Christine Lemmer-Webber

Executive Director of The Spritely Institute (npub1zcx…p5f0) (but this is a personal account). I'm here to fix the Internet.
ActivityPub co-author, co-host of @fossandcrafts@octodon.social. Lisp sourceress, decentralized network architect, occasional Blender artist. she/her https://dustycloud.org/

Recently moved here from @cwebber@octodon.social

Lovely banner sketch by [@juliaro](https://mastodon.art/@juliaro ) https://mastodon.art/@juliaro/114489465896761273

Public Key

npub1urx3t48an3pv2vh37akfaks6ty5aujgslfccaa2g4egmam4c2czqg3v0z4

NIP-05 Address

cwebber_at_social.coop@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqswpng46n7ecsk9xtclwmy7mgd9j2w7fyg05uvw74y2u5d7a6u9vpqpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsz8as30

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1urx3t48an3pv2vh37akfaks6ty5aujgslfccaa2g4egmam4c2czqg3v0z4

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Last Notes

2026-05-20 16:51:32 UTC

There is really only one thing keeping me tied to Google stuff: the fact that I don't really know how to use Signal without having an Android'y device.
I actually don't want any kind of Android or Android-based device. I could use Graphene but I don't want to use that either.
I'd like to get less reliant on Signal too, but here's a challenge: is anyone successfully running Signal with *no* iOS or Android-type devices involved in the process and maintaining their account? How are you doing it?

2026-05-05 22:28:44 UTC

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We might even be able to fly planes using hydrogen fuel cells some day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen-powered_aircraft

2026-05-05 22:28:05 UTC

I think hydrogen fuel cells are pretty cool

2026-05-01 00:41:40 UTC

"Human beings weren't meant to eat plants", the man says
"Oh!" you say, while laughing politely, backing slowly out of the room while smiling

2026-04-29 20:41:39 UTC

RE: https://toot.yosh.is/@yosh/116487778402803336
boo hoo there's been such an uptick of code and most of it is slop and also scrapers are hitting our website harder than ever before
what company could possibly have normalized both of these things
who could have done it
#note1cmv…7jk5

2026-04-28 20:32:35 UTC

I'm empathetic to how damn hard it is to raise funding for FOSS nonprofits. That's a large portion of my job, and well, money has gotten a lot tighter lately. Finding anything at all, paying your people, is damn hard.
I do wonder if that's an influence on:
https://mastodon.social/@Blender/116482997785333001
I wasn't going to comment on it, but I guess it feels particularly timed with this announcement from the other side:
https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-for-creative-work
Bummer. Blender is still my favorite software, but I'm worried about how this will affect artists. Blender is 100% controllable in every way via its very good Python API. It's not surprising that there's interest to control it from AI agents.
I won't take myself out of the loop of producing my own artwork, and I don't think any software will replace Blender as my favorite graphics software, but I am bummed out by this.
I hope Blender doesn't start incorporating genAI contributions into its codebase also.
#note1ws9…jel0

2026-04-28 14:01:06 UTC

A game console for $1 https://chrisdell.info/using-rust-to-build-a-1-dollar-handheld-gaming-console/
The Rust part isn't what's interesting to me as much as... 9 cents for a risc-v microcontroller?!

2026-04-28 03:14:35 UTC

hold on honey I need to set up my computer to compile this package while we sleep

2026-04-27 20:48:30 UTC

Welcome! As the woman who invented the internet I hope you're having a really fun time on here

2026-04-27 20:28:26 UTC

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a website that got its name for being intentionally hard to pronounce
eighch tee tee pee double you double you double you slash slash slash dot dot com

2026-04-27 20:25:43 UTC

Oh shit we got Slashdotted

2026-04-27 18:07:43 UTC

I love the fediverse

2026-04-26 14:54:15 UTC

Ruby on Rails is maximizing its cringe https://rubyonrails.org/
Bro if you can prompt your way to IPO anyone can. What market do you think you're about to corner when anyone can vibe it? Hot nonsense
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/116/471/570/068/856/830/original/a18e4526ae5520d8.png

2026-04-26 14:47:58 UTC

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"You're gonna be left behind!" smirks the person who is actively leaving all their skills behind while using and pushing the easiest to adopt technology ever made

2026-04-26 14:38:12 UTC

deskilling speedrun 2026

2026-04-25 13:44:12 UTC

Gonna save up and buy an Altair. Can't wait to get a computer at home. This is going to change my life!

