Quinn Norton

Queer genx might be the cohort with the absolutely least fucks to give.

So I have written about putting datacenters into low Earth orbit and it's a great idea! Just kidding it's idiotic how do these people even remember to breathe https://emptywheel.net/2026/08/28/datacenters-in-spaaaaaaace/

Am I seriously the only person who finds the hugging face thing sus? At the perfect time to get out of a possibly disastrous IPO? While their shit and datacenters are hated? Surely they would never do anything unethical or make overblown claims

RE: https://stefanbohacek.online/@stefan/117048396195686755 I fondly remember my immediate reaction when I saw that first webpage: "Why would anyone use this when there are perfectly good gopher servers out there?"

I cannot possibly be the only person who doesn't trust Sam Altman. Though sometimes it feels like I am.

Fixing that takes weeks and real money and is stressful as hell. Is anything still in your infra? You don't know until you've looked. It's shit, it's horrible, there's a reason it's a fucking crime. ...unless, of course, you just planned the whole thing out in advance for the lols with another company God this timeline is stupid.

It's worthwhile to ask why so much of humanity is falling for this con right now. I suspect climate and a deep, even subconscious fear of there not being enough, of scrambling for survival against our neighbors. Whatever is it, looking at America or Britain or even Russia and chalking up all the problems to the low character of the people isn't going to get you ready for this era of turmoil. Look for solidarity, never give up on human rights, even for Americans.

RE: https://infosec.exchange/@0xabad1dea/117013470325193102 With just the right set of circumstances, you could end up saying "I had to go to The Hague for a parking ticket, those guys are harsh"

@blogdiva@mastodon.social that's wild, I'm dyslexic in my native language and now I'm wondering if I would or would not be if I ever succeeded at learning French

RE: https://mastodon.social/@EUauditors/117030523517841711 Is it though? Is it? Is it transforming the world like lead in the water transformed ancient Rome and 1970s America? Is it transforming the world by tricking us into giving up our climate goals? Is it changing the world by burning it? Is it changing us by stealing our humanity and giving us collective psychosis? I don't see many productivity gains, but I do see dead kids, burning forests, financial instability and a mad rush towards tech without reflection.

@zvinj@tooot.im that's not true of the dark ages. In fact they were relatively more peaceful times. The moniker Dark Ages comes from a lack of written records, partly because there was less centralization and war. People even lived slightly longer on average. Emperors aren't very good for societies, as it turns out.

RE: https://mas.to/@gleick/116962686153453732 Turns out the CFAA was just a law for normal poor people.

@cmsdengl@mas.to ah yes, born and bred products of American culture destroying the world with their Americaness, like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Sergy Brin, Jensen Huang, and Sundar Pichai.

@cmsdengl@mas.to it's a global problem with roots in globally unconstrained capitalism and not learning from the gilded age.

@Viss@mastodon.social I'm still not sure I'm gonna believe this isn't just a staged publicity stunt.

I've decided to just call myself an LLM vegan. I plan to be annoying as hell about it too.

@AccordingtoWouter@mastodon.world house spiders are excellent roommates if you live somewhere with decent biodiversity, and therefore a house full of bugs. Every once in a while they even eat mosquitoes!

I am fighting an ant invasion and all twisted up about how to get rid of them, but nicely if possible, thinking "what would @futurebird@sauropods.win do?"

@maxleibman@beige.party this but also all the years

OMFG the Brits have the chance to do the funniest thing Please come through guys, it would be amazing. Epic. It's the miracle we all need right now. https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-farages-election-gamble-could-see-him-face-one-challenger-count-binface-2026-07-08/

@tzafrir@tooot.im @zvinj@tooot.im if you were a Gaul, the pax romana was very quiet, the quiet of genocide

RE: https://fediscience.org/@petersuber/116912971042945604 This seems like a good reason to preemptively block UK ips from accessing Wikipedia. That should make everyone happy.

