If you’re in the EU and you opted out of Meta training generative AI on your Facebook, Threads and Instagram posts and pictures, Meta are requiring you to opt out *again* or they will continue training on your data.

Users have until May 27 2025 to opt out again or forever lose the right. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/05/meta-is-making-users-who-opted-out-of-ai-training-opt-out-again-watchdog-says/

This is the random ass opt out URL, which isn’t advertised in their apps: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/6359191084165019

Instagram opt out: https://help.instagram.com/contact/233964459562201

Dear EU,

Just ban all cookies apart from those technically necessary.

The cookie pop-ups are fucking ruining the internet.

as a teenager in the 90s, i grew up around a lot of tech people. it was an exciting, weird place full of exciting, weird people. the vast majority of them went on to become ISP owners, software engineers, game developers, IT managers, and made a lot of money doing it.

the sad part was that the vast majority (okay, 100%) of them became people whose only goal in life was making money and spending it on themselves. once the technical knowledge was stripped away, they were utterly boring people to be around, living out a 19th century stereotype of the american dream.

reading Doug Carlston's (of Brøderbund) Software People - a book about the early 1980s software developers - I came across a name I hadn't heard in a long time: Paul Lutus. While I've never met Paul personally, he sounds like the living contrast of the IT people I grew up around. He had been homeless (by choice) for a while, and worked on the Space Shuttle lighting system. After developing an insanely popular series of text editors for the Apple // called Apple Writer in a cabin he built himself in Oregon, he donated his land on 8 Dollar Mountain to the Nature Conservancy (+ a big cash donation), funded Planned Parenthood, and exited the software industry.

If we're going to reductively talk about the tech industry as being some kind of inherently evil thing, it's a disservice to folks like Paul. He did the hard work of making himself a value to society, and not because he wanted to be famous or rich.

He's my living prototype of how to live a good life, and not become a shithead while doing it.

A 1980s interview with Paul at his cabin in Oregon - showing off his Apple // setup.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7iFA_TKyeQ

Two great photos of his setup in the cabin:
https://www.reddit.com/r/vintagecomputing/comments/q1iuz0/i_interviewed_apple_writer_creator_paul_lutus/

An AMA with paul from a decade ago:
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/q9qzn/iama_former_nasa_space_shuttle_engineer_created/

paul's personal homepage:
https://arachnoid.com

We think the US is falling apart because of Trump's reelection. But Trump is just a symptom of a bigger problem:

The US is falling apart as a result of the US allowing an insane wealth distribution, where the rich pay no taxes, because their companies are offshored and now have revenues larger than countries.

This has allowed the malignant to buy both media and social media, which has allowed them to hack democracy by polluting the minds of the uneducated, which THEN has gotten Trump elected.

'Hanging On'

A beautiful, large ancient oak tree with some remnants of autumn colour on a cold, frosty winter's morning. I've got many images of this tree, but I hope one day to have a set of nearly identical images through the different seasons.

#ThickTrunkTuesday #photography #landscapephotography #nature #trees #mastoart #winter