice things

2026-03-31 15:39:40 UTC

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@nprofile…rl6x didn't know i wanted to find out what this person has been up to until just now
and it's a bit of a sigh of relief that something from early internet culture hasn't turned sour
thank you for sharing! :3

2026-03-31 10:07:38 UTC

as someone who has been in NGOs since high-school, the latest essay by @nprofile…el49 was a punch in the gut that i welcome with masochistic enthusiasm: https://newdesigncongress.org/en/pub/the-great-convergence-and-its-discontents/
in Romania, i was the CTO of the civic tech NGO that provided the gov. with digital infrastructure during the COVID-19 lockdown. we made the dashboard that we then saw in the subway stations every day, death toll rising. the gov. cooperated when they needed us and the shut the door in our faces.
(1/6)

2026-03-26 08:22:05 UTC

"What many countries around the world are about to experience... is a period of rapid and involuntary decarbonisation. And that will necessarily mean rapid and involuntary degrowth.
Degrowth is a highly divisive term – and many will reject it. The main shortcoming of degrowth is the assumption that it will be in some way up to us to decide – a kind of lifestyle choice.
It won’t be; whether you like degrowth or hate it, the war on Iran makes it all but unavoidable"
https://open.substack.com/pub/reclaimedsystems/p/how-to-lose-an-empire-in-less-than

2026-03-20 09:45:58 UTC

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@nprofile…u7p7 thanks for describing how you see this entire dynamic
it's good to know it isn't so unpleasant
and if my description of how things look from the outside over-stated the reality of it all, i stand corrected :)

2026-03-20 09:37:11 UTC

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@nprofile…u7p7 that's the one that i mean, yes
it's just super disappointing. it could have been a good moment to say, well, look, we're all on the same side, you have a point, i'm not ceding to your point but i want to acknowledge it etc.
we could have prefigurated the kind of camaraderie we talk about
but no. instead, thousands of words to bury a point under a mountain of the aesthetics of radical discourse, void of essence

2026-03-20 09:28:43 UTC

i believe in cooperation and coalitions
which is why it scares me and worries me that @nprofile…ugpy is using his enormous platform to essentiailly rile against one dissenting opinion of @nprofile…u7p7
nothing is more corrosive to collaboration than a fragile ego which can not tolerate, or accommodate, or even be welcoming towards dissent
if we use all our might to homogenize the discourse in a room, we're dancing to the tune of the authoritarian fetish

2026-03-10 09:16:37 UTC

Excellent article by @nprofile…ypm9 on the weakening of the #EIDAS regulation:
https://epicenter.works/en/content/five-problems-the-commission-must-fix-in-the-eu-wallet
@nprofile…83ta signed an open letter to the Commission calling for stronger safeguards in the implementing acts:
https://epicenter.works/fileadmin/medienspiegel/user_upload/eIDAS_IAs_OpenLetter_2026.pdf

2026-02-13 10:34:58 UTC

an excellent data-based investigation on „mobile Europeans” - folx who live in an EU member state with IDs issued by another country and who do not participate in general elections in their current state of residence (and, sometimes, neither in the state that issued their IDs)
https://homolova.sk/missingvoters/

2026-01-23 13:12:47 UTC

Microsoft Gave FBI Keys To Unlock Encrypted Data, Exposing Major Privacy Flaw
https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2026/01/22/microsoft-gave-fbi-keys-to-unlock-bitlocker-encrypted-data/

2026-01-19 08:40:11 UTC

@nprofile…ak5n published an excellent article on their advocacy red lines
their position states "We do not tolerate actors who pursue a policy of group-related misanthropy and who are trying to destroy democratic institutions"
they call out invitations issued by US state department representatives to talk to NGOs about "freedom of expression", which they describe as "an attempt to instrumentalize a CSO for the policy of the U.S. government and the lobbying of Big Tech"
https://digitalegesellschaft.de/2026/01/wir-muessen-nicht-mit-jedem-reden/

2025-12-28 10:17:47 UTC

I saw a funny toot that said "I wonder what the overlap of the Panama Papers and the Epstein files is".
This is exactly the kind of question that free and open-source software like #OpenAleph can answer.
@nprofile…ycu2 is doing a session at #39c3 on making sense of leaked data and solving "AI problems" without AI.
Join us on Day 3 at 19:30 at SoS Stage H https://events.ccc.de/congress/2025/hub/en/event/detail/where-do-all-the-leaks-go-openaleph-roundtable

