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commoner

9,614 karma · joined November 5, 2016

Ready to take a break? These projects could use your help:

- Common Voice (commonvoice.mozilla.org): Donate your voice or validate audio recordings to build a public domain dataset for speech recognition.

- OpenStreetMap (openstreetmap.org): Map your area to build an open atlas of the world for navigation and analysis.

- Wikimedia (wikimedia.org): Contribute data and media to build an open corpus of public knowledge for research and education.

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commoner··on Mexican student creates an acoustic fire extinguisher to put out fire in seconds
Infobae has more information (in Spanish) and a video demonstrating the fire extinguisher:

https://www.infobae.com/mexico/2026/08/27/se-puede-apagar-el...

commoner··on A/I shuts down
> America has the most progressive tax system in the world. There is no other country where the ultra rich pay such percentage of the tax burden.

Nope, not even close. Sort this list by "Highest" and keep in mind that NYC is only one city in the US:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates

commoner··on Fairphone is now officially available in the United States
Exciting to see this soon after someone got the Fairphone 6 camera working on postmarketOS:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49338285

The 6+ is a different model, but the announcement says the camera module is the same.

commoner··on Firefox is now the last major browser that still supports uBlock Origin
Absolutely not. This is exactly why people have a problem with Chromium, which now has some of the same restrictions on extensions as Safari (Manifest V3).

- uBlock Origin works best on Firefox: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...

- uBlock Origin Lite FAQ: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as...

commoner··on Muse Glimmer: 30B-parameter model optimized for always-on local agent workflows
Muse Glimmer doesn't redeem Meta, but it's a contribution to the commons and the Apache 2.0 licensing is an improvement from the restricted licenses attached to Llama. If even Meta can use a permissive license for its model weights, so can any other company.
commoner··on Startup founders urge U.S. government not to shut off Chinese open weight AI
Even with US sanctions, Chinese AI companies would continue to serve users in every other country in the world (including China itself), so I don't see why they would stop releasing open weight models.
commoner··on Startup founders urge U.S. government not to shut off Chinese open weight AI
Alibaba Cloud runs ModelScope, which is like Hugging Face but based in China:

- https://modelscope.ai

- Source code (ironically on GitHub): https://github.com/modelscope/modelscope

It's not limited to Alibaba's Qwen. All of the other major Chinese ones are on there (GLM, DeepSeek, Kimi, etc.) as well as finetunes and quantizations of the non-Chinese ones.

commoner··on OpenAI and Anthropic unite against open-weight AI risks to their bottom line
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

- Script: https://archive.org/stream/hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy/H...

- Film (with some differences): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41Vli6Fnj1E

commoner··on OpenAI and Anthropic unite against open-weight AI risks to their bottom line
OpenAI is currently a PBC that metastasized out of the original nonprofit also called OpenAI which owns 26% of that PBC. But yes, it is ridiculous.
commoner··on OpenAI and Anthropic unite against open-weight AI risks to their bottom line
Unlike Claude Fable, once an open weights model is released, it's available forever (or at least until every copy is lost or deleted, which won't be soon).

Open weights models are already great, and the ones that are already released will continue to be just as good as they are today even if newer versions are released at a different speed in the future.

commoner··on OpenAI and Anthropic unite against open-weight AI risks to their bottom line
I have no reason to care about the interests of these companies. My interests are best served with a competitive selection of open weights models available for my use.

OpenAI has the year-old GPT-OSS, and Anthropic has never released any open weights models. Meanwhile, other companies are delivering a steady stream of high-quality open weights models every month, and I'm not going to stop using them just because some other people don't like the country they were developed in.

commoner··on Meta's AI models are powering the first wave of Genesis Mission projects
I agree with you on the distinction. Meta's models are not even open weights, and yet they are claiming that their models are open source.
commoner··on Meta's AI models are powering the first wave of Genesis Mission projects
Whenever Meta claims their models are open source, you have to double-check.