@womble@infosec.exchange "I am an idiot" is very very much in CFAA/wire fraud territory, and intent isn't really at issue. It is absolutely covered by plenty of existing law, just whether any AG wants to pick up the case. I know maybe a bit too much about this.

@ifixcoinops@retro.social This is like the wine gummy scene from Gravity's Rainbow but from the English perspective.

@futurebird@sauropods.win winning is straight up exhausting.

@jake4480@c.im I don't know entirely but closer to the heat death of the universe for sure.

@ireneista@adhd.irenes.space didn't want to follow the implications

The stories that come out from ICE don't surprise me, but a deep level they confuse me. How do these lying liars who lie all the time, and hurt people every chance they get, see themselves? Are they somehow the heroes of their own stories? If so, how?

@mshelton@mastodon.social that... I did not see that coming. For real 😂

@hal_pomeranz@infosec.exchange @rysiek@mstdn.social honestly the early web was not fun or easy to use. It was almost a one way road, sometimes it was easier to restart than navigate back at times. Then one day my sysadmin pulled me in to his office to show me the gui web. I literally fell over. I was floored. When I could speak again I said "everything is going to change" And then it did.

@woozle@toot.cat when you have bread mold growing in your lungs, don't blame a baker.

@catsalad@infosec.exchange oh god not again

RE: https://mastodon.social/@anon_opin/116832554693146959 *spit take*

@donni@mastodon.social almost certainly! Tho the poor things will stay small for a long while because of the co2. The bacteria otoh... PARTY ON SLUDGE WORLD

@hzulla@infosec.exchange to be fair if we add to it actually protecting healthy existing ecosystems, line can go up! 😂

@womble@infosec.exchange have dealt with a few CFAA cases irl (quite famously in one case) and intent isn't much of a defense irl. Though Sony (rootkit) did teach me that CFAA is not a thing for companies, companies are allowed to hack all they want, you know, like crowdstrike. That it is one rule for me, not thee might be the state of play, it's still corruption and wrong.

@Crell@phpc.social @majorlinux@toot.majorshouse.com there isn't much reason to vote if you don't live in a swing state. All my west coast dem votes have never mattered and will never matter. Me voting is Kabuki theater, and that's true for most people.

If there was something i could beam into the heads of all my fellow journalists, it's that polls are polls, and just polls. They can't peer into the collective soul of the people. They're not elections, sales figures, personality tests, cultural benchmarks, or some god-like insight into how the people will think and act. They're polls, and they've been broken for a while, partly because everyone knows what a poll is. And most people don't love them.

@fribbledom@mastodon.social yeah this is definitely my network. I'm old and bitter and surprisingly difficult to track.

@12thRITS@mstdn.social @fribbledom@mastodon.social I got this as a T-shirt for my partner, he wore it into tatters.

@whvholst@eupolicy.social ...but that's just the identity of what I said. how does that process work? what leads them to do that? how do they perceive the person they are touching? do they? who are they accountable to in their own mind? what is the reward, what is the thing they're afraid of?

@magnetichuman@cupoftea.social @mrzarquon@mastodon.social @hzulla@infosec.exchange @lkanies@hachyderm.io

@skykiss@sfba.social nah this is the moment it was made for.

@mcnado@mstdn.social I've had an ng tube raw dogged violently down my nose. It went badly. For everyone in the room when I started violently vomiting.

@RolloTreadway@beige.party @davidnjoku@mastodon.world nah it's about whether you want a bunch of people trying to change your life. Wealth looks exhausting and full of assholes.

@dangillmor@mastodon.social laws are not for companies, who can act with impunity, that's the American way. Remember the Sony Rootkit? Still maybe the largest hack ever, but it didn't count because Sony did it. 50 AGs, not a single one was interested. That's who we are, that's why things are like this.

@zvinj@tooot.im I guess to come back to this, the actual salient point is when humans are left alone in reasonably sized communities, and the change to change communities if needed, we're mostly ok.

@patcharcana@furry.engineer it was never about data, it was always about MIT (and an AUSA) showing off their power.