Hugh Barnard
Ecology, local democracy, FOSS, AI, ethics, radical financial reform/alternative currencies, music:http://tinyurl.com/4btpysvm, miscellaneous mischief.
Pic is Umi&me at the Grand Soleil in Gruissan
@hughbarnard@post.lurk.org and https://hughbarnard.org
- Repair Cafe: Hackney Fixing Factory 9 hours ago on Hackney Freegle Sat, 7th Feb 11:00 - 14:00 4 Dispensary Lane, London E8 1FT Weekly Community Repair session at the FIXING FACTORY site in Hackney! Got an electrical appliance in need of = TLC? Eventbrite here www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/hackney-fi...
- Found my way back from this: fosdem.org/2026/schedule/ Haven't been since 2020, it's a pretty extraordinary world that few people know about. Also had a Dame Blanche at La Brouette which never changes thank goodness.
- Yep, Idiocracy (CS edition) here we come. More worrying and more sinister, loss of control and conceptual mastery over stuff that may be harmful later on.
- ‘Novice workers who rely heavily on AI to complete unfamiliar tasks may compromise their own skill acquisition… We find that AI use impairs conceptual understanding, code reading, and debugging abilities, without delivering significant efficiency gains on average.’ arxiv.org/pdf/2601.20245
- arxiv.org/abs/2601.15494 Pessimistic view, maybe that's the 'point'? FOSS etc. must be very irksome to some parts of GAFAM in spite of their extractive use of it (Google, AWS etc.). All that money not being made. Bloody hippies.
- Just spent my last post-FOSDEM morning in Brussels at: www.comicscenter.net/en/home Bit hard to find after 35 odd years, but it's amazing. There's a Métal Hurlant exhibition at the moment with video clips from/by the founders as an extra treat.
