An amazing Home Assistant cake at @homeassistant Community Meetup in Cologne yesterday! 🤩🍰😋

Isn’t the our community the best? 🫶

#HomeAssistant #HomeBakeAutomation #SmartHome

Feels bad, man. Social media was a mistake.

Something super strange as a pop culture millennial is that in this year 2026 you can't just enjoy the characters in your sci fi or fantasy shows, you are constantly aware of merciless trolling of the actors playing them in real time, and feel haplessly obligated to defend them on the internet.

I used to work really hard to not be that weird fan who followed actors beyond "bravo" + applause. Now we all know which company the troglodyte who sent them a grotesque racist comment works for within 10 minutes and are actively discussing revenge strategies with them on instagram.

What people don't understand is it never used to be this bad. Even the tunnels under the Internet used to be well-kept by their inhabitants. Radscorpions were trained by diligent owners and didn't need leashes. There was a sense of community.

Age verification is not en never was about protecting children. It's about mass surveillance.

"Once a user verifies their identity with Persona, the software performs 269 distinct verification checks and scours the internet and government sources for potential matches, such as by matching your face to politically exposed persons (PEPs), and generating risk and similarity scores for each individual. IP addresses, browser fingerprints, device fingerprints, government ID numbers, phone numbers, names, faces, and even selfie backgrounds are analyzed and retained for up to three years."

https://www.therage.co/persona-age-verification/

#AgeVerification #MassSurveillance #Persona #Thiel #ChatControl #Discord

The LLM discourse on the Fediverse has really irked me the last few days.

Refusing to read writing made with the use of LLMs and refusing to give time to writers who use, promote or justify the use of LLMs is not purity culture, it's a boycott. It's a political act of withdrawing my time, resources and support for something that I find deeply morally wrong. It's protest. I have a choice and I refuse.

LLMs are exploitative, destructive, biased, mediocre parroting machines. Using them has a negative impact on the climate, the arts, the quality of the internet, the job market, the economy, the accessibility of electronics, even on skill development, creativity and mental health. LLMs are made and trained on the unpaid labour of millions -if not billions- of people who didn't consent. Their generic output litter the path to finding anything by true human creators.

Wherever I can, for as long as I can, I reject LLMs and anything that is related to them. I'm boycotting.

Coin operated vending machines dispensing kibble for streetcats are my favourite shared infrastructure discovery this week.