Salem Brought a Guillotine To Oppose New AI Data Center. Company Reps Left, Feeling "Unsafe".
Someone brought a guillotine to a city council meeting in Salem, Oregon on July 27, 2026. Not a sign shaped like one. Not a drawing. According to community accounts and social media posts, an actual guillotine structure appeared at the protest outside Loucks Auditorium, where hundreds of residents had gathered to oppose a proposed multi-billion-dollar AI data center. Company representatives reportedly assessed the scene and left, citing safety concerns -- though that detail hasn't appeared in formal news coverage or official minutes. [...]
Salem just reminded the industry that community consent isn't a formality you schedule around -- it's a variable that can stall a $5.1 billion project before a single permit clears.
Also, if you are going and we actually know each other in person, lemme know!
During the last storm, I was able to weather 80+req/sec. But this time with only 32 req/sec, responsiveness went completely to shit. Possibly because thousands of connections were staying in LAST_ACK? I dunno.
After trying many things, the only thing that alleviated it somewhat was to start blackholing entire countries by /16.
And having done so, I'm... still getting 32/req sec. But now the site is responsive. So there's some thing special about this latest attacker that makes things fall over, that is not merely "hammering you with page loads as fast as you respond". And this was the case even if I fed the scrapers a plain-old Apache 404 or 503, without dropping down into PHP at all.
To whom do I send the invoice for the lost productivity of my staff, who could not access our own web site to do their jobs for most of the week? Asking for an everybody.
Anyway, some things I have been finding helpful this week:
- country-block;
- ipsum = level 3;
- blocklist.de = all.
My approach (which had been working great last week, but not so much this week) was to create separate php-fpm pools for "real" web sites and for scrapers; and a corresponding fcgi proxy for each. The idea here being that under load, the "scraper" responder might become unresponsive, but the "real" site will be fine. And that was working pretty well... last month.
Something like:
<Proxy "unix:/run/php-fpm/jwz.sock|fcgi://php-jwz"> ProxySet </Proxy> ... <Proxy "unix:/run/php-fpm/dadadodo.sock|fcgi://php-dadadodo"> ProxySet timeout=10 </Proxy>
But the fact that under catastrophic load, I couldn't even get the php-fpm status pages to load, despite using a pm.status_listen "invisible pool" to bypass the queue, suggest to me that there's some other shared resource contention I don't know about:
<Location /fpm-status-dadadodo> SetHandler "proxy:unix:/run/php-fpm/dadadodo-status.sock|fcgi://php-dadadodo" Require ip ... </Location>
I also have conflicting experience with whether things are better with a "reasonable" number of Apache workers, or going hog wild on it: ServerLimit 16, MaxRequestWorkers 400 versus ServerLimit 400, MaxRequestWorkers 10000.
In summary: "AI is the future, don't get left behind." Also in this future you can't have a web site.
US citizens: call on Congress to block the proposed autocratic grant rule, protect scientific independence, and stop political appointees from turning federal funding into an ideological loyalty test.
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Please spread the word.
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Take action.
US citizens: call on Tell Congress: vote to keep DACA going so that people who grew up in the US can stay here.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on news media to cover the bully's Department of Injustice as a rule of law crisis.
US citizens: call on the Dept of Transportation to release the billions of dollars already appropriated by Congress for public transit projects.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Thank the New York Times for Fighting Back against the magats' subpoenas against journalism.
The Wiener campaign was in part inspired to create the chatbot in order to "lean into the AI craze overtaking the city," Arellano added. [...]
Ian Krager, spokesperson for the Chan campaign, told Gazetteer that Wiener is "desperately resorting to gimmicks" because Chan's message to voters has narrowed the gap; recent polling suggests that Chan is within five percentage points of Wiener.
"If there was ever any doubt that Scott Wiener is bought and paid for by Big AI, he's not even trying to hide it anymore," Krager said. "We know Scott Wiener is desperate for attention, but it's never a good idea for a man to put words in a woman's mouth -- especially when they are falsities fraught with racist and sexist undertones."
Krager added that Wiener has "cozied up to Big AI and corporate money," and that "voters deserve better than the tired and trite slop Scott Wiener is offering."
48 Hills: Wiener’s racist, sexist AI chatbot attacks Chan – and it’s weird and stupid and gross.
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
Global heating is making winters wetter and summers drier and hotter in Europe. In addition to wildfires, and early death of humans from their smoke, frequent severe droughts will cause agricultural failures.
The recent European heat wave is estimated to have killed 20,000 people. What should we call the people who want to kill tens of thousands for their profit?
The European heat wave and drought have dried up rivers, cutting off shipping of freight.
In addition, nuclear power plants are shutting down for lack of cooling water. They are too expensive to be economically feasible.
LLMs are just the thing to push certain people into delusions and psychosis.
I suspect that referring to them by the term "AI" facilitates this effect.
Inside the New York court where children face deportation without access to attorneys.
