Mastodon Feed: Posts

Boosted by jwz:
lusrangifer@blimps.xyz ("Lady Lus, Inflate-a-Bou") wrote:

Have you seen the new browser to replace Firefox? It's called IceCat. It's literally called Zen. It's a customized Librewolf install. It's a gecko fork called Pale Moon. You can probably use SeaMonkey. It's called K-Meleon. We're all using Floorp. Install Floorp right now. We're all using Floorp. Install Floorp right now. Everyone is using Floorp now. Install Floorp right now.

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

Nine.

Boosted by jwz:
claytoncubitt.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy ("Clayton Cubitt") wrote:

Have you tried Apple's "Clean Up" ai function in Photos? It's advertised as being able to remove blemishes, distracting details, entire objects. But if you use it in any photo that contains nudity it switches to a censored pixelation mode. One step closer to my tweeted predictions.

Boosted by jwz:
jamescheese@monads.online ("the sloop james c") wrote:

in china you can operate an llm for far fewer resources by virtue of the room already being chinese

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

We have a bunch of great writers here. All just hangin around spinning yarn, preaching to the converted. Seems like a waste.

100 Fediverse writers on Substack* or Threads would have a measurable impact on perceptions.

(*I know why you're not on Substack I've considered that before I wrote this no need to comment about it)

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

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

Seven times now.

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
celesteh@hachyderm.io ("Charles ☭ :trans: is a Green") wrote:

This EP is really obscure.

Your less online friends will be impressed when you tell them about it.
https://charleshutchins.bandcamp.com/album/basic-waveforms

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

The Sillicon Valley digerati are winning the propaganda war on the web. It may not look like it where we hang out. But over on Substack, Threads, X, and Bluesky, there are prolific writers pushing big tech talking points that go largely unchallenged.

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

whoever is responsible at "alibaba cloud" for the bot that's crawling one app I host with ~40req/s from an entire ipv4 /18 network: fuck you, and I hope you'll be unable to wash your hands without your sleeve getting we for the next 10 years

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

In my backyard are so many different types of birds. Crows, sparrows, hawks, blue jays, cardinals, sandhill cranes, and at least 20 other species that I don’t know the names of but love.

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

What do you mean "let it snow"? Motherfucker, the snow didn't ASK for your permission, now, did it

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

Madness rules at the upper levels of everything. Avi Loeb is the pinnacle of academia in that sense.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/12/17/avi-loeb-is-nuts/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnSJXcUGD1o

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

OH HELL YES

RE: https://www.threads.com/@sethrogen/post/DSXyCWQFF-C

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

Reported the exact same gambling site ad on YouTube five times today, each time the ad seems to come from a different advertiser in a different country. Odds are that at least half of these reports will come back saying they weren’t violating YouTube’s terms

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
kingcons@tiny.tilde.website ("Brit") wrote:

New post: Make me CEO of Mozilla.

Lol.

https://blog.kingcons.io/posts/make-me-ceo-of-mozilla.html

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

You can't win, Apple.

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
skeletor@mas.to ("Inspirational Skeletor💀") wrote:

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

The idea that there is a double-backshot root harm that cannot be defeated ("regulatory capture") is almost always in service of a permission structure for irresponsibility. A way to avoid the hard work of the obvious fixes to justify chasing self-serving goals that cannot make sense unless an abstraction is put in place to obscure direct causal relationships.

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

Programmers are familiar with the idea of abstraction taxes, but underestimate magnitudes. 10-100x improvements are generally ripe for the taking. Why? Fairy tales about option value for comfortable devs.

We need a similar understanding about the dangers of ethical abstraction. Examples: efforts to destroy geopolitical alliances and diplomacy, "effective altruism", anti-vaccine nonsense, opposition to wealth taxes, etc. All justified on theoretical harms, ignoring practical effects.

Boosted by keul@fosstodon.org ("Luca Fabbri"):
MrLovenstein ("J. L. Westover") wrote:

Secret Panel HERE 🔺 https://tapas.io/episode/3658850

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
anatudor ("Ana Tudor 🐯") wrote:

Single element, minimal #CSS (20 declarations and only that many to even out browser inconsistencies), minimal #JS (just updates a custom property value), comparison slider (original image vs. desaturated one) on @codepen https://codepen.io/thebabydino/pen/MWMvxxX

#code #coding #frontend #blending
#web #dev #webDev #webDevelopment
#blendMode

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

“…populism’s appeal has grown in a world rapidly reshaped and destabilized by innovation. The gains to productivity and human flourishing from the information technology revolution have been immense. But we should hardly be surprised that the ride has been bumpy so far… this revolution upends not just physical limits but mental and biological ones. It changes who we are.”

— Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present by Fareed Zakaria
https://a.co/8Kz8DZq

Boosted by jwz:
JauntyArt@crispsandwi.ch ("Jaunty Art") wrote:

The company that gave me a content warning against a pole dancing axolotl drawing I did is now trying to sell me sex toys

Boosted by jwz:
dansup wrote:

The Loops For You algorithm isn't some black box, not only is it open source, and will be documented, but people will be able to clear recommendation data at any time, giving you more control 😉

Learn more: https://joinloops.org/our-mission

Boosted by jwz:
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 jwz:
mawhrin@circumstances.run ("flere-imsaho 🇺🇦") wrote:

we're told the confabulation machines are good at summaries.

which is why acm, not asking the authors, rolled out a summary feature for the published papers, to be displayed along the abstract (because why rely on an existing summary written by the authors of the paper when you can rely on a summary from an autoconfabulator).

it went exactly as well as you think it went.

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