Readers in 2025 "may struggle to remember the optimism of the aughts, when the internet seemed to offer endless possibilities for virtual art and writing that was free..." argues a new review at Bookforum. "The content we do create online, if we still create, often feels unreflectively automatic: predictable quote-tweet dunks, prefabricated poses on Instagram, TikTok dances that hit their beats like clockwork, to say nothing of what's literally thoughtlessly churned out by LLM-powered bots."

They write that author Joanna Walsh "wants us to remember how truly creative, and human, the internet once was," in the golden age of user-generated content — and funny cat picture sites like I Can Has Cheezburger: I Can Has Cheezburger... was an amateur project, an outlet for tech professionals who wanted an easier way to exchange cute cat pics after a hard day at work. In Amateurs!: How We Built Internet Culture and Why It Matters, Walsh documents how unpaid creative labor is the basis for almost everything that's good (and much that's bad) online, including the open-source code Linux, developed by Linus Torvalds when he was still in school ("just as a hobby, won't be big and professional"), and even, in Walsh's account, the World Wide Web itself. The platforms that emerged in the 2000s as "Web 2.0," including Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, and Twitter, allowed anyone to experiment in a space that had been reserved for coders and hackers, making the internet interactive even for the inexpert and virtually unlimited in potential audience. The explosion in amateur creativity that followed took many forms, from memes to tweeted one-liners to diaristic blogs to durational digital performances to sloppy Photoshops to the formal and informal taxonomic structures — wikis, neologisms, digitally native dialects...

[U]ser-generated content was also, at bottom, about the bottom line, a business model sold to us under the guise of artistic empowerment. Even referring to an anonymous amateur as a "user," Walsh argues, cedes ground: these platforms are populated by producers, but their owners see us as, and turn us into, "helpless addicts." For some, online amateurism translated to professional success, a viral post earning an author a book deal, or a reputation as a top commenter leading to a staff writing job on a web publication... But for most, these days, participation in the online attention economy feels like a tax, or maybe a trickle of revenue, rather than free fun or a ticket to fame. The few remaining professionals in the arts and letters have felt pressured to supplement their full-time jobs with social media self-promotion, subscription newsletters, podcasts, and short-form video. On what was once called Twitter, users can pay, and sometimes get paid, to post with greater reach...

The chapters are bookended by an introduction on the early promise of 2004 and a coda on the defeat of 2025 and supplemented by an appendix with a straightforward timeline of the major events and publications that serve as the book's touchstones... The online spaces where amateur content creators once "created and steered online culture" have been hollowed out and replaced by slop, but what really hurts is that the slop is being produced by bots trained on precisely that amateur content.

Slashdot reader BrianFagioli writes: GIMP has officially launched its own Snap package for Linux, finally taking over from the community-maintained Snapcrafters project. The move means all future GIMP releases will now be built directly from the team's CI pipeline, ensuring faster, more consistent updates across distributions. The developers also introduced a new "gimp-plugins" interface to support external plugins while maintaining Snap's security confinement, with GMIC and OpenVINO already supported.

This marks another major step in GIMP's cross-platform packaging efforts, joining Flatpak and MSIX distribution options. The first officially maintained version, Version 3.0.6GIMP 3.0.6, is available now on the "latest/stable" Snap channel, with preview builds rolling out for testers.

"This is an attempt to stop Waymo cars from driving into the dead end," complains a home-made sign in San Francisco, "where they are forced to reverse and adversely affect the lives of the residents."

On an orange traffic post, the home-made sign declares "NO WAYMO — 8:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m," with an explanation for the rest of the neighborhood. "Waymo comes at all hours of the night and up to 7 times per hour with flashing lights and screaming reverse sounds, waking people up and destroying the quality of life."

SFGate reports that 1,400 people on Reddit upvoted a photo of the sign's text: It delves into the bureaucratic mess — multiple requests to Waymo, conversations with engineers, and 311 [municipal services] tickets, which had all apparently gone ignored — before finally providing instructions for human drivers. "Please move [the cones] back after you have entered so we can continue to try to block the Waymo cars from entering and disrupting the lives of residents."

This isn't the first time Waymo's autonomous vehicles have disrupted San Francisco residents' peace. Last year, a fleet of the robotaxis created another sleepless fiasco in the city's SoMa neighborhood, honking at each other for hours throughout the night for two and a half weeks.
Other on Reddit shared the concern. "I live at an dead end street in Noe Valley, and these Waymos always stuck there," another commenter posted. "It's been bad for more than a year," agreed another comment. "People on the Internet think you're just a hater but it's a real issue with Waymos."

On Thursday "the sign remained at the corner of Lake Street and Second Avenue," notes SFGate. And yet "something appeared to have shifted. "Waymo vehicles weren't allowing drop-offs or pickups on the street, though whether this was due to the home-printed plea, the cone blockage, or simply updating routes remains unclear."

An anonymous reader shared this report from Cryptonews: Sony has taken Wall Street by surprise after its banking division, Sony Bank, filed an application with the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish a national crypto bank under its subsidiary "Connectia Trust." The move positions the Japanese tech giant to become one of the first major global corporations to issue a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin through a federally regulated institution. The application outlines plans to issue a U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin, maintain the reserve assets backing it, and provide digital asset custody and management services.

