Mastodon Feed: Posts

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
josephcox@infosec.exchange ("Joseph Cox") wrote:

This is a wild hack. a16z gave a million dollars to startup called Doublespeed. They use a phone farm to flood social media with AI generated influencers and ads. A hacker remotely broke into the phone farm, unmasking the AI influencers/fake accounts, gave us the data https://www.404media.co/hack-reveals-the-a16z-backed-phone-farm-flooding-tiktok-with-ai-influencers/

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
samlitzinger@journa.host ("Sam Litzinger") wrote:

Unprecedented errors are eroding the credibility of Trump's Justice Department - https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/unprecedented-errors-are-eroding-credibility-trumps-justice-department-2025-12-17/

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

"a federal magistrate judge said the errors were part of a broader pattern of unprecedented prosecutorial missteps, resulting in a 21% dismissal rate of the D.C. U.S. Attorney's office's criminal complaints over eight weeks, compared to a mere 0.5% dismissal rate over the prior 10 years." https://journa.host/@samlitzinger/115735463470063295

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
newsthump@mastodon.online ("NewsThump") wrote:

A Christmas gift with a hint of nostalgia for those of a certain age! Order yours by midday tomorrow to get it in time for Christmas - includes FREE UK delivery here >>> https://go.newsthump.com/B2R4rB

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
MichaelWhelan@mastodon.art ("Michael Whelan") wrote:

With nonhuman creatures though, this can lead to misinterpretations. Take chimps, for example. They seem to smile when afraid and yawn when feeling aggressive. If aliens were to meet humans—even if they had humanoid forms—chances are that our expressions would cause both species considerable confusion. 2/3

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
MichaelWhelan@mastodon.art ("Michael Whelan") wrote:

However, in the world of illustration, my goal is to communicate something of the aliens’ nature to the viewer. Since my audience is made up of humans, it’s fitting for me to use the human library of gesture to convey my point. Such is the case with my painting for the novel CHANUR’S HOMECOMING by C.J. Cherryh (DAW) 3/3

https://www.michaelwhelan.com/galleries/chanurs-homecoming/

Boosted by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻"):
gedankenstuecke@scholar.social ("Bastian Greshake Tzovaras") wrote:

«a startup backed by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) that uses a phone farm to manage at least hundreds of AI-generated social media accounts and promote products has been hacked. The hack reveals what products the AI-generated accounts are promoting, often without the required disclosure that these are advertisements»

Nice that you can be a well-funded 'startup' to effectively just be a parasite to other 'social' companies and flood them with shit…

https://www.404media.co/hack-reveals-the-a16z-backed-phone-farm-flooding-tiktok-with-ai-influencers/

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

I want to join a webring and make one of those cool animated gif badges for my site

Boosted by jakedel@mamot.fr ("S. Delafond"):
freexian@hachyderm.io ("Freexian :debian:") wrote:

Ever thought about APT compatible add-on package repositories for Debian? Like PPAs but having proper compatibility with #Debian, QA tests and automatic built-in snapshot capabilities?

Glad to announce #Debusine repositories are now in public beta for Debian developers and maintainers.

Head to https://www.freexian.com/blog/debusine-repositories-beta/?utm%5Fsource=mastodon&utm%5Fmedium=social to learn more about it and how you can use it.

#Freexian #DebusineRepositories

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

Just came across AI Snake Oil, that talks, in part, about how AI companies are using Congress to pass AI licensing laws as a regulatory capture strategy.

Control AI, the org that Hank recommends his audience go participate in its lobbying tools to Congress, states that its goal is to help pass laws for, yup, you guessed it—AI licenses.

Another great book by brown folks passed up by the left-leaning YouTube circuit. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/ai-snake-oil-arvind-narayanan/1145168436

Boosted by adele@social.pollux.casa ("Adële 🐁"):
carlchenet ("Carl Chenet") wrote:

Dans beaucoup de boîtes, on applaudit le héro qui éteint l’incendie en urgence, jamais celle ou celui qui avait proposé de documenter, automatiser, simplifier. Tant qu’on valorise le pompier plutôt que l’architecte, les mêmes problèmes reviendront en boucle 🔁

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

What the hell, since things largely seem to suck a bit these days, why not hold an otherwise completely unplanned sale?

So, for the holidays, a €10 EUR discount on my books, and you can choose between reading about how "AI" doesn't work or about how to fix the shit storm that is modern software development

The Intelligence Illusion, for €25: https://payhip.baldurbjarnason.com/b/34qSg

Out of the Software Crisis, for €25: https://payhip.baldurbjarnason.com/b/skbMv

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

Constructed in 1964, this building was designed by architects Sigvaldi Thordarson and Skarphéðinn Jóhannsson. Buildings designed by Sigvaldi Thordarson are often referred to as Sigvaldahús.#Iceland #Reykjavik #photography #landscape #nature #naturephotography #abandoned #decay #trees #architecture

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

Simulated Company Shows Most AI Agents Flunk the Job:

"The results should comfort people worried about AI replacing them. The best of them, Claude 3.5 Sonnet from Anthropic, only completed 24% of the tasks. Google’s Gemini 2.0 Flash came in second with 11.4%, and OpenAI’s GPT-4o was third with 8.6%."

