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jscalzi@threads.net ("John Scalzi") wrote:

Ending the war in Ukraine on Putin's terms would be one of the most shameful things we could do, and the US has done a lot of shameful things over the years

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/26/us/politics/witkoff-leaked-transcript-deference-russia.html?unlocked%5Farticle%5Fcode=1.4U8.61K5.5yc5Xf1v5L82&smid=bs-share

Boosted by taral ("JP Sugarbroad"):
SecureOwl@infosec.exchange ("Mike Sheward") wrote:

“Another, and make it a double!” He said, sliding his glass toward the barman.

“Don’t you think you’ve had enough?”

The question obviously riled the disheveled patron, who locked eyes with the barman.

“My executive team asked me today how we can leverage AI as part of our quantum strategy,” he began. “We don’t even have an asset register.”

“My god. This one’s a triple, and it’s on the house.”

Boosted by taral ("JP Sugarbroad"):
fastfinge@interfree.ca ("🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦") wrote:

@RachelThornSub So as an actual blind user who uses AI regularly...no, not really. If you include AI generated alt-text, the odds are you're not checking it for accuracy. But I might not know that, so I assume the alt-text is more accurate than it is. If you don't use any alt-text at all, I'll use my own AI tools built-in to my screen reader to generate it myself if I care, and I know exactly how accurate or trustworthy those tools may or may not be. This has a few advantages:
1. I'm not just shoving images into Chat GPT or some other enormous LLM. I tend to start with deepseek-ocr, a 3b (3 billion parameter) model. If that turns out not to be useful because the image isn't text, I move up to one of the 90b llama models. For comparison, chat GPT and Google's LLM's are all 3 trillion parameters or larger. A model specializing in describing images can run on a single video card in a consumer PC. There is no reason to use a giant data center for this task.
2. The AI alt text is only generated if a blind person encounters your image, and cares enough about it to bother. If you're generating AI alt text yourself, and not bothering to check or edit it at all, you're just wasting resources on something that nobody may even read.
3. I have prompts that I've fiddled with over time to get me the most accurate AI descriptions these things can generate. If you're just throwing images at chat GPT, what it's writing is probably not accurate anyway.

If you as a creator are providing alt text, you're making the implicit promise that it's accurate, and that it attempts to communicate what you meant by posting the image. If you cannot, or don't want to, make that promise to your blind readers, don't bother just using AI. We can use AI ourselves, thanks. Though it's worth noting that if you're an artist and don't want your image tossed into the AI machine by a blind reader, you'd better be providing alt text. Because if you didn't, and I need or want to understand the image, into the AI it goes.

fribbledom ("muesli") wrote:

Rust projects don't have an FAQ, they have a "Why Rust?" manifesto that's five times longer than the actual codebase.

jwz wrote:

Saw someone post something with this text in it and it took me a few tries to figure out WTF "sound the Fez" means.

jscalzi@threads.net ("John Scalzi") wrote:

Fucking good.

RE: https://www.threads.com/@hollywoodreporter/post/DRimpHBjiPJ

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

We need this but for open source software https://www.theverge.com/entertainment/827650/indie-developers-gen-ai-nexon-arc-raiders

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

love ain’t no good till you give it away

https://music.apple.com/us/album/somebody-to-love-you/1443728597?i=1443728608

Boosted by kornel ("Kornel"):
regehr ("John Regehr") wrote:

it's getting towards the end of 2025... I wonder if we can call this video as the winner of the "dudes being dudes" category?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KkKArsEH8Y

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

Been waiting for the series Burnout Syndrome for a while, as I enjoy both the director’s and the actors’ prior work, and what do you know? The protagonist is an artist and a major plot point in the first episode involves him losing out on a job because he won’t use generative “AI” out of principle

Boosted by kornel ("Kornel"):
rustnl@fosstodon.org ("RustNL") wrote:

** Speaker announcement ** Our next speaker is Alice Ryhl!
Alice is a Tokio maintainer and member of the Rust for Linux core team and Android Rust Team at Google!

Info & tickets:
https://2026.rustweek.org

Do you also want to give a talk? Our CFP is open.

See you in Utrecht in May!