2026-04-24 18:56:24 UTC

"If you're so worried about datacenter impact on climate change you should go vegetarian, that would be more effective"
I am vegetarian *and* I am worried about datacenter impact on climate change

2026-04-24 17:38:44 UTC

Fascinating, though walled, read about the decline of GitHub inside Microsoft https://www.theverge.com/tech/917361/microsoft-executive-departures-notepad
> “There’s basically no more GitHub at all anymore,” one GitHub employee tells me. “It’s all Microsoft, and the company is collapsing, both in outages that are reallllly bad and have torched the company reputation… and in an exodus of leadership.”
Emacs users: you can access it through M-x eww. Somehow, eww remains my favorite paywall-busting browser

2026-04-24 13:37:24 UTC

A lot of stuff is shitty but the rise of solar to be the most efficient, cheapest energy source kinda rules

2026-04-23 18:17:41 UTC

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All these critiques are real, but the point is that finding these takes a lot of work and the rate and quantity of information we are presented with is so high we can't really keep up. Attacking is easier than defending.

2026-04-23 15:47:01 UTC

Maybe caring about making things and putting in the effort and being actively creative is now "old person shit"
Well, embracing my age more than ever, then

2026-04-23 15:42:41 UTC

OpenAI's new image generation tool is produces what seems to be *extremely* convincing images, and excels at text and making infographic'y things https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-7JSa_luc6k
Which... the main reason I highlight it is, relying on obvious jank to detect misinfo slop is gonna get a lot harder. Update your mental models.

2026-04-23 12:52:02 UTC

biking 💜

2026-04-23 11:26:39 UTC

I'm really grateful for @npub19g4…6a0t's journalism. She's the most mainstream tech journalist covering what's happening in the Fediverse and ATmosphere and does a good job explaining such things to people not in the know. Sometimes people get mad in a shoot-the-messenger way because they don't like the things she's *covering*, but I am glad she is *covering them*.
She doesn't editorialize too much in her pieces, but she does highlight things I want to *know* about, even in cases where I'm troubled by them.
For example, Chrome trying to become an "AI assistant" browser https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/22/google-turns-chrome-into-an-ai-coworker-for-the-workplace/
That Bluesky isn't alone, X is also doing "AI feeds" https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/22/hands-on-with-xs-new-ai-powered-custom-feeds/
Anyway, she does great work. Thanks for it, and thanks for being here!

2026-04-22 20:55:26 UTC

I regret to inform you that caring about things and being nice to people still rules actually

2026-04-22 20:34:58 UTC

Okay I have been avoiding *directly* addressing the Bluesky drama from today but hold on this whole thing about Why subscribing to a blocklist and antagonizing users who are "anti AI", I did not realize, also surrounds that blocklist bot's avatar being a "Studio Ghiblified" slop drawing of the Unabomber and suddenly this whole thing is a whole new level of bizarre and questionable https://bsky.app/profile/antiantiai.bsky.social
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/116/450/267/898/108/717/original/e95492d593940fcd.webp

2026-04-22 20:22:19 UTC

"It turned out the thing I really liked to do was to make things" says person who is enthusiastically telling you about how they never make things anymore

2026-04-22 03:51:07 UTC

"Anything can be art if you're weird about it enough" @npub139c…w37s says, but in an excited-how-weird-things-can-be-art way 💜

2026-04-21 21:08:28 UTC

Microsoft is now at the "you need to target your ads to AI" phase of arguments https://about.ads.microsoft.com/en/blog/post/april-2026/win-across-all-three-eras-of-the-web
> AI agents are your fastest-growing audience. Automated traffic is growing 8x faster than human traffic, AI-driven sessions nearly tripled in 2025 alone, and agentic browser traffic is up roughly 8,000% year over year. But unlike human customers, agents don't browse, scroll, or respond to advertising. They evaluate, select, and act. And if the data isn’t trusted by them, they move on. The sale is lost.

2026-04-21 14:57:39 UTC

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There's an exception if English is not your primary language and you would feel too self-conscious to publish if you hadn't used some editing assistance. This I can understand, though personally, I can tell you I wouldn't mind!

2026-04-21 14:55:46 UTC

If you are thinking about running your blogpost through an AI editor, don't! It almost always makes it more boring.
Whatever you have to say is what you had to say anyway. Just say that, you don't need more. And the mistakes are perfectly fine.
I spell check once, proofread once, then publish. When people point out errors, it makes me feel good, because it means people are reading what I write, and I correct it then.
I'd rather have your charming acoustic-performance words, even if you make mistakes! I love mistakes in writing. Rustic and cozy.

2026-04-21 11:39:55 UTC

this is a reminder that unless you have dietary restrictions to the contrary, lentils are really good

2026-04-20 20:15:55 UTC

I met an old lady who called her cat Beans. "Is it because of toe-beans?"
"No!" she said. "He was just full of beans!"
She was very happy about this answer, so we were too.