This implies an unfair trial. But then, it is not a real trial, and the judge is not a real judge.
Apartheid Emerald Mine Space Karen supposedly became a "trillionaire" on June 12 and lost that status 12 days later as nearly half of that money [sic] evaporated. Yesterday SpaceX and Tesla stock had a "rapid unscheduled disassembly" and he was down to a paltry $600 billion, his 2024 level, meaning that in 49 days, he lost 25% more money than he had ever had prior to that. 49 days is the same timespan by which a head of lettuce famously outlasted Liz Truss in office.
This is almost enough to make you think that money isn't real and the stock market runs entirely on vibes. But that can't be right.
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
The SFPD "Real-Time Investigation Center" is the surveillance nightmare funded by a $9.4 million "donation" from billionaire Chris Larsen and another $3 million "donation" from Salesforce and Trump quisling Marc Benioff.
"We're going to be covering the entire city with drones," said RTIC representative Captain Thomas MacGuire.
Because there's nothing fascists like more than keeping the populace under constant surveillance.
(Funny story about this Chris Larsen guy, he calls himself a "privacy activist". How does a "privacy activist" end up buying cameras for cops? Oh that's easy; when he says "privacy" he means "financial privacy" which means "tax evasion" and "cryptocurrencies".)
Well. Besides partnering with enthusiastic ICE accomplices Flock, they have now begun "reaching out" to local businesses to really build out that Public-Private Panopticon Partnership. From a recent couple of emails we received from some private company who apparently got an SFPD contract to recruit for this grift:
Vale is building a direct link between SOMA and SFPD's Real-Time Investigation Center, the same unit that's already helped with over 500 arrests. We'd love your feedback on what to build to make SOMA safer and help businesses flourish. [...]
By tying businesses directly into the RTIC, SFPD can respond faster with evidence that actually leads to an arrest. We're reaching out to businesses to build a list of the first 100 businesses to roll out Vale's product with.
Let me know if you'd like your business included in Vale's Pilot with the City or just want to learn more about what we're doing to clean up SOMA.
My best guess as to how to translate that: "We want real-time access to your security cameras, and/or to install our own cameras on your property. And if you happen to have facial recognition at the door, well Hello Sailor!"
It sounds like Vale is a Nextdoor clone (that's the Weaponized Karens snitchware app whose main function is reporting people for Walking While Black.)
And it looks like the founder and CEO (Jon Goldsmith and Andrew Munday) also run a "ghost kitchens" company (that means "ratfucking independent restaurants".) Their third partner? Disgraced former SFPD Chief Greg Suhr.
Did I respond to those emails? I did.
The "Real-Time Investigation Center" is the most dystopian shit I've ever heard of. we want nothing to do with the surveillance nightmare you and your billionaire fascist buddies are trying to purchase for yourselves. Unsubscribe.
Among the statements at the center of the lawsuit were claims that Patel "attempted to overthrow the government," "planned January 6," was "guilty of sedition" and was a "Kremlin asset," as well as an allegation that Patel and his foundation paid people to "lie to Congress," according to the court filing. [...]
The order also referenced a post Stewartson made after the default judgment was entered, in which he called Patel a "Googly-eyed Kremlin bitch" and said Patel would have to return to Nevada for a trial where Stewartson would explain why he was "dead serious" when he called the FBI director a "chud." [...]
"✍️ PSA: Now that my case is settled, you are free to refer to @FBIDirectorKash as a 'chud,' a 'googly-eyed Kremlin bitch,' and a 'traitor' without fear of legal repercussions!" Stewartson wrote. "You're welcome! 😁👍🏼."
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
On July 8, Amnesty International UK released a report titled "A Growing Threat: The Anti-Rights Movement in the UK." The report mapped 117 organizations working to restrict the rights of, among others, transgender and queer people in the United Kingdom, and documented the financial infrastructure behind them, including far-right Christian nationalist organizations, U.S.-based legal powerhouses like Alliance Defending Freedom, and conversion therapy promoters. [...]
For three weeks, the question was whether Amnesty would stand behind its own research or capitulate entirely. This morning, we got the answer: a full, groveling apology from the organization that has weathered the Soviet Union, Putin's Russia, and the Bush administration's defense of Guantánamo Bay -- but could not weather J.K. Rowling. [...]
The apology identified no factual errors in the report. It did not retract any specific finding. It did not name a single inaccuracy. It simply surrendered the entire document. [...]
This is not the first time Rowling has used the threat of litigation to silence critics in the United Kingdom. In 2022, she threatened legal action against a social media user who called her a Nazi, forcing a public apology. In 2024, her lawyers compelled journalist Rivkah Brown -- whose grandparents were Holocaust survivors -- to publicly retract a tweet calling Rowling a Holocaust denier after Rowling dismissed the Nazis' well-documented targeting of transgender people; her lawyers even required Brown to edit the apology's phrasing.
Planet Debian upstream is hosted by Branchable.