So this morning I found out that the RPG Maker forums will be shutting down this year, and it’s really just another depressing thing to see.
If you read the link the company does of course say they’re replacing the existing forums with new ones, and I’m sure no one would say the old ones didn’t perhaps need a lil bit of a glow up, some tech debt fixing… but there’s a few key notes in there:
They are NOT carrying over any history, data messages etc. from the old forums
They are NOT archiving, retaining or in any way saving the existing forums in any way
They have NOT provided any reasoning past ‘as part of continued efforts to support developers’
As an offhand, moderate read, this sounds to me like a desire for some change in the forums but deciding nuking everything is less expensive than rebuilding and carrying over info.
If I’m cynical, and likely realistic? Probably to increase sales of their latest GameMaker software by making it inherently more difficult for someone getting the older software for cheap pushing it to its limits. The amount of institutional knowledge on those forums is absurd.
And even if it is a benign reason, it’s still terrible because what do you mean you’re doing this with no recourse or potential for change? You sell software that runs on community goodwill? In an era where people are pulling away to open source software?? Crazy.
There are yeeeaaars of answers, plugins, suggestion, community built up on those forums - I’ve used the em to learn and grow my own skillet!!! And soon it won’t exist.
At the very least, they gave a ‘heads up’ - the deletion occurs mid December, so archiving by the community is possible from now. It’s just absurd that it needs to happen in the first place.
It’s just reflective of how the industry is right now - and why it’s so important for communities to grow and build up knowledge together, knowledge that is NOT reliant on a company that can pull the plug at any time in the very name of the very customers, users and supporters they are screwing over.
I'm here after a long break, due to many circumstances, it's been a very difficult period, guys.
I hope everyone is well and safe, I miss you, I am here now because I need you at this time, as you know, my family and I live in a house we have rented and at the beginning of every new month I collect the costs here with your help, so that I can pay the rent and maintain the shelter that shelters us all.
I've done it many times, and you guys haven't let me down, but honestly I don't get much attention lately, and that's why I'm not always active here, but I love you from the bottom of my heart. My family has always been fine thanks to you, please guys, we need you so much now.
I only need $700 so I can pay the rent and keep my family safe.
Any delay from the payment date will be kicked out on the street homeless, life is very, very difficult, I use you guys.
Payment date will be on 10/06/2026
Hello guys, this fundraiser was created with the help of my friend Adam.
Our goal is to help … Adam M needs your support for Help Samir
I will not prolong much, this is the purpose of the publication, as for the circumstances I went through, I will not bother anyone here, whoever wanted that, I can write to him privately and reveal all the details, I was injured two days ago, and I hope to be fine in the coming days.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Over the weekend, I did an interview about my forthcoming book The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI (a book about being a better AI critic), and the interviewer said she was surprised that I wasn't an AI booster, based on my demographics and work history:
I could see where she was coming from. I encountered computers in the mid-seventies, as a small child. My first computer was a CARDIAC, a working, Turing-complete, mechanical computer made entirely of cardboard, that I spent endless hours with:
Then I graduated to a teletype terminal and acoustic coupler connected to a minicomputer at the University of Toronto. My mom, a kindergarten teacher, used to smuggle home 1,000' rolls of paper towel from the kids' bathroom. I'd get 1,000' feet of computing up one side, then another 1,000' down the other side, then I'd carefully re-roll the paper towel so she could put it back in the bathroom for the kids to dry their hands on.
After that, I got an Apple ][+ in 1979, and shortly thereafter acquired a modem, and that was it: I was hooked for life. I became an amateur programmer, then a professional programmer. I hosted forums on dial-up BBSes where I distributed software and offered support to strangers who wanted to connect their computers to the internet. I got a job as a gopher developer, then a web developer, then a CIO-for-hire, helping wire up small businesses and connect them to the net. Eventually, I co-founded a free/open source software startup, before transitioning to 25 years as a digital rights activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. And for most of that time, I was energetically writing science fiction, eventually becoming associated with a school sometimes called "post-cyberpunk":
The force that energized all this work was a dialectical one, the contradiction that powered cyberpunk literature itself. For all that cyberpunk was undeniably enamored with the coolness and combustibility of new technology, it was also terrified of how technology could be a force for oppression, surveillance and control. As William Gibson says, "cyberpunk was a warning, not a suggestion."