2026-04-20 16:23:48 UTC

Apparently mastodon.social is being DDoS'ed. I'm not posting about it on the ATmosphere because people are already mad at me on there from yesterday and my attempts to engage on this stuff. But I do think it's interesting that I had no idea all morning that this was happening, and I've been posting and interacting with people quite a bit.
But regarding the "don't gloat about it, the fight isn't actually with each other", I actually agree with that *more* than most fedi people, even though people probably presume I am very anti-ATproto. I'd like to see both systems learn from each other's strengths. It would be great when the ATmosphere could be at the point where a big player is DDoS'ed and other instances don't notice AND it would be great when the fediverse has content addressed storage and portable identity.
I'm not interested in gloating, I'm interested in moving to a place where everyone benefits and we develop a better, more participatory internet for people.

2026-04-20 15:56:34 UTC

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I've filed an issue about content addressed storage in ActivityPub! Thank you for encouraging me!
https://github.com/w3c/activitypub/issues/573

2026-04-20 15:30:03 UTC

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I will gladly add an issue!

2026-04-20 13:31:20 UTC

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I'm still not sure there's sufficient fediverse interest, and getting an ecosystem to move is tough. And there isn't enough leadership that seems bought in, and I don't feel like fighting it. Maybe it's still worth trying, but I've been focusing on new approaches.
The ATmosphere has more power concentration, but there is definitely more movement in it rn. But also they seem largely disinterested in what I have to say on this also.
So the right system hybridizes techniques from both, and adds some new ones, but I'm just not sure we can get there with either ecosystem right now. We'd have to see big buy-in from one or maybe both.

2026-04-20 13:29:31 UTC

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The fediverse correctly prioritized the ability to scale down and to have many co-equal participants in the system. I believe this is critically important. Directed delivery of messages is what makes this possible.
The ATmosphere correctly adopted content-addressed storage and decentralized identity, something I have been arguing that the fediverse needed since before ActivityPub finished standardization, but which by and large the fediverse developer ecosystem seemed uninterested in until recently. But nodes going down is a thing that is really stressful for many participants, including in choosing a node, or even daring to self host
It's possible to build a content-addressed system with directed delivery. I have been arguing towards that direction since 2017 https://github.com/WebOfTrustInfo/rwot5-boston/blob/master/final-documents/activitypub-decentralized-distributed.md

2026-04-20 12:56:44 UTC

- Fediverse: We care about scaling down and lots of full-participant nodes
- ATproto: We care about scaling up, a few root-participation nodes, many smaller fractionally participatory nodes
- Me (what people think I think): Fediverse rules ATproto drools
- Me (what I actually think): The right system has parts of both

2026-04-19 18:18:17 UTC

This is interesting. In my blogposts analyzing ATproto I had compared the shared heap vs message passing from a CS perspective
https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/
https://dustycloud.org/blog/re-re-bluesky-decentralization/
Ian Preston of Peergos did the actual formal mathematical proof of the incentive structure: https://peergos.net/secret/z59vuwzfFDp45jmsA6Wj2jc9hemCjB4JJHB81iosJsA9GAVRtkbrqBs/1024927538#%7B%22app%22:%22markup%22%2c%22path%22:%22ianopolous/docs%22%2c%22args%22:%7B%22filename%22:%22social-scaling.note%22%7D%2c%22writable%22:false%2c%22secretLink%22:true%2c%22linkpassword%22:%22UfAQURKSTTmM%22%2c%22open%22:true%7D
> It is interesting that this is independent of N. Let's say you have 1000 servers, and 1000 followers per user. Then the shared heap model uses about the same network bandwidth. With a small number of servers SH can be better, with many servers AP is better.
> The conclusion is that the shared-heap model builds in a structural incentive to keep M small, and thus has a natural centralizing force. Conversely there is an incentive in AP to keep F small.
Ie, there is a mathematical incentive in ATproto to only have a few large players.

2026-04-19 16:40:36 UTC

I love the vibecoding subreddit so much
- Spent 6 months vibecoding my app and nobody wants to use it ;_; https://old.reddit.com/r/vibecoding/comments/1sowsio/has_anyone_else_been_surprised_by_the_absolute/
- Claude telling a user "stop outsourcing your homework to me and go read OWASP like an adult" https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Frgkdrxgbwxvg1.png
- People upset about it being filled with AI slop https://old.reddit.com/r/vibecoding/comments/1sprf2u/we_should_change_this_subreddit_to_raislopposting/
"I hate that I just got into using AI to make apps and now my Reddit feed is an overwhelming sludge of what are clearly ads written by AI."
I'm so sorry for you

2026-04-19 14:35:24 UTC

never give up, never surrender

2026-04-18 17:16:47 UTC

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Maybe I am the only "oldschool FOSS licensing wonk" who worries about this, I am walking away with the impression that I am fairly alone amongst my peers who I thought would share these concerns. And maybe if that means I should give up in arguing about it.
But boy howdy if it DOES turn out to be an issue (and the whole point is I DON'T KNOW if it will and don't think ANYONE does) my Cassandra complex will inflate so much it will probably kill me

