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Thomas Berker

@thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy
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STS researcher at Trondheim's Centre for Technology and Society. Co-founder of NTNU's The Good Infrastructures Lab. Fascinated by infrastructures, user agency […] [bridged from tikatech.org/@thomas on the fediverse by fed.brid.gy ]

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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 18/09/2026
Everything and everyone is at some point plateauing and then declining. The only way to avoid facing this simple fact is to exploit growing and developing things and people.
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 17/09/2026
Did some research funding evaluation for the Swedish Research Council today where I was the only one critically interrogating what I thought were naive uses of commercial and closed LLMs in qualitative social research. And of course there was no time in the meeting to even start a discussion […]
tikatech.org
Original post on tikatech.org
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 17/07/2026
Working during July in Norway's academia proves Jackson's broken world thinking: because everybody is on holidays infrastructures are not maintained and decay spreads: first the coffee-machine turned into a brown-water-machine, now the closest printer broke down, and we are running low on A4 paper.
Empty street on Dragvoll campus
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 06/07/2026
I am not complaining (as immigrant I wouldn't dare) but that #Haaland wants my daughters to be ready to die for their national team is not what I want them to learn from yesterday's football match […]
tikatech.org
Original post on tikatech.org
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 23/06/2026
I hereby pledge that no metric will ever determine again how I spend my precious time on earth. Let's see how long this pledge will last.
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 15/06/2026
Ok, Microsoft wants the LLMs to run locally on our PCs. Damn, now I will have to find new ways to justify my #selfhosted AI hobby as part of some kind of resistance.
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 10/06/2026
In this scenario universities can position themselves as mind gyms or as places for human thinking (which is findamentally embodied and ethical). Judging from what I see our students want I'd say we should offer both.
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 10/06/2026
A likely scenario: in a few years we will have a lot of people who are not using their brains as much as before for activities that are done well enough by machines. Some go to mind-gyms to train, but most live well with doing much less of the thinking that can be delegated to machines. And the […]
tikatech.org
Original post on tikatech.org
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 07/06/2026
Submitted a seed funding application for a little project on local university infrastructure sovereignty at #NTNU. It promises to 1. Map environmental footprints of existing and potential alternative data-infrastructures and 2. Build community around detaching from existing and attaching to […]
tikatech.org
Original post on tikatech.org
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 24/05/2026
O great, my 12 yo daughter has discovered Gemini-AI on her school-provided Chromebook. She is excited and happy about the new possibilities provided by this ever-patient, ever-compliant companion. Another fight that we as parents cannot win... Help!
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Reposted by Thomas Berker
Poul-Henning Kamp @bsdphk.fosstodon.org.ap.brid.gy · 19/05/2026
I think I can finally put words around what truly bothers me about the "AI changes everything" meme, as far as programming goes: Programming is fundamentally hard for our brains, because it requires fractal perfection. (By fractal perfection I mean that each code line must be perfect, but so […]
fosstodon.org
Original post on fosstodon.org
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 10/05/2026
It pains me that my beloved host-country #Norway is choosing the drill-baby-drill side of global energy futures: www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/…
theguardian.com
‘We are talking about energy security for Europe’: Norway doubles down on oil and gas production
Norway’s energy minister says country has a ‘responsibility’ to address shortfalls caused by wars in Ukraine and Middle EastIn case of any doubt about Norway’s commitment to maintain – and expand – its production of gas and oil offshore, the energy...
