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Boosted by kornel ("Kornel"):
jschauma@mstdn.social ("Jan Schaumann") wrote:

What comes first?

db@social.lol ("David Bushell ☕") wrote:

Advent of Code begins tomorrow!

https://adventofcode.com

I'll be attempting it in TypeScript, Zig, and Rust!

db@social.lol ("David Bushell ☕") wrote:

"give me 1500 words on a tired stereotype"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2465lndrnno

quality stuff from the Beeb here

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

LLMs are not automation. That would have economic value. The generated text artefacts look coherent and we, as a society, don’t even value the coherent kind. We underpay most forms of writing. Even code has no inherent value (see open source) outside of the associated integration and expertise

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

More and more, generative models are looking like productivity tobacco. Promoted by biased research, it’s addictive, harmful, and the little benefit it has (nicotine is a somewhat effective ADHD drug, for example) cannot outweigh the fact that it’s hurting us all, directly and indirectly.

This shit is already turning out to be one of the most harmful tech innovations of the 21st century. It needs to be regulated at least as much as tobacco, if not banned outright from most economic spheres

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

But, unfortunately I don’t see that happening. If we’re lucky, a bubble pop will clear it out of education and the economy, but if we’re unlucky, governments in charge will use public funds to try and rebuild after LLMs with more LLMs, baking this shit into the foundation of our economy for a generation

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

Between diffusion models and LLMs, tech has inflated a trillion dollar bubble around automating activities that have immense social and cultural capital—writing, art, photography—but little actual capital. It’s harmful to education, culture, and society with minimal overall benefit

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

“AI sceptics” who work on policy and education continue to overestimate the utility of LLMs—portraying it as a potential revolution even as they warn against overhype—simply because they can’t see that generating seemingly coherent text has very little economic value

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

“You can support Pivot to AI’s work! – Pivot to AI”

https://pivot-to-ai.com/2025/11/29/you-can-support-pivot-to-ais-work/

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

“‘What makes something data?’ by Emily M. Bender”

https://medium.com/@emilymenonbender/what-makes-something-data-f6d9f498f312

> As a general rule, you can’t reason about the results of some scientific study based on data without clear information about the data itself

db@social.lol ("David Bushell ☕") wrote:

new visual regression tester just dropped

https://onemillionscreenshots.com/dbushell.com/screenshot

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

“Jim Nielsen’s Notes”

https://notes.jim-nielsen.com/#2025-11-29T2054

> Say that again? The costs for operational software failures in the US were more than the defense budget?!?

Back in the day, this was called the Software Crisis (capitalised) but today it's just business as usual

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

“Needy programs @ tonsky.me”

https://tonsky.me/blog/needy-programs/

Boosted by jwz:
sharif@fosstodon.org ("Sharif Naas") wrote:

Seen at @dnalounge #dnalounge

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
skjeggtroll@mastodon.online ("Skjeggtroll") wrote:

@datarama @regehr

There is one important question that keeps getting overlooked in all the talk about LLM code generators replacing human developers, and that is "Where's the software?"

Where _is_ the software? If LLMs are actually useful and yields a significant productivity boost in software development, where's all the new software? Where are the more rapid release cycles, the more frequent updates, the long-requested features finally being added? Why has nothing changed on _that_ end?

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
pikesley@mastodon.me.uk ("Guillotines for a better world") wrote:

Sometimes I just get an idea and it won't go away

Edited to add, since this is now doing Numbers:

Fuck the Tories, fuck the Labour party, fuck the TERFs, free Palestine

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

Wealth taxes now.

https://youtu.be/6DXZMXZCY0I?si=4tZCG81u-J5YXl7t

Boosted by taral ("JP Sugarbroad"):
Schneems@ruby.social ("Richard Schneeman") wrote:

@yosh something I internalized in the Texas winter storm of 2021: the opposite of "efficiency" isn't "waste" it's "redundancy"

Boosted by taral ("JP Sugarbroad"):
thecasualcritic@writing.exchange ("The Casual Critic") wrote:

"The reason billionaires urge you to vote with your wallets is that their wallets are so much thicker than yours. This is the only numeric advantage the wealthy and powerful enjoy. They are in every other regards an irrelevant, infinitesimal minority. In a vote of ballots, rather than wallets, they will lose every time, which is why they are so committed to this wallet-voting nonsense. The wallet-vote is the only vote they can hope to win."

@pluralistic is spot on, as usual.