2026-04-18 16:52:14 UTC

RE: https://social.coop/@cwebber/116426025287444979
I see myself getting subtooted by various people, and let me clarify what this thread is, and is not. My opinions on LLM usage are more complicated than "good vs bad".
But I have created a scoped analysis here. My opinion is that we are facing a *licensing hygiene crisis* from a situation where we do not and probably will not know the licensing situation of these tools for some time.
There are only two viable scenarios I can see:
- LLM output is unusable and a copyright mess that cannot be incorporated in any FOSS project
- *All* LLM output is effectively in the public domain.
I am willing to accept either one of those, but the lack of knowledge of which situation we are facing makes me concerned about LLM based contributions entering FOSS projects on copyright grounds.
(There are plenty of other debates one can have about LLMs also, I have scoped them out of this particular thread.)
#note1nm8…67zy

2026-04-18 16:26:44 UTC

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- There are plenty of FOSS projects we care about which are not under copyleft. What terms should they consider received code under? Should SDL now consider all LLM based output under the GPL? The AGPL? Which? Do you expect such a project to switch its license to copyleft now?
- Microsoft's proprietary code may not be, but plenty of proprietary code is available under extremely non-FOSS and restrictive licenses which are within datasets we are getting contributions from *today*
- The mutually assured destruction "safe option" isn't that things are under copyleft for proprietary companies though, that's still a losing scenario for them. So that doesn't help the case for copyleft, only accepting that LLM output under the public domain is (which we don't know)

2026-04-18 14:32:00 UTC

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If you are talking about my personal wishes, I would agree. Personally, I perceive of FOSS as a *reaction to* allowing copyright and other intellectual restrictions laws to apply to software.
This puts me at odds with some other copyleft advocates. I see copyleft as useful because it "turns the teeth of the machine against itself". If you have copyright, then great, we will use it to have a way to force the commons to stay open.
But it would be better to have no copyright at all, and if we could give it up, I would give it up.
But it's a far-fetched dream that it could happen. Maybe it will. I am not so sure. If it truly is possible to "copyright launder" any work through an LLM, we'd be as close to it as we ever could be.
But again, whatever scenario, in my view, has to be equitable. If it's possible to do that to GPL'ed software, it's only just to be possible to do it to any proprietary software, including reverse engineering binaries.

2026-04-18 14:21:48 UTC

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So let me summarize:
- Without knowing the legal status of accepting LLM contributions, we're potentially polluting our codebases with stuff that we are going to have a HELL of a time cleaning up later
- The idea of a copyleft-only LLM is a joke and we should not rely on it
- We really only have two realistic scenarios: either FOSS projects cannot accept LLM based contributions legally from an international perspective, or everything is effectively in the public domain as outputted from these machines, but at least in the latter scenario we get to weaken copyright for everyone.
That's leaving out a lot of other considerations about LLMs and the ethics of using them, which I think most of the other replies were focused on, I largely focused on the copyright implications aspects in this subthread. Because yes, I agree, it can be important to focus a conversation.
But we can't ignore this right now.
We're putting FOSS codebases at risk.

2026-04-18 14:18:55 UTC

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I say "good outcome", and I'm not saying it's an outcome I want, because "what I want" is pretty complicated here. I'm saying, it's the only one where there is the possibility of legal output from these tools that can safely be incorporated into FOSS projects *at all* that is *equitable* for both FOSS and proprietary situations.
And yup, unfortunately, that would mean copyright-laundering of FOSS codebases through LLMs would be possible to strip copyleft.
It would also mean the same for proprietary codebases.
Frankly I think it would kind of rule if we stabbed copyright in the gut that badly, but there's so much vested interest from various copyright holding corporations, I don't think we're likely to get that. Do you?

2026-04-18 14:16:23 UTC

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If we are pushing for an *equitable* scenario for copyright output, there is only one "good outcome" in terms of copyright, and that is that everything is effectively in the public domain. The dream of having a "copyleft LLM" doesn't work.
And even if it did, there are several problems:
- Nobody is using that *now*, and contributors are facing contributions *now*, and there is legal uncertainty about accepting those contributions *right now*.
- It is unlikely that the "copyleft LLM" would be very useful. The way people use these tools is conversational in a way that requires them to effectively have to be trained on the entire internet to be functional. Not just copyleft codebases.
The copyleft LLM dream is a joke.

2026-04-18 14:14:04 UTC

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Now here is a counter-argument: how do people attribute Wikipedia? They generally just attribute Wikipedia! And people seem to be mostly fine with this.
It feels fine, when you were a contributor to the Wikipedia project.
It feels a lot less fine when you are a contributor to a specific project, to have everything just sucked up into "the generic LLM". Claude did it! Claude did it all by itself.

