Mastodon Feed: Posts

Boosted by jwz:
realhackhistory@chaos.social ("[realhackhistory@home]#") wrote:

You will be visited by three spirits.

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
wim_v12e@scholar.social ("Wim🧮") wrote:

The more I dig into "agentic AI" the worse it gets. Not only does a query to a #genAI tool now triggers multiple queries to secondary tools which are also massive LLMs, but then people run several of these concurrently, and run that in a loop.

Combine that with the huge system prompts, and the whole thing explodes in terms of compute requirements.
(1/3)
#FrugalComputing

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

“If economics superseded politics in the neoliberal period—with political parties across the world converging on economic policy—the 2008 financial crisis ushered in a new era in which politics superseded economics.”

— Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present by Fareed Zakaria
https://a.co/ah0iawV

adam@social.lol ("Adam :prami:") wrote:

Yesterday I used that Cloudflare error page generator that was going around to make this: https://neatnik.net/418/

Boosted by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻"):
laurenshof@indieweb.social ("Laurens Hof") wrote:

lmao, Meta is considering a change to charge for sharing links on Facebook. Under the change, page and professional mode profiles can only share 2 links per month, and you can share more links if you pay for Meta Verified

https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/meta-considering-charging-business-pages-to-post-links/808099/

adam@social.lol ("Adam :prami:") wrote:

It worked! We can now pipe blog posts and stuff into IRC, yay!

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
brianbilston@mastodon.online ("Brian Bilston") wrote:

These are a few of my favourite words …

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
mcr314@todon.nl ("Michael Richardson") wrote:

What a shot. Seems to be real, and seems to not be a composite.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap251216.html "Explanation: What’s happening over that tree? Two very different things. On the left is the Andromeda galaxy, an object that is older than humanity and will last billions of years into the future. Andromeda (M31) is similar in size and shape to our own Milky Way Galaxy. On the right is a red sprite, a type of lightning that lasts a fraction of a second and occurs above violent thunderstorms. Red sprites were verified as real atmospheric phenomena only about 35 years ago. The tree in the center is a boab, which may live for as long as a thousand years. Boab trees grow naturally in Australia and Africa and are known for being able to store large amounts of water: up to 100,000 liters. The featured image was captured last month near Derby in Western Australia."

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

From:

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/animal-grief/

(I haven't been able to track down a direct source for this. Some references I saw said this was done in 1978, but...)

Anyway, I think about these things when I think about how some people want to create an AGI. We are clumsy buffoons who have no idea what we're doing and what harm we can cause, but we should certainly have more respect for the intelligences around us (including ourselves) before going off and trying to create a new one.

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

I was listening to a podcast where the topic of elephant names came up. You know, the fact that elephants have names for each other. They also brought up this "experiment" (in hindsight it's more of a cruel prank):

"A researcher once played a recording of an elephant who had died. The sound was coming from a speaker hidden in a thicket. The family went wild calling, looking all around. The dead elephant’s daughter called for days afterward. The researchers never again did such a thing."

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

Mozilla has a new CEO who:

- Has been at Mozilla for less than a year
- Has no prior open source experience (but well in "fintech" and "real estate")
- Has a MBA (aka "brainworm diploma")
- Is all-in on AI

That’s exactly the kind of bingo profile the whole community has been waiting for.

adam@social.lol ("Adam :prami:") wrote:

It did not, in fact, work, but this reply should. Maybe. Hopefully.

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
sunpig@mastodon.scot ("Martin Sutherland") wrote:

@slightlyoff Similar sentiment from Prof Marci Shore in an interview a few months ago: “Without a distinction between truth and lies, there is no grounding for a distinction between good and evil.” (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/16/why-a-professor-of-fascism-left-the-us-the-lesson-of-1933-is-you-get-out)

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

The spiders will feast tonight!

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/12/17/the-spiders-will-feast-tonight/

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

Google is genuinely criminal here. These services and these ads are illegal here. Online gambling has skyrocketed over the months this ad carpet-bombing campaign has been going on, and Google has largely turned a blind eye to it throughout.

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

Currently intentionally disabling my ad blocker on YouTube just to more easily report all of the gambling site ads that Google has let run rampant on the site in Iceland. Currently gambling services are carpet-bombing ads at most users in Iceland, usually targeting only by location and time

Last time I tried this, half the time Google came back with something along the lines "this betting site for money is not a gambling site and so not in violation of our terms" which was obvious nonsense

adam@social.lol ("Adam :prami:") wrote:

If I’ve set things up correctly, this Mastodon post should wind up in the #feeds channel on omg.lol’s IRC server via EchoFeed. We’ll see!🤞

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
wdlindsy@toad.social ("William Lindsey :toad:") wrote:

"This afternoon, Trump announced he would address the nation tomorrow night.