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
jciv ("John Coates") wrote:

Harvard Professor Jack Goldsmith (a Republican) provides details on the obviously illegal order our Secretary of Defense just executed - murder - on behalf of all US citizens.

https://www.execfunctions.org/p/a-dishonorable-strike?utm%5Fcampaign=post&utm%5Fmedium=web

Boosted by taral ("JP Sugarbroad"):
juliusgoat.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy ("A.R. Moxon") wrote:

We need to start to understand that “respecting people’s beliefs” means giving the people holding anti-society beliefs what they want, which is separation from society. Respect their agency that they want what they say they want. Give them credit for the natural logical effect of their belief.

taral ("JP Sugarbroad") wrote:

Thought of the day: What would #riscv look like if you made #CHERI integral?

1. CSRs could be "capability-mapped". No need for separate CSR instructions. This might be a win or a loss depending on your use case?
2. Traps could generate special sentry capabilities that encode complex execution state. I see a common pattern of per-mode "save" registers for traps. How much of that can we avoid with this? Is LDM/STM an option?
3. Instead of hidden extended registers, could we require pair support?

Boosted by jwz:
jascha@ohai.social ("tomate 🍅") wrote:

We just celebrated Black Friday in memory of Rebecca Black who invented Friday back in 2011.

ChrisWere@toot.wales ("Chris Were ⁂🐧🌱☕") wrote:

Latest Freebooters podcast: Our new self-hosting podcast site, our latest adventures with bash scripting, and Chris gets caught using AI

https://freebooters.uk/media/20251111-self-hosting-bash-scripting-and-chris-gets-caught-with-ai.mp3

In this episode, Chris and Drew share their latest exploits with bash scripting, talk about KeePassXC allowing AI assisted contributions, and the chaps show off the new self-hosted website....

#Freebooters

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
pixelpaperyarn@masto.hackers.town wrote:

Oh wait. It's been like a whole week since I listened to "Walking in L.A." by Missing Persons. Let me fix that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQF7FDeUePA
#NowPlaying

cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen") wrote:

I have, like many people, enjoyed the musical stylings of Led Zeppelin. But I have to say I've possibly enjoyed Robert Plant's turn towards collaboration with other musicians in his later years even more:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHL5ApOqMQc

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow") wrote:

Enshittification is not the result of your failure to grasp that "if you're not paying for the product, you're the product." You're the product if you pay. You're the product if you don't pay. The determinant of your demotion to "the product" is *whether the company can get away with treating you as the product*.

8/

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
MichaelWhelan@mastodon.art ("Michael Whelan") wrote:

BEYOND THE VEIL (2023)
Acrylic on Canvas - 6 ¼” x 6 ¼”

This began as an abstract color experiment. I had no particular subject in mind until I recalled a drawing in my sketchbook. Staring at a darkly swathed figure earlier that day, I felt that she’d been waiting for a painting to float into. 1/2

#leftoversandpalettegremlins #sciencefiction

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
laemeur@mastodon.sdf.org ("LÆMEUR") wrote:

I need testers!

I've created an SVG-based drawing/note-taking app called SKRIBBLOR, and I need some Android-using artists to join the closed beta so I can get the darned thing into the Google Play store.

Not an Android user/artist? No problem -- you can use the Web version here: https://skribblor.app and let me know how it works for you and your devices.

I'll post more about it in coming days, but here's my little video time-lapse call for testers:

Attachments:

• video: A time-lapse video of someone drawing a trench-coated man in a subway car. There's text over the video making an appeal for beta testers.

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
nolan@gts.thewordnerd.info ("Nolan Darilek") wrote:

Was surprised to learn that there are apparently no command line tools for poking around the Linux accessibility tree, so I made Acsh, the Accessibility Shell. With Acsh you have both a CLI and REPL, in which you can do things like:

/> ls # Lists all top-level apps
/> cd firefox-1.26 # cd into Firefox, with tab completion. REPL only
/firefox-1.26> cat 0 # Get more information on the first child by index, if you're fine with the possibility that index might change before the command is processed--not likely at this level. Paths are referenced by name or index
/firefox-1.26> watch 0 # Get stream of events for the first child
/firefox-1.26> search -r button ok # Find all OK buttons in this Firefox instance
... # and more

The future, though, is probably acsh mount. This makes the accessibility tree available as a FUSE mount under ./a11y by default. ./a11y/README.md gives a better overview of the layout, but in brief, directories are apps/accessible objects with their children as subdirectories. Properties are either files containing their raw values or .json files with richer structure. There's an events.json.sock Unix socket in each directory below the root that lets you watch events for an accessible object and all its children, and you can use standard filesystem tooling to search/filter/stream. It's probably slow because there's no caching--it's meant to be a debugging/introspection tool, after all. I'll probably rename this to acfs and drop the CLI/REPL soon--it was great for prototyping and the idea to use FUSE only occurred to me after I realized I was slowly re-inventing all of a filesystem anyway.

Thoughts? I'm sure it has bugs, but what doesn't? https://dev.thewordnerd.info/nolan/acsh