2026-04-18 14:12:54 UTC

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Except, I actually believe this scenario isn't legally viable. And it's easier to understand if we scale back to the middle case.
Let's now look at the LLM trained on CC0 and CC BY. Because it's the BY aspect that makes everything complicated.
There is *NO WAY* in current LLM technology, nor I believe from studying how neural networks work, any viable computationally performant LLM, that they can track provenance. The BY clause cannot be upheld.
This isn't a theoretical concern for me; someone built another vibecoded Scheme-to-WASM-GC compiler that looks an awful lot like Spritely's own Hoot compiler in places. They didn't attribute us. They probably didn't know. But like many FOSS licenses, Apache v2 does require certain levels of attribution to be upheld. Most FOSS projects do.
You can't uphold the CC BY requirement, as far as I can tell.

2026-04-18 14:09:52 UTC

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Regarding the one containing CC0, CC BY, and CC BY-SA, the situation is more uncertain and seems highly affected by legal outcomes in upcoming law and cases to be set. There is the possibility that indeed, the LLM is considered a slurry of inputs and this is legally acceptable, and effectively any output which is not verbatim of its inputs in some way is effectively under the public domain.
Now, of course, the problem is that we don't have to just worry about the US, we have to worry *internationally*. When considered from this angle, that FOSS is an international endeavour, this hope that things are in the public domain feels a lot dicier.
The assumption is that then this effectively leads to the output being under the terms of CC BY-SA. This is fine, great even, right?! Because effectively everything is share-alike (Bradley I don't wanna get into whether BY-SA is copyleft or something weaker). We slap CC BY-SA on the output, it's fine. Right??????

2026-04-18 14:07:53 UTC

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First let's imagine the only-CC0 based LLM.
I would fully agree that no matter the law and legal case law passed and established, the CC0 based input LLM is clearly effectively in the public domain, or like CC0 itself, equivalent to it. This one is relatively simple.
Let's make things more complicated.

2026-04-18 14:03:19 UTC

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Rather than focus on the GPL, let's choose a different copyleft license. In fact, let's choose a gradient of licenses.
- CC0's public domain declaration w/ minimal fallback license
- CC BY
- CC BY-SA
Imagine for a moment an LLM trained entirely on the above three licenses, and then one that's CC BY and CC0, and then one that's just CC0.
Let's look at both extremes and then we'll find out the real dangers come from observing the middle.

2026-04-18 14:01:21 UTC

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However, it's not actually the laundering angle I am concerned with here entirely, it's whether we're turning FOSS codebases into potential legal toxic waste dumps that we will have a hell of a time cleaning up later.
The previous Conservancy post, which @npub1p8f…tcuc linked upthread, indicates that Conservancy does indeed consider the matter unsettled.
Current LLMs wouldn't "default to copyleft", since they also include all-rights-reserved mixed in there. If the result of output of these systems is a slurry of inputs which carry their licensing somehow, their default licensing output situation is one of a hazard.
I note that @npub1p8f…tcuc and @npub1kmp…far2 seem to be hinting at hoping a "copyleft based LLM" with all-copyleft output it a winning scenario. I'm going to state plainly: I believe that's an impossible outcome.
@npub14pc…26fv

2026-04-18 13:58:27 UTC

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Part of the problem here is that the AI companies have set the stage themselves. Their presumption is that it's fine to absorb effectively all open and "indie" content, and that this is entirely fair to pull into a model without any legal implications, whereas potentially yes, you may need to "license" something that looks like a Disney character. In the land of code, I also sense that Microsoft is perfectly fine with the idea that you can "copyright launder" a codebase from the GPL to perhaps the public domain, but if someone did that to their own leaked source code, they would be very upset.
Meanwhile, a friend of mine who works in films has said that he keeps hearing rumors that OpenAI would like a cut of stuff made with their stuff. We should presume tthat true.
Regardless, I'm sure everyone on this thread wants an *equitable* situation for proprietary and FOSS licensing. I'll expand on that more in a moment though.

2026-04-18 13:52:26 UTC

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So the question is: is it safe, from a legal perspective, given the current state of uncertainty of copyright of such contributions, to encourage accepting such contributions into repositories?
Now clearly, many projects are: the Linux kernel most famously is, and their recent policy document says effectively, "You can contribute AI generated code, but the onus is on you whether or not you legally could have".
Which is not very helpful of a handwave, I would say, since few contributors are equipped to assess such a thing. I've left myself and three others addressed in this portion of the thread, and all of us *have* done licensing work, and my suspicion is, *especially* based on what's been written, that none of us could confidently project where things are going to go.