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 09/05/2026
Spent 20 minutes this morning trying to figure out why the wifi was down. Then I realised that it was the power that was down. And this was actually a relief, because someone else is responsible for fixing the power while my #selhosting, #frugalAI, #homeassistant, etc home network is a true […]
tikatech.org
Original post on tikatech.org
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 08/05/2026
Still deep in the "frugal AI" rabbit hole (help, get me out of here!!!): I heat my basement with a used rtx 3090 now. Equipped with the right local LLM and good tools it does everything what big-tech models can do while preserving privacy and control. Technical details: #qwen 3.6 ( 35b, A3B) […]
tikatech.org
Original post on tikatech.org
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 03/04/2026
Actor-Network Theory is such a weird creature: romantic about becoming, but hates metaphysics. No ghosts, no generative gaps, no imagination! 🍄 Anna Tsing's "worlding" fixes this: actors experimentally construct worlds through gaps & mistranslations. ANT's flat ontology misses the very […]
tikatech.org
Original post on tikatech.org
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 02/04/2026
I have to admit I am currently deep in the rabbit hole of frugal and #selfhosted AI. With a used Geforce rtx 3060 (12 gb vram), gwen3.5 (35B A3B) is an amazing toy. For more context on frugal AI: restofworld.org/2026/frugal-ai-big-…
restofworld.org
Nations priced out of Big AI are building with frugal models
Amid a widening global divide in AI adoption, low-cost AI models that can deliver sovereignty and efficiency with a smaller environmental footprint are gaining ground.
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 27/03/2026
Three days at #stsing in Bochum, thanks to the organisers for putting this fantastic conference together! STS' future in Germany is in good hands! And I hope all the smart people without permanent positions that I met will soon be as lucky as I was when I was in their situation!
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 17/03/2026
Does this make sense? "Quillx is an open standard for disclosing AI involvement in software projects - expressed through the language of authorship. Not a judgment. Just transparency." github.com/QAInsights/Quillx
github.com
GitHub - QAInsights/Quillx: Quillx is an open standard for disclosing AI involvement in software projects - expressed through the language of authorship. Not a judgment. Just transparency.
Quillx is an open standard for disclosing AI involvement in software projects - expressed through the language of authorship. Not a judgment. Just transparency. - QAInsights/Quillx
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 16/03/2026
In an age of #AI #sycophancy, a worthwhile task for the #humanities might be to be the slave who whispers into the ear of the pandered-to individual: remember you are only one human. Apropos the Roman tradition: during a triumphal procession, a slave stood […] [Original post on tikatech.org]
The ruins of Ephes, the rest of a temple with 7 Ionic columns in the front, and what may have been a street lined with monuments in the back. (Getty images, published under the unsplash+ license)
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 11/02/2026
Today a student reminded me that hacking/appropriation is the better alternative to pragmatic acceptance and principled rejection, which are my two reactions to new tech. In this spirit: I finally found a way to have command line access to my work-emails and appointments which are involuntarily […]
tikatech.org
Original post on tikatech.org
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Reposted by Thomas Berker
ploum @ploum.mamot.fr.ap.brid.gy · 09/02/2026
Little reminder for those who still take marketing at face value: If you are paying someone else to use a tool you don’t own, it is not a "technology", it is a "service". You are not "learning" or "mastering" or "building", you are "spending". You are not an "entrepreneur", you are a […]
mamot.fr
Original post on mamot.fr
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 13/01/2026
After having "created" a native #SailfishOS app with claude code, I am happy that refusing to buy into Android or iOS is getting so much easier. This could weaken the grip that app and play store have on the mobile os market. However, it is clear that this is individualising something which […]
tikatech.org
Original post on tikatech.org
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 05/01/2026
On the other hand: maybe the hope to be able to change for the better is not only ideology: the author of the article scores high on the "openness" trait, which should support change of the kind reported in the underlying research.
