./\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\.
 |                                                       |
 |  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?

    ...