Dear computer companies,

This -> ✨

Is now the Mark Of Cain. I will never ever click any button that features it.

Regards,

Approximately everyone

Really, the only thing you need to know about Google's agentic #AI #Chrome "Auto Browsing" feature is that #Google says YOU are responsible for all actions the agentic AI takes on your behalf.

That's the whole ballgame. Right off the cliff. Don't touch it. Don't use it. Don't get anywhere near it.

You prob know this already, but if you duck-search, you can go to a slightly different entry point at https://noai.duckduckgo.com to do web searches without AI slop dumping on you.

I see they've dressed up the landing page there! Now more obviously non-AI. I mean, it's a selling feature, so yeah, go to town guys.

(if you still google things, consider the duck search! it's worked well for me for years, and the non-ai version is a nice step forward).

#InternetSearch #degoogle #websearch

How my students taught me that Github’s monopoly is hurting the Open Source ecosystem even more than I thought.

https://ploum.net/2026-01-05-unteaching_github.html

#github #floss

Last week in a seminar we discussed a text that was largely about sexual violence, including mass rape during war. Heavy stuff.

One student admitted they had not read the text but worked off a ChatGPT summary.

They had no idea the text was about sexual violence. ChatGPT withheld that information.

This wasn’t just a minor error nor a typical LLM hallucination.

About a third of the text, arguably its most important part, went completely ignored because it didn’t match OpenAI’s content policies

"Qualcomm-owned #Arduino quietly pushed a sweeping rewrite of its Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, and the changes mark a clear break from the open-hardware ethos that built the platform."

(source: Adafruit https://www.linkedin.com/posts/adafruit_opensource-privacy-techpolicy-activity-7396903362237054976-r14H)

Oh boy, that was fast! Somehow we need to find more future-proof models for open-source hardware. Letting the market do its thing is showing its true colors once again. Pure evil! 👿

#opensource #hardware #fablab #makerspace #electronics