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kim

@bitsmith.bsky.social
108 followers 316 following 95 posts

computer nerd from aotearoa, currently in berlin. tangata tiriti. free software, open access publishing, digital libraries, ttrpgs, logic & computation. left. also @bitsmith@mastodon.nz

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Reposted by kim
Queen Olivia III @queenoliviaiii.com · 17/02/2026
Side by side comparison image showing two politicians seated together in 2024 smiling with overlaid text that reads 2024 and Were stopping 3Waters And replacing it with Nothing. Below in a 2026 press setting the same two people appear more serious with microphones visible and text that reads 2026 and Yea look unfortunately Wellington is covered In poo now.
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Ben Williamson @benpatrickwill.bsky.social · 14/02/2026
The "AI revolution" in science is going so smoothly that my instititutional library is having to deploy multiple technical protection measures against "poorly behaved Gen AI crawling" just to maintain its timely service library.ed.ac.uk/research-sup...
Screenshot of text from University of Edinburgh library services:

Like many academic libraries, we have been experiencing slowness and outages on some of our open access platforms over the last few months. We have identified that this is the result of poorly behaved Gen AI crawling activity. As such we have had to try to disable the ability for AI -harvesters to access content from our repositories, via IP range blocking, geographical blacklisting, implementing limits to throttle bots and using robots.txt files to limit access. 

