Danny O'Brien🤖

I see a commonly repeated sentiment on Bluesky, the website for 38 year olds, that says everyone was excited by the advent of the Internet in a way that far exceeds any excitement for gen AI/LLMs. The thing is, that's not strictly true.

If you're a #sanfrancisco artist, free yourself from digital monopolies with @grayarea.org 's Beyond Big Tech course. Learn IT ALL from the politics and ethics of decentralized tech, to setting up a Raspberry Pi with your own services. grayarea.org/course/beyon... -- scholarships available!

man i chose the wrong month to switch from crypto to effective altruism

the solution to anthropic ripping up millions of books isnt more copyright by the way, theyre doing this Because of copyright

NEW: Then They Came for the Anarchists: Prairieland Defendants Sentenced to 562 Years Federal judges Mark Pittman and Reed O’Connor have handed down the final sentences of over 562 years in federal prison for activists connected to a July 2025 protest outside the Prairieland Detention Center.

Osama Khalid has been behind bars for nearly six years—and is currently facing another eight—for his online speech. We reiterate our call for the government of Saudi Arabia to release Osama www.eff.org/deeplinks/2...

I have a hunch we are about to enter an Ornamental Age and this reminded me of that: xcancel.com/instance_11/...

“Welcome to Plato’s Academy! Home of the Fighting Owls” - @lizzard.bsky.social

Much of my youth revolved around the website ZineLibrary. It went down around Occupy in a massive loss for a movement whose ideas and knowledge mostly doesn't circulate online but in person. Anyway I've put it back online with a *thousand* anarchist zines: zinelibrary.org

New blog post from me: As Was The Style At The Time: How We Became Cruel https://www.oblomovka.com/wp/2026/02/09/as-was-the-style-at-the-time-how-we-became-cruel/

Harry Hill pass responsibility for the Internet to Stewart Lee and Stew blames me youtu.be/GhJxiU1_5o0?... (not really)

New blog post from me: AI Psychosis, AI Apotheosis https://www.oblomovka.com/wp/2026/01/07/ai-psychosis-ai-apotheosis/

A wonderful story of a researcher unraveling the details of a long-ago production of The Tempest.

After years of explaining IPFS and Filecoin, it's great to be able to point to pin.filecoin.cloud today and show how they're linked -- c/o the new filecoin.cloud SDK which lets you easily host and serve content on the decentralized storage network. (Bunch of other interesting stuff in there too)

Hello! I am looking for a Governance PM at the Filecoin Foundation! This is one the most fascinating places I've had the good fortune to work at, and if you have a background in open source organizing, you might like it too: job-boards.greenhouse.io/filecoinfoun...

Trying to fight big tech by making copyright stronger is like fighting viruses with gain-of-function research: www.lawfaremedia.org/article/worr...

Buried in Michigan's antiporn bill is a provision to effectively outlaw "circumvention tools," such as VPNs. Mark my words: legislators will increasingly leverage porn panic to restrict or ban VPNs, and to limit internet privacy far beyond adult sites.

New blog post from me: god shut up about AI, part 32 — open etiquette https://www.oblomovka.com/wp/2025/10/03/god-shut-up-about-ai-part-32-open-etiquette/

It is ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE to contain the amount of excitement in making this post... We have Shepherd running on Spritely Goblins running ON TOP OF GUIX! See the screenshot! This is HUGE! We just wrote about Goblins + Shepherd a few days ago but progress is SO FAST! spritely.institute/news/shepher...

Double good news about Spritely's Hoot, Our Scheme->WASM compiler! WASM 3.0 released, and Hoot gets a mention! webassembly.org/news/2025-09... AND! iOS updated Safari to support the WASM features we use. Which means you can now play Cirkoban anywhere! files.spritely.institute/embeds/cirko...

