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Barba Koala

@barbakoala.eurosky.social
76 followers 186 following 53 posts
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Barba Koala @barbakoala.eurosky.social · 18/10/2026
Needless to say, this is not a unique point of view :)
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Barba Koala @barbakoala.eurosky.social · 18/10/2026
Power to those that stand against groupthink and weather the storms it unleashes on them.
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Barba Koala @barbakoala.eurosky.social · 18/10/2026
Whilst none of us are truly unique, the space that used to exist between us, and afforded us some individuality within our small circles, has disappeared. Such individuality is an ingredient in nuance and critical thinking. Groupthink at this scale drowns it out and diminishes all that takes part.
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Barba Koala @barbakoala.eurosky.social · 18/10/2026
That's progression I guess. What was fantastical becomes dull once its secrets are no longer a mystery. But the pace that mysteries have been squashed this last century is giving us whiplash. We're not attuned to such rapid, fundamental change. Differing intra-generational experience is the norm.
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Barba Koala @barbakoala.eurosky.social · 18/10/2026
The concept of Individuality is being crowded out. Yet that's something most of us yearn for; a unique experience, a new creation, a leader to idolise. With such slim pickings, the choices open to us all tend towards mediocrity. Or rather, what was once exceptional is trending towards the norm.
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Barba Koala @barbakoala.eurosky.social · 18/10/2026
Every Social Media post does the heavy lifting of an old school newspaper headline; quick to consume, and designed to instill a judgement in the reader. But instead of one that we might ponder through the day, we're bombarded with 1000s that clobber us to think one way or another towards groupthink.
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Barba Koala @barbakoala.eurosky.social · 17/10/2026
A drop in the ocean compared to the proxy taxes we hand over to private equity every day. We really should be laser focused on diminishing those that extract a thousand times as much every year, for much less even than the "soft" value the Royals give us.
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Barba Koala @barbakoala.eurosky.social · 15/10/2026
Pretty cheap for an investment that will provide huge, long term benefits.
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Barba Koala @barbakoala.eurosky.social · 11/10/2026
Can't read the full article but am guessing this was already possible with fuzz testing and existing tools like Playwright.
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Barba Koala @barbakoala.eurosky.social · 27/09/2026
Consultancy services truly are the vampiric leech locked around the throat of public services.
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Barba Koala @barbakoala.eurosky.social · 27/09/2026
It's tricky as a consumer to vote away from this with your spending money. PE have their claws in every link in the chain from raw material to end product. Don't begrudge folk making money, but this gathering of wealth is hideously imbalanced. P2P commerce is needed to cut off supply to the leeches.
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Nicolas Hénin @nicolashenin.net · 17/09/2026
Nice campaign by the Norwegian Consumer Council about the declining lifespan of products. Enjoy!
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Barba Koala @barbakoala.eurosky.social · 16/09/2026
Arrogant, self-preserving horseshit. I truly feel I'm in a parallel universe where people will be nodding along with this. Big Tech has been put on such a pedestal over the years, that they appear as gods to some. Malevolent conmen who want the planet to themselves www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
OpenAI's Sam Altman says world 'right to be afraid' but 'should trust' AI firms
Sam Altman and other tech CEOs say there are incentives to limit advancements in AI, as fears grow over the threats it poses to humanity.
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Miguel de Icaza @migueldeicaza.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Good post on the fear mongering from Anthropic and OpenAI: pop.rdi.sh/dario-please/
pop.rdi.sh
dario, please! - POP RDI; RET;
Your favourite ROP gadget
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Naomi Klein @naomiaklein.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Since it can be hard to believe that political and corporate elites would actively give up on our shared future on this singular planet, we made a short film so folks can hear from the end timers and judge for themselves. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
theguardian.com
Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor: the future according to end times fascism
In a new video, Klein and Taylor outline a ominous evolution taking shape on the far right – and how to stay loyal to this planet and each other
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Barba Koala @barbakoala.eurosky.social · 12/09/2026
This will only buoy their supporters. How can they be convinced otherwise when any scrutiny is met with cries of "fake news"? I feel it'll just have to play out and only then, once they've felt the pinch of a state destroyed by private greed, will their eyes be opened. As it always was, and will be.
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Barba Koala @barbakoala.eurosky.social · 20/08/2026
There's also a frustration that the content we've been lovingly crafting & freely sharing for 30 years is now fodder in someone else's profit machinery. But yes, a head-in-the-sand approach will only harden the path we're currently treading. I say this whilst enjoying the comfort of sand in my ears.
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Barba Koala @barbakoala.eurosky.social · 20/08/2026
AI's clearly useful, but its arrival has coincided with a recognition that its Big Tech birthers are societal parasites. And this itself speaks to an uncomfortable truth for the Left; that many comforts we now enjoy were borne of Individualism's willingness to shit on his neighbour to make progress.
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Barba Koala @barbakoala.eurosky.social · 10/08/2026
Fewer options for consumers, can't easily vote with their feet, so the fat cats just keep gorging. Gov/society needs to boost small businesses and the pension funds that house them, create healthy competition that refocuses on making the customer happy, not shareholders. Consumers are not numbers.
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Barba Koala @barbakoala.eurosky.social · 08/08/2026
Generations of equating dollars to success have led the American system to enabling the likes of Trump, and those with any whiff of morals can't survive within it. It's a broken model, too weak to correct itself. The Danes and Greenlanders are lightyears ahead of this decrepit nation ❤️🇩🇰🇬🇱
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Barba Koala @barbakoala.eurosky.social · 03/08/2026
What's Big Tech's long play with data centre capability? I doubt it's to offer compute to consumers; models can ultimately be run locally for less. Model creation & "open" proliferation is likely the end goal. 1. Stuff biases into the model. 2. Get people reliant on it. 3. Profit.
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Barba Koala @barbakoala.eurosky.social · 03/08/2026