We acknowledge that this approach is not consistent with our open access policy which should require us to permit machine access to our content. Our limiting activity is not 100% fool-proof, and is a temporary measure to give services breathing space to perform while a longer termn solution is worked out by software providers and the community. This approach also has the added benefit of helping to assuage authors fear of losing control of their works.
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Norm DePlume @normdeplume.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
Hannah Arendt did not mince words, did she? 'Totalitarianism replaces all first-rate talents with crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.' From "The Origins of Totalitarianism" (1951)
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lauren @lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com · 20/01/2026
we're getting all the downsides of cyberpunk (social alienation, ruthless hyper capitalism, digital mass surveillance state) but none of the promised upsides (cheap street food, cool jackets, super drugs that make you really fast and strong before they kill you)
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kim @bitsmith.bsky.social · 20/01/2026
I've done my familial duty by turning motion smoothing off on the elders' TV before starting the new agatha christie
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Claire Knowles @cgknowles.bsky.social · 09/01/2026
At the University of Leeds, we are seeking a dynamic and highly skilled Lead Engineer to lead a project development team for Digital Library services, to support digital access to the Libraries’ Cultural Collections? It is a fantastic opportunity: jobs.leeds.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx...
jobs.leeds.ac.uk
Job Opportunity at University of Leeds: Lead Engineer (Digital Library)
The interviews will be held on the 12 February 2026This role will be based on the university campus with scope for it to be undertaken in a hybrid manner. We are also open to discussing flexible worki...
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Seva @seva.bsky.social · 01/01/2026
Jan 1: this is the year of new Me Jan 12: [eating shredded cheese directly from the bag] new years resolutions are a bourgeois construct for disciplining bodies into productive units for capital
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Avdi Grimm @avdi.codes · 19/12/2025
Testing server-rendered HTML: Make a request, look at the result. Testing React et al: Make a request. Receive HTML. Ignore it! It also contains a string. The string is attached to a bird The bird speaks latin Find an antiquities professor He can distract the bird While you build a fake browser
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Eddie Clark @dreddieclark.bsky.social · 18/12/2025
Genuinely great work from the university libraries across Australia and New Zealand to get this deal. Getting all these companies - especially Elsevier - too shift on pricing and access is a huge acheivement.
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Andrew Heiss @andrew.heiss.phd · 15/12/2025
Grading and googling hallucinated citations, as one does nowadays, and now that LLMs have been around for a while, I've discovered new horrors: hallucinated journals are now appearing in Google Scholar with dozens of citations bc so many people are citing these fake things
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lauren @lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com · 11/12/2025
generational discourse can be solved once and for all by distinguishing between "remembers no computers", "remembers no personal computers", and "remembers no cell phones". everything before that fought in wars. everything after that is, best case scenario, inventing the borg
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lauren @lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com · 08/12/2025
okay, yes, it's now dark at 4:30. but at least all the fresh produce also tastes worse
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Belinda Barnet @manjusrii.bsky.social · 15/11/2025
The irony here is that academics don’t just write the articles for free—we also referee and edit for them for free. Something is deeply broken. “New Zealand's eight universities spent $30-million a year on journal licences and about half of that sum went to Elsevier. www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...
rnz.co.nz
Universities in 'battle of the century' with journal publisher Elsevier
One New Zealand university told its staff all universities in New Zealand and Australia would "lose some degree of access" to the publisher's 1600 titles from the start of next year.
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kim @bitsmith.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
didn't know i would laugh so much watching ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER. also convinced matt berry wrote most of the character names
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kim @bitsmith.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
Love this art style
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kim @bitsmith.bsky.social · 09/11/2025
Impressive work, and really detailed write-up
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Kyle Swanson, MD, FAANS, FCNS @kiswanson.medsky.network · 08/11/2025
Ryan Moulton
@moultano
Oil is the most Lovecraftian thing that actually exists. You're telling me that there's a black ichor under the earth, made from the ancient dead, whose burning can realize all the dreams of man but only at the price of slowly returning the earth to its primordial state?
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Tania Roxborogh @taniaroxborogh.bsky.social · 07/11/2025
😭 Moe mai rā e te manukura, e tā mātou kaiarataki ka aroha ana ki tōna whānau pani www.teaonews.co.nz/2025/11/07/l...
teaonews.co.nz
Lee Tamahori, trailblazing Māori filmmaker, dies aged 75
Renowned filmmaker Lee Tamahori, whose work helped define Māori storytelling on screen and propelled New Zealand cinema onto the world stage, has died.
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kim @bitsmith.bsky.social · 30/10/2025
Hmm
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Amy Westervelt @amywestervelt.bsky.social · 27/10/2025
A stat we don't talk about enough: Newspapers have lost 77% of their jobs over the last 20 year, more than any of the 532 other industries tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
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aethylred.bsky.social @aethylred.bsky.social · 24/10/2025
It’s Labour Weekend in Aotearoa, where we celebrate Samual Duncan Parnell, unions, and the Labour movement (no, not the party) for getting us the 8hr work day and the weekend. By striking. Big time. nzhistory.govt.nz/people/samue...
nzhistory.govt.nz
Samuel Parnell | NZ History
Labour Day, a public holiday in New Zealand since 1900, is a suitable occasion to pay tribute to Samuel Parnell, who achieved fame as the founder of the eight-hour working day in New Zealand.
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Internet Archive @archive.org · 22/10/2025
Happy Internet Archive Day! Join us tonight—online or IRL—for The Web We’ve Built! If you visit the Archive in person, grab a free copy of Sir Tim Berners-Lee's new book THIS IS FOR EVERYONE from our BIG Free Library! 🎟️ ➡️ blog.archive.org/2025/10/22/h... #Wayback1T
A "Big Free Library" shaped like the Internet Archive's logo, featuring two rows of books. The book prominently featured is "This is for Everyone" by Sir Tim Berners-Lee. It takes up the entire top row and the middle section of the bottom row.
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Luca @lucagalletti.bsky.social · 19/09/2025
I know a fae trap when I see one
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qntm @qntm.org · 07/09/2025
ME, IN TEARS: you can't just say every single part of a computer system is a file UNIX, POINTING AT THE MOUSE: file
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kim @bitsmith.bsky.social · 30/08/2025
I like arch, but I'm not a huge fan of constantly installing new flaky versions of nvidia drivers when I `-Syu` (actually, maybe my real problem should be with nvidia's lack of open drivers / decent linux support...)
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David Hood @thoughtfulnz.bsky.social · 21/08/2025
I think it says a lot about NZ's Green Party being environment/ecosystem/science based rather than some of the cultural trends in other countries, that the Green Party had the fewest voters who had never had a covid vaccination 0.34%. 32.5% of NZ First voters say they never had a covid vaccination.
Percentage of NZES respondents saying they had 0 covid vaccinations as percent of vote share (weighted)
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Cool Hand Fluke @nzrossvideo.bsky.social · 04/08/2025
I see they’ve given up on calling him associate minister.
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kim @bitsmith.bsky.social · 31/07/2025
So FSU got one board member into #InternetNZ (following their big membership flood) but the rest of us got Dylan Reeve which is nice, and every member motion was "not carried" (2/3 majority needed). 12 of those 15 motions were moved by team FSU. Membership has gone from 400 -> 4000 in 2025.
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Keith Ng @keithng.bsky.social · 31/07/2025
The upshot here is that a) the FSU block had ~1000 out of 2800 votes, so not a big margin, but big enough, and b) it was definitely a FSU vs everyone else block - virtually all of Ayling's surplus votes went in the bin (ie. Ayling voters didn't rank anyone aside from Ayling/Brown*)
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kim @bitsmith.bsky.social · 31/07/2025
So FSU got one board member into #InternetNZ (following their big membership flood) but the rest of us got Dylan Reeve which is nice, and every member motion was "not carried" (2/3 majority needed). 12 of those 15 motions were moved by team FSU. Membership has gone from 400 -> 4000 in 2025.
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Byron C Clark @byroncclark.bsky.social · 31/07/2025
If you joined InternetNZ to help stop the takeover by rhe FSU and Hobson's Pledge, you've done some great work tonight Consider bringing that energy to other civil society organisations, groups like Voices for Freedom are also trying to take advantage of low participation to push their agenda
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Seamus Blackley @seamus.bsky.social · 29/07/2025
The person who wrote this simultaneously demonstrates a deep lack of understanding and also an extraordinary deficit of seriousness in a very remarkably small number of words.
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weeder @weeder.bsky.social · 26/07/2025
"I've been reading less political news lately" I say, mentally noting your over-medium egg order as typically centrist
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Independent Media Australia. @indymediaaus.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 24/07/2025
Why Lenin’s imperialism is still relevant www.greenleft.org.au/content/why-le… #Auspol
greenleft.org.au
Why Lenin’s imperialism is still relevant
In the first part of this interview with Green Left’s Federico Fuentes, veteran Filipino socialist activist Rasti Delizo discusses the ongoing relevance of Vladimir Lenin’s concept of imperialism.
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Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 18/07/2025
"i asked grok" "i asked chatgpt" yeah well i asked carl sagan and he said the greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge 🧪
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Byron C Clark @byroncclark.bsky.social · 14/07/2025
If you joined InternetNZ more than 3 months ago to help stop the hostile takeover of the NGO by the Free Speech Union and Hobsons Pledge, you will have received an email with a link and password to cast you vote. This is a good guide. Don't rank the FSU/Hobsons candidates at all, leave them blank
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 13/07/2025
There is no longer any doubt that Israel has set up a fake humanitarian organisation so it can kettle Gazans into a kill box and murder them en masse It is evil beyond description and in a decent world it would result in immediate, massive, global action to stop them and prosecute those responsible
theguardian.com
Dozens of Palestinians killed in latest Israeli attacks near food aid distribution site, medics and witnesses say
Witnesses describe people shot in head and torso near sites run by Israeli-backed US organisation Gaza Humanitarian Foundation
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the Mountain Goats @themountaingoats.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
contrast younger self's fear of being put out to pasture with mature and wise self's deep yearning for the pasture
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kim @bitsmith.bsky.social · 28/06/2025
It is a scientific fact that in Berlin-Brandenburg, no matter how far into nature you go, there will always be a half naked 50 year old dude blasting House or DnB on a Bluetooth speaker
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Michael Brown @jingajik.bsky.social · 25/06/2025
Explanation of the intensive copyright assessment-clearance work that goes into making a serial available on NLNZ's Papers Past website - and a callout for information natlib.govt.nz/blog/posts/a...
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Te Pāti Māori @tepaatimaori.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
📣📣 Aotearoa, take a bow! 📣📣 🗣 Approximately 131,000 submissions made, 2nd highest ever after the Treaty Principles Bill. I puta te karanga, and Aotearoa, you answered. ❤️✊🏾💯 #NZPol #RSB #ToitūTeTiriti
Screenshot 
Red, black, and white graphic with bold text.

