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Monday June 8th, 2026

Libre Euro Star Open Dan Lyke / comment 0

LibreOffice: An open letter to office suite users, just before the Euro-Office announcement

In recent days you will have read various articles announcing the arrival of Euro-Office, which is being “marketed” as the first open-source office suite developed in Europe. We feel compelled — reluctantly, since open source should rest on transparency, not deception — to correct this claim. The first open-source office suite developed in Europe was OpenOffice.org in 2001, based on StarOffice’s source code, followed by LibreOffice from 2010.

These are two genuine open-source office suites, built from source code that originated in Europe. They are not a freeware clone of MS Office whose code provenance is undisclosed, nor a product that has rebranded itself out of pure opportunism to ride today’s wave of Digital Sovereignty.

Disruption in auto retailing Dan Lyke / comment 0

Electrek: Carvana’s bet on Slate is ACTUALLY a bet on itself, as the future of automotive retail.

The Protagonist Problem Dan Lyke / comment 0

If you're intrigued by thinking about story structure, I really enjoyed Uncanny Magazine: The Protagonist Problem by Ada Palmer and Jo Walton

Having questions is how we build friendships Dan Lyke / comment 0

In talking about the BoingBoing link to Vadim Drobinin: Am I a Bad Friend? , an observation of something I've felt, from ‪Elf M. Sternberg‬ ‪@elfsternberg.bsky.social‬

It was at one party that I ran into a couple of friends I hadn't seen in a few weeks, and after a round of "How ya doin?" we ran out of things to talk about because we were so on-line we KNEW what was going on in their broader lives.

Elf M. Sternberg ‪@elfsternberg.bsky.social‬

We didn't have the gaps that took time to fill, that justified talking to each other, that justified spending time together.

Maybe the rise of TTRPGs and the like is a way to create a context for being together and trading synthetic experiences since the real experiences we used to trade are gone.

Bat BASIC Dan Lyke / comment 0

Short little video of an easter egg in the Lego Batman game that's awesome for those of us of a certain age.

Via.

Grounds for keeping the kids Dan Lyke / comment 0

Arkansas state trooper resigns after wife files 'white supremacist' messages in divorce records

In a court filing, Alana requested sole custody of the children, with Michael given visitation rights so long as he completes a parenting course "in order to limit the hatred and prejudice that he has towards people."

The comments from the Arkansas State Police rep are extremely telling. Yikes.

Via.

United States v. Heppner Dan Lyke / comment 0

Good read on why conversations with LLMs aren't protected as attorney-client privilege: Elizabeth X Guo writing in the Harvard Law Review re United States v. Heppner.

The Heppner court assumed sub silentio that Claude was more like a non- attorney human than a tool. One might reasonably question that assumption. On the very same day of Judge Rakoff’s oral decision, the district court for the Eastern District of Michigan (in a civil case concerning work-product protection for a pro se litigant’s ChatGPT- generated materials) emphasized that “ChatGPT (and other generative AI programs) are tools, not persons” and represent “a litigant’s internal mental impressions reformatted though software.”

Sunday June 7th, 2026

With the news that Meta's AI bot is Dan Lyke / comment 0

With the news that Meta's AI bot is being used to steal accounts, hat tip to everyone who's used "Facebook Login" to trust Meta with their identity on third party services.


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for the web publications at www.flutterby.com and www.flutterby.net. Last modified: Thu Mar 15 12:48:17 PST 2001