2025-12-25 11:34:11 UTC

my essay on Relationship Anarchy and how we can build a better future with technologies is out!
https://catileptic.tech/posts/relationship-anarchy-technology/
I'm doing a session on these ideas at #39c3 https://events.ccc.de/congress/2025/hub/en/event/detail/relationship-anarchy-and-technologies-of-conn_x57l
on day 3, at 12:00 PM, in SoS Lecture E
last year, i did a similar session, trying to establish RA as a form of livable anarchy. that essay is here: https://catileptic.tech/posts/relationship-anarchy/
would love to hear the thoughts of all creatures on this stuff, at congress, on mastodon and in DMs
#anarchy #relationshipanarchy

2025-12-16 07:20:41 UTC

This year, I stopped consuming the feeds of Big Tech social media platforms. I still have my accounts, because a lot of activism & advocacy is organized & amplified there. My NGO is no exception (for now).
I still consume the Mastodon feed regularly.
As my overwhelm increased, I took breaks from short-form thoughts altogether, and read a few pages from a book when I needed to procrastinate or wind down.
Reading about the same subject, in long form, feels relaxing. A relief for the nerves.

2025-12-02 09:14:15 UTC

"WW1 toxic compound sprayed on Georgian protesters, BBC evidence suggests"
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czrk7g50e1po
What happens next? Well:
"Georgian Dream launches legal action against the BBC in international courts"
https://georgiatoday.ge/georgian-dream-launches-legal-action-against-the-bbc-in-international-courts/
(Georgian Dream is the pro-Russian Georgian party currently in government)
#georgia #protests #chemicalweapons

2025-11-19 16:42:54 UTC

@nprofile…k4zw has published their position on the now-published, no-long-a-leak Digital Omnibus proposal: https://edri.org/our-work/commissions-digital-omnibus-is-a-major-rollback-of-eu-digital-protections/
i wrote up the stance we take at @nprofile…q2ma in #Romanian: https://apti.ro/content/GDPR-facut-ferfenita-sub-numele-digital-omnibus
whichever you read and share, the message is the same: the Digital Omnibus amounts to deregulation and a love letter addressed to Big Tech. it risks dismantling the hard-won system that kept our personal data safe, in the EU.

2025-11-10 08:34:23 UTC

People are being fired, or employed precariously, because too much money has been funneled into the bankrupt technology of genAI and the profits have never materialized.
Companies cut costs with employment in order to keep fueling the investments in either building or using genAI.
(article by FastCompany, paywalled, so here's an alternative way to read it) https://archive.is/9sdT5
We should all be luddites and call this technology by its name: an anti-social technology.
#antiai #luddite

2025-10-31 08:44:43 UTC

Denmark dropped detection orders from the #ChatControl regulation proposal. A bunch of issues remain. The proposal still treats all citizens as already-guilty, already-suspect. It instills generalized surveillance, even if platforms get to do it voluntarily.
https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/half-good-new-danish-chat-control-proposal/

2025-10-27 13:35:35 UTC

can anyone recommend a FOSS "library" app?
i have a bunch of books, essays, articles i've collected and i'd love to put all of them in one place, "index" them and then browse them with a web app.
#foss #library #archive #books

2025-10-09 12:38:18 UTC

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"The AI bubble is the only thing keeping the US economy together, Deutsche Bank warns.
According to a research note recently sent to clients by Deutsche Bank, the AI boom is currently helping the US economy avoid a recession but it cannot continue indefinitely. George Saravelos, Global Head of FX Research at Deutsche Bank, said the US would be close to a recession this year if Big Tech were not spending so heavily on building new AI data centers."
https://www.techspot.com/news/109626-ai-bubble-only-thing-keeping-us-economy-together.html

2025-10-09 11:55:17 UTC

Ursula von der Leyen said: "I want the future of AI to be made in Europe. [...] We will drive this ‘AI first' mindset across all our key sectors, from robotics to healthcare, energy and automotive."
If this "AI" is generative AI, this statement is a threat.
It's the threat of mass precarization and erosion of social protection and labour laws.
The threat of further eroding social cohesion.
I'd rather Europe lead in burning genAI down here, first.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_2299

2025-06-10 07:39:02 UTC

North African 'resilience convoy' heads to Gaza, aiming to break Israel's siege
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/north-africa-convoy-heads-gaza-break-israel-siege
"Thousands of volunteers from Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia left the Tunisian capital in a 100-vehicle convoy to raise international awareness of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and deliver life-saving aid, organisers said."

