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

My very poignant and clear example for how it felt when decentralized social media people told us it was okay that we invited Meta to be a part of the decentralized social media club.

I probably shouldn’t write after 9pm

Boosted by jwz:
jwz wrote:

@codebyjeff Eminent Domain PG&E. https://www.publicpowersf.org

Boosted by jwz:
jplebreton ("JP") wrote:

@MLNow waymo et al are part of a campaign to replace all public transit with for-profit corporate controlled surveillance and they can't even function in emergencies when they're most needed. the tech is bad and its politics are even worse.

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
xgranade@wandering.shop ("Cassandra is only carbon now") wrote:

Maybe another way of putting all this is that if I look at something like an LLM and ask "how can I make it ethical," I wind up with something that is probably pretty ethical, but it no longer resembles an LLM at all. Like, you can't train one at the scale of an individual artist, or on work that you can meaningfully obtain consent for. The "large" in "large language model" is incredibly load-bearing.

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
nasser@merveilles.town ("Ramsey Nasser") wrote:

and beyond just the triumph of capital over any alternative, it really breaks my heart that computers are just objectively worse today than they were in the time of Chuck Moore. I try and not be an old man yelling at the cloud about this but we've given up on stability, soundness, maintainability. these are non-goals of modern computing, sacrificed at the altar of shareholder value.

it is wild that an official update of the operating system could break otherwise working code in a way that is impossible to determine even what is happening, let alone what to do to fix it. but this is what we've come to expect. computers break all the time, software breaks all the time, stuff crashes, you restart, whatever. and this isn't even factoring in the incoming wave of vibe-coded systems which make no attempt at correctness.

this isn't what computing was, there were attempts -- serious attempts! -- at developing theory and practice to build systems that were stable and correct in the face of usage and updates. we put half a century into that. and now we live in a kind of collective surrender. it's really depressing. as someone who has dedicated a life to computing, it's really fucking depressing.

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
xgranade@wandering.shop ("Cassandra is only carbon now") wrote:

I'm not a huge fan of "don't obey in advance," as it implies that there is a correct and useful point at which one should obey fascists. "Fuck you, make me" or even just "fuck you" work much better.

But goddamn it, "ethical AI" *is* obedience. It is acquiescence. It's the narrative refuge of quisling appeasers. It is an absolutely *vapid* intellectual stance that does nothing but muddies the waters when it comes to the fascist project of enclosing culture with AI.

Boosted by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻"):
alex@deuill.org ("Marid Vex de Uill") wrote:

@fromjason #emacs ain't too bad either: https://github.com/rnkn/fountain-mode 😄

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
mihaip@hachyderm.io ("Mihai Parparita") wrote:

Playing around with adding BlueSCSI Toolbox protocol support to DingusPPC. Though somewhat roundabout, the end result is that you can transfer files in and out of more emulated machine types on Infinite Mac. As a bonus, it also makes the Macintosh Garden library integration work.

It works for the 6100 running 7.1.2 (https://infinitemac.org/1994/System%207.1.2?saved%5Fhd=false&blue%5Fscsi=true), and you can try to enable it for any other machine via the "Customize…" dialog.

Many thanks for @nulleric for @BlueSCSI in general and specifically for fixes to the SD Transfer app and my DingusPPC virtual device (code for the curious: https://github.com/mihaip/dingusppc/commit/6c002e81e58eb336b345bca27973726fd150c139).

Attachments:

• gifv: Demonstration of transferring files and out of Infinite Mac running System 7.1.2 using the BlueSCSI SD Transfer app.

jwz wrote:

Four way stop versus $100 billion valuation.

It's on its back, baking in the hot sun, but you're not helping, Leon. Why is that?

Also, all the headlines say variants of "Waymo halts service during massive S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams" but what they fail to mention is that it took nearly six hours of these traffic jams before Waymo *finally* decided that the press they were getting was bad enough that they should do the most obvious thing in the world.
https://jwz.org/b/yk0t

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

The iA Writer Template for Screenwriters:

"Fountain supports elements specific to screenplays. Like Markdown, it establishes a set of conventions to use when writing in plain text. Based on that syntax, Fountain will then render a fully formatted screenplay."