SAM License (https://github.com/facebookresearch/sam3/blob/main/LICENSE):

> iv. Your use of the SAM Materials will not involve or encourage others to reverse engineer, decompile or discover the underlying components of the SAM Materials.

> v. You are not the target of Trade Controls and your use of SAM Materials must comply with Trade Controls. You agree not to use, or permit others to use, SAM Materials for any activities subject to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) or end uses prohibited by Trade Controls, including those related to military or warfare purposes, nuclear industries or applications, espionage, or the development or use of guns or illegal weapons.

> b. If you institute litigation or other proceedings against Meta or any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the SAM Materials, outputs or results, or any portion of any of the foregoing, constitutes infringement of intellectual property or other rights owned or licensable by you, then any licenses granted to you under this Agreement shall terminate as of the date such litigation or claim is filed or instituted. You will indemnify and hold harmless Meta from and against any claim by any third party arising out of or related to your use or distribution of the SAM Materials.

The DINOv3 License (https://github.com/facebookresearch/dinov3/blob/main/LICENSE...) is similar but with the model names swapped.

It's always nice when a model's weights are released, but Meta's models are not open source because their weights always come with weird restrictions.

commoner··on Google ordered to open Android and Search to rivals in Europe
European Commission press release:

"Commission provides guidance to Google for AI interoperability on Android and sharing of Google Search data under the Digital Markets Act"

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_...

commoner··on Thunderbird Desktop settings research: what we learned from your feedback
Thunderbird supports threading in the message list pane (which displays replies next to the email that was replied to), but a conversation mode for the message pane is still in development:

https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/true-threaded-conversat...

In the meantime, the Thunderbird Conversations add-on provides a conversation view that looks like classic Gmail, which is probably what you're looking for:

https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/gmail...

commoner··on Mastodon, the Only Good Choice
"They" can always be used to casually refer to someone when their gender is irrelevant to the conversation.
commoner··on Krea 2: SOTA open-weights 12B image model
While I appreciate that Krea made this model's weights available for download, it's not open source when the license (https://huggingface.co/krea/Krea-2-Raw/blob/main/LICENSE.pdf) has these terms:

> 2.3 Revenue Threshold for Commercial Use. Commercial Use under this Agreement of the Krea Model, Derivatives, or Outputs is permitted only if you (including all affiliated entities under common ownership or control) have total company-wide annual revenue of less than one million United States dollars ($1,000,000 USD), calculated on a trailing twelve-month basis and including all revenue from all sources. If you meet or exceed this threshold, you must obtain a separate enterprise license from Krea prior to any Commercial Use. If your revenue meets or exceeds this threshold at any time during your use of the Krea Model under this Agreement, you must immediately cease Commercial Use and contact Krea. Enterprise license inquiries may be directed to opensource@krea.ai.

> 4.1 General Restrictions. You shall not, and shall not permit any third party to: (a) Use the Krea Model, any Derivative, or any Output in violation of applicable law, regulation, this Agreement, or the Acceptable Use Policy;

> 4.2 Content Filtering Requirement. You must implement reasonable and appropriate Content Filter measures to detect, prevent, and mitigate the generation or distribution of prohibited, harmful, or unlawful content through your deployment of the Krea Model or any Derivative. Such measures may include, but are not limited to: (a) open-source content classifiers, such as Falconsai/nsfw_image_detection, NudeNet, or CompVis safety checker; (b) commercial content moderation APIs, such as Hive Moderation or Microsoft Azure AI Content Safety; (c) manual human review processes; and/or (d) any combination of the foregoing or other technically appropriate measures.

> 4.4 Acceptable Use Policy Compliance. You must comply with the Acceptable Use Policy, which is incorporated herein by reference.

