Today, in planet-eating machine cult news, OpenAI plans to build 5x 'Stargate' 'AI'-only datacenters, upping OpenAI's energy use at enough to power 5.25M homes. CEO Sam Altman looks to a day where they can "create a factory that can produce a gigawatt of new AI infrastructure every week.” Naturally the benevolent "cure for cancer" is cited as an all-justifying prize in all this, as if that really was their end-game
Gizmodo
OpenAI Announces Plans for Five More 'Stargate' Data Centers in the US
Stargate’s AI data centers are about to pop up across the U.S.
 (Thanks to @Christina for the pointer) #climate #ai
Very pleased to have been a part of this project - a great collaboration. My contribution, an article, was specifically on helping chart a pathway for climate-facing organisations to shift from big tech platforms to self-hosted and sovereign infrastructure. You can download the book free, or pre-order in print.
Tactical Tech
The RePlaybook: A Field Guide to the Climate and Information Crisis
The Replaybook is the first-of-its-kind practical toolkit designed to equip communicators, campaigners, journalists, and researchers with fresh too...
 #climate #selfhosting #infrastructure image
Meta has been pulling strings to crush whistleblower (and fellow Kiwi) Sarah Wynn-Williams, who wrote a book on the abusive working environment & unethical practices of Meta during her time as Global Policy Director for the company Her book recounts "her experiences working for the company, including accusations of sexual harassment by a long-time Facebook executive and claims the company explored breaking into the Chinese market by appeasing government censors there." https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/573766/meta-out-to-silence-and-punish-kiwi-whistleblower-sarah-wynn-williams-british-mp
In other marauding barbarian US tech company news, Slack hits up a non-profit coding club for high schoolers: "Slack reached out to us and said that if we don’t agree to pay an extra $50k this week and $200k a year, they’ll deactivate our Slack workspace and delete all of our message history"
Slack
: Collaborationware CEO tried to smooth things over, but Hack Club now plans a strategy shift
 But the kids will be alright - they switched to Mattermost. #bigtech #floss #selfhosting
The Critical Signals website, hosted on donated e-waste in a cupboard in Wellington, is currently down due to power outage in the building. Had a DNS fiddle to point it back to a copy on a server in DE. It should be up again soon.
Very pleased to present another round of Tunnel and Fortress, live classes in the design, deployment & administration of self-hosted, tightly secured & sovereign server infrastructure. The classes draw from 2 decades deploying dozens of servers & services for orgs & groups, big & small, & often with powerful adversaries. I want to teach you to be able to do the same, to get the communities you care about off Big Tech.
Nīkau Video
Tunnel and Fortress 2
An introduction to self-hosted server infrastructure in the context of
Tunnel and Fortress
Tunnel and Fortress is a live, coached and intensive training series empowering participants to deploy and secure sovereign server infrastructure.
 #exitbigtech #sysadmin
Leaked 'Gaza Riviera' plan made of generative 'AI' slop would displace entire remaining Gazan population, and put the strip under a US trusteeship for at least 10 years. In particular, the plan proposes building "AI megacities" as the primary drawcard for investors. To rub it in, they have decided to call it the 'Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation Trust' – or GREAT.
the Guardian
Leaked ‘Gaza Riviera’ plan dismissed as ‘insane’ attempt to cover ethnic cleansing
Prospectus proposes forced displacement of entire population and puts territory into US trusteeship
 #ai #ethniccleansing #gaza
It's not possible to have a meaningful chat about the siege and creep of corporate software automation in public & private life without coming to grips with the broader mechanism of Technological Determinism, one that our societies are largely captive to. From the excellent WP page on it: "It is, '... the belief that social progress is driven by technological innovation, which in turn follows an "inevitable" course."
Technological determinism - Wikipedia
 1/n
Ever worth remembering we were never asked how much we wanted "AI" in our lives, if at all, and to what extent. Instead we find ourselves thankful for opportunities to opt-out, forgetting all the while there was no opt-in. It's not the '2nd industrial revolution'. It's just more imperialism.
Instead of dedicating resources to finding and arresting actual terrorists, for instance the UK's many ultra-violent white supremacists and self-professed neo-Nazis, almost 500 people peacefully protesting holding pieces of paper and signs were dragged away on the grounds of promoting and/or engaging in terrorism, at enormous expense to tax payers and sanity itself. According to the UK Police themselves, it was largest single day of arrests in at least a decade.
the Guardian
Police arrest 474 people at protest over Palestine Action ban in London
Number of arrests was highest recorded in relation to single operation in at least past decade, according to Met police