Gibson's more famous quote, of course, is "the street finds its own use for things." In Gibson's novels (and in my own life in technology) all the most interesting things happen when users of technology (often without formal training or credentials) find ways to adapt the technology they use to suit their needs:
This is why I remain an ardent fan of Hypercard, Scratch and other meta-tools that are designed to allow non-programmers to write software that exactly conforms to their desires. Whatever the apps produced by these tools lack in sophistication and efficiency is more than offset by the fact that they give everyday people the power to directly control the tools they rely upon.
If "epistemic humility" means anything, it means acknowledging that no amount of "requirements gathering" can capture the needs of people totally unlike yourself as faithfully as those users can capture their own needs. Giving people the tools to produce their own software is always going to make tools – vernacular, idiosyncratic, homespun – that are more suited to their own hands and minds than anything a technologist working on their behalf could make.
The ancient dictum of "nothing about us without us" – born in 16th century Poland and taken up by the modern disability rights movement – asserts the right of people to control their own living conditions, and also the unique capacity of people to understand their own needs. You know what's even better than being consulted on the design of the technology you use? Having direct control over that technology!
This is why I was so suspicious of the iPad. The iPad's much-lauded "ease of use" was entirely about how easy it was to use an iPad to consume technology. But the iPad remains the single most user-innovation-hostile technology in modern history, a device designed to make it impossible to produce technology without permission from a remorseless multinational corporation. This is cyberpunk as a demand, not a warning:
The technology I've championed all my life is technology that gives more control to its users. One of my immutable precepts is that people who are different from me know things I can't know, and the only way I can get the benefit of their unique knowledge and perspective is if they are free to make and share things that matter to them. As Dan Gillmor said, back when he was inventing the study of citizen journalism, "My readers know more than I do":
And while I am broadly very skeptical of AI, and deeply alarmed by the proliferation of "vibe coded" software in production environments, vibe coding for personal projects is a useful and exciting addition to the lineage of tools that let computer users decide how their computers will work. For people making personal projects, vibe coding extends the power of shell scripting, cron jobs, Applescript, and other desktop automation tools to a wider audience.
One of the journalists I spoke to last week about my book described how he had vibe coded an app that showed him an alert every time a plane flew over his house, giving the tail number and other details of the flight. This is information that I have no need for, no interest in, and that I'm therefore excited to learn about, because its very existence affirms that the world is full of people who are delightfully, irreducibly, amazingly different from me, and moreover, that their unique needs can be directly met using their imaginations and their personal computers.
I recently sat down with my colleague Naomi Novik, a brilliant author who also co-founded Archive of Our Own. Naomi demoed her followup to AO3 for me: Wreccer, a system to help you find small groups of people with taste similar to your own, in order to facilitate media recommendations within that group – a kind of personal, relationship-driven alternative to massive, centralized, monolithic algorithmic recommendation systems:
https://github.com/wreccer
Naomi told me that Wreccer was being built using the same design ethos that the original Twitter embraced. When Twitter launched, it was an API first, and the official Twitter front end was built on that API – but anyone could build their own front end for Twitter that worked in the way they wanted it to. Now, the word "anyone" is doing a lot of work in that sentence, because most people don't even know what an API is, and of the people who do, most of them were not capable of writing their own software front end for Twitter.
But Wreccer is being designed for the age of vibe coding, and the API will really allow anyone who uses the service to design their own interface to the system, one that elevates and centers the features they find useful and tucks away the ones they're not interested in. Your personal, custom front end could also bring in other data-sources – pulling in your Mastodon messages, for example, or even showing you an alert with the tail-number of any plane flying over your home.
This is the part of vibe coding that I'm quite excited about, but it's not the part the industry focuses on. Instead of hearing about how personal, homemade software utilities can be an end unto themselves, we hear about vibe coded projects as prototypes for commercial production code. We hear about clueless bosses vibe coding software products and services that run fine for one user on a siloed desktop computer, and then demanding to know why it takes 50 engineers a year to make the same thing work for millions of users on the public internet. We hear about people who vibe code and submit patches to free/open-source software projects with millions of users, overwhelming project maintainers with slop code that is riddled with security vulnerabilities.
