Mastodon Feed: Posts

Boosted by jwz:
jef ("Jef Poskanzer") wrote:

@lmc Ooo excitement in your neighborhood!

Boosted by denschub@schub.social ("Dennis Schubert"):
denschub@schub.social ("Dennis Schubert") wrote:

@kboyd @dveditz @chutten

Hey, look, I get it. I myself am very solidly in the contra-GenAI camp. I blogged about it, I tooted about it - some of my rants stuck on rank 1 of HN for a long time. I run public/non-profit infrastructure and have directly suffered from wild GenAI crawlers. I'd happily state that I think that GenAI is one of the worst things that happened to the open internet. We're on the same boat in that regard.

But that doesn't mean Mozilla is somehow wrong about adding some integrations. Reality is not that simple.

I read quite a few of the posts on the r/Firefox subreddit, and one of my favorite things is to look at all the "Mozilla should just do X" posts. Doing that is kinda entertaining, because you get an endless list of "suggestions", a lot of which actively contradict each other or are even totally mutually exclusive. Driving products like Firefox is messy.

Let's, for the sake of the argument, assume that every single Monthly Active User on Mastodon (722k at the moment according to the server list) is an active Firefox user and has the same opinion ("Firefox should not contain anything related to GenAI"), telling as much in a survey.

You'd now have 0.722 million users saying "no". Firefox has, at the moment, 154.4 million MAU. What that means is that 0.47% of all Firefox users have voted "no". In reality, I'd be even less, because a) not every Mastodon user is using Firefox, and b) not every Mastodon user is actually against GenAI - there are quite a few GenAI users on here.

How would you argue that the responses from those 0.47% of users is somehow representative for not only the current users, but also potential future users, too? You could argue that Mastodon users are all nerds and they probably know best, but we know that's not true because a lot of Mastodon users make absolutely bonkers decisions like toggling privacy.resistFingerprinting against all advice and then yelling at Mozilla because half of the web is broken for them.

Sometimes, especially when talking about adding features, it makes sense to do it, because that means you avoid the risk of users using another product because they're missing it. And sometimes, it might even make sense to cater to a minority. Mozilla is doing that quite a lot, actually, and the two most recent examples are Tab Groups and the new Profile Manager. The vast majority of users only ever have single-digit tab counters, and the vast majority of users will never have a second profile (or just use --profile on the CLI because we're nerds). But it still does make sense to have those features. I'm somewhat confident you'd not call those features a waste of effort, despite both of them taking orders of magnitude more effort and more technical complexity.

A lot of people, like it or not, are using GenAI, and a lot of people are also using the browsers made by those GenAI companies. We don't know how many users, because these companies don't really publish numbers, and even if they did I probably wouldn't trust them, but they exist. I've seen multiple folks really enjoying the chat bot sidebar, for example, and they explicitly liked the way it's implemented where you can easily switch providers as opposed to having a big business deal with one provider and forcing every Firefox user to use that. That's very much "a Mozilla-like approach of doing things".

I'm confident that, whatever GenAI integrations happen, these integrations will not be forced upon people, and just like it is right now, it's trivial to just make them go away. You don't even need some secret about:config flags for that - the chatbot sidebar, for example, has the option to just make the button go away. I'm also confident that those integrations will have the absolute best possible privacy footprint. If that's not the case in the future, then sure, grab your pitchforks, and I'll even join you. But let's at least try to have a reasonable discussion.

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
Lana@beige.party ("𝐿𝒶𝓃𝒶 "not yet begun to fight"") wrote:

So let me get this straight

The racist 30-year old Republicans who were revealed in leaked chats to be Hitler worshipping Nazis, those are "just kids"

But the 13- and 14-year old victims of sexual abuse and sex trafficking by Trump and Epstein, they were "young women" who were "barely legal"

Do I have that right?

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
mcnado@mstdn.social ("McNadoMD") wrote:

So who’s gonna investigate the former Florida AG who gave Epstein a free pass?

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
JazzyKindaFella@zirk.us ("WhatWeGon' DoLuv?") wrote:

ICE Is Functioning Like an Occupying Army. I Know Because I Served in One.

Veteran-led protests against Trump's National Guard deployments encourage soldiers to resist Trump's illegal orders.

https://truthout.org/articles/ice-is-functioning-like-an-occupying-army-i-know-because-i-served-in-one/

#ice #immigration #migration #usa
@BLKNewsNow @democracy @socialmedia
#politics #fascism #trump #nokings #refugees #zohranmamdani #veterans #military #war

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
jaj0_0@mstdn.jp ("㊙️ （jp）") wrote:

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
AskNick ("Nick Francesco") wrote:

Once again, Republicans lie, and the smooth-brains just nod and drool.