2025-05-17 09:05:58 UTC

On the day of electoral silence, one day before the vote, in Romania, campaign messages are no longer allowed. We've said all there was to say. In observing this day, I want to share Vladimir Bortun's essay on how we got in the current political situation:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/16/opinion/romania-election-simion-dan.html

2025-05-14 08:42:13 UTC

An excellent documentary about the fascist and neo-fascist movement in Romania, with English subtitles!
https://youtu.be/sHp4omSFSNg?si=b-2XIH5wDjiyBH8T
Created by info-sud-est, a local newsroom from Constanța, that has been at the forefront of documenting this extremist movement and the people involved in it, at the cost of their personal safety.
If y'all want to shed light on what is currently happening in Romania, I encourage you to spread this documentary far & wide.

2025-05-12 10:21:42 UTC

The Romanian fascist candidate shared a post on his blog, where he addresses those who will not vote for him directly. He tells them that he will "deal with each one of them", individually, after he becomes president.
https://georgesimion.ro/ce-ma-fac-cu-voi/ (at the bottom of the post)
Believe would-be dictators when they tell you what they will do. And vote against them.

2025-04-24 11:18:05 UTC

Companies like Infatica are paying app developers to include a SDK into their apps. This SDK transforms the users of these apps into docile botnet participants. Infatica's own customers are then using these residential, normal-user IPs to crawl the web (for AI data gathering purposes, for example).
Good write-up sounding the alarm: https://jan.wildeboer.net/2025/04/Web-is-Broken-Botnet-Part-2/

2025-04-19 07:52:04 UTC

Excellent point, with an excellent name: inverted orientalism. The racism that becomes complicit to crimes against humanity, dressed as progressive politics.
https://freethinker.co.uk/2025/04/the-racism-of-anti-racists-bourdieu-said-and-inverted-orientalism/
Slavoj Zizek also makes this point in the context of migration, pointing out that we must uphold human rights in every situation, and that no amount of "knowing thy neighbour" will erase fundamental differences. We can and must learn to live with difference. And defend human rights when they are infrindged upon.

2025-04-16 18:07:59 UTC

If I turn on local news: a Romanian MP said that little girls who play with Barbies instead of regular toys do not experience the role of the mother, but, instead, a role closer to that of a prostitute.
If I turn on international news: the UK Supreme Court rules that trans women aren't women.
It's not about "women", it's about control.
What will unite us is resisting control, regardless of our identity.
Abandon gatekeeper and take up solidarity.

2025-04-15 09:59:45 UTC

‘Your cloud is drying my river’
SourceMaterial and The Guardian publish an investigation into the impact on water availability of datacenters, both those already built and those that are under construction.
https://www.source-material.org/amazon-microsoft-google-trump-data-centres-water-use/

2025-03-31 16:14:44 UTC

thrilled to be part of the newly-launched Data Research Center - DARC
https://dataresearchcenter.org/
i'm lucky to be in the company of some pretty awe-inspiring people!
here's to good work, out in the open
tinkering with OpenAleph https://openaleph.org/ & other experimental investigative tooling
#opensourcedevelopment #FOSS

2025-03-07 13:58:53 UTC

"U.S. satellite mapping company Maxar Technologies has blocked Ukraine's access to its imagery, according to a report by Ukrainian defense outlet Militarnyi."
https://www.politico.eu/article/us-satellite-company-maxar-cuts-off-ukraine-access-imagery-report-says/

2025-02-28 20:06:14 UTC

"ZELENSKYY: Mr. Trump, you are increasing the volume of your voice, but not the logic of your argument. Ukraine is still standing. We are still fighting."

2025-02-27 15:25:00 UTC

The Tate brothers, who were under investigation for human trafficking and money laundering, have been allowed by prosecutors to leave Romania, after the current circle of USA fascists put pressure on authorities to allow their release.
Here's the Romanian journalistic investigation: https://www.riseproject.ro/projects/the-tate-brothers/
and a summary, in English: https://youtu.be/AWtn70tN3og?si=7SD523d0IfSf3Pd0
With March 8 coming up, all I want is to see those who abuse women being sanctioned not just by the law but also by their peers.

2025-02-18 13:15:55 UTC

I highly recommend "Why Fish Don’t Exist" by Lulu Miller during this time when we are seeing an accelerationist ideology married to the fascism that won the elections in the USA.
The book documents - among other things - the eugenics movement in the early 1900s USA.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/oct/05/why-fish-dont-exist-by-lulu-miller-review-a-marvel-of-narrative-non-fiction
#antifascism #eugenics

2025-02-17 12:51:41 UTC

I've started listening to #metal music intently again, after a couple of years where I mostly enjoyed prog, post-rock and symphonic stuff.
I'd love some recommendations for #queer metal bands. Sounds and aesthetics that aren't firmly rooted in masculine representation would be absolutely lovely. Any subgenre or related genre is welcome.