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 05/01/2026
Of course in this day and age we won't accept that some parts of ourselves cannot be optimised: How to change your personality in six weeks: www.bbc.com/future/article/20260102…
bbc.com
我花了六周时间改变了性格
I changed my personality in six weeks (www.bbc.com) 04:02  ↑ 102 HN Points
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Reposted by Thomas Berker
Ruth Mottram @ruth-mottram.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 01/01/2026
Not that many people here will need it, but as an indicator it's interesting: In case you're looking for an alternative New Year resolution, Denmark has a new people's movement: Danmark skifter, Denmark switches, which aims to help people regain focus, change their social media habits and get […]
fediscience.org
Original post on fediscience.org
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 30/12/2025
"Technical reports often compare LLMs’ outputs with 'human' performance on various tests. Here, we ask, “Which humans?” [...] We show that LLMs’ responses to psychological measures are an outlier [...], and that their performance on cognitive psychological tasks most resembles that of people […]
tikatech.org
Original post on tikatech.org
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 23/12/2025
This year's dark season distraction: doing research about the largest cities in the world, and practicing some good oldfashioned, climate friendly daydreaming about distant places.
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 18/12/2025
#Academic housekeeping: This is the pile of drafts, exams and applications that an average prof in Norway reads and comments on in one year. Every text is an expression of hopes and aspirations, which I am quite aware of while reading. Not much AI-mediocrity in […] [Original post on tikatech.org]
An untidily stacked pile of computer print outs.
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 16/12/2025
Intelligence amplification or assistance (IA) instead of Artificial Intelligence (AI) makes a lot of sense to me. @viznut reminds us that algorithms are neither good or evil and that while big-tech creates big and centralized AI we should look for small and decentralized @permacomputing […]
tikatech.org
Original post on tikatech.org
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 07/12/2025
My Frankenstein data centre has a new addition bought from a gamer who I guess was upgrading. Here no games but 4K #jellyfin transcoding and quicker #selfhosted LLM answers. Turns out a consumer GPU does not fit at all in a server and I needed a riser cable and […] [Original post on tikatech.org]
An open old Huawei server and a Geforce gpu and a lot of cables and stuff.
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 01/12/2025
A weekend with some more experiments with local #LLM: these monsters are so much more useful when fed with a lot of context - mostly about me - which for obvious reasons is verboten in the case of chat-gpt & co. Reasonably good results with Alibaba's #qwen (通义千问 3:235b-a22b, via #ollama). It is […]
tikatech.org
Original post on tikatech.org
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 20/11/2025
Simple and good about "What AI is Really For": www.chrbutler.com/what-ai-is-really… "When a private company can construct what is essentially a new energy city with no people and no elected representation, and do this dozens of times a year [...], you have a sudden imbalance of […]
tikatech.org
Original post on tikatech.org
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 11/11/2025
Nerve wrecking joy: updating my mastodon instance without having a clear idea of I am doing. I think I made a backup of the database, but maybe I did not? Usually there is next to nothing at stake when botching an update of my #selfhosted services. But losing my dear followers would indeed be […]
tikatech.org
Original post on tikatech.org
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 10/11/2025
Mmmmh, #writerdeck, small, cheap computers that can do only one thing: distraction free text prosessing. Very tempting, and many diy options. On the other hand, I have bought so many devices through the years, and usually they gather dust in a corner after a week of intensive use […]
tikatech.org
Original post on tikatech.org
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 19/10/2025
Just realised that a lot of what I talked about at the oppositional responses to ai workshop (#cscw2025) today was inspired by Sally Wyatt's brilliant idea to do research on the coming AI winter. sallywyatt.nl/imaginary-research-ab…
sallywyatt.nl
Imaginary Research about the AI winter
I have now achieved one of my dreams – a publication in the _Journal of Imaginary Research_. Volume 10, on the theme of flourishing has just been published. My contribution, co-authored with Aida Inverno, stresses the importance of doing research about the imminent AI winter. AI winters follow periods of hype about what AI can do. We’ve had them before. My contribution appears on pp.40-41. The Journal appears once a year. Check out their website later in the year for the 2026 theme.
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 12/10/2025
Unreasonably excited about my new Linux desktop environment: The wonderfully functional and performant #Niri (1) made beautiful and complete with #DMS (2). Redefining the sweet spot between bling and function, the holy grail of desktop environments […] [Original post on tikatech.org]
A monitor showing the niri desktop with the settings for dms open. A wallpaper from Scavengers reign shows a pot of leaves.
