US citizens: call on Congress to block the Paramount media takeover.
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 Amazon to end its contracts with the deportation thugs.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: call on Congress to block the bully's scheme for making deportation profitable for some of his backers.
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 Congress to investigate military contracts in which the corrupter and his family would personally profit.
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 subpoenas to Breakthrough News as an attack on freedom of the press.
US citizens: call for no Pretend Intelligence data centers on federal lands!
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Social Security 2100 Act.
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 the House to pass the Stop CHEATERS Act to restore Biden's increased funding to making rich people and corporations pay their taxes.
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 Congress to stop the bully's illegal bombing of civilian boats.
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 Congress to terminate the bully's NSPM-7 political persecution crusade.
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.
Naturally, that means it's time for our latest installment of CYBERDELIA.
This is the THIRTY-FIRST Anniversary of HACKERS, yes really. Join me as I crumble to dust. So, as per tradition, we will have:
- A screening of Hackers at 8pm;
- Hackers costume contest at 11pm;
- Head-to-head Wipeout XL competition throughout the night;
- Skate ramps! Rollerblades welcome!
- Electro / big beat / cyberpunk dance party to follow.
If you've been to some of our other movie nights recently you may have noticed that people tend to clear out pretty soon after the movie ends. This one is not like that. There really is a dance party after, so be prepared!
"Hackers penetrate and ravage delicate public and privately owned computer systems, infecting them with viruses, and stealing materials for their own ends. These people, they are terrorists."
And we hope we will also see you at our subsequent movie nights as well! The Crow, Thu Oct 29 (Devils' Night Eve), Scott Pilgrim, Sun Nov 22, and the greatest Christmas movie, Batman Returns, Sun Dec 20. Season Pass tickets available!
Bonnie Tyler died last month, and so the glorious "Total Eclipse of the Heart, Literal Version" by Persephone Maewyn and dascottjr was making the rounds again, dodging takedowns. (This video is a textbook case of fair use, since not only is it a parody song, but the lyrics are direct commentary on the video itself, I mean come on.) Anyway all extant copies of it are shit quality, so I reconstructed it from the official HD video plus the "literal" audio, and re-built the subtitles by hand. Immediate takedown. I appealed. A week later, some intern or chatbot at BMG said "fuck you no". Then I tried to do a counter-claim, but they wouldn't let me, because I wouldn't give them a lock of my hair first. Then... 30 days later... they're both up, and all is forgiven I guess?
Mirror them while the mirroring's good.
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:
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.
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.
Update:: Oh no, Wiener had to take down his AI racism-bot. Oh no.
"Scott Wiener can rightly take down his bigotry bot, but he can't erase the concerns it raised among San Franciscans about his character and judgment," said Ian Krager, Chan's spokesperson.
"San Franciscans deserve better than a campaign funded by Big AI weaponizing the technology to mock an immigrant woman of color, doubling down after justified outrage, then reversing course and shrugging it off as simply 'missing the mark.'" [...]
"Women have spent generations fighting to have our own voices heard in the halls of power," read the statement from Pelosi. " We should not have to fight against artificial intelligence putting words into our mouths."
This clown also had a giant sign across the street from the entrance to Outside Lands that said "Connie Chan wants to cancel Outside Lands". If she was as much of a lying piece of shit as he is, she might have had a sign that said "Scott Wiener wants to build millionaire condos on the Polo Field." I mean, it sounds true, doesn't it? My AI Girlfriend says it might be.
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
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.
Planet Debian upstream is hosted by Branchable.