Gopher Proxy
gopher.linkerror.com:70 gopher.linkerror.com:70/0/phlog/2026/20260810
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| I suppose I've been starting every other phlog post |
| lately with trying to explain why I haven't been |
| posting much. I've tried to explain that a shift |
| towards unethical LLM practices amongst the entire |
| software industry, and it's users is mostly to |
| blame. |
| |
| It feels wrong to put words on the internet now. |
| I don't want to feed the machine. |
| |
| |
| This hasn't changed. But I also know I'm not alone in |
| feeling like this. It's been very difficult to figure |
| out what a solution might look like. |
| |
| Things have gotten worse, |
| and they keep getting worse. |
| |
| What started with google intentionally crippling |
| their traditional web search, to force users to |
| rely on the LLM output instead, has escalated to |
| "AI" companies now intentionally destroying all |
| sources of content. For instance, Anthrophic's |
| project panama is intending to destroy all of |
| the world's physical books (1). |
| |
| Unfortunately, in hindsight, it seems that avoiding |
| feeding the machine, is playing into their hand, as |
| they /want/ all sources of information that are not |
| LLM-based (under corporate, controlled, control) to |
| be eliminated. |
| |
| It's difficult to find a solution that is accessible |
| to humans, but inaccessible to the scraping robots |
| that feed the large language models, but there is |
| clearly a demand and a need for such a thing. |
| |
| Meanwhile, I've been trying to figure out how to |
| do my computing in this dystopian present. |
| |
| Almost all modern software is tainted. Vim has been |
| lost, the linux kernel, etc... the list of important |
| software tainted by LLM slop is seemingly endless. |
| |
| I've thought about just version-freezing everything, |
| but then what? I need some environment I myself can |
| maintain, patch, in it's entirity. Most modern OSes |
| are too complex for that. I've thought about just |
| moving everything to oberon or something, but there |
| is a lot of trade-offs to deal with in terms of |
| practicality as well. I still haven't figured out |
| the way forward. |
| |
| Beyond that I've also been struggling with some |
| health issues, but whatever. The desire to just |
| give up and be gone is strong. I'm getting old |
| and tired. I also don't have a solution for |
| employment or generating any income. I don't |
| know how to function in this world anymore. And |
| I am not sure if I care to. |
| |
| |
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1: https://www.rnz.co.nz/life/books/wellington-second-hand-book-store-s-mysterious-orders
Sigh. I guess this turned into another whining
phlog post. Sign of the times I guess. I didn't
mean for it to be. In between the lines is some
optimism, many feel the same way, we need a way
to bring everyone together in communities safe
from the harvesting machines and it's myriad
apologists and collaborators,... and rebuild.
There's a lot to figure out:
1) communication & collaboration safe from LLM
ingestion? A safe place darknet which bans
LLM usage and human verification maybe. But
that alone would be hard to enforce, as one
mistake could lead to massive ingestion.
Perhaps intentionally limit bandwidth?
Gopher's limitations have, after all, been
relatively successful in keeping corporate
interference away, as an example. But that
comes with other tradeoffs...
2) software licensing? copyright has always
been broken, but copyleft was a clever way
to ensure code remains Free with a capital
-F- ; but not only is that model broken
now, the community around it has pretty
much all but disolved and/or has become
compromised and infiltrated.
3) Software stack? what's simple enough but
still functional enough that it's both
usable and maintainable by an individual
or a relatively tiny community?
...
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