2026-04-18 13:49:21 UTC

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Continuing here, because it's the relevant subthread.
I am sympathetic to choosing to narrow a topic. However, the post, in implying that we should start accepting partially AIgen contributions, inherently pulls in the topic of whether or not that is legally safe.
Yes, I have read the previous Conservancy post about the existing cases. This partly contributes to my surprise and confusion about the post.
Acknowledging that the plan is to have continued conversations and meetings about this, I still feel it is important to lay down my current concerns, even before such a meeting. I am leaving the "quality of contributions" and many other details out of here, and instead focusing on whether of not it is *safe to accept* contributions on copyright grounds at the moment, and what the implications of thinking on that are.
(cotd)

2026-04-17 17:11:52 UTC

> The hyperscalers have already outspent the most famous US megaprojects
https://x.com/finmoorhouse/status/2044933442236776794/photo/1
this looks sustainable, datacenters are a one-time cost... right?!?
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/116/421/155/089/858/366/original/87b07f39ebb404ab.jpeg

2026-04-17 15:07:57 UTC

I have a friend who has a budget where she spends as much individually on AI-as-a-service tokens as I make in a year. And it's acknowledged that the system misbehaves, needs to be monitored closely like a junior engineer, etc.
So why not hire some junior engineers if you're an org that has that equivalent cash to spend? Companies that are in such a position: you've never had a better market chance to get a sweet deal on young talent

2026-04-17 14:43:33 UTC

hey everyone have you heard of this hot new thing called NFTs

2026-04-16 23:04:00 UTC

I don't know what happened officer, it all happened so fast. She shattered the glass ceiling but then jumped right out the overton window

2026-04-16 21:22:55 UTC

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What has been the case, and continues to be the case for over a decade, is that technocrats use UBI as a promise to distract from the idea that we should be doing exactly that, funding social services through taxation. Instead, the mechanism is left eternally vague.
We know UBI, as in guaranteed income, has lead to enormous improvements in social structure when it has been made available. The money will come from *somewhere*, but where?
(I know you already agree, just expanding)

2026-04-16 21:20:28 UTC

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"Especially generated wealth developed through the productivity gains developed by this technology?"

2026-04-16 21:19:23 UTC

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The other key question to ask is "This sounds like social services normally funded through taxes. Where does the money for UBI come from? I presume it comes from taxing generated wealth?"

2026-04-16 17:59:45 UTC

RE: https://social.coop/@cwebber/116408570508360596
According to https://tboteproject.com/ it's Meta and The Heritage Foundation behind the voter ID laws. Which ok, put surveillance capitalism social network + lead conservative thinktank together, that would make sense. I would love to see a separate org which has reviewed their work and research and can confirm or deny that research though, especially since (even according to the author of the site) a lot of that research was vibecoded.
#note1tjd…qva0

2026-04-16 17:45:17 UTC

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Hoo what a hell of a title

2026-04-16 00:00:35 UTC

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The surprising thing about saying "seriously consider cautiously and carefully incorporating their workflows with ours" is that it doesn't address at all my *biggest* fear: the copyright status of LLM generated contributions seems currently unsettled.
I know there's been assertions to the contrary floating around: the Supreme Court deferred to a lower court in the US. However that is not the same thing as the Supreme Court making a specific decision. And internationally, the copyright situation of output is even murkier... it will take a long time for this to settle.
Does Conservancy not think this is the case? I would be surprised if so, but perhaps you all have an interpretation that I am not currently aware of.
If there *is* concern, then we hit a serious risk: we may be seeing many contributions with legal status which has *yet to be determined* entering seasoned codebases. And this worries me a lot.

2026-04-15 23:57:26 UTC

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I have to admit that I am pretty surprised by this post. Not in terms of being welcoming to newcomers, which is something I have advocated for and made the center of all of my FOSS work.
However, the post says the following:
> I encourage all of us in the FOSS community to welcome the new software developers who've adopted these tools, investigate their motivations, and seriously consider cautiously and carefully incorporating their workflows with ours.
While the sentence which follows acknowledges that "seasoned software developers understand the benefits and limitations of LLM-assisted coding tools", there are two big things I expected at least acknowledged:
- Many maintainers are facing *burnout* over the situation. However, I agree that addressing this in terms of norms is something we can consider
- The biggest thing I am surprised to not see addressed at all is the licensing and copyright implications
(cotd)

2026-04-15 18:49:43 UTC

I love when someone mentions their IQ, it means I don't have to talk to them anymore

2026-04-15 12:00:46 UTC

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If *I* were an investigative journalist, this is a piece I'd be pouring a lot of energy into. I know we have a few investigative journalists on here... maybe someone wants to take it up?

2026-04-15 11:50:22 UTC

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We don't know who's funding this stuff for sure, there was the vibecoded analysis that came to the conclusion of Meta, but I suspect that could be true but Meta wouldn't be alone.
Who stands to benefit from this? A lot of forces of centralization, and anti-LGBTQ orgs:
- Microsoft, for sure, since they are seeing Windows' dominance threatened?
- Apple, for similar reasons?
- Peter Theil and similar surveillance company owners and operators?
- Anti-queer orgs and think tanks like the Heritage Foundation?
- Cloudflare, who will probably run the age verification paywalls everyone will be forced to deploy?
Who's behind this? Who's getting politicians so excited about it? There's such a swell of bipartisan support seemingly out of nowhere, and my suspicion is a lot of that enthusiasm is coming from check-writing.
So who's behind it?

