The Death of the Mind

Also in this series:
The Four Horsemen of the LLM Apocalypse
The people vs the AI overlords

After ranting and railing about LLMs or “AI” as the optimists (or
accelerationists?) call it, I figured it might be important to
be a little more honest about my use of LLMs and how I think about it
more practically in the world. The Debian vote context This is not a coming out. I am not using LLMs on a daily basis, and
this blog is, again, written out of my cold dead hands in a dying
world, with over-engineered hardware and (to a certain extent, hi
Emacs!) software, powered by 100% green energy built on stolen land. There is a vote going on in Debian….

External feed Read More at the Source: https://anarc.at/blog/2026-08-25-llm-nuance/

X has sent cease-and-desist letters to Nitter, the open source project behind privacy-friendly X front ends, demanding its instances and code repository be taken down over alleged scraping.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/25/x-sends-cease-and-desist-to-open-source-project-nitter-over-alleged-scraping/

If Sony thought that the outrage over its decision to make the next PlayStation entirely disc-less was going to dissipate quickly, it was wrong. There are actually multiple organic campaigns to protest Sony’s decision to ditch physical media now. We already talked about the plans for a purchase and usage blackout of all things PlayStation in late August. Now we can add to that a social media campaign of sorts going around, called “No disc, no buy.” While the name is self-explanatory as to its purpose, what’s interesting is how this mantra and pushback using it are appearing everywhere.
An example of that can be found in the most recent State of Play showcase Sony held…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/2026/08/24/sony-keeps-getting-punched-in-the-face-over-going-disc-less-in-unrelated-places/

“Runaway” AI, “rogue” agents, and “autonomous” actors—the current rhetoric would have you believe that AI agents are not only awake and aware, but angry at their creators. Prominent tech leaders such as Demis Hassabis, Dario Amodei, and Sam Altman push for regulation of these seemingly “superhuman” systems, while a separate faction, led by policy organizations and academic philosophers often aligned with the effective altruism movement, debates whether humanity holds the moral right to govern them at all.  Upon closer inspection, they are all calling for the same thing: a view of AI systems as being so advanced and capable that no entity, human or corporate, could possibly be responsible for their actions. While these perspectives seem…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/08/20/1142571/ai-consciousness-debate-trap/

Candidates from the left’s Democratic Socialists of America party have been gaining momentum around the country in primaries leading up to the midterms. The Onion examines the common myths and facts surrounding the DSA. MYTH: Socialist ideas have never worked in the real world. FACT: No political theory has ever worked in real life. MYTH: The Soviet Union had democratic socialism. FACT: The Soviet Union had a dog who went to space. MYTH: The government will take away your money and give it to the poor. FACT: You are the poor. MYTH: The workers of the world must unite and seize the means of production from the ruling class by force if necessary. FACT: The workers…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://theonion.com/democratic-socialism-myth-vs-fact/

To keep energy bills manageable, people often set heating and cooling temperatures to uncomfortable levels. Olga Dobrovolska/Moment via Getty ImagesOne light bulb. That was what electrification brought to my grandmother Mag’s two-story farmhouse in Boydton, Virginia. No one wrote down the year the rural electric cooperative workers brought the wire to her house in the late 1940s. Newspapers celebrated rural electrification for making people’s lives better: People could run refrigerators, water pumps, dishwashers and, in some places, air conditioning. Mag’s family did not think one bulb in the first floor of their two-story house counted as history. Their lives barely changed after they got electricity. Every day she hauled buckets of water from a stream…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://theconversation.com/just-because-the-bill-is-low-doesnt-mean-energy-is-affordable-289458

After years of feckless capitulation, ABC is clearly developing something vaguely resembling a backbone.
The company has filed a new lawsuit against Brendan Carr and the FCC (pdf), (correctly) claiming that the agency has been engaged in a coordinated campaign of harassment that violates the First Amendment and tramples the company’s free speech rights. The lawsuit asks a federal court to put an end to the harassment campaign the company says poses an “existential threat” to its operations.
“Acting through the Federal Communications Commission, the Administration has waged a retaliatory campaign against ABC for a single reason: it disapproves of what ABC broadcasts,” ABC/Disney wrote in its complaint.
As we’ve explored at length, the Trump FCC has…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/2026/08/18/abc-sues-the-fcc-for-massive-first-amendment-violations/

Today’s links

IP can’t save you from AI: Property rights cannot substitute for labor rights and privacy rights.

Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.

Object permanence: Flying Brits v brown people; Probability neglect; Law v “enhanced patdowns”; Onion says Brits love paywalls; “Hench”; “Lessons in Magic and Disaster.”

Upcoming appearances: Sydney, Melbourne, Brighton, London, South Bend.

Recent appearances: Where I’ve been.

Latest books: You keep readin’ em, I’ll keep writin’ ’em.

Upcoming books: Like I said, I’ll keep writin’ ’em.

Colophon: All the rest.

IP can’t save you from AI (permalink)
You don’t have to believe that AI “art” is any good (I don’t), nor do you have to believe that AI “art” can be any good (I don’t) to understand that the reason that…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://pluralistic.net/2026/08/18/enron-corpus/