Mastodon Feed: Posts

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

If you’re being fed rapid-fire updates about an issue, or a series of issues, that hint at an outcome that never transpires, if the thing that should happen is always just around the corner, but that corner is never turned, you are not engaging in political advocacy, you are watching a soap opera. And the thing about soap operas is that they’re designed to go on forever so long as there’s an audience for it.

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

The onus, as always, is on the people making extraordinary claims, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

The idea that you can run a fully autonomous, general reasoning, artificial mind on what's effectively just a bunch of CPUs and GPUs is a fantastical claim.

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
cstross@wandering.shop ("Charlie Stross") wrote:

NOT GUILTY BY REASON OF MLEM
https://norden.social/@feliz/115790271152257386

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

If somebody shows you can't build a ten-story house out of plywood and bailing wire, citing the tensile strength of the wire, they are not in doing so arguing that only God can build towers. They shouldn't be expected to explain that tensile strength is not evidence of the divine hand of creation

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

Been seeing a few people outright claim that studies that outline specific reasons why Large Language Models won't lead to "Artificial General Intelligence" are "whitewashing creationism", because apparently showing that a task isn't feasible somehow affirms the existence of a divine soul

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
astro_jcm@mastodon.online ("Juan Carlos Muñoz") wrote:

I had to. Sorry / you're welcome.

mbrubeck@mefi.social wrote:

Cause she’s so high
High above me, she’s so lo-fi

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
effinbirds ("Effin' Birds") wrote:

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

It's grim out there, but the sparrows just want breakfast.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/12/28/its-blizzard-time/

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
futurebird@sauropods.win ("myrmepropagandist") wrote:

She was fine with it … until I petted it. *That* made her mad (tail puffed up ... ) so I stopped because she has enough drama in her life without simple humans making it worse.

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
cstross@wandering.shop ("Charlie Stross") wrote:

SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION TIME:

There are now only 30 days until publication of "The Regicide Report", the 14th (and final!) book in the Laundry Files. Preorders help enormously!

British/EU edition: https://store.orbit-books.co.uk/products/the-regicide-report

US/Canada edition: https://torpublishinggroup.com/the-regicide-report/?isbn=9781250373861&format=hardback

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

this is a very cool idea
h/t @simon

https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/25/claude-code-transcripts/

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
NanoRaptor@bitbang.social ("Nanoraptor") wrote:

What bothered me about LLM use growing, and why people would ever ask it anything at all when it only gives an answer that sounds like an answer might, had me missing something glaringly obvious until this week.

I realised it while on my eighth google for the purpose of diagnostic LEDs on a Mac Pro 4,1 CPU board - and getting links to bad forum answers, and videos (some AI generated themselves) I realised…

Search engines today also only give shitty approximations of what answers are like.

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

“How Big Tech Manipulates Academia to Avoid Regulation”

https://theintercept.com/2019/12/20/mit-ethical-ai-artificial-intelligence/

> At the Media Lab, I learned that the discourse of “ethical AI,” championed substantially by Ito, was aligned strategically with a Silicon Valley effort seeking to avoid legally enforceable restrictions of controversial technologies

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

The photos I was taking outdoors I. 2003-4 have a similar focus on the mundane although they’re also have a greater similarity to the kind of photos I take today. #photos #film #blackandwhite

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

Back in 2003-4, by which I was in a bit more practice shooting on film, I seem to have been a bit obsessed with documenting the mundane. #photos #film #blackandwhite

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

My new years resolution is to stream more on @owncast and do less with big tech. Follow me and Drew on @fblive to get notified of when we/I/he go(es) live.

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
craiggrannell ("Craig Grannell") wrote:

Hard to disagree with anything Howard Oakley says here: Last Year on My Mac: Look back in disbelief https://eclecticlight.co/2025/12/28/last-year-on-my-mac-look-back-in-disbelief/

Sad to see that last pic of an older macOS and see how far things have fallen. (And Howard didn’t even mention the absurd “hovering” buttons.)

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

This is outstanding work, DSD + slotting will open up new worlds to folks exploring these patterns:

https://calendar.perfplanet.com/2025/revisiting-html-streaming-for-modern-web-performance/

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

Lots of great stuff in this year's Perf Planet Advent/December series:

https://calendar.perfplanet.com/2025/

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

It's not enough that we end #ICE, if that's even ever possible. How do we care for the generations of traumatized children, who will grow up to be troubled teens, who will become the catalyst to another sweeping crime bill that locks them all up.

isagalaev ("Ivan Sagalaev :flag_wbw:") wrote:

Sometimes, just watching what's happening on the social media, I stop and think that may be my biggest life's achievement was avoiding to become a tech bro believing in the "great replacement theory"… The bar is low.

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

Apple unveils new Apple TV title card and it’s very different:

"It has a new logo animation of the Apple TV logo, and the piano chord is gone, replaced by a jingle by Finneas, who’s mostly known as Billie Eilish’s brother and collaborator, and has his own solo career."

The title card was made using practical effects, glass and lighting techniques. As far from AI slop as you can get. https://www.macworld.com/article/2960801/apple-unveils-new-apple-tv-title-card-and-its-very-different.html

Boosted by kornel ("Kornel"):
StingrayBadger@zirk.us ("Stingray's Badger Friend") wrote:

Good Law Project has setup up a system so you can find out if your local #NHS trusts have signed up to evil US tech giant #Palantir and email them to ask them to opt out

Do a good thing to #SaveTheNHS this evening and pop over here:
https://notopalantir.goodlawproject.org/email-to-target/stop-palantir-in-the-nhs/

Boosted by kornel ("Kornel"):
bleuje@mathstodon.xyz ("Etienne Jacob") wrote:

Attachments:

• gifv: looping black and white animation, a snake-like curve moves between hex grid circles, with some accelerations

Boosted by rust@mas.to ("Rust tips"):
mattmcal@fosstodon.org wrote:

PSA to Rust programmers: padding bytes don't trigger niche optimization. Add a `bool` at the end off your struct to get it for free.

#rust #rustlang

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

Switched from em dashes to writing with en dashes with spaces a couple of years ago to help with some of the typesetting experiments I was doing, but am so tempted to switch back because of all of the ignorant assholes who think common writing ticks and habits are only used by fucking ChatGPT

Boosted by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻"):
404mediaco ("404 Media") wrote:

also, this happened this year:

Following Charlie Kirk’s assassination and the Trump administration’s promise to go after the “radical left” a study showing most domestic terrorism is far-right was disappeared.
https://www.404media.co/doj-deletes-study-showing-domestic-terrorists-are-most-often-right-wing/

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

Thanks to everyone who joined us on stream. Follow @fblive to catch the next one.

I had a great time, I think I'm done streaming on Twitch. OwnCast is definitely where I prefer to be.

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

“Modern civilization has given ordinary human beings greater freedom, wealth, and dignity than any before it. It has empowered billions of people in all kinds of ways. If it collapses, and the new dark ages arrive, it will be because in our myopia, our internecine squabbles, and our petty rivalries, we lost sight of the fact that we are the heirs to the greatest tradition in history…”

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