Top panel (red background, white text):
“AOTEAROA WE SMASHED IT!”

Middle panel (black background, white text):
“131,000 SUBMISSIONS”

Bottom panel (red background, white text):
“MADE IN TOTAL E TE WHĀNAU”

Footer:
Māori Party logo in black and red, flanked by red and black horizontal bars.

This image celebrates the collective effort in making 131,000 submissions, attributed to the whānau of Aotearoa.
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kim @bitsmith.bsky.social · 12/06/2025
my train's digital boards and announcements are all busted so i'm being treated to proper human station announcements and stuff, quite nice
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Jason Scott @textfiles.com · 11/06/2025
And there you go. It would be poor form for me to rant. www.thepost.co.nz/culture/3607...
thepost.co.nz
National Library to recycle 500,000 unused books
Some of the books include outdated travel guides to foreign countries, a work on thatching cottages in the Yorkshire style and another on concrete pouring techniques.
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Berlin Swapfest @swapfest.berlin · 19/05/2025
After the success of the first Berlin Swapfest we're happy to announce the date for the next: July 20th, 2025 at @c-base.org from 12:00 - 18:00 We're incredibly thankful to everyone who attended the last and we're excited for the next! Register to attend or reserve a table: www.swapfest.berlin
swapfest.berlin
Berlin Swapfest @ c-base
The Berlin Swapfest is a place for people to buy, sell, and swap electronics, computer equipment, and tools.
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kim @bitsmith.bsky.social · 11/05/2025
Is academia.edu harvesting sandbox Datacite or ORCID data? I just an a really old test repository item "recommended" to me... it's never seen a production system. A couple of other random "researcher profile" sites seem to have dragged this old test item in from somewhere, too...
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Gef the Toking Mongoose @geftokingmongoose.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
if the hardcore band looks like this you are going to die in the pit
Still from the television show Pepper Ann showing from left to right Nicky, Milo and Peppper Ann walking down a sidewalk next to a parking lot
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