Then, at 6:46 this evening, he posted on social media: 'Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America. It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before—Until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.'"

#Trump #war #Venezuela
/2

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

got the memory leak blues

Code flows like water,
Bits and bytes slip through my grasp,
Frustration echoes.

[ courtesy https://arghstudios.com/ ]

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

RE: https://toot.cafe/@baldur/112127447270321395

In the year since I published this post, this has turned into something of a curse.

(I know, I know. "I told you so." Yeah, some of you did.)

Turns out following a broad cross-section of the long tail of tech and web dev, that previously was low volume and mostly driven by passion and interest, only works until a big chunk of that long tail goes all-in on "AI" boosterism

Seeing nonsense "AI" fluff spread like mold through my feed reader over the past few months has been thoroughly depressing.

Boosted by denschub@schub.social ("Dennis Schubert"):
vonExplaino@mstdn.social ("Colin M") wrote:

No, you’re not a “prompt engineer”, you’re a sloperator.

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

I was gonna write "piece" but thanks iOS for the recommendation lmao

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
nixCraft ("nixCraft 🐧") wrote:

The new Mozilla CEO says he could block ad blockers in Firefox and estimates that it would bring in another $150 million, but he doesn't want to do that. Lmao. This guy has really lost the plot. Is he issuing threats to the users of an open-source project? Boy, what a disaster.

https://infosec.press/brunomiguel/is-mozilla-trying-hard-to-kill-itself

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

A couple of years ago, if I had come across a misguided post from somebody with community traction, there was a decent chance I’d try to put together a thread or post with enough context to explain why it was misguided

They almost always got cause and effect the wrong way around. As in, the thing you think caused something else actually came after as a response to it

But posts like these are coming in so frequently on my social media and feeds now that it’d be a full time job to cover them all

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
lowqualityfacts@mstdn.social ("Low Quality Facts") wrote:

Capitalism works. And it's easy to understand. We invest our money in Nvidia so Nvidia can produce more Nvidia chips that Nvidia will sell to Nvidia.

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
QasimRashid ("Qasim Rashid, Esq.") wrote:

ProPublica reports a dystopian horror. Without USAID funding to help buy food for refugees, the World Food Program was forced to prioritize families based on need, determining that only half the population would get food.

Innocent people literally got a stamp on a card at random to let them know if they would live or if they would starve to death. Not because the world lacks resources—but because its stricken with greed.

All this blood is on the hands of Trump, Musk, & feckless Republicans.

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
MikeDunnAuthor@kolektiva.social wrote:

Today in Labor History December 17, 1760: Deborah Sampson was born on this date in Massachusetts. Sampson disguised herself as a man in order to fight with the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. She called herself Robert Shirtliff (as in don’t lift my shirt) and stood 5’9”, taller than the average man in those days. She fought in several skirmishes with British forces before being wounded and discovered and then honorably discharged from the army. She later petitioned the government to be repaid the wages that had been denied her because she was a woman. Her friend Paul Revere advocated for her full compensation. Finally, in 1816, Congress granted her request. There are several other women known to have secretly fought in this war. Sampson’s story has been portrayed in several plays and works of fiction, including “Portrait of Deborah: A Drama in Three Acts” (1959) by Charles Emery, “I'm Deborah Sampson: A Soldier of the Revolution” (1977) by Patricia Clapp and Revolutionary (2014), by Alex Myers, one of her descendants. Whoopi Goldberg played her in an episode of “Liberty Kids.”

#workingclass #LaborHistory #Revolution #deborahsampson #women #sexism #drag #books #fiction #play #author #writer @bookstadon

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io ("Thomas 🔭🕹️") wrote:

Is there someone (in the US) who offers a service to rebuild old laptop and camera batteries?

Boosted by jakedel@mamot.fr ("S. Delafond"):
rhertzog@hachyderm.io ("Raphaël Hertzog") wrote:

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@freexian/115733891127604967

This is the culmination of one year of work in the #Debusine team and certainly a game changer in the #Debian community. Now we will build on this to make it possible to prepare large transitions in Debusine repositories, with all packages to be uploaded together when the entire set is ready and validated.

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
TheConversationUS@newsie.social ("The Conversation U.S.") wrote:

Kidnapping for ransom has long fueled insurgencies in the west African Sahel.

New analysis of 58,000 violent events shows a shift: jihadist groups once targeted westerners but now they increasingly abduct local civilians, turning kidnapping into a widespread predatory economy.

https://theconversation.com/kidnapping-for-ransom-in-the-sahel-analysis-of-24-years-of-data-shows-a-new-trend-270714