Of course, there's an obvious reason why the industry wants to focus on the potential for vibe coded software to replace production code. The AI bubble has burned up $1.4t to date, while bringing in mere tens of billions of dollars per year, even as its unit economics grow steadily worse:
To keep the bubble inflated, AI hucksters must promise massive economic returns to the technology. They want investors to believe that vibe code is about to replace working programmers, who are skilled, high-waged, high-demand workers. Their pitch is that for every million dollars' worth of programmers that an AI salesman and a boss conspire to fire, half a million dollars will go to the AI company whose bots shit out that vibe code.
That's par for the course with the AI bubble, whose focus is entirely on how AI can centralize, control and homogenize our lives. Whereas early desktop publishing, web publishing and social media gave us a glorious higgledy-piggledy of chaotic, weird and transgressive hobbyist media and retina-searing designs, AI art and design are instantly recognizable at a thousand yards, and it all looks the same, boring, and washed:
AI companies have released open weight/open source models that can run on your own computer, but these are treated as side-shows and toys and demos. The real action, we're told, is in "frontier models," which is industry-speak for "a piece of software whose running costs exceed the GDP of most countries":
Perhaps this is why the dynamics of AI are so different from the early dynamics of the web. Early web users were workers, who demanded that their bosses allow them to use the web and so devolve more power to people doing their jobs. By contrast, today's most ardent AI boosters are bosses, who threaten workers who don't use AI enough in the course of their duties:
Where we do see idiosyncrasy emerging from AI usage, it's often terrible. AI can help you create a folie-a-un in which you and a chatbot team up to reinforce your delusions and drive you deeper into a world of dangerous mirage:
There's a (false) story that's told about people who championed the early internet: that we were blithely certain that technology could only be a force for good, and negligently disinterested in the possibility that technology could control, extract and harm. That's demonstrably untrue: recall cyberpunk's dualism of "the street finds its own use for things" and "cyberpunk is a warning, not a suggestion."
More true is to say that early internet champions were alive to the importance of the internet, and therefore both excited about the possibilities of the internet to deliver a world of connection, idiosyncrasy, love and solidarity; and about the danger of the internet as a dystopian system of surveillance and manipulation:
History isn't finished. Long after the AI bubble pops, there will be local models and people vibe coding homemade software that respond directly to their needs. The stuff we make on our own computers, for ourselves, is deplatformed from its inception. It's part of the life we can build in technology's "shadowy corners" that we used to just call "technology." The fact that this stuff is utterly unsuited to be production code makes it inherently unmonetizable. It's how the street finds its own use for things:
For all that cyberpunk was undeniably enamored with the coolness and combustibility of new technology, it was also terrified of how technology could be a force for oppression, surveillance and control. As William Gibson says, "cyberpunk was a warning, not a suggestion."
Ignoring ongoing covid paved the way for this change and put millions more in worse danger because of it. Mask up. Keep people developing debilitating long-term illness the government wants you to die from.
Together, we reached the full $300 goal for my university application fund.
I honestly didn't know if I would make it when the deadline arrived. After six days of effort and one final extension, your support made this possible.
Thank you to everyone who donated, shared, encouraged, and believed in my journey.
This is not the end. It is the first step toward my Master's degree and a future I have been working toward for years.
Mahmoud is a gazan student who has been working really hard to support his fellow university students through the Isnad Foundation (please check it out at @isnadfoundation Tumblr), even as he works toward his own studies.
Here is his campaign link, because the road ahead is still filled with hardship.
This is not the kind of post a mother wants to write
When I look at this picture, I see a child who should be allowed to enjoy a beautiful moment without fear or worry. But I am writing this because I need help providing basic essentials for my family.
I am sharing this because I want people to see him first, and to remember that behind every fundr@iser_ there is a real family trying to hold on.
If you can don@te_, thank you.
If you can’t, reblogging this post would still h_elp us.