2025-02-11 13:34:44 UTC

Two pieces of news that make me unhappy today:
1. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has launched InvestAI, an initiative to mobilise €200 billion for investment in A (source: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_467 )
2. Roblox, Discord, OpenAI and Google found new child safety group (ROOST). The press release announcing ROOST specifically calls out plans to offer "tools to detect, review, and report child sexual abuse material (CSAM)."
#AI

2025-02-09 21:45:36 UTC

Excellent podcast about the conservative ideology that shaped the Internet, as well as media and Internet policy, in America, from #TechWontSaveUs (and host @nprofile…uzew ):
https://techwontsave.us/episode/251_the_forgotten_story_of_how_conservatives_shaped_the_internet_w_becca_lewis
The guest, Becca Lewis, published some of the facts discussed in the podcast in a Guardian article recently:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ng-interactive/2025/jan/29/silicon-valley-rightwing-technofascism

2025-02-06 10:28:22 UTC

The List of Trump’s Forbidden Words That Will Get Your Paper Flagged at National Science Foundation
"Trump and his fellow fascists use terms like DEI to describe anything they don’t like, which means that the word “women” is on the forbidden list while “men” doesn’t initiate a review."
There's a list at the end of the article.
https://gizmodo.com/the-list-of-trumps-forbidden-words-that-will-get-your-paper-flagged-at-nsf-2000559661
#DEI #fascism #statetakeover

2025-02-03 11:04:38 UTC

Reading a lot of "benchmark" articles comparing DeepSeek and ChatGPT.
My conclusion is that generative AI benchmarks are just vibes.
It's a lot like I was comparing two cars by opening the door, peering inside, and concluding "the car on the left feels more sustainable".
#genai #slop #ai

2025-01-29 11:09:34 UTC

SURVIVE THE TYRANT!
"An RPG-style guide to living under an oppressive regime"
https://survivethetyrant.infy.uk/

2025-01-25 21:43:14 UTC

> A reporter once asked A.J. Muste -- a social activist who, during the Vietnam War, stood outside the White House night after night -- 'Mr. Muste, do you really think you are going to change the policies of this country by standing out here alone at night with a candle?'
> "'Oh,' Muste replied, 'I don't do this to change the country. I do this so the country won't change me.'
(quoted from Denise Roy's essay, "The Mother is Standing")
#antifascism

2025-01-18 16:03:54 UTC

"Hype, Sustainability, and the Price of the Bigger-is-Better Paradigm in AI" - this recent paper is such an approachable, clear read! I can recommend it to folx who might only want to "catch up" with the general state of LLM research.
It makes excellent points about how training data volume decreases the ability to document what is being used, thus making audits impractical. The focus on scale also gaekeeps research opportunities for "GPU poor" institutions.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.14160
#AI #LLM

2025-01-17 14:58:35 UTC

Digital rights policy folx, is there any article published on how local authorities are preparing for their work ahead under Article 77 of AI Act?
(local language is fine, doesn't have to be EN)
Anything on them training staff, anything on them declaring explicitly "oh, we'll focus on this particular high-risk use"?
I'm considering FOIA-ing the ones nominated in #Romania, to ask how they're preparing.
#AIA #AI #digitalrights

2025-01-02 09:25:07 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…d6h6 I think that Meredith Whittaker's talk from this year's CCC Congress (38c3) might be a good companion to these thoughts: https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-feelings-are-facts-love-privacy-and-the-politics-of-intellectual-shame
It speaks about this concept of "the politics of intellectual shame" and how the tech industry profit-making is predicated on shaming people into quiet cooperation or support. The opposite of that, of course, is "saying the quiet part out loud", expressing dissent and the kind of "thinking in the public space" that your articles are so good at!

2024-12-30 19:13:53 UTC

my wager was that a philosophical enquiry into liveable anarchy and how that can be put into practice through #relationshipanarchy would be welcome at #38c3 - and oh, i felt it found its place!
https://catileptic.tech/posts/relationship-anarchy/
i am thankful to each person who offered their thoughts. thankful for all the lovely conversations we had around the subject.
the #relationshipgeeks assembly was a cozy and safe home for all these connections and the orga team has been phenomenal.
stay safe, folx!