The filing places Sony alongside an elite list of firms, including Coinbase, Circle, Paxos, Stripe, and Ripple, currently awaiting OCC approval to operate as national digital banks. If approved, Sony would become the first major global technology company to receive a U.S. bank charter specifically tied to stablecoin issuance....
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency "has received over 15 applications from fintech and crypto entities seeking trust charters," according to the article, calling it "a sign of renewed regulatory openness" under the office's new chief, a former blockchain executive.

Meanwhile, the United States has also "conditionally given the nod to a new cryptocurrency-focused national bank launched by California tech billionaire Palmer Luckey," reports SFGate: To bring the bank to life, Luckey joined forces with JoeLonsdale, co-founder of Palantir and venture firm 8VC, and financial backer and fellow Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel, according to the Financial Times. Luckey conceived the idea for Erebor following the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank in 2023, the Financial Times reported. The bank's name draws inspiration from J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit," referring to another name for the Lonely Mountain in the novel...

The OCC said it applied the "same rigorous review and standards" used in all charter applications. The ["preliminary"] approval was granted in just four months; however, compliance and security checks are expected to take several more months before the new bank can open.
"I am committed to a dynamic and diverse federal banking system," America's Comptroller of the Currency said Wednesday, "and our decision today is a first but important step in living up to that commitment."

"Permissible digital asset activities, like any other legally permissible banking activity, have a place in the federal banking system if conducted in a safe and sound manner. The OCC will continue to provide a path for innovative approaches to financial services to ensure a strong, diverse financial system that remains relevant over time."

Long-time Slashdot reader Bruce66423 shared this article from the Los Angeles Times: Scientists have increasingly observed how the rupturing of a fault during an earthquake can be even faster than the speed of another type of damaging seismic wave, theoretically generating energy on the level of a sonic boom. These shock waves — created during "supershear" earthquakes — can worsen how bad the ground shakes both side to side and up and down along an affected fault area, scientists at USC, Caltech and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign wrote in a recent opinion article for the journal Seismological Research Letters. Although not everyone agrees that supershear earthquakes are inherently more destructive than other types, the potential implications are massive and need to be accounted for in seismic forecasts, the scientists contend... In just the last 15 years, 14 of 39 large strike-slip earthquakes have exhibited features of supershear ruptures, the opinion article said....

In California, supershear earthquakes would be expected on the straightest of "strike-slip" faults — in which one block of earth slides past another — like the San Andreas... There are a number of communities directly on top of the San Andreas fault. Among them are Coachella, Indio, Cathedral City, Palm Springs, Desert Hot Springs, Banning, Yucaipa, Highland, San Bernardino, Wrightwood, Palmdale, Gorman, Frazier Park, San Juan Bautista, Palo Alto, Portola Valley, Woodside, San Bruno, South San Francisco, Pacifica, Daly City and Bodega Bay.
One earthquake scientist suggests building codes need to be more strict, according to the article.

But it also cites a U.S. Geological Survey research geophysicist who isn't convinced by the new opinion article. "I don't think we know yet whether supershear ruptures really are more destructive."

"Microsoft does everything in its power to keep Windows users under its control," warns the Free Software Foundation in a new blog post this week.

They argue that the lack of freedom that comes with proprietary code "forces users to surrender to decisions made by Microsoft to maximize its profits and further lock users into its product ecosystem" — describing both the problem and one possible solution: [IT management company Lansweeper] found that of the 30 million enterprise systems they manage, over 40% are incompatible with Windows 11. This is due to the hardware requirements like Treacherous Platform Module version 2.0 — a proprietary chip that uses cryptography that users can't influence or audit to restrict their control over the system.

The end of Windows 10 support is the perfect opportunity to break free from this cycle and switch to GNU/Linux operating system (GNU/Linux OS), a system that respects your freedom...

The endless, freedom-restricting cycle of planned obsolescence is not inevitable. Instead of paying Microsoft for continued updates or buying new hardware, Windows users left behind by Microsoft should install GNU/Linux. Free Software Foundation certified GNU/Linux distributions respect the user's freedom to run their computer as they wish, to study and modify its source code, and to redistribute copies. They don't require update contracts, often run faster on older hardware, and, most importantly, put you in control.
"If you're already a GNU/Linux user, you have an important role to play. Help your friends and family make the switch by sharing your knowledge, help them install a free-as-in-freedom OS. Show them what it means to have real control over their computing!"

The Guardian reports that atmospheric carbon dioxide "soared by a record amount in 2024 to hit another high, UN data shows."

But what's more troubling is why: Several factors contributed to the leap in CO2, including another year of unrelenting fossil fuel burning despite a pledge by the world's countries in 2023 to "transition away" from coal, oil and gas. Another factor was an upsurge in wildfires in conditions made hotter and drier by global heating. Wildfire emissions in the Americas reached historic levels in 2024, which was the hottest year yet recorded. However, scientists are concerned about a third factor: the possibility that the planet's carbon sinks are beginning to fail. About half of all CO2 emissions every year are taken back out of the atmosphere by being dissolved in the ocean or being sucked up by growing trees and plants. But the oceans are getting hotter and can therefore absorb less CO2 while on land hotter and drier conditions and more wildfires mean less plant growth...

Atmospheric concentrations of methane and nitrous oxide — the second and third most important greenhouse gases related to human activities — also rose to record levels in 2024. About 40% of methane emissions come from natural sources. But scientists are concerned that global heating is leading to more methane production in wetlands, another potential feedback loop.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader mspohr for sharing the article.