“Life for Gaza 2”. Donations will be directed toward:
Water supply enhancement projects
Maintenance of water wells
Implementation of water desalination initiatives
Management of waste collection and disposal systems
Reconstruction of roads demolished during war
Implementation of sewage water pumping and treatment schemes
Execution of pest control and rodent eradication programs
“One Step Closer”. The Artificial Limbs and Polio Center is one of the most essential facilities under the management of Gaza Municipality, responsible for its administration and providing essential resources, equipment, and supplies to enable the center to serve citizens for nearly 50 years. Established in 1976, this is the only facility currently operating in Gaza City, offering prosthetic services to the injured. It also provides therapeutic and medical care for children with disabilities, the elderly, stroke patients, and physical therapy services.
Donations will be directed toward operational expenses to ensure the continuity of essential services for citizens, sustain the Artificial Limbs and Polio Center, and provide the critical medical care that has become even more urgent due to ongoing aggression. Including:
Manufacturing and fitting prosthetics for all levels of upper and lower limb amputations.
Offering psychological support and rehabilitation to help patients cope with the mental challenges of limb loss and develop coping strategies that foster self-confidence and social integration.
Maintaining and repairing prosthetics to ensure their ongoing effectiveness.
Designing and supplying orthopedic devices for various levels of amputation and spinal support.
Providing custom-made medical footwear.
Training individuals with disabilities to use their devices effectively, focusing on empowering them to engage in society and rely on their self-capabilities.
Supplying polio patients with essential assistive devices to support their needs.
19-year-old Khalil Al Habil's liver and kidneys are failing. Shrapnel damage from the bombardment that killed his baby brother Omar has gone mostly untreated due to a lack of funds and resources. The ill effects of this damage have progressed to the point that the organs are losing their ability to function. Khalil urgently needs 3 rounds of treatment to combat the effects of his deteriorating liver and kidneys.
We've paid off the first round of treatments but Khalil has two treatments that he still needs. The second costs about $1,250 usd, but we haven’t made much progress in more than a month and his condition is getting progressively worse. We need to meet this second goal ASAP!!!
Current: $9,829 out of $10,407 usd (3 May)
Need to raise: $578 usd
Hello, my name is Khalil, I'm 19 years old, from Gaza.
Vetting information linked in the last reblog of this post, courtesy of murderbot
Khalil is suffering in silence, and his weakened body can't endure any more. Every day that passes without treatment means more suffering and puts his life at risk.
Thanks to your kind hearts, we've reached $11,036 of $12,781, leaving only $1,745 needed.
🥺 Imagine that Khalil's hope of continuing treatment now rests on this small amount compared to what we've already raised. We're so close, but we still need your help.
❤️ A small donation could ease his pain and give him a new chance at life. And if you can't donate, sharing this post could reach the person who can save him.
Don't leave Khalil alone in this fight. Every minute counts, and every act of kindness could make a miracle. 🙏💔
Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said both sides had declared an immediate and permanent end of all military operations.
All sides have said the memorandum of understanding on an end to the war will be signed in Switzerland on Friday. Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said the memorandum would then be published.
Iran and the U.S. have both said the Strait of Hormuz would start to reopen and the U.S. blockade on Iranian ports start to lift as soon as the memorandum is signed.
Both sides have said negotiations on more difficult further areas of dispute - notably Iran's nuclear issue and U.S. sanctions on Iran - will be conducted over the following 60 days.
STRAIT OF HORMUZ AND BLOCKADE OF IRANIAN PORTS
U.S. President Donald Trump said the Strait of Hormuz would be reopened on Friday and he had ordered a lifting of the blockade on Iranian ports.
A senior Iranian official said the strait would be reopened "to all commercial vessels" once the memorandum was signed.
Iran's semi-official Fars news agency reported that under the memorandum, marine traffic through the strait would be regulated by Iran in coordination with Oman.
IRAN'S NUCLEAR PROGRAMME
Both sides have said that Iran agrees that it will neither produce nor acquire nuclear weapons - a promise Tehran has been making repeatedly for decades.
The senior Iranian official said pending a final agreement Iran would freeze its nuclear activity, refraining from further uranium enrichment or the expansion of nuclear facilities.
The senior Iranian official said the U.S. had agreed that Iran could dilute its stockpile of highly enriched uranium inside Iran under a future comprehensive agreement.