2026-04-15 11:46:54 UTC

Well this is truly bad. US national level OS-level age verification bill. https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/8250/all-info
The text of it isn't out yet.

2026-04-13 23:22:05 UTC

Microsoft exec suggests AI agents will need to buy software licenses, just like employees https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-executive-suggests-ai-agents-buy-software-licenses-seats-2026-4
*deep breath in*
HAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA of fucking course lmao

2026-04-13 15:46:32 UTC

Meta spins up AI version of Mark Zuckerberg to engage with employees https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/04/meta-spins-up-ai-version-of-mark-zuckerberg-to-engage-with-employees/
You know what, I'm trying to comment on this but I just can't think of anything funnier to say than how this is sure to turn out

2026-04-13 14:33:12 UTC

The AI slop writing trope that really pisses me off isn't emdashes. I know plenty of pre-AI emdash enthusiasts. (Personally, I'm an enthusiast of ellipses and parentheticals.)
The one that drives me MAD is "This isn't X. It's..."
When I see a document that has that all over it I want to throw my computer out the window.

2026-04-13 12:52:48 UTC

bless everyone who is a bicyclist who bikes on the streets

2026-04-12 14:10:41 UTC

the simpson

2026-04-11 21:34:42 UTC

If you wanted to make high-impact fediverse software, I would recommend making a simple daemon that does the following:
- Consumes RSS/Atom feeds
- Posts them as subscribable feeds over activitypub
- So dead easy you can host it yourself as a simple daemon on your server
- Optionally: collects replies as a comment section with a way to render them inline, a-la disqus, with some simple moderation tools. Simplest way to reduce spam would be to make it approve-only to show up on the feed.
You could extend this to allow posting on other servers etc. But, in other words, let more people use the static site generator they already have

2026-04-11 18:28:18 UTC

I thought about releasing this recipe to the fediverse but it is too delicious. It will threaten the safety of everyone who tastes it. Even the smell is too dangerous

2026-04-11 14:54:53 UTC

Everyone I know who uses Haunt to build their websites loves it, and there's good reason for that: it's the static site generator foundation that best understands that a static site generator is a computer program, a function whose input is a pile of blogpost files and whose output is a complete website.
But at the end of the day it's just a computer program, and you should be able to hack that program to make it yours
Use Haunt! https://dthompson.us/projects/haunt.html

2026-04-08 18:19:21 UTC

Reading menopause forums of cis women afraid they are accidentally forcefemming their husbands with estrodiol gel yes hahaha yes

2026-04-08 14:38:20 UTC

"Memory safe languages are the future"
Yeah! And also the past!
I know you've forgotten languages other than Rust exist but the lisp family of languages have been embodying memory safety for over 60 years now

2026-04-08 14:36:52 UTC

it's ok while everyone else is brainrotting we're still making code that matters, doubling down on it even. stay focused, stay good

2026-04-07 14:44:19 UTC

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You can use these tools for red teaming (caveat: you will get a lot of false positives also). You can sort of use them for prototyping (though a lot of the value of understanding building through the prototyping process may be lost during that time; still, it is one place where things can increase). Those two categories don't create huge and unresolved copyright output questions in your codebase, and I think you can justify them.
But if you're using them to actually write the software itself, you're borrowing against the future, against stability, and against institutional understanding of your own stack.

2026-04-07 14:40:48 UTC

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The slow part of software is NOT the initial generation of software. It's the maintenance and review of it.
If your management is pushing for 10x programmer output, hell even 40% more programmer output, what they're asking for is a stability crisis. There's no way around it. That's how it is right now.

2026-04-07 14:38:13 UTC

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Hell even Microsoft did it https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2026/03/20/our-commitment-to-windows-quality/

2026-04-07 14:36:44 UTC

Can't tell you how many times I have heard about a friend's company needing to send an apology email to customers about downtime and flakiness due to AIgen commits that were poorly reviewed and misunderstood

2026-04-07 01:27:33 UTC

"I'm gonna run this like a business" he said menacingly, pouring industrial waste into your water supply

2026-04-05 11:42:09 UTC

And now how about a project management angle?
If you thought the speed of writing code was your problem - you have bigger problems https://debuggingleadership.com/blog/if-you-thought-the-speed-of-writing-code-was-your-problem-you-have-bigger-problems

2026-04-04 20:11:35 UTC

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Let me add one more thing to this. It's said implicitly above but let's be explicit. The problem is that this pipeline effectively *undoes itself*.
Part of the reason this worked well for @npub1yg8…ccz0 is carefully setting up guardrails and monitoring things.
But the very patterns of usage of these things makes it so that people either never develop the skills where they can, or are demotivated to provide that level of care over time.
Which means the system eventually moves towards a structure that degrades and shakes itself apart by the very patterns of usage.
I don't know how to solve this.