2024-12-27 09:24:08 UTC

I've published a zine on Relationship Anarchy, subtitled "Dreaming in the Belly of the Whale": https://catileptic.tech/posts/relationship-anarchy/
I'm vibrating from head to toe with excitement that I finally put my thoughts into words, all in one place, and I can offer them to others.
This zine is the result of countless excellent talks with lovely folx. It's also the result of reading Victor Vilisov and Slavoj Žižek, as well as many other texts that expanded my mind and nuanced my thinking.
#relationshipanarchy

2024-12-24 20:42:32 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…ka48 so sweet to read of other folx doing the same thing tonight. I submitted a self-organized session on Relationship Anarchy at 38c3 and I'm still writing the zine that's supposed to form the basis of that presentation.
Looking forwards to your talk! :)

2024-12-16 09:52:40 UTC

Amnesty International Security Lab revealed how the Serbian authorities have been using Cellebrite to break into the smartphones of activists and journalists, followed by planting NoviSpy, a type of spyware that Amnesty attributes with a high degree of certainty to the Serbian secret services.
https://securitylab.amnesty.org/latest/2024/12/serbia-a-digital-prison-spyware-and-cellebrite-used-on-journalists-and-activists/
#Serbia #Spyware #Cellebrite #NoviSpy

2024-12-01 12:03:10 UTC

The parliamentary elections in #Romania are in full swing today. So far, more people have voted than they did, at the same point in time, for the presidentials, last Sunday. More people than in the 2020 parliamentary elections.
The recount of the votes from last weekend is still under way. Monday, a decision will be announced on whether or not the presidentials will be anulled and re-organised at the end of this month.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/01/romania-votes-in-parliamentary-election-amid-claims-of-russian-interference-calin-georgescu

2024-11-26 23:01:45 UTC

Antifascist street protests are unfolding simultaneously in many cities in #Romania, not just the capital.
"Loving one's country is incompatible with fascism" - in a shorter form, that rhymes, in Romanian - is one of the main slogans.
Hearing the word "antifascist" being chanted in the University Square, in the capital, hits a nerve.
I'm finally seeing the press - more of them! - writing about the glorification and white-washing of Romanian fascists.
I hope it works.

2024-11-25 12:28:12 UTC

I'm heartbroken.
The first round of presidential elections in #Romania ended. First place: a pro-russian, fascist candidate, who has been peddling for strengthening our ties with Russia. A candidate who repeatedly said that the Iron Guard fascists of Romania, those who enacted pogroms, are heroes.
Second place - the candidate of the opposition to the establishment. A woman. Her discourse has become more progressive as the campaign went on.
(1/N)

2024-11-15 21:09:48 UTC

i'm relieved to the point to tears to read @nprofile…03x0's essay:
"I’m no longer interested in encouraging the design of more human-centered versions of these murderous technologies, or to inform the more humane administration of complex algorithmic systems that separate families, bomb schools and neighborhoods, that force people out of their homes or onto the streets, or that deny medical care at the moment people need it most."
https://ali-alkhatib.com/blog/fuck-up-ai

2024-11-14 12:54:41 UTC

I contributed to an investigation, for the Romanian publication Context, on how the Ministry of Exterior acquired software to profile and track journalists and influences, online. Why? Because they're trying to "combat #disinformation". With AI, of course.
Based on FOIA answers, I found out that the software is not operational one year after being bought. It also uses crude techniques, very different from what the Ministry publicly claims they're doing.
https://context.ro/dosare-personale-pentru-jurnalisti-si-influenceri-ministerul-de-externe-a-cheltuit-10-milioane-de-lei-pe-un-soft-cu-ai-care-sa-urmareasca-dezinformare-si-emotii-nefunctional-la-un-an-de-la-l/

2024-06-20 08:49:07 UTC

what do you use when you want to plot values in a chart quickly and neatly?
i don't mean "for production" or "for publishing". i just mean: you have a data set and you want to see lines on a line chart for yourself, just to get an intuition about what the data shows.
curious about the go-to solution of other folx when it comes to quick #dataviz.

2024-06-14 09:47:37 UTC

wrote about the excellent & extremely quotable ChatGPT is Bullshit paper on my blog: https://catileptic.tech/posts/chatgpt-is-bullshit/
kind reminder that #llm technology is not truth-seeking, that it merely reproduces without attempting to understand, that the made-up content is an intentional effect of how the algorithm works, that #ai kills and that #chatgpt puts large amounts of natural resources to waste only to feed us bullshit

2024-04-29 11:44:13 UTC

just read about the amendment to Investigatory Powers Bill (IPB) essentially passing (am i missing anything, UK folks? is there any chance for it to be stopped?)
with the Online Safety Bill letting Ofcom force companies to break end-to-end encryption and this amendment letting the gov. force companies to not patch security vulnerabilities, the uk is building a pretty good backdoor factory
the IPB applies the "halt security fixes" to overseas companies, too. wondering how that will work.