The acceptable use policy is on the website (https://www.krea.ai/krea-2-use-policy) and includes:

> You shall not use or allow others to use the Krea 2 Raw Model or Krea 2 Turbo Model, any Derivative, or any Output for any of the following purposes:

> (8) Circumventing or removing any safety measures, usage restrictions, content filters, content provenance, or watermarking mechanisms implemented by Krea or any deployer;

commoner··on Brave Origin
Pay to remove bloatware? Brave is begging to be forked, LibreWolf-style.
commoner··on We intercepted the White House app's network traffic
See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47581532
commoner··on Pebble is officially back on iOS and Android
Not impressed to see the official Pebble app and app store be closed source once again. Looks like Pebble is taking the Google Play route by making it inconvenient to use the underlying open source software without a proprietary service.
commoner··on Codeberg Reaches 300k Projects
No, the main ForgeFed repo is on Codeberg:

https://codeberg.org/ForgeFed/ForgeFed

The README in both repos links to the main Codeberg repo and says that the GitHub repo is a mirror.

commoner··on FFmpeg moves to Forgejo
Anubis has a commercial version called BotStopper that allows the mascot to be changed:

https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper

But, Anubis uses the plain MIT license, so you can modify it to remove the branding yourself: https://github.com/TecharoHQ/anubis/blob/main/LICENSE

If Anubis used a license with that mascot requirement, it would not be free and open source.

commoner··on Office is too slow, so Microsoft is making it load at Windows startup
> When I switched to KDE/Plasma 5 to get fractional scaling it was extremely unstable

KDE Plasma 6 made major improvements and has excellent fractional scaling, the best I've seen in a Linux desktop environment and comparable to scaling in Windows 10-11. I encourage you to give it a try.

commoner··on Apple sued for false advertising over Apple Intelligence
From the class action complaint:

> The Deception of the Challenged Representations and Unlawful Marketing & Sale of the Products. The Challenged Representations misled reasonable consumers into believing the Products possessed certain AI qualities, capabilities, and features, they simply do not have. As a result, Apple charged consumers for Products they would not have purchased, or at least not at its premium price, had the advertising been honest. Beyond exploiting unsuspecting consumers, Apple also gained an unfair advantage over competitors in the market who do not tout non-existent AI features, or who actually deliver them as promised.

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25599001/0001-03-19-2...

The false advertising violates the California Unfair Competition Law and consumer protection laws of other U.S. states, according to the legal filing.

commoner··on The Framework Laptop 13 has just been upgraded to AMD's Strix Point
From the specs:

> Interfaces

> Supports USB4 with DisplayPort output and USB-PD power input on the rear two slots

> Supports USB 3.2 with DisplayPort output and USB-PD power input on the front two slots

https://frame.work/laptop13?tab=specs

commoner··on Lenovo has removed the TrackPoint nub from new ThinkPad laptops
It's a shame that Framework hasn't managed to implement a pointing stick on its laptops. If they offered one, I would already be using their laptops.

The Framework feature request is here: https://community.frame.work/t/responded-any-chance-of-track...

commoner··on Lenovo has removed the TrackPoint nub from new ThinkPad laptops
You can't scroll with just your thumb, while you can scroll with a TrackPoint while holding down the middle mouse button. Using your thumb on a trackpad with your hand positioned above the keyboard is also less accurate and restricted to a narrower range of motion.
commoner··on Lenovo has removed the TrackPoint nub from new ThinkPad laptops
HP discontinued pointing sticks on all of their laptops, including their business workstations, a couple of years ago. Dell did the same, but a bit earlier.
commoner··on Lenovo has removed the TrackPoint nub from new ThinkPad laptops
Not needing to reposition your hand to switch between typing and operating the mouse makes the TrackPoint super efficient. The difference is even greater in cramped places like airplane seats that don't have enough room to place a separate mouse or comfortably use a touchpad.
commoner··on Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
On the other hand, the use of WordPress servers is in no way covered by the GPL. WP Engine can pay for their own servers the same way Bluehost used to.
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