As others have noted, the whole article (www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...) reads with more nuance than the "relentless" in your post suggests. We're crying out for honest politics here, Zack. Hold power to account on one hand, offer camaraderie where warranted on the other.
bbc.co.uk
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Richard Murphy @richardjmurphy.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
I was asked yesterday what neoliberalism is. This is the answer:
An infographic on neoliberalism
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Grady Booch @booch.com · 14/07/2026
I say this with all due respect but simultaneously with a rage that can unmake stars, a software-intensive system that “exhibits all the cognitive capabilities that the brain has” is not “a few short years away”. x.com/demishassabi...
x.com
Demis Hassabis (@demishassabis) on X
https://t.co/PTeDiv1b6L
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Barba Koala @barbakoala.eurosky.social · 13/07/2026
The coalescence around big tech, and global fads and conventions has made the Internet a much smaller, greyer place. Like newspapers before it, and village gossip before that, the Internet is how most people form their world views these days. It takes first-hand experience to add colour to life.
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Barba Koala @barbakoala.eurosky.social · 27/06/2026
Am I caught up in an echo chamber doom loop? It seems every technical advancement erases a little humanity each time. A march towards our obsolescence, and the majority of people are happily carried along on the wave. What's "cool" now is a smoking gun in the hands of a greedy, miniscule minority.
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Dr. Jonathan Foley @globalecoguy.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
I especially love this diagram.
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Chad Loder @chadloder.dev · 19/06/2026
I really need people to understand that Palantir is not an engineering marvel; it is a multi-billion-dollar contractual containment layer wrapped around the world's ugliest legacy open source frankenstack. It's a shitty Snowflake for companies that don't know how to do data engineering.
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Barba Koala @barbakoala.eurosky.social · 10/06/2026
The saving grace of arrogance is that it is itself responsible for eventually revealing the weaknesses it hides. One of nature's little self-correcting mechanisms.
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Joseph Cox @josephcox.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
This is absolutely nuts: hackers are hijacking high-profile Instagram accounts by simply asking Meta's AI chatbot to change the email on the account. Meta's AI does it, hacker gets password reset code, they're in. A staggering security issue www.404media.co/hackers-simp...
404media.co
Hackers Simply Asked Meta AI to Give Them Access to High-Profile Instagram Accounts. It Worked
The exploit shows the extreme risk of offloading technical support to AI.
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Prem Sikka @premnsikka.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
Danish Pension Fund Blacklists SpaceX. Previously, dumped US Treasuries over Trump's threat to Greenland. It says Spacex is “grossly overvalued”, and has “catastrophic governance structure” as Elon Musk strives to be a trillionaire. Any chance of City of London growing a backbone? archive.ph/dsVfR
bloomberg.com
Danish Pension Fund Blacklists SpaceX, Citing Governance Issues
A $25 billion Danish pension fund that earlier this year made headlines by ditching Treasuries as Donald Trump was threatening to seize Greenland now says it won’t touch SpaceX.
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bylinepodcast.bsky.social @bylinepodcast.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
A briliant analysis of how private equity turned capitalism on its head - and ripped off the taxpayer. A joint production with the excellent @taxjustice.net @goldbergradio.bsky.social @bylinetimes.bsky.social 🎧 open.spotify.com/episode/4SiO... youtu.be/RPiwx58XZaI?...
youtu.be
The Finance Curse: How Private Equity Upturned Capitalism
YouTube video by Byline Times TV
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Barba Koala @barbakoala.eurosky.social · 29/05/2026
Respect to all the folks out there doing good deeds and not telling the world about it.
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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 27/05/2026
I don't care who you are, there will always be times when hell is other people. Not because other people are horrible - quite the opposite! Other people are *wonderful*, but boy are they ever *stubborn*. 1/
A hand-tinted image of elderly people in the lounge of a nursing home. Three killer robots have been inserted into the scene.
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Barba Koala @barbakoala.eurosky.social · 27/05/2026
Who was it who suggested politicians should wear all their sponsors on full show at all times? Perhaps, similar to advertising standards, stipulating they be shown alongside every newsreel/article involving these people would help the casual reader connect the dots. Highest office, lowest standards.
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Barba Koala @barbakoala.eurosky.social · 25/05/2026
I keep the joy of coding to myself & limit AI to an "arrogant reviewer". It finds subtle faults in my code & I gamify our interactions by improving my code each time simply to deprive it of the pleasure in pointing out my failures! I retain creativty & understanding, and grow stronger along the way.
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Barba Koala @barbakoala.eurosky.social · 25/05/2026
Commentary on the cheese rolling today has been top notch.
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Patriotic Millionaires UK @patmillsuk.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
How Much Is Too Rich? We asked @adambrichto.bsky.social to take to the streets and see what the British public thinks. Extreme wealth has spiralled so far out of control that it's almost impossible to put into perspective. We're playing with poker chips to see what it really looks like.
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Albert Pinto @70sbachchan.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
daaaamn london
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Alex Andreou @sturdyalex.bsky.social · 16/05/2026
Sneaking a giant screen into the flagshagger march is one of the funniest things @ledbydonkeys.org have ever done. "STAY HYDRATED" 😂🤣😂
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Barba Koala @barbakoala.eurosky.social · 11/05/2026
Why build a complex media empire to influence the diverse, distributed network of skull blobs, when you can get everyone to relinquish theirs for a megabrain controlled from the centre. Nature designed our blobs to invent towards convenience; turns out that may be a very clever self-destruct switch.
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Barba Koala @barbakoala.eurosky.social · 08/05/2026
bsky ➡️ eurosky ✅
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Eliot Higgins @eliothiggins.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
Palantir put out a 22-point summary of their CEO's book The Technological Republic. It's pitched as a defence of the West, but if you read it through the VDA framework, verification, deliberation, accountability, what it's actually doing looks rather different. twitter-thread.com/t/2045574398...
Opening text of a thread by Palantir from X
Because we get asked a lot.