Trump said on Saturday there was no urgency to extract Iran's stockpile of nuclear material, and that the U.S. would retrieve it "when all is calm".
Trump said there would be a strong inspections regime for Iran under any deal, but he did not give specifics.
U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham said any final deal on Iran's nuclear programme would have to be reviewed and approved by Congress.
SANCTIONS AND FINANCIAL IMPACT
The senior Iranian official said the U.S. had agreed not to impose any new sanctions on Iran until a final deal was reached.
They added the U.S. would waive oil sanctions on Iran for a specified period and that after the final agreement all U.S. and U.N. sanctions would be lifted to an agreed timetable.
The senior Iranian official said the U.S. had agreed to release $25 billion of Iran's frozen assets, including via direct cash transfers, cooperation among regional countries, and financial credit lines.
Washington, in coordination with its regional allies, would prepare a reconstruction and development plan for Iran, to be negotiated and agreed with Tehran within 60 days, they added.
Trump said Iran would not be provided with cash but that sanctions could potentially be lifted.
LEBANON
Sharif said the immediate and permanent end of all military operations would include Lebanon.
The Secretariat of Iran's Supreme National Security Council said military operations would stop permanently on Monday night including in Lebanon.
Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said there must be a complete halt to Israeli attacks against Lebanon and the U.S. bears responsibility for implementing the framework deal.
Israel's Defence Minister Israel Katz said the Israeli military would remain in security zones it has captured in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza and that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had made this clear to Trump.
Before the memorandum was announced, Trump said he would bring peace to the region, including Lebanon. He said there should be no more Israeli attacks on Lebanon and no more attacks by the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah on Israel.
In Gaza, war has destroyed homes, blocked roads, and left countless people without work. Yet, amidst the rubble, hope remains. Students and
We aim to create a safe, fully-equipped workspace with reliable electricity and fast internet, offering students and freelancers in Gaza the environment they need to continue their journey despite the hardships.
💡 What will your contribution achieve?
✅ Free access for students to study in a safe and supportive environment.
✅ Affordable workspace for freelancers to sustain themselves and support their families.
✅ A better-equipped space with more chairs and proper lighting.
✅ Uninterrupted electricity through generators that require costly fuel.
[All transfers are tracked publicly here for accountability.]
LATEST UPDATE
Sat, Apr 04
Spark Space is now hosting courses for students & nurses - help bring them hope
Thanks to your generous help, good things are happening and we are progressing, with new students and new teams coming to the space. But in addition to the groups benefiting from the space in a humanitarian way, some new developments have emerged. We are now also accommodating several work teams to work together at Spark, and, at the request of some students and nurses, we have been organizing courses in several fields: economics, first aid, and programming. We are now about to launch several courses in various fields.
Your support is essential to our work. The project's biggest challenge is the cost of energy, currently 25 NIS/kWh (about $8, or £6). (For comparison, in the UK, it's around 15–20p/kWh!) This is one of our essential costs, excluding labor, kitchen, rent, and other expenses.
Thank you for your ongoing support. For us, these challenges fade away when we see our community thriving and able to survive—not just survive, but to work together to rebuild and reconstruct our nation. This work means building people and cultivating conscious and ambitious youth. We are certain that the outcome of this work will be immense, and that the seeds will one day sprout and bear fruit.
I lost more than an account… I lost my small world, people I loved, and the only place where my voice was heard while surviving war and illness in Gaza.
Palestinians are facing unimaginable hardship. Gaza's health system has been systematically dismantled by the Israeli military, and thousands of people have been forcibly displaced and pushed towards starvation.
The world is forgetting us while we are still fighting to survive.
I am not writing this for attention.
I am writing because my family is still trapped in a nightmare that has not ended.
Every day is a struggle to find food, clean water, and the most basic necessities. Every day we wonder how we will make it through the next one.
The world may have stopped talking about us, but our suffering did not stop.
If you see this post, please do not pass by. Reblog, share, and support us if you can.
Your kindness can help a family survive another day.
We are exhausted, but we have not given up hope. ❤️
Hello everyone, my name is Sahar! I am organizing this fundraiser on behalf of a dear friend of mine in Gaza and his family. I have been tal
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