lol. https://www.cs.cmu.edu/news/2025/agent-company

Boosted by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻"):
rayckeith@techhub.social ("Third Foundation") wrote:

#MicrosoftCopilot #AI

"I'm still not even sure what it's supposed to do to improve my Windows experience. All it did was deteriorate my Windows experience until I was driven to hardware sabotage. "

Even after removing everything related to Copilot, he could not stop the system from asking to install Copilot whenever he accidentally hit a certain key. So he pried the key off his keyboard and used glue to make sure its stub never moved again.
https://www.tumblr.com/reasonablywittyatbest/803127085604438016

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

I writing a part 2, and perhaps a part 3, so this may be a series. It eventually drifts away from Hank and explores why #AIdoomerism seems so popular in left-leaning circles (spoiler: maybe it's not? It's complicated)

Anyway, my apologies to anyone who subscribed via RSS because you thought I only posted coffee reflection essays. I promise to do something lighter after the series.

https://fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/hank-green-and-the-fantastical-tales-of-god-ais/

Boosted by jwz:
virtualbri@mastodon.online ("Brian Tatosky") wrote:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/12/16/coast-guard-swastikas-nooses/

Oh, so they let the anger die down a bit and then did the policy anyway?

Boosted by jwz:
ansuz@social.cryptography.dog ("ansuz / ऐरन") wrote:

Mozilla announcing their vision for the future followed immediately by a link to Twitter pretty much sums up the state of things

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/leadership/mozillas-next-chapter-anthony-enzor-demeo-new-ceo/

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
glyph ("Glyph") wrote:

it's truly amazing what LLMs can achieve. we now know it's possible to produce an html5 parsing library with nothing but the full source code of an existing html5 parsing library, all the source code of all other open source libraries ever, a meticulously maintained and extremely comprehensive test suite written by somebody else, 5 different models, a megawatt-hour of energy, a swimming pool full of water, and a month of spare time of an extremely senior engineer

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
FediThing@chinwag.org ("FediThing :progress_pride:") wrote:

One of the myths that comes up again and again in FOSS is "It's run by a non-profit, it's safe, the corporate world cannot take it over".

Mozilla shows how incorrect this assumption is: https://mastodon.social/@sarahjamielewis/115730052589989499

Non-profits can be captured by corporations very easily:

1. Evil corporation donates massive amount of money to a non-profit, far more than it got from individuals, grants etc.
2. Non-profit uses the massive donation to greatly extend its features and pay itself much bigger salaries
3. Non-profit can no longer function without corporate donations
4. Non-profit captured, does whatever corporation wants

#FOSS

Boosted by ChrisWere@toot.wales ("Chris Were ⁂🐧🌱☕"):
samwilson@wikis.world ("Sam Wilson") wrote:

I don't want AI in my browser, I just want the #RSS icon in the address bar to come back. I liked that.

#Firefox

Boosted by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻"):
Rockndoll@misskey.de ("HugoStiglitz") wrote:

#banger #classic #hiphop #alltimefavorite

https://youtu.be/h2zgB93KANE

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

The insanity of the political moment requires that we say clearly that open societies require a search for the truth, and evidence is the central player in that search.

So when oligarchs and politicians throw science and evidence on the bonfire, understand it as attempted cover-up; fundamentally immoral and self-serving. When business leaders go along with anti-evidence policy, see complicity. When civil society institutions fail to defend science and evidence, grasp the revolting cowardice.

Boosted by ChrisWere@toot.wales ("Chris Were ⁂🐧🌱☕"):
CodyIwatzky@lemmy.cafe ("Cody Iwatzky") wrote:

How about LibreWolf?

As there seems to have been recent confusion about this, just a quick “official” toot to then pin: we haven’t and won’t support “generative AI” related stuff in LibreWolf. If you see some features like that (like Perplexity search recently, or the link preview feature now) it is solely because it “slipped through”. As soon as we become aware of something like this / it gets reported to us, we will remove/disable it ASAP.

chaos.social/@librewolf/115716906957137196

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

Bye there #Mozilla,

Hope your CEO and your AI have a good time together because soon they will be the only ones left using any Mozilla slop 🤖

I was wrong for thinking we could have a nice browser, silly me..

@mozilla

lloydmeta ("Lloyd") wrote:

This is the secret to true native level Japanese.

chipotle@mstdn.social ("Watts Martin") wrote:

(The “g” is an example of having that keyword become a reflex: I use DuckDuckGo instead of Google, but I had to remap DDG to “g” because I just kept typing it automatically.)

chipotle@mstdn.social ("Watts Martin") wrote:

Tahoe’s revamped Spotlight is impressive, but I think my brain is too wired for Alfred at this point—I start nearly all web searches with “g ”, and Spotlight seems peculiarly bad at doing web searches, unless there's something I'm missing.

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

Hobby Lobby is rife with AI generated prints and illustrations in its products.

https://youtube.com/shorts/tjRl3odfKbw

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

We have such a clear advantage in fighting against AI executives and turning the narrative against them that I don't they we use nearly enough:

These people are capital D Dorks. Straight gum balls. They are deeply dislikable people so much so that Sam Altman literally gets paid just because he can speak without people vomiting (usually).