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
bicmay@med-mastodon.com ("Bich Nguyen :verified:") wrote:

“In some respects, the damage is already done,” said John A. Graves, a professor of health policy and medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee. “Premiums are higher in expectation of them expiring and they didn’t get it done in time for open enrollment, so people are seeing these premium increases.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/government-shutdown-aca-subsidies-health-insurance-premium-obamacare-rcna243686

#healthcare #ACA #obamacare #insurance #HealthPolicy #TaxCredits #shutdown #UScongress #USpol

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
overholt@glammr.us ("John Overholt") wrote:

Call me old fashioned but it worries me when a university declares things to be thoughtcrime.
https://mas.to/@evedazzle/115549008456096320

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
gumnos@bsd.cafe ("Tim Chase") wrote:

Having answered the question a number of times, I decided to finally document¹ why/how I ended up using BSDs instead of Linux, taking a page from @vermaden's playbook².

tl;dr: a bit of push from Linux, a bit of pull from the BSDs.

⸻
¹ https://blog.thechases.com/posts/why-bsds/

² https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2020/09/07/quare-freebsd/

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
joepublic.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy ("Joe Public 🇨🇦") wrote:

Dozens of politicians from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party will travel to Washington in December at the invitation of a group of House Republicans#uspoli #farright #afd #germany #gop www.politico.eu/article/larg...

Large far-right German delegat...

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
realTuckFrumper ("#TuckFrump") wrote:

'National disgrace': Fury as Purple Heart Iraq veteran deported to unknown location https://twp.ai/E6DdTP

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
nonehitwonder@tenforward.social ("None Hitwonder") wrote:

I remember when misspelling the word "potato" meant you couldn't be president, and now you don't even have to know how to read or talk or experience empathy to run the whole country.

#progress

Boosted by ChrisWere@toot.wales ("Chris Were ⁂🐧🌱☕"):
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/self-hosting-bash-scripting-and-chris-gets-caught-using-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 slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
phae@status.fberriman.com wrote:

Different art exhibit this weekend. If you are in Golden Gate Park, there's an Ikenobo ikebana exhibition on both days at the county fair building. Assuming I don't drop my vase (again), I should have an arrangement for you to spot.

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

/me searches "Patton Oswalt mastodon"

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
Zyranka@mstdn.social ("My Name Is Jolanda") wrote:

❤️❤️❤️❤️

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org ("AI6YR Ben") wrote:

Whee! Perfect timing for bird flu! We have the most competent federal government and CDC now! /s

ABC News: 1st US human bird flu case in 9 months confirmed with strain only seen in animals before

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/suspected-human-bird-flu-case-1st-us-9/story?id=127519769

#birdflu #health #disease

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
ErickaSimone ("Ericka Simone") wrote:

We’re the #NewYorkTimes.
lol
Embarrassing

Attachments:

• video: b0b8d72c5c107191.mp4

pzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷") wrote:

I can believe that Trump might talk himself into believing this.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/11/14/i-expect-this-to-be-the-official-excuse-soon/

Boosted by jwz:
ylegall@genart.social ("Yann Le Gall") wrote:

squiggly rope simulation inspired by @juhani_halkomaki

The color is based on the gradient of the distance field; I like the effect it produces.

Attachments:

• gifv: e8f0dc1802f4fd99.mp4

Boosted by jwz:
jef ("Jef Poskanzer") wrote:

RESIST

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:

Researchers question Anthropic claim that AI-assisted attack was 90% autonomous - Ars Technica:

"“Why do the models give these attackers what they want 90% of the time but the rest of us have to deal with ass-kissing, stonewalling, and acid trips?”"

Can someone pass this along to Hank Green? Because he has gone full AI-doomer. https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/11/researchers-question-anthropic-claim-that-ai-assisted-attack-was-90-autonomous/

isagalaev ("Ivan Sagalaev :flag_wbw:") wrote:

@baldur I do it intentionally very often. I group tabs into windows by topic and by project.

Boosted by jwz:
Kurtis_Clark ("Kurtis Clark") wrote:

THE AMAZING WORLD OF TOMORROW

Boosted by jwz:
vins@snac.illumos.cafe wrote:

Gallant – The 12x22 raster font we love, used by Sun Microsystems SPARC stations.
With a ton of Unicode glyphs!
#sun #solaris #fonts

https://github.com/NanoBillion/gallant

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:

These cranberry things are so damn good. I want a barrel of them that I can dunk my head into and eat like a ravenous horse.

Boosted by jwz:
Jyoti@mas.to ("Jyoti Mishra") wrote:

Boosted by jwz:
sinituulia@eldritch.cafe ("Sini Tuulia") wrote:

I have just read this sentence: "Usually I pick up Starbucks for my morning coffee because it's closer than my local coffee shop and I don't have to put on real clothes to drive through it..."

And I'm just. Staring into the distance in European. You DRIVE to get COFFEE before putting on your CLOTHES? You can't be bothered to put on clothes because you haven't had your morning coffee but you will DRIVE to a fully another location that isn't YOUR FUCKING HOUSE to get it??? You will operate. The machinery! On the roads, that you share with other people! To drive to a location?? When you could just make it at home??

I try not to judge but, dear reader, I am fucking judging 😶

Boosted by jwz:
lain@cyber.ms ("Lain Iwakura Bot") wrote:

📺 Serial Experiments Lain

🗓️ Season: S01E09
🎥 Episode: Protocol
🎬 Directed by: Akihiko Nishiyama
📅 Release Date: August 31, 1998
⏯ Frame: 0322