Don’t know how I missed this! iA Writer is the best writing app. https://ia.net/topics/ia-writer-fountain-template

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

A Christmas card dated 1940. My favourite thing about this card is the poor bird that the little girl almost ran over with her skis. The white dog doesn't seem to be having much fun either.#Christmas #Advent #Iceland #holidays #xmas #vintage #1940s #postcard #illustration #dogs

Boosted by taral ("JP Sugarbroad"):
cbarbermd@med-mastodon.com ("Carolyn Barber, MD") wrote:

😀

Boosted by taral ("JP Sugarbroad"):
gsuberland@chaos.social ("Graham Sutherland / Polynomial") wrote:

Anna's Archive backed up Spotify. They got 99.9% of metadata, and 300TB of music representing 86 million tracks - original 160kbps OGG for tracks with popularity>0, and re-encoded 75kbps for popularity=0. absolutely wild project.

the metadata in particular is a hugely useful data source. MusicBrainz catalogues 5 million unique ISRCs (like ISBNs but for music releases), whereas this archive has a whopping 186 million.

https://annas-archive.li/blog/backing-up-spotify.html

Boosted by ChrisWere@toot.wales ("Chris Were ⁂🐧🌱☕"):
johanpeitz@mastodon.gamedev.place ("Johan Peitz") wrote:

If people are so keen on using ai to generate art, why not generate sports as well? A good game is a good game - right?

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

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
InternetEh@dads.cool ("Sid 🇵🇸") wrote:

Brilliant sticker placement, no notes

Boosted by adele@social.pollux.casa ("Adële 🐁"):
venelles ("Philip Wittamore") wrote:

The latest comment from @adele about Firefox inspired me to write this phlog/log entry.

Firefox and the useless box.

https://spike.nagatha.fr/log/2025/2025-12-21-20-08-Firefox-and-the-useless-box.txt

gopher://spike.nagatha.fr:70/0/phlog/2025/2025-12-21-20-08-Firefox-and-the-useless-box.txt

#gopher #smolweb #firefox

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your merry 'net denizen"):
jesse@chaos.social ("Jesse @39C3") wrote:

The NS (the Dutch train company) was selling some old emergency brakes, and well... one thing led to another, and now I have this in my home 😂

Attachments:

• video: Video of a very small toilet. We see the emrgency brake hanging in there. Big red handle sticking out from the bottom. Text on the body says that misuse is a finable offence, and not to use it in tunnels. A hand moves into view and pulls the handle. We hear a relay click, the lights dim, disco lights activate and music starts playing. The entire toilet is bathed in tiny coloured dots of light. The hand moves in again, and holds the handle for a second. The music stops, disco lights turn off and the regular light gets bright again, returning the toilet to it's normal state.

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

Is there a term for when a platform with a passionate userbase knows that an upcoming decision will be wildly unpopular, so the organization brings in a sacrificial CEO to make the change, then when it's done, brings back the old CEO who promises to make things right but never really does?

Anyway, nothing like that will happen here.

#Fediverse #Mastodon

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

Connor Hayes on #Threads and the #Fediverse:

"“It’s something that we’re supporting, it’s something that we’re maintaining, but it’s not the thing that we’re talking about that’s gonna help the app break out”."

No thanks for all the fish, no press release. Just a paywalled afterthought on a Thursday. https://connectedplaces.online/reports/fediverse-report-147/

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

I accidentally bought two identical sets of pens. I'm thinking my niece and I can spread a little Christmas cheer by driving to a random restaurant and give the set of pens to the wait staff lol.

That's fun, right?

Boosted by kornel ("Kornel"):
fabienmarry ("Fabien") wrote:

Fantastic that every area has rounded corners exactly matching the screen corners but… there is no more space for the content and this is unusable?!?

#designIsHowItWorks

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

New to me personal infosec idea: the deadname canary.

https://mastodon.social/@fesshole/115758701342987137

Boosted by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻"):
morrick@appdot.net ("Riccardo Mori") wrote:

@fromjason @angry_drunk That interview with Nate Soares — the hack who co-wrote that horseshit of a book called “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies” together with another AI charlatan — was especially embarrassing, and painful to see.

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

A-frame buildings are quite charming.#Iceland #Reykjavik #photography #landscape #nature #naturephotography #streetphotography #abandoned #decay #trees #architecture #graffiti

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

Back in 2019 I was still living in Montréal, but took these two photos during a trip back home here in Iceland. One on the way to Viðey, the other on a beach somewhere on the Reykjanes peninsula, I think. #iceland #photos #photography

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

I did find this photo from 2022, from a tourist-y trip to the old artificial caves in the south of Iceland #iceland #photos #photography

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

“It’s ridiculous. AL is all over the place.” — my mom

Boosted by adam@social.lol ("Adam :prami:"):
zicklepop@nyan.lol ("🌸 melanie kat 🌸") wrote:

Did you know you can use omg.lol's source.tube to update your now page automatically? Here's how! Get forking.

https://source.tube/melanie/now-updater

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

An early Christmas present. I have a head cold so, I can’t currently smell anything. I think they call that irony in the literary biz.