The Technological Republic, in brief.

1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation.

2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible.

3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public.

4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.
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Charlie Stross @cstross.bsky.social · 18/04/2026
This is a valid point: whenever you see this sort of high-pressure sales tactic turned on a technology, you can be CERTAIN that it's a fake—actually useful new tech sells itself! And don't underestimate the effectiveness of FOMO as a tool in the hands of a con artist.
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shanley @shanley.com · 11/04/2026
This is something i wrote in 2023 on the actual goal of AI wrt labor , and this is a key part of the "economic transition" www.shanley.com/blog/ai-is-d...
shanley.com
AI is Designed to Create A Massive Destabilized Labor Pool — Shanley
One of the biggest debates about AI has been surrounding jobs, and the concern that it may replace jobs.  There’s a lot to unpack here, but I think one of the most important points, is that VENTURE CAPITALISTS ARE FUNDING STARTUPS WHO ARE *TRYING* TO FUCK UP YOUR JOB. YOU MIGHT GET A NEW
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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 09/04/2026
Amazing post. I hope web devs understand this as downstream of antitrust pressure on Apple re: iOS & other browsers. @open-web-advocacy.org won the headcount Apple poured in since '20 because it allowed them to claim engagement w/o threatening the app store: blog.gitbutler.com/the-great-cs...
blog.gitbutler.com
The Great CSS Expansion
CSS now does what Floating UI, GSAP ScrollTrigger, Framer Motion, and react-select used to require JavaScript for. Here is exactly how much that saves, why these libraries were painful beyond their size, and what the platform still hasn't figured out.
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Good Law Project @goodlawproject.org · 07/04/2026
“I’ve spent the last four years researching private equity, and during that time I’ve been blown away by both the sheer scale of its involvement in our lives, and by what it reveals about how power and wealth now operate.” How public services are prioritising private profit: bit.ly/3Or5Hcu
theguardian.com
Want to know capitalism’s endgame? Just look at private equity – it has captured our everyday lives | Hettie O'Brien
These companies now own everything from nurseries to care homes, squeezing vital services for profit while we foot the bill, says Hettie O’Brien, author of The Asset Class: How Private Equity Turned C...
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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 04/04/2026
Crises precipitate change. That's no reason to induce a crisis, but you'd be a fool to let a crisis go to waste. Donald Trump is the greatest crisis of our young century, and the EU looks set to squander the opportunity, to its own terrible detriment. 1/
The EU flag. The field has been turned from blue to orange. In the center of the circle of stars is Trump's open, hooting gob. Behind the orange field we see the faded traces of a printed circuit board.
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Miguel de Icaza @migueldeicaza.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
The herpes of the internet is back at it: browsergate.eu
browsergate.eu
LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer
Microsoft is running one of the largest corporate espionage operations in modern history. Every time any of LinkedIn’s one billion users visits linkedin.com, hidden code searches their computer for in...
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