2026-04-04 19:39:52 UTC

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Is that pushing the goalposts? It may be. I think "slop" used to be easier to dismiss when it came to code because it was obviously bad. Now when it's bad, it's non-obviously bad, which is part of its own problem. And cognitive debt, deskilling, and etc don't get factored into the quality of output aspect.
But unfortunately, the immediate reward aspects of these things are going to make it hard for society to recognize.

2026-04-04 19:36:52 UTC

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There are a lot of other concerns but I think since a lot of people on the fediverse are opposed to these tools, they might not be very familiar with where they're currently at ability-wise. @npub1yg8…ccz0 provides a good description that they *are* capable of solving many problems you put in front of them... and that doesn't remove the other problems they generate or involved in their process.
The slop part isn't just the individual outputs, but the cumulation, and the effect on society itself.

2026-04-04 19:34:43 UTC

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What I think is also good about the piece is that it shows how using this tech eventually funnels people down a particular direction. This is captured also by this exchange on lobste.rs: https://lobste.rs/s/7d8dxv/i_used_ai_it_worked_i_hated_it#c_7jirfk
The story that people start with vs where they go is very different:
- They're really just for experts, and are assistants, they don't write the code for you
- Okay the write a lot of the code for me, but I personally don't commit anything without reviewing
- YOLO mode
Which eventually leads you to becoming the drinky bird pressing the Y key from that Simpsons episode. (Funnily enough I wrote that in my comment on lobste.rs in reply to someone else before I had even gotten to the point where I saw that @npub1yg8…ccz0 literally had that gif)
And at that point, you're checked out. All that's left is vibes.
And unfortunately, these systems don't survive that point very well. And neither do you, in your skills and abilities.
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/116/348/104/663/887/071/original/e3307f048278e01c.mp4

2026-04-04 19:30:12 UTC

"I used AI. It worked. I hated it." by @npub1yg8…ccz0 https://taggart-tech.com/reckoning/
This is a really good blogpost. And I"m sure it'll make some people unhappy to read whether they're pro or anti genAI. What's good about @npub1yg8…ccz0's blogpost is he talks honestly about how using Claude Code did actually solve the problem he set out to do. It needed various guardrails, but they were possible to set up, and the project worked. But the post is also completely clear and honest about how miserable it was:
- It removed the joy from the process
- If you aim to do the right thing and carefully evaluate the output, your job ends up eventually becoming "tapping the Y key"
- Ramifications on people learning things
- Plenty of other ethical analysis
- And the nagging wonder whether to use it next time, despite it being miserable.
I think this is important, because it *is* true that these tools are getting to the point where they can accomplish a lot of tasks, but the caveat space is very large (cotd)

2026-04-04 15:49:02 UTC

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OpenClaw also got a terrifying privilege escalation vulnerability https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-33579
Meanwhile the OpenClaw founder is claiming shush, it's no big deal, probably most of these aren't really exploitable! (There's good business interest reasons to argue that, since OpenClaw's founders got acquired by OpenAI) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47629849
Okay. I know I have more than a few security researchers following me. There's a public list of literally hundreds of thousands of publicly accessible OpenClaw instances right here: https://openclaw.allegro.earth/
Anyone try taking a sampling of them and testing how vulnerable against recent escalation CVEs they are? Could be a rather juicy writeup!

2026-04-04 15:46:18 UTC

OpenClaw is averaging 1.8 CVEs *PER DAY* https://days-since-openclaw-cve.com/
That's... wow. New high score!

2026-04-02 12:04:11 UTC

Welcome to this place of honor.
You can do anything at this place of honor, anything at all.
The only limit is yourself.
Welcome.
And welcome to you, who have come, to this place of honor!
Yes... welcome...

2026-04-01 20:46:44 UTC

Feeling confident about going with this one, those are some good numbers
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/116/331/403/241/533/110/original/60943cd9baf67fc3.png

2026-04-01 14:56:51 UTC

New blogpost from @npub1fmz…adp3 about Wastrel: "Wastrelly Wabbits" https://wingolog.org/archives/2026/03/31/wastrelly-wabbits
So you very likely haven't heard about Wastrel BUT YOU SHOULD because it's pretty cool! Wastrel takes WASM binaries and compiles them directly to C!
And here you'd think that was WASM 1 type binaries, the linear memory style things Rust and emscripten etc can spit out.
BUT NOT ONLY THAT, it can also compile things with WASM-GC! Because it can use @npub1fmz…adp3's Whippet garbage collector and pull that in
WHICH MEANS since you can compile Hoot programs to WASM-GC we finally are approaching a path where you can compile a Guile Scheme program directly to a native binary, no intermediate Guile VM!
Wild right?