#rustlang #rustweek2026

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
artnacrea@mastodon.ie ("Andy Linton :tinoflag: ✅") wrote:

In 1989 there was an Internet gateway at
the University of Waikato which connected at a whopping 9600 bps to
the University of Hawaii but no TCP/IP connectivity from elsewhere in
the country. It was possible to connect to the gateway using other
networks like DSIRnet, DecNet, X.25 and the UUCP suite. It was clunky
and frustrating.
Three of us, Jonathan, Mark Davies and I, took it upon ourselves to
fix that for VUW Computer Science. Our big problem was we literally
had no budget for this!

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

this is a powerful book with an interesting and useful analytic perspective

“These three forces—technology, economics, identity—together almost always generate backlash that produces a new politics. Human beings can absorb only so much change so fast.”

— Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present by Fareed Zakaria
https://a.co/2qXw52K

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
uglyreykjavik.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy ("Ugly Reykjavik") wrote:

I was trying to take a photo of the rusty railing, but the rainbow was a little distracting.#Iceland #Reykjavik #photography #naturephotography #nature #landscape #landscapephotography #decay #rust #grass #sea #mountain #rainbow

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

Freebooters podcast now available on gemini.

gemini://freebooters.uk/

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
fugueish@wandering.shop ("Chris Palmer") wrote:

VanillaJS has the strongest supply chain security story of any JS distribution system

Boosted by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻"):
blogdiva ("your auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦") wrote:

RE: https://federate.social/@mattblaze/115613132555490013

🗣FEES ARE TAXES IMPOSED ON WORKING CLASS PEOPLE TO AVOID TAXING BILLIONAIRES

do not normalize $250 fees and proof of citizenship to enter national parks.

Boosted by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻"):
uncanny_kate@dice.camp ("Kate Kirby") wrote:

Humanity really needed librarians to own Internet Search, not venture capitalists.

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
trib@aus.social ("Stephen Collins") wrote:

@jsonstein if you post it to me, you can not eat it at all.

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
liquor_american@universeodon.com ("George Liquor, American") wrote:

@paninid Yes, let's talk about how The Weather Channel seeks to benefit from the Trump admin's deep cuts to NOAA, essentially privatizing access to life-saving news about weather events

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/as-trump-slashed-weather-agency-his-appointees-have-ties-to-companies-that-stand-to-benefit-from-privatizing-forecasts

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

now I just have to let it cool and somehow make myself not eat it before tomorrow

Boosted by jwz:
kenwhite.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy ("Popehat of Serious Proportion") wrote:

James Bond supervillains threaten to blow up the world with their big laser unless you pay them a trillion dollars. Real American supervillains embed themselves in the economy and threaten to cause a depression unless you subsidize their sex robots and the weird chatbots they use to avoid humans.

jwz wrote:

OpenAI says dead teen violated TOS when he used ChatGPT to plan suicide.

Ghouls gonna ghoul: Facing five lawsuits alleging wrongful deaths, OpenAI lobbed its first defense Tuesday, denying in a court filing that ChatGPT caused a teen's suicide and...
https://jwz.org/b/ykxy

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

Listen to "Fun to Make Fun Of" from CARROT: The Musical! https://youtu.be/7kCpvyD0fxI

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
meg@fediscience.org ("Megan ⚘") wrote:

If you or anyone you know is on the autistic spectrum, you may enjoy this read https://psyche.co/turning-points/does-being-autistic-make-me-a-better-doctor-than-a-friend

"In medicine, empathy came easy. In friendship, it fell apart. An autism diagnosis helped me understand why"

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

Listen to "Human" from CARROT: The Musical! https://youtu.be/KQr0SPpSB8E

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

soon to be a cherry pie for tomorrow

Boosted by jwz:
davidgerard@circumstances.run ("David Gerard") wrote:

"how many layers of security theatre are you on"
"like, maybe 5 or 6 right now, my dude"
"you are like a little baby, watch this"

https://www.iacr.org/news/item/27138

Boosted by jwz:
tef wrote:

in hindsight, it's a little unfair to characterise all of the pro GenAI people as "wanting to bring about the antichrist"

some are "a few dead teenagers is an inalienable price of technological progress" and some are more "psychotic breaks? magical thinking? sounds like a skill issue, i am smarter than every dead teenager"

it's one thing to have the nftesque fait accomplit "the future is here and it's not going away" but hearing "genai doesn't kill people, prompts kill people" is a bit much

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

#BlankFriday is coming up the day after Thanksgiving. If you need to prep, for instance by getting a pocket full of cash, today is the day. And it's ok to use transit cards if you bought them with cash.