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 01/10/2025
Back to my #android ( #grapheneos ) phone after another week with the #sailfisos C2. Defeat. Most things work well enough on the C2. But my employer #ntnu is locked into the Microsoft ecosystem and has disabled mobile access to email and calendar from outside Outlook. Not being able to ckeck my […]
tikatech.org
Original post on tikatech.org
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 14/09/2025
I am teaching an introduction to #sts on the MA level this fall and did a little anonymous mapping of #ai use at the beginning. Most interesting findings: for almost all of these 20 students AI = #chatgpt. And almost all expected that AI will lead to profound changes in the next decade, with the […]
tikatech.org
Original post on tikatech.org
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 18/08/2025
Trondheim's Good infrastructures lab is looking for a #PhD student who wants to write about the fediverse as infrastructural hope. Norway treats its PhD students well and we will help you to make your application competitive. For the call, see here […]
tikatech.org
Original post on tikatech.org
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 13/08/2025
Finally switched from #plex to #jellyfin for my streaming needs. Main reason: using a tool instead of a (wannabe) platform is such a mental and esthetic pleasure as it eliminates clutter and reduces complexity. Jellyfin does fewer things and it does them well. Platforms all dream of becoming […]
tikatech.org
Original post on tikatech.org
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Reposted by Thomas Berker
DW Innovation @dw-innovation.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 02/07/2025
"Young people have always felt misunderstood by their parents, but new research shows that #GenAlpha might also be misunderstood by #AI." Rosie Thomas of @404mediaco summarizes the findings of a really interesting paper that focuses on how #LLMs (mis)interpret teenage slang and meme culture […]
mastodon.social
Original post on mastodon.social
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 21/06/2025
@skyglowberlin Claude (which obviously has Internet access): "University: Christopher Kyba received his PhD in Experimental Particle Physics from the University of Pennsylvania in 2006 Thesis Title: "Measurement of the Atmospheric Neutrino Induced Muon Flux at the Sudbury Neutrino […]
tikatech.org
Original post on tikatech.org
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 21/06/2025
@skyglowberlin I just asked Claude and it got place and title of my really obscure thesis exactly right. What is wrong with LLMs is unfortunately not only that they are wrong.
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 19/06/2025
That no ownership of the means of production always was linked to exploitation of work should be an easy way to convince knowledge workers to not use any cloud products (including non-local LLMs). Unfortunately, it is not. #selfhosting #localfirst #work
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 16/06/2025
Ok, I have now switched to #maintenance mode: Preserving, repairing, and caring for things and people in my reach. Abandoning the progress myth starts here! Innovation must die! Old and boring is beautiful.
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 02/06/2025
Grrrr, working with revising an article where one peer reviewer has not understood a word of what we want to say. They still wrote a long review where 90% just repeat what we have written and smell a lot like AI. The other reviewer wants us to comply to the IMRAD-structure, as if this was the […]
tikatech.org
Original post on tikatech.org
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Reposted by Thomas Berker
Sophia :AAAAAA: @via.myf.one.ap.brid.gy · 21/05/2025
INCREDIBLY excited to announce this: I collaborated with the Internet Archive to make a new 24/7 lofi livestream! By day, you can see scanners scanning and what they're scanning, and when they're not scanning, you will see public domain silent movies and pictures. Sorta like an Internet Archive […]
myf.one
Original post on myf.one
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 20/05/2025
So what happens after you have convinced someone close to you to ditch #Facebook and #Instagram? S/he starts to scroll the homepage of the mobile chrome browser where a feed of curated "news" is displayed. Never underestimate the salespeople of algorithmic entertainment! Next mission: #RSS
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Thomas Berker @thomas.tikatech.org.ap.brid.gy · 11/05/2025
Bluetooth is still quite unstable, unfortunately.
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