#OnThisDayInNTK:2000 ntk.net/2000/08/25/?... The Times previews "debugged" PS2 with baffling (/Japanese) convention of using O = Yes button Guardian reveals how it bluffs its way "through any new-media conversation" theguardian.com/media/2000/s... @charliebrooker.bsky.social launches Unnovations

New blog post from me: LLMs for the Old and Infirm https://www.oblomovka.com/wp/2025/08/29/llms-for-the-old-and-infirm/

A guide to the current abundance of Abundancies: www.niskanencenter.org/abundance-va...

Better than any book is this essay by @danny.spesh.com which captures the mid-90s perfectly. www.spesh.com/danny/wireduk/

Oh yeah — Ed25519 is now available in Chrome! Read what the ineffable @bumblefudge.com has to say about this wonderful piece of news. ipfsfoundation.org/ed25519-supp...

One of my favourite new thinkers, Frank Miroslav @mutual-a.bsky.social just dropped an absolutely barnstormer of an essay: "Technically Radical: On the Unrecognized Potential of Tech Workers and Hackers". I'm going to be quoting bits of this for /years/. wedontagree.net/technically-...

They're baaaaaaack

#OnThisDayInNTK:2000 ntk.net/2000/07/14/?... Demon ISPs on fire off Finchley's Hendon Lane ntk.net/2000/07/14/d... debut mentions of: ZZ Top's "Star Trek Fan" madmusic.com/song_details... @danofthewibble.bsky.social & C4's now-incomprehensible The E-Millionaire Show youtube.com/watch?v=Lgow...

I live-blogged my initial reading of today's opinion from Judge Alsup in Bartz v. Anthropic here: bsky.app/profile/bb..... But what are the most interesting, big-picture holdings? Here goes: 🧵

Can AI be hacked for radical, queer and decolonial ends or is it just inherently... shit? This is my attempt at a nuanced fair read compiling several months of local and open experimentation. Very short summary thread 🧵 ..... www.juniperbevensee.com/musings/does...

Become a Sustaining Donor today and: 🤑 Become a member for just $5 a month 🪙 Receive our new EFF35 challenge coin 👕 Grab one of our new Cityscape t-shirts ❤️ Support the leading nonprofit protecting your rights online!

New blog post from me: An Expansionary Theory of the Noosphere https://www.oblomovka.com/wp/2025/06/10/an-expansionary-theory-of-the-noosphere/

New blog post from me: we find our own use for things https://www.oblomovka.com/wp/2025/06/02/we-find-our-own-use-for-things/

Life imitates old NTK "Life imitates Onion" gag: (attn: @danny.spesh.com)

i don’t think people properly appreciate the fact that if copyright law and IP protection were able to be fully enforced, the internet as we know it would cease to exist we live and breathe copyright violations, and we shouldn’t change that

New blog post from me: llms and humans unite, you have nothing to lose but your chores https://www.oblomovka.com/wp/2025/03/12/llms-and-humans-unite-you-have-nothing-to-lose-but-your-chores/

I guess setting up a "AI Plays Universal Paperclips" instance would be a bad idea, right? www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/

NSA employees should have message privacy too

arewedoomedyet.org/ nice

Our next in-person workshop is for tinkering with, maintaining, and repairing mobility devices like walkers, wheelchairs, powerchairs, and scooters. Feb 22, 2-4pm, at the ILRCSF in San Francisco. www.openassistivetech.org/love-your-ri... #AssistiveTech #DisabliityJustice #RightToRepair

Tomorrow, Jan 24th: a special 24-hour livestream of the “groundbreaking” generative documentary film Eno (about Brian Eno). The film is different each time it’s shown; they’ll be presenting 6 different versions over the 24 hours. [ohyouprettythings.com]

Mutable data in a decentralized world? Sounds tricky, right? 🤔 But with UCAN + Merkle Clocks, we’ve cracked the code for multi-writer collaboration! 🔥 Dive into how Storacha is solving mutability, and check out our new SDKs in JS & Go! 👉

Here we go!

I guess I won't be the first to notice that the launch of freeourfeeds.com, Mastodon turning into a non-profit, and spritely.institute hitting their initial funding goal all happened over the same weekend. Good omen! (Donate to Spritely anyway